Sunday at PKR.... You'd think that the larger buy-in would prevent it, but not so.... I basically got knocked out by Joe-Bob going all-in with 7h, 2h.... I've got pocket sevens and the board gets 4 hearts! LOL.
I'll let Rick tell you of his play for the day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I can relate. I got knocked out when, six-handed, I raise UTG 3.75 times the $400 big blind with pocket tens, and 5-6os calls out of position from the big blind. He has both poor pot odds and implied odds to make the call, as I only have about $2,300 left. Best case scenario is that he’s about a 2 to 1 dog to two overcards, and worst case he 4.5 to 1 against an overpair. Easy fold. Anyway, flop comes K-7-4, BB checks, and I push in. He immediately calls (this isn’t a bad call, as he’s getting about 2.4 to 1 on his money, and is now only about a 2 to 1 dog against an overpair). I’m not sure why he didn’t move in on the flop to get some folding equity, since he obviously planned on calling my bet. Maybe he thought he was “trapping me” with his draw? Yet another one of life’s little mysteries. Of course, the straight comes on the river.
Whenever someone makes a bad call with crappy cards (and no real plan), I’m always reminded of an impulsive ex-girlfriend who, a few years ago, decided she wanted a new car. She stopped by a dealership on her way home from work one day. Once she saw the Expedition she wanted, she asked the dealer one simple question: How much is it? The dealer told her $36,000 (or whatever it was), and she took out her checkbook and wrote a check right then and there. No questions, no haggling, no research, no shopping. Of course, when she told me the story that night, I dragged her back the next day (she had her heart set on the vehicle) and told the dealer that we were going to return it if we don’t get a better deal. After a little back and forth, we finally agreed on a price of around $32,000.
The point is that many loose players don’t care about things like getting proper odds, or “getting a good deal.” They get it into their mind that they’re going to play a hand, and their only question is “how much do I owe?” I’m convinced that if I had raised to six times the BB in the above situation, I’d have gotten the same result. I had held out hope that the higher buy-in would create an environment where we can actually play poker. Sadly, it looks like this will not be the case. It looks like it will be the same game as Saturday, only that it costs three times as much to rebuy when your queens get beat by someone re-raising all-in with 9-7 (hey, they we’re suited, right?).
It’s an interesting game with a nice bunch of guys. Usually entertaining, almost always frustrating (even when you win), but it’s definitely not poker. If you “only” raise 4-5 time the BB, then half the table calls. If you raise more, then either nobody’s in or everybody’s in (one or two bad calls, and all of a sudden everyone’s got pot odds). I don’t know why we bother pretending it’s poker. We can just save a lot of time, and have everybody throw a couple hundred in the middle and draw for high card. Then the rest of the weekend is free to do other things. Better yet, just turn on the computer and play online. At least on Party Poker players occasionally fold to a re-raise...
The bottom line is this: you cannot beat this type of game by being skillful, you have to be lucky. That is not to say a good player cannot win. He or she can…if they’re lucky enough that day. The all-in fest is the great equalizer. A good player may still have an edge, but it’s negligible at best. It’s almost a microcosm of the WSOP Main Event. We may never again in our lifetimes see an established pro win the event, simply because of the sheer number of landmines they have to tiptoe around. No mater how careful they are, they’ll eventually get blown up by one. If you get enough blind sprinters racing across a minefield, simple math says a few will make it…
Rick :-)
Post a Comment