Bodog and Satellite Dishes

Last night I went back and played a little online poker on Bodog. Partially it's because I crave poker these days like I would a lover. Partially it's because Josh and I are trying to get the house ready to sell and had to have it all cleaned up for the realtor's visit today.

So, given the choice between cleaning or procrastinating cleaning and playing poker, I think we know what won.

I was aware that we had enough joint projects around the house that I could be called away at any time, so I sat down for a cheap $.25/$.50 table. The low stakes would mitigate me being distracted by the house work and the cash game would let me step away at any time. The table was full. I took a quick look at chip counts and didn't notice anyone with a big stack (maximum buy-in was $50 and everyone was $55 or below). After a few hands I noticed two players who played nearly every hand they were dealt. It's possible that one or both of them was simply having a good run of cards, but after watching their dubious betting strategy (you know it must have been bad if even I noticed it), I decided that neither of these two players were any good. The next 3 or 4 players were conservative but I noticed that they could easily be gotten out of a pot with a re-raise or appropriate bet. One or two players were potentially decent and I avoided them unless I had excellent cards.

After 15 minutes, I'd nearly doubled my $50 buy-in when I heard Josh shout for some help in taking down the satellite dish. Taking me away from a profitable table is like taking a rawhide chew toy away from a large dog, but I managed to be pleasant and go downstairs to help. When I managed to lift the heavy dish safely away from the trellis, he said with amazement and in a pet-addressing voice, "Good girl!" That certainly didn't help since I was already about to growl for the interruption.

I went back upstairs after 30 minutes and my donkey table was no where to be found. I would come to miss it later in the evening.

I went about cleaning and, at about 9:00, was so burned out that I decided to take a break and play a little $6 Super-Turbo tournament. I was so tired that I didn't really notice that it was a two-table, 18-person tournament; although, if I'd had half a brain, the tournament paying out the top 4 to 5 places should have told me that it was multi-table. The tournament went extremely well -- at least at the beginning. After about an hour I'd built my initial 1,500 chips into 6,200 and had a 4,000 chip lead over everyone else at the table.

The table had an interesting mix of players.

One player seemed okay but played too many hands without the proper aggressive style of betting to back that up. The others seemed to be too conservative for tournament play, particularly as the blinds started to increase. One player was down to 60 chips and folded on the dealer button, which made no sense to me. I'd have put my remaining small amount of chips in at that point, even if I'd had the beer hand. A couple of players were your typical aggressive pot stealer's who could generally be removed from a hand with a re-raise. I'd played tight for the first 30 minutes, so after a while, it was easy to steal a pot here and there.

I was feeling pretty smug about my chances of a payout at this point, particularly after I knocked out two players and we were now down to five players remaining, two of whom had very small chip counts.

Then the screen blinked and my table turned blue and populated. I'd been merged into the second table. The second table that I didn't know existed. This was the point where I invented a few new curse words.

I did a survey of the table and noticed that, out of 9 players, I was 3rd in the lead for chip stack. However, this set of players was considerably better than the 1st table group. I played reasonably conservatively at this point with my $6000 chip count, which was a mistake since the blinds had gotten up to $400/$800 or something along those lines. I had a few bad cards and didn't know enough yet about the new players to feel secure in playing those bad cards, so I waited, playing only a small hand or two here and there. The blinds and not the players got me down to $2500, which was well past the point where I needed to go in the opposite direction and play more aggressively. After all, even though I was now one of only 6 remaining at the table and wasn't the lowest in chips, if I wanted any chance of winning, I needed to not try to conserve my chips, but instead to play much more aggressively.

Thanks, Dan Harrington. It was some good advice, even if it didn't work out this time.

I was on the button with pocket 5s and $2500. I went all in, hoping to double up, and got a call from one of the more aggressive players with a slightly higher chip count. I suppose I could have simply called here, but that would have cost me 1/3 of my chips and left me in a weak betting position. The caller flipped over A-5 off suit. The flop came Q-4-A. The turn was a 7. The river a K.

I was out just shy of the money; but, as usual, learned a lot. Lessons learned from last night:

• Don't ever play when you're so busy with other things that you don't notice how many people are playing in the freaking tournament.
  




• As the blinds increase, even if you're in a good position and have a great chip count, your play should get more aggressive, not more conservative. It's the only way to have any chance at winning.
  



• Cable is most definitely preferable to satellite.