Sensei’s Poker Dojo

Earlier this evening I was involved in an impromptu playing card fight at my friends place. It proved to be a hilarious and amazing way to end an evening of other games, due in large part to the enjoyment I get out of throwing cards. Now, this interest probably comes specifically from the fact that whenever I play live poker, I get a huge kick out of mucking my hand as accurately and smoothly as possible. Ideally, I’d have the seven seat every time and get to lob hand after hand across the table and past the board to bury itself under the muck with pinpoint precision. This practice has significantly increased my affinity for folding, a trait which serves me very well in a slow live game.

The biggest problem that most online players who rarely play live encounter during these sessions is that they are dealt so few hands per hour. The boredom leads to overly loose preflop play, which generally leads to a strategic disadvantage against your tight opponents. This is especially true in full ring games, which many online players are already unaccustomed to. Now there are of course tables where your opponents are so weak in a certain way that you can play most of your hands and still crush them, but those games are becoming few and far between nowadays, even in live games. My solution to this problem is to treat each mucking opportunity as a challenge, and always try to discard my hand in as stylish a manner as possible. It keeps me busy through those hour-long stretches of non-playable hands and keeps me out of trouble.

Oh, and an ipod helps a ton too! I used to be opposed to them on grounds of being anti-social, but I play better when I’m not being social anyhow. The right music can do a lot of good, so I generally choose my tunes strategically to get me in the right mood for the battles I’m about to face.

We had a game tonight, my first in a while. Unfortunately it was on top of Potrero Hill (like, the very top) which is a royal pain in the ass to ride up on a bike. Fortunately, I had a burrito to eat when I got to the top. Mmmm. Anyhow, they moved me to shortstop, I guess because our regular first baseman wasn’t there. Shortstop is actually pretty fun, theres a lot of action and I got to take all the outfield cutoff throws and make a few attempts at gunning a dude out at home (none successful, unfortunately). In the first inning, I made all 3 outs myself. One was fielding a grounder and tagging out a runner who strayed off of second base, and the other two came when I caught a line drive and then stepped on second to get the guy who had run to third preemptively. I hit second in the lineup, another change, but it seemed like a pretty good idea since I’ve had more power this season than before. True to form, I blasted the first pitch I saw into deep right for a 2-run homer.

My next at-bat was a bloop single to right. After my first moon shot the outfield gave me a lot more respect so I tried to just send an easy line drive over the infield but ended up popping it up more than I expected. Fortunately it was deep enough to get past the second baseman. No RBI’s though

Halfway through the game some soccer players came and were using deep right field to play in, so I was concerned about hitting them with a long ball. Good thing I can switch hit. My righty swing wasn’t feeling great when I warmed it up, but the other team challenged me to hit from the other side of the plate my next at-bat, and I clearly wasn’t going to turn down that one, so I switched over and promptly ripped the first pitch into left for a double. I earned a pound from the opposing second baseman for that one, too. I may or may not have gotten an RBI out of it. Probably.

My final at-bat was another righty attempt, and wasn’t quite as impressively hit as the last one,  but still dropped into left field for a double. I probably could have stretched it into a triple and completed the cycle, but my lousy teammates told me to stay at second.

We won the game 21-15 to improve our record to 6-1 on the season. Looks like we’ll be cruising into the championship at this pace!

Thursday we all went to the Rio a little after noon, and I decided to play some cash games until Vanessa got closer to the end of her final table. She wasn’t on the main stage because some Negreanu dude final tabled a limit event (who wants to watch that anyhow?) so her final table was just on a regular table next to the rail. I ran one big bluff early in the game and got called (Isoraised a limper with 64dd, raised his donkbet on a K85r flop, called his little donkbet on a 9d turn, and bet a lot when he checked a 9 river to me. He snapcalled with a straight ), so after that I tightened up and was able to valuetown the pants off of everyone, and ended up booking a win. There was really only one huge fish at the table (the guy I tried to bluff, obv) and the rest of the players weren’t that bad, so I wasn’t too disappointed to leave and go sweat when Vanessa got to 3-handed play. She had most of the chips, still, but the two dudes left weren’t going down quite as easily as the previous 6. The one on her left was a total jerk, celebrating boisterously whenever he won a pot and showing lots of “bluffs” which in most cases were the best hand. The one on the right was a nice guy though, Australian and presumably a club owner or something. So we were all pleased when she busted the dude on the left and got headsup with a big chiplead. At that point all of our crew and all of the Australian dude’s crew were celebrating together, and it got pretty silly pretty fast. In fact, the first few hands of heads up, he was just potting preflop and the flop blind, but once he did that on the turn as well and Vanessa jammed over the top, he had to check his hand and realize how stupid it was. After that he played a little more reasonably, but still pretty insanely since it was headsup PLO after all. She finished him off with the nut straight and a flush redraw against his… something, and then it was party time for the whole crew of DC coaches and other well-wishers. We headed to a sushi restaurant off the strip to meet up with some DC members in the first iteration of “DC Dinners”, which was a lot of fun although we were definitely pretty boisterous. It was good that we were buying a lot of food and had our own section of the restaurant, because otherwise we’d probably be unwelcome.

The next morning we all got up, a bit hungover, and headed back to the Rio for the 10k HUNL event, which Jay and Emil and all the other dudes were really excited about. I didn’t manage to register for it beforehand, which in retrospect I really should have. Everyone of note from our crew won their first 3 matches to make it to day 2 and the round of 32, which is a ridiculous feat. Well, JSnipes didn’t, but thats because he had to play Vanessa in the first round. I spent most of the day playing cash games, the 10/25 nl mostly. The table wasn’t all that great, and there weren’t too many whales involved, but I ran pretty hot. The most notable hand involved me raising with 65ss and getting called in a few spots, and flopping 432sss, (a straight flush). I bet out on the flop, got raised by the guy on my left, and decided to just call him. The turn was an offsuit 5, so I led out hoping he’d put me on the naked ace and raise any flush, or even bluff, and he took some time to think before picking up his stack of cash and dropping it on the table. He wasn’t too pleased when I snapcalled and tabled the nizzloots, and in fact it turned out that he had AA with the spade and had been slowplaying it preflop. I think he had about $6k in his stack, so that was a nice pot. Shortly thereafter, I headed out to go play the WSOP Razz tournament which started at 5. Now, I skipped the first level, because its essentially irrelevant in a stud tournament, but I was blinded off during it. I should have just bought in an hour late and started with a full stack, but I forgot about that possibility. Oh well. The tournament didn’t go all that well, I was down to 1200 of my starting 3000 at the first break. The next level I managed to win a few pots early and get back up to 3000, but then it crashed down and when I had about 800 left at 25-25-100-200 I got involved with a hand that was probably ill-advised, but it was a big multiway pot so I figured I could either triple up or bust out and end the misery that is Razz donkaments.

Anyhow, I went to meet up with the dudes and grab some food and report my Razz failings. Ended up going back to the same seafood restaurant in the Rio. Afterwards, all the HU players were gearing up for their third round matches, and I decided I’d take a shot at the 25-50-100 PLO game that was running. From all I had heard, it was about the softest game in the room, and with a lot of money up for grabs too. I sold off some action, got on the list, and hung out by the two tables that were running it to scout out the action. The main game was playing absolutely insane, with restraddles and tons of reraising and huge multiway pots almost every hand. The feeder game wasn’t quite as crazy, but there were plenty of big pots where, for instance, two players went to war on a drawy board and both showed down 2 pair no draw. I finally got into the game, but the deck was not cooperating too much, so I was stuck about 5k pretty quickly. I won a decent pot with A3sQJ by checkpotting the preflop raiser on an AA2 board, but then the deck slowed down again. I finally ended up getting my stack in in a very large pot: There were a few limpers for $100, a raise to $500, and I called in position with JT97dd. We went to the flop 4 ways, and it came down 872 with a different flush draw. The preflop raiser potted for 2k, so I repotted, shipping my remaining 8k into the middle. One of the other callers then came over the top (yikes!) and the preflop raiser got out of the way. We ran it twice, both times I bricked the brickiest bricks ever bricked, and his 9886 took down the 20k pot. Sigh. Running the equities aftewards I had 40% to his 60, but with the 4k of dead money in the pot it was a +EV play. A gambley +EV play, of course, but thats PLO for you.

Saturday we slept in and headed to the Rio to sweat our folks left in the HU event. Vanessa and Jonas (RBK) and Emil made it through to the round of 16, but Jay and Brian busted out. I decided to play in the 5k PLO with rebuys event, a pretty huge tournament full of big names and big action. It started at 5, so while I got going on it everybody else was getting food and gearing up for the next round of HU. I ended up running really hot in the first 2 hours, building my stack up to about 50k from the original 10k without a rebuy. I got it in 3ways with AA75 on a Q43 board against a few dudes who both had some top pair and other stuff hands, and somehow held up. Then very quickly after, I busted a dude with AA again, and then I busted two guys on a 655 flop when I had 8664ds. The next hour I continued running super hot and built up more of a stack. Within about 15 minutes I made runner runner quad kings and a runner runner royal flush, although neither pot was that big. Rebuys were over after level 3, and I had the chiplead at my table at that point (although a few players came close after spending 10k on a double add-on). I got into a big hand against Phil Laak where he raised preflop, I reraised in position with KJT3ds, and he called. On the K63r flop he donked pot into me, I obviously jammed, and he called the rest of his stack off with T876, explaining that he put me on aces. Turn 8, river 9, and he runs down a straight. (He had 17% equity when the money went in, as it were). If I had won that pot I’d have been close to 100k in chips, but instead I dropped to 25k or something. After that my stack was up and down, but never too huge. I finished the day with 33.4k at about 3AM. At that point I wandered over to see if anybody else was still around, and found most of them still sweating the final HU match.

Vanessa and Jay were playing in a 2/5nl game and there was a seat open on Vanessa’s left, so I took it, intending to call and minraise her a lot. Fortunately for me, the dealer turned on godmode and kept dealing me huge hands. I ended up busting her and several other dudes at the table who were playing more seriously, and won about $2300 in maybe 45 minutes. Most hands I played blind preflop, and looked at one card on the flop, and only looked at the other when my opponent was giving me some heat. Perhaps the most hilarious hand came when Vanessa raised blind to $20, I min-reraised blind to $35, and it folded around to Chuck’s friend Dave who shoved about $200. She called (presumably blind), and I looked at one card (a Q) and decided to call as well, and then we checked it down on a low board. She flipped over AK, and my other card was also a Q. Dave’s KQ was crushed.

My flight was delayed yesterday for a few hours due to some navigational systems failure nonsense, but I managed to make it into Vegas around 530 or 6. I went straight to the Bellagio sportsbook to watch the NBA finals game with Jay and Ariel and Chuck and Joe and some other dudes who I was meeting for the first time. Ariel stayed to play a 100/200 nl game and the rest of us came home to the DeucesCracked mansion, which is awesome. I played a little online and won a few g’s, then we all hung around and sweated some games and shot the bull. Several of us were planning to play the 5k the next day, so we didn’t stay up too late.

This morning I got up and rode over to the Rio a little before noon with Dani (Ansky), and bought into the 5k event. My table wasn’t that great, and I wasn’t really getting any cards to play either, so I didn’t make much happen. In the 3rd and 4th levels I moved a few chips around, but never really made a hand until I raised KT to 600 from middle position, a dude on the button with maybe 5500 called (I had 7k or so at the time). The flop was JT7 rainbow, I bet  900 (probably kinda small but whatever) and he called. Turn was a K, I bet 1800 or something, he jammed, and I didn’t really have to think about it before calling. He had AQ and I didn’t boat up. So that sucked. A few hands later I actually doubled up with AA, but it didn’t take too long for me to bust after that by restealing with A6s and running into JJ and somehow not getting there. Oh well, at least I was out pretty early so my soul wasn’t crushed, and I can play more tournaments soon.

I went over to check on Vanessa’s progress in the PLO event (she was crushing as expected) and then headed over to the cash games area. Not really in the mood for anything too big after having just busted from the tournament, I sat in a 5/10 PLO game which turned out to be a great idea. The buyin was $500 minimum and uncapped, though nobody really had more than 3 or 4k on the table (until I arrived). Fortunately there weren’t many shortstacks, though I don’t mind them nearly as much in PLO because you can spitecall just about always and its usually correct anyhow. There was also a “voluntary mandatory” $25 Mississippi straddle on the button, so the blinds acted first. Most pots wound up being either limped around for $25 each, 5-7 ways, or had one raise and 3-5 callers. Everyone was playing pretty tight-passive postflop too, which was reasonable since most people who know the basics of PLO but not much else are quite nitty postflop. Anyhow, there weren’t too many notable pots for much of the game, just a whole lot of medium ones without much of a struggle. There were a few decent players there, who were playing back at my aggression, but most people weren’t. However, I played one magnificent pot which was pretty great all around. I was UTG with 7s6c5c4s, the prettiest hand I had seen all night. After both blinds limped in, I potted it, and several people called, including an older bear-like fellow who was a dead ringer for Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies. The button, a new player to the game with about $1500 behind, repotted. Now this was very unusual, so I had a pretty good idea where he was at and was getting excited for some gambool. To my surprise, the BB coldcalled the $600 or whatever it was, and I repotted to put the whole table in. Hagrid happily called off the rest, since he only had about $600 to start the hand, as did the other fellows. Well, it took about 4 minutes just to sort out the side pots since there were 4 people allin preflop with different stack sizes, but finally the dealer laid out the flop: 7 5 3, giving me the straight and top 2 pair, and presumably utterly missing everyone elses stupid highcards/AAxx/KKxx. There was a diamond draw which I didn’t have and was concerned about, but I went ahead and flipped my hand so as not to slowroll. The turn and river came off 3 5, turning my straight into a boat, and nobody could come close to it. Hagrid had AKKT, the button had AAxx, and the limp-coldcaller (who actually started the hand with like $2000 or $2500) tabled some garbage like AQ93 singlesuited. I raked in the huge pot of green chips, red chips, and cash (lots of cash! Mostly I hate playing with cash on the table, but raking in a pot full of big head Benjamins is a pretty nice exception). The two players on my right got up and left immediately, but Hagrid stuck around for a while. He stared me down and asked incredulously if I had, in fact, gone all in with that hand before the flop. Realizing that Hagrid had no idea of pot equity or general Omaha strategy, I didn’t feel like educating the fish (though I was wearing a DeucesCracked tshirt!) but couldn’t think of a better way to respond non-awkwardly than “I liked my chances”. The guy on my left who seemed to actually have a pretty good idea of what he was doing, and also clearly didn’t want to educate the fish, added that if I didn’t shove preflop I wouldn’t have won all that money, which was probably true. Then Hagrid said that there was something fishy about the dealer, and gave him a suspicious glance. It was made a little more funny by the fact that the dealer, like many at the Rio during the series, was clearly not too experienced. Eventually he wandered off, and I didn’t play too much longer because when I went to check on Vanessa I found that she had just busted the 10th place player and was done for the day. Hilariously, the dude who she busted was 2nd in chips at the time, and there was a player at the table with 1.5bb left (who, thanks to Vanessa, now has a WSOP final table on his resume).

So anyhow, Vanessa and John Snipes and TJ (who were there too, conveniently) and Joe Tall and Chris (DeathDonkey) and JCMoussa went to dinner at the seafood restaurant in the Rio. It was decent, but not mind-blowing, though I did only get a salad and some crab-cakes. TJ lost credit card roulette but the damage wasn’t so bad, just a few hundred. We returned to the DC mansion and quickly got into the Chinese poker, followed by some try-to-get-unstuck-but-sometimes-end-up-more-stuck 5-card omaha flips. Then everybody else came home from wherever they were, and we picked horses in a $1+.20 sit-n-go online and bet a $100 last-longer. My horse was awful, but managed to luckbox his way into the chiplead before we grew weary of sweating (note to self: pick a turbo next time) and just drew high cards for the $200 that had been contributed by dudes whose horses were out already. I didn’t get either of them. Things winded down from there, since Vanessa has to win a bracelet tomorrow and everyone else either wanted to go to bed or go to the strip and cause trouble. Jay and I split some action on a PLO game and won a few K, which presumably got me unstuck on the day (including the 5k for the donkament). Booya.

Tomorrow I may play the $2500 mixed PLO/PLHE (which I should have a big edge in) but it starts at 5pm and I don’t really want to miss the first DeucesCracked dinner for coaches and members both. I definitely want to meet some of our members. So maybe I’ll just play cash games and/or sweat Vanessa instead. In any case, off to a good start here, now all I have to do is hit a big score. Ready, GO!

I’m flying to Vegas tomorrow in my quest to accumulate mad paper stacks. I’ll be staying with the DC crew in some sort of palace, which I’m definitely looking forward to. Presumably will eat lots of fancy dinners, play lots of live poker, meet lots of young internet poker pros who I haven’t come across before, and all sorts of shenanigans. I’ve never been a huge fan of Vegas, but usually I learn a little each time about how to make the next trip more enjoyable. Here’s the Sensei guide for other young poker-playing semi-hippies who make the journey to Vegas in search of riches and good times:

1) If you’re going to be there for more than a day or two, don’t stay in a hotel. Rent a condo or something with some friends. If you do stay in a hotel, you’re probably best off staying at the place you plan to play the most poker in.
1a) Go with friends. Vegas is full of insane people, so its important to have friends around to keep you from becoming insane too.
2) Don’t spend much time in clubs or other night-style establishments. They’re pretty much a waste of time and money, unless you’re into those sorts of things. That being said, its probably worth going once just so you know.
3) Don’t spend a bunch of money on stupid stuff like expensive clothes or watches. That money is better off spent on something else, like…
4) Eat lots of nice dinners. The assortment of great restaurants in Vegas is actually pretty impressive, so take advantage of it.
5) Play plenty of live poker. Chances are the high stakes games won’t be as good as you might have expected because there are so many local pros, but the mid and low stakes games are juicier here than anywhere else. For one night at least you should also play some very low stakes games, hopefully with friends, drink heavily, and encourage the rest of the table to follow suit. Chances are they will, and it’ll be a great time! Some places will spread any game you like if you bring them enough players (Caesars is a shining example) so consider taking 7 friends and asking for a 2/4 mixed game, and play all those silly games that you wouldn’t otherwise, like Badugi. Alternately, just play a home game and save yourself the rake and tips, though you miss out on some things, like when theres a seat open and some local low-stakes grinder gets into the game and nits it up, and sometimes you end up beating him anyhow, which almost feels better than beating somebody out of much more money in a real game.
6) If you’re awake during the day, go to the pool. Pools are sweet when its 100 degrees out, and there may well be some babes around for the scoping. But don’t forget the sunscreen.
7) You don’t really have to go downtown to the old strip. It just feels sleazier and cheaper. I played poker at binions once my first time in Vegas, because I felt obligated to make the pilgrimage, but the biggest game they had was 1-2 NL. At least the buyin was uncapped; When I arrived at the table it consisted of about 8 glum, sullen faces looking up at me. When the floorwoman said “new player”, their response was “does he have any money”, so I dropped a big enough clump of $100’s to easily cover them all in response, and they ceased the sass. I beat them for a decent amount, too, I think, but it was a pretty small game for me at the time so it wasn’t a very big deal. Long story short, you don’t really need to spend any time there.
Take lots of money, but not too much. It sucks to be playing with half of your cash on the table, but it sucks even more to lose more than you really could afford.
9) Superfeast. Theres a barbeque place, well, I forget where it is or what its called, but it has a superfeast and its awesome. I’ll try and figure that out and come back and fix this, heh.

If I can think of other tips I’ll try to come back and add them in. Good luck at the tables!

I raise KhTh to $80 from early middle position and get 2 callers. Flop A T 6 rainbow, with one heart. I lead $160, the caller in position floats, and the other folds. Turn is the 7 of hearts, I play with some chips and check, he bets $300, I count out the calling chips and play with some raising ones but decide to just call. River is an offsuit J. I play with some big chips again and then check, he bets $500, and I quickly raise to $2000. He ponders it for a while, talking about how he put me on AJ and bet anyhow, and then mucks.

So, I was tentatively planning to go to Los Angeles this weekend, to meet up with some friends, get a little DC video work done, and stack some fools in the legendarily soft Commerce NL games, but when I learned that two of the three people I wanted to see down there weren’t going to be in town anyhow, I decided against it. Fortunately, the stage was set for another classic weekend of San Francisco shenanigans.

Friday afternoon I convinced a friend of mine to go down to Lucky Chances to play a little of the ol’ live poker and hopefully accumulate some more paper stacks before my upcoming trip to Vegas. I played the 10-10-20 and staked him for the 1-1-2, and we both did about equally well (relative to the stakes, of course). There weren’t too many super interesting hands on my end; the one really big pot I played (and won) involved 3-betting QQ in a pot I had killed, and barreling all the way on a Qs 9h 4h 9c 2s board for stacks (I covered his $5500 stack). I booked about a $3500 win on the day, and my friend won $360, so it was a nice little session for both of us. After returning home, we drank some cold ones and watched Superbad (which, in my opinion, is one of the best comedies of the last few years).

Saturday I woke up somewhat early, as I’ve been doing lately (long days and little sleep last weekend gave me a good kickstart back towards a normal sleep schedule). Of course early is probably like 11AM, but its a step in the right direction. In the bonus hours between 11 and 2, when I usually wake up on the weekend, I put in a little session online and booked a decent win of about 7k, which was a pretty nice way to start the day. I expected to go to the park and play frisbee around 3, but we couldn’t get a big enough crew together to play for some reason, so instead we biked up to the Union Street Festival in the northern part of the city and wandered around it for a while. There were dozens of stands of low-grade festival food (a step down from the standard SF fare) and a majority of people there were wearing sunglasses unnecessarily (it was overcast) but other than that, there wasn’t much notable about the festival. I guess there were a lot of pretty girls too, but they weren’t really the kind of pretty girls I much care to hang out with. Plenty of former sorority girls, if you get my drift. So we didn’t stay there any longer than it took to check out the scene. A friend of mine lived a block or two away from there though, so we moseyed over to his place to play a few games of ‘Hustlers of Catan’ which is the same as ‘Settlers of Catan’ except with a wide variety of gangster and street terms in place of the regular ones. I failed to achieve victory in said games, but I fully blame the dice. We ordered a pizza, since it was about that time, and watched Smokin’ Aces on demand. If you take nothing more from this blog post, take this: Don’t EVER watch Smokin’ Aces. It sucks really bad. Probably the worst movie I’ve seen in years. The plot has a lot of potential (Mob insider decides to snitch to the FBI, huge bounty is put on his head, half a dozen quirky teams of hired killers converge on Lake Tahoe to take him out, and the FBI is there too because they want to protect him) but unfortunately there was way too much buildup and not nearly enough climax. It pains me to write more about that miserable movie though, so I’ll just reiterate that you shouldn’t ever see it.

After the movie, we motivated ourselves to make a move towards a party thrown by a friend of ours on the complete other side of the city. But mention of the possibility of crepes led to craving, so we decided to take a detour. Now, the crepe place was on the other side of Pacific Heights, some of the tallest hills in the city, so we had to find a way over or around them. Over seemed like a good idea at the time, so we rode until the uphill was too steep to ride up anymore. In fact the road was so steep that there wasn’t even a road there, it was just a long set of stairs up the hill. So we walked up about a block of stairs, and then discovered that they continued up another block. Having come too far, and without a reasonable alternative, we carried our bikes up it as well. Finally we crested the hill and were able to cruise down the other side until we reached California street, and then began to race towards our destination. We burned past a city bus because it had to stop at red lights like a sucker. My reward was a nutella, strawberry, and banana crepe and a mocha shake with the little tapioca balls at the bottom. A worthy prize, indeed!

Finally we cruised back to my place, and then called a cab to get to the party down in the southern part of the mission. We were a little late to the party, but still managed to get in a game of beirut (albeit a tougher game than usual since the fuel was an IPA instead of busch light) and some quality time with the folks.

This afternoon’s events included riding to the park to play a big game of capture the flag with everyone we could round up. I haven’t played capture the flag in a long time, but its a great game, and worked out quite well. I also earned some significant badass points before the game even started; my friend left his bike at my place the night before, so I had to get it back to him, but he wasn’t answering his phone so I just delivered it back myself, by putting the frame over my shoulders and carrying his bike on my back while riding my own bike to his place. I wish I had a picture of it. We followed up the capture the flag with delicious burritos from my newly decided favorite taqueria in the city and some good quality loafing.

I finally returned home to end the weekend and then promptly loaded up some tables and owned a lot of souls in some pretty good PLO cap games to book a nice little 25k win (at a rate of over $100 a hand, weeeee).

Not a bad weekend, and definitely not a bad way to start off my June quest for all of the monies. Lets just hope I can run good when I’m in Vegas soon. I’m due for at least 2 bracelets this series since I didn’t win any last year.