In need of a defense at the WWdN...
Disclaimer: I am on a Research Elective and have ridiculous amounts of downtime. If brevity is what you're looking, look elsewhere friends, because this is already running away from me, and I haven't even gotten to the hands yet! But I'm having fun so I'm going to keep indulging myself.
So I played the WWdN (my poker alma mater) last night, and want to try recreating it from my perspective. I scribbled some notes - not a hand by hand (don't have the memory or speed for that) - but rather an attempt to follow the tangent I travelled through my 3 hours at the table. I'll steal a page out of Hoyazo's book and include a few screenshots.
[For any interested - my technique was to open a powerpoint presentation and make 20 blank slides. I'd Alt/Print Screen at what I hoped were interesting moments (translation: when I remembered) then switch to the slides and paste them as I went a long. When the game was over I made a new folder and saved each slide as a picture in that folder, then uploaded what I wanted. Don't know if that's how the master is doing it, but it worked for me. And yes, it's much harder to do than I thought it would be, because you have to take yourself out of the critical moments enough to remember to record the event for posterity - or posteriority, depending on the play.]
I'll begin with the summary to spare you any faux suspense: still nowhere near a final table [control your shock], but once again hung around to the teens - this time out on a coinflip I started from behind and remained as such (KJs vs 88) to GRob, who went on a vicious tear right after swearing he was "sleeeeepy" and would be all-in until all-out (must try that down the road).
Anyway, I've played this tournament 5 or 6 times since January, and I don't recall ever playing at Wil's table. Statistically you'd think it would've happened by now, but no. However, this time I did get the cool surprise of sitting to the right (of course) of the good doctor. Shall I comment on the illusory but irresistable pull of fame that has me referring to a writer by a title I had to sacrifice a big chunk of my twenties (and a fair bit of dough) to achieve for myself? Nope - I grew up on Hunter Thompson, and if anyone else has a better right to that mantle I have yet to encounter them. [Anyone murmuring P.J. O' Rourke needs to get out more] What the Doctor really needs is his own Ralph Steadman...
It goes without saying that anyone reading this should feel free to critique my play. I have three simple goals for this blog:
1. Work out my writer's muscles (much maligned and neglected these last 8 years) in anticipation of cranking out a novel this year, and hopefully entertain any passersby. I'm shooting for an experience appealing to a trainwreck fetishist, but we'll see.
2. Record my thought process for my own analysis, that I might better understand and master my motivations and, in doing so, learn to make better decisions.
3. Create an opportunity to learn from players with more experience and skill than I currently possess. And perhaps inspire me to actually do some homework.
On with the show:
The first scribble i made in my most untrusty notebook:
Great start - they all folded to my pocket Kings [I indulged my paranoia and wondered
how they just knew...] This was to become a recurrent theme.
I (try to) begin with a little aggressive pre- and post-flop play, taking some chances while there's time to recover if I mis-step. For a while I build a little momentum. I even raised everyone out with the Nerf, which for idiosyncratic reasons I much prefer to its unsuited big brother.
The chat is lively as everyone seems to know everyone, and is pretty happy to be there. The irony that they'll soon settle down to sharpened steel and set out to eat one another is not lost on me. The fact that I am an unknown allows me to interact, but to concentrate on not becoming the one eaten. Or so I think.
After about a half hour of play I feel that unmistakable gravitational axis shift - where the table is no longer looking to give me credit for a decent hand, and slowly each heads-up flop incurs reraises that will put my stack on the line, or at least in serious jeapordy. Yes I'll allow I may not be the best judge of the reality of those moment-to-moment assessments, but that's how they felt as they unfolded.
I settle into the unhappy habit of folding to these reraises with my decent but breakable hands. I am sure the table image I have is of someone confused, and bullyable - but on the bright side I am still hanging in there. And I am sticking with religious fervor to 3BB raises, whether it I'm looking at KK, AQ or 9Ts or Slackers: 22. The hope is I'll see a monster reraise to me when I'm holding the goods and finally pull the trigger. On that note, is it a testament to timing that I didn't do better than I did? Most people complain about being card dead in these tourneys. I didn't have that problem last night. Instead I had KK, AA and KK folded to me. Until I didn't and I'll show that hand momentarily. I also was dealt AKs/o 3 times, AQs twice and AQo ("the new Hammer", as someone pithily noted during a hand) thrice. Am I way off here, or was that an out-of-proportion amount of painty goodness? And still - 18/68...sheesh!
An hour into the game and the tone is different, it has changed as it always does by this point: the camaraderie is on hold and almost no at the table is talking, though the occasional sojourner stops by to offer commentary and their unique take on things. Its mostly open, raise, re-raise and a slew of folds to a heads up flop and some difficult decisions. For my part I've been slapped around and am down from a high of 2000 to 800+, so am waiting and praying for deus ex machina to employ itself and save me.
My luck turns for the better when I deliver an unrepentent and decidedly ugly beat on the river. I see A4c and am feeling somewhat despondent. "How good a hand is this?" I muse, "And after all my odd moves, what if any hand will they put me on? Can I sell kings?" I decide to push and the answer to that little riddle turns out to be a resounding "No." I am called by AJo and am revealed - if doubt there was any - as someone with a distinctive and flavourful death wish. But St. Jude looked down and smiled. The flop met us with 2 clubs and suddenly I felt hopeful. A turned ace set the knives to me, but the river yields a 4. mmmmmm.....My opponent took it like a pro. And as usual I felt worse about winning than I would've about losing that hand. And that reminds me: is it still a bad beat story if you're the one delivering said beat. There needs to be a phrase to delineate this alternative. A screwdriver? Yep, I like that enough for now.
I thought I caught a break when Pauly got bounced before me, calling his opponent a Tourist on the way out, but without much malice. My relief that Pauly was no longer to my immediate left was brief, because GRob moved in and began to pound my 3BB's with some monster reraises. Take a look below.
Can you call that? Should I have even tried the raise - it was folded around to me in LP, but yeah, I know this hand is so bad its got its own aforementioned nickname. I folded, and it really inspired GRob to make me his personal secretary, just daring me to step out of line. A small but fleeting revenge occurred before the break when my ATs found matches on the flop and his aggressive but not all-in raises smelled of the Hammer. He tried to send me all-in, but when I called and he would have needed just 240 more for the a chance to see it through, he gracefully folded and we adjourned. With me still alive and with some plausible chance of keeping this thing on track.
After break I had my first sortie with Pocket Jakes. Play was folded to me in late position. I raised with my AQo looking to do some damage, and having been pushed around my last few raises, I admit I may have had a chip on my shoulder. The SB, Boobie Lover (aren't we all, really?) reraised me bigtime... and he had been playing selectively for the last few orbits. Its possible thats AA or AK sitting over there, which would not be good. But this is WWdN, its also possible its another Hammer Play, and this may be the last set of good cards I see. I could afford the call without crippling my stack, so I did. A and Q both say hello. Before I can even mull that over he pushes all-in. well AA, QQ, 88 would have me dead to rights. With anything else I look good. At this point, I feel I have to call (if not to this flop, what was I looking for when I called?). Results below.
I liked the fact that he calmly asked me, "What hands did you think you could beat when you called that pre=flop reraise?" Someone wittily opined "Jacks!" which made me smile, but I couldn't deny the logic of the question. This is where another wit observed "AQ is the New Hammer", which also made me smile. The call on the flop I think was a must...but the call pre-flop is certainly debatable and by better poker brains than mine. Would I have called an all-in pre-flop? I doubt it. But that reraise was tantalizing, in my reach, and it wasn't as though I was in a terrible starting position. Potentially dominated, but on the other hand, did I believe he had the goods. All I can say is it wouldn't have surprised me if I lost, but I don't think this was the heart of donkey-hood. And it did propel me to the top (albiet briefly), which you betcha I found time to screen capture.
The heart of donkey hood occurrs here, when I promptly fell apart on this hand. Stupidly ignoring Gillain's raise and foolishly continuation betting this very unattractive flop, I ended up doubling him up.
And yes....Dems Quads Beetches.
Indeed.
Jung would call it synchronicity that the hand that briefly made me and the one that did me (mostly) in was the same and in fact dealt from the same position. Again, I would posit there is justice, plenty of it, in poker, most people are just looking for it on the wrong hands. Somehow, I managed not kill myself off on that hand. Put another way, Gillain just didn't have enough of his own to take all of mine. And so I trundled on until these babies found me. Every time I see meet these guys, two aligned but contrary thoughts go through my head.
"Now these are people I can do business with."
"This is a good hand to broke with."
Having watched my stack steadily dwindle from its high water mark, I was ready to say goodnight if I had to.
But it wasn't to be. Either way. StB turned up the black kings and we chopped GRobs donation to the point, both of us grumbling about missed opportunities. And that was pretty much it for me. The blinds were lethal at that point, so too late I went into high agression mode. I caught KJs and she went down without a fight to GRob's 88s. 3 hours, and no real improvement from last week. In retrospect, I think I got into too many hands when I had the lead, surrendering several 3BB to monster reraises...hand selection got away from me, and the table punished me when I tried to limp. I hope Wes makes his way over here some day, cause I'd like his take on that hand too. In all, I have a blast playing that game, and still aspire to take it down at some point down the road. Ah well, there's always the Mookie tonight to cut more teeth on.
And this is poker in a nutshell. 3 hours 68 players, finish well back of glory. 90 minutes or so on a 6X33 right after the game and the facts speak for themselves.
Still - no question which is more fun. Still positive, but barely, for the year. I'm keeping track as of right now.
So I played the WWdN (my poker alma mater) last night, and want to try recreating it from my perspective. I scribbled some notes - not a hand by hand (don't have the memory or speed for that) - but rather an attempt to follow the tangent I travelled through my 3 hours at the table. I'll steal a page out of Hoyazo's book and include a few screenshots.
[For any interested - my technique was to open a powerpoint presentation and make 20 blank slides. I'd Alt/Print Screen at what I hoped were interesting moments (translation: when I remembered) then switch to the slides and paste them as I went a long. When the game was over I made a new folder and saved each slide as a picture in that folder, then uploaded what I wanted. Don't know if that's how the master is doing it, but it worked for me. And yes, it's much harder to do than I thought it would be, because you have to take yourself out of the critical moments enough to remember to record the event for posterity - or posteriority, depending on the play.]
I'll begin with the summary to spare you any faux suspense: still nowhere near a final table [control your shock], but once again hung around to the teens - this time out on a coinflip I started from behind and remained as such (KJs vs 88) to GRob, who went on a vicious tear right after swearing he was "sleeeeepy" and would be all-in until all-out (must try that down the road).
Anyway, I've played this tournament 5 or 6 times since January, and I don't recall ever playing at Wil's table. Statistically you'd think it would've happened by now, but no. However, this time I did get the cool surprise of sitting to the right (of course) of the good doctor. Shall I comment on the illusory but irresistable pull of fame that has me referring to a writer by a title I had to sacrifice a big chunk of my twenties (and a fair bit of dough) to achieve for myself? Nope - I grew up on Hunter Thompson, and if anyone else has a better right to that mantle I have yet to encounter them. [Anyone murmuring P.J. O' Rourke needs to get out more] What the Doctor really needs is his own Ralph Steadman...
It goes without saying that anyone reading this should feel free to critique my play. I have three simple goals for this blog:
1. Work out my writer's muscles (much maligned and neglected these last 8 years) in anticipation of cranking out a novel this year, and hopefully entertain any passersby. I'm shooting for an experience appealing to a trainwreck fetishist, but we'll see.
2. Record my thought process for my own analysis, that I might better understand and master my motivations and, in doing so, learn to make better decisions.
3. Create an opportunity to learn from players with more experience and skill than I currently possess. And perhaps inspire me to actually do some homework.
On with the show:
The first scribble i made in my most untrusty notebook:
Great start - they all folded to my pocket Kings [I indulged my paranoia and wondered
how they just knew...] This was to become a recurrent theme.
I (try to) begin with a little aggressive pre- and post-flop play, taking some chances while there's time to recover if I mis-step. For a while I build a little momentum. I even raised everyone out with the Nerf, which for idiosyncratic reasons I much prefer to its unsuited big brother.
The chat is lively as everyone seems to know everyone, and is pretty happy to be there. The irony that they'll soon settle down to sharpened steel and set out to eat one another is not lost on me. The fact that I am an unknown allows me to interact, but to concentrate on not becoming the one eaten. Or so I think.
After about a half hour of play I feel that unmistakable gravitational axis shift - where the table is no longer looking to give me credit for a decent hand, and slowly each heads-up flop incurs reraises that will put my stack on the line, or at least in serious jeapordy. Yes I'll allow I may not be the best judge of the reality of those moment-to-moment assessments, but that's how they felt as they unfolded.
I settle into the unhappy habit of folding to these reraises with my decent but breakable hands. I am sure the table image I have is of someone confused, and bullyable - but on the bright side I am still hanging in there. And I am sticking with religious fervor to 3BB raises, whether it I'm looking at KK, AQ or 9Ts or Slackers: 22. The hope is I'll see a monster reraise to me when I'm holding the goods and finally pull the trigger. On that note, is it a testament to timing that I didn't do better than I did? Most people complain about being card dead in these tourneys. I didn't have that problem last night. Instead I had KK, AA and KK folded to me. Until I didn't and I'll show that hand momentarily. I also was dealt AKs/o 3 times, AQs twice and AQo ("the new Hammer", as someone pithily noted during a hand) thrice. Am I way off here, or was that an out-of-proportion amount of painty goodness? And still - 18/68...sheesh!
An hour into the game and the tone is different, it has changed as it always does by this point: the camaraderie is on hold and almost no at the table is talking, though the occasional sojourner stops by to offer commentary and their unique take on things. Its mostly open, raise, re-raise and a slew of folds to a heads up flop and some difficult decisions. For my part I've been slapped around and am down from a high of 2000 to 800+, so am waiting and praying for deus ex machina to employ itself and save me.
My luck turns for the better when I deliver an unrepentent and decidedly ugly beat on the river. I see A4c and am feeling somewhat despondent. "How good a hand is this?" I muse, "And after all my odd moves, what if any hand will they put me on? Can I sell kings?" I decide to push and the answer to that little riddle turns out to be a resounding "No." I am called by AJo and am revealed - if doubt there was any - as someone with a distinctive and flavourful death wish. But St. Jude looked down and smiled. The flop met us with 2 clubs and suddenly I felt hopeful. A turned ace set the knives to me, but the river yields a 4. mmmmmm.....My opponent took it like a pro. And as usual I felt worse about winning than I would've about losing that hand. And that reminds me: is it still a bad beat story if you're the one delivering said beat. There needs to be a phrase to delineate this alternative. A screwdriver? Yep, I like that enough for now.
I thought I caught a break when Pauly got bounced before me, calling his opponent a Tourist on the way out, but without much malice. My relief that Pauly was no longer to my immediate left was brief, because GRob moved in and began to pound my 3BB's with some monster reraises. Take a look below.
Can you call that? Should I have even tried the raise - it was folded around to me in LP, but yeah, I know this hand is so bad its got its own aforementioned nickname. I folded, and it really inspired GRob to make me his personal secretary, just daring me to step out of line. A small but fleeting revenge occurred before the break when my ATs found matches on the flop and his aggressive but not all-in raises smelled of the Hammer. He tried to send me all-in, but when I called and he would have needed just 240 more for the a chance to see it through, he gracefully folded and we adjourned. With me still alive and with some plausible chance of keeping this thing on track.
After break I had my first sortie with Pocket Jakes. Play was folded to me in late position. I raised with my AQo looking to do some damage, and having been pushed around my last few raises, I admit I may have had a chip on my shoulder. The SB, Boobie Lover (aren't we all, really?) reraised me bigtime... and he had been playing selectively for the last few orbits. Its possible thats AA or AK sitting over there, which would not be good. But this is WWdN, its also possible its another Hammer Play, and this may be the last set of good cards I see. I could afford the call without crippling my stack, so I did. A and Q both say hello. Before I can even mull that over he pushes all-in. well AA, QQ, 88 would have me dead to rights. With anything else I look good. At this point, I feel I have to call (if not to this flop, what was I looking for when I called?). Results below.
I liked the fact that he calmly asked me, "What hands did you think you could beat when you called that pre=flop reraise?" Someone wittily opined "Jacks!" which made me smile, but I couldn't deny the logic of the question. This is where another wit observed "AQ is the New Hammer", which also made me smile. The call on the flop I think was a must...but the call pre-flop is certainly debatable and by better poker brains than mine. Would I have called an all-in pre-flop? I doubt it. But that reraise was tantalizing, in my reach, and it wasn't as though I was in a terrible starting position. Potentially dominated, but on the other hand, did I believe he had the goods. All I can say is it wouldn't have surprised me if I lost, but I don't think this was the heart of donkey-hood. And it did propel me to the top (albiet briefly), which you betcha I found time to screen capture.
The heart of donkey hood occurrs here, when I promptly fell apart on this hand. Stupidly ignoring Gillain's raise and foolishly continuation betting this very unattractive flop, I ended up doubling him up.
And yes....Dems Quads Beetches.
Indeed.
Jung would call it synchronicity that the hand that briefly made me and the one that did me (mostly) in was the same and in fact dealt from the same position. Again, I would posit there is justice, plenty of it, in poker, most people are just looking for it on the wrong hands. Somehow, I managed not kill myself off on that hand. Put another way, Gillain just didn't have enough of his own to take all of mine. And so I trundled on until these babies found me. Every time I see meet these guys, two aligned but contrary thoughts go through my head.
"Now these are people I can do business with."
"This is a good hand to broke with."
Having watched my stack steadily dwindle from its high water mark, I was ready to say goodnight if I had to.
But it wasn't to be. Either way. StB turned up the black kings and we chopped GRobs donation to the point, both of us grumbling about missed opportunities. And that was pretty much it for me. The blinds were lethal at that point, so too late I went into high agression mode. I caught KJs and she went down without a fight to GRob's 88s. 3 hours, and no real improvement from last week. In retrospect, I think I got into too many hands when I had the lead, surrendering several 3BB to monster reraises...hand selection got away from me, and the table punished me when I tried to limp. I hope Wes makes his way over here some day, cause I'd like his take on that hand too. In all, I have a blast playing that game, and still aspire to take it down at some point down the road. Ah well, there's always the Mookie tonight to cut more teeth on.
And this is poker in a nutshell. 3 hours 68 players, finish well back of glory. 90 minutes or so on a 6X33 right after the game and the facts speak for themselves.
Still - no question which is more fun. Still positive, but barely, for the year. I'm keeping track as of right now.
posted by Iakaris aka I.A.K. at 11:11 PM
3 Comments:
I think I'm your curse.
I logged in around 10:20 to see who was still playing, saw you were in the final 19, went to your table to say hi, but before I could, YOU WERE OUT.
Sorry
too funny! all good. i had a strong sense i was on the way out...next time I'll cradle that big lead a little closer and wait on the primo hands.
also, I saw you linked to me - very cool. you're first up as soon as I figure out how.
cya at the mook tonight
Another great read, i must try playing the new hammer myself!!
You are now added to my links also. That WWdN sounds like great fun, damn the time difference!!
Tried to include how to add a link but blogger wont let me. Email sent with details.
Cheers
Thirsty
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