Vegas
I just got back from a poker filled weekend in Vegas. Every time I go to that city I am always amazed at how bad they are.
I started off playing 5/10 NLHE at the Bellagio. Everyone one in that game sucks at poker. The ‘winning’ players are just a bunch of set mining nits that are super easy to play against. The loser players are a bunch of drolling retards that refuse to fold. When I play online I am constantly in thinking situations which can (and often do) lead to tough spots. This seems to never happen in these small stakes live games. Of course, the only downside to live poker is playing 10 handed and getting 30 hands an hour.
The next day I played in a four handed 10/20 NLHE game. Over the past year I have really been focusing on my short handed no limit play, so this game was a perfect match for me.
Seat 1 was some asian gambler who didn’t play bad, but he also didn’t play good. Seat 2 was some guy who was just weak passive bad. Seat 3 was David Sklansky who was more interested in betting on horses than playing poker.
We played a few hands where I was just a total LAG. I won a bit without going to showdown so I had a pretty good image. Seat 2 got up to leave and I was left heads up with the asian guy. Effective stacks were about 3k and he was not reloading.
On one of the early HU hands I raised the BB, bet the flop, then check raised the turn with nothing. The guy folded.
I was then opening about 80% of buttons, which was super aggressive, but this guy didn’t really like to showdown so I thought this was fine.
I open K3o, he calls in the BB. Flop Kd 5h 3h, Perfect! He checks, I pot, he check raises, I 3bet. I was expecting him to play any king hard against me since I had been betting/raising so much. I was hoping he would put in his reminding 1.8k here, but he folded. Oh well.
At this point it finally clicked in my head that I am totally running over this guy. I starting bluffing raising a ton of flops/turns, betting whenever he showed any weakness, and just playing like a huge aggressive retarded… And it worked! He did not adjust well to it. He started open limping every hand on the button. I would raise the BB… he would call and then fold most flops. I would slowdown on some rivers when I wanted to induce a bluff from him… that worked once in a big pot.
After about 30 minutes of this he got moved to the main game so we were done. There is nothing better than playing a heads up session where you have total control over the table and the other guy cannot adjust to it.
I will post some fun stories later this week.