:Pot Stuck

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.

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I played a bit online today, few hundred hands, and I was in one of the best online games I have ever played in. It was only mid stakes, but the players was awful. Open limping, min betting, and min raising from literally every single player. I seriously felt like I was in a limit game where everyone else could only bet the size of the big blind, and I was the only one is was allowed to bet whatever he chose. This screen shot should give you a pretty good idea to how the game was.

The best thing about this screenshot is 1) Obviously the VPIP/PFR/POT stats, 2) The button open limping, very common, and 3) the SB leading out for a 33% pot sized minbet on this board.

After playing online I headed to the local casino to play live. Heres a hand.

4 handed, and folds to the SB, he opens and I 3bet 4h 2h in the BB. He calls. Effective stakes are 100bb.

The flop is Ah Qh 5s. Sweet, He checks, I bet 70% of pot, he snap calls.

The turn is 3d. He checks, I pot, he calls.

The river is a 6c. He leads for some crappy amount and I raise 3x which puts me all in. He snap calls and flips up 7d 4d. I love his turn peel with 7 high.

I cant really complain (and I shouldn’t) because this month has been great. I have been playing a good amount online, a few thousand hands of shorthanded poker and am up about 10 buyins. On top of that I have already earned about $1,000 in rakeback. Sunday I plan on putting in a big online session since I didn’t play at all on Friday and only a few hundred hands on Saturday. Plus, the Sunday games are always great.

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I was in Vegas this week staying at the Bellagio and it was the first time since November that I was able to log a few serious sessions of live NL. Since Nov 2006 I have been playing nothing but online no limit and the difference between live and online is huge.

The first thing that I found so interesting was the over betting. In a 10/20 NL game the standard open was $80, which is fine, but once three players took a flop massive over betting would occur. The pot would be $240 and all of a sudden a guy who cold called a preflop raise would lead out for $320 from the SB on a 27T rainbow board. Wow?! This happened 5 or 6 times, sometimes the lead would even be as high as $500.

When I play online I make a lot of my money from 3 betting light in position. Always alway always 3 betting. It was hard for me to adapt to live at first because players would either never open raise or only open raise with the top 2 or 3 hands. After about an hour you could figure out who you could 3 bet light, but these situations do not come up nearly as often as they do online.

Your image at a live table is so easily craftable because of the amount of time between hands. One night when I first sat in the game there was a big fish directly on my right. He would limp probably 90% of his hands and then play so passively postflop. So of course every hand he limped I would immediately make it $100 in order to isolate him. We would see a flop, I cbet, I win. After doing this 5 times in 1 orbit a player at the table made a comment about how stupid aggressive I was. Anyway, the fish busted and left so I stopped doing this. I think I went 2 orbits (which was probably and hour in this game) without seeing a flop. All of a sudden that same player that called me stupid aggressive made some comment about how I was the tightest player on earth and he was going to start folding AA face up to me. It is so awesome when another player makes a comment like that out loud to the entire table. He thinks he is harassing you and trying to goat you, but he is just giving you the exact table image you need.

The last thing I noticed, and was really impressed by, is that the live NL pros do an amazing job of keeping the fish happy. They never berate them, always make small talk with them, and keep telling them that they played their hands fine whenever the fish takes a beat or plays a hand poorly. Tons of these fish struck me has huge degenerates with no life and money to burn. I am sure these fish view poker as a social thing and the pros really do a great job at providing a nice comfortable setting for them.

I don’t think I could play live all day, but it sure is a great break from playing online.

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