Mon, April 19, 2004

(I've linked to a poker glossary in case the lingo gets too thick; I tried to keep it in clear context, though.)

The Texas Hold 'Em variety of poker is my kind of game. I'm reminded of the slogan from the Othello box we had as kids – a minute to learn, a lifetime to master. It's a very simple game to understand, and yet the nuances of strategy are infinite. I've only briefly referred to poker in this space previously, because as soon as I mentioned that I'm good at it, Andy – whose playing style can be very successful if he happens to get great cards, as he did last McThursday – called me a liar. When I said it, I was basing it on the fact that I'd just taken top money in a marathon poker game hosted by Arksie and, intermittently, K-licious. (This isn't to say she wasn't a gracious hostess. She just slept for about six hours of the 12-hour game, and then went to work.) (Also, she beat me in an early all-in, forcing me to re-buy. Women!) Partially, Andy was right. My poker game was hardly refined, I just managed to get lucky. Also, I think my chief advantage is that I'm relatively difficult to read because I'm kind of spastic. I tend to randomly play a few hands I shouldn't, and randomly fold a few hands that might've turned into something good, which I think makes me somewhat unpredictable. This sort of thing pays off better over time. Andy based his analysis on smaller three- or four-person McThursday tournaments which, due to their size, tend to reward this kind of play less often. Sometimes I'd hit big, but at a small table I never had time for my strategy to even out after a few early beats.

During these informal McThursday games, we're often regaled with Arksie's stories of poker games and tournaments he's attended with his friend Phil, who is very good at poker. Phil briefly dropped by our extended game at Arksie's, and left with a considerable amount of money. We hear about Phil playing poker constantly. So, I started hinting that I'd be grateful to receive an invitation to some of these poker games. Not that Joe has any direct control, but Phil seems to be connected, and I know Phil. I've hung out with Phil a few times, and he managed to hit on my sister a lot at Joe's wedding, and he's seen me play poker competently but not as well as him, so I figured he might at least consider throwing me a bone and letting me tag along to a game or two. It's not that I don't love the McThursday games, but they don't represent much real-world practice because there are usually only three people and action is very loose. Plus, I'm just passing $5 or $10 back and forth to Andy or Joe over the course of a few weeks' play. I'd much rather play for more time, more money, and strangers' money at that.

Okay, enough preamble. This Saturday, all my gentle needling finally resulted in an invite to a 30-person Hold 'Em tournament hosted by MJ Loheed and Leigh Wetzel of the Silverlake Card Club. They packed three poker tables into their charmingly cozy Highland Park home, and play ended up lasting just over six hours. (If you want the short version, the title says it all; I came in second.) This was my first tournament of this magnitude, so I had to get used to all sorts of official stuff. Upon arrival, I handed my $20 to MJ, and received a bag of chips totaling $1000, drew a card to indicate my table and position, and picked up a few other sheets of paperwork (chip value listing, blind raising schedule, house rules). Already I was terrified. These people must play a lot of poker! Fortunately the rules were all pretty standard; it boils down to, make your intentions clear. (If you have the winning hand, say so and say what it is; if you're placing a bet, announce it, along with the value or whether it's a raise or call. It just helps avoid confusion, especially if you're trying to raise below the minimum, or call a value less than the value of your chip when you've run out of small chips.) I was nervous about forgetting the chip values and blind amounts as they went up, but fortunately it turns out that the blinds are announced very clearly and everybody is a lot more patient and relaxed than the paperwork would indicate. I drew 4, which put me at the first table, in the third seat off the button. Not excellent position, under the gun on the first hand, but it was definitely the nicest table in terms of its condition. It was a big oval, like Celebrity Poker Showdown, not a small octagon; and it had a cushy arm rest. Also, Phil was at my table, just two seats away, which made it much more comfortable. A familiar face. Plus someone whose playing style I already knew, which would help me judge him and, by watching him, judge whether the table seemed to be playing tight or loose.

I have a terrible memory for poker hands. I know what beats what; what I mean is, I can't remember what I had or what anybody else had, after the fact. Ordinarily, I have a photographic memory. Ask anyone. But when I'm having fun, nothing gets saved into long-term memory. It's why I can't remember any funny jokes from Mitch Hedberg's or Brian Regan's stand-up routines, either. Hopefully, I'll get better at this. I'm sure it would improve my play, although for right now you'll understand if I don't see much need for improvement. So, I don't remember the first hand, although I suspect I bought into it and lost some money. For the next two hands, I was in the blinds, so I lost some more money. We went around one more time, and I probably won one small pot, but mostly just threw away my chips a little at a time. I don't remember calling that often, but I must have because I was short stack at my table by the next time around. I probably had around $600-$750 left. (It felt worse than it sounds, because everyone else had more, and because that includes one $500 chip, so it's a pretty teensy pile.) Then I was dealt a pair of tens, right as the player to my left showed up. (He had announced he'd be arriving late, so our table was "blinding him off," just paying his blinds and folding all his cards, until he arrived.) I think I probably raised to $40 or something. He rushed in just as play was coming to him, and took a look at his cards. He immediately raised to $500. Blinds were $10/$20 at this point, so this was a giant raise. Perhaps not the largest pot we'd seen so far, but close. I don't have a categorical knowledge of poker strategy, but I've read a little about it, and when I found out I was invited to this tournament, I read a lot. And I knew that pocket tens were pretty good in this situation. If he had pocket aces or something, I was sunk. But, if he had Big Slick (AK) or a high card, he was waiting for a draw, and I was not. Plus, if the flop comes A T 8, he may think he's got me with his pair of aces, but I've already got trip tens. Anyway, I called, the flop came A T 8 or something. It could have been Q T 4, all I know is I got my trip tens. I had virtually nothing left, so I just went all in. Someone else had (ridiculously) called his $500 raise, so the pot was massive, and I'd been taught about pot odds, so I had to try. I think the third player didn't call me, but Kris (late guy) did, and I turned over trip tens and he turned over AQ (I think; it was Ace-something). He didn't manage to out-draw me, and suddenly I had a very hefty chip stack. I had a couple of other good hands, and even took out a guy (I think the second guy of the tournament) and built a very large stack. Which is not a situation I know a lot about, so I made some bad choices and lost a fair amount of it. I chose a bad moment to call a big bet by a guy who had been losing a lot of hands, which was silly. I had noticed that he often put a lot into the pot when he had awful cards, so when he started putting money into the pot, I thought it was nothing. I failed to make the distinction between betting big and calling big bets from other players. It was the latter condition that usually sank him, and the former in which I called him and lost a lot. Anyway, we froze play once the tournament had eliminated ten players, and consolidated to two tables. At this point, I still had slightly more than $1200, which was an improvement over my original $1000 stake, but felt sad compared to my one-time lead of at least $3000, maybe more. We drew cards again, and Phil, Kris, MJ, and I moved to table two, greeting six new faces.

As it happened, most of the chip leaders ended up at table one. We only had two people with sizable stacks, a guy named Amir and a woman named Marcy. I was immediately terrified of her, and remained so for the rest of the night. She was very silent, but she used her chip lead deftly and it was very hard to get a sense of her play. She seemed to play tight, but we saw her cards infrequently. I felt like the only person at the table who didn't know her, so I was uncomfortable engaging her. They were chummy with her, which indicated she wasn't as serious as she seemed with her silent stare and her dark glasses, but to me she was powerful and scary. I played A7 against her at one point just to see if she had any cards backing up that chip stack and, in this case at least, she did. (A7 is nothing great, but I was hearing stories about how it had beaten two people at this table before the break, and I was also on a blind. The blinds were going up and my stack was going down; I had to do something.) The guy to my left, Jeff, was slightly shorter-stacked than I, and he went all in with God knows what on the board. I had AK, and I had some money in the pot, and if I had to guess I'd say the board held a pair of tens or something, so I had a sense we might be playing for kicker. I called him, after much deliberation, because it would leave me with very, very little. He turned over AK and we split the pot, picking up probably $100 or $150 each in blinds. (A lot of money to the two of us at that point.) I forget just about everything else at this table. I was scared, and I folded a lot. A lot. I participated in few hands, trying to just hang on to the final table. We lost Phil and Kris and three other guys (one of whom had won last month's tournament, I found out). In fact, two people went out simultaneously on each of two hands, so we were down to five very quickly, and froze again until table one produced its five winners to join us at the final table. I had maybe $690 in chips. Marcy had thousands. Jeff had $800 or so. I was terrified. But, I'd made it to the final table!

Joe was at table one, and everyone there had lots of chips. Joe had made some plays at the end of the first round and then avoided my mistake of giving his money away. He was doing all right for himself at table one. They still had eight people and play was pretty tight, and stacks were high. It would be a while. I knew very few people at this table, but I had played with two of them. A guy named Matt and another guy (Ron maybe), the guy I'd given a lot of money to in the first round by calling him at the wrong time. That guy was short stack, and I was glad to see it. Not only because he'd taken my money, but also because he didn't seem to know what he was doing, and I didn't want to have to worry about trying to read him at the final table. (Maybe he's an excellent player, but it was a feel I got in the first round, and it was information that had backfired on me – my fault, I know – so I was just nervous about him.) At the end of the table, two guys named John and Matt (a different Matt, we'll call him "Champagne," because everyone else did – it's his last name) had pretty massive stacks. Joe was probably third to them. Champagne was playing chip bully, and people rarely called him, so he scraped up a lot of blinds. Joe won a hand or two, but generally just tried to protect his stack – smart thinking. Occasionally, he'd raise big before or after the flop, and pick up a few blinds and bets. Generally, he waited. Why not save as much for the final table as you can? (Being in the opposite condition, I could only agree.) Ron Maybe doubled up his puny stack with pocket Aces, which made Matt's girlfriend Julie the low stack. My heart sank. But it was still eight players. It seemed to go on forever. Anyway, after a considerable amount of dull blind-stealing and a few hands of compelling poker, they were finally down to five. Joe, Champagne, John, Julie, and another guy named Matthew who reminded me of a blond Jeff Garlin, joined us at the final table. We were Marcy, Amir, MJ, Jeff, and myself (chip stack in that order).

First poker tournament, and at the final table! It was a great feeling as long as I didn't look at my chips. I had drawn pretty decent position so I could just fold and watch the players for a while, getting comfortable. (Well, not comfortable. Let's say, acquainted.) I was between John and Champagne, which was pretty good because they both had lots of chips and John was kind of nutty, so he'd throw out huge bets sometimes, making it easy for me to fold on the small blind. I was really enjoying MJ's play. He is a really nice guy with a soft-spoken sweet demeanor and a good sense of humor. Marcy and Amir were the only people from table two with any chips, so he was kind of in the same situation as Jeff and me, although not quite as bad. So, he was very funny about how he played his cards and what he said, which made it easier for me to get over my nerves. I picked up a few smallish hands, but even collecting blinds was huge to me. Blinds were $100/$200 at this point, and I didn't have that many hundred to begin with! Mostly, I just watched as the big guns wiped each other out. Julie, John, Jeff, Amir, and Matthew left us, in approximately that order. I was in the money! I was guaranteed a $10 profit on the day. Wow! Also, I had a lot of chips. I have no idea how it happened. Maybe Joe can fill us in, if he remembers. I have no clue. Soon thereafter, I took MJ out by playing 8 9 against his JJ. He went all in pre-flop, and – God knows why – I called him. After the flop, I had an open-ended straight, and there were some hearts on the board as well – which MJ helpfully pointed out, while staring agog at the miserable hand that I'd called him with, once I had bet Champagne out of the side pot. The river was another heart, I got the flush, and he got fifth place. By this point Marcy, who still scared me to death, was pretty short-stacked. Champagne and I probably had the most, with Joe close behind. Hands, hands, blah, blah. Then I was dealt pocket fives and the flop came 3-something-3. I had two pair, and they were sneaky. I'd also read about this being a fun hand to play because it's kind of invisible to the other players. Marcy went all in. I wasn't excited about it, but pot odds, the chance to take someone out, whatever. I called. She turned up Ace-something (I think). I turned up two fives and she was like "What the hell?" She didn't manage to out-draw my two pair, and so she was gone. I was elated, but I tried to be as gracious as possible. She had scared me all day, and I had eliminated her. Wow. Down to three.

Some time later, Joe went all in and I had more than enough to call him, so I almost did even though I was holding 72 off-suit (the worst hand in Hold 'Em), just because I thought it was silly to go all in at that point. However, I couldn't do that. But Champagne did; Joe was gone. I was now in the final two! Champagne and I played heads-up for a while with $500/$1000 blinds that quickly raised to $1000/$2000. We were pretty evenly matched, which means that I went from almost nothing at the final table to roughly $15,000 in chips. My first tournament! (Um, wow!) He went all in with a hand I can't remember, but I called him with A 8. Nothing spectacular, but there was an Ace, I was suited, and I was ready to wrap this thing up. I got an 8 on the river, and my 8s won. I don't even think the Ace kicker came into it. Now, I had gone from roughly $690, lowest in chips at the final table, to about $27,500 in chips. I have no idea how to play heads-up with that kind of chip lead. I really didn't care about the money. (First place won $270, second $150.) Joe was sitting there, waiting for the end so he could get some boxes out of my car, and he wouldn't stop crowing, "I can't wait to tell Phil. If you win, I can't wait to tell Phil. I'm so sorry, guys. I invited him. I don't feel so bad losing to you on McThursday, now. I can't wait to tell Phil!" Ah, beer. It was nice having a cheerleading section, but I felt like Champagne must be a little irked by it. And probably MJ, too. I had sucked out against him with that miserable flush draw and now, as host, he had to sit around and deal cards while I acted like a goof and my friend kept shouting about how awesome I was. He and Leigh had a party to get to. I tried as hard as I could to quiet Joe down, but it was no use. So, I played my best and tried to get it over with. I was very happy to accept second place, and I was never in it for the money, I just wanted a chance to play more poker and get more practice. With just two of us, I was invested in every hand at least $1000, which meant I needed to play really tight and control my chip lead. Mostly, I did this, but sometimes I played hands I shouldn't have, or folded hands I should have tried to get more money for, just because I was tired and ready to go. I did try to push him around, putting him all in on any hand where I had anything. He outdrew me. I put him all in when I was holding K Q – he outdrew me. Suddenly, he was chip leader, with about $18,000 or so. I got Q8 and flopped a Q and some other stuff. He raised $5000; I called. The turn came, he raised me all in. What the hell, I called. 8 on the river. Queens and 8s – not bad at all. He had a straight. Apparently that other stuff was like Jacks and 9s and stuff, I don't know. Anyway, that was it. $27,500 (approximately) to zero in about ten minutes. Second place! I can't wait to tell Phil.

This was tremendous fun. This was probably also a tremendous fluke. If Kris had had an over pair in round one and outdrawn me, I could've been the first person out. I believe I was the first all-in of the day. I don't think I'm particularly well trained as far as the odds of different hands. I've got almost no practice reading players and "putting them on" cards. (As in, "Hm, he isn't raising, but he's calling a raise. He wants to see that flop, but not be too committed. I put him on A8.") This isn't my fault; I just haven't played against many people. I need to learn limit Hold 'Em and practice at the casinos in town, but no-limit is just so much more fun! However, with all this inexperience, I do pretty well. I think I have two things going for me. I understand the game pretty well, better than average, and I change my style of play constantly. This makes me pretty hard to read. I'll occasionally call something I never should (like the 89 that outdrew MJ or the 55 that took Marcy down). I'll play pretty tight for a while, but when I'm aggressive it doesn't always mean I have something spectacular. I think I gained some valuable experience playing with a low stack in this tournament, and that's good experience to have. Going all in, seemingly out of desperation, with a hand you can win means a lot of calls and an opportunity to double through or hopefully triple or quadruple your stack. Which is to say, I'm pretty good at poker, but I'm better at it than I think I am, so I'll do crazy stuff when I get nervous, and that unpredictability averages out to my advantage. Also, at least this time, I had great energy. I honestly think that's what took Champagne and me to the final two – energy. He was just like me: giggly, joking constantly, making little rhymes and gabbing with the other players regardless of whether they were gabbing back. I was too new to feel comfortable being totally silly, but I was joking around some, and in games with people I know, that's totally my style. When Champagne was dealer, we were all in for a treat. He'd just chatter a mile a minute, talking to every player as he laid down their cards – it was great. I was slightly quieter, but just as excited. When Marcy left, she admitted that when it gets to the final table, she often just gets tired. This didn't happen to Champagne or myself, and I think that helped us a lot. Even at the end, when we were trying to be respectful of the time crunch that MJ and Leigh were in, we were pretty goofy. I started doing this thing where I would check if I had a straight draw, by counting back and forth between my hand and the board, pointing as I went. I thought this was hugely funny. Leigh thought I was "a riot." I will use this in the future when I'm trying to decide whether to call someone all in. How can than not screw you up a little, when you're sitting there with your life on the line and the other player is going, "Hmmm... one, two, three... hmmm"?

Anyway, tremendous fun. Plus, as much as I felt sure I'd overstayed my welcome by playing like a psycho on my first day and nearly winning, Leigh assured me that I'd be welcome the next time. I may have won more than my share as a first-timer, but I take comfort from the fact that I definitely provided more than a few players with weird and interesting bad beat stories. I'm sure I'll go out third in the next tournament, but it will be just as much fun!

***

SLCC will post the results on their website (linked on this page) in a few days or so. Check back for some sassy pictures of yours truly shoving chips around the felt.

© onebee · all rights reserved