Mad Man Poker

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I went to a casino! I actually have been dying to enter one, but since I’m only 18 years old, I can’t visit the Belgian casinos. But now I’m on vacation in Dublin, where the age limit for casinos is 18! I was really excited to enter the card club.

Even though the tournament I wanted to play in wasn’t until that evening, I went by in the afternoon to get my membership done. Upon registering, I even recieved a €10 free bet. Pretty nice! And it really felt good to have an actual casino chip in my hand. My club of choice: Fitzwilliam Card Club (link). It’s not that big of a casino, but it has a friendly atmosphere and seems to be perfectly what I expect from a casino.

In the evening, I went by again, now to actually play the tournament. That evening they were hosting a 20+5 rebuy tournament. I’ll show you the details:

Wednesday €20+5 No Limit Holdem Rebuy Tournament.

Usually between 35-50 players. Players start with 2000 chips. There are rebuys available for 1 hour. Rebuys cost €20 and players can have up to 3 rebuys. The first rebuy is worth 2000 chips, the second is worth 3000 chips, and the last rebuy (or add-on) is worth 4000 chips. Blinds go up every 20 minutes. Bonus chips 500.

You get your bonus chips if you are in your seat by the time the tournament starts. So we started off with a 2500 stack, the blind level was 25/50 and levels would go up every 25 minutes. I had a rather slow start, getting utter garbage hands. This made that I could watch my fellow players a bit, and especially in the first few levels I was baffled at the play! However I did think there would be some fishes at the table, this was even better than I hoped for. I think about 3 of the 9 players at the table – myself included – had some idea about pot control, stack sizes, bet sizes and whatnot. The others just played like they felt like. Really, if you have played TPC before, TPC has a way harder field than the one I encountered yesterday.

Sadly it is hard to exploit weak loose calling stations if you never have a hand to play with yourself, so my stack dwindled down quite a bit. By the end of level three, after which the rebuys would stop, I found myself having only 1,3K in chips! But when I finally got a somewhat decent hand, 7 7, I put all my chips in and got called by 10 6 cc. The flop was a worrying 7d 8c 5c, but my hand did held up. After the level I bought my add-on of 4K chips and was ready to start level 4 (blinds 100/200) with 6,6K in chips.

During the break that followed level 3, I went upstairs, where I saw we could have some free food! French fries, chicken nuggets and sandwiches were at our disposal. Mind you, drinks were free as well. Not that’s treating your players the way you should!

I kept pretty quiet during level 4, but level 5 introduced ante’s, which made me come to live! I’ll go over a hand from level 5.

I have a rather tight image, and only showed winners at the showdown. The blinds are 150/300 with a 25 ante and we are playing 8 handed. A player in middle position (MP) limps in. His stack is 13K at the time. I raise it up from the button with J10 of diamonds to 1100, my stack is 7200. The MP calls. Flop: KQ3. MP fires out 1600 and I call. Turn 7c. MP thinks for a little while then bets 2000. Once again I call. River brigs the 8c and MP checks. I go all in for 3,5K more and MP folds. I’m up to nearly 11K.

After that hand, I knock out 2 short stacks and run my stack up to about 16K. By this time we have reached level 8, blinds 400/800/50. I lose a huge pot with AK to a young Frenchman who rivered a flush, leaving myself with only about 3K left. I put those last 3K in UTG with J9, get called by QJ and I’m out.

Of the 5 tables that starting playing, we were only 2 when I got knocked out, so I guess I ended up like 16th out of 45 players, not even close to the money (I had no idea about the payouts). I did have a great time though! It was very nice that I finally didn’t have to deal myself in a tournament and later on in the tournament I got to talk a bit with the fellow players at my table. I had a long chat with like the funniest Turkish guy I ever met. This guy is like 70 years old, but a decent poker player. He spends his time at the tabling singing, swearing at dealers and finding nicknames for his tablemates. He named himself Ribery, by the way. The young Frenchmen I talked about earlier became Sarkozy.

I am planning to play about 20 tournaments this month, hoping to end up with positive ROI. Next tournament is coming up Friday, a 40+10+5 with scalps. I have played a ton of knockout bounty tournaments on full tilt, so I feel ready! I do think I will be playing way better than I did yesterday, because it wont be as new and intimidating anymore. Wish me luck!

In order for a regular poker game to stay alive it needs a couple of things:

 

It needs a spot to play. If your game has to move too much and you never know when and where the next action will be, there is no chance in hell you can keep it running.

It needs quality. Without players that have some advanced tricks up their sleeves the game will generally degrade to a once and again type of happening. People will start getting frustrated about tough decisions and will need more time to reload their appetite for poker.

It needs commitment. Without players that are actually prepared to worry whole night about poker hands, your game will slide into some kind of gathering where there happen to be some poker hands.

It needs material. Sure you can play on the kitchen table with pennies and cents, in your hand a cardboard deck that has more cringes than George Burns’ face, but for enjoyment reasons it is more fun to actually have some quality cards and chips in hand while you are sitting at your genuine poker table.

 

But most all

 

It needs players!

 

And that’s where it goes wrong most of the time.

Why?

Simple! Have you ever heard about a “consistent loser”?

Ok, Ok, Laliberté isn’t exactly winning, but he has so much money he hardly notices he’s losing.

Furthermore I don’t think anyone will be able to come up with names of active players who have been down in the trenches for a while now, but have nothing to show for themselves.

 

Players like that get lost along the way.

This makes for one of the biggest anomalies in home-game poker.

You start playing out with a bunch of friends and soon notice that there are consistent winners, people who win less often, but win big when they do, people who need to catch up a bit after a cold streak, and then you have consistent losers.

This type of player will leave the group, eventually, because there is no more fun in playing with the rest of the group.

Therefore you always need fresh blood in a poker game.

But what when you run out of friends who play?

 

Casino? Making new friends? Playing with people who are not your friends?

 

The solution is actually far more simple than this.
You need diversity in games.

 

From the original 9 players in my group 5 are to be considered nothing less than action-junkies. They play all games, and usually pick up on standard game strategies in card games quite fast.

Guys like this are not amused by No Limit Texas Hold’em alone anymore. They want PLO, Razz, deuce to seven, seven stud. But also badugi, blackjack, Chinese poker, gin rummy, heck, even coin flipping. In that very diverse list of games there is bound to be a source of pleasure for everyone. It is almost impossible that a player is consistenly getting beat in all these games.

 

The world is maybe centred around No Limit Hold’em, but it is sure not limited to that.

 

It’s a shame that new blood is usually only a bit experienced in NLH and has never played any of the other games.

It’s even more of a shame that when people ask me “hey, do you want to teach me how to play poker”, they are talking only No Limit Hold’em and look at me in utter disbelief when I start out “with the basics”, Limit 5-card draw, or try to explain that there are 3 major types of poker, community, stud and draw. Let alone I try to tell them what antes are.

 

In my experience it is not always the best idea to teach new players NLH from the start. I play a small pot of poker every year with my parents, aunt and uncle on Christmas eve. For 2 years I tried to lure them into the wonderful world of Texas Hold’em. It failed! The different types of hands where not to difficult to learn, and sure they understood the concept of the community cards, but their insight in pot odds was a disaster and they had no idea how to play pre-flop. And then I got an amazing idea! These 4 people are not idiots! They have a pretty decent level of intelligence and should be able to grasp a basic idea of gaming theory. Especially my mother likes to understand the deep underlayers of what she is playing and them not being able to catch up was beyond me.

I decided to cut out the No Limit part and give them a basic idea of information from the moment a hand started.

So, what game gives at least some information about the other players from the start and is generally played limit?

 

Yes, Seven card stud! My uncle fell for this game as a comet drawn to the gravity of the sun. My mum, finally rid of the pre-flop psychology part flourished in stud and found a type of poker in which she had to allow only me to consistently beat her. My uncle now wants to play whenever he sees a chance and because he feels he is getting beyond the point of the nit player he is really taking an interest in the game and is starting to show interest again in NLH, a game he was never drawn beyond the point of “throwing chips around” in.

 

So, in the end, they learned 2 games, in stead of 1, are more involved in NLH and have a far better understanding of the whole theorem of poker.

Mission accomplished, it seems.

Especially since it turns out that my dad, who’s not half bad at NLH doesn’t seem able to handle the draws and the swings that come with it in seven stud.

My uncle on the other hand likes chasing a drawing board in stud, but is not able to recognize a losing hand in Hold’em.

 

As long as we keep playing both games in a nice mix none of these two will lose interest in these evenings.

If we had stuck to 1 game (NLH) we would have lost my uncle after a couple of sessions and the game would probably have died out.

In fact he is now the motor behind us playing and even bought a small chip set of his own.

 

When you are playing another game than Hold’em, not only do you train your capacities of handling different situations, also, you might be keeping a player in your home game that otherwise would have been lost a long time ago. Think about that the next time you find yourself playing a game you’re not so good at.

 

Untill next time, try to broaden your horizon.

Should you come across some difficulty, come see us, we’ll show you all corners of the room.

 

The Mad Man