Mad Man Poker

After my last post where I described how I yet again rebuilt some parts of my playing style (must be Mad Man, version 5 or 6 by now) I thought I’d owe it to you to let you know how it went in that first live game trying our “newly aquired” tricks.

First of all, in general it went excellent. It had been a while since I left the table on one of these nights as the “big winner”, but yesterday I stood up with my buy in stack almost tripled.

A lot of this is courtesy to 2 players playing a very agressive game and me being able to pick on it. Whether the fact that this was as succesfull as it was (one of them never saw a show down with me in the hand) was because I catched the cards at the right time (floating with 2 overcards to the flop on a board where my oponnent showed no real strenght, and I hit one of my cards on the river) or because being so familiar with being the agressor that I knew where to look for weaknesses (I made chasing any board virtually impossible for one guy), fact remains that I had fun again.

I started out very tight for the first few orbits, only to notice that people gradually started believing I had a big hand when I was in (wauw, so this is what the world looks like through the eyes of a rock) and started giving me walks.

I then loosened up. First of all, because by now I had the stack to do it, because people layed it down more easily when I came in and mainly because I don’t like waiting for a big hand when nobody is willing to play with me, and wanted the table to notice that the maniac might be tamed, but not gone.
When I’m playing somewhat tight, the least I can do is proclaim my image and get some people in not believing I’m carrying the goods.

In that same spirit I made sure I advertised no ABC-plays or monster hands if I didn’t have to. Dennis Van Hove offered me money to find out what i was playing with on a KQQ flop, but I denied him (and later told the table I had kings. They didn’t believe me (and are right not to) but boy, if they knew what was in my hand!) and reversely did advertise “frisky” plays. 

Also, my read is back. Or at least to some extent. When people accused me of slowplaying my pocket jacks against an all undercard flop with 2 harts, I actually wasn’t slowplaying, Niels was. I just sucked out on the turn when a jack came off. 
The people assuming my trickyness in that hand, obviously haven’t read this site too often, because on more than 1 occasion I already pointed out that 1 pair is no reason to go slowplaying.

Once more: slowplaying requires a monster in both hands (you and your oponnent) since you delay getting value to later streets and therefore need exponantially bigger bets on turn and river.
Playing agressive and slowplaying 1 pair to let the other guy ”catch up” is basically telling him you have a made monster and there is no need to start betting his rivered pair.  That’s what gave off Niels. People were so focussed on me they all forgot about the fact that Niels didn’t bet either.

The second thing I did was avoiding Maarten De Laere, which in itself must have looked strange since I had him to my immediate right, but Maarten is running godlike the last few weeks and I didn’t want to go toe to toe with him unless I had some hand to back it up. I let go of a reasonable pocket pair when a paired board with rag kicker came off and Maarten bet, just because these are the situations where Maarten sucks out on you lately.
I did however seized every opportunity to get in line with him when he didn’t push me out, ending up wit KTos in a hand where the flop came AQJ. Why? Because against Maarten I tend to get payed off large when marginal hands like this hit.
I must admit, Maarten took the beat really well and went on to river an 8 against Niels to more than save his night.

Well, there you have it.
I hope I can keep up with this winning, leaving a very dark period pokerwise behind us.

The Mad Man