Live Poker Wrap

Change of pace: actually played lots of live poker this week! It's almost like I'm a poker player or something.

Resorts East, Gary, Ind:
You know how some people like going to casinos? Unless they play poker I really don't understand it. There's almost nothing more depressing than wandering through the Penny Slots on a Thursday afternoon. Anyway, sat down at the table and played some 1/2 NL for awhile. Caught a couple cooler flops and dumped about $150 to start, but finally doubled through and ended up about $100 for the session. Play at the 1/2 NL tables was typical I think, by which I mean pretty bad. One or two good players, a couple just generally tight players, and some people just begging to give their money away. Even a donkey cash game player like me can run over that game pretty easy.

Majestic Star, Gary, Ind:
The Majestic is only about a mile away from Resorts, so I wandered there after dinner. This time up to 2/5 NL. Third hand, pair of 3s in ep, limp, call raise. Flop A 2 3, and stacked a set of deuces. Up about $400 in that hand.

Nothing much good to say after that. The key hand was when I picked up QQ utg, popped to 20, two callers. Flop 9s 8s 2c. I bet 45, mp calls, other player moves in for 300 total. I went into the tank and finally called putting him on a draw. He had 98. Good read me. After that, I lost about another 200, couldn't hit flops, didn't play very aggressively, felt tired, and just generally played bad after that all around. I'm sure the table was sad to see me go.

A couple of thoughts in general. First, in a weird way, live poker doesn't feel like real poker, and I realize how ridiculous that sounds (I believe Chip Reese, Stu Ungar, etc. all just rolled over in their graves). But almost all of my real poker success has been online. Poker is my job, and when I'm playing multi-tabling 3-4 tournaments at night, that feels like I'm working. Not that I'm not enjoying it; if I ever stop enjoying playing poker, I need to find a new job. But playing live just feels like I'm having fun. And I play better when I'm having fun. I was having fun at the first table, talking to other people, making fun of the donkeys with the actual solid player next to me. The 2/5 game was much more serious. And frankly, it was a hell of a 2/5 game. There were a lot of good players, not much chatter. Some of those people played for a living I'm pretty certain.

Second, I'm not a good cash game player. Period. That's not news.

Third, I should stick to tournaments.

Greektown Casino, Detroit, Mi:
Went to Detroit on Saturday to meet a friend of mine, we had fun screwing around in the casinos for awhile. Mostly we were at the MGM, and I gave away $50 playing slots. Exactly what is the fun part of casinos again? Meanwhile despite the MGM being fairly new, they didn't have much poker. They had about 4 tables going. That's it. Eventually we wandered back to Greektown, and I sat down at a 1/2 NL game. Wow that table was absolutely terrible. TERRIBLE. Even on the scale of 1/2 NL tables, this has to be one of the worst tables I've ever seen. Only played for about an hour, and only up about $20, but that table was just begging to be cleaned out. But I stopped because they announced they were having a a $275 tournament. Hmm, tournaments. I believe I play those.

There ended up being 15 players. I'd say about a third of the players were remotely competent. Then there were lots of players that liked to limp oop with terrible hands, call raises, and then call with gutshot straight draws (that was the guy who finished third). And then there was the guy who finished four giant blue drinks. He finished fourth. But mostly they were just begging to be run over, weak tight players that couldn't raise without a hand and would never repop. It was easy to just sit there and pick off pots. By the break I'd doubled my stack, from 5k to 10k. Unfortunately, it was 200/400 right before break, and jumped right to 400/800 50 ante after break. They also combined the tables with 10 of us left. So that considerably reduced my ability to play small ball and pick off pots. But I won a race with 9s against AJ, and I was off and running. Found AK in the sb, ran into AJ in the bb, and had the big stack. Got down to three handed, won a race with 5s against AJ, I run like a god. Got heads up, button min raised, called Q9s, flop KJ3, two spades, he had K10, turn was a 10, river a spade just in case. Ship $2250. And I made it out of Detroit with that much cash without getting shot. So, bonus.

What have I learned from this week? If I'm gonna play live cash games, play 1/2 or soft 2/5 games and donk around and have fun. I'm not a cash game player. But there was definitely a 2/5 game at Greektown that was awful, where both players got it all in on the turn with aces with a bad kicker. Seriously, that happened. What is it about Greektown? Seriously, if you live near the Detroit area and play poker, GO TO GREEKTOWN. Every game in that place is soft.

But I do need to find some more tournaments to play live on a regular basis. I know Majestic runs some. Also, the Heartland Poker Tour, known to me mostly for its terrible announcing and production value, is coming to Majestic in a couple of weekends. Buyin is $2200, sattys running for $450. So I'll definitely try and get in on that. But otherwise maybe I'll start going to Indiana once a week if I find a regular tournament that I like. I'll check it out the next time I'm there.

Other fun note, on April 12 I passed 44K, the most money I've ever made in a year. Weeee.