Mark's Poker Blog

Tuesday night poker

I played in a semi-regular game last night. This is a fun game that I have talked about before. We generally only play until 1:00 or so, but played later because we were all stuck and one guy had all the dang money. It all started when Adam went all in preflop with Q5 of hearts. He busted two players with strong hands and suddenly had a decent stack. After that donkey play, he bluffed and hit cards on his way to a huge stack. Lots of donkey plays and suckouts. Here is a picture. At the peak, Adam had 3 times as many chips as shown in the picture:

The good news is that several of us were able to get a good chunk of our money back. Adam continued to get some big cards, but they stopped holding up. Justice was served.

Headed to WSOP

I played in a 21 person, $500 buy in tournament last night. The winner gets a seat to the WSOP main event. The arrangement is that if the winner cashes, he/she gets 50% and the remaining 50% is split evenly among the other 20 players. They each get 2.5%.

Well as you can guess, I won the event. I got $500 in cash and will register myself for the tournament. They expect 8000 players this year.

I went into the tournament planning to play to win. The last thing I wanted to do was make the final table with no outs to win. No point playing tight in a winner-take-all  tournament.

The tournament was a lot of fun. I got down a bit, but moved up to the chip lead pretty quickly. Generally, the players were very tight. There were are few semi-loose players, but no one was super aggressive. I caught some cards and pushed all-in with several big flush draws. I hit all of them and busted several players. I also got a couple of big hands and got paid off. Once I got a big chip stack, I was raising almost every hand. I stole a ton of blinds. I was at a slight disadvantage, because the guy in second was to my left, so I had to be cautious. Fortunately, we stayed away from each other.

When we finally got down to 2 players, I had about a 4 to 1 chip lead. I offered a deal. I offered to take the seat, but give him $2000 or $2500 out of my pocket. I thought it was a fair deal, but he declined (I probably would have too). We played for what seemed like forever. I made a bad play - had top pair on the flop, but slow-played it into a loser, so he doubled up and we were about even. We went back and forth forever. There were very few show downs. I was getting pretty poor cards, but was able to win pots betting weak hands. I gave my opponent a lot of respect any time he raised. I made a few all-in plays to mix things up, but never got called.

On the last hand, we were just about even. I had a few more chips. He raised the minimum and I put him all in with A6 offsuit. He called immediately and I figured I was dead to a good pocket pair or a stronger ace. I was thrilled to see he called me with QT suited. Just like on TV, the guy dealing laid out the flop, turn, and river very slowly. The flop was AQ4 rainbow. A K came on the turn, giving him tons of outs. Any Q, J, or T gave him the win. The river was a 4 though, giving me aces up and the win. I felt bad, because I knew it would feel lousy coming in second and not getting anything.

At any rate, I am headed to the WSOP. I was planning on playing anyway, but now I have a free ride (just like thousands of others).

Been Busy Lately

Sorry for the lack of activity on the blog. I have been really busy and really not playing much cards. I went to a conference most of one week, then took the family to South Padre Island for Spring Break, and am going to a "management retreat". Things should settle down, so hopefully I will be posting more.

I am continuing to host a game. I haven't done well in my own game. Had a bunch of flat days and one really bad one. I finally had a good day, won about 4K. Hopefully that trend will continue.

So many games

There seem to be a lot of games going on now adays. A couple of new games have started up. There have always been a ton of lower limit games, but now there seem to be more middle limit games, like 2/5 and 5/10 pot or no limit. I received several calls on Friday and the game managers were promising me "big games, lots of action", which of course was based on certainly players attending. I had a couple of game managers promise a couple of guys were playing, when I knew they were out of town. I am not sure how a guy who is out of town can attend two games, but I guess it is possible :) There is increasing competition for players and of course, intense competition for the bigger action players.

Poker Robbery in San Antonio

Apparently there was another poker game robbery on Friday night. I was playing in another game, when the dealer (Miguel) came over and relayed the story. Apparently several thieves broke in the back door and robbed the game. They took the money and I think they took peoples wallets and phones. I guess they did not take people's jewelry. One or two guys were hit, but no one was seriously hurt. I have never played at this game, so I don't know much about the layout or what sort of security they provide. I know they play as many as 5 nights a week.

I know a couple of places where someone has an apartment and allows it to be used 5, 6, or 7 nights a week for poker games. I think this is very dangerous, because potential thieves know that there is a game at these locations virtually every night of the week.

There are also so many games, that there is a lot of competition for players. I will post another entry on this. From a security point of view, this is dangerous, because I think game managers are taking chances in allowing unknown people to play at their games. Some of these people may just be there to case the game.