White Belt Poker

I was getting little tired of playing at PokerRoom, so I just thought I’d spend some time at Pacific just for a change of scenery (okay, and because the players there are not the greatest). In general it’s a pretty soulless experience playing at Pacific – the software isn’t very attractive, there are no hand histories, you can’t add player notes or classifications, the chat window is horrible and keeps flashing, and the players you get there have a habit of trying to avoid blinds by sitting out (which obviously doesn’t work), so you have to be careful to keep an eye on your “auto post blinds” box.

After an hour and a half of getting dealt utter trash I was down $8 and feeling a bit down even though there wasn’t much else I could’ve done given the cards I was getting. Then suddenly I caught some good cards and within 10 mins I’d made $25.

I may need to play a little looser here I think, or at least try to stay in hands longer unless there’s a lot of betting. Starting hand requirements won’t change, but I’m going to try to look for chances to stay in pots longer when I have marginal hands. For instance, tonight I had two pair after the flop (8s and 9s) but feared overcards. I just checked and called a guy down – I think he had JJ or something and was gambling on hitting another one. I caught another 9 on the river but I may have won the hand without it anyway, but it’s so difficult to tell what people have at low limits. Raising and re-raising seems to have little effect at this level, people will stay in with practically anything. Staying in a hand for very little when you think you have more outs may not be a bad play on occassions. I think I’ll go back to read Lee Jones’ book on low limit hold’em again for advice.

I’m having to keep a separate spreadsheet for working out Pacific wins and loses because there are no stats or hand histories to speak that could be imported into Poker Tracker. So far my hourly profit is $4.50 over nine hours.