White Belt Poker

After complaining about anti-social players a few days ago, I think it’s only fair that I mention that I actually played at a limit table last night where I had a really pleasant and funny discussion with one of the other players. He caught be pressing too hard with aces when he’d flopped a set of jacks that I didn’t give him credit for. He bet and raised just enough to convince me that he didn’t have the jacks and trapped me very skillfully, extracting as many bets as possible from me. I don’t really mind if a good player catches me like that, because there are some hands that are going to cost you money if you look to extract the best value for them.

So I said ‘nicely played’. There was some mutual respect there, probably after he’d seen me trap another player in a similar way with a flush a few hands before. He’d spotted a fellow grinder who was looking to move up, so we chatted about how tough it can be to grind away at the lower limits for a while and wished each other luck as we left the table later.

So it’s another example of how poker can be cyclical. For every obnoxious prick who wants to upset the table, there’s a someone else who’s funny and engaging.

Although poker is often a pretty brutal game where you can’t afford to be sentimental, it’s still essentially a social game where people sit around a table together, so there really is no need for players to get abusive or aggressive in their language.

I was playing at a limit table at Full Tilt last night and there was a guy sitting on my right who was really pissing most of the table off. He began by showing his cards after every hand he won rather than mucking them, just to show us how clever he was at bluffing. Then he would tell us all how we were his bitches. Fucking prick.

Fortunately, I’ve dealt with guys like this before. The hands he was showing were often trash and he was trying to win almost every pot. He was playing no-limit at a limit table, so he was setting himself up. I waited for a big hand and after about twenty minutes I picked up a pair of kings. I raised and got re-raised by him before the flop. I capped the betting, with everyone else getting out of the way. The flop came Q high. I raised, then called his re-raise because I wasn’t convinced he had a set of queens. One of them maybe, but not a set. Worst case scenario was that he’d flopped two pair, so I decided just to call him down from the turn onwards. Unfortunately, another queen appeared on the river and I made a crying call strongly suspecting that I was beaten but hoping he’d been bluffing with trash. He turned over a queen and I mucked my kings. I was annoyed with myself for calling his re-raise after the flop. He’d provoked me into doing it by acting like a prick and I’d walked into the trap. I should’ve known better.

Then as the cards were being dealt for the next hand, I noticed that he’d typed the word ‘punk’ into the chat window – almost certainly directed towards me. After I asked if he was calling me a punk after he sucked out on me, his abuse was directed solely at me (by name) from then onwards. He told me how he was going to take all of my money and kept saying things like ‘bring it on dave’. I just wanted to concentrate on my game, so I decided to ignore him. It’s not as if he was going to play any worse than he was already if I started abusing him anyway. I could’ve muted him, but I was interested in what he would say next. He was clearly trying to make me chase him with bad cards, but it wasn’t going to happen again. He continued to play as if he was in a NL tournament and eventually busted out, losing the $30-odd he had sat down with. Some of the other players around the table laughed at him when he lost big pots, one even said ‘who da punk now?’

It’s just a real downer when someone gives out abuse like that. It makes it an unpleasant experience for everyone. I was pissed off by his constant bullshit, but I’m not someone who is particularly good at quickly firing off cutting responses. Although I thought up some good ones afterwards. Hours later I thought of some brilliant insults I could’ve thrown back at him. I am what Jay McInerney once called a “retarded reposter”

At least it made me think about how I would deal with people like this in future. Fortunately, it’s pretty rare in my experience, but I have some ideas for next time. It’s a shame that people have to act that way though.

I’d had an up and down kind of day playing the NL tables at Full Tilt when I decided on impulse to enter my first sit ‘n’ go – the first real money tournament I had ever played in.

It was quite exciting to actually be part of a tournament for the first time. In proper Jim McManus style, I had practiced beforehand with turbo texas hold’em (and another program DD Poker) so I knew what I was doing – enough for a $5 buy-in table anyway.

My strategy was pretty simple – very tight at the beginning (as is traditional), look to steal blinds on the bubble and (if I got that far) play super-aggressive heads-up and raise almost every time, as Howard Lederer suggests. There was one little twist I wanted to add though. I wanted to look for one big hand early on that could win me some chips and make me look like someone who would ask you difficult questions if you tried to mess with me. My chance came on the second level with a pair of black queens. I had one caller for a bet around 4x the big blind. The flop was king high, and my opponent took a long time thinking about calling the bet I had made to find out where Istood. In fact, he raised me a little, but I got the feeling he didn’t really want to be in this pot even though he may very well have been ahead – (I put him on a weak king). Had he raised me much more, I may have been forced to throw the queens away, but I sensed he didn’t want to risk that many of his chips this early on and was hoping his little raise would make me fold, so I made a pretty bold move to come over the top with a large re-raise. I was hoping to make him think I had made two pair. Over half of my chips where now in the pot. He waited until the last second before folding. I was now the clear chip leader, having increased my stack by 50% and I had made a statement that raising me could mean having to make a big decision. Okay, I’d taken a gamble, but the table had been pretty cautious so far and I didn’t
feel as if my opponent in this hand was prepared to risk many chips so early on, and I got it right. My plan then was to coast for a while and just play big hands.

Eventually though, I felt as if I needed to make another move. My chips had dwindled badly after a couple of aborted attempts to steal blinds and some stone cold cards. I ended up all-in with AJs, only to be shown a pair of jacks. Only an ace was going to stop me going out 6th, but one of them arrived just in time on the river to put me in great shape as chip leader again. I half-heartedly apologised to the guy I’d sucked out on, who then dejectedly threw away his remaining chips on the next hand but one. I busted another player then waited for the others to squabble for 3rd place while stealing pots with very little. By the time we were down to the three money places I had 10k in chips and the other two had around 2k each. I continued to wittle them down slowly, forcing them into having to committ most of their chips pre-flop, knowing that they both were looking to take the other one out then take me on with only a 2 to 1 chip deficit. I was careful not to let either of them double-up, knowing that the increasing
blinds would put more and more pressure on both of them to play sub-standard hands. The eventual heads up contest didn’t last too long. My opponent was far too passive, clearly feeling as if I would force him all-in if he raised at all. It ended when he found a pair of nines and made a stand, only to see me turn over jacks.

I was delighted, because for all of the practice I’d done with offline software, I’d never actually won a tournament before.