Got to Diamond Lil's somewhere around the first quarter of the ballgame. Not that it made any difference to me; I personally have little interest in college or pro sports, and you'll sure never see me going to a stadium or arena and paying big bucks to watch a bunch of millionaires play ball with each other. Hell, THEY should pay ME to come watch! They can afford it way better than I can. And besides, the only sport I'm really into is: Co-Ed Wrestling. And NOT as a spectator!
The parking lot and the room were both half empty, but there were two 20/40 games going. I landed sixth on the list, but it moved quickly, and soon I got a seat, then didn't move an inch for the next seven hours. Well, my stack moved— downwards— in spite of a truly wonderful lineup. A sixty something Chinese lady sat next to me all that time, and timidly went to the river with nearly every hand, making rebuy after rebuy. The one time she actually made a bluff, then proudly showed it, we all clapped and cheered for her. Well, not the guy she knocked off the best hand on the river, but everyone else.
Hadn't seen Singapore John for, like, a year or more, but there he was in seat five, his old favorite. Said he's moving back there, just in town to sell his house, and leaving tomorrow. So I guess this was his Seattle Poker swan song. Too bad, as he's a fun guy action player who likes nearly every starting hand too.
The rest of the lineup had just a couple slightly rough spots, but otherwise was nice and soft. Kinda like Charmin. It also included this one incredibly stoic guy, a regular I won't name, who can sit there for hours, never say anything, passively play nearly every hand, and rebuy, rebuy, rebuy. After a while he may curse some very quietly, under his breath, but otherwise never says a word.
So it was a great game, but I sucked, and couldn't do much. Oh well. At least they play here every day, so plenty of opportunity to get revenge.
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How Low Can You Go?
No, we're not talking about dancing the Limbo. This ties in to an old Sgt. Rock quote (see the archives) about how "Everyone's true character shows itself sooner or later in the poker game." We're talking about those players who get beat, then "punish the dealer" by deliberately mucking their hand AWAY from the center, instead of towards the center.
Sometimes they are actually able to inflict physical pain on the poor dealer who has to reach and stretch to retrieve that low-life's cards, even when she already has an aching back, or shoulders, or worse, from the repetitive motion stresses and strains of dealing the game every day. And that doesn't even begin to talk about the arrogance, the attitude, the insult, the disrespect, conveyed by this despicable gesture. I guess this is why I could never be a dealer; first time some asshole pulled that shit on me, I would surely say or do something that would get me fired right away.
And how about the utter stupidity of blaming bad luck on the dealer in the first place? If she really had any control, wouldn't she put her sister and both her cousins into the game? What kind of pathetically immature personality does it take, what kind of "denial" to you have to be in, to hold the dealer responsible for which cards, shuffled by a machine, come off the deck?
And ya know what's really frightening? These same people, with this same broke-dick defective reasoning, get to vote in the presidential election. Or if you or I were to somehow be arrested for something and put on trial, innocent, these same brain-damaged people could be on the jury, deciding our fate. Scary!
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To Catch a Thief
Even worse is a player who steals chips from the pot, and this next part is posted as a public service. I thought I saw a something wrong in the D.L. 20/40 the other day, and it reminded me that I thought I had maybe seen the same thing from the same guy at the Mucks last year. I'm only 82% sure I saw what I thought I saw, so I cannot name this guy. I'll just say that he's younger than me, and English is not his first language, but he is not Asian. He's not a regular at D.L., but I see him there once or twice a month or so. That narrows it down some, so if you play or deal in Seattle, well, keep your eyes open, and try to catch and bust this guy if you can. Here's what I thought I saw:
A bet and one or more raises have been called. The betting round is over, maybe the showdown has occurred and our boy has lost, or maybe it's just the turn. Our boy has some loose chips on the cloth in front of his stack, near his hands, and then his bets and calls are stacked out in front of him. The dealer has already verified that all the bets are "out there," correct number of chips everywhere; the pot is right."
But then our boy "helps" the dealer bring in his bets, even when no help is needed. Some players help sometimes with the edge of their hand, or fingertips, or maybe "clear" their hand after helping, to show that nothing went South. Not this guy. He pushes them out with his palms, smearing them into the cloth, breaking the neat stacks into a loose pile of chips, just in time for the dealer to take that pile to the pot. Then he drags his hands, palms still down, back over the aforementioned loose chips in front of his stack, grabs some of those, and puts them on his stacks. Got the picture?
I saw this three times in a session last week, and was thinking that there is no reason to do this-- handle your chips and bets in quite that way-- unless you wanted to steal, and every reason to do it, exactly that way, if you did want to steal. But I'm slow, and didn't figure all that out until the third time I saw it. Shortly after that, the alleged perpetrator racked up and left.
So to bust this guy, you would have to catch the dealer the moment she has taken that pile, but before she can bring it into the pot, and have her stack it back up again, and show that what just a moment ago was 16 chips, is now only 14 or 15 chips. And I damn well better be right, or face some extreme embarrassment, or worse.
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My Worst Play This Year (So Far)
I open limp under the gun with pocket deuces. Now that may seem bad right there, and it usually would be. But this is the late night game, 5 or 6 or more players seeing nearly every flop, usually for one or two bets, so I feel just fine about the limp.
Shauna raises right behind me. Oops. Can't like that much. But then she gets a few callers. OK, that's better.
And it flopped real nice, too: Q 4 2. I checkraise, and Shauna calls.
Turn brings another Queen, I bet, she raises, and I just call. I have to put her on three Queens, or a big pair, and still think my boat is best. I'm vaguely planning to wait and see that the river isn't too threatening, maybe raise her then, but not yet.
And I was damn glad I didn't, too, when the river brought yet another Queen! I check, she bets, I call, and she shows me four Queens.
So that's that's my worst play so far this year: The last call on the river. A moment ago I had a big hand, but now I have shit. What can I beat? I needed to take a moment, take a breath, accept the suckout, fold, and save some chips. But instead, almost by reflex, and as if "in denial," I quickly made that truly moronic call. Sick.
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MegaTell
After the house rake, Lil's drops another $2 per hand, to fund the bad beat and super bad beat jackpots, plus they give a $500 cash bonus for the highest Hold Em hand, every two hours. So whenever you make a big boat, or especially quads or a straight flush, you're wondering if someone else in the room already hit a higher hand, or if you have a shot at the five bills. The highest hand (so far) is recorded on the big whiteboard up front, right beside the waiting lists. You can always look up there to see what you gotta beat. And if you're in the 20/40 Main Game, you're at Table 1, very near that board.
If this isn't The Mother of All Tells, then I don't know what is. A scare card hits the turn, or river, and the player looks up at the board, to see what the high hand is. Five times out of six that I've seen someone take that look, it turned out that they had indeed just made the monster hand. And when I made quads on the river the other day, I really had to fight the urge to look.
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See also my old posts to rec.gambling.poker at:
http://sgt.rock.home.comcast.net
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