Table spills.
November 18th 2007 15:56
I knocked on a hollow sounding door to find i was the first one there. My first thought was "what a danky little shit tip for such an academic!" Moreover, it was a complete mess. He must be really intelligent if he can leave his room in that state. I said my nervous hello to the friendly faced, strong accented German doctor and took a seat on the other side of the slightly enclosed space, and waited.
Before i knew it i was sat between a guy called Hamish who smelt like kebabs, and Essex Dan (because he's called Dan and comes from Essex). There were also several shy, fat people who had no intention of contributing to the seminar, or to the education they are paying so much for and one semi decent looking girl, with a mean pair of eyebrows and a northern accent. Amidst this however, i could think about only two things: when should i bring up the world cup of 1966? and what do i post next on here? It's been a while since my last post.
I wrote this blog a very long time ago now, probably into the months, but i think it's ok to publish as it seems EVERYONE loves poker at the moment.
I’ve been playing poker for about 3 years now. Slow penny games in Lancaster and £10 entry poker at Uni have both been very reliable sources of income. I’ve won 4 tournaments in the last 2 years, ranging from £130 to £450, totally way more than £1000. Online poker, however, hasn’t been so profitable. Whilst I had two major wins last year after being bed-ridden and a slow build of money from smaller games, totaling $1000, I’ve lost just as much. I’d say I was in profit, but by how much I’m not sure. Downward spirals.
I’ve had no direction in managing my account and haven’t won anything major online in the last 6 months. There were two tournaments online, and a cash game (where you simply play with your money) that could have won me a lot of money. I’ll try and explain why bad poker players dicking about with their click happy fingers and bad fortunes stopped me from getting there.
I usually play on Pokerstars, the best poker site on the net for tournaments (which, for you that don’t know, is a set entry fee to win everyone else’s entry fee, so you pay $10, and if there are 1000 players, there will be $10,000 in prizes, the winner getting around 40% of that, lower places getting a lower proportion), and i play on Full tilt poker for cash games, as the design and free prize system for playing members is simply the best on the internet. Ill start with the cash game that lost me nearly $600.
I was playing a constant, strong, aggressive game at $4/8 level, which is quite high ill admit. I usually play .25/.50 at most if I want to play lots. But my bankroll (the amount of money in my account) was growing and I felt very confident. I sat down at a table to a mid conversation about a guy who won $13,000 from the table in the last two hours. I’d taken his place.
Now, to all those none players out there who don’t understand about profit from a $4/8 table, a $13,000 is mental. It’s considered more or less impossible. The maximum amount of money you can put at a table is under $1000. Apparently the guy was moving all in with his money every hand, and winning, every time. I sat at a table that was so on tilt and willing to gamble lots of money with bad hands as they had just lost, on average, $2000 each, i figured I was either going to win an awful lot or lose an awful lot.
My second hand is as far as I got. I raised to $27 with QQ, and there were two callers, and a re-raise to $88. I called, nobody else did.
This is the guy who took the brunt of the money losses, so it would be hard to put him on a big hand. I had to play my QQ strong. To my disbelief, the cards came down QQA. I had flopped 4 queens.
I bet $175. I wasn’t slow playing the hand like the poker books tell you to do, as I was playing against a guy that either had AA or KK and would either try and get me off the hand, or bluff his way to my account. He moved all in for $330 more. I called without blinking.
He turned over a pair of aces.
A flurry of censored words came on the chat box, as the same guy that had lost well over $2000 was about to lose the remaining money he had with a full house of aces and queens.
My heart sank, my eyes closed and my head went into my arms when the fourth ace appeared. In two hands, after one month of solid playing, I had lost just under $600 to the worst bad beat you could ever encounter. I was mortified. I haven’t played cash games since. It wasn’t this hand that technically lost me the most money however.
The tournament beat I’ll share was online when I was at the house in Lancaster. It was a $11 tournament with more than 2000 players. I’d made it to the last 10. I had a mediocre chip stack and was holding my own.
I was currently on £60, but after one more player went out, that doubled, and so on from there up to first place which was $2000 plus. I was playing a safe, tight game. I had KJ, QQ and AJ the last three hands, with which I won small pots.
By this time, however, the good quality players were starting to get suspicious as you should not be getting good hands every time, so my raises were starting to get called. The fourth hand was AK. I raised and without hesitation the player next to me moved all in. He had the same chip stack as I did.
Malcolm and Steve, my flatmates, were watching by this point, and between us we figured that the player wouldn’t have AA or KK, and so was facing, at worst, a coin flip. I called after much thought, for him to turn over A4. The four of spades. If I had won this hand, I am pretty confident that I would have won the tournament. He hit a flush on the turn, with one spade in his hand. The four.
I sat at the computer, hands ran through my hair for twenty minutes...and then got extremely drunk with Steve and Malcolm.
It’s these things that you remember though guys. You never remember the time you did this to someone else, the time you took all of somebody’s money or the time you hit a two outer to win a hand. But the bad beats are usually so bad, these are the worst I’ve encountered, I’m sure to have plenty more, even though I pray I won’t. Hopefully one day I’ll get past these bad beats to win big, without the table spills.
Next week, freerolls.
III
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