Vegas Adventure - Part II
I want to apologize for not getting back to this blog sooner or more thoroughly, but things have been absolutely brutal since I have been back from my trip.
Mrs. Sponge continues to amaze me with the way she can handle the gaggle of mini-sponge’s without so much as a hair getting out of place. Me? If I am alone with them for more than 20 minutes, there is reason to be concerned for their health and well being and for my sanity.
Work has kept me very busy since my return from my trip and was no cake-walk even before I left with all of my doctor visits and such. I did get my liver biopsy results back yesterday and I am happy to say that I am just fat. YAY, I’m fat! Well, I’m not even really that fat anymore; in fact I have lost enough weight over the past 5 months move from “fat” to “mildly fat”. With respect to that, my liver has also moved from “fatty” to “mildly fatty”. In other words the biopsy came back clean, there was no scarring, and I just need to keep up the low cholesterol/low fat diet. Thanks to everyone for all of their words of encouragement!
Back to my Vegas experience, I actually took some decent notes (at least for the first couple of days). I will apologize ahead of time for this mini-uber-post in direct violation of Dr. Pauly's rules of blogging etiquette.
If you read part I of my ‘Vegas Adventure’ then you know that I had a decent experience on the tables until the management of the tournament went all to hell. I can blame the tournament for my failure to win, because I am a rookie. The excuses will run out by the time this ‘adventure’ concludes, so let me lean on that for now.
While I ended up play for a long time in my first tournament, the guys I came with got knocked out fairly early and were itching for more action. We broke for dinner and afterward they were energized to get back at it. I was still a little brain dead from the first session, which I thought was mentally grueling, and opted out (besides, day 2 of the NCAA was in full swing and I wanted to catch some games and go to the book).
They entered the 8:00 tourney at Binion's for $125 along with 74 other hopeful entries. I kept checking in on them periodically and found one of the guys was down to 1200 chips with 200/400 blinds when a couple of critical back-to-back all-ins swung his way and brought him back from life support to being in the top 15 in chips. Very nice recovery!
It was all for naught, however, because his last hand resulted in a HUGE mental mistake. This hand should serve as a shining example as to why you NEVER play poker when you are tired. He went all in with QJ in the pocket, I forgot what was on the board, but what he thought was a straight turned out to be two pair and he lost to the straight he thought he was holding. He did make it to 19th place, but would have gone much further had he not made that mental break down.
The other guy that I came with ended up playing past my other, more mentally challenged buddy, and put on a poker school for all to revel in. He was the chip leader in the tournament at several stages throughout and was effectively using his chips to bully the tables appropriately.
The tournament got down to 12 or 13 (top 10 paid) when he locked horns with the what was at the time the current chip leader (they were first and second in chips) everyone else just got out of the way. My buddy, we will call him Mr. J was the big blind (600/1200). The chip leader, we will call him Mr. X, raised my buddy to 3000. Mr. J thought this was an attempt to steal and retaliated with an all-in (he had AdJd so it wasn’t an unfounded play).
Mr. X called the all-in and showed pocket 10's, statistically I think these hands are about even 51%-49% (correct me if I am wrong). The flop came 10-J-x and Mr. X made his set *the crowd cheers and groans. Mr. J now has a pair of Jacks, which is quickly realized by the crowd and acknowledges with raised eyebrows, but they know he is a big underdog to win this hand.
The turn was no help, but the river was a Jack, Mr. J made his set and started going nuts (the crowd did too, and Mr. X was exasperated in defeat until someone pointed out what he really had), but quickly came to realize that the second Jack also gave Mr. X his full house. It was the worst 11th place finish I could possibly have thought of. I mean all he had to do was… well… nothing, and he would have been in the money. Instead he went the aggressive route, which in all fairness was what got him to this point in the first place, and he finished one place out of the money.
As a group, we went over the hand for the next couple of hours analyzing every angle and how we would all have done it the same or differently but in the end we were all concluding that the end result would probably have been the same whether he went all in pre-flop or after the flop with his top pair. I was rooming with the guy so we spent another hour or so after we called it a night going over it again looking for any kind of statistical info in the books we brought to back up his play. I think he is still sick over it, I know I am.
More to come in Part III – Stay tuned!
Mrs. Sponge continues to amaze me with the way she can handle the gaggle of mini-sponge’s without so much as a hair getting out of place. Me? If I am alone with them for more than 20 minutes, there is reason to be concerned for their health and well being and for my sanity.
Work has kept me very busy since my return from my trip and was no cake-walk even before I left with all of my doctor visits and such. I did get my liver biopsy results back yesterday and I am happy to say that I am just fat. YAY, I’m fat! Well, I’m not even really that fat anymore; in fact I have lost enough weight over the past 5 months move from “fat” to “mildly fat”. With respect to that, my liver has also moved from “fatty” to “mildly fatty”. In other words the biopsy came back clean, there was no scarring, and I just need to keep up the low cholesterol/low fat diet. Thanks to everyone for all of their words of encouragement!
Back to my Vegas experience, I actually took some decent notes (at least for the first couple of days). I will apologize ahead of time for this mini-uber-post in direct violation of Dr. Pauly's rules of blogging etiquette.
If you read part I of my ‘Vegas Adventure’ then you know that I had a decent experience on the tables until the management of the tournament went all to hell. I can blame the tournament for my failure to win, because I am a rookie. The excuses will run out by the time this ‘adventure’ concludes, so let me lean on that for now.
While I ended up play for a long time in my first tournament, the guys I came with got knocked out fairly early and were itching for more action. We broke for dinner and afterward they were energized to get back at it. I was still a little brain dead from the first session, which I thought was mentally grueling, and opted out (besides, day 2 of the NCAA was in full swing and I wanted to catch some games and go to the book).
They entered the 8:00 tourney at Binion's for $125 along with 74 other hopeful entries. I kept checking in on them periodically and found one of the guys was down to 1200 chips with 200/400 blinds when a couple of critical back-to-back all-ins swung his way and brought him back from life support to being in the top 15 in chips. Very nice recovery!
It was all for naught, however, because his last hand resulted in a HUGE mental mistake. This hand should serve as a shining example as to why you NEVER play poker when you are tired. He went all in with QJ in the pocket, I forgot what was on the board, but what he thought was a straight turned out to be two pair and he lost to the straight he thought he was holding. He did make it to 19th place, but would have gone much further had he not made that mental break down.
The other guy that I came with ended up playing past my other, more mentally challenged buddy, and put on a poker school for all to revel in. He was the chip leader in the tournament at several stages throughout and was effectively using his chips to bully the tables appropriately.
The tournament got down to 12 or 13 (top 10 paid) when he locked horns with the what was at the time the current chip leader (they were first and second in chips) everyone else just got out of the way. My buddy, we will call him Mr. J was the big blind (600/1200). The chip leader, we will call him Mr. X, raised my buddy to 3000. Mr. J thought this was an attempt to steal and retaliated with an all-in (he had AdJd so it wasn’t an unfounded play).
Mr. X called the all-in and showed pocket 10's, statistically I think these hands are about even 51%-49% (correct me if I am wrong). The flop came 10-J-x and Mr. X made his set *the crowd cheers and groans. Mr. J now has a pair of Jacks, which is quickly realized by the crowd and acknowledges with raised eyebrows, but they know he is a big underdog to win this hand.
The turn was no help, but the river was a Jack, Mr. J made his set and started going nuts (the crowd did too, and Mr. X was exasperated in defeat until someone pointed out what he really had), but quickly came to realize that the second Jack also gave Mr. X his full house. It was the worst 11th place finish I could possibly have thought of. I mean all he had to do was… well… nothing, and he would have been in the money. Instead he went the aggressive route, which in all fairness was what got him to this point in the first place, and he finished one place out of the money.
As a group, we went over the hand for the next couple of hours analyzing every angle and how we would all have done it the same or differently but in the end we were all concluding that the end result would probably have been the same whether he went all in pre-flop or after the flop with his top pair. I was rooming with the guy so we spent another hour or so after we called it a night going over it again looking for any kind of statistical info in the books we brought to back up his play. I think he is still sick over it, I know I am.
More to come in Part III – Stay tuned!
posted by Sponge at 10:50 PM
2 Comments:
Hey, its Mike.
For my 2 cents worth, i think your friend was a fool for a couple reasons:
1- There is ONE guy in that tournament with the power to knock him out at that particular moment. It was very brash to tangle with him with a marginal hand like AJ.
2- If he wanted to see if the guy was full of it or not, he could have only re-raised a decent amount. If and when Mr. X re-raises again, then J could get out.
3- With 125 bucks on the line and on the bubble for the money, there is no reason to play anything but AA, KK, AK until you are guaranteed atleast your buyin back. I know AJ suited looks beautiful, but (again) why AI?
If your friend checked the raise and saw the flop, a nice raise is certainly warranted, but even at that point there is no reason to risk a big pay day with just a top pair. So i dont buy the "Well, after the flop i would have been AI regardless."... refer to #1.
Of course, the same can be said with the chip leader, why was he farting around with the only guy who could massively cripple him?
I like aggressive play, but you need to know when to change gears and on the bubble as 2nd in chips is defenitely one of those situations to play like a tight wad.
Lemme add some odds. As a big stack, you want good odds when you go AI just in case you get called.
With this hand your friend could have been up against a small pair, which case he would be against odds 48/52.
He could have been up against two low which would be 60/40
He could have been against AK, which is like 15/85.
It looks like the best he could have been up against would have had him only 60%... fuck me if i ever put my tourny on the line as 2nd in chips with a 40% chance to get knocked out!
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