Seven Deuce

Late night session at the Aria and someone suggested we introduce seven deuce to liven things up. Basically, this means that anyone winning with 72, either at showdown or through bluffing, gets paid an agreed-upon sum (in our case $10) by each other player.

The motion was unanimously adopted and naturally the dynamic of the game changed. There were several big pots where players holding 72 risked large amounts of money just to be able to table their bluff and reap the additional $80 reward. I wasn't so bold but did manage to win the $80 when I called a button raise with 72 in the BB, and took the small pot down on the turn.

Here is an example of a well-executed 72 bluff :





Sometimes, however, things get out of control :

Pass the Sugar

The Aria dealer notices that Seat 6 and Seat 7 are having a conversation in a foreign language even though they are not in a hand.

"English only at the table please," requests the dealer.

I crack up laughing, having already identified the "foreigners" as Australians as soon as they had sat down.

"We were speaking in English," responds one of the Aussies.

The dealer, a native-born American, still looks puzzled and, amid bursts of laughter, I assure him that it was indeed English.

Ex Libris Subliminalis

I have heard good things about these 2 books:

Quantum Poker by Derric Haynie and

Playing the Player by Ed Miller

and will soon be adding them to my collection. I find it best to wait for the second edition, which usually has fewer errors and typos than the first, not to mention the inevitable price reduction.

The debasement of poker terminology

"That's not a knife, THAT'S a knife!"

-- Crocodile Dundee

The other day I was on the giving end of a bad beat when I decided that my AKo was good enough to get involved in a preflop raising war between 2 other LAG's. We ended up all-in 3-handed with the following holdings (and preflop equity) :

LAG #1 : As Ah (93.1%)

LAG #2 : Ad Kc (3.6%)

Myself : Ac Ks (3.2%)

Much to the dismay of everyone present, I took down the huge pot with a club flush. THAT is a bad beat.

Matt Matros, a player with a strong math background who I highly respect, talks about his WSOP experiences in Card Player (August 8, 2012). He recounts a hand where his KK was all-in preflop against AKo and an ace came on the river. This is a 70:30 situation and on a bad beat scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a 5. Yet he refers to it as a "huge beat" and a "vicious beat". Later on he describes losing a preflop all-in with his A9o vs. QJo as a "bad beat". This is a 57:43 scenario, sometimes loosely referred to as a coinflip, hardly a bad beat.

Wendeen the teaser

US players with account balances on Full Tilt have been given more food for thought as to the prospects of seeing 100% of their funds with this teasing tweet by industry insider Wendeen Eolis. In her last tweet on this very subject, she spoke of a "cloudy forecast".

Schadenfreude and Planet Hollywood revisited

For reasons best left unsaid, I found myself playing poker for the first time in many years at Planet Hollywood on Friday night. I don't particularly like the "room" as it is just a roped off open area surrounded by drunk screaming girls and a generous oversupply of loud music. Communication between players and dealer is done through shouting and, when necessary, with sign language.

Tonight, 24 hours after the event, as I was reading grrouchie's blog I happenstanced upon a link to another blog and after some reading realized that I had actually played with this blogger on Friday night, although I didn't know it at the time. It was no other than Stump, a very amiable young fellow who was seated to my right. I have added his link to my blog list and suggest you take a look.

One lowlight was when I managed to get a straight flush which is normally rewarded by a $200 high hand bonus, provided there is at least $10 in the pot. I was heads-up with a young imbecile who, despite my obvious prompting and hinting, refused to call my $5 bet (which I would have gladly returned to him plus some) to bring the pot over $10, thus denying me the $200 bonus. I let him know my feelings in no uncertain terms, but as it so often happens with the mentally challenged, he couldn't comprehend what had just occurred and refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or mistake on his part.

A couple of hands later, this very same cretin lost his $200 stack when his turned nut flush was rivered by a boat. As he sat there stunned, I vocally made it known that I was very pleased at the result by shouting "very, very nice hand" at least 4 times to the victor, standing up and applauding while doing so. Fuckstick then slowly left the table accompanied by some subtle, albeit crude, farewell parting shots from yours truly.