Brutal Structure, Delicious Action

I hadn't played poker in months, so I went to Fallsview last Friday. I love Friday nights at Fallsview. Gamblers come out to play and vacationers arrive for a weekend of fun.

I played in the 1/2 no-limit Texas Hold 'em game from 14:30-01:30. The buy-in for the game is $40 min. to $100 max. That's pretty small, 50 big blinds for a max. buy-in. The opening raise was usually to 10 or 12 with reraises going to 35, so a $100 stack isn't really enough to play a raised pot. The house takes a session fee in this game of $5 per half hour instead of raking the pot. At the ten player table, each player paying $10 per hour to play, a buy-in is taken off the table by the house every hour. That is hugely expensive! But the game has so many loose, bad players, that it's still profitable. And because players are there on vacation or just there to gamble, they usually don't mind losing and it ends up being fun to play.

I was card dead until about 21:00. I kept topping up to 100 so I could get a nice return if I got involved in a hand. A new guy who had been at the table for about ten hands made it 12 under the gun. A loose, but fairly solid player with a big stack called. A player to my left held his cards in a way that I knew meant he was going to play the hand, so I got great odds and called with QcJc. The flop came QQT giving me trip queens. It was checked to me. Now in this game, if you make three of a kind on the flop, it's pretty much written in stone that you check to hide the strength of your hand. Which is exactly why I bet 10. Poker is all about counter strategy. My opponents would reason that if I bet, I must be representing a queen and don't actually have one. And only betting 10 into a $51 pot, well that shows incredible weakness. The guy to my left folded. The original raiser called. The other guy folded. The turn made the board QQTK. My opponent bet out 35!

Okay. So the guy raised preflop UTG which meant that if he was a half decent player, he had a quality starting hand. Because of the way I played my hand and the level of thinking that was going on in this game, he probably thought I had a T. This meant he thought he could either beat a pair of tens or could make me fold a pair of tens. Therefore his likely starting hands were AA, KK, JJ, TT, AK, or AQ. I didn't think he had TT because if he did, he would have checked to me to let me bet again. He probably didn't have AQ because people hadn't been playing that hand aggressively in this game. If he had KK, I expect he would have made a probe bet on the flop instead of check/calling. I could beat the rest of his likely hands. My estimate was that I was about 70/30 or better to have the best hand. There was $106 in the pot. I had about $80 in front of me. I clearly had a +EV situation. I raised all-in. He confidently called and turned over AA. I turned over my QJ and he sighed. He didn't hit his two outer and I finally had some chips to play with.

Bluffing wasn't really an option at that table because it was difficult to get players to fold. I continued to wait for +EV situations, maximized my return when I had a winning hand, and kept the pot small when I wasn't sure. I continued to be card dead.

My best starting hand was AsKs. My best pocket pair was JJ. A solid player with $30 in front of him raised to 15. It was folded around to me in late position so I raised to put him all-in. He turned over QQ to beat my JJ. Oh, well. I managed to bob and weave and stay ahead of the session fees and go home +$58, plus a day out, plus a whole lot of fun, plus a lot of energy drink abuse. Oh, yeah, and I also got to use my murse. It worked great!

Glossary

+EV: Positive expected value.
A: Ace
K: King
Q: Queen
J: Jack
T: Ten
Trip, Trips: Three of a kind.
UTG: Under the gun. The player who is first to act.

Also see Wikipedia for their Poker Glossary and more about Texas Hold 'em.