Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Golden Rule

He who has the gold makes the rules.

Or, if you're playing poker, don't ruffle the feathers of the star.

So I'm in a great £250 NL game at the Vic last night, mainly because of one player, an Italian businessman who is happily blowing off steam. You know the sort, raising every other hand, making big bets with not much and so forth (not that these players aren't dangerous; you can suddenly find yourself under a lot of pressure against one of these types).

Anyway, he's losing about two grand when it's all folded around to him in the small blind. He puts out a £25 chip with the intention of raising. The big blind, Colin (not Gill or Kennedy for all you Vic regulars), one of those annoying idiots who never knows when its his blind or how much the bet is or even when the action is on him, now makes a fuss that he didn't hear the Italian say raise.

To be fair to Colin the Wanker, Paul Parker was having a noisy conversation with Rick Gladding in the next seat (is it possible for Paul not to have a noisy conversation?) so it was hard to hear what was going on. But then again this Colin the Cretin never ever knows how much the raise is or that it's up to him or anything, so what difference?

The Italian insists that his intention was to raise, but, oh no, Colin the Dick is having none of it, rules is rules. Technically Colin the Fuckwit is right of course; the Italian only put a single chip in which constitutes a call (nobody was sure whether the Italian said raise or not and the Italian himself didn't seem to mention this factor).

So now the Italian is made to call, they end up checking down the pot which Colin the Shithead wins by making a pair and now the Italian has the hump so he gets up and leaves. Nice one Colin.

I mean, what a nit. All so he could save £15 and see a flop. The irony was that Colin the Moron was one of the big beneficiaries of the Italian's lively play. I guess he wanted to lock up the win and piss everbody else off. Job done.

Some poker players put on an act and maybe this Colin the Twat is like that, but he seemed genuinely unaware of what a stupid thing he'd done.

Oh well, rant over; maybe I'm being a little excessive with my vitriol for Colin the Stupid Motherfucker, but I can't help it. The whole table was dumbfounded and it wasn't long before the game broke up.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Surely It's A Split Pot - Oh, It's Not...

So I'm playing in a lively £250 PLO game at the Vic when the following hand occurs.

The guilty party in this coup is a veteran of the Vic, definitely a player who should know better.

I raise UTG with some sort of double suited rundown hand, the veteran calls and now the star re-raises the pot. This very much looks like aces; both me and the veteran call as well as another player I think. Whatever, there was about £480 in the pot. BTW, the effective stack size between the veteran and the star is about £3k.

Flop comes down K Q T. I check, the veteran checks and now the Star bets £250. I fold and the veteran makes it £750. The star now calls that raise and re-raises the pot. The veteran now goes all-in for a little over 2 and a half grand which the star calls.

Sitting there watching the hand play out I figured that both players had the nuts at that point (A J - as if you need me to tell you) and that the veteran had the freeroll, two pairs or trips to go with his Broadway.

But no!!! The Veteran turned over J9xx (can't remember the other two cards, but they were in the region of the flop so he did have outs). Considering that it was highly likely that the star had aces, surely it wouldn't have been too hard to imagine that a Jack was one of his sidecards?

I don't know, I've been guilty of some terrible plays myself, but getting it all-in with the sucker end of the straight in PLO? Sure, the other player was a star, but you just have to wait until you have the goods against these types (btw, the board blanked off and the star won a nice pot). I'm sure I wasn't the only "local" who felt a bit embarrassed for the veteran.

This brings me to another matter - as you can see above, I have been pretty quick to criticise a horrible play where another player has seemingly slaughtered his money senselessly. But the truth is in poker, we sometimes do some fucking idiotic things in the heat of the moment. I always think that at least for a nano-second there, we figured it was the right play.

Anyway, the reason I'm suddenly being so fair to the veteran (and believe me, there are many Vic regulars who would enjoy a delicious helping of schadenfreude if they knew who I was talking about) is because, like the idiot I am, I posted what I thought was an interesting hand that I played in the £250 NL game on the 2+2 strategy forum.

There were a couple of reasonable responses, but most of the thread ended up saying what a complete donkey I am etc etc. Now of course I expected that, but it made me think how quick poker players are to just slam other players and so on.

The amount of times you hear people cunting off other players or somebody gives you an incredibly forceful and emphatic opinion on how badly a certain hand was played. You'd think that none of these fuckers ever played a hand badly in their life, when in fact quite the opposite is true.