Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Fun with Ace High

Played a really short session at the Aladdin and made $200. Basically I played one pot.

A new player with a $200 stack sat down to my left, in position to take the big blind. The dealer asked if he wanted to wait or play now, and he said emphatically, "Oh, I want to play." It was limped to me in the small blind and I found AsKs. I just called. The new player took his option and raised to $20.

It was folded back to me, and again I just called. The flop came down QsJc7s. I had the nut flush draw, a gutshot straight draw, and two overcards. I checked and he bet $15 dollars. This could have been pocket queens or pocket jacks praying for action, but the way he bet seemed like he didn't really like his hand that much and just didn't know what else to do. I raised to $100. I didn't want calling to be an option for him. I wanted him to either fold or go all-in. Either one was fine with me. He thought for a bit and went all-in. Of course I called.

He said, "I don't have anything yet." We flipped the hands over. He had AcTd. He almost literally could not have been in worse shape. If you like, take a look at a poker odds calculator and find the one hand that's a bigger favorite over AcTd on this board than AsKs.

1 comment:

Tarr said...

AJs. My second guess. (KTs was a really dumb guess - the key is taking away his outs, not adding to mine.)

I actually played brick and mortar casino poker for the first time since the spring yesterday, on the way back from skiing. Poor outing. Very loose table, but I was card dead (best starting hand all night was pocket 6's), and I eventually got frustrated and started playing more pots. This is which is not my style, particularly in limit. There's no sense in bluffing at pots when anybody holding a pair is willing to call you down. It was a good leaning experience - the reason I like playing at real casinos is that people play looser, but this doesn't help if I play loose as well. Still, frustrating as hell to watch the donkey to my right river a nut strait three times in an hour (not exaggerating).

I think my lifetime casino poker record is somewhere between +$100 and +$200, but that's a combination of big winnings in Vegas and big losses in Tahoe, Blackhawk, and online. Online is unsurprising (less well-suited to my game) but I haven't decided whether the Vegas/elsewhere dichotomy is chance or something particular to the players in Vegas.