Shabbir's Diary

Most awesomest Ranger Rick video ever!

My colleague Jordan Hirsch recently got cast in a new video for Ranger Rick that was too funny.  I'd totally forgot about Ranger Rick, but he's 40 this year and they cast Jordan to do a web video about his relevance.  Check it out, and hire him if you need acting work, just don't take him away from us full time.

Our stuff has arrived.

What little stuff we brought originally to California we could easily fit in a rented van.  We've been living on it for 3 months, and as I said to a close friend, we weren't that attached to it.  In fact I suspect that were the van stolen, it would save us a lot of hassle.  Secretly I wished to return from lunch with my friend Stasi and find the van missing, relieving us of the burden of unloading it.

But I had no such luck.  I unloaded the van and we slept on an air mattress for two nights while waiting for the majority of our belongings to arrive in the shipping pods Sarah researched, from DoorToDoor.com.

Barring any major disaster with either the piano or the television during unpacking, I'm a big fan of these things now.  For one, it avoids the whole problem of the unscrupulous moving guy.  Generally house moving appears to be a commodity market with layers of  subcontractors that makes it impossible for anyone to promise any level of quality.  Think you can trust your moving company?   Nope, they just contract the work out to a long haul trucker.  Think you can trust the trucker?  Sorry, he just hires random guys on each end of the move to do the loading and unloading.  Sarah's had some literal crackheads in her home on a previous move, because they were cheap, and the driver didn't care.

So the better way of doing it is to hire the pieces yourself.  You need to hire two crews to do the packing and unpacking, one for each end of the move, and then a storage container company to rent and store your shipping containers.

You get a tremendous amount of control this way and remove the crapshoot of the moving industry which is rife with scam artists.  What's great is that the shipping container companies have a required amount of infrastructure that makes it less likely they will be unscrupulous or fly by night.  An established container shipping firm is going to have warehouses and a sizable amount of assets in place that will make it not profitable to screw you. 

However with a cellphone, some flyers, and a U-Haul I can become a moving company.   These shipping companies probably wouldn't exist in the size that they do if there was satisfaction in the moving industry...but there isn't.

Amazing how fraud and poor customer service can kill an entire business model.  In particular it's nice to see the market punish fraud.  It doesn't have to put these companies out of business to show that the market works, it merely has to provide a sizable alternative.

Taking a shot at $8/$16

I feel I've got my $6/$12 game under control, and so tonight as I waited for a seat at $6/$12 I sat in the $8/$16 game (half kill).  The half kill means that if you win two pots in a row, the stakes go up to $12/$24.  I'm comfortable at these stakes, but I don't keep a bankroll big enough to play it that often unless I'm going to win.

I sat down with $200 and worried that it might not be enough.  It probably wasn't, but I got my $6/$12 seat fifteen minutes later.  I didn't have to worry though.  It turns out that when I'm playing my best $6/$12 game, it's probably good enough for $8/$16.  The amount of donkeyness I saw was overwhelming.  I saw people play any two cards when there was a raise and two callers.  Now I know that no hand is worse than 4 to 1, but the fact of the matter is that you're just donking your money away for fun, hoping to catch two pair and break somebody with Aces who can't lay them down.

I got my seat 15 minutes and $45 of pre-flop losses later.  I moved to the $6/$12 and after being told not to take photos of the players with my camera phone, became shocked at how bad the players were in comparison.  I came to realize that it wasn't exactly helpful to simply label players as tight/loose-aggressive/passive.  In fact what I needed to know was how they played before the flop and after, along with any particularly bad  weaknesses they had.  So as I went around my table my list of players went, "tight/tight, tight/loose, tight/tight, loose/loose, tight/loose, loose/loose, me, tight/loose, tight/tight (smart fucker)."

This was much more useful to me.  It allowed me to figure out if they were pressing hands like two pair hard, or if they had a set or better.  I'm converting my opponent database to account for this, and will be changing the way I keep records.

The one thing I find amazing is this: I've been playing hard, for about a week or so, and I've improved until I'm a pretty dangerous player.  Most of the other players I've seen regularly are terrible.  They play too many hands before the flop and they don't consider that the board changes hands after the flop.  What the hell are they doing, playing without paying attention?  I don't get it.

Oh, and someone paid me a compliment today.  A good tight/tight player raised and got three callers, including me.  He looked at me and said, "You're the only one I really wanted out."  I felt all proud of myself until I realized that if he realized I was a good player, I wasn't going to get any action from him.

Doh.  Perhaps that might make him fold at some point in the future.

Tilting to the left of me, tilting to the right, here I am stuck in the middle...

The lady to the right of me is muttering that the guy to my left is "brilliant, just brilliant.  Just keep playing those cards."

He consistently plays junk and beats her top pair because she doesn't know how to play post-flop and can't smell two pair.  When she starts, he starts talking to himself, calling her a "pro".  They're not actually speaking directly to each other, because they're pissed, but they want the other one to hear, so they mutter louder and louder until they're actually shouting in my ear.  It's like a married couple fighting passive aggressively.

That's how I spent my evening, but that's not how it started thank god, let me elaborate.

I sat down secure in the knowledge that I'd learned something about this environment, "Nobody will fold to your bets until they see you win a pot."   It's something I had noticed with Katie sitting at this table this week.  I don't think for every player that it's a conscious factor, but it's definitely at work.  I can't make anyone fold without having shown down some strong hands first.  Everyone draws on you if you have no table image.  People start to fold if you do, but you'll still have people with you to the end, albeit fewer of them.

So I resolved to win a few real solid hands before I started having to make tough decisions, because the opposite is true.  If you lose a few hands, it encourages people to call you with junk, and who wants that? 

I had a second change to my game as well.  I had been practicing $5/$10 Limit Hold'em with Poker Academy and had spent a lot of time with the odds tables and my notes from this game.  I realized that straight draws are too often not worth chasing with these pots when you play with people who play any two suited cards in the hopes of hitting a flush.  The pot odds have to be a lot better than I was seeing, so I resolved to drop most straight draws from my repertoire.  I also had broken myself of the habit of playing all unsuited Aces with medium or weak kickers as well.

I knew I'd be folding a lot, but I also knew I'd have way less variance that I usually did, and that I'd stop the leaking problem in my stack.  I was ready.

 

I sat down, posted my $6 as my penalty for coming in right after the dealer button, and saw Ten-Eight unsuited.  Exactly the kind of junk I wasn't going to play.  Of course it came back to me raised, and I broke all my rules and called and saw a flop of Jack-Nine-Seven, all different suits.  I had flopped a straight, and likely I was going to get paid.

Of course one of my opponents had Jack Nine and I got paid big.  Then I hit another big hand.  When it was over I looked down to a stack of $450.  (I started with $240). 

Ok, two hands after sitting down, now I had table image.  I spent the next few hours taking photos and making notes.  Noting who always draws and the occasional player who's actually talented enough to fold Queens, Kings, or Aces, I formulated a strategy for each one and memorized it through the act of writing it down. 

My left hand neighbor had run his $200 up to $650 while I was taking notes and not playing, and he'd done it at the expense of the lady on my right.  I knew he was going to give that back if he stayed, and so I was counting on his degenerate gambler nature.  Little did I know that he was such a gambler that when he ran low on money he'd leave the table, go win some money at blackjack, and then bring it back to buy in at the poker table.  He also had a bad habit of blind raising (before he saw his cards) every time it was my turn to have the big blind.  This scared the rest of the table who didn't want to pay $12 to see a flop, but when it came around to me I'd look down and if I saw two cards over Ten, I'd re-raise and we'd fight out the hand.  The first time I three-bet it when it got to me and when I hit the flop hard, I won a $100 pot. I did that twice more and probably made $250 alone from this move.

And yet he still did the blind raise.  After a while I would nudge him every time it was my big blind, and he did it five more times.   Unfortunately the whole table had figured out my technique and I never saw good cards again.  I folded every time, but they all called and someone always caught something, and then took $75 or $100 off him.  On the whole it worked out great for me, but I was disappointed that they actually learned from my technique.

At 10pm I'd been there a little over four hours and was looking at about $400 profit.  I had the second biggest stack at the table, and I decided I was done and got up.  Once again the other good player at the table said, "Well the fish are leaving, I'll go too."

What is it about my play that I keep getting called a fish?

My big mistake, and how I lucked my way out of it.

An afternoon session of $6/$12 at Garden City Casino yielded this hand in which I executed a strategy that would have been otherwise smart at this table, and it backfired on me.  I caught a lucky card and ended up with a big pot.

Sitting in middle position, I was dealt black Aces.  A strong player to my right ("Taylor Made") raised it to $12 and it came to me.  I re-raised it to $18 and we got three cold callers, all of them players with a wide range of crap they could play.  The original raiser called and we saw the flop with a pot of $90.

My thought was that given the broad range of hands, depending on the flop I was likely to be up against a big card, like Ace-King on a King-high board, and I'd still be good even if the Ace came and paired him up.  Three of the four other players had a habit of playing weak holdings, so I was pretty happy about it.

The flop came Jack-Eight-Five rainbow and the original raiser bet $6.  I raised it to $12, and one of the weak players to my left, "Pro-Am", made it $18.  Two more players folded until we got to the original raiser, "Taylor Made".  He just called, and I capped it.  They both called.  We saw the turn card for a pot of $162.

The turn brought my ace, giving me three Aces.  I stared at the board.  I knew I had to be good.  There's no straight on the board, and everyone showed aggression already, so the two flush on the board was an incredibly expensive flush draw, and unlikely.  I had to assume I was up against something in the range of Jack-Jack through Ace-Ace or Eight-eight or Five-Five.  Seven-Six was a possibility, but a very remote one.

Taylor Made wasn't going to let this go any farther and he bet out.  I raised, and Pro-Am raised again.  Taylor Made capped it, and we both called.  We saw the river with a pot of $306.

The river was a Five making quad-Fives a possibility.  Taylor Made bet out $12, and I raised to $24.  Pro-Am just called and said how frustrated he was.  He showed his cards to his neighbor and I saw an Eight of Hearts.  I told the dealer, "I saw one of his cards" and Taylor Made asked me what it was.  "Eight of Hearts" I said, and in frustration Pro-Am showed his pair of eights for a full house, eights over fives.  I knew I had him beat.  Taylor Made raised to $36 and said, "Well ,if you have quad fives I'm dead."  I capped it ($48) and Pro-Am called with his Eights.

Taylor Made showed down Jacks, for Jacks full of Fives, and I showed my Aces, for Aces full of fives, and scooped up my $446 pot.  (I lost $4 to the rake)

The entire table tilted for the next twenty minutes.  Pro-Am just bitched repeatedly and bought another $400.  (heh)  Taylor Made said, "There was no draw on that board, I was beat and there was no draw."

About 40 minutes later after I got up, Taylor Made insultingly said, "Well I'm not getting my money back from you, I'm leaving too then."

I like my strategy, but I misjudged Taylor Made.  He's a talented player and I shouldn't have pulled it when he was in a hand.  I'd like to think that if it was just me and Pro-Am, a generally weak player with a large range of possible hands that I could have beat with my Aces, I feel pretty good about it.

I've been folding Aces a lot (and correctly) lately, and so I'd like to think I could have done it on the turn or river without my third Ace coming.  Unimproved I could certainly have done it on the river, though it would have been expensive to get that far.

It's time to get serious.

I've taken the last two afternoons off to play cards with Katie while she was visiting.  We logged good time at both Bay 101 and Garden City Casino.  (We liked the players at Garden City more, since they were more passive)

I had a couple of epiphanies during my 7 hour $6/$12 session with Katie, all of which were helpful.

1. Poker skills are like muscles, especially hand-reading skills.  I folded both Ace-Ace and Jack-Jack correctly to players that suddenly hit hands on the river.  Not only that, but I noticed who noticed that I folded, and when I learned that they had taken note of it and intended to bluff me, I called them down.  I couldn't do that three days ago since I was relatively out of practice.
2. I can re-arrange my schedule to squeeze in at least 8, if not twice that much hours of poker weekly if I stop staying up until midnite.  This will help with #1...
3. When I study my opponents, I learn not just how to play against them, but it also causes me to consider the right way to play a hand.  I need to do more of this.  Also I'm running into the very same people over and over again all over San Jose.  I can have a real leg up on them if I have some way of remembering their play styles.
4. My limit game is weak.  You might think this would depress me, but it just makes me want to master the $6/$12 games around here and move up to $8/$16 and $20/$40.  I know I can do it.

To that end I'm going to do a couple of things:

1. Re-arrange my schedule to spend less time killing time around the house after 10pm so I can log some work hours early in the morning and get in some cards occasionally in the afternoon.
2. Start developing a player database and start taking notes at the table to help me understand how other players think.
3. Play twice as much limit hold'em as no limit hold'em.  Though this will put me in games I'm not always a favorite in, this is where I want to work.  Ultimately I think limit hold'em is a better learning tool because the damage to your stack of a bad decision is mitigated.

To this end I need to ask you something: do you have a favorite voice recorder?  I need a way of easily turning on a recording device and muttering to myself or talking to another player and recording it for later record keeping.  Do you have a favorite voice memo recorder, perhaps disguised as a pen, that you'd suggest?  I figure I'll subtly turn it on, and then say, "Hey George, the board's three diamonds, so why did you bet that Ace high on the flop?  You didn't think I had the flush?"  I'll review and transcribe later.

Let me know in the comments.

Well, I lived through 40.

I made it to and through 40.  Steve graciously took and posted a gazillion photos up to flickr, including this one at right.  If you missed it, I'm sorry, stick around until I'm 70.

Incidentally, if this party looks like a lot of fun, I suggest you hire Johanna Walsh, our friend and party planner and owner of Twirl Management.  She's a real pro who understands the basic logistics of catering, liquor estimation, entertainment, music, and furniture.  She also understands the more subtle elements like, "How do we keep this particular area of the party from being a dead spot?"  and "How do we ensure that people spend time here where the blackjack tables are?"

Our party was a wild success and no effort on our part due to her expertise.  Please hire her.

As I write this, my poker buddy Katie is visiting me from the East Coast and I left her at 5pm at my local card room, the Garden City Casino.  We'd been playing $6/$12 limit hold'em since 1pm when I took the afternoon off to hang with her.  I left at 5 to pick up Moishe from school.  At 7:30pm I got a text message from her saying she was up almost over $700.  I think she's running a $500 profit or so.

What we found amazing was that at 1pm in the afternoon they had 4 full tables of $6/$12.  What's more, they were feeding two tables of $8/$16 with a half kill (which means it's a $12/$24 game sometimes).  People busted out of the $8/$16 game frequently and our game continued to get drained of mostly the best players at the table who went to the other table.   Every time a good player left the table Katie and I looked at each other and smiled.  It ran about two to one bad players to good, so our odds of getting a bad player were 33%.

That's not to say it's easy to make money off bad players.  Bad players catch cards and unbelievable hands, and really force you to read your opponents carefully.  The real trick is in combining their body language plus your ability to read the board to figure out exactly what they have.  It's not easy, as they can often be overplaying something like two pair when there's a flush on the board.  But if you can get good at that, you can play weaker hands and depend on your reads to pull you through.

 

The players at the $6/$12 were of medium talent, but there were some truly awful ones that basically meant that you would make about 30%-40% more on each pot you won because they would stay in with an awful hand.  Chip runners were constantly coming to our table to refill their stacks, and after $500 or so, they would leave.  Katie and I also noticed a phenomenon I hadn't ever seen so clearly: a good player with solid poker skills who was not in control of his game.  He consistently played weak hands or called down a bettor to the river, thinking his weak hand was good.

He knew the game well, but his judgement was way off.  I don't know if that's because he'd seen his opponents play so badly that he had adjusted too much, or if he just lost focus, but either way he was playing bad.

I played pretty well and ended up about $40 or so.  I never really dipped far below my starting stack, and took a series of bad luck hands that dropped me from about $450 down to $300 before it was time to leave.  The best, probably, was when my queens got called to the river by an Ace that had paired it's kicker (Ace-Three, mind you).  When the Ace came and my opponent bet into me I thought hard and then folded my Queens face up.  He showed his ace and swept the pot.  I loved that fold.  I had the very best hand until the last card, and then, when the power shifted, I got the hell out and saved myself $12.  I'm confident most other players at that table (except Katie) couldn't have made that fold.

I'm taking one more afternoon off tomorrow which is Katie's last day here.  I'm working early in the morning to catch the East Coasters.

I should be sleeping...

...but I'm posting my rah rah hand moment.  I played at the Big Dirty Game tonight.  It was destined to be a tension filled evening.  Of course I couldn't forget my $800 slide there the last two sessions, along with my self-doubt that I was playing without a clue.  After my successful no limit weekend I had my confidence back and I walked into the club with a single $300 buyin.  I was prepared to try and out-think my opponents.

The two very best players in the club sat down and I thought, uh oh.

I made two mistakes overplaying poor hands against a strong player and a poor player.  I beat the poor player, and lost $400 to the strong player, but still had $200 left, so I wasn't out.  I played some bad hands then, but got control of myself and regained my focus.  Finally I looked down at a raise from the Pretty Boy (he had $700), a call from the Barman (he had $650), and a pair of jacks in my hand (I had $400).  These guys are aggressive enough that I am not able to pattern their play in any way, so I'm basically playing my cards, while they're playing their cards and me (and my cards, in a way).

We saw the flop for $16 each, which is like it wasn't raised at all.  This is a wild game where this isn't really considered a raise at all, and it came 962 with two clubs.  I didn't hold a club.  Pretty Boy bet $30, Barman raised it to $70, and I went deep into the tank to think.  I've seen Pretty Boy make this play with an overpair, but I thought I could rule out Aces through Queens, there would have been a bigger pre flop raise.  He could have jacks, or more likely tens.  Yes, there's a set possible, but the odds are low he hit it.  He could also play large unpaired cards that way.  I didn't think he'd have 2 pair because he wouldn't raise under the gun with 96 or 62 or 92.  So his range is a pair (Aces through Sevens), big unpaired overcards (Ace King down to Ace Ten), or top pair (Nine with an Ace).

Barman would almost certainly be playing this way to isolate with top pair (a 9 with any kicker), a straight draw, or a flush draw.  He wouldn't have just called $16 with any pair, he would have re-raised.  He would have played that way with 10-10 or 8-8.

I felt that Barman was trying to take the hand down cheaply, and I thought they thought I would fold.  I had been folding a lot all night, but occasionally would show down crap.  I definately had them thrown.  I decided my jacks were probably the favorite here.  Sure I could be against a set, but I'd know pretty soon about that when I got re-raised.  I wasn't going to get called by Aces through Queens because they didn't exist in my opponent's hands.  I needed to make this too expensive for them to continue in the hand.  I raised it to $150 to go and Pretty Boy thought for a while and folded.

Barman fiddled with his cards.  "Shabbir Shabbir...." he shook his head and said "Good bet" and folded, showing a Jack of clubs.  It turns out he had the Jack-Nine, and Pretty Boy had Ace Queen.  Pretty Boy went insane the rest of the evening trying to get me to tell him what I had, and I finally offered him a deal.  I'll tell him, if in the future I get to expose one of his hands instead of folding it.  He agreed and I told him.  He's good for it, and so sometime in the future I'll exercise that favor when I make a tough fold against him.

The money's nice (I finished up about $250), but more so is the fact that I realized that when I'm thinking I can be competitive with these guys.  Pretty Boy has a real job, as does Barman, but Barman in particular is my aspiration for poker skill.  (I don't want his life).  He owns several businesses that seem to run without difficulty and so he plays poker every night, and during the day plays as well at an outdoor game in the DC area.  He gets in hours of practice time and his play really shows a level of complexity, insight, aggression, and trickiness I really aspire to.  If I hadn't moved away I would have gone to sit at his feet and begged him to take me on as an acolyte.  Alas I'll have to keep looking.

This also brings me into positive territory this year for the Big Dirty Game, something that had haunted me for a few weeks.  I'm toying with the idea of just playing no limit this year, purely so I can practice my skills at cash games and tournaments.  The hand reading and "range of hands" analysis are very similar in both game types, and so I think I could really focus in well.  I don't want to learn some obscure game just so I can be good at it.

As an aside I had a long talk with my poker colleague Chris about my theory about low limit hold'em being all about the cards, and the concensus was that I needed to move up in limits or stop grading myself on whether I win or lose money, since getting dealt cards is a prerequisite to win money in these games.  I think I might do both...

Atlantic City revisited

I just came back from my first of two birthday weekend celebrations in Atlantic City. 

Apart from the poker, I met someone from the local Maryland poker community, ehonda.  The guy actually plays poker as much as I wish I could!  Go check out his blog, I've been reading it for a while and when I saw him in the Tropicana, I walked over and introduced myself.  I hope to get to his game sometime soon when I'm on the east coast.

I did really well and yet I don't feel like I have a good handle on some of the games.  I ended up playing $4/$8 limit hold'em, $7.50/$15 limit hold'em, and $1/$2 no limit hold'em.  I also played two tournaments, but I don't count those in my totals, as I have no expectation of making money.  (I also don't keep those in my cash game bankroll.)  I left AC a little over $700 wealthier than when I came, so the trip was a success, but there's a lot I learned, and even in the games I made money in, some of them feel over my head.  Here's a recap:

$1/$2 no limit hold'em
This was the game I did best in, and for two reasons: 1) it's very very cheap to see a flop when you've got $300 in front of you and the table isn't wildly aggressive, and 2) the players at the Tropicana aren't that good.  When I did actually run into a talented table, I knew it and got up after two orbits.  Imagine two tables, one full of laughing people who obviously aren't headed to the world series of poker, and another table where nobody says a word, they all wear Pokerstars gear, and one player announces to another that "you have 6 different tells" and then correctly raises him out of the pot.  I saw almost none of these pots bigger than $25, and none of them go past the flop. 

Clearly, I left the second game for the first.  I hit a number of good hands, and more importantly managed to always slowplay them just slow enough to make money.  When I had a pair, I hit a set a disproportionate number of times, and managed to also time it when another player had a hand he  or she was too inexperienced to let go.

I think my my overall abilities in no limit are still novice skills.  The difference, I think, is that I have enough patience to wait for hands that hit flops, and even fold when they hit but not hard enough.   One example was when I was in late position with a pair of red 6's, and I raised and got three callers.  The flop came three clubs, all higher than 6.  I decided I was done with the hand and after everyone checked it around to me I did as well.  Of course the 6 of clubs came on the turn and a $10 bet circulated and was called by two players.  I laid my set down, and said to the table "I'm so proud of this fold".  It turns out an early player had the flush the entire time, from the flop on.  I don't know if it was my spidey sense or an over-abundance of caution, but something kept me out of the hand.

Such a fold would be much harder for me (probably impossible) in limit hold'em, and figuring out why that is would probably explain why my results are much worse at limit than no limit.  I made most of the profit from the trip, except for about $100, at no limit.

Oh, and once again I managed to really piss off two people that were together.  A relatively cute girl and her boyfriend were seated together.  I bluffed the girl out of a pot that tilted her for 20 minutes.  Then I busted her boyfriend with a slowplayed set of jacks.  He was a good sport, but she left soon after.  They were both very tilty. 

 

$7.50/$15 limit hold'em (pink chip)
This game is played with pink $2.50 chips and is legendary for being full of awful players.  The last two trips it has been full of good players.  This time I recognized several of the older regulars (all over the age of 60) and when I noticed three of them begin to just check down hands to each other instead of betting, I racked up my chips and got up, announcing that I thought they were cheating.  Hoo-boy, that made me unpopular.  It was also aggravating because most of them bet on the horses so the game is always short handed because 1 or 2 of them are always away at the betting window, and one other player is away doing something else.  If I never play this game again it will be too soon.

$4/$8 limit hold'em
I played this quite a bit, both with my friend having "poker school" and by myself.  Poker school, by the way, is when we sit next to each other and when we're not in a hand, we whisper guesses of what the other players have to each other.  We're careful not to let anyone anyone hear us.  It's a great way to practice your reading skills, and we often critique hands that we or the others play as they play them.  The goal isn't to win money but to use your poker brain muscles.  (However the goal is not to lose money, so you play your best to win the pot, even though the presence of people thinking about poker may influence the actions of other players.)

Poker school was awesome, and somewhere in the middle I made probably the very best read of my life on a player which allowed me to bet into the river when I didn't hold the nuts.  Here's the skinny:
The guy on my right is a novice who's aggressive but not tricky.  If he has anything, and I mean anything, he bets it.  Top pair, second pair, bottom pair, he bets it all. 

We both see a raised flop and I hit top two pair with my mid-sized Ace.  He bets into my like he paired the ace, and I raise him and he slows down.   He's been checking and calling the whole way when we get to the river and a straight comes.  He checks.  I had the presence of mind to stop and think.  The safe thing to do is check in case he was waiting for the straight, but check raising is entirely out of character for him.  I've been here two hours and he hasn't done it once, even with big hands.  So I do the range of hands analysis on him.  A set?  Unlikely, as he would be leading the betting into me.  Two pair?  Maybe, but I've got that beat.  Top pair with some unpaired kicker?  Probably.  Straight?  Nope, he'd have bet into me.

And so I bet into him, he called, and showed top pair with a big (but unpaired) kicker.  I showed him my two pair and took down the pot.  That read made me an extra $8, but the money's not the object, the analytical skills are.  I'll be enjoying that event long after I've spent the $8 on something.

My bottom line on limit games on this trip was that I felt like luck played a huge factor in my game.  I really felt like I was really at the whim of the kinds of cards I was getting, and frankly, I don't like that.  I need to know I'm playing a game of skill, or I'll leave the casino.  Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like to play craps, blackjack, slots, or any other casino game for money because it seems to pointless.  What is the use of your brain in something where your edge is so small that luck is the overriding factor?  For me the answer is nothing.

Tournaments:
I played two of these on Saturday and Sunday morning.  The first was a 74 person $125 tourney.  I went out 11th and was really proud of my play.  I stopped before every hand, thought, analyzed the situation and acted really smartly.  I also had a fair bit of luck, but I finally ran into someone and made an actual mistake, pushing with a weak ace when our table was six handed and I got put out 11th and they merged the last two tables into one without me.

The second was a classic case of hubris.  I was late because we had to walk down twenty five flights of stairs with our luggage since the elevators were not operating.  I sat down, promptly bluffed off all of my chips to a pretty girl who clearly plays plenty of cards and wouldn't lay down her set to my bluffed flush, and put myself out of the tourney in a record TWENTY MINUTES.

I definately have a tourney impulse problem that I'll have to work on.

On the whole, though, a very successful trip.

Bay Area Poker Information

Now that I'm starting to settle in California a bit I'm starting to aggregate information about poker rooms out here.  I've built two useful resources for people interested in Texas Holdem poker in the Bay area.

The first is a Bay area map of casinos that I know have poker rooms.  I'm using "Bay Area" kind of loosely since some of these are as far as an hour away, but I'm not the first one to torture that phrase in the pursuit of marketing, so I presume you'll forgive me.

The second resource you might find handy is the schedule I put together of poker tournaments at these same casinos.  These are the regularly scheduled tournaments, and is not intended to include one-time or special tournaments such as World Poker Tour events or World Series of Poker satellites.  As always, check with the casino if you're unsure.