Shabbir's Diary

How do you play Aces when there's an Aces cracked bonus available?

For reasons more complicated than I can explain here, my weekday schedule has me awake when everyone else is asleep from 4:30am or 5am onwards.  Tuesday through Friday I've been spending 2-3 hours every morning at my local poker room.  (Yes it's surprisingly full at that time of the morning)

From 6-9am they have a bonus: $100 if you get your Aces cracked.  Since I've been playing almost exclusively $3/$6 limit hold'em, this sets up a fascinating dynamic for those interested in how to maximize value.  I've been dealt Aces at this time of day at this game almost three times, so it's worth examining it as a poker question.

This morning I was in the big blind and dealt bi-racial Aces (red and black) of hearts and clubs (AhAc).  Six random players called, which includes the small blind, and I'm put to a decision.  Given the stakes of the table, I think I want to see my Aces cracked.  The $100 bonus is greater than the size of the pot I'm likely to win.  I want some other player to catch up and beat me.  I really really want everyone to play this hand.  So I check.  The flop comes AdQd3c.  Crap, I've hit a set.  Suddenly it's more likely that I'm going to win this pot, and I don't want to win $21 (-$4 rake), I want to win $100.  The small blind bets out, I call, and two other players call.  Pot is $29.  Turn is a 9c.  Small blind checks, I check and hope someone with a club flush draw decides to stay in now.  Everyone checks.

River is a 10d.  If there was a diamond flush draw out there, they've just made their hand and beat me.  Also, a straight, though I can't imagine anyone betting a straight on a flush board like that.  The small blind checks, I check also, and a middle position player bets.  The next two players fold and it's up to me.  I've played this hand so passively he might be betting with just a queen, but he could also have two pair.  I decide I want to shove a little more money in the pot in case I win it so I raise.  My opponent just calls.  The pot is now $53 and my opponent shows KsJd for a straight.  I show my set of Aces and the floorman comes over to give me $100 for cracked Aces.

So how should one play this?  According to pokerstove my equity against 6 random hands is 43%.  I believe that means I need to have at least $43 in the pot to have earned the equity my Aces deserve. 

The only really complicated decision is before the flop.  Assuming nobody folds, I could have pumped the pot to $42 immediately.  (At $3/$6, nobody folds when the big blind raises)  However I believe that unless someone had hit something and gleefully tried to take the pot from me, it would have stayed there and my gut shot straight drawing opponent might have folded had anyone bet on the turn.  Adding another two big bets to the pot ($12) would have put it at $54 (-$4 rake), pretty much the same thing I ended up with.

I think the right play here is to let as many players in as possible, and then play the hand without too much emphasis on value because you're dancing the knife edge between winning a respectable pot on the river and chasing away anyone drawing thin who might catch up and win you the $100 bonus.  What do you think?

As another aside, should I count the $100 bonus in my totals?  I religiously record every session's numbers and weird spikes like this certainly warp my numbers.  So far this year I've won $227 total over 52.5 hours of play, averaging out to about $4.33 / hr.  A session with $100 jammed into it certainly warps that a bit, but one assumes the rake has a downward effect on it as well.

This is totally situational as well.  The Bad Beat Jackpot, which I'm incredibly tired of hearing the $3/$6 players obsess about, stands at $170,000 right now.  Were I to hit it and win $85,000, it couldn't possibly be right to put it into my numbers.  Even my portion of the table share at $6,000 or so would make me look like an unfairly brilliant low limit hold'em player. 

I've had aces cracked in this situation twice, winning the pot once.  Since my early cardroom shift appears to be my poker time for the forseeable future, I'd be curious what you think about the right mathematical strategy here.

A raid in Maryland; my poker game; my big yard project

It hasn't hit the news yet, but there was another SWAT team raid of a poker game in Maryland in the last week.  This time it appears they just confiscated the money and chips, cards, and tables.  Perhaps they will press charges later, but on the whole, I suspect this is just easy money and easy ways to up their misdemeanor/felony count.  Raiding a poker game run by ordinary people is very unlikely to turn violent, or even turn up a weapon.  You go in, collect the cash, take down names, and notify them later of their charges.   60 days surveillance by a detective and one night's work by a SWAT team.

My poker game continues to be in free fall.  I'm focusing entirely on my limit hold'em game using the math I've worked out at the direction of my coach.  While my game is better, my results are not.  I know I'm playing better hands, and playing them in a more positive expected value manner, but I don't have any bottom line result yet.  It will come, and thankfully I'm playing at stakes suited to my bankroll...

Finally, I started a big yard project Sunday.  We're clearing an 18'x22' spot in the backyard to be Sarah's formal vegetable and herb garden.  I pulled up almost half a dozen bamboo plants that had been planted a while ago.  If you ever feel the need to plant decorative bamboo, let me urge you not to.  It's like burying nuclear waste in your backyard: it creates problems for the next owners of your house down the line.

I pulled up one plant and found six different runners growing outwards from the plant, trying to spread.  As I tore up flagstones chasing each on with my shovel, I began to get aggro.  Every time I finished one I looked at the remaining bamboo with my giant bolt cutters in one hand and my newly purchased Home Depot axe in the other, asking, "Who's NEXT?  Who wants a piece of the Shabster!?  Bring it on, frakkers!"

We literally now have over a hundred pounds of compostable material in our yard that has to go.  I've moved it into a temporary spot so I can grade and till the remaining soil.  For the grading task I'm using a line level with some string and leftover rebar.  It's going to be a lot of work, but I've got the strength, and time, and it doesn't require any complex skills.  Once I've got the yard leveled we'll build the retaining walls around it, and then bring in 6 inches worth of dirt.  Sarah says we need compost, and I think that's an awesomely huge amount of dirt.  This calculator says I need 6.3 cubic yards of dirt, and this other calculator says that dirt is going to weigh a total of 21,262 lbs, which will also equal over 500 bags.

I'm going to have to do this in stages, as there's no way in hell I can lug that much dirt in at once.   Even if I hired every day laborer in the city.

My 2008 poker year thus far

So its not quite mid year but it's close enough that I'm going to do a little bit of analysis out loud.  (I've also been traveling like a fiend and my company is in the middle of living a genuine Business School Case Study, which let me tell you, it's not fun to live.  They read a lot easier after the fact.)

I'm just about break even for the year in dollar results when you include all the live tournament play I've been doing.  But the cash games are the real important area.  My no limit cash game is running a deficit of $500 or so.  That nets out to losses at one location in DC where I play when I'm there on business of almost $1,000, and wins in other places that offset about half of those losses.

The competition at the private game in DC is strong enough that I've concluded I'm outmatched.  During my last session I looked around the table and concluded that I knew who the fish was, and when he busted out, I knew I was the new fish.  I left while I still had chips and vowed to play in easier games.

Now looking at it, with only a few exceptions, I'm a money loser at no limit cash games pretty much everywhere, so I'm dropping that from my practice routine.  Depending on where I'm playing, I'm averaging a loss of about $10-$70 per hour of play.  Clearly I'm outmatched across the board.

The limit cash game numbers are much better.  I make about $10 / hr playing $3/$6, and about a $1/hour playing $6/$12.  Once again, I think the results suggest the obvious: I should be playing $3/$6 limit and honing my game there.  I find there are plenty of opportunities for intellectual exercise at that level, and I certainly don't have any concern about money if, on the whole, I'm beating the table.  It's also where I'm focusing all of my time with my coach, so that's appropriate.

The one weird exception to this is my tournament results.  If you take all my data as a whole, I make about $23 / hour playing hold'em tournaments.  However that's really just due to one big win, and my whole sample size this year is less than a dozen tournaments.  I would say the data does not yet prove that my tournament skills are impressive enough to continue to play them except for fun, which is exactly how I've been treating them since Vegas.