Not much ado for me in the poker world in the last ten days, though I commented to a post over at Bill Rini's Virtual Poker Shack regarding the PokerStars rules modification within triple draw and badugi. Still, that stuff is a tempest in a teapot.
The real truth is that the laptop hard-drive crash of a couple of weeks back and the worst of the September poker crush has kept me real busy of late... not even talking about that lovely 22-hour finale to the WSOPE. Eyelids... toothpicks... eyelids... toooooothpicks.... But between that and two other events and some rather major domestic stories regarding poker legislation and legal matters, it's been a busy stretch.
I've played live a couple of times recently but exited two tourneys in the way I find most frustrating -- when players who I thought were fairly decent proved to be rather weaker than initial estimations, knocking me out by accident by making really, really bad plays. Today, for instance, I moved all in over the top of a man I've played against several times -- nice enough guy, for all that -- who had been getting squirrelly with his aggressive steals. I pushed from the button with Q-Q with a marginally (but not terribly) short stack, over his raise from MP over a UTG limp, and he called with... K-J?? For half his stack?? Nice hand, sir, bwahhahahahahahaha. He rivered a four-flush to knock me out, but what I thought of while looking at the WPT Boot Camp hat he was wearing is that he ought to write those folks and ask for a refund. A player with that lack of comprehension of metagame considerations couldn't even tread water in $10 SNGs online. What he's not doing with that K-J is realizing that against my range he's got at least two chances in three of crippling himself. What he's trying to do instead is pray me onto a hand like pocket nines so he can somehow be in a race.
Or crap it out the hard way.
Yeah, frustrating.
Far more interesting, of course, was listening to four guys at my table, average age of 50, all assuring themselves and each other how rigged online poker was and is. "Oh, my aces got cracked eight times out of nine." Surrrrrrrre. Of, course, since he was the king of the pre-flop min-raise, thereby guaranteeing everyone else the best possible odds to come in after him, I suppose it was possible.
Of course, one of them then spouted that he'd heard about this UltimateBet thing, making him the fount of all knowledge on the subject, and oh, yeah, it was the absolute (heh to that) proof that all online poker everywhere was the dirtiest game imaginable. I've heard this stuff enough while playing live to know to just ignore it. It's times like these, when I'm playing more or less incognito, that I just like to be quiet and listen to the yokels yammer. It's always entertaining.
It's funny, though, just how badly some of these folks play in tournaments that have these $100 and $150 and $200 buy-ins. My god, I wish I had a bankroll of $10,000 or so so I could just roll around and take donkament shots without worrying about variance. On average, they are significantly worse than your typical $20 or $30 tourney player online, and are exactly the same folks that think nothing of going to a nice local golf course, plunking down $80 for greens fees and a cart -- and another $40 for drinks and a sandwich -- and hack it around to the tune of a 115. Thus we learn about the utility value of money: the more one has, the less each additional individual dollar is worth.
No comments:
Post a Comment