Saturday and the Coaster

I played on Saturday for the first time ever at the card room and it was a rollercoaster to say the least. I got there about 4 in the afternoon and the house was full. Every table looked soft. I mean, at Hamilton's, you have about 3 classes of players. They are:

Retirees
Rednecks
Young guns

The retirees are passive. The rednecks vary. The young guns are aggressive. Everyone is very, very loose.

I was seated at a table who's youngest member was about 56 and everyone referred to him as the "kid". This table was very passive, not raising pre-flop ever. Even with KK, no raise pre-flop. For that first hour and a half, there were only 3 or 4 pre-flop raises and all came from me. I started limping in with lots of suited connectors and Kx and Ax suited cards from every position and managed to hit a couple big hands. By 5:30, I was up $95 (47.5BB). You know that sound rollercoasters make when you're climbing?

*click* *click* *click* *click* Throw your hands up and scream cause we're about to go over the edge.

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!"

The next two hours had me on a downswing as I was card dead and I just folded 90% of the time. The 10% I did get involved had me stuck with missed draws, marginal decisions, and river'd 2nd best hands. I fell back to about $40 up (20BB) and decided to move over to the straight $2 table to try to win big and leave.

Straight $2 is just limit hold'em but all the bets are $2 and don't double on the turn. It's 2/4 without the 4. I usually stay away to keep the integrity in my standard limit structure game, but the pots are larger at straight $2 so I gave it a shot. I had already thought about it in depth and decided it was a bad game because you can't protect your hand on the turn since the pot is so big by that point and the bet doesn't double. Most people that call a bet on the turn aren't adding dead money to the pot with almost any hand, even a lowly pair, so all the dead money would have to come from the pre-flop action and occasionally flop action. This mean I would need to only bet heavily on monster hands where all future calls would pretty much be dead money. That's where your profit comes from in small stakes Limit.

*click* *click* *click* *click*

Well, I moved steadily back up to $90. After that I got involved in a hand where I flopped a set, value betted it since I couldn't do anything to protect it, and lost the $50 (25BB) pot to a river'd gutshot straight. Oh well, it happends 1 out of 11.5 times.

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! OH shit, a Loop!"


The next big pot saw me with AJs, flop top pair, turn top two pair, and lose to a river'd gutshot.....again. This was about a $60 (30BB) pot and it stung a little. On the flop, a player before me raised. I took the opportunity to re-raise making it 2 to go hoping to get folds or dead money. Several people still called so I knew it was value bet at best time from there on out and when the J turned I was happy to do so. I raised the river, got re-raised, knew I was beat but unable to fold such a large pot for 1 bet and paid him off. After which he replied "Man, I pulled that one out of my ass" while it took the dealer three pushes to get all the chips over to him. I think he got up and did some cartwheels after that, I'm not sure, I was too busy trying to find a window to jump out of. Don't worry, it's only a 1-story building. I just wanted to make a statement.

*The coaster derails, lands on an old lady, there are no survivors.*

I ended the night up about $40 (20BBs) for 5 hours. Below what I'm used to, but happy I wasn't down after those two hands.

That's all for now. I've vented and my soul is at rest again. I'll try to post up some constructive stuff later on.