We had the craziest poker game last night. We play a $1/$2 pot limit hold em game. Not really a big money game, and usually the pots get bigger toward the end of the night as people loosen up, try to push people around with a big stack, or try to recoup their losses. Well last night was insane from the first hand and got more insane as the night went on. 3 of our regular players are in Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but we had two of our occasional players show up and one new guy who was just about the worst poker player I've ever seen. Anyway, just listen to how things got started...
First hand of the night, I'm in the small blind and I've got pocket queens. Jeff is under the gun and he raises to $5. Jan is in middle position and he raises it to $10. Both Jeff and Jan are very loose players who could be raising with almost anything here, so I reraise to $20 figuring I've probably got the best hand here. They both call me. Flop comes Q J 4. I bet enough to put them both all in. Jeff immediately calls, Jan folds and he turns up pocket kings. Beautiful, first pot to me and Jeff has to rebuy after one hand.
Second hand of the night. I'm dealing, Jeff is already bitching, and we see the flop with 5 callers and no raise. The flop comes K 10 3. Jeff bets $10, Jan goes all in, Dave goes all in behind him and Shane calls too. Back around to Jeff, he then goes all in with what he has left and Shane is all in too. So we've got 4 players all in after the flop. They flip up the cards. Jeff has K3, Jan has AK, Dave has pocket 9s (I told you he was the worst player I've ever seen) and Shane has K10. No one improves, Shane takes down the pot and now we've got three people rebuying after the second hand, with Jeff rebuying for the second time in two hands. And he's REALLY bitching now.
Fast forward to about the 7th or 8th hand of the night. Jeff is still bitching up a storm. I'm in the big blind with 5 2 and no one raises. Flop comes 5 4 4. I check, not liking my kicker at all, Jeff bets $5, Dave calls and Shane calls. It's not a big bet, there are 3 other players, so the pot odds demand that I call as well. Turn is another 5. Huzzah! I check, Jeff bets $20, Dave calls, Shane calls, I raise to $50 (I know someone else has the 5, probably Jeff, so I know it's a split pot, but with the other two calling big bets I figure I might be able to get them to call another one). Dave finally folds but Shane calls. And the river....is a third 4. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Jeff bets $20, but I'm sure he has the 5. Shane is all in for about $9 at that point, so I call the $20. Shane turns over the 4 for quads, which I knew was more than likely, but for a lousy $9 into an over $200 pot, you can't lay it down.
And by this time, Jeff reaches for this 3rd rebuy in less than 15 minutes at the table. And of course we'll be hearing about this for the next 3 months. It really never got any calmer than that either. Dave, the world's worst player, lost about $200 in an hour or so just by making stupid bets. He went on about a 5 hand streak where he caught cards and won everything. He had a big stack in front of him, but at one point when he went to the bathroom I told Jan, "That stack will be gone, and all the money he brought, within 2 hours. After that, he just raised the pot on every single hand and one by one, we picked him off until he had emptied his wallet. If it weren't for idiots like him, poker wouldn't be nearly as profitable. I ended up losing $70, mostly on the one hand where my full house got beat by quads on the river. But it was a night of "oh my god" hands and it was fun to watch.
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Ed,
I was wondering about Shane's play on that third hand. He calls all the way, but was that the best way to play his hand? He started off with trip 4's after the flop. I would have raised before the flop, but when you raised $50 after the turn I would have figured you for a 5's and folded. Or maybe that's just because I'm even a worse player than Dave. LOL
Anyway, what's your take who might end up on top in the WSOP? I'm guessing we won't see a name win it, but it'll be another newcomer of the Moneymaker/Raymer mold. Mainly becuase there are so many of them!
At what point is the tyranny of Hold 'Em going to loosen its grip on poker?
At what point is the tyranny of Hold 'Em going to loosen its grip on poker?
A Hold 'Em Hegemony?
My dad used to tell me that 5 card stud was the only real way to play Poker.
Dave wrote:
No, I think you're right here. The way the betting went, he had to know he was drawing to a single card after the turn and should have folded rather than call the $50 bet. He should have raised after the flop. I know that I would have folded after the flop if Shane had reraised Jeff because Shane is not typically a deceptive player. And after the beating Jeff took in the first two hands, I can't imagine he would have called if Shane had popped him up to $20 with two small pair and a weak kicker. The bare minimum that Shane would have raised with in that situation is a 5 with an ace kicker, so we would likely both have folded. It was a bad play on Shane's part but he got rescued by hitting the case 4 on the river. That's poker!
I don't think Raymer and Moneymaker should be lumped together. Moneymaker was truly a man out of nowhere who had never played in a live tournament before, but Raymer, while not a household name, was a seasoned tournament vet who has had his share of success in $1000-$5000 buyin tournaments in the northeast. Greg was an excellent poker player before winning, just not a "name" player. But I agree, the chances of a name player winning is certainly reduced by the enormous field. Last year's record field of over 2500 has been more than doubled this year. So it's a safe bet that an unknown will hit a streak of cards and win it. Raymer did survive the first day with almost $40,000 in chips, though.
norbizness wrote:
Well, I'm a hold em player so I rather like it this way. But never say never. I picked up the long awaited second version of Doyle Brunson's Super System a while back and in it he mused about the fact that when he wrote the first one, he had Mike Caro write an entire section on draw poker and it was left out in the new version completely because no one plays the game anymore. I just can't play Omaha, especially straight Omaha. Omaha hi/lo I can play just for fun, but I'm not nearly comfortable enough with the numbers in the game to play it for money.
I can't figure out the interest in "celebrity poker" but I'll just raise the question: are they recording this for display on the one of the celebrity poker shows that seem to have proliferated over the cable senders?
I prefer chess, but nobody seems to cover that any more.