Pro day 3
On the recommendation of Snake, I popped into an old favourite casino this evening – the very same venue I played my first hand of poker in a ‘proper’ cardroom back in 1998 or so. A £15 freeze-out beginners night tournament populated by a field of 60 or so similarly green players – tough stuff for a fledgling poker player such as 26 year old fLuke to overcome.
I recall my first hour of cards being a nerve-wracking experience. Only mildly calmed by the wry and humorous tournament direction of their cardroom manager, none other than Roy ‘the legend’ Houghton.
Well, it’s 12 years later and Roy had moved on, but it seems he’s left the same green players behind, and all it would appear they’ve done is graduate from tournaments to cash poker.
My third night pro was unfortunately somewhat spoiled by the stinking cough and cold I picked up last week. I spent the entire five hours at the table spluttering germs over my fellow combatants. The lurgy has been building up all week, and I’m absolutely certain that so many hours sat at a card table handling filthy chips hasn’t done my health any favours.
Nonetheless, an extremely soft game located once again, if anything even easier than pro day 2. My cards were as cold as ice, but it didn’t stop me playing 95% of hands. I do believe there was a raise once, maybe around 10.30pm, but apart from that it seemed that everyone was content to rely on the basic poker arsenal of fold, check, call and bet.
An interesting dynamic broke-out, possibly one deserving further analysis over a laptop. With the majority of players willing to limp/call any pair, top pair no kicker became a bit of a monster. I was able to stack up rather nicely throughout the night adopting a very simple and consistent line of betting/raising my junk, and calling down with top pair or better.
I do have to share a fairly hilarious set of circumstances that led to my staying relatively late this evening, rather than allowing my declining health to drive me back to bed. Matey in the seat to my immediate right has made one or two somewhat odd plays early in the evening, it’s somewhat possible (albeit unlikely) that he knows what he’s doing. We get chatting about general rubbish, and within about ten minutes I manage to stack him for about £100, calling him down with 87o after he bet out a TT8 flop and kept shooting. Deciding that he would be the type to trap a ten, I called and called a turn and river of Jh 7s (giving me three pair), and so his final desperation shove made for a pretty straight-forward call. He grumbled and didn’t show, probably an under-pair to the flop, fives or sixes.
He stacked-up soon after, this time to about £300, making the two of us joint big chips versus everyone else’s ~£100.
It’s at this point that I should mention that he had an enormous furry tiger cub as a mascot, sitting on the table virtually blocking my view of his stack. It was around 9pm that I twigged that whenever he had what he perceived as a big hand, he’d pick-up the tiger and shake it at the player contemplating a call, making grrr sounds. It’s not quite as subtle as putting a cookie to your ear, but hey – whatever rocks your boat. I’m not sure any of the other players were paying any real attention, or at least they kept calling with lord only knows what and then passing to his triumphantly flipped up top pair.
Funny (and obviously extremely profitable), but that’s not the comedy gold part of the night. Around 10.30pm one of his buddies wanders over. “What are you playing mate?” he asks.
“It’s poker isn’t it, like you seen on TV.” he explains.
“How does that work then?”
Tigershaker then goes on to explain the game of poker. It’s a long and rambling tale, infused with advice such as “when you’ve got two cards the same in your hand, that’s a pair”, and “when you get two cards the same on the table, and when you’ve got another two cards the same in your hand, that’s two pair”. His advice on bluffing I thought was particularly insightful, apparently “never bluff, because people won’t fold for just £100″. It was obviously a do as I say not as I do lesson, because there were an awful lot of hands where Mr Tiger sat undisturbed over the following few hours, and strangely matey would grumble and pass to my 3x raises…
Staggeringly, the mate, now having been taught the finer points of poker, decides to borrow £50 from his buddy and join the game. Myself and the only other vaguely compos mentis player at the table goggled incredulously over the following 15 minutes as he churned through three buy-ins in very short order. Happily, most of the money ending up back in Tigershaker’s stack where I intended it to be just a matter of time before the lovely pile of black £25s would slide one seat to the left.
Unfortunately though, I couldn’t find a hand to shake a tiger at. And by 11.30pm my coughing was reaching a frequency and volume that I really started to become embarrassed about. With a big game planned for tomorrow night, I elected to cash in my nicely chipped-up stack and to jump in an AddLee home and to bed.
So just before I sign off, a quick tally of performance relative to the pro week metrics:
5 hours played, adapted once again beautifully, no major errors other than perhaps one or two river value bets missed, and apart from the coughing I rather enjoyed myself. Very much looking forward to the 17 hours of poker I need to get in over Friday and Saturday to complete this experiement.
Oh, and happily enough, despite that I’m not considering the financial side of things as part of the experiment’s success criteria, I’m now on a four figure freeroll for the weekend. If I can chip that up further again on Friday, I might have to start considering taking a shot at the 5/10 game at the Palm Beach. It’s at least a £1,000 sit down, so I’m going to need around three grand in my pocket to play the game properly. Probably wise to wait until my health is back at 100%, but something to give consideration to at least.
Ps. In line with expectations, the ‘pool night’ that Baron, Jimbo and Nemo played this evening as a final final goodbye to Smalls turned into stacks poker. It seems the boys didnt even make it until 8pm before they broke-out the cards. Bloody degenerates…
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