Chris Halverson’s Blog

I played a little bit last night, only 150 hands or so, instead I watched Pauly play in his WPT Satellite. I was trying to play at the same time, but I noticed I was paying more attention to Pauly’s table than mine, so I dropped down to one 50/1 table while watching. While I’m resolving not to focus on individual sessions so much during my quest, I thought it was semi-interesting that I finshed exactly even. Poker Tracker shows neither red nor green for last night. I played on three different tables at two different sites (well, Empire and Party, so technically they’re the same) and the net result was zero. I’m not disappointed, I just don’t think I’ve every been exactly even.

Anyway, during my quest to run my bankroll up I’m going to try very hard to not worry about individual sessions. The gurus of poker (ie. Iggy, hdouble and Felicia) all have told me directly or to the general populace not to worry about individual sessions. I can see the benefit in this and I’m going to spend more time looking at my play. Henry has given me some good advice on using Poker Tracker and I’m going to start making that an important part of my “play”, even if that means it cuts into actual play time.

Nothing too remarkable last night. I misread the board on one table when I had two hands in play and I thought I only had top pair when I really had a straight (doh!). There was only one other person in so it probably didn’t cost me much, but it still pissed me off.

I watched Pauly for quite a while, halfway through Level 2 until 5, then I missed 6 and part of 7 (wife time) and came back in time to see him short stacked to the left of a big, aggressive stack. He got bullied around a bit and went all in with KT. I thought he had it until the second A came up. Oh well, it was fun to watch and pull for him. Better luck next time!

Since I have a week before my classes start again, and since my son decided to stay at my parent’s house tonight, I jumped back into the fray at Empire. Mixed night overall. I made the mistake of being bored of 50/1 and played a bit at 1/2 and lost 10BB. At my 50/1 table, i was up 10BB. In the end, BB-wise it was a wash, but money wise it was a mistake.

After chatting with Iggy, I have decided to refocus a bit on my game. I honestly get a little frustrated at times grinding away at 50/1. I can (within normal variance) beat 50/1. My problem? I read people like hdouble, Penguin, Grubby and others (no offense if I left you off, but the point had been made) winning hundreds of dollars in on night (more than my entire bankroll) and I get thinking. Then I read others saying how they went on runs of 75BB or so and I think how nice that’d be at 1/2. Then I make a jump one night when my bankroll really isn’t ready for it and lose a bit, say 10BB. The problem is, with a limited bankroll, 10BB at 1/2 is very different than losing 10BB at 50/1. It’s painfully different. There’s also times when I’d lose more than that. Then I get upset and move back to 50/1 exclusively. Every time my roll has taken a hit it’s because I got “smart” and tried 1/2 too early. I’ve beat 1/2 games, so it’s not that I’m really worried about that. The problem is the bankroll. Right now it’s not enough to handle even normal variance at 1/2. Add this with Henry’s advice that he’s given me lately and I have decided to refocus and work my bankroll up, Fuzz-like, to $1000 at 50/1. Right now this seems insurmountable, but I have never really had a goal in mind while playing. By giving myself a goal at 50/1 I feel I will accomplish a couple of things. First off, I’ll work a lot on my game, honing it a lot more and being able to cheaply work on the finer points (ie. post-flop) parts of my game that are lacking. Secondly, when I get to that point, I will have enough roll to jump up to 2/4 or so and be able to withstand the variance. Ironically, right now (of course, it’s late and I’ve had a couple drinks), I’m looking forward to this. I think I needed a little focus to my game.

OK, how about some poker? Best play of the night: A♠K♠ in LP. I’m all set to raise when MP raises. This guy has been pretty aggressive all night. I just call. Flop comes up 5♠7♠10♠. I flop the nut flush. The two people left check and I check along with them. Turn comes A♥. Check, bet, I call, other guy folds. River is 6♥. Guy bets, I raise, he re-raises, then types in the chat, “Bet well”. I do, with a re-raise. He pauses, then calls and my flush drags in a 13BB pot. I normally don’t slowplay, but I thought it would be too obvious on the flop to go for it. I got the extra benefit of having an A come on the turn. I’m pretty sure I got a couple extra bets out of the one guy, especially when the A fell.

The rockets actually won for me tonight. I got them UTG and raised. Four callers, flop comes A77. I decide to play it right and bet, one caller. Turn is a 4 and I bet, the other guy folds. Not a big pot, but the rockets never pay off for me, so it was memorable in that respect, and a full house at that.

T minus 9 days until Vegas. My buddy who’s going with is a B&M virgin. A month ago or so, he mentioned going to the casino sometime before we go, but I was gone for two weekends and this week is our last chance. I emailed him today and said we should go this weekend. He’s trying to sell his house and such, so he started giving lame excuses like cleaning up, painting, prepping for open houses and other nonesense. I said we had to do it! Well, he just called me (9PM) and asked if Friday night would be OK. OK? Hell ya! He’s got season tickets to the MN Wild NHL team, and there’s a game that night, so we we won’t be going until after the game (about 9:30-10:00 by the time he gets to where we’re meeting), so the line will be killer, but it’ll be fun. He hasn’t played much (any?) poker at all, so of course what will happen is that I’ll lose big and he’ll be a big winner. It’ll stil be fun, even giving up the Friday Party fish fry. B&M is more fun, even if it’s less profitable.

First off, a big “Thank you” goes out to Henry for his hospitality over the last couple days of my trip. It was a blast.

So it’s Friday and my son and I head into LA. Of course, on the day we leave the mountain, the temperature hovers around 35 degrees (F) all day, which would have made for some nice snowboarding (had there been any snow). Figures. I ask Henry the day before for anything cool to do in LA for a day to which he informs me “there is nothing to do” Hmm…With that in mind we head down to Venice Beach. Venice Beach is a good place for Midwesterners to go as it’s full of freaks, it opens your eyes a bit. The weather was nice, sunny, but still a bit cool for the natives, so the beach wasn’t too busy. We hung around there for an hour or so and then looked for something to do. We decided to go find Henry’s place and work our way out from there for a couple of hours. Thankfully I didn’t get lost this time at all. We found HW Manor and went exploring from there. We hit Beverly Hills and I found a liquor store and picked up some gifts, including a six pack of Guinness to toast Iggy. We then proceeded to get lost. It’s a good thing my son is Magellan-like as he got us back just as Henry was getting home. I tried calling but his cell was going straight to voice mail. I then called his house and his wife answered and said she’d be right out. We barely get out of the car when both Henry and his wife show up. We chit chat a bit, but we’re all hungry so we went out for dinner and then it was time to go to the casino!

We ended up going to Hollywood Park (it didn’t matter to me either way), I was told, “It’s not in the best part of town, but I’ve never had any trouble.” Oh, OK We take the PT Cruiser and head down there to find the parking lot just packed. Oh great, long lines again. We valet the car so we don’t have to walk through the parking lot with the huge wads of cash that we’re going to win and head in.

My first impression was that HP is huge. The poker room is easily three times as big as Canterbury (which is my only B&M poker experience). The ceilings are high and the light is very white whereas Canterbury has lower ceilings and the yellowish lighting which, IMHO, is more pleasing. I think service is easier to get at Canterbury, and soft drinks and water are free too, so that’s a nice benefit. Chips, however, are easier to get at HP as the chip runners walk around with racks of chips. At Canterbury, they take your money and go to the cashier for you. Since it’s smaller, it doesn’t take too long, but it’s not as fast as having the chips right there. Everything is very well run though, I was impressed. We get in and look at the board and there is a decent list at 2/4. I said I’d go up to 3/6, but we decided we’d hang out at 2/4 for a bit. Only 10 minutes or so later Henry gets called for a seat. We look over at the table and both the 1s and 2s are available. I’m figuring I’ll get called immediately, but nooooo…it took ten more minutes are so due to a potential table change or something. I then get called and sit down (thankfully) in the 2s.

This 2/4 table was strange. There was Henry and I in the 1 and 2s, then a guy who seemed to more or less know what he was doing (he ended up splitting something like 10 pots that night, it was kinda weird), but eventually busted out. The 4s was rotated through a couple times. 5s was a pretty tight player who ended up OK. 6s was taken by a passive middle aged woman. If she was in a hand on the turn, you knew she had something. She would never raise though. She could have the nuts and never raise. The 6s was a middle aged black woman (I am mentioning the “black” thing as it will become important later on, it’s not a racist thing, stay with me here) who would rebuy at $20 a pop about ten times during the night. 7s was taken by two black guys throughout the night. The 8s and 9s rotated through with the 9s ending up being a pretty agressive player later on.

Like I said, the table was strange for 2/4. There were very few pre-flop raises and we saw very few showdowns. Henry was going crazy. This low level stuff is not good for him I greatly appreciate him sticking with me for a bit, and he helped me out big time on one hand. I had QQ and flop came down all undercards. I played the hand hard hoping that they would hold up. Like I mentioned, people were folding like crazy if the turn didn’t make their hand, so I figured if I bet them hard I’d take the pot. Well I was called down the whole way which kinda scared me. At the showdown the guy flips his cards over and says out loud, “Two pair”, to which the dealer pauses and says, “Two pair”. I’m beat, but show Henry my cards before I muck them. I have them in my hand when he yells out, “Wait! Those are good!” I pause and flip them over. The other guy misread his hand (or something) and the dealer messed up. I pulled in the decent sized pot. Thankfully Henry was paying attention

Henry was going crazy at 2/4, but HP was spreading $100 NL and $200 NL tables (two of each with lists on both!) and he was eyeing those juicy games. Eventually a seat opened up on the $100 table and was open for a while. I kept telling him to go for it and eventually he did. It’s a good thing too as he doubled up (I’m guessing he’ll have his own full version, check his site for the full details). He then moved on to 6/12 while I languished at my strange 2/4 table.

The most exciting part of the night was when “Ice” showed up. Ice sat in the 1s right beside me. Ice was a character: he’s black, had small round sunglasses, a long leather trenchcoat and was chomping a 1 inch long or so unlit cigar. He sits down and introduces himself right away. He then reaches into his coat for some money and as he pulls it out, a baggie of weed (or something) drops onto the table. He pauses, looks at it, grabs it up and says to the table, “You didn’t see that did you?” He’s laughing and he leans over to me and says, “That’s some good shit!”. I just laugh and we’re off. He epitomized a manic. It was hilarous. He called everything but would raise about every other hand. If he was re-raised he would jump up and yell “Time!”. He’d then stare down the raiser. When it was the 9s who raised, Ice would get up out of his chair and literally walk around the dealer and get a foot away from the 9s and just stare at him. It was so funny! He basically put the whole table on tilt. Within about 45 minutes he turned his $20 buyin into $110 and then he left.

About halfway through his stay at our table he leaned over to me and in a loud voice said, “I don’t hate you because you’re white.” The whole table stopped and looked at him. I just smiled and said, “Thanks!”. He said, “Some of my brothers and sisters hate white people no matter what. You haven’t done anything to me, so I don’t hate you. Affirmative action my ass.” The whole table is laughing and the other two black people at the table are just staring at him. I was just laughing and trying to stay a bit focused, but it was hard. Anyway, I didn’t lose too much to him as I just stayed out of his way.

My night, however, did nothing to build my Vegas bankroll. I proceeded to bleed away 80% of my buyin. I was down 20BB and was just about to rebuy so that I would have enough to cover a full round of betting in case I caught something good. Henry, on the other hand, stops by periodically using a wheelbarrow to move his racks around, to see how it’s going. I held OK for a while, but then hit a bad run of cards. No pocket pairs and bad face card companions. I eventually got on tilt and started playing some bad hands. I then made some questionable (ie. -EV) plays such as thinking my two pair would stand up against a three to the flush/straight on the board. When I was down to my last $20 it was about 2:30. Henry swings by and I ask him when he wants to leave. He leaves it up to me and I figure I’ll stay until I bust or I win back a bit more. I then get a rush of good cards. I turned my $20 into $104 over then next hour. I then looked over at the 6/12 table (it was right next to mine) and saw Henry almost dozing off. My blind was coming up so I went over and we decided to leave.

While it wasn’t my best night of play, at least I was up, albeit just 1BB over 7 hours of play. That is, however, much better than -20BB. Also, considering the ridiculous rake and SB on the button charge, it wasn’t all bad. Henry cleaned up, but I kept my B&M streak alive: 4-0. I had a great time and we made it home in one piece with all our money.

Needless to say, after getting back at 4:30AM, we were beat the next day. We didn’t do a whole lot that day. We went to the La Brea tar pits and watched “Rounders” We then played a couple tourneys with Henry, my son and I. I went out early in the NLHE tourney and also in the 7stud tourney. My son and Henry chopped the prize on the stud tourney so we could eat. My son would lull us in with 1 chip bets and then misread his cards but end up winning anyway. It was hilarious. The downside is that we didn’t get to enjoy the nice scotch I brought, but we did polish off the Guinness.

Our flights back were totally uneventful, and I got home at about 7:45, so I didn’t play in the Planet tourney, but will be there next week. All in all, the vacation didn’t quite go as planned. Due to my son not snowboarding much (not his fault obviously), I played about 30% of the poker I had planned on playing. It was nice to have a week off though. Add to the fact that I got to meet Henry (who I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, I don’t think he has to worry about anybody trying to take his money unless they’ve got a gun) and his lovely wife, and got to play live with him, and I spent a lot of time with my son, it was a great time overall.

Next stop: Vegas in 10 days.

I’ve got to say, the weather this week has been BEAUTIFUL. The problem is that warm weather sucks for snowbaording. My son decided to not even bother to go on Thursday because it was already 70 degrees at 8AM. While this saved me $36 in lift ticket fees, it did bring up the problem of what to do all day. Have I mentioned that this town has NOTHING else to do? Oh yeah, I have, sorry. We ended up driving around the lake a couple times looking for anything interesting, then went back to the condo. Once there I let him use the laptop and he spent the rest of the afternoon on AIM with his friends.

I used that time to re-read Jones in hopes of finding some holes in my play (I did). One of the things he said, and the advice that Henry gave me the other day, was once you see the turn, if you even have a small chance of winning, you have to see it through unless a raising war breaks out. As Jones says, “Close your eyes, grit your teeth and throw in your chips”. Even if you “know” you lost, there is still that slim chance that you could win and you’ll win more long term by calling that down. That’s a hole for me, if I’m pretty sure I can’t win, I will fold to any bet on the river (uh, wait, except in NL tourneys! ) Anyway, I got some more nuggets of info, so that was helpful.

The exciting part of the day was that there was a forest fire at the top of the mountain where we are staying. They had a controlled burn get a bit out of control. It was interesting seeing the helicopters flying overhead going to dump water on it. Soon it was on the LA news and everything. It was chopper city for a while. The wind was blowing away from us so we weren’t in any danger.

I didn’t actually play any poker on Thursday. None. I let my son use the computer after dinner too and next thing I knew I had fallen asleep on the couch. No prob, I could use a decent night of sleep in preparation for Friday’s invasion of the Hawaiian Gardens with hdouble. Henry said he’ll come slumming with me at the low limits, but is going to be a maniac :). I’m looking to build my bankroll for my Vegas trip in three weeks, so I’ll be trying to play solid. Of course, at 2/4 you can almost win more if you are a maniac, of course, if you lose, you’ll lose big too, so I’m (hopefully) going to be Mr. Tight-Agressive. This should be fun, I can’t wait!

Now let’s just hope I don’t get too lost in LA before I get there…

Since it was 70 degrees again today, snowboarding was limited. We ended up going bowling at the Big Bear Bowling Barn. Yes, it’s called the “Bowling Barn” and is in a buliding that looks like a barn. Boy, bowling has got expensive. I also suck. Plus, they didn’t take credit cards. I had to use cash! WTF? Thankfully I had enough to not have to dip into my B&M bankroll It was fun though, but it only lasted an hour. We then watched “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” which is one of my favorite “dumb” movies. I laughed my ass off for a couple hours. Then it was 4pm. sigh

I played a couple hundred hands in the morning. Played two tables at 50/1 for a total of +1.5BB. Played two tables of 1/2 (!) for a total of: +4.5BB. That’s right, I decided to try out the 1/2 tables. Henry yelled “No! Wait for the night :)” I did it anyway and came out slightly ahead.

The night? I may as well just have flushed my money down the toilet. It was bad. I played a 50/1 and a 1/2 table (jumped a couple times on each level). Outcome? A miserable -20BB on the 1/2 tables and -10BB on the 50/1 tables. It was just terrible. On the 1/2 tables I got virtually nothing. My QQ (which I stupidly didn’t raise with) got beat on the river to a flush. That was the best hand I had all night on the 1/2 tables. My 50/1 wasn’t much better. I think I played pretty well, I just didn’t get many cards tonight, it was just brutal. What a night to try moving up. It was only after donating my money did I pour a long (long, double long) pour of Johnnie. Maybe I should have started earlier. It wouldn’t have made the cards any different but at least it would have eased the pain.

-EV move of the day: Logging into instant messenger while playing poker. I’m playing along, chatting with Henry when suddenly I get three more messages from people at work. Ug. I’m on vacation and everybody wants to know how things are going and such. I get caught up telling the three different people the exact same thing when I realize I’m not paying attention. I lost a decent amount when I had top two pair on the flop, but didn’t see the flush draw possibility. Of course, I’m betting and am ready to celebrate a 14BB pot when suddenly the chips are pushed to the other guy. sigh I was pot committed anyway, but the fact that I didn’t see it pissed me off. I was playing fine while doing one chat, but four was out of hand. Plus, Henry gave me some more advice which paid off about five hands later (he ROCKS!).

That was written earlier in the day. Now I’m thinking the -EV move was deciding to to play poker at all tonight. Oh well.

May not be able to play tomorrow morning, depending on what the weather is like, but I plan on redeeming myself. Let’s just say that being in a resort town with no snow is boring. There is literally nothing else to do. We rented a townhouse which is different than a hotel, ie. I rented this until Friday, if I check out before that, I still pay until Friday. Therefore it doesn’t make any sense to leave early as I’ll have to pay for Thursday night anyway. I’m now looking forward to heading to the B&M on Friday even more than I was before.