Chris Halverson’s Blog

Last Wednesday my friend Jason (of “Steve’s Home Game” and Las Vegas fame) emailed me asking if I wanted to go to Canterbury on Friday. His wife is seven months pregnant, but is out of town, and he saw this as a prime opportunity to get out to the casino. I agreed, pending approval from The Boss, which was forthcoming, and I was set to go!

He asked me what I planned on playing and I immediately said 3/6. He’s never played that and said he may just play 2/4. I said no problem, even though the play isn’t really any better than at 2/4, but you just potentially need 50% more bankroll. He was still undecided when we met up on Friday night at about 7pm.

The parking lot was packed. In addition to the super crowded poker room, there was live horse racing which draws a pretty good crowd. We go in and look at the board. Oh my…The line for both 2/4 and 3/6 was long. Really. Freaking. Long. I confidently tell him that 3/6 will cycle through quickly and it’s no big deal. He decided to step up and try 3/6 out and we both put our names only on 3/6. Big mistake. Two hours later we’ve watched the 2/4 line cycle through and we’re still about 6 from the top of 3/6. Ug. We could have sat at 2/4 for an hour (we tracked one guy who walked in ahead of us and sat at 2/4) while waiting for our names to be called for 3/6. We’re finally called to separate tables 2 hours into our wait.

I sit down in the 7s and buy in for a rack of blues. Table makeup is your average low limit makeup: half are young (25 or less), a couple older guys, and a couple my age (mid 30s). I sitdown right as the button passed so I post and get nothing. I’m involved in a couple pots while trying to figure out the personalities at the table and come to determine that, surprise, it’s basically a bunch of passive calling stations. I had told myself that I was going to be more aggressive and this table makeup was going to help that out. This, however, cost me about 4BB pretty quickly and I was already thinking that it was going to be a long night.

Shortly after we get sat down, my friend comes over and asks how my table is. I tell him that a raise generally takes the pot and that there had been no pre-flop raises since I sat down (including from me). He said his table is crazy, there hasn’t been a hand that hasn’t had at least one round capped. He was in over his head on this and put in for a table change to my table. Twenty minutes later, he sits down in the 9s.

In that twenty minutes I’ve watched one guy about my age rebuy for another rack, one college kid rebuy for another $40 and the older man directly to my right drop way down. The upside to this is that a large amount of those chips found their way into my stack. I got pocket kings and popped it, caught my third on the flop and rode them home (”3 Kings Halverson” strikes again!). A couple of hands later I took down another nice pot to put me up about 6BB. My pocket aces flopped a set. My 95o big blind special filled up on the turn with an A on the board and I took down a big pot.

The older guy to my right rebought for $20-40 a time about 5 times while I was there. Ironically, he got some good cards, but was so passive that he let people outdraw him. I was more than happy to laugh sadly with him while I scooped the pot, all the while saying, “You had some cards, what could you do?”

It took a while, but the solid middle aged guy in the 2s finally left. He was pretty decent, but saw a lot of flops so it was difficult to figure out what he had. When he got up he was replaced by Mr. WPT, a 20′ish year old guy with cap and mirrored sunglasses. Now I generally wear a cap (always the same one), but it’s more to have something recognizable to other people, ie. so I can hopefully meet some poeple and it’s something to recognize me by. I just don’t get the mirrored sunglasses at 2/4 and 3/6. Come on…Anyway, he sits down and is pretty aggressive. We tangle a few times and he only had me once. I had a pretty good read on him and he tended to draw a lot, but he was always betting, not letting people get free cards. He ended up with a pretty good stack at the end, just very little of my chips. I only did one “fancy” play when I made a full house on the turn (Jacks full of 5s or something, 2 J on the board) and I just checked hoping to do a check-raise. WPT Guy looked at me, reached for his chips, then set them down and I missed a BB. I led off on the next round and he called. He called me down but I was hoping that he had something good (he did, but for some reason got smart then). That’s why I don’t slow play anything, just get the money out there at LLHE.

I think I played pretty well, I wasn’t as aggressive as I told myself I would be which was kind of disappointing. I did, however, play harder than normal and it paid off. I played middle pairs pretty hard if I had position and could lead out the betting. I took down a decent sized pot with A high betting the whole way. I’m not sure what’s more scary, the fact that I was pushing that (I was in LP) or that other people were calling with worse hands. I took another decent one with JTo when the flop cam AJx. I pushed the J hard to end up winning against a J9o. The guy even raised me on the flop and I stuck with him (maybe should have re-raised?). In my not so distant pass I would have automatically folded that, but I stuck with it and it paid off. This guy was pretty decent too, but I just didn’t put him on the A.

During this time, my friend wasn’t faring as well. He was down to his last $30 and bought another $20. He saw a few flops, then would fold to a bet on the flop. He’d lean over (he had since moved to the 8s directly to my left) and say that Big Slick suited didn’t pay off again. I told him he had to raise that in a heartbeat. I think he was a little nervous about being at 3/6 and he doesn’t play anywhere close to as much as I do, so I can understand his passivity. I still don’t play as aggressive as I think I need to yet I was much more aggressive than 90% of the table. It was very interesting to see how aggression can work. My friend and the older guy to my right (before he finally gave up and went home) would get good hands and never raise pre-flop. I think my friend did once, but the older guy would get JJ and not raise. He would then get outdrawn by some crap hand that probably would have dropped pre-flop had he raised. I understand that it’s tough to become aggressive, and like I said, I still don’t think I am as strong as I should be in that regard, but after watching what happened that night (and my friend has no reason to not tell me his true cards and the older guy showed me his almost all the time since I only played premium hands) I now can “see” how aggression can win you a lot of pots. Sometimes I think it just takes “seeing” this personally to really understand it.

Around 12:30AM we decide that we’ll finish out this orbit and head home. I ended the night approximately +18BB (+$106), or 4.375BB/hr. Sweet! I more than doubled up which made me very happy. While not quite hdouble-esque, I was very happy with how it turned out and it will definitely help my bankroll for Trump Chicago next week. I “colored up” my 20’s from the home tourney win (I had brought $200 to play with) and am now ready to go to Chicago.

I’ll say it again: I love to play live. It’s a major pain in the ass here in Minnesota since I have to drive 45 minutes to get there, then have to wait potentially a couple of hours to just get a seat, play, and then drive another 45 minutes to get home, but it is fun. Even when I lost big (comparatively) last time, it was still more fun than online. Yes, I can get about 400x as many hands played online in the same amount of time (well, it seems like it anyway). In fact, if I just played the 90 minutes that I travel to get to the casino I’d still play more hands online than I’d play all night at the casino. It just isn’t as fun though, and this is coming from a very dedicated introvert. I don’t claim to be able to really “read” people, but even at 3/6 live, you can get some information if you just look. I never look at my cards until it’s my turn, I watch everybody else. It’s also so much easier to keep track of people’s betting patterns live than it is online where you are (well, I am) multi-tabling and have a constant cycle of people coming through. Online I pretty much play ABC poker becuase multi-tabling and the constant stream of people basically makes you play that way. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not as “fun”. I’ll gladly go to the casino and enjoy the overall “game” more. I don’t go as often as I’d like due to the drive and the wait, but when I do, I enjoy it immensely, even if I lose.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 31st, 2004 at 8:45 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.