Chris Halverson’s Blog

After playing live two nights in a row back in the middle of August, I have been getting antsy about wanting to play live back “home” at Canterbury. I started looking at my calendar and although I’m not much of a social person (as in going out and doing things, I’m actually a nice guy and very sociable once I get to know you), I noticed that my calendar was very full. I was kind of hoping to go this upcoming holiday weekend but I’ll be recovering from some minor surgery that I’m having on Thursday (technically I’d probably be OK, but the thought of having to sit in a certain position at the table all day doesn’t sound appealing). My son also starts school on Thursday, so my weekday nights are out now. So I asked Mrs. H if she cared if I went down on Tuesday night and I got the green light.

I cut out of work 30 minutes early and walked into Canterbury at exactly 5pm. For the last few days I’ve been trying to decide what limit I wanted to play at. I have heard from many a person on 2+2 that until you get to the 8-16 at Canterbury the play really isn’t much different than the 2-4. Sure, it gets incrementally better, but according to some of the grizzled veterans on 2+2 who are also regulars at Canterbury, the general comparison to Party’s games are as follows:

Now, I’ve never been sure if I’ve believed this, but I could at least go along with it until proven otherwise. I have been doing well at the 3/6 and feel like I can beat that. I also feel that I am playing better recently and am anxious to try out the SSH techniques if I could. Since the general theory is that since the 3/6 and 4/8 both play like Party’s 1/2, and since I’m playing 2/4 at Party and am beating Canterbury’s 3/6, I decided to give the 4/8 a shot. I was also told that the 4/8 was “a cash machine” and was hoping to make that come true.

I was still a little nervous when I walked up to the board and said I wanted 4/8. Almost more so when she said, “You can go to table 26 right now”. *Gulp* Of course, 4/8 is only 30% more than 3/6 which was 50% more than 2/4, so this smaller incremental jump should not have been a big deal, and indeed it wasn’t. I still get a bit nervous when moving up though. This was even more the case as I was hoping to be more aggressive which could lead to losing more, but potentially hitting much bigger.

Canterbury plays the 4/8 with blues ($1), which is kind of strange IMHO. The running theory on why they do that is that it makes the pots look bigger which encourages action. We actually asked one of the dealers about this and she said the “official” reason is that the rake structure is different for the yellow chip and up games (err, yeah, the rake goes down at those games ). That being said, I asked a couple people who I know who play the 4/8 what they buy in for and everybody said one rack. Yikes! $100 to sit at 4/8? No way! I went to the table and sure enough, most people looked like they bought in for a rack. Hmm…Well, I sat down and told the runner I’d take a rack, figuring I’d rebuy if I got down to $50 or so.

When I got to the table, the open seat was the 7s, but as I started to sit down the young Asian guy in the 9s politely, yet forcefully, says that he’s switching to that seat. Great, I have to sit next to the dealer in the 9s. No problem. I wait for him to move his $80 and then sit down. He then proceeds to tell me that the 9s is cursed and he hasn’t won jack there all day. Oh great, now I’m on the cursed seat

Unfortunately, this turned out to be pretty much true. I couldn’t catch cards to save my life. The Asian guy, on the other hand, went on a huge rush and was up to over $200 in about 90 minutes. He played almost every flop, but made some pretty good laydowns post-flop if he didn’t hit. My biggest, almost only, hand that kept me afloat was when I got rockets in early position, raised, and kept betting all the way through. They held up and I was able to recover my previous couple of hour’s blinds. During this time I had dropped to around $50 and rebought for another rack. I felt much better having a decent stack in front of me which eased the nervousness a bit.

A while later the Asian guy had to leave and I quickly claimed his seat figuring it couldn’t be any worse that what I had now. The “luck” was marginally better there, but the night was about to take a wild turn.

At around 8pm (I remember this because the WSOP coverage was just starting) the 2s was in dire straights, he was down to his last $40 or so. He then went on a streak where he won something like 6 hands in a row. Virtually all of them were capped pre-flop with 5 or 6 people calling! By the time the hand was done there would be more than $200 in the pot, all in $1 chips. It was crazy! This went on for 2 hours. It got to the point where if it wasn’t capped pre-flop everybody was confused. There was a ton of money flying around, people were rebuying like crazy. The 2s went from $40 to over $400 (or more, he had chips everywhere) in the course of 2 hours.

Of course, during this time I had about 2 playable hands. Well, playable for 5 bets anyway. All this crazy play made me tighten up considerably. I probably folded every hand, including both blinds, for about 3 orbits in a row due to it being 3 or 4 bets to me. This led to some more bleeding of chips all the while I’m watching the 2s not even have enough time to stack all his chips for about 30 mins as he kept on winning. Eventually I caught A-high suited and stayed in on a capped pre-flop. I got my flush on the turn and was able to pull down a good sized pot. Unfortunately a fourth of that suit hit the river and I didn’t get any action on my bet there.

When I played a hand, I did so fairly aggressively. I still have a lot to learn in that area, but I’m getting better. The college kid to my left (who was stuck for $300 when I sat down and had rebought twice more) would play a lot and we were heads up a few times. I raised him at least two times on the turn and made him lay down one and call the others while he was drawing dead (or to two outs). I also played hard when I made the third nuts on the turn (K high straight with QT), but with a flush draw on the board. There were three left on the turn (when the flush draw came down, but also made my straight) and I led out betting. That dropped one guy but the solid older (well, early 50s) guy to my right stayed in. The river didn’t help, he checked and I bet. He hemmed and hawed, looked at me, almost mucked then said that the pot was too big to lay down. Unfortunately he had the AT for the Ace high straight. He gave a loud “*whew*” and said that I played that very, very well and he almost layed it down. This guy was so tight he almost made me look loose, so I take that as a compliment When I flipped up my cards a couple people looked at me strangely and one young guy said, “How can you be betting into a flush draw with the third nuts?” Before I had a chance to say anything, which I wasn’t going to do anyway, the tight guy to my right popped up and said that I drove off one other guy and almost made him lay his hand down so it was a good play. That shut the table up for a while and I just kinda smiled (the young guy rebought once and busted out totally within 90 minutes).

This table was so loose it was incredible. By “loose” I mean raising pre-flop with 93o. Calling 4 bets cold with Jack high (maybe suited, maybe not). One time I mucked A9o and they flipped up as they were going in. About half the table looked at me and two of them said (almost simultaneously and almost the same exact wording), “How can you muck a A? You don’t know what you’ll have until the flop!”. Oh my. I repeatedly heard, “You at least have to see the flop, you don’t have a hand until then”. This is at 4/8. I would expect this at 2/4, but man, this was incredible. It was so loose that even after I folded for three orbits, I looked down to see the Cowboys and raised. I got 4 callers and one raise! Talk about no respect! I of course popped it again and ended up winning, but people were calling everybody all the time.

Around 10:30pm I was thinking about leaving. By this time I was positive and feeling pretty good. A new guy came and sat down in the 9s and just about freaked out at the play. He repeatedly said out loud, “This is the loosest 4/8 table I’ve ever seen!”, and loud enough for the whole table to hear. We told him what it was like an hour before and he just shook his head. He tried to limp in a number of times only to have it made 3 to go by the time it got back to him. He wasn’t too excited about that.

Oh, and for all you B&M newbies, remember, protect your cards even if you aren’t near the dealer. Near the end of the night the 8s mucked and flipped his cards harder than normal toward the center. They went flying across the table and one of them got stuck between the 4s cards. The player pulled out the card and the dealer freaked out because she didn’t see which card was which. The 4s flipped it up and the 8s said that it was indeed his card. The rest of the table agreed (I saw it the whole time) but the floor was called. He ruled the 4s hand dead but let him pull back his raise. The guy tried to argue, but to no avail. He then flipped up the rockets. Unreal. The floor said that if he had just put a chip on top he would have been fine. This should be a no brainer if you’re in the 1s or 9s (or, *shudder*, the 10s), but this just goes to show that you should do it no matter where you sit. The 4s actually took it pretty well, I was impressed considering all the action that had been taking place. The 8s didn’t do it on purpose, it was a freak happening, but it can come back to haunt you.

I felt I played pretty well. I didn’t make a killing, but I didn’t get killed either. Throughout the night there would always be a couple other decent players (ie. ones who had decent starting hand requirements and played well and didn’t just call everything) and I did not feel outplayed. That is what I was most concerned about. I feel I can play at 4/8. I was not afraid of the larger stakes and the play was no better than any other limit I’ve played at. I know that one session is not representative, but I wanted to see if I could play there and I feel I can. I obviously don’t expect to win every time, but if I play well then that’s all I can ask for. The rake is also less of a deal here, which is important when you’re at the low limits. I really want to get to the 6/12, but I want to take it one step at a time and make sure I can play well at the other levels. I’m definitely going to make the 4/8 my regular game at Canterbury from now on.

The final tally left me at +5BB over 6 hours for 0.83 BB/hr. Not great, but I was willing to take a loss to figure out where I stood play wise. It’s still a positive night although not quite a cash machine for me. Yet. Like I said, I feel I played well, although I can still stand to be more aggressive, and more importantly, I did not feel outplayed by the good players (I wasn’t worrying about the people raising with the 93o, I was comparing myself to the other decent players).

Unfortunately I won’t be able to get back out there until late September at the earliest. The upside is that I’ve got a couple home games on the horizon including another one at Drac’s place and potentially another one at a poker blogger’s place. Playing live rocks

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2004 at 8:16 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.