Note To Self....

Skip Wednesday night at the Muck. Last night was really slow. I went down to play after work and there was an open seat in the $30/60 game. That should have been the first bad sign. I took the seat only to see the game break about an hour after sitting down. We then converted the game to $20/40 to try and attract some new players. We did, but man was it the wrong kind of players. I don't mind a game with a few donkeys in it, but last night we had a full table full of bad, suck out, players. It started as me and one other good regular and 6 crappy players, then the other good player quit because the game was not all that fun and I was left alone to fend off the fish. It was me against 8 other REALLY bad players. I thought I was sitting in a $4/8 game except the people had some decent money to lose. At one point in the middle of the evening I actually had a Cow farmer from Oregon on my left, and he even looked the part. He had on a Stihl chainsaw hat, and farm clothes. He proceed to tell the table that he owned 150 acres of land with cows on it in Oregon and he was up showing cows at the State Fair near the casino. At least he did not stink like cows. Then I ended up with a huge fat guy who did stink on my right who said he was a mortgage broker and just closed a deal and was out to celebrate. He was absolutely terrible. I don't think he has played more than 5 times in his life, but hey, he had the money to play and let us know that as well. The moment those two donkeys sat to my left and right I announced that I am not chopping. I usually chop in a rake game because it is not worth the effort to win the pots heads up and try to beat the rake. These guys were so bad and I knew I was about a 10 to one favorite or more in any hand I was in I had to play. So now that I have painted the somewhat ulgy picture let me tell you about the evening...

This was a typical passive suck out game. You almost could not bluff because if anyone caught even the smallest piece of the flop, or had a runner runner draw, they were going to see the river. I don't mind a few at the table like that, but a whole table makes the swings HUGE. Needless to say I went through my somewhat usual mediocre run of cards where I had nothing to play. In this game it was super important to play good cards because people were calling with anything. I had people calling my raises cold with 6,2 suited, 2,3 off, J,7, Q,3, you name it. All hands were playable hands tonight for the table. We were taking flops off 4 to 7 handed most of the night. I am really in a $20/40 game?? No one would raise pre-flop but me, or the occasional raise from these wonderful players. Pretty easy to put them on a hand as they would only raise with really big cards. I went up and down all night as I just could not hold hands. I would go in with A,K and get called by A,7 and the 7 would hit and he would call all the way down. I got away from a few hands as it was obvious what they had, you know you just got beat by K,2 the way the aaction would go down. The other problem with seeing big multiway pots is that it prices you in to see draws that you would not typically have the odds to call. So you play the draws, miss the hand and muck the river because it was so obvious what the other players had you could lay down with almost absolute knowledge you were beat by a stupid hand. Besides there was going to be someone curious to see the hand anyway, so in most cases you go to confirm you were just beat by 6,3 off.

All in all a very frustrating night. These games can be profitable, but you need to run pretty well and actually get some cards to play, two things which were not high on the list tonight. I swung around even all night, which I consider great for the cards I was getting, then the beautiful short game started happening. Most of these recreational players never bring enough money to play with so they buy in for $500-$1000 and lose, then leave. Some just need to go home because their wife called at 11:30pm and told them to get home. Also when you play poorly at this level the leaks cost you tons of money. You will get eaten alive protecting every blind you have and seeing one or two other hands a round with weak hands. You start with a $1000 and you look down in a hour and you have $100 left, what happened? So the game got 6 handed and I proceed to break one, then two, then after about another hour the third. When we got to three handed the other two quit me because they did not want to play me three handed. Don't really blame them, they had no chance unless the deck just hit them the rest of the night. As I said most players do not play well short handed and these bad players to start with had no chance. I ended up making a small profit of $623 for the night. I will chalk it up as a moral victory because the way I was running it could have easily been a loss. I actually felt good about the win because I had to manufacture it, it definitely did not come easy. This was a game that had high tilt factor and I fought it most of the night, but I won the battle and stayed within my game to squeeze out the win. Note to self don't go back on Wednesday.

I won't get to play this weekend and there is a lot going on, but I will be back at it next week. Talk to you soon..SJ