Begging for Jacks

Strange things were definitely afoot at the Circle K last night.

The mad geniuses behind the obvious rigging of internet poker had themselves a field day. It was a thoroughly strange assortment of events. Being me, of course I feel the need to bore the world with the gory details.

Speaking of gore, Robert Blake got off and Scott Peterson’s going to fry. It’s interesting how two cases based entirely on circumstantial evidence can turn out so differently.

Anyway, first off, I really thought I had a shot at hitting the bad beat jackpot on Party. I sit down in the big blind and get dealt pocket 9s. I make quads on the flop of J99. Someone bets into me, I play veeery slow to maximize the chances of hitting the big score. Turn is an Ace, suit not relevant. The person betting into me slows down. River is another Jack. I bet, villain raises, I reraise. I’m begging here. “PLEASE have JJ”. I could really use that 25 grand or so. Please. I’m breaking out my best James Brown impersonation.

Please please please please
(please please, oh oh)
please, please, please
(please, please, oh oh)

He didn’t have JJ.

I should go back and look at the hand history, because my best guess as to what he had would be KJ, QJ or JT. I should have known it wasn’t JJ, because I don’t think it was raised preflop.

Nuts.

Other than that, not much else was working. I had a table with great starters (VP$IP of 23%), I had a table with horrible starters (6% VP$IP). Both were losers. I missed flops by a wider margin than Detroit Lions QBs miss open receivers. If I did flop a set, it got taken out by a straight or a frush. It wasn’t pretty. I did manage quad Aces, sucking out on the river to defeat a probable turned frush. Even I find it hard to lose with quads, not that it would bother me all that much to do so (that’s a hint, Party Poker, please get busy on that).

Of course, if I do lose with quads, it probably won’t be on a bad beat jackpot table. I’ve done some analysis as to how much the jackpot drop hurts your winrate, and it’s much more significant than I thought it would be. It’s just stupid to play those tables at the $2/$4 level, but I do it anyway. It’s the rules of attraction -- you have to love the prospect of the sizable score. Even a table share once the jackpot reaches $100,000 is quite a bit more than my online bankroll. It’s much like playing the lottery – hugely negative EV, but it would certainly be awesome to hit it.

Getting back to the play-by-play, I also tried a couple lowish buyin MTTs, with annoying results – busted out of both close to the money. I did get to see at least two really strange hands:

I contemplate and fold 55, which I have received for the third time in four hands. Three players get it all in preflop – AK vs. AT vs. 66. Flop is KQ6, putting the set of 6s ahead of AK’s top pair. Turn is a J, giving AT the lead with the nut straight. The river is the case 6 for quads and the improbable come from ahead then from behind victory.

And then, this one time at band camp I got it all in with KK. Oops, someone behind that I put on AK actually had AA. Good thing for me the flop came K33 with no Aces on the turn or river. I had to apologize to the poor victim. That was just evil.

I really need to cut back on the play. Maybe I should try and learn something instead.

I think I’m going to write an ebook. Unlike people who appear to have invested time and knowledge to produce a useful piece of work, I plan to go totally stream of consciousness, doing no research or editing. It’ll be called “RIGGED! The True Story of How The People Who Make Billions Running Internet Poker Really Are Out To Get You”. I think it’ll be a huge hit with the black helicopter and tinfoil hat crowd. Maybe I can get on “Inside Edition” or “Geraldo”.

I get to travel to Minneapolis on business next week. Hopefully this will mean that I get to spend Friday evening in the familiar comforting environment of the Midwest’s finest card playing establishment, Canterbury Park, twiddling my thumbs as it takes three hours to get through the 3/6 or 4/8 waitlist.

Back to work.