Dollar Donkeys

{Warning: Contains all the things you hate about bad poker blogs: Hand histories, bad play and an arguably bad beat. I just feel like spewing and don’t have anything interesting to say. I’m not making you read this crap.}

With the crashing and burning of the entire Party network last night, I had to make alternate arrangements for purposes of tilting off bankroll. The answer: Pokerstars!

What to do with $9? Scratch that. What to do with three dollars and change (after an ugly O/8 SnG)?

Play with the dollar donkeys, of course!

One of the many things I like about Stars is that they offer a wide and regular selection of extremely low buy-in multi table tournaments. I rarely play them – I’m not a fan of 1500 player MTTs, they take too long -- but I utilized my huge stake to buy into three – Stud H/L, O/8 and NLHE – all starting within a half-hour. If only I’d had more money in my account, I could have added two or three more. Three it was.

As you might expect, the standard of play in a dollar MTT is just a bit on the low side, which makes it frustrating at times. I’ve been giving some thought to the hand that busted me in the NLHE event, and would be interested if anyone disagrees with my analysis. I don’t have the hand history at the moment, so some of the information will be a little sketchy.

Blinds are either 150/300 or 200/400. I think it was 200/400.

Irrelevant Limper is in EP with a forgotten # of chips
Hero is in MP (somewhere) with Ad Ah with about 5,000 chips
Villain in the BB with about 6,000 chips

Preflop: Limper limps. Hero raises to 1,600 (4xBB). BB calls. Limper calls.

Flop: Kh Qd 6c

BB bets 600. Limper folds. Hero pushes.

{In retrospect, I’m just not sure if this was a mistake. I could have simply raised to gather information, although I’m going to have a hard time getting away from the hand, since the board isn’t too tremendously threatening, and I’ll be hurting chipwise if I do have to let it go.

My thinking at the time was that the BB – who I had absolutely pegged long before this hand as a horrible player – called preflop with AK, maybe AQ, or an underpair. He didn’t reraise, so I don’t think he has KK or QQ, although KQ is a possibility that should scare me. If he has K6 or Q6, so be it. I want to take the pot right here and not let him draw out if he has, say, JT, so I need to give him the worst odds possible. The end result is the decision to push.}

BB calls and shows Ac Jc

{My initial reaction: WTF?! You called a push with that? An overcard, gutshot and a backdoor flush draw?!}

{Next reaction, before the remaining two cards are dealt: Oh, XXXX, this is RiverStars. No ten!}

Turn: 5c
River: 4c

BB wins pot, Hero shakes head in disgust (after being 86% to win preflop, 80% on the flop and even 72% on the turn) and goes off to lose a few bucks chasing the Bad Beat Jackpot once Party comes back up.

This isn’t intended to be so much a bad beat story, since the result was largely irrelevant (so I lost a dollar, it’s not the end of the world). I’m just having trouble deciding if I made the correct play or not.

Anyway, I also wanted to relate a highlight from the same tournament. A couple levels earlier I’m dealt the Hammer (7s2c) in MP. I raise to about 4x the BB and pick up the blinds. I show, of course. The very next hand, I’m dealt AA. I couldn’t have asked for better timing. I’m thinking I have to have the table image of a maniac, right? So I raise more than I would have otherwise (to 5xBB), looking for someone to say “he just went nuts with 7-2o, he’s probably got junk again”.

Picked up the blinds.

Dammit. I hate it when the dollar donkeys use common sense.