Redraws

PLO is all about redraws
-- Maigrey, a long time ago
(I may be paraphrasing slightly)

%^&%*^%!!! &*(*^ing redraws.
-- Me, last night.

Didn't feel like doing anything productive when I got home yesterday, so I played for a bit. The session had 'disaster' written all over it. Start by playing PLO above my bankroll at Full Tilt -- frankly, any NL/PL game there is above my bankroll at the moment, but I did it anyway.

Early on, I get a playable hand in middle position, QQJT, single suited but no clubs. Four players to the flop.

Flop is 89J, with two clubs. EP pots, I re-pot, making it $10 to go with $15 in the pot, two players behind call. Uh oh.

Turn is a harmless 6 of hearts. EP pushes for less than the pot, I call also all in. So do the two behind, the last of whom has us all covered.

River is the ace of clubs.

EP shows a queen high straight with a missed redraw to a king high straight.
Hero shows a queen high straight with no redraws.
LP shows a set of 9s.
Button shows a nine high club flush. He called all those bets and raises with the sucker end of the straight made on the turn and a redraw to a crappy flush, which hit. I have no idea how he called on the flop, let alone the turn.

Oh, well. It's not the first time that the worst hand on the turn (12.5% equity) has drawn out. I was 50% to tie, 50% to lose at that point. I suppose I could have folded the turn and saved myself $15 or so, but folding with the current nuts is still something that I find it difficult to do. Level zero play.

Object lessons here: (1) You need chips on the table to push people out. I was hurt by not having more (and so was EP) -- we couldn't price anyone out on the turn. (2) The princess, of course, was right. Redraws are not only your friend, they're necessary.

Anyway, the omatard from the above hand ended up losing every last one of his chips. I reloaded for the rest of the money I had on FT (less than half a buyin, should have moved down) and ground my way back up to even. A good time to quit. No harm done.

Also played a token SnG and saw something I don't think I've ever seen before. We reach the final table with blinds at 50/100. The chip leader has more than 10,000 chips, nearly 40% of all chips in play.

Fifteen minutes later, he's the bubble boy.

After losing a couple pots, he tangled with the 2nd biggest stack. Flop of QJx, they go to war. All in on the flop. 2nd biggest stack has a set of jacks. The big stack has KT for an open ended straight draw. He doesn't improve and is crippled.

Wow.

Oh, and by the way, AA held up twice, against 66 and 77. Maybe things are turning around.

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I'm not much of a blog pimp, but allow me to put in a few words about a couple really outstanding posts: If you haven't read Dr. Pauly's "Born to Gamble" series or Absinthe's post "No Good Deed" on the realities of tournament play, you're missing some of the best writing of the year. Trust me.

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Ye gods I have a lot of things I could post about. Many of them are not too exciting , though, so I think I'll limit my drivel-posting to the first section of this entry.

I will mention that I read my way through All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback. A very easy read (one evening), it's a decidedly non-comprehensive history of the WSOP. If you're at all well-read in the poker genre, you'll feel like you've read many of the stories before, but there are still plenty of nuggets that you probably didn't know. I enjoyed it, the price was right (got it through the library), and I'd say it's worth checking out.

You know, it's amazing what you can get through the library. Grand Rapids is about as red state, moral majority, uptight conservative as you can possibly get, and yet you can obtain a copy of Skin City : Behind the Scenes of the Las Vegas Sex Industry from the main branch.

Not that you would, of course...