random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Thursday, October 09, 2003

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Pretty decent little site here. I've been playing Texas Hold 'Em (no limit, $10 buy-in, winner take all) with the same group for about three months now. Normally, we're getting together six to ten strong on a weekend night, and playing until 1 or 2 AM.

So far, so good. There's only two of us that can claim three victories during these games. I'm one of them. JS would be the other.

JS has an interesting game. He gets miracle cards some of the time. But, then again, you only generally get miracle cards if you stick around and catch a lot of flops with hands that you probably should have folded to begin with. Some of the time though, he plays aggressive when he may be only holding a pair or an open-ended straight type hand. He limits himself sometimes to catching great cards on the turn and the river, and bets into hands holding nothing. Sometimes, though, he's hard to catch this way. If he's hitting his cards, which he seems to quite often, he's a monster. If he's not, he'll be out early.

JS's girlfriend SF plays with us every time as well. She's usually the only woman at the table, and has a pretty strong game as well. She is beginning to get pretty easy to read though. First off, she doesn't play much that isn't a strong hand pre-flop. She'll need, normally, at least one face card in order to jump in. SF also hits a lot of nice cards normally, so when she's in a pot, she's normally in it to win it. The best way to get her off her game though is to try to take her for a ride early. She's not one to fold a hand after raising her bets, so if I've got a really strong hand, and I can make her on something less, it makes sense to try to put a dent in her chip stack. She's not a real self assured person, so when she does get taken, it sticks with her, and obviously throws her off her game. She's much easier to read (just a basic good hand/bad hand type read) when she's off her concentration.

My brother Nancy (as he's known in this crew) has been to most of these games, that is, when his fiancee will let him (just kidding kiddo). I've got a little bit of a book on him going as well, but I can't get into it, as he's on here reading up from time to time. I will say that he's got an aggressive game that will pay off sometime, but he doesn't make his draws very often, which has doomed him at many of these games as an early out.

PD plays a conservative game, and has one serious tell that is almost laughable that he hasn't caught. When he's playing behind you late in a hand, if you so much as touch your chips, he'll muck his hand. Basically, just the idea that a bet might hit the board makes him so nervous he'll run off. If he doesn't muck, the read then becomes "he's in." That being said, the one thing PD doesn't do that would help him out a great deal is to get more aggressive putting chips in the pot. But frankly, the same thing could be said of me early on as well.

JH and DH, brothers, play more often than not as well. I always make sure to sit next to D, as he has a bad habit in the middle of the hand of telling me what he just folded. Hey, helps when you've got a Queen, there's one on the board, and he tells me he threw one away. Means there's only one more to draw. Bad habit for him, borderline cheating for me. I'll take it. D plays far more hands than he should, and would play longer into the night if he just folded more often. His brother plays OK, but has the Bobby Brady Tiki Idol hanging around his neck. Kid gets nothing more often than not. He also lets losing get to him, and bets more wildly on nothing when he's being taken.

What's interesting is that in each of the three games I've won, I've had to go heads-up with someone new to the game. People I haven't played with before, or since. In each occasion, playing heads-up I've let them take some smallish but significant pots from me, setting the table for me to take more than that when I am holding. I think in most cases I'm usually in a good spot playing heads-up, as I'm not afraid to lose some chips in the battle to try to win the war, and I also usually have a good read on when I'm beaten. Also, I'm not going to get so tired that I want out of the game and bet my chips on nothing.

I'd love to play with a different group one of these days, just to see how well I'm really doing playing this game.

[>>]posted at 12:51 PM by BG - click to email
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