random thoughts and thoroughbred selections
"All life is 6-5 against" - Damon Runyon
Thursday, February 12, 2004

My one hour of poker on Tuesday night…

I only managed to sneak in an hour of PartyPoker last night, and played a $5 SNG, where I managed to bring a slight chip lead into the final three. Unfortunately, although I knocked the third place finisher out, my heads-up opponent had taken the bulk of his chips before doing so.

I was quite happy with how I played heads-up, at least initially. I saw right away that my opponent was coming in for a pre-flop raise in almost every instance, and wasn’t shy about calling or re-raising with most marginally playable hands. I remembered the theory that anything decent becomes good in heads-up, as your opponent isn’t likely to have better cards than you have if you have at least one face card. Now, post flop is different, but I took a few pots calling through with middle pair, at least one with bottom pair, and stayed in on a couple of draws and hit.

I did face a fairly ugly little streak of down cards and mismatched flops with overcards that started to basically blind me to oblivion (or Bolivian, or ubiquita). The final hand played out a little something like this…

BG – 2200 / OTHER DUDE (OD) – 5800

BG is dealt A4o, both call into the flop (blinds are probably 200/400 at this point).

Flop comes 459 rainbow. I’ve got bottom pair with an overcard. I’m feeling OK about it, and call an 800 bet into the pot (holding 1000 or so after).

Turn gives me my set. Another 4. I’m thrilled. I’m figuring that there’s probably not another card heads-up that can hurt me, so I check, as does he, to the river.

River pairs the 5 on the board. Now I’ve got the boat. I’m stoked. I push all-in, and OD pushes in within a heartbeat. I start pumping my fist, waiting for the pot to push to me…

…and I get the “Congrats, you finished in 2nd” message.

A4 turns into 44455 full house, and I lose to A5 making the 55544 full house.

That was just brutal.

But hey, a $9 profit (whoo freaking hoo, I know, but it’s positive cash flow) is better than a red hot poker in the eye.

By the way, it’s hands like this one, occurring late in a SNG, that makes me think that Party is rigged for “action pots.” Let’s face it, it probably costs them money to have two knuckleheads heads-up on a table. Maybe it’s costing them in network resources, maybe they’d just prefer we were at a raked game table. I don’t think Party is rigged towards anyone in particular, I just think that sometimes the “right” cards fall into place at the right time for a few players, and action is certainly generated.

I could be wrong. And this isn’t a blame thing, because I’ve certainly been on the favorable end of stuff like this as well. It would have been dumb to not go all-in on that boat I hit, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It was the right play. But was it chance that gave OD his ever-so-slightly-higher boat?

Maybe.

I’m not saying Party IS rigged, I’m just saying that sometimes it seems like that is a tangible explanation.


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