A couple of weeks ago I posted about this fish over at Hawaiian Gardens who was so clueless he didn’t even understand hand ranks. Well, I’m at Hawaiian Gardens this week and this fish is at my table again. Only problem is that there are three guys at the table with close to or over $1000 in chips so the sharks are feeding which means I’m going to need to watch my own back at the table instead of worrying about busting the fish. But a funny thing happened on the way to the dinner plate, the fish ate the sharks. Call it dumb luck but this guy was catching hands like you wouldn’t believe and because he was so damn stupid he had no clue about the strength of his hand and just called down $100 and $200 bets all the way to the river and then turned up the better hand. The one that really put him up for the evening was a flop of A9T. Shark bets $50. Fish calls. Turn comes 4. Shark bets $100. Fish calls. River comes 7. Shark bets $200 and the fish calls. The fish sighs and says, “You probably got me beat. All I have is three nines.” The shark flips up aces up (AT) and says “You slow played me!” The fish goes on to explain how he thought he was beat the entire hand and everyone is laughing their asses off not just at the fish’s line of thinking but because the shark is becoming more and more tweaked. Finally the shark blurts out “I was going to give you credit for making a good slow play move against me but after hearing that I’ve realized you’re just f’ing stupid.”
The fish had the table chip leader to his immediate left. The chip leader was this middle-aged Asian dude who had on the shades and a stack of at least $3000 in front of him. He kept pretending to befriend the fish and teach him how to play. Whenever the board would come up rags he would turn to his new buddy and say “See, look at all those junk cards. You can’t just wait for the good hands you have to play the junk cards too.” When the fish took down the monster pot you could see the Asian shark liking his lips. He had already mentally put those chips in his stack. Only problem is the fish kept getting good cards and kept chipping away at the Asian shark’s stack.
Then this other dude started in and really took some serious chunks out of the Asian shark’s stack. He caught him bluffing a couple of times after the Asian shark had put out monster bets ($200) trying to push everyone off the pot. Pretty soon the Asian shark is on tilt playing every hand and trying to push everyone all in. He gets called a few times and everyone at the table starts doubling up on him. One of my favorite was this lady who was sitting to my left. She had a pair but was on a flush draw and the Asian shark must have put her on just the pair as he pushed her all in with something like 68s. She flips up A9s which had the shark drawing dead.
Unfortunately, even with all the chip spewing I didn’t fare too spectacularly. I made one mistake early in the night which cost me a good chunk and then I got bad beat with a pair of kings when I put this kid all in and he flips up J9o. He caught a nine on the flop and rivered a jack. Still, I clawed my way back from both and ended up down only a nominal amount. I was actually happy with how the evening turned out because when I got cracked the first time I thought for sure that with this table of tough opponents and large stacks that I was going to probably end up busting out. But I chipped away here and there and made back what I had lost and then some. Then the kid with J9 cracked me and I had to scrape and claw some more to eek back towards break-even.
Obviously when the deck hits you in the face and you can’t seem to make a bad move it seems like a good session but it’s often the tough sessions that leave you with valuable lessons. Most of the time at HG when you sit down at a NL table, it’s filled with a bunch of loose / aggressive types and it’s mostly an exercise of manipulating them as you would in a limit game. This table was much more of a thinking game where a call by your opponent worries you more than a raise. When you play against weak opponents there’s a tendency to give yourself too much slack because your competition is so bad. You tell yourself that that loose call was ok because you could outplay your opponent or you knew he didn’t have anything. When you play against much better players those same mistakes can cost your dearly and they don’t give you as many opportunities to make it back so you really have to focus in on eliminating the errors in your game. So, really, the other night ended up being short-term -$ and long-term +EV.