Standing in the Shadows

There seems to me to be a certain synchronicity to be sitting in Las Vegas, the home of b&m poker, when a law is passed that looks likely to debar US residents from games on Party, Paradise, and any other listed online poker operation. On the privately owned (i.e., riskier) sites, it will become difficult for losing US poker players to fund their habit, because you can expect most credit card operations to make desposits onto Antigua-or-wherever-based poker sites impossible. PokerStars is kind of "half-listed" (i.e., it planned to become listed), but henceforth will probably stay private. But its respectability makes it unliekly to cock a snook at the US regulators.

In other words, things seem to be turning to shit and I had better get used to Asian time rather than US time when it comes to playing poker online, because that is where any business that there is around is likely to be coming from.

The markets went predictably mad, hitting Party and SportingBet shares by more than 50%. I've cleaned up on Sporting twice this year when the markets have overreacted and I'm darned tempted to do so again, if it weren't for the fact that an attempt to buy SportingBet shares online through Barclays from a US Internet Protocol address (and a Las Vegas one to boot), would probably make me liable to arrest at any US airport and cause the Barclays Sharetrader software to crash and burn, taking my laptop with it.

We live in exciting times.


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There is a particular type of Las Vegas poker player, usually elderly, female, Jewish and from New York or Florida (having retired there from New York), who I like to call "Mrs I'll-Take-That-Seat".

Mrs I'll-Take-That-Seat will never stop bemoaning her bad cards, and as soon as a winning player departs, she will shout "I'll take that seat!" Needless to say, her own abysmal play (which tends to consist of calling with anything pre-flop apart from Aces, which she raises, and then, on the flop, folding nothing, calling with anything else, except a nut flush, nut straight or top set, with which she raises) causes her stack (usually the minimum buy-in, rinsed and repeated five times) to continue to dwindle. And so she moans again, and a winner leaves, and she shouts "I'll take that seat!" again.

Now, my point here is, how far can you take "good" poker play, and still retain your soul? Because the correct metagame here is doubtless to lie through your teeth and to encourage this kind of behaviour, saying "yep, that guy sure was lucky -- I'd like that seat myself". However, this all feels a bit Faustian to me, particularly when what you want to say is "It's not the seat. Your play won't change". So you compromise, and remain quiet, even though the periodic musical chairs (is the amount the woman loses worth it for the aggravation, you ask yourself) drives you mental.


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I had a very entertaning $3-$6 game with a full kill this evening (Sunday). Entertaining, that is, apart from the fact that I did my bollocks, although I did recover from $280 down to $170 down at the end.

People think that sessions like this are bad beat after bad beat, but they aren't. It's more subtle than that. What tends to happen is that you start off with a minor losing hand (say, an AK hand that doesn't get there). Then you will have a bad beat, and then you will go card dead for a while. Then another raising hand will fail to get there, and then more card-deadness. Next thing you know, you have played for two hours, seen six flops, lost all of them, and you are over a hundred and fifty down. Then you might get Aces, put in a raise, get one caller, who then folds on the flop. Then it's back to card dead, and then you get another bad beat, and the next thing you know, the $150 has become $300 over a four-hour period, solely because you are not winning any pots.

It's at this point that Jack-eight suited begins to look like a raising hand, or you call a raise cold with Ten-Nine suited. And these don't work either, so the speed at which you are losing money gets ratcheted up a notch. If you aren't careful, 90 minutes later you are 100 big bets down and are on full-blown tilt.

Now, that kind of thing doesn't happen to me. I keep plodding along, knowing that I have little chance of being even for the session, but trying to salvage what I can. And, usually (like tonight) I succeed.

Figures for the trip so far. Slightly down, unless you count comps, in which case, slightly up.


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Oh, and here's the bad beat tale (appended at the end), solely because in retrospect it is so funny and is a marvellous example of how the poker gods can conspire against you on a bad night.

I had raised in the BB with Black Aces, to be called in three places. The flop came Q52 rainbow. I bet and I am called in two places. The turn brings a Jack, putting two clubs on board.

I bet, and the player on my left, a Negreanu lookalike and chatalike, called. The third player thought for a couple of seconds and then folded. But his cards flipped over, showing Q3 suited.

The river brings ... a queen! Folding opponent curses. I bet, the Negreanu lookalike raises, and I call. He shows Queen-Ten for trip queens.

The hilarious part of this is that the folding opponent obviously thought that at least one of us had a better queen than he did. If he folds without exposing his hand, then I check-call the river. However, by exposing the Queen, I make Negreanu lookalike less likely to have a hand that beats me (he's in no position to flat-call flop and turn with a set of fives or a set of threes) and so I bet out. So, a bad beat (case queen coming on river) compounded by another bad beat (one opponent exposing his hand, thus costing me an extra bet).

Marvellous. The dealer and I had a good chuckle about that one.

Took some pictures this morning but I haven't uploaded them yet. More later.

( some more pics )