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Foxwoods 75/150 Taking A Shot Trip Report

So, if you haven’t heard (Jeffage!) I was taking a shot at the 75/150 game at Foxwoods today. The highest I’ve ever played live was 30/60, so this was a significant jump in limits. I decided I was willing to plunk down 4K to take my shot.

Anyway, I hit the sack early on Friday night, I was pretty beat and wanted to be well-rested. Of course, that just resulted in my waking up around 2-3am and not being able to fall back asleep. My scouting of the game had resulted in the Foxwoods Day Manager suggesting I arrive by 10am to ensure I could lock-up a seat, so I was well ahead of schedule.

Wound up leaving the house a little after 5am and got to Foxwoods before 7am. I find open seating at table 89 for the 75/150 O.E. game and rush off to buy my chips. There’s only a few people in line, but only two windows open. I get in line behind a middle-aged bald man and I happen to have the sniffles a bit, so I make a *sniff * noise. He turns around and glares at me, so I just look away. Then I look back, and he’s still glaring. I’m trying to ignore him, but he won’t stop staring at me.

So I say “what?” He responds with “don’t make that noise behind me.” So now I’m thinking “wtf????!!!!!”

I of course reply with “what noise” rather incredulously and he just repeats “don’t make that noise behind me.”

“All I did was sniff” I say, and he turns back around. Not sure if this guy was cuckoo in the head or maybe he thought I was implying he smelled bad or something? Whatever, it puts me in a pissy mood.

Meanwhile, some Habib-looking fellow behind the counter of the window I’m not at tells me I can go over to the lady at the far end. So I get out of line, only to find she doesn’t have any greens or blacks, so I have to get back into line (which, of course, now has more people in my way, grrrrr!)

I eventually get my 2K stack of blacks and 2K in greens and sit down in the O.E. game. It’s not full, but it’s not short either. There are seven players at the table already:

Seat 1: Older guy, tall, bit overweight with glasses and grayish hair. He plays junk like 25TT in O8 from EP. Doesn’t seem overly skilled at any of the games.

Seat 2: Scruffy looking kid in a ratty-looking flannel shirt wearing earbuds. He’s got a huge stack of blacks and purples and looks to be in his late 20’s or early 30’s. Plays a bit too loose I think preflop, but does well post-flop

Seat 3: A talkative asian who tells me his name is “Phong”, he is friendly and tells me I can’t play too tight at that table. He’s been playing for close to 15 hours and doesn’t stick around much longer after my arrival.

Seat 4: Some Indian/Pakistani guy I think, he’s got lots of expensive looking bling. His eyes are bloodshot and I think he’s been playing for quite a long time. He pisses and moans quite frequently, and tends to get himself caught in the middle of a three-way pot in stud hi/lo and winds up with the worst hand in both directions most of the time.

Seat 5: Blue-collar looking middle-aged guy with a hat and a Tom Selleck stache, he also makes note that I haven’t played a pot yet, and makes comments about having me removed from the game because I’m not playing. He doesn’t seem to care too much about paying attention to others, instead playing air guitar while rocking out with his headphones. In addition, he’s extremely easy to read on the river in stud hi/lo, as he grimaces or say’s “[censored]” to himself when he misses whatever he was drawing too.

Seat 6: Itsa’ me, Mario! No, seriously, itsa’ me!

Seat 7: Non-descript asian who whittles himself down to just one stack of green and leaves shortly thereafter. Seems friendly and talkative, but didn’t play with him enough to glean much else. His lack of chips likely means he’s probably too loose or bought in short.

Seat 8: Dave I believe is his name. Foxwoods regular, white hair and glasses, older guy, fairly slim. I’ve seen him before. He doesn’t stick around very long either.

As has been stated above, I wasn’t playing many pots at all, I folded the majority of my hands right off the bat. I wanted to establish a tight image initially, while obtaining a feel for the table and players. Plus, I was getting dealt lots of junk and wasn’t going to be talked into playing crappy cards against their raises.

A number of the players would get up and go somewhere or use their cellphone and the game would become more short-handed, which is not my specialty. It got so bad at some points that we were only playing three-handed. But, then players would wander back to the table and we’d have 5-7 of us in action again.

Once I felt I had a decent understanding of the other players and had a squeaky tight-image, I opened up my game. Raising UTG with 345J suited and taking it down against the Pakistani fellow on a 268 flop with two of my suit (he commented “he must’ve had aces”)

There was also lots of CO or Button attempts to steal in the O8 round, should it get folded to them. I defended my blind against the scruffy looking kids raise with a 79JK suited in the BB (he was in the CO and raised when it was folded to him). I check-raised the KTK flop and took it down.

The Tom Selleck stache guy raised in EP with A4JJ suited, the Pakistani guy called from the SB and I opted to not reveal the strength of my hand by just calling the raise with A23K suited in the BB. The flop was 36T with two of another suit, one of my suit and I just check-called. The turn was a 3 and I lead out and got called. The river was a 2 and I lead out, the A4JJ raised and we chopped.

By the time the table started to get really short on a regular basis, I decided to take a break (I was up) and snag some breakfast. I returned afterwards and found five players in action, took my seat and more players began to show up shortly thereafter (table really began to fill up around 10-11am)

The table dynamics were interesting in that most everyone was pissy for the most part. It was actually quite unenjoyable sitting there listening to their pissing and moaning off and on.

One O8 hand I had AA3J suited and raised after the Pakistani guy raised first-in. Then the Tom Selleck stache three-bet (he held AA8T) and the flop was QT7 from what I recall. We both check-called the stache guys bet. Then the turn was a 2, giving me the nut low draw plus the overpair, but I just check-called. The river was a 7 and I check-called and chopped with the stache guy.

A newer player to the table, another blue-collar looking guy with a baseball cap, facial hair and a shaggy mess of hair on his head commented “nut low draw and aces on the turn and he doesn’t bet it, no way I would ever not bet that, blah blah blah”. Of course, he doesn’t understand that I put the stache guy on the other two Aces, and I know he’s going to bet. And I have the redraw to scoop if a King hits, so I don’t want to risk pushing out the Pakistani guy who calls and calls and often finds himself stuck in the middle with the worst hand both ways.

In another hand, this time Stud hi/lo I was heads-up against the scruffy looking kid with the earbuds. I had a nice low draw going into the river, plus a pair of 6’s and a straight draw. The river gave me Aces-up, but my opponents board gave him the potential for straight, low and flush draws that might’ve hit.

So I opted to check to him. If I bet, and I’m beat, I’m getting raised and I lose $300. If I check-call and I’m beat, I lose $150. If the kid decides to try and bluff me on the river because he’s missed, I gain $150 that he wouldn’t have called if I bet (given my low looking board and the Ace showing).

Of course, the Pakistani fellow starts yapping “he checked that? Aces up? How can he check that hand?” because he didn’t understand my line of thinking above. I wound up scooping the hand, by the way.

I wound up seeing Bill King from the 2+2 forums arrive at the game. He had told me I should try and buy-in for 2 racks of green (i.e. 5K) and that 4K was a bit short. But it looked like he only sat down with 2,500-3K in chips, unless I missed something or he had more waiting in his pocket.

I decided to leave sometime into my second session at the 75/150, and there were a few reasons for this. While the game had finally filled up with 9 players, which is good for me, there were a number of negatives.

Sure, the guy immediately to my left was limping 3788 and going nuts on a 48K all spade flop, so that was great. But he was also looking to get a seat in the higher-stakes NL cash game and wasn’t likely to be sticking around.

There were actually a number of players at the table looking to get into the NL cash game, and I’d rather have those type of players in my O.E. rotation trying to apply NL bully tactics to games they don’t work with.

But the biggest factor was that I had made the crucial mistake of counting my money recently. So I knew how much I was up. In my first session before breakfast, I didn’t even think about the money I was putting into the pot, to me it was just chips, win or lose. It was great, I was free to play without fear or hesitation, and to maximize my profits based on my holdings and not by worrying about the amount of money being bet.

But once I counted my money in the second session, all I could think about was “man, it would suck to lose this back”. And there was certainly potential for that, since there had been a number of four-way hands in stud hi/lo where betting was capped on 3rd and 4th streets, and lots of chasing. And you can either win or lose very big in situations like that.

In addition, being around all these pissy moaning players who couldn’t help but to make their comments about how a hand was played, or grumble about how they always missed was putting me in a sour mood. And they treated the dealers awful. Granted, the dealers usually aren’t that great, and the time-charge in this game is $20/hr, but I still don’t believe in giving dealers a hard time, as I would never want their job.

They’d scream and shout at the dealers if they made a mistake, the Pakistani guy would say “easy buddy” in a condescending tone towards the dealer if he felt a mistake was being made in the showdown and pot-awarding process. I guess I can understand to some extent, there can be a lot of money on the line. But I still don’t see a reason to act like an [censored] to the dealers.

And a lot of these middle-aged guys also had the humor of a Sarah Silverman show, trying too hard to make curse-words hilarious. I guess one of the dealers was known for swearing and not having a problem swearing. So whenever he sat down, the middle-aged guys would start yapping “oh, don’t swear around this dealer cause he doesn’t [censored] allow you to [censored] swear” and it was just an endless tirade of the same joke over and over, which was also pretty grating.

In the end, I was clearing $340/hr playing the game, slightly above my initial estimate of $100-$300/hr (which I had stated was conservative). While I love that earn rate, it’s a small sample size and there’s certainly potential with variance to lose a good chunk of change as well. Luckily that hourly rate is after expenses (i.e. tips to the dealers, which I believe I was the only one who ever tipped, and usually a $5 chip, no one else seemed to tip EVER, plus tips to the waitress for a drink of water or whatever)

While I would love to play that game on a regular basis for the potential hourly earn rate, there are a number of reasons why I likely will not continue in it:

- Grumpiness of players makes it a real chore to sit there for extended periods of time

- Foxwoods is a 100-mile drive one-way for me

- I am not adequately bankrolled for 75/150 and a few losing sessions would be devastating

- My inexperience winning and losing that level of money may cause me to think too much about it’s real-world value, which can cause me to play too cautiously

I still have reservations in a few weeks for Foxwoods during the WPT. I haven’t decided if I’ll still attend or not, as playing with these grumpy guys really made me dislike being there.

If I do go down, I’d likely stick to the 20/40 mixed games where I’m more comfortable with the amount of money being bet. If I had a bankroll of 30-40K to play with (i.e. just poker, not for anything else) I likely would play the 75/150 game more regularly and probably move closer to the casino so the commute wasn’t such a chore. I guess I would consider playing it if backed in some way in the future, but aside from that I’ll stick with what I’m most comfortable with using my own funds.

Also ran into King Jackoff down there as well, he stopped by to say hi before heading to play an Act II super satellite. Hope you did well, and you too Bill King, hope the cash game treated ya great. Thanks for all of your info before I headed down!

Oh yeah, and Foxwoods should also do the following:

SIGNUP DESK

The desk where you signup for the lists on various games can have 3 or maybe 4 people behind it. But they don't have it roped off to form cohesive lines, so there's just a huge mess of people on a busy day.

There's a section specifically for signing out of games, but it can be hard to get too with all the low-limit Hold Em monkeys milling about. They should definetely have a more established signage and roped-off design for the lines.

CHIP CAGE

It really sucks to be standing in line behind some guy who's trying to cash in his twelve dollars in yellow chips and wants to have a big long discussion with the cashier while I'm standing there with over 4 grand in cash or chips with everyone looking at me salivating.

It'd be nice to have a window for yellow chips, window for red chips and window for green/blacks, or just more people in the cage so the lines aren't so freaking long.