[marchron]

Irish Mike Goes To Four Winds IV: Linda's Return


(Don't worry, it's short. Well, it's shorter, I guess.)

So my step-grandmother Linda got her credit for one-quarter of the money she lost to slots on Four Winds' opening weekend and was itching for revenge. I was itching for a date with a gorgeous cocktail waitress.

I didn't tell Linda about the cocktail waitress; I didn't tell the cocktail waitress about my step-grandmother. This is like a bizarre sitcom plot. I'm envisioning my step-grandmother inadvertently c-blocking me as I'm trying to throw my game, or her getting pissed off at me for having an ulterior motive for bringing her with me. But we'll deal with that later.

When we arrive, I shepherd Linda through the acquisition of her refund credit, since last time Four Winds forgot to give her her introductory $10 bonus. She actually chooses to walk further than the first slot she comes to and selects a row of "Wheel Of Fortune"-themed machines. As she's ticking away the bonus, I notice something about her machine. While I'm not a slot expert like she is, I notice that every other machine in the carousel has either triple or 5x pay symbols except hers. I choose not to tell her about this because, hey, come on, who's the slot genius here? She clears the bonus and I tell her once again where the poker room is in case she gets lost again. She'll figure it out, I guess.

When I get to the room, there's two tables of 3/6 and a handful of 1/2 NL. However, there's a couple new wrinkles; first, the 1/2 NL buy-ins have changed. They were $50 minimum and $200 max; they're now $100 min and $300 max. So if you're in the neighborhood and like playing NL a little deeper than standard, 1/2 NL is still evidently the game at Four Winds. To compensate for making the 1/2 a larger game, they've introduced a .50/1 NL game that's $50-$100 in buy-ins. I put my name on that as I get seated for 3/6.

The other wrinkle I discover when I get my seat. The last trip one guy managed to have a bankroll of like $93.50 and left the entire room befuddled. When I sit I notice that three or four people have 'rolls that have .25 or .75 at the end of them. Holy [censored], how the hell did this happen? Someone explains that 4W tweaked their rake system. It's still 10% to $3, but now that's calculated in increments of $2.50 instead of $10. This doesn't matter that much, since most pots get to $30 and thus get max rake, but on the odd occasion you wind up with a pot of, say $18, 4W now rakes $1.75 out of it instead of $1. I guess when you're only raking $3 at the most, every little bit helps along the way.

My first hand is complete déjà vu as I hold 88 and flop a set; however, unlike last time when the obvious draw came in and I missed a value bet, this time the river brought three to the obvious flush but also paired the board. I bet and my two remaining opponents folded. Booooo. About an orbit later I raise 99 in EP and flop another set, and again it holds up.

I win with AQ. I win with KJ. For a solid hour I'm just killing the table. My W$SD rate is 100% and I'd like to keep it that way. A little while later I get 76o in the big blind and see a free six-way flop of something like J62. It's checked around. I consider value-betting the turn with second pair, but the turn brings an overcard, maybe a Q or something. Again it gets checked around. The river's a blankapalooza, and again it's checked around. I think my perfect run of showdown-winning is about to end when I say I have a 6, my cards show up on the center console, and nobody can beat it. Holla, ship that pot. I look down and realize: six-way limped pot. Eighteen dollars. Minus the new rake is $16.25. Now I have a quarter. [censored].

A little while later, Ben sits down on my right. He notices my name and shirt; I notice his hat and class ring. He's a Notre Dame alumnus. I ask what year and he says '44. I do the math: that'd make him somewhere in the mid-80s age-wise. He also tells me he lived in Cavanaugh Hall, which I chuckle at because it's now a women's dorm. (I had a running gag on my campus radio show that always ended in me attempting to get them to face the windows that were visible from our studios . . . topless. Sadly, it never worked.)

I immediately introduce myself to Ben by clobbering him with AQ on an A-high board. He proves his ND bonafides by using the words "goddamn" and "sonofabitch" often. He calls down every piece of the board, every pocket pair, and occasionally chases backdoor draws. Eventually I hear a familiar voice talking to him: Exquisite Fish from the last two trips I've made to Four Winds. Unfortunately, our table is full, and he sits at the other, along with Phu, The Oldest Vietnamese Man In The World, whom I remembered from my trip to Blue Chip last year. That table looks good, but mine's every bit its equal, and I'm running red-hot. I pick up QT[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] in EP and limp. The flop is KJT with two hearts, and four people hang in for two bets each. The turn is A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], and I have to check/call because I'm concerned about someone either having the flush or freerolling me for it. The river's a blank and I make the final overcall, expecting to chop it with somebody. But no; I had the only Q, my showdown streak stays intact, and I scoop a huge pot.

Sometime around now DIANE shows up, and she made my buddy Ben look like a nit. She basically called any two to the river and frequently called the river with whatever. She throttled Ben with a one-card straight flush to beat his natural King-high flush. If that weren't enough, she ended my showdown streak when she called down TT on a AKx board, rivered a set and beat me with AQ. I did get to exact a small bit of revenge on her by beating her and a third person who was all-in for exactly $4.25. The resulting pot raked away my loose change.

I got a visit from Linda, who found me when I was at $286, up from my initial $100. She's breaking even thus far. This is good news to me, since when she wins I lose. Unfortunately, she messes up my mojo, and for the next hour or so I can't make a hand to save my ass and bleed away $60. But I make most of it back by flopping a set of Jacks against a fellow named "Ordinary Guy." He was pretty unexceptional. He paid off my flop raise, turn bet, and finally my river bet when I landed the fourth Jack. That put me at $265, at which point the .50/1 NL table finally had enough players to open. I debated telling them to take my name off the list, since I liked being at the same table as DIANE and Ben, doubly so after EF arrived in Seat 4 to hang out with his buddy Ben. But then I noticed Phu was migrating over from the other 3/6 table, and figured the rewards for stacking him outweighed what I could earn piecemeal from everyone else.

It didn't quite pan out that way.

Not that I lost at .50/1 NL, just that since it's the table for those people who want the NL experience without the bankroll for 1/2, it plays pretty tight, especially postflop. Most of my wins were in pots that were less than $20. But there was a memorable moment that involved me and Phu. For the first few hands, he'd been King Of The Semibluffs, betting his hands hard and getting there most of the time. Adding to the hilarity of his improbable run of suckouts was me being my goofy self by playing on his name, pronounced "Foo," by always talking to him in a Mr. T voice: "Oh man, you just made that flush, PHU!" "You got him on the river again, PHU!"

Anyway, Phu limps in EP and it's folded to me in LP with AJo. Even though the max buy-in was $100, I only brought $65, because it was enough to cover almost the whole table since most of them bought in for the minimum $50, but also if I got stacked I still had $100 profit in the bank. I crunch some numbers in my head and raise to $6, expecting Phu to call, and he does after the blinds fold.

I chose $6 as my raise because it set up an SPR* of about 5, which is about where I wanted it. Everything went according to plan when I flopped my Ace; Phu checked, I bet $7, and he called. But when the turn came I got my wires crossed and for some reason started thinking I only wanted to bet two streets with top pair, so he checked and I checked behind. The river brought four to a low straight, like A3654 or something, and he checked again. Against other players I'd be happy with a free showdown because six worse Ax hands now beat me, but I think I can value-bet Phu, and he'll be willing to pay off a half-pot bet with a smaller pair. The pot is $24 and change and I bet $12, and disaster strikes when he check/raises nearly the minimum, to $25. I go into the tank. "I can't believe you just check/raised me there, PHU!" I eventually tell him. He looks at me and grins. I've seen this grin before, when he got caught three-barrelling a flush draw at Blue Chip last year into someone who was well-known to call down with any piece. (I described it at the time as "like Angelina Jolie had just approached him and asked if she could give him a BJ.") I'm now fairly certain I still have him, and if not I'm fairly confident in my ability to get it back. I call and he shows ATo. MHIG. Ship it.

I dink and dunk my way up to $110 from my initial $65. Linda finds me again, and she momentarily freaks out because the last time she saw me I had $286 in front of me, but I explain that I only brought $65 here, so I'm up $45 plus the $165 from earlier. She's BUSTO, again. I fold the next few hands and log off before my big blind. I cash out and we hit the buffet of awesomeness before leaving.

Brag: finished up $210.
Beat: no sign of Gorgeous Cocktail Waitress, because Linda burned through her 'roll too quickly.
Variance: Linda does not like the slot machines, for obvious reasons, so next time I bring her she's considering playing the e-poker with me.

Can't wait.





*If you haven't read Professional No-Limit yet, let me try to explain SPR in a way that doesn't step all over the intellectual property of Ed Miller et al: SPR stands for "Stack-to-Pot Ratio," and in a nutshell it's an attempt to quantify how deep the effective stacks are relative to the size of the pot that's being played. This is important because just saying you have 65 big blinds, or 150, or 500, at the start of the hand isn't always the most important factor. Just like the concept of position, which can be absolute or relative, SPR is a way of taking "absolute depth" — the size of everyone's stacks as a multiple of the big blind — and making it "relative" as a multiple of the postflop pot size. For example, in this hand, my raise plus Phu's call made a pot of $12, ignoring the blinds, and after my raise I have $59 left, giving me an SPR of just under 5, which is relatively shallow from here on out: three bets of a little less than 2/3 the pot put me all-in. But if I were in a situation where I completed from the small blind and the big blind checked, the pot would be $2 and I would have $64 left. With an SPR of 32, I'm basically never able to get all-in unless I get raised, which means the stacks are pretty deep since the pot is so small.