Wintermute, Emptyshell and Me, Part II (bad poker content)

[Mendacious]

So I finally get a seat at the $200 buy-in NL table, where Shell has staked himself to an impressive $5 in profit after 30 minutes or so. The BB is $3 the small blind $2 and the button(??) is another $2. I am informed that the house takes a large percentage of this, and Shell tells me that the normal raise is around $20-$30. Interesting. I once read something to the effect in Sklansky’s theory of poker, that all poker starts as a battle for the antes. It goes on to say that the bigger the antes relatively speaking, the more inducement there is to steal. Here, the house takes most of the antes, and yet the players typically lead out with 10x the size of the blinds as opposed to the more standard 3-4 you might find on the internet. My first observation, “these guys obviously haven’t read Sklansky.”

We get in a few hands when Mute gets seated-- much to my chagrin-- he is one seat removed from my left. I get lucky in the early going with a pair of Jacks then a pair of kings which I raise with. The Kings get shown down by an AQ hand when a queen flops, and I have quickly doubled up. Mute proceeds to alternatively taunt, or fist bump everyone at the table, especially the dealer. By the time we get to first infamous hand, he has probably lost $460 of his $600 remaining dollars by a combination of ultra-aggressive raises/ultra-wishful calls. I am dealt 6-9 on the button and Mute does not raise pre-flop (probably because he believes that his K6 unsuited is a great trapping hand. Flop comes 679, he bets probably the pot, and I shove, fully expecting that he will call me and turn over a hand with a 5, 8, or 10. He calls with his last $100, and no, he has a pair and an overcard, which means I’m like a 7-1 favorite or something. He catches his King, I shake my head, give it a fist bump, and can’t be too upset because a) I expected it, b) he still has money to play, c) I am still up on the night, and d) you can’t help but like the guy.

The evening wears on and Mute starts to catch his cards against a variety of locals. Mute’s philosophy of Hold-em can be distilled to theses basic premises. Over-raise anything all the time. This is good for an action table image. Then, lead-out, raise or call any all-in, because your combination of crappy but unlikely to be duplicated cards and over-raised pre-flop has given you pot odds to call virtually anything but the most obvious connected hi-card board.

At this point, Mute has demonstrated that he is probably the biggest NLHE fish on the planet, and he quips that his last $100 is the “rent money”. Somebody asks him what he does for a living and Mute quips “you wouldn’t believe it if I told you” I am thinking to myself—Mute is going to tell them he is a professional poker player and has already cleared 6 figures this year playing poker, and that he is correct, no one WILL believe him. I zip it, because I don’t want to wreck his table image, and MUTE tells them he is a Grad student—which they equally find hilarious and someone starts calling him “Einstein” .

But Einstein is about to teach them a little about his theory about the special relativity of playing crappy cards.

First, he exacts revenge on some old walrus looking guy wearing an Oakland Raiders cap and a WPT jacket. Mute hits trips on the flop, slow plays them for one round and this guy’s pocket pair of queens are cracked and he is stacked. Yes, he did mutter about it for the rest of the night. No he had no clue that Mute checking on a flop with 66x meant that you could bet your life that he had a 6 in his hand.

Second, a young black professional (assuming drug distribution is a profession) sits down to do his best Phil Ivey impersonation. He’s black, he’s got a cap, he’s got an ipod, he can therefore bully the whole table. First hand, he over-raises with half his stack on a crappy board. SNAP! Mute goes over the top. Ivey lays down. Mute shows him complete crap. (editor’s note—had Mute not been on my left I would have come over him too, so obvious was his over-bet.) So, basically, "It's on!" Then he proceeds to do the macho thing several more times, with a few trips to the ATM in between. I think Mute’s stack is now is hitting the $800-$1000 range. Ivey is plainly in awe that Mute has greater disregard for money than he does.

Then, a very drunken local sits down in the seat Shell just left as he was called to the “main” table. The local is wearing a Stanford sweatshirt and a Berkeley cap which I feel are more likely to be trophies from undergrads he beat up, then indicative of his matriculation at either of these schools. He has the chatty get in your head thing going just like Mute, but whereas MUTE is filling the table with lively banter about a recent encounters with a hot stripper in Vegas, Bad Will Hunting (BWH) is talking about how far up your ass he is going to shove his boot if you call. A confrontation is inevitable. Sure enough, Mute BWH and some random guy (probably Asian) get in a hand. Flop is 236 Mute gets in, BWH gets in as does Random Asian (RA). Mute turns over 6/5 Will turns over 6/4 and RA turns over an overpair. Turn comes 4 and Mute’s “Yes!” is drowned out by BWH’s “YES!!” because BWH has failed to realize that if his other card came, to give him two pair, that it would necessarily make Mute the straight, and thus he was drawing almost completely dead. Mute’s straight holds up, stackaroo. Mute now has around $1400 and I am called to the “main” table… to be continued.

[januarymute]

[ QUOTE ]
First, he exacts revenge on some old walrus looking guy wearing an Oakland Raiders cap and a WPT jacket. Mute hits trips on the flop, slow plays them for one round and this guy’s pocket pair of queens are cracked and he is stacked. Yes, he did mutter about it for the rest of the night. No he had no clue that Mute checking on a flop with 66x meant that you could bet your life that he had a 6 in his hand.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually I led the flop for ~1/2 the pot, pretty standard for flopped trips (or set) OOP. Then called his raise and c-r'd all-in on the turn. No way was walrus-man getting away from an overpair given my image, so might as well let out some rope for him to hang himself with...

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
So I finally get a seat at the $200 buy-in NL table, where Shell has staked himself to an impressive $5 in profit after 30 minutes or so. The BB is $3 the small blind $2 and the button(??) is another $2. I am informed that the house takes a large percentage of this, and Shell tells me that the normal raise is around $20-$30. Interesting. I once read something to the effect in Sklansky’s theory of poker, that all poker starts as a battle for the antes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, CalGrand has an invisible ante that UTG has to post.

And that is one good story.

-g

[Mendacious]

[ QUOTE ]
First, he exacts revenge on some old walrus looking guy wearing an Oakland Raiders cap and a WPT jacket. Mute hits trips on the flop, slow plays them for one round and this guy’s pocket pair of queens are cracked and he is stacked. Yes, he did mutter about it for the rest of the night. No he had no clue that Mute checking on a flop with 66x meant that you could bet your life that he had a 6 in his hand.


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Actually I led the flop for ~1/2 the pot, pretty standard for flopped trips (or set) OOP. Then called his raise and c-r'd all-in on the turn. No way was walrus-man getting away from an overpair given my image, so might as well let out some rope for him to hang himself with...

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm impressed that you remember this so well, however your recounting does not really change how obvious it was "given your table image" that you had a monster, precisely because these standard plays were huge underbets for you. To make matters worse for the Walrus, I am pretty sure the flop was 66A, which made your play even more suspicious, and his hand totally vulnerable. I assumed the whole way that he had an Ace and you had a 6.