foxwoods trip report, fun hands, LOL quotes

[shuinthehouse]

This trip report should get people who have not played live low limit excited to play it, and be good for a few laughs. TL;DR version below, but I you should check out the quote above it, as I think it is LOL and NC title nominee worthy.

Background:
Wife and kids are visiting her brother in CA for a week, so I take off Friday to donk it up at Foxwoods for 2 days. Foxwoods is only 71 miles, 75 minutes from my house, but I married in 2000 and had kids in 2001 and 2003, so I have not played live in almost 8 years, and was playing 5-10 and occasional 10-20 stud then. But I had started at $1-5 spread limit stud, and even at that level you hoped to get 2-3 fish at the table, the rest were fairly solid. Remember this was before the poker craze. A lot of you young folks know no such time. So I was skeptical of the reports of tables full of fish at 2-4 and 4-8 hold-em. I didn’t know if that was just the perspective of experienced 2+2’ers who consider .5/1 online to be donkalicious, and I am only about +100BB after 25k hands there. Well, the rumors are not exaggerated. I played 2-4 and was by a wide margin the best player at all times.

Day 1. Friday 10:30 am – 11 pm, 30 minute break – 12 hours.
To pass the time I kept track of how many blinds I posted, and how many hands I got, and took notes on amusing plays. No one noticed me keeping notes, I could have been using a typewriter. Got 335 hands, less than 30 per hour. Average players to the flop about 6 or 7. Very passive for the first few hours, the only PFR’s I saw the player went to showdown and had AA or KK. And there were a lot of KK and AA shown that did no PFR. I would say AA and KK were PFR’d about 75% of the time, and nothing else was PFR’d. I posted about 40 BB and I don’t think I was faced with a raise more than once or twice. I also noticed VPIP from the SB is probably 80-90% at this level.

I saw my first 3 bet about 2 hours in, so noted the hand and decided to track 3 bets. In 335 hands there were four that were not mine. 1 LRR KK UTG1, I LRR 99 HJ (out of character play, later said he just felt like building a pot), one by SB w/ KK, one by 88 in CO (an aggressive player for the table, e.g. raised other than AA/KK, not a particularly good raise in this case).

I was card dead, and lost $150. This was with no bad beats to note, other than QQ catching a Q on the river to beat my AA. I just had few cards to play, and very often folded the flop UI. I was playing similar to SSHE loose table starting chart and was probably about VPIP 10, PFR 4 for the day.

Day 2: Saturday 10:00 am to 2:00 am Sunday, 15 hours with a 1 hour break. Decided to take more detailed notes, there is lot of time to kill. 5 columns: time blind posted, hands dealt for that orbit, # hands I played, # hands I PFR, # hands PFR’d by others (3 bets/caps count as one).

I posted 44 blinds to get 382 hands. I played 99 hands, raised 39. There were 78 hands raised by someone other than me. So without me, about one of four hands were raised PF. This was much more aggressive than Friday, when about one hand per orbit was raised PF IIRC. I had above average cards, got beat by some suckouts, but won some big pots. Ended up plus $173 for the day.

Interesting to note: I think if you ran a study of players to flop with no PFR and players to flop with an UTG or UTG1 PFR the number of players to flop would only drop from e.g. 7 to 5.5.

Interesting hands:
1st hand of day 1: New table, I end in MP2 to start, couple limps, I raise TT, 5 or 6 to the flop. T96 rainbow. EP bets, I raise, all fold to EP who calls. Turn 7, EP check-calls. River 8, check-check, fish shows 94 and we chop the board str8. Welcome to 2-4.

Most overplayed hands ever: Fish 1 is a little more fishy than Fish 2. K92 flop, fish 1 bets, 2 raise, 1 treys, 2 fours, at some point all other fish are out of the hand and it goes to 5-6 raises each, 10-12 bets total with Fish 1 stopping first. This is set over set 100% of the time, right? Turn and river blanks, Fish 1 check-calls both. Fish 2 turns over K9o and I think ‘what an idiot’, Fish 1 turns over KQ and complains about the bad beat. I choke down my laughter.

Fish trying to disguise hand: I limp 44 3rd in HJ, 6-7 see the flop 222. All check, I bet since no one seems to have a pair, CO calls, all fold. Turn 4. I’ve got the 2nd nuts. I bet, CO raises. I’m thinking about how many raises I’m willing to go, fish has a lot of combos of e.g. 77-AA (very little QQ-AA discount for lack of PFR) and only one combo of a 2, when fish says with obvious forced nonchalance, “let’s see who has the bigger full house”. I almost LOL and flip over my hand, but I have to see this for the story, so I call down. Fish turns over an A and I think, wow, he had AA, then, slowly for extra drama, turns over the case 2. NH sir.

STF up you F’ing Fish hand: Few hours into day 1, I have not played outside the blinds for two orbits. Been card dead so should be seen as tight. EP limps, I raise AA in MP, button, blinds, EP call. Way to pay attention guys. Flop is A8T rainbow. I bet, button raises, 3 calls, I raise, 1 fold 2 calls. Turn blank, I bet, button picks up 4 chips to raise, I get wood, button drops 1 chip into his stack on the way in, puts in three and goes back and gets the 4th. SB fish yells ‘string bet’ and dealer agrees. I know this is wrong, confirmed with floor later, because it was a clear intention to raise and half or more of the raise amount went in. But I don’t want to fight it and give my hand away and lose the other two players. I hate myself immediately after and still hate how stupid that was of me, they are calling or not either way. Anyway, 4 to the river, an 8 for 2nd nuts, I get 3 callers.

LOL showdown: day 1, 6-7 LIMP to the flop, I’m not in the hand, some bets and calls to the river, 2 fish chop the pot, both had pocket kings. I have to turn away and pretend I’d coughing to cover my laughter.


Great quotes:
LOL Weak-tight quote 1: between hands fish across the table is saying how whenever he has QQ an A and K come on the flop. Few hands later fish raises, flop is AKx (I’m not in the hand). Fish ends up showing down AA or KK at end of hand. I tease fish saying “I put you on QQ because of the A and K on the flop.” Fish laughs and says, “well you would have been right, except I don’t raise with QQ”, pauses a second and realizes this is TMI and says “usually”.

LOL fish quote: uber-fish (12 bet flop with top pair in hand above), limps crap and calls to river with something like 10’s and 6’s on paired big card, 3 broadway card board (maybe JTK6J rainbow), loses to full house and loudly complains like it’s a bad beat, then tries to show us how good his card reading skill are, loudly and confidently saying “I knew it, I knew when he bet he had the full house…(couple second pause)… or at least the straight”. And you called because…

LOL Weak tight quote 2: Fish 1 on my left limps AKo, bets flop UI, some callers, all check turn, river is a queen, fish 2 bets, fish 1 calls w/ A hi, fish 2 shows Q7 FTW. Fish 1 complains about the river and I sympathetically agree. Next hand Fish 1 raises AKo, hits K on the flop, bets thru the river and his hand is good. I’m chatty with him so I say, well you’re batting .500 with AKo, that’s pretty good. He agrees and I say it’s interesting you won the hand you raised and lost the one you limped. He agrees and I say, what made you raise the second time, did you feel a K coming? He says, “Well, to be honest, I only raised because I was on tilt from the hand before”. I wish I could have said with a straight face “ well, you really should take a walk, maybe get a drink, if you feel like you’re tilting, you don’t want to start doing things like raising AKo, you can lose a lot of money that way”.

Nomination for next NC thread title: “I only raised {AKo PF} because I was on tilt”


TL; DR:
Brag 1: Foxwoods is only 71 miles, 75 minutes from my house.

Beat 1: I am married with 2 kids so I have not been almost 8 years.

Brag 2: wife and kids are away, so I get to donk it up for 27 hours and 700 hands of 2-4 at Foxwoods. Live play is LOL.

Beat 2: I miss them a lot.

Variance: I only win 6 BB.

[Man of Means]

nice tr, we [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] the wonder of it all; move up to 4/8 next time!

VPIP of 10% and PFR 4% seems low, you can definitely play/raise more hands...maybe it was the extreme card-deadness you speak of?

[BigBadBabar]

excellent post sir
you should come to our trip in may also, it's going to be fun.
if you can afford it, move up to 4/8, as the rake isn't as bad and the players are only marginally less bad.

[jstill]

[ QUOTE ]
move up to 4/8, as the rake isn't as bad and the players are just as horrifically bad at poker as u could ever imagine.

[/ QUOTE ]

fyp

nice work last month btw BBB saw the graph thread

Seriously though theres no difference between 2/4 and 4/8 the only difference u ll ever notice will be based on simply which individuals are sitting at the table (table selection) rather than a product of which of those stakes u are playing.

5/10 gets a bit nittier since everyones using the red chips and the pots look smaller since its one chip people are putting in and not 4 like in 4/8 (thats definitely part of it I think, the pots looking bigger at 4/8 definitely does generate more actions and looser play), but everyone still plays poor almost without exception (even though they seem to be trying a bit harder not to than at the lower games)and everyone gets retardedly stupid and loose pre and postflop as soon as its a kill pot.

[shuinthehouse]

[ QUOTE ]
nice tr, we [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] the wonder of it all; move up to 4/8 next time!

VPIP of 10% and PFR 4% seems low, you can definitely play/raise more hands...maybe it was the extreme card-deadness you speak of?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, 10/4 was day 1, and meant to show how card-dead I was, I was basically playing SSHE loose table guidelines. Day 2 was more normal, like 25/10. As you know, it's such a different game from even .5/1 online, blind steal/defense is not even a concept, it was folded to the SB twice in 700 hands, and it was never folded to me in CO or otb.

Re: 4-8, If I could plan on playing regularly, even, say, once every 2 months, I would play 4-8. But given I may not go back again for a while, I couldn't stand the thought of losing 300-400 and knowing I won't have a chance to get it back. That's just my conservative fiscal nature, I am 'rolled' for way higher stakes than I can play, but also have college educations and retirement to save for.

[tyler_cracker]

good report.

i am intrigued by the data you collected. i'm tempted to run a similar experiment, but i can't completely believe that it has no affect on your image. anyway, it would be fun.

[Dr. Matt]

how did you take notes? I tried with my cell phone but got yelled at.

[BigBadBabar]

pen and papar

[aK13]

I go to school about 15 minutes from Bay 101, and my house in southern cal is about 1 hour from commerce, and I think that is way too far.

don't think it's a brag that Foxwoods is 75 minutes =P

[Spurious]

I wonder if they got games like that here in germany [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
What an aquarium.