A few notes:
I placed in the money at High on Main the first time a couple weeks ago. It was during my vacation, so I entered the tournament in a very relaxed mood. I had already won about $140 before it began, so I was bankrolled to re-buy if I chose. I ended up going out twice, the second time just three or four minutes before the break. I started to call it quits and sit down in the cash game for a bit, but I’d told a friend of mine that at ten or so I’d come by his house if I was done playing the poker tournament. I knew that if I sat to play cash that would be a tough promise to keep, so I cast thirty more dollars into playing the tournament. From there, I tripled up before the break, added on, and then it was smooth sailing all the way to the end, never really facing a challenge until I was tied for the chip lead with only two of us remaining. Bob C. and I made a nice deal and then played for the last 224 or so, but he eventually emerged victorious. For me, most of the final table was just stealing blinds when I could, and then playing stack and position to move up the ladder.
After the tournament I was up significantly, having come in with nothing and now with 600 and change in my pocket. I sat to play cash and managed to get up over 200, before I ran into a flopped boat. The flop was 722, and I had K7. I bet, got raised a lot by an aggressive player. We had played a large raise pre-flop, so I called. He had played 7-2, not off-suit at least.
That trend continued the next week, when despite doing poorly in the tournament I was up about sixty and decided to play a good seat in a crazy game for a while to see what would happen. I got up a little. I was just getting ready to leave and got AK suited. I raised 15 from the small blind, and got five callers. The flop was A-6-7. I bet fifty, half my stack, and got four callers. The turn was and 8 and I winced but put the last fifty in. There were two folds and then a raise of 200. The last player folded, and I asked the raiser if he’d made his straight. He showed me his 4-5 off-suit. I can’t blame the solid player who did it, because the insane action that the weak left side of the table was giving made both calls worth it to him. In hindsight maybe I ought to have bet 100, but with the stack the player in question had he likely would have made an incorrect call anyway, if the callers in front had folded.
I’ve noticed most of my profit in poker comes with big hands and not with hammering out a lead by stealing blinds and blowing people off hands, etc. Anthony tends to get much of his profit like that. Maybe I’m just too lazy for it, and maybe it’s a weakness. He once told me that I play my good hands very well but my mediocre hands could be played better. I’m sure he’s right about that, but to each his own. It isn’t as if I don’t ever try to eek out a little extra profit from position and pushing people around. I try to win as many pots as I can by default, it’s just that I don’t usually try too hard when I’m WAY behind. When I’m on a draw from early position, I semi-bluff, but when I’m on a draw from last position I take a free card. Sometimes I reverse it just t mix things up. Sometimes I even play hands in ways that are statistically a mess, just to try to work a new angle in and take down a big pot when someone reads me wrong. As an example, I limped with aces the other night, and then check-called. I got them killed by the turn and knew it and had to let them go, but I did it just to see if I could outplay a tough player on the end and take him down if the board had come differently. The same scenario occurred with a straight draw. I used to laugh at people with gut-shot draws, but when you KNOW another player has made a small straight and the price is right, it’s often correct to draw to a bigger one. I’ve tried to incorporate a few of those things into my style of play, and I think it’s worked out very well for me. I chip off a lot of chips but not too many, and when the cards start to come, I can take down monstrous pots. I suppose that has a lot to do with why I enjoy Omaha. Because there are so many ways to outdraw your opponent, and there is often dead money in there from players who are drawing to hands that will go from good draws to worthless when three high cards fall, it makes a good hand to poke around with til the river and see what happens. Of course hand awareness is very important when you’re poking around. Its important to know when you’re drawing dead and what you might win with even if you don’t hit. There have been lots of hands where my second option for money paid off while my confident winner was beaten.
This weekend one player to whom I had shown some of my hands remarked that his respect for me had increased a great deal by watching my play on that night. At the time I was down significantly, so I wasn’t sure what he meant. This particular player is known as a superior reader of hands, and he was starting to get pretty close to what I was holding. I started having second thought about showing him my hands. I mix it up as much as I can to throw him and others off, so I knew that in the past he had a hard time reading me. I think perhaps he thought the reason he couldn’t read me well was that my play was weak and random, so it was a double compliment that he was correcting himself. Of course, it was also scary, because that lets him figure my hands a little closer.
