Saturday, February 19, 2005
Can't Win 'Em All
Finished 13th in the £100 Round of Each last night, out of about 45. Fairly quiet early on, doubled up with AAxx v AJJx in Omaha, won a comedy Hold-em hand with JT against 99 with a final board of 4KKQQ, nicked a few up to 14K and was in reasonable shape with 18 players left. Unfortunately the wheels came off at that point, I raised and missed twice, with AQ and 88, to lose 7K - 5K of which was unavoidable, but 2K was a possibly ill-advised stab at the pot on the turn. With 4400 UTG and blinds 600-1200, I went for it with 74s, the BB called with 66 and I lost. At least I'm back to being knocked out with filth :-). A few random thoughts :
It never ceases to amaze me how people don't make the slightest attempt to prepare. "I didn't know it was a round of omaha" moaned one guy in that 'it's not my fault' tone that irks me so much, "is it High-Low ?". I really should have said yes but I just don't have that much devil inside me :-). Meanwhile I had to love the guys who said "Is it Omaha ? Fuck, I hate this game" on every change, and proceeded to play 3/4 of the hands in the game they hate so much.
After giving credit to the guy who beat me last week, he murdered his chips early on yesterday in an embarrassing fashion. Hold-em, on a turn board of AKQJ, he bet 500, to be raised to 2000, and then a third party flat called the 2000 for good measure. Not only did the hero call with AJ, he called the last 1000 on the end. The other two players might as well have pasted their 10s on their foreheads like in Indian Poker.
Even though half the "new generation of poker" didn't show up, the standard of Omaha play was predictably awful. JJ74 was a reraising hand, for example, and that was from a guy who has won tournaments all over Europe. On further thought, there's no need to be coy here, it was Lallie Khajuria with his bobbies. He'll be alright. Unfortunately it wasn't easy to benefit because there was a lot of raising pre-flop, which is not at all what you want against bad players with largish blinds. C'est la vie.
When we had completed the first round of Hold-em, the self-dealt table broke. "Excellent, Omaha" announced a new arrival (who was one of the better players as it happened), "we've just finished our Omaha round". They had played two rounds in the same time it took us to play one. I never complain about being on a self-deal table - you don't have to play 10-handed and you deal at least 50% more hands per hour, which is all good news for the man with an edge.
It never ceases to amaze me how people don't make the slightest attempt to prepare. "I didn't know it was a round of omaha" moaned one guy in that 'it's not my fault' tone that irks me so much, "is it High-Low ?". I really should have said yes but I just don't have that much devil inside me :-). Meanwhile I had to love the guys who said "Is it Omaha ? Fuck, I hate this game" on every change, and proceeded to play 3/4 of the hands in the game they hate so much.
After giving credit to the guy who beat me last week, he murdered his chips early on yesterday in an embarrassing fashion. Hold-em, on a turn board of AKQJ, he bet 500, to be raised to 2000, and then a third party flat called the 2000 for good measure. Not only did the hero call with AJ, he called the last 1000 on the end. The other two players might as well have pasted their 10s on their foreheads like in Indian Poker.
Even though half the "new generation of poker" didn't show up, the standard of Omaha play was predictably awful. JJ74 was a reraising hand, for example, and that was from a guy who has won tournaments all over Europe. On further thought, there's no need to be coy here, it was Lallie Khajuria with his bobbies. He'll be alright. Unfortunately it wasn't easy to benefit because there was a lot of raising pre-flop, which is not at all what you want against bad players with largish blinds. C'est la vie.
When we had completed the first round of Hold-em, the self-dealt table broke. "Excellent, Omaha" announced a new arrival (who was one of the better players as it happened), "we've just finished our Omaha round". They had played two rounds in the same time it took us to play one. I never complain about being on a self-deal table - you don't have to play 10-handed and you deal at least 50% more hands per hour, which is all good news for the man with an edge.
# posted by Andy_Ward @ 9:29 AM 
