This is my favourite thread on 2p2.

From a lurker.

ETA: pic of awesome beard?

I like very much that you went to Red Rock.

I’m gonna text you a couple thoughts so as to not tard up the thread.

I think there are some very cool King-ish stories that could be written out of the locals in LV

Damn! Thanks sumey! Posts like yours help keep me grinding through good times and bad.

As for the beard: I'll be shaving it once we have 3 or so consecutive 100°F (38°C) days out here, so probably April. I'll take a pic around then, for posterity. No way it'll be Duck Dynasty length by then, but I'm hoping for at least a 2013 Red Sox veteran player length.

Always looking forward to hearing from you, Natamus. Doesn't matter if it's by post or text or in person.

The cranberry of doom!

devoting hours playing poker finances more time to write...or is this a paradox too far

If I wasn't so damn lazy, I would be able to do both without a time conflict. Anthony Trollope wrote 47 novels while working full time for the British Post Office. He wrote for 3 hours every morning. Stephen King writes for 4 hours every morning. I managed 2 hours each the last few mornings, so I'm getting there, I guess.

Speaking of 2 hours, that's all the time I played last night. I left because my tilt meter was finally full. It takes a lot to tilt me, but it's been building and the bar has been slowly filling up over the last few days.

Jared Tendler says that you should note and be aware of your own physical signs that point to tilting. For me, it's my hands shaking. On two occasions in the past, a player at the table has noted out loud that my hands were shaking, and they've speculated--again out loud--that I had a big hand. Not true in both cases. But it was awful nice to get those two folds when I was holding ****ty goddamn *********** hands that didn't connect with **** all.

No one called me out on the shakes yesterday, but I noticed them. It took every ounce of my will not to pull an 'FU I call' facing a $50 bet heads up on the turn with 99 on a 3673 board.

I was in the BB, Villain was a bad TAG opening $10 from UTG+1. Both of us had around $250 to start and I had already check/called his pot-sized $20 flop bet.

Everything about his line screamed that he had a higher overpair and that he wanted to keep me from hitting a draw with my potential big blind special, and that being a bad TAG, he was not interested in folding to a checkraise for any amount.

So, FU I call. Right?
No you idiot.
How about FU I call then?
No goddamn it.
We'll donk shove the river, any scare card.
Shut up!

I folded, picked up and went home. I had likely saved myself several hours worth of lost EV by buckling down, but there was little to guarantee that I'd be able to do it again in the next spot.

Speaking of buckling down, Dry January is just about over. I plan on playing until midnight or so tonight, then it's off to Ellis Island for some of their $2.50 pints of house craft brew.

Bally's: 2 hours:
(-$158)

I couldn't pull the trigger and fold JJ in a very similar spot the other day. He had the QQ and I went q_q.

Good job using your brain.

tells aside, if V is a bad tag (and idk what you mean by that as it could go a lot of ways) are you resigned to set mining pre? You flopped about as good as you can with your hand and you x/c, x/f get angry?

Always psyched to see a question from tbh. Nobody gets to the potential weaknesses in my HHs more quickly and more on point.

The first thing to know is that this hand didn't tilt me. If a hand like this, in a vacuum, ever made me angry then I'd know that I'm in the wrong business. You'll have to give me some credit: I was tilted before the hand, from days and days of beats. The spot would have been unremarkable otherwise.

Because I was tilted, I was vulnerable to taking any shortcut in analysis that would have led me to 'FU I call.' So it's true that with 99 I was at the top of my calling range. And it's true that by checking twice, I underrepped my holding given my relative hand strength on that board. Two compelling reasons to call, but...

Mid-overpairs on low boards are spots that always can use a lot of data. What else should we need? Player type, position and bet sizing are necessary.

Player type: Bad TAG.

What do I mean by that? First off, bad TAGs usually run around 24/10. For those of you who don't use HUDs, the first number means that that Villain plays around 24% of his hands. The second number means that he open/raises around 10% of his hands. So he limps more than he raises, but not by a huge margin. A larger spread between the two numbers--say 36/7--would call out a fish.

What also separates him from a fish is that he's positionally aware. Before he opens, he's going to ask: where am I? And he's going to open tighter from EP.

Position: UTG+1

I don't think he's open/raising more than 5% of his hands from here. What does range that look like?



30 combos are beating me, and 34 combos are behind me. Should that be a call, given that I'm getting much better than 1:1? Not in this case, because of...

Bet Sizing: Large: 5/6th pot on the turn

From experience I'm expecting that sizing from a bad TAG with no pair on the turn, after I call his pot-sized flop bet, is almost always going to be smaller--somewhere between checking back and just over 1/3 pot. The exception here would be if he had the overcard spade combos, where he flopped a flush draw. But that's only 4 combos here, and he has decent equity with those.

All of the above add up to the reason why I check/called the flop and checked the turn. His sizing on the turn is going to tell me where I'm at in a lot of cases.

If I was against a competent TAG, a SLAG or a good LAG, I'd have to station down here for the large sized bet, but not against this guy, and consequently not against a lot of average $1/$2 players.

Finally: set mining is definitely a feature against this type of player. They don't open much in EP, and they have a hard time dumping their big overpairs for 100-150bbs.

Again, the interesting part of the spot to me is being tilted and having to bear down and force myself to wipe out the emotional aspect and to consider the finer points.

Bally's: 5 hours:
+$146

Walking off Strip in Las Vegas is serious business. At every major crosswalk, one must navigate past impatient vehicles eager to use the heavily travelled right turn on red lanes, even after the traffic signal tells you that you're in the clear.

The traffic signals here have a sound indicator to tell blind people when they can cross. It sounds a little, but not quite like the chittering of an angry red squirrel. Today, a mockingbird in a palm tree behind me at an intersection chirruped out a perfect imitation of the crossing sound, and I came very close to stepping out into heavy traffic.

Tonight I played downtown. I wanted to see Binion's new poker room. It's not a room; it's a nook. On Friday night at 8:30 PM, with the surrounding Fremont Street experience packed wall to wall with tourists, Binions's was packing ten players around a single small $1/$2 table. The waiting list was long, and handwritten on a legal pad, as they're not affiliated with the Bravo network. I don't believe that they had the dealers on hand to open up a second cash table. 25 years ago this was the absolute world Mecca of Hold 'em.

After 30 minutes spent with my name on the Binion's legal pad, I walked across the way to the Golden Nugget. They had six tables of $1/$2 going, along with a tournament with 50-something runners. I started out seventh on the cash game list, and I got on a table within 10 minutes.

Golden Nugget: 4 hours:
+$309

Sick world

SJ takes a month of drinking. First day back and he almost walks in front of traffic

Agreed. The natural world is up to its eyeballs in murders--day and night.

Still not as dangerous as your homeland. A few days ago, an Aussie woman was bit by a viper hiding in her toilet.



Bally's Freeroll: 3.5 hours:
+$280

Standing room only for Super Bowl LIII at the Westgate sportsbook. Fortunately, the poker room has seats, and free pints of craft beer.

Except she brought me a Bud Light, I asked for a stout

You still tipped her though didn't you.

Twice.

Twice

You gotta speak up brother! It’s not like you got a NE accent (thank gawd)

I was in a hand vs a wicked aggrotahd.

Did he pahk the cahds in havad yahd?

Driving round in the blazah, listening to Wingah.

Another pathetic week in terms of hours. I'm taking today and tomorrow off. After that I'm throwing down a 40 hour challenge for next week.

If I fail to put in 40 hours from Wednesday-Sunday, I will donate $100 to charity. Charity, by the way, is not a dancer at the Spearmint Rhino.



Post here if you have a favorite charity. If we get more than one outlet, then we'll vote on a winner.

Westgate: 3 hours:
+$49

The CPUSA.