The 4-flushes or Casino Action

I went to the casino Weds. night to play $1/$2 NL again. This time I went with a friend from work. (He just started coming to my fish game. He is really new to the game is a level 1 player at best. Some level 1 bad habits he really needs to break: Only sees his holdings. Not seeing the difference between a concealed 2pr, small hole pr in hand and 1pr on the board, and pr on the board + 1 pr matching 1 hole card. Doesn’t protect his hand. Doesn’t value-bet. Ect. Ect. Unlike the rest of my fish, I have begun to teach him the game. Mainly due to the fact that he wants to start playing often with me live. Damn I’m a saint.) We drove the hr and got there a little after 7 pm. We walk into the main slot room and I can see that there is not a table running. My heart sinks. What a bitch it would be to drive a freakin’ hr to only turn around and go home, ‘cause believe me I hate the slots and won’t hang around and put even a quarter in one. He hits the Head and I walk over and ask the Pit-boss or whatever you call ‘em what’s up. He has 5 on the list, but needs 6 to open the table. I sign in and grab a rake of chips and pick on of the seats on the end. (Goes to show haw much I know yet about the game. I can’t even tell you what seat I’m in. I’m 3 to the left of the dealer anyways. I’m going to guess seat 3. If I’m wrong feel free to hook a brotha up with some knowledge.) Chris shows up and takes a seat straight across from the dealer. The Pit-boss starts paging over the P.A. that the table is open and also calls the names of the players on the list. Oh yea, a quick factoid: the max buyin at table is $100. I don’t know if this is normal or not for live $1/$2 NL games. I know that online the rule on most sites is 100xBB max buyin.

We are sitting there waiting for the players to show. The dealer shows up and goes thru his pre-game checks, i.e. counting the chips in his tray, that for some reason he never touches and fanning the cards out and verifying one-by-one that they are all there. I already could tell that I wouldn’t have the patience necessary to be a dealer; all that meticulous shit, plus having to be nice to drunks and the tards that just don’t pickup on things. I could just see me forgetting my pills one day and snapping on some dumbass. “Hey stupid you are now the small blind. What was your first clue. Last hand you were the big blind dikshit, what don’t you get here. Every fucking round it’s the same shit with you. What don’t you understand?” I start whipping cards at the guy like Jesus Ferguson taking out a watermelon. The rent-a-cops with their slot-keys and Mag Lights dragging me kicking and screaming out the back door to kick the living shit out of me, because they watched Good Fella’s too many times. Son-of-a, zoned off again.

It’s like 8 min and 3 pages later before the players start showing up. First I thought they were just finishing up at the BJ tables or cashing in quarters from the slot. But no, they were just taking their time so the wouldn’t break a hip. To say that these were elderly people would be an understatement. The 2 men where ancient wayways. The geriatrics squad takes their seats. Only 4 of the 5 showed, so it was 6 of us. The other one likely keeled over and died of old age or liver spot poisoning. Just joking, I love the extremely elderly. Especially the ones that take forever to make any decisions. I know, my day is coming.

As we started playing I noticed a few things. Here’s the breakdown. They all called small raises PF. They would even call smallish raises post flop with marginal holdings and draws. They all didn’t have much care or regard for kickers. The 1 young-old lady would call ½ pot raises with A-rag all day long without hitting it, then on the river fold if she missed. I watched her take down a few pots over the night from Chris due to this sad tactic. It did catch up to her in the end and she had to rebuy once. Chris actually was the player, in a moment of poetic justice, to put the deathblow on her first baby stack because of this bad habit of hers. Basically they all over-valued their holdings time and time again. The young-old lady’s dad was the most competent at the table, other than ME of course. (Aforementioned statement possibly skewed due to hypersensitive ego.) No really I was the most solid player at the table. (Aforementioned statement possibly skewed due to hypersensitive ego.) Sadly, even though I had good reads on them all, I didn’t really know how best to change up my tight-aggressive style to extract the most profit from these guys. So much for being a good player aye? I was pretty passive and waited for semi-strong hands to exploit their leaks. But as fate would have it, most of the time they would be rewarded at the table for their flaws. Retirees with more money than skill.

I chip down a little waiting for a hand. Chris’ stack is steadily dwindling because he is seeing almost every flop. Plus he would see small post flop raises with overs and draws and he wasn’t often connecting. I look down at cowboys a few rounds in after I got my reads. I raise to $7 and get 3 callers. No respect for raises. Innocuous flop and I bet out $10. Chris and Father Time drop. The skinny old lady calls. Turn is a blank and I see no reason to slow down, so I bet out $15, which is fairly small considering the size of the pot. She drops. Damn.

I watch Chris lose a nice pot to young-old lady. Chris bets TP on every street after she checks it to him. River brings an Ace and she bets out this time. Chris calls. She shows A-rag-off-suit for the win.

Soon after I have AKo. I throw out $7 again. A few callers. AKx flop with 2 clubs. The skinny old lady bets out $5. I raise it $10 after a fold. Only the skinny old lady calls. Turn, another club-small. She checks, I have no club, but figure that she is checking to the aggressor more likely than slow-rollin’. I bet out $20 and she calls. River is another club. She checks. I check behind. She turns over A4o, but the 4 is a club. Kickers apparently mean nothing to her. She hits my stack pretty hard. Her dropping the baby flush is pretty iffy to a river raise. Anyone bet that 4-flush river? I think betting that river is –EV overall, but especially against her.

An Indian with a long rat-rail joins the table to my right. Right where I want him. He is a regular. I have only played 3 or 4 times ever and I saw him there every time. He is fairly aggressive but also tuff and crafty. He likes to see most pots and is hoping for the 2pr spikes that will inevitably come his way. I actually mentioned him in a previous post about the first time I played live. Things are looking up for some profits. Oh yea, one cool thing about this dude that I got off him a few weeks back; he sits down with a full rack of yellow $1 chips. I asked him why no red $5 chips. He told me that back in the day when they first started up the room that everyone always had to ask for change with their $5 chips so it just became a habit. He said plus the goal was turn all his yellow chips red. I really thought that was a pretty cool statement. He also never drinks alcohol like the rest of the table usually does. He makes lots of odd bets with his $1 chips and never is consistent with his bet amounts.

We both start getting our chips red. Mine because I got a few hands that the calling stations paid off; his because of his aggression and spiked hands. Then comes a bad hand concocted just to smack my stack. I am in the big with J4o. I complete and the flop brings K44 with 2 diamonds. The whole table limped here. The antiquated guy from the cutoff bet $5. The 2 regs called. I just called to see how many more callers I could get. 2 more callers. The turn brings another diamond. I check, as does everyone around to the old guy. He makes it $15 to go. The 2 regulars drop. This is where I made my mistake. I should have check-raised here to see where I’m at. I am weak here in my game I’ll admit. I don’t know if I just don’t think or if I don’t want to increase the pot. I call $15. Chris also calls the bet. River a 4th fucking diamond and I start lamenting my luck. Twice a 4 flush was going to kick my ass tonight I start to think. Thanks Lady Luck, you biatch. I check my cards. Ooh, the Jack is a diamond; this might not turn out too bad after all. All that beats my flush is the A or Q, and of course a boat. I check. Chris checks the old guy bets out $15 into the close to a $100 pot. I decide that I pretty much have to call. Chris raises it $15 more. Damnit I think to myself. If he would have done that instead of checking the first time around I could have folded no problem. Old dude calls. I know that I’m beat now but with it only $15 to call $170 I feel propelled towards this ass-whippin’. I have the Jd. Chris has the Qd. And the old guy shows Ad. He scoops in a monster. Even though Chris’ river raise sucked, at least he had a pr of Kings until the river flushed. The old bastard had A-rag-off-suit. He raised with A-high all the way and got 2 running diamonds to keep himself from a good ol’ ass-smackin’ that even his grandchildren would have felt.

Another regular shows up and sits to the right of the Indian and the dealer. I also mentioned this dude before in my “first time playing live” post. He was the regular that kept getting smacked around by the cocky “that’s one powerful 6 and a 3” guy. I don’t really like seeing another good player at the table. My greedy ass wanted money for myself.

I only have half my starting stack due to that big hand. Chris has $8 and pushes the next hand. He then commences to buy back in for only $50 this time. We had barely been there for an hr. 2 huge slaps from 4-flushes and I’m still only down $50. Can’t ask for much more than that. Yes I can. Maybe being up to over $300 in my stack would have been a bit better. But hey, Lady Luck gets bored sometimes and needs to get her jollies off.

Stagnation, and then about 20 min later I am in the small or big again and have T7o. I wimp along with other callers. Flop T77. BANG. I check and Chris bets out and there are callers. I slow played until the turn and the check raised the 3 or 4-way pot. All folded but Chris. I put him allin for his last little bit on the river and showed him the bad luck for his junkass hand with a 7 in it. He doesn’t reach for his wallet right away, so I asked if he was ready to go home. Even though we had only been there an hr and a half and the fact that I didn’t want to leave the likely lucrative table, I figured it was time to leave. Chris was down $150, we had an hr drive home, plus we had to both work in the morning.

So I grabbed my chips and cashed in for a $26 profit. I still can’t help to think that I could have made over $300 if those 2 hands hadn’t went horribly wrong.