Revisiting my playground

So I went to The Caribbean today, thinking that it might be nice to play in a live/cash game again.  I only spent about 2 hours there, although I waited more than an hour before a seat became available (yet again, another reason I am becoming a firm believer in online poker).

I noticed some interesting things today about playing at the $3-$6 table today, which are in sharp contrast to playing online, at least at the $5-$10 tables.  First, the tables themselves were incredibly loose; looser, in fact, than what seemed normal.  There were consitently about 4-5 people seeing the flop per hand, and I never witnessed a chop the entire time I was there.  (A chop is when everybody folds around to the blinds, and rather than play they decide to fold, take back their blinds and move the button to deal again.  This happens in a casino primarily because once the blind money becomes a pot, a rake is taken out and it is no longer profitable to play the hand.)

As a result of the table being so loose, it was actually worth seeing hands like suited connectors and Ace-X suited.  When playing hands like this, you want to be able to get in cheap, and if you hit the flop well, you get paid off.  If you miss, it’s easy to dump (hopefully).  I’ve gotten into the habit of only playing those hands in late positions, after 2-3 people have limped in before me.  Normally there just isn’t enough money in the pot to justify even a single small bet to see the flop (online).

Another thing was how many weak/tight players there are.  Once the flop hits, people just wouldn’t protect their hands.  During one hand, I had pocket 8s (my favorite hand, BTW) and the flop came 2d, 2c, 5h.  I’m in late position, and there are 4 of us in the pot.  Rick, in early position, bets and two people fold; I raise with an overpair and Rick just calls.  I figured he either has a deuce or an overpair like myself or he couldn’t call my raise.  The turn, the 3 of hearts, presented a straight possibility, so I checked after Rick (I probably could have bet here, but I have played with Rick before, and he’s sneaky enough to bet with a straight draw and then check/raise me.)  The river was a miracle eight, giving me a full house with 8s full of deuces.  Rick bets, and I raise.  The only hand that can beat me at this point is if he had pocket deuces, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have.  He thinks and thinks about it, and come to the conclusion, as he announced verbally, the only hand that could beat him was wired 5s.  I remember smiling a little inside when I heard him say that.  He hadn’t considered the eight.

He called, and I showed him my hand.  It turns out he had 5-2 offsuit, and had flopped a full house.  I asked him, why in the world didn’t he protect his hand and reraise me on the flop?  The truth is, had he reraised me, I might have called, but would have been ready to dump the hand on the turn in a heartbeat.  I simply wouldn’t have had enough outs to call another bet on the turn after he represented at the very least 3 of a kind, or even scarier, the full house he actually had.  My miracle eight on the river was certainly a suck-out; however, as I stated at the table, “I can’t be held responsible if you can’t protect your hand.”  I told Rick that had he been as aggressive as a full-house would dictate, I would have dumped my overpair in a heartbeat.  Rick just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

Anyway, I ended up making $96 today for about 2 hours of work.  Even if I include my wait time into the $/hour calculation, I still did really well.  With an expectation of $6-$12/hour at a $3-$6 game, I ended up at $32/hour (almost $50/hr for actual game time).

In another blog by another poker professional, I read an interesting quote:  “$100/day keeps the jobs away.”  I’m not exactly comfortable with only $100/day, but the saying definitely makes sense – I’m very happy with only making $96.