« Dashiell Hammett Explains Poker For You | Home | Tension Chords »
04.26.06
Hustlered
posted by Absinthe | 10:22 PM
Glyphic’s girlfriend was out of town and, Murderer’s Row still being inexplicably out of session, we decided to hit the Hustler. Why the Hustler? Couldn’t say, especially since it’s about the least convenient of the LA card rooms. Glyphic makes some strange calls.
There were three $15/30 tables running, one a must-move. I had to hang around while glyphic got seated by virtue of apparently being a shinier object than I and thus more able to catch the attention of the hummingbird-like floorman.
The must-move table was a little manic; a fiftyish guy on my left had kings cracked twice in as many orbits and went on mega-tilt, raising and reraising blind, betting dark, and quickly losing as much as the kings cost him in the first place. I’d have loved to get a chunk off of him but I had no cards. Eventually I (thankfully) got moved to another, fuller table – though not with glyphic, which is a shame because I can run all over that boy. (Yeah, you heard me.)
The players at the new table were a mixed bag, and our table frequently got short. I was card-dead for the longest time, in that irritating slow-motion way – those open-ended straight and flush draws that you almost have to jam on the flop, given the number of players in, and can’t let go of until the river. Somehow I worked my way up to about 20BB up, mostly due to extracting maximum value from a random two pair out of the blinds, a stolen pot or two, and playing top pair aggressively on the flop. ABC poker. Then I lost a big pot with AQ vs. QT (QTx flop), lost a bit more to a spiked three-outer, and missed enough flops to bring me back down to even.
We had probably the worst dealer I’ve ever seen for half an hour; what’s worse is that he was so bad that some players got up and walked away at their blinds, which meant the ‘missed blinds’ markers were flying fast and furious, and he frequently screwed up the small-big-big and small-small-big blind sequences, which caused more anger. I choose to find such things charming, figuring that anything that puts other people on tilt gives me an edge. (Like, for example, when I drew fire from a few players for wasting time when I refused to stop raising with the nuts on the turn and river when it was “obviously” a chop – listen, lady, I watched you play for two hours and it’s fifty-fifty you’re capping at me with the ignorant end.) Besides, it was worth it to see the dealer absolutely pour sweat. We’re talking Albert Brooks in Broadcast News here – players were handing him napkins and handkerchiefs and it just wasn’t enough.
Finally he was replaced by a much drier dealer. Unfortunately our table got broken shortly thereafter, but at least I got a high card and immediate seating at the other table. Things quickly went from okay to bad there, as I lost a huge pot to a turned two-outer and missed a few more draws. I was about $300 down when glyphic called it a night (he’d flopped a full house and had the third-best hand at the river, losing to a bigger boat and quads), but resolved to soldier on. I managed to turn things around with two pair-and-a-flush-draw combos, pulling slightly ahead of my starting buyin until I didn’t give the table maniac credit for hitting his one overcard and called him down with 99 on a K-high board.
When I cashed out I was pleased to discover that I was about .43BB up for the night. Thirteen dollars, baby! Suck on that hourly win rate.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Topics: Poker | No Comments »