Relative position

One of the hands I've struggled with since moving to NL is suited connectors. To a lessor extent, suited aces are in there too.

Postflop, I think those are hands that a relatively easy to play, but finding what Tommy A. might call a bread and butter spot with them has been tough. It's gotten to the point where I was routinely mucking them in the blinds, which I'm sure is wrong, and sometimes even to raisers when I had OK position. I just had no really sense for what I was doing, and I'm surely passing on some great spots.

I think I'm finally getting a handle on them, thanks to Rolf Slotbloom's PLO book.

Rolf developed a really tight, shortstacking strategy that involved keeping the laggro big stacks on his right, and then limp-reraising. The idea is simple. He limps in the CO, LAG otb raises, BB, who knows LAG is FOS, calls, now Rolf can come over the top with his short stack and either take the pot right away or get his money in almost always with a solid edge.

For some reason, this got me thinking about flops. You're way better off being able to semibluff behind a bet and a call, than you are facing a bet with a guy left to act behind you. You not only have more dead money in the middle, you're playing with a smaller stack-to-pot ratio, which is perfect for draws because you want to either see no more cards or two. You can get it in much easier.

So take this hand. MP is 45/22/2.2, CO 35/8/1.1. calls.

Ultimate Bet - No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.50/$1 Blinds - 6 Players - (LegoPoker HH Converter)



Hero (SB): $99.00

BB: $117.10

UTG: $71.85

MP: $141.50

CO: $13.50

BTN: $104.95



Preflop: Hero is dealt 9 A (6 Players)

UTG calls $1.00, MP raises to $4.50, CO calls $4.50, BTN folds, Hero calls $4.00, 2 folds



Flop: ($15.50) 6 5 5 (3 Players)

Hero checks, MP bets $15.50, CO folds, Hero raises all-in to $94.50, MP folds

Uncalled bet of $79.00 returned to Hero



Pot Size: $46.50 ($2.30 Rake)




So if he folds, I pick up $25 for a $2.50 investment. If one of them calls, I'm probably behind, but likely have a solid 11-15 outs. I think he's got exactly two hands, 66 and 55, that have me in any kind of real trouble.

So there it is. It seems simple. It actually is simple, I'm just dense. I'm ok with playing the SCs in position now, but what I really want to see is that raise/call. That's bread and butter time.

If I'm ever in Amsterdam, I owe Rolf a beer.

I'll probably just head straight for the weed, but what ever.

My table image apparently sucked

Will, at CP, has said several times in different threads that people rarely have any sense of their actual table image, and even if they think they know what their table image is, they're usually wrong.

I had an interesting demonstration of that Saturday night.

I went to the boats with this guy Peter, the husband on one of Bronwyn's friends. He plays a little online and is a nice guy. He wanted to go to the boats, so I got to play tour guide. I was going to play 2/5, but I called ahead for 1/2 and figured if we were at different tables at 1/2, I wouldn't look rude when I moved up. Instead we got sat at the same table, so i played 1/2. I didn't mind.

Peter got the four seat and I was in the 10. Early on, he was limping a lot and gave away two of his three buyins pretty quickly. I just played tight and looked for good spots. Second orbit, there are five limpers to me on the button with T2d. I call, the sb folds, the BB in the two seat, big stack at the table, a ~regular and a fairly straightforward player, raises $13 more. Three callers in between I make a bad call.

The flop is 982, one diamond. BB leads out for $30. Folds to me. I kind of think my deuce is good here. He's got overcards or some kind of squeeze bluff a fair amount, and I've got an easy turn fold if he double-barrels. So I throw in six more chips. He checks the turn (4d, nice card) and I shove for $65. He folds after not much thought.

Later that orbit, I raise to $15 three off the button with 9h9s behind two limpers. Both blinds and both limpers call. The flop is K74 all diamonds. Checks to me and I check. It's just suicide to c-bet this. Turn is the sweet, blessed 9c. BB (old guy with a hat from the ship he served on in the Pacific. I love these guys. Usually loose and passive, and great stories.) bets out $35 into ~$75 and it folds to me I only have $140 behind. So I shove again. He folds.

I make a quick note in my head. One orbit, two shoves.

So for like the next two hours, I played maybe three pots. I got caught making one small bluff and didn't manage to drag a pot, but was still on like $300. I'd been getting tangled up with the three seat. A nitty, socially retarded guy. Mid-40s, looks like he lives at home. Gets pissy about weird things. Loose, passive, but tough to catch in big pots because he never bets when you've got him set up for a checkraise.

So after about 15 orbits of being card dead and talking about good bars in chicago with the six seat, who has been up since Thursday (I love live poker), I get A2h otb, only two limpers, so I bump it to $15. The three seat calls in the BB, the two limpers fold. Three has about $170 behind. Flop is 5h3d2c I bet $25 with what I assume is the best hand, and he calls. Turn is the 6h. He checks and I think for a minute about betting but if he had a four, I can't call so I take the freebie. River is the 4h.

He rolls his eyes a little and checks. I think about betting something value-sized, but then I remember "one orbit, two shoves." So I shove and he calls off $130 in a $80 pot playing the board with 43o.

I love live poker.

I ran really well after that and after a couple more big pots, had the table covered for the next four hours. I nearly had $1000 on the table at one point, and never topped up. Ended up cashing out $750, and Peter got some of his money back too.

In the car driving home, he mentioned that the two and three seats kept muttering about me being a maniac who just kept pushing and pushing and they couldn't wait to snap me off. They didn't notice the two hours I spent folding preflop or check folding flops. Just the really big, obvious stuff. Even Peter noticed that every time I bet big and got called, I had it. But those two "regulars" could barely be bothered to think about why I was shoving. I love live poker.

Which is good, because online poker hates me this month. I won't bother you with details. Let's just say, that $650 win kept me breakeven for the week.

Buddy, 1918-2007

My grandmother died this weekend.

I spent the first part of this week in Appleton, Wis., basically doing the family things you do when someone dies. The visitation was Tuesday and the funeral was wednesday, and the time in between was spent sitting in rooms with three generations of my family, none of us really knowing what to say most of the time.

I didn't know how to feel Saturday when my sister told me Buddy died that morning. We called her Buddy. She was a bit vain, and when my cousin John, the oldest of her grandchildren, couldn't say "grandma" he used buddy, and she clung to the nickname for the next 35 years. Buddy was 89. She'd been ill in one way or another for the last 20 years. First it was an arthritis that robbed her of the balance and grace that she was so proud of (she taught dance for 60 years). In later years, she'd had a series of strokes, the final one leaving her all but paralyzed, mentally incapacitated, often at the mercy of nursing home staffers (who were to a person kind and caring, but Buddy was as independent a person as I've ever known).

On top of the physical failings, she never got over the death of my grandfather, 10 years ago. They were married for 56 years when he passed away, and she missed him every single day that he was gone. Buddy loved to send cards, and even after Grandpa died, she signed each and every one of them "Buddy and Grandpa."

Then four years ago, my cousin Jeff died, at the age of 26. It was another blow that left all of us, but especially her, hurt, reeling and confused. By the end of that year, her health and our fears for her finally forced her to leave the white clapboard house on Outagamie Street she'd lived in for 45 years.

Visiting her in recent years, it was palpable how much these losses weighed on her. She was smaller, weaker, sometimes viciously angry at how her body and mind, so sharp for so long, would fail her.

The last time I saw her, we took her out to dinner. She was in a good mood, ate well, and played with her greatgrandson Jordan. When the bill was paid, she placed both hands on the rails of her wheelchair and tried to push her chair back and stand up, just the way the rest of us had gotten up from the table. She'd forgotten she couldn't walk. Angry and embarrassed, she tried to wheel herself out, fighting with us when we'd try to help, which of course we had to. When my dad and I helped her back to her room, she grabbed me around the neck, buried her head in my chest, and started sobbing and apologizing. I just hugged her and told her there was nothing to apologize for. We understood.

So knowing all of that, it's easy to think "well, it's over now. She's home, with Grandpa and Jeff, and in a better place." And that's all true.

But what I think was amazing about this week is that we finally got to stop thinking about all that. It started with the picture boards my aunts did. There were all of these amazing pictures of Buddy through the years, starting with her first dance studio (when she was 17, btw. Buddy was a feminist before there were feminists), her shows, baby pictures of Buddy and Grandpa and my dad. Graduations, summers at the cottage, Christmases, a whole life spread out in images.

Then came the people. I mentioned Buddy taught dance for 60 years. What I mean is, she was THE dance teacher in Appleton for 60 years. When I was a kid, if someone in Appleton happened to catch my name, almost immediately they'd say "Oh, your Chip and Marie's grandson?" Try buying a pack of cigarettes on the sly with that hanging over your head.

There were literally hundreds of people at the wake. Almost all of them had a happy memory of Buddy to share. You could tell she'd genuinely touched these people. As the father said at the funeral mass, "I must confess, sometimes I'll see the name of a person whose funeral I performed a year or so later and think, 'what was their story again?' But I promise you this: I remember Chip even now, 10 years on, and I will always remember Marie."

It was a genuinely touching sentiment and one we heard from hundreds of people. I was recognized by complete strangers who told me Buddy was always a quick one with the latest pictures of the grandkids.

Buddy wasn't the closest grandparent I had. We lived in Chicago, not Wisconsin, and visits weren't as common as we might have liked. But as I got older, we did have some time together, just to talk and know each other. I remember being dumbfounded once when she told me, even with all of the health problems, even having to move into a nursing home, she had no regrets. She would marry the same man, have the same children, have the same career. If god came to her today, she said, and offered her a chance to start over, she'd choose exactly the same life.

I've lived barely a third as long as her, but can't possibly say the same. Sometimes it seems like there's nothing but regrets. But it really is possible to live that good and that happy a life. I saw it with my own eyes, even if I didn't always recognize it.

I'm so proud to be her grandson.