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This is a continuation of my posts on the 2009 World Series of Poker (before I got sidetracked on the Pokerstars Big Game and diatribes on safe poker).
So I settled in for a weekend of online satellites to the WSOP. Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars were both running massive qualifiers with huge guarantees. This means that the poker sites guarantee to give out a certain number of seats, whether or not enough people actually played the satellite.
Some of you might wonder why I’d spend a whole weekend in the summer in NYC playing poker. Well, first of all, my apartment has air conditioning. The less time I have to spend outside in June / July in New York the better. Second (and maybe more importantly…) the games are always best on Saturdays and Sundays. Why? It’s simple, people who do not play poker for a living actually work during the week. This means they cannot play during the day and may not want to play late into the night. So, people with money and limited time will load up their favorite online poker site on a Saturday or Sunday and play all day.
Satellites can be a lot of fun to play, but can also be extremely frustrating. In theory you should “win” more often than a regular tournament, but if you do not know how to play you can get beaten down over and over again. I do not really want to get into satellite strategy, but suffice it to say, taking as few risks as possible in order to min-cash is the ideal! The problem is, you make one mistake or get just a little too aggressive and what was once a sure cash is now a “Thanks for Playing.”
On Saturday I got lots of those messages. FullTilt… busto. PokerStars… busto. UltimateBet… busto. Absolute Poker… busto. Most of the tournaments I was playing were long shots ($200-500 buy-in), but Sunday the game started to fall in place for me. All the Sunday tournaments had huge guarantees and enormous prize pools, each giving away a seat in the WSOP along with assorted extras (hotel rooms, cash, and extra prizes for television time).
Each of the two best online poker sites, Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker was running a 200 seat guarantee, and each blasted through its guarantee to give away well over 200 seats. I built up a huge stack early on in the Pokerstars WSOP satellite by luckboxing my way to a quadruple stack early by flopping a flush against a smaller flush and two sets. My luck just continued after that AA against KK, sets against overpairs, etc, etc. Once I built a huge stack I played standard satellite strategy and played nice and tight until we made our way into the money.
The Full Tilt satellite was a little more interesting. I got short-stacked early on, losing half my stack on a crying call against a player who rivered a bigger straight than the one I turned. Slowly I chipped back up with hyper-aggressive play, 3-betting, 4-betting, squeezing, doing everything I could to rebuild my stack - I was GOING to win 2 seats that day or I was going broke in the next 10 hands. Eventually I got even and then up to a double stack, where I could slow down again and play a little poker. This hand came up when I had about 30,000 in chips at blinds 300 - 600. I raised in late position to 1500 (love the 2.5x raise) with 8d9d and got a caller on the button and in the big blind (for a pot of 4800). Flop came down a beautiful 7dTcAd. Big blind checked, I bet 3600, the button raised to 12,400 and the big blind shoved for 40,000 (having both me and the button covered). At this point I have to assume the button is coming along for the ride so I need to call 24,900 to win 90,300, which means I’m getting ~2.5 to 1 on a call. I’m obviously putting these guys on a range, but smack in the middle of their ranges are sets and either a big ace or 2 pair (and I am not terribly worried about a bigger flush draw since the Ad is on the board, so effectively I have all 15 of my outs assuming the board doesn’t pair. Getting 2.5 to 1 with about 60% equity. YIPPEEEE KAAAAAYEEEEEEEE!!!! Thankfully I hit my 6s and the board did not pair. I held to win a monster pot and my second WSOP seat of the day!
At least once a week I get an email asking whether underground poker rooms are safe to play in, and frankly that is a really good question to ask before you go play in one of these.
When the poker boom began after Moneymaker won the World Series poker rooms began sprouting up all over city. Rooms like Playstation and others were some of the best poker rooms in the country, with 3-5 tables in a room, great cocktail service, and plenty of fish to keep the games profitable, even with the insane rake.
After the initial glow wore off and a couple shootings occurred, however, the games had to go further and further underground. I new things had changed forever when I played golf with a young NYPD officer who told me he no longer plays the underground games because he is too afraid of being busted. Back in 2005 and 2006 the thought would not have even crossed a police officer’s mind. Even if the cops showed up, they would not have cared about another officer being in the game.
Even though this comes up every time I play and every week by email, it is actually not something I think about much. Years ago I decided that I was going to play in the games whether they get busted or robbed, and I moved on. But this has come up again in the media recently due to a couple robberies in Texas, and has become the subject of a couple recent episodes of Poker Road Radio.
The closest I have ever been to a shooting in a poker room was back around the time this blog began. I was playing a game downtown in the backroom of a chinese restaurant (I know, cliche right?). Every night this gaunt older Dominican man showed up and lost a few hundred dollars and never seemed particularly happy about it. One night we were playing 1-2 no limit and the smallest stack at the table was about $500. One crazy player made his standard raise to $100 and got 2 callers, including the Dominican. The flop was a rainbow J52 and it checked around. On the K turn the Dominican bet $100 and the pre-flop raiser went all-in. The Dominican sighed and muttered “You got it.” Everyone kind of stared and he repeated more definitively “I said, you got it.” The player who was all-in threw his cards in the muck face up showing a 67. The Dominican stared and then said “I got a jack.” We all stared again as we realized this guy thinks he won the pot! WE ALL HEARD HIM FOLD. As the dealer started to push the pot towards the raiser the Dominican guy stands up and says “I GOT A JACK.” The dealer starts to explain to the guy and he puts his hand under his shirt into his waistband and says “I GOT A JACK!” As we see the handle start to emerge the dealer stands up and another comes running in.
“Woah woah woah papi! It’s okay it’s okay, we’ll take care of it!”
The Dominican guy stared and the dealer repeats “We will take care of you. Johnny, got get some chips for him - $300.”
The Dominican stared at the dealer, then stared at the raiser and finally sat down slowly, $100 richer.
There is really no good way to say it, but shit happens. Games will get robbed and people will get shot. Sometimes it’s not even a robbery, but an irate player. As long as there money in a room someone is going to try to take it. When you start playing the game and getting money involved you know just have to know something could happen and you have to be prepared. The best you can do, if you decide to play is not to worry about what might happen, but be prepared if it does. If someone comes in and wants your money you give it to them. You cannot control how others act, but you can do your best to protect yourself.
Most of the games are safe, there are security guards stopping the wrong people coming in, but you should always know what might happen and be ready for it. If you are not, or if this concerns you too much all I can is find some friends to play with or stay home and jump into an online game (as I did for a few weeks after last year’s WSOP after I’d been in the busted game.
Hope this helps. Be safe!
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Somewhat off-topic post here, but it seemed worth writing about. THis wek launched the first week of The Pokerstars Big Game. With the NYC poker games being a little slow these days (everyone being in Las Vegas for the WSOP), I’ve been spending my time playing more online poker and watch trashy poker tv.
This show actually isn’t that trashy though. The format is interesting, something at least a little fresh, and they have a good group of professionals at the table. For those of you who don’t know, the format of the Pokerstars Big Game is a 6-handed game of pot limit hold’em pre-flop and no limit hold’em post flop. The really interesting part though is that only five of the players are the standard TV professionals we usually see. The 6th player is what they call the “Loose Cannon.” This is a player who qualified through Pokerstars and then made it through a casting call. The Loose Cannon gets $100,000 from Pokerstars, but the twist is he / she only gets to keep the profit above that $100,000.
This week the Big Game’s Loose Cannon is a starstruck DC-ite named Ernest Wiggins. Ernest seems like a perfectly nice man, but his play is, for lack of a better word, garbage. I generally don’t like to criticize people’s play on this blog, but Wiggins’ play really is astounding. The problem is that he is clearly scared of his opponents (Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, Phil Laak, Tony G and Phil Helmuth), and is getting run over by them. Anyway, I think the lesson from this show is never to be concerned about the people you are playing with. Just know who is good and who is bad and play accordingly. Don’t get scared of people and don’t let reputations proceed anyone.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…
Beginning a few months before the WSOP every year all the major online poker sites begin running satellites to the Main Event. In 2009 Full Tilt Poker even offered satellites to some of the smaller events, which was a brilliant marketing move in my opinion. The great thing about these satellites is that online poker sites are no longer allowed to buy players in to any event at the World Series of Poker. This means they have to deposit the money to a player’s account and hope the player shows up. Because it’s great advertising for each site to have players in the World Series and on TV, most online poker sites, including the two biggest, Full Tilt and PokerStars, will provide incentives for satellite qualifiers to actually show up and play. These include extra spending money, free hotels, freeroll tournaments and other perks.
My decision to try to satellite could not have come at a better time. After having been detained by the NYPD Vice Squad I decided to keep a low profile until the WSOP and concentrate my play online.
I have never really written about playing online before, but any poker player who only plays live (particularly playing live poker in New York City) is missing out on an extraordinary amount of value and opportunity to improve.
Value
Sadly these days underground poker games do not run every day / night. Back in the early 2000s they might have, but these days there are usually only a couple games running on any given night (not including the various underground casinos around the city, which attract some crossover, but mostly a different clientele). This means that, just as you have to pick and choose what clubs to play at and whether to leave a must-move when you are about to be moved, you also have to decide every night whether to play online or live.
I happen to prefer playing live, so if a good game is running I will make every effort to be there, but sometimes I cannot escape the fact that I am going to make twice as much money online. Not only can I play more hands per hour, I can also play more tables. And if I am feeling particularly good or bad on a given day I can play higher or lower than I normally would.
Opportunity to Improve
I hate to say this as a mostly “live professional” poker player, but online players are, for the most part, better than live players. This is one reason that the live New York poker games can be so profitable, but they are *only* that profitable if I keep improving faster than my competition. By playing poker online in the comfort of my apartment (or at the Starbucks down the street from me as I often do…) I can see how others are playing and use software like PokerTracker to constantly evaluate my play. As a live poker player it is all too easy to forget about a hand once it is over.
Those of you who have quit your job to play poker for a living know that your friends have one of two reactions. Half the friends think it is the coolest idea ever and want to tell everyone they know that you have become a “professional poker player.” The other half, probably like your parents, tell you that you should probably just “quit while you’re ahead.”
If you quit to play in underground poker games in New York City, you can add in another group though, those who are worried you are going to get arrested, robbed, or shot. I guess some of those concerns are not that unfounded…
I began feeling out my friends to see if they would want to buy a piece of my action for the World Series of Poker, and found limited success. Some friends wanted to but did not feel comfortable with it, others just did not have the money or were worried about losing their jobs so wanted to save everything they had. I did find some success though and sold off $3000 of the $7000 I was looking for.
Next I approached people I used to work with, particularly those I knew loved poker and had introduced me to the New York poker scene. There I hit pay dirt. Everyone wanted a piece of someone playing in the WSOP just on the off chance that I hit. Within a week of blasting out a couple emails I was oversubscribed and had to start turning down investors. I wished I’d sold my shares for a higher price, but once I brought on investors at $1.40 per buy-in dollar I felt I had to honor it. It’s been said over and over again, all you have in poker or any gambling industry is your word. Once that is bad you have nothing else.
$10,000 in hand I did what any good player would do, I used part of my bankroll to jump on to the online poker sites PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker and tried to win a seat to the main event so I could get free lodging, spending cash, and essentially freeroll the WSOP.
I have to apologize for the delay. After getting busted by the NYPD vice squad playing in midtown I took a little break. Not from playing, but from playing sketchy games… well, from playing SUPER sketchy poker games. And, in the interest of not being hassled, I took a break from posting here.
Since it is coming up on World Series of Poker time again I thought it a good time to fill you all in on what has been happening.
Shortly after the bust I packed up and went to Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker. Forget the Rounders cliches, if you’re anybody in poker, that is to say anyone who plays poker for a living, you go to Vegas in July and you play in the WSOP. Even if you’re a banking-industry castoff who is playing 1-2 and 2-5 no limit for a living you scrounge up a bankroll and you find $10,000 to buy in.
A rule of thumb in the poker world is to have about 50 buy-ins for a poker tournament. Numbers vary, but I think that is reasonable. To put it bluntly I do not have $500,000 to put into poker tournaments. That said, the WSOP main event is the biggest poker tournament in the world and I wanted to have as much of myself as possible in the event. I decided to put in $3000 myself and sell off the other $7000 for 50%.
For those of you who have never tried to sell pieces of yourself before, it is an odd process. We all have friends who have said “You play poker? If I give you $100 can you turn it into $200??” Remember how obnoxious that was? Well, now you have to go talk to those friends and convince them that you the expected value on their $100 is $300, but that they could lose it all if you get unlucky or play poorly.
You might think the first people you’d want to talk to are your parents, but think about that. Do you REALLY want your parents questioning your chosen profession again? Chances are they were not thrilled with your original chosen profession. Do you really want them to have 7000 new reasons to convince you to leave?
So the other option is your friends…
All of a sudden the monitors went black, the dealers sprinted from their seats in the box, trying to look like normal patrons, and the NYPD Vice Squad busted into the room screaming “Everybody! Hands up! Hands over your heads!”
We all froze, hands high in the air, nobody moving a muscle.
“Anybody have any weapons on them???”
Silence.
The cops searched the whole apartment, presumably for money, drugs, people, whatever they could find. Then, with the 20 of us still sitting there, hands over our heads, they took us into the back room one by one.
When it was my turn to go the officer had me put my hands against the wall while he patted me down and emptied my pockets. Then a barrage of questions: name, address, logistics about the game etc etc. Thankfully I had only been here a couple times before so I could truthfully answer “I don’t know.”
The cop explained to me that they were not here for the players, they were only here to get the people running the games. They didn’t even take the $300 cash he found while patting me down!
Then something truly inexplicable happened. The cop asked me if I ever play in Atlantic City. I told him I do, and even sometimes up in Foxwoods. He seemed to be hanging on to my every word, so I told him about a trip I had planned to go to Vegas soon for the 2009 World Series of Poker, and he got really excited. Started asking me all sorts of questions about Vegas and the WSOP ad generally just forgot about why we were in this back room together.
Finally the door opened and he came out of his reverie. It was time for me to go back out to the general populous.
I sat back down in the main room, this time with my hands down, and two hours after seeing the Vice Squad sprint up the stairs I was free to wander back out on to the streets… Minus the $1,000 I left on the table.
Last night was going great until the SWAT team busted down the door.
I’ll back up.
About a week ago I started going to a new game. A dealer friend of mine mentioned a new spot he was working and suggested I stop by. The game was old school NYC poker club. It was nicer than any I’d been in, had two tables running, and even had a full on security system. Cameras watched you from the second you buzzed the building’s front door all the up to the apartment on the 4th floor.
Not only did this spot have a unique knack of making a player feel safe, but it also seemed to attract some of the weakest fish I had ever seen.
So after a couple weekend nights playing this new game I decided to come in on a weekday and see what the action was like. Just as I got there last night people were sitting down in the second game to start playing. I bought in a little deep, $300 in a $1-2NL game, and sat down ready to grind.
About five hands into the night this hand came up. I raised in middle position with ThTc and got three callers. The flop came Ts5c2s. I bet about ¾ of the pot to force any flush or straight draws to pay. I got one caller, a notorious chaser. The turn was my gin card, the 5s. This card made my opponent’s flush, but also completed my full house. I checked to the villain and slowly called his bet. On the blank river I went all-in and was insta-called by his flush. Good game you.
After picking up a few little pots here and there I pulled almost the same exact stunt on another player who was sitting $400 deep, and got his whole stack. What a night. Only about 2hrs in and I’m already sitting on a $1,000 stack! This game was great, but unfortunately it was a must-move, which means as seats opened in the main game players had to move from my table. Unfortunately the main table was a terrible nitty game, so by the time I was next to move I figured I would just rack up and leave when it was my turn to push.
And the all hell broke loose.
All of a sudden the monitors lit up with cops in uniform sprinting up the building’s stairs with guns drawn…
I will post the rest of this story in the next few days.
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When I left you I was on the bus to Atlantic City, recounting past adventures with colorful degenerates. So, I was on my way down to Caesar’s in AC to play the $340 buy-in WSOP Circuit event. The tournament gave plenty of chips to start and nice long levels, so there was no reason to bust out early.
I found my table and sat down in the 4-seat. Looking around, the table did not look too worrying. The guy immediately to my right was youngish & aggressive looking, while the rest were middle-aged to old and either looked uncomfortable at the table or looked entirely too confident. In the words of Quagmire from Family Guy, “Dear Diary, Jackpot.”
We played raise and take it for a while, followed by raise, continuation bet, and take it, which brought me up to about 6000 chips (from a starting stack of 4000). I had most of the table covered, with the exception of the 7-seat, who had been given a gift of a double-up by a guy making a move with 2nd pair. Then this hand came up. I was on the button, the 1-seat called, I raised with TsTh, the big blind called, and the 1 seat called. The flop came 2s5s7h. Big blind checked, 1-seat bet into me, I went all-in (having them both covered by about 2000 chips), big blind called, and 1-seat called. Big blind had a set of sevens and 1-seat had AcQc for the nut flush draw. Turn was a 9h and the river was the Tc. I rivered a set, but it made the 1-seat’s flush. Thankfully the big blind had more chips than the 1-seat, so I got a small rebate.
After raising or 3-betting a few hands, I worked my way up a little, and when I failed ot get paid off with the nut straight, I made my way back up to about 4000. Then came my rapid demise.
Blinds were 100-200, button was on the 9-seat, the 3-seat called, and I called with 99. The 6-seat threw in 2 chips, meaning to call, but actually throwing in a purple and a black for a raise to 600 (As soon as he realized his mistake he said “Crap, is that binding?? And the dealer declared a raise to 600). Knowing this, the 8-seat just called, everyone else folded, including the 3-seat, and I was put to a decision. With 1900 in the pot and 4000 behind, I thought there was a good chance I could just take the pot right here. The 6-seat will almost always fold to a raise, unless he is shooting an angle, and the 7-seat has to fold. His call has shown that he has something like KQ, QJ, or a pair, mostly likely 99 or worse. After the mistaken raise he would have re-raised with any decent hand. So I shoved.
The 6-seat insta-folded and the 7-seat thought for at least a few minutes. I had him covered by 200 chips, so he was calling 3800 chips to win 5700. After a few minutes, he finally calls… and rolls over KQ offsuit. We are off to the races. He rivers a Q on me and that is pretty much it for my tournament life. An interesting play, and one that really should have worked, but sometimes shit happens.
Busted from the tournament I stuck my tail back between my legs and grabbed the next bus back to the City. I could have sworn I saw the crotchety old dealer sitting in the back seat.
A lot of players will think I’m crazy, but I have always enjoyed playing tournaments. Granted, they are high variance and can take forever, but your payday can be huge, so what the heck I’ll play them every once in a while.
The WSOP Circuit was in town recently. By “in town” I actually mean Atlantic City, NJ, and although this blog is generally about playing the underground games in the city, occasionally you will have to indulge me on a trip to one of the dirtiest, most depressing places on earth, the land happily known by only its initials A & C.
The bus down to AC is a cheap easy jaunt, two hours, $15 when you clear your bonus at the casino, and some of the least enjoyable company you could imagine. Granted, not everyone is angry and depressed, but any random sample will likely find at least 70% with those two attributes. Indulge me in a story from my past:
A couple years ago, when I was playing poker seriously, but not professionally, I decided to make the trek to Atlantic city late one night. It was about midnight, one of the last busses for the night, and I had had a few too many drinks to be making rational decisions like “not going to AC”, but there was a big July 4th tournament at the Borgata the next day, so at the last minute I took a friend up on her offer of a free suite at Bally’s and bussed on out of the city.
The man sitting next to me was old and weathered looking. He looked, well, like he should be on a bus to Atlantic City at midnight on the Tuesday before 4th of July. He looked like a slot jockey, that beautiful creature who can sit for hours praying to its one-armed god - now more like its buttoned god. A creature who needs nothing more than a frequent player’s card, a lanyard, and a bucket full of quarters to find true happiness.
We are about 20 minutes into the ride when I turn to my companion and ask “So what are you going down to play” and his response surprised me.
“1-2 no limit at the Trop and 5-10 stud at the Taj” he grumbled.
A little surprised I asked what he did for a living and he muttered “That.”
Okay, at this point the old guy kind of surprised me, but I guess maybe he was some retiree eeking out a living between that and social security, or maybe he had a nice retirement fund to work with.
After another minute or two of small talk and short answers, yeah, I was prying, the guy says “I deal a game out of Queens too.” Okay, so the guy deals in Queens and plays in AC.
“What’d you do before that?”
“Before that?”
“Before you were dealing a game in Queens.”
“What do you mean before I was dealing a game in Queens? When I was growing up I ran a craps game for my dad, then I started dealing.”
Okay, there was my answer. A man who spent his life in the New York gambling world. When he was young it was craps, now at the age most men are retiring to the golf courses he has graduated to poker.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Atlantic City.
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