Money Hater

MoneyHater now has its own poker forum. If you want to discuss limit hold’em hands with the best minds on the planet, this is the place to be.

http://www.moneyhater.com/forum/

I have been haunted by the 3s lately. It seems that every time someone needs a 3, regardless of how horribly bad they have played their hand, it comes. In the past 3 days, the 3s have wrecked me. I have 3 examples of the 3s.

First is a live hand where I have two aces. This happens to be my favorite hand. So, when someone raises in late position, I understandably increase the betting to 3bets from the small blind with my aces. It is, after all, my favorite hand. The BB decides that this would be a good spot to 4bet with, you guessed it, 33. I know, you’re thinking “why would anyone ever do that with a hand that only has 33% equity against RANDOM hands, much less hands that people have CHOSEN to play, especially when the original raiser will never fold anything and if either of them have a big pair, he can’t have more than 16% equity?” I don’t have an answer for you, but I am sure he figures he can make up a TON of equity if a 3 hits. This seems reasonable. Anyway, BB 4bets, the other guy calls and I just call because I am sneaky and have clearly overestimated BB and assumed he’d have a hand here. Of course it comes 345 and I lose a lot but not as much as I should have, thankfully, as I bet the river and he inexplicably just called, on a board of 34589.

The next hand is also from a live game. I am in the SB with red T8. 2 guys limp in and it comes 984 with two clubs. No one bets. The turn is a red 5. I now bet, and a guy with 62 in the BB calls. I know, you’re thinking, “why would anyone ever call that bet with a maximum of 8 outs (2 of which make a flush) when they are only getting 3:1, in this tiny pot and aren’t even closing the action? ” Again, I don’t have an answer for you, other than maybe BB thinks I’ll go crazy on the river if he makes his hand. I know, you’re thinking “But you can’t bet most rivers given his turn line, much less go crazy, so he’ll never make up the money that he put in so bad on the turn. Not to mention you may fold if he makes his hand but the flush hits. Gross.” Again, I have no answer for you. Sorry. The river was a non flush 3. I checked, he bet, and I called and lost to his straight.

The last hand comes from a 50/100 game online. Many assume that in such a game, the players must be much more skilled because of the fact that the game is so big. This is not the case, as will become evident in a moment. An awful player limped in with A2 of diamonds, some guy raised and I called on the button with 44, both blinds called. The flop came down T54r. The preflop raiser bets, I raise, the blinds fold, the A2 guy now decides to check/3bet, the initial raiser folds and I call because now I get to raise the turn and raising the turn with a set is so much fun. I know, you’re thinking “why would that guy do that on the flop with just a gutshot and an overcard that may or may not be good vs. two guys who clearly like their hands?” My answer would be, “same reason he limped in preflop.” The turn comes a queen, he bets, I raise, he calls. Guess what the river was?

I get to see people play super bad whenever I sit down at a poker table. If people aren’t playing super bad, I’d have to find another game, as why would I want to play with people who play good? Thankfully, people play super bad. I am used to this and have come to expect it. On occasion someone will exhibit a level of incompetence that jolts me for some reason. Perhaps I had not seen such utter incompetence in a while, or I thought a guy played OK but then he goes and does THAT. Whatever. I have seen just about everything when it comes to bad play. It is not new to me, and I have become numb to it for the most part, yet I still appreciate it for its inherent beauty.

Recently I experienced something I cannot recall ever having experienced before. Two players, one awful, the other marginal, but both with grossly inflated perceptions of their respective poker abilities, get involved in a pot where they both play really bad. They then engage in a slightly heated debate about who played their hand well and who didn’t. Each had to make several decisions in the hand and each got more than half of their respective decisions wrong, but neither understood this and thus were passionately arguing their case. It was surreal. I felt like Galileo having to listen to people explain how they know that the sun revolves around the earth. They are dead wrong, yet not only do they think that they are right, they have a bunch of ‘evidence’ to support their claim that they will cite with beaming pride. What can you say to someone like that? Well, you can’t say one word without having to follow that word with at least 50 more that they probably aren’t going to understand anyway, so I kept my mouth shut and observed in stunned, giddy silence the spectacle that was unfolding before me. Thankfully these guys are merely incompetent yet arrogant poker players, as opposed to incompetent yet arrogant structural engineers, airline pilots or heart surgeons.

“The proper way to perform open heart surgery is to have the patient lie on his right side. You want him on his right side so that his heart is close to you. If he lies on his left, you have to dig more deeply to get to the heart, and that is bad. We want the heart close to us. Granted, we will have to amputate the left arm in order to get at the heart, but having no left arm is better than being dead. Plus, most people are right handed so their left arm is more likely to be expendable.”

“You are wrong. It doesn’t matter what side he lies on, because the heart is actually in the middle of the chest. The heart being on the left is only true in cartoons and Hallmark cards. Since losing a limb is a very serious thing, it should be up to the patient, not the doctor, to decide which limb is lost. Duh. You call yourself a heart surgeon and you don’t even know THAT?”

I hate online poker. Hate it. My mother would cringe if she heard me say that. “Bobby, hate is a very strong word”.

I understand that I toss that word around more liberally than perhaps I should, but that does not change the fact that I do indeed hate online poker. I even feel that ‘hate’ is inadequate to describe the depths of disdain I feel for online poker. I make money playing it, but if online poker were sitting on a bench eating an ice cream cone, I would careen off of the road and run it over without a second thought. I would do it harm.

It is like exercise. We know it is good for us and sometimes we even enjoy doing it, but if we never had to do it again it and could still live the way we wanted, we’d be thrilled.

In live poker, you get to see who your opponents are and they get to see you. This is not the case online, which creates an environment of anonymity that has a two-pronged effect.

First, some people feel they can speak freely (via a ‘chat’ box where one can type things that the whole table can read) without any reprisal. Profanity and insults are tossed about with reckless abandon. One of my favorites is when one player calls another player, whom he cannot see and likely knows nothing about, a ‘nigger’ or ‘jew’ or a ‘fag’. I have been called all of these things and more, in spite of the fact that I am a heterosexual white guy whose mother was a nun and whose dad was inches from the priesthood. Thankfully, no one has called me a fat, out of shape jackass with greying hair, as that may actually irritate me given that it hits pretty close to the mark.

Second, people tend to do things they may not do if they had to face a bunch of guys staring at them with “what the hell were you thinking?” looks on their faces. When a guy in a live game plays a hand like a moron (assuming he knows he indeed did play it like a moron), he usually looks embarrassed and like he wishes he could disappear. It’s like singing in the shower. No one wants to get caught doing it, because it is rarely pretty.

Online games also are extremely aggressive, and typically mindlessly so. Imagine a boxer trying to kill a fly by punching it. Lots of flailing about and fury, but no dead fly. Even the guys who allegedly win money are prone to spazztarded fits of mindless aggression. If you told me that the other players were actually blindfolded 2 year old boys, with those plastic hammers that 2 years old boys have, pounding on the mouse/keyboard, I would believe it.

Recently I played a hand vs. a guy who knows who I am, and thus should know that (a) he could never beat me and (b) I don’t ever fold anything ever. He raised with Q6o on the button (questionable in the first place), I 3bet the SB, and now he decides to 4bet with this thing. He is only a 51/49 favorite to win the hand, and that is if my hand is RANDOM. When I 3bet, the following are true (a) my hand is not random and (b) I ain’t folding anything that beats Q-high. Why on earth would anyone choose to put in MORE money in this spot? Same reason one would try to kill a fly with an uppercut.

Wow.