The Poker Mutant will be retiring (mostly) from poker on 1 January. This is the latest installment in his thrilling countdown to the End of Times.
Before I went to bed last night, jumped into the Ignition Casino $400 GTD PLO and played it for about 45 minuted—actually getting up to 2nd place in the 60-player field after a big hand—and only realized it was actually PLO8 after I’d busted out. At least I wasn’t the guy I played with at the Venetian a few years back who bought into a $400 tournament only to do the same sort of thing (“I was kind of wondering why none of the hands had a low…”). It might be embarrassing if I mentioned it to anyone.
This was how the second hand of that tournament went. I had won the first hand, and was up to 6000 chips from a starting stack of 5000. Late entry, blinds were 125/250. 8 players at the table, I was hijack, with [th 8d 8c 7d]. I was the first caller. The dealer (6450 chips, [ts td 5h 3s]) limped in with me, then the small blind (12,197 chips) raised to 1450 with [as ah 9s 3c]. I called, then the dealer called.
Now, according to the CardPlayer Omaha Odds Calculator, with the player in there with aces my chance of winning the hand doesn’t change from a heads-up match against the pair of tens, but he’s the dog in the three-way fight. Flip the Hi/Lo switch and things stay pretty much the same.
Anyway, the flop is great for me: [8s 2s 2c]. I shoot up to 57% equity. The small blind pots his aces, I’m all in to call with my full house, and the dealer—who has nearly a full starting stack—shoves with a weak flush draw (beat by the nut flush draw of the aces) and a bad low draw. The aces called.
The turn [3d] counterfeited the lows of both players, then the [9h] river shipped me the pot, so I more than tripled to 18375. Nice start, but I made a bad call another 40 hands down the line.
Got a 5x NLHE Jackpot Sit-n-Go, and managed to get out front after a bad start, but ended up going out third.
After doing stuff around the house (mostly sitting), I headed out to the Final Table $2K GTD NLHE. Our table had a drunk guy from “down the valley” who said he’d won a tournament earlier in the day. I stacked him twice in the same level, once when he 3-bet [qs 4s] and I 4-bet [qx qx] and he called. I don’t remember what he had when I called his shove with almost an entire rebuy stack, but I won that, too. I was up to 45K early on, then doubled up an annoying player I’ve mentioned before when I had aces under the gun and just limped in expecting a raise from someone at the tableNaturally, when I c-bet and the annoying guy raised for most of his stack on a king-high board, I had to put him all in and he had [kx 6x] for two pair.
Doubled up once when I got down to about 10bb and we were at two tables, lost a chunk to the player I doubled through with an open-ended straight draw where he had top pair and a deuce kicker, then just never managed to put it together.
