Cash Games at Commerce

So in the last three multi-table tournaments I’d played as of last Monday, I’d gone 2nd, busto, and 1st. A pretty good streak, I’d say. I started to think about things. How can I do so well in tournament play and so mediocre in cash games?

I decided that the reason I didn’t do as well in cash games was that in the games in which I play (i.e., the lower limits), there are many more players seeing the flop than in your average tournament. Players in tournaments are trying to survive, and you can generally assume that if you raise preflop, you will have fewer opponents with narrower hand ranges after the flop. So it becomes easier to put people on hands, and thus you can avoid being trapped or you can take down pots when they have nothing.

In my live games, by contrast, there could be six players seeing the flop after a raise of 5x the big blind and they could be holding virtually anything. Playing only big cards just doesn’t work so well against half the table because most flops are going to give you either a single pair or nothing.

This renders continuation betting virtually useless. Rarely will you be able to take down the pot, so you’d probably better have a fairly strong hand (at least two pair, often) to be betting. But if you adhere to this, your bets will scare out the other players and you won’t get paid off so well.

After reaching this conclusion, I decided to stick to tournaments and forego cash games completely until I could afford to play at higher limits.

This resolution didn’t last long. On Friday, I went back to Hollywood Park to play in the rebuy tourney. Open-ended straight draws got there three times out of three, and I was done quickly. Stupid tourneys, I told myself. I'm going back to cash.

Saturday, I was sitting around my apartment, looking for something to do. The casino was calling. I decided to drive down to Commerce, since I hadn’t been there in a while, and play some live no limit before the UCLA football game. Played pretty well, and didn’t take any major bad beats. I walked out up $340. Hey, I thought, maybe I’m not so bad at cash games after all.

Sunday, I went back, but I had some reservations about it. I was afraid that Saturday had been a fluke, and that I would merely be giving back what I had won the previous day. But again, boredom got the best of me, and I made my way over.

I played good – but not mistake-free – poker, enough to be up $200 after about an hour. Around that time, I saw a familiar face sit down at the table and I could barely believe my eyes. It was Sgt. Donk from Vegas, back when I vacationed there in May. He was visiting a friend in Los Angeles (he lives in Maine, himself), and they randomly decided to play some poker. I couldn’t fathom what the odds were on that. It’s a very small world indeed.

I continued to play well. Took a horrendous beat at one point, for a huge pot, and I completely lost my composure. I was visibly steaming, and in my mind I recognized that I was in grave danger of giving away all my winnings for the day, and maybe even more from my wallet. I could just feel it coming.

But the strangest thing happened. I’m used to seeing poker players try and take advantage of another player who is on tilt. They say things to make him angrier and to play worse, and they gun for him in every pot they can. Didn’t happen last night. Quite the opposite, in fact. The guy to my immediate left, as well as Sgt. Donk, actually went out of their way to talk me off the ledge. They deliberately engaged me in conversation about everything but poker, until I calmed down and was my normal happy-go-lucky poker self. Later on, they let me know that they didn’t want to see me blow up and lose a lot of money. I’m quite grateful to them for that – I’ve never seen that kind of class at a poker table before.

Anyway, thanks in part to them, I later took everything I’d lost back from the guy that put the beat on me, and a few hundred more on top. I ended the day up $701. Combined with Saturday, that makes a nice little two-day run.

I would like to think that my cash game play has been fine all along, and that I had just been having a run of worse than average luck at the casinos. But I know that’s not entirely true. I’ve learned a lot in the past few months, reading the Harrington on Hold’em series, as well as the recently-released Professional No Limit Hold’Em and How to Dominate $1 and $2 No Limit Hold’em. I plugged several leaks in my game with them, and I highly recommend them.

So what does this all mean? I’m up over $3,700 in the past week – by far the best run in my career. Can I keep it up? I certainly hope so.

I left the game last night a little earlier than I might have. But my stack was at a nice round $801, and the guy that had put the bad beat on me had donked his way into a stack of $400. Plus, he had been gunning for me for a while. Every time I entered a pot, he moved all in pre-flop, regardless of his hole cards. I had survived several of those in order to attain my current stack, but with the way his stack was growing, I was getting a little wary of risking my chips. I decided to call it a night.

But before I took off, Sgt. Donk spoke to me away from the table for a little bit. I found out that his real name was Adam, and he apologized profusely for mispronouncing my name in Vegas and last night. He asked for my contact information, so that we could stay in touch. He said that he really liked the way I played, and asked if I ever needed a backer or someone to stake me in the WSOP or anything. He said that in Maine and being in the military, he didn't get to play very often. But he recognized a great player on the rise, and he wanted a piece of my action if I ever made it big.

I was stunned. It was the last thing I had expected from a guy like this. I graciously gave him my information, and I told him that I would love the opportunity to have such an arrangement with him. We parted ways as friends.

I can hardly describe what it felt like to hear that from a guy. That level of respect ... just made me feel validated. All the hard work that I had put in over the past three years. Everything I had learned. All the frustration and the euphoria, the backaches and the headaches, the laughs and the cries -- it was all worth it now. I didn't really care about the $701 I'd won any more. Hearing those words of praise for my poker-playing ability was worth a hell of a lot more.