Fortune favours the … Maniac’s
December 5, 2006
Well, I played the 1st game of the league tournament games for December, last Friday night. I tried to keep in mind what I had written about in my last post and…………… I went out early.
Yet I am confident the strategy worked. The first 30 minutes of the tournament I was pretty dominant and was chip leader practically from the off.
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| About 35 minutes in I was tripped up by the leagues semi-maniac, who called my 4xBB on the pre-flop and then again on the flop, up until then I had top pair and ace kicker with a gutshot straight draw, the semi-maniac had nothing except a gutshot draw, he hit top pair on the turn and that was the end of that hand.Not much I could do about that, he really had no right to be in the hand after the flop and my subsequent raise.Stayed with the ‘strategy’ and won a few more hands, until on the SB I limped in to the pot and hit 2 pairs on the flop, the board was all low to middle cards and just me and someone with a pocket pair, who lucked out and hit a set on either the turn or river I can’t recall exactly.
For me the important thing was the strategy was working quite well. The two hands I lost to, I would have lost to big time even playing my normal strategy, one was against a loose betting player who just got real lucky, (he was out shortly after me I noticed) and one was against a normally tight player who has been a little erratic of late, with one of those 7% hands. Even against the 7% hand I was winning the hand with 2 pair when we pushed all in, until he hit a 25-1 shot on the turn/river. It felt weird playing so differently and after I hit the chip lead I kept wanting to reign back in, I had to really force myself to keep the aggressiveness going and man I have to admit it (the strategy) was holding it’s own. I caught a couple of those seemingly loose players with their hands firmly in the cookie jar more than once. I wasn’t at all concerned about going out of the game after 40 minutes or so. It was a learning experience for me, I had to keep to the strategy, just to see. Now I have seen, I know next time to adjust some things and keep on that way, fine tuning the playing style. After the league game I played some $10 sit and go’s, = bubble, 1st and a 2nd. No play Saturday for me. Sunday played the late game in our league and this time adjusted my style slightly. Was sitting quite pretty, picked up AA on the SB, made a hefty raise as there were enough callers in the hand by the time it came around to me. All folded except.. you guessed it the semi-maniac who called me. Woot! Trip aces, made an even heftier raise just under half my stack and… you guessed it the semi-maniac called me. Well the board wasn’t showing any danger, no connectors and just my ace. Turn came and still nothing too dangerous showing, I bet into it again and … you guessed it the semi-maniac went all in this time, I was pot committed and had the nuts at that point, ok all in. And…. You guessed it the flipping maniac (no longer a’ semi’ in my books I promoted him to full maniac status) hit the river for a straight. No matter how well you prepare, no matter how well you play the game, when push comes to shove, you can’t beat outrageous luck. I understand that luck plays more than a good part in the hand but, well annoying though, for the same maniac to suck me out with very poor starting hands twice in consecutive tournaments. Monday’s game I was in for exactly 12 hands and I kept notes on my hole cards;
Awful hands for the 1st 11 deals and then pocket rockets, which lost to someone on the SB with a 10-2 that 2 paired on the flop.. G’night blagger.. I didn’t even get a chance to play any strategy. The nearest thing to connectors was 7-9 and not one hand suited, before the rockets hit. I am taking a break from league games for a while, I am not enjoying them right now. Even that old horse whisperer Lardog is off on a self imposed sabbatical from the game, as he feeling pretty much the same way. Personally I think he is taking time off to try and devise a new way to circumnavigate the wonderful defensive properties of my tin foil beanie hat. So it’s off to the cash tables and sit and go’s for me for a while, at least until I get some kind of hunger/buzz again for league games. Good luck to all (except the maniac of course) —————————— Remember you are welcome to add and read comments, just click on the comments (no comments) tag directly below any blog entry. |
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6 Responses to “Fortune favours the … Maniac’s”
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Well Blagger, I was in the shadows watching your table last night because of a certain player I wanted to monitor, you know the one. I saw you fold every hand until hand # 12, and I believe it was a 6 2 offsuit that did in your pocket rockets when that “maniac” hit two pair on the flop.
What the hell can you do when your up against luck? Fold a hand that wins 70% of the time? I wish I had the answer, but I don’t. You may want to ask LarDog01 what he’d do although I can’t imagine he would say fold AA. I know LarDog01 has studied every kind of poker stat ever written and I’m pretty sure he plays percentage poker most of the time, except for the occasional boneheaded bet to try to steal a pot, and yet even he gets sucked out on very often by these same league members. I’m not saying that LarDog01 doesn’t get lucky from time to time, I have seen him go all in with pocket 8’s against pocket K’s and hit a set on the flop, but LarDog01 admits when it was luck and doesn’t pretend he was supposed to win, but that doesn’t change the fact he got lucky and it doesn’t make the player with KK feel any better.
So now that we can admit luck is a bigger part of the game than most of the poker book pushing pros want us to think, how do we move forward against these maniacs? Almost every pro out there says the amateur uses the all in bet too often. It’s because they don’t want to risk their tournament life to call an all in even with a very strong hand 12 hands into a tourney.
Maybe we should take a lesson from the amateurs this time and go all in pre flop every time we have AA. Sure, we won’t win many monster pots that way but maybe, just maybe, we won’t get called by some maniac with 6 2 off.
Wow Blag, sounds like a tough night. You did, however get to test some playing stategies which will help your game.
Luck, to me, is winning a hand over a bigger hand when you should have been in the hand in the first place.
Having someone suck out a hand when they shouldn’t even have been in the hand is another story. That to me this is “stupid luck”. Stupid Luck prevails sometimes but stupid luck also affects me more than regular luck.
I can understand and accept regular luck while playing. Lets say I have A Q and raise and get called by A J. On the flop a J hits and my opponent wins the hand.
To me this is luck. I don’t blame my opponent for being in the hand. He called with a decent hand and got lucky.
Stupid Luck on the other hand effects me more because it takes some of the emotional joy of playing away from me. I start thinking “why play against this?”. There is no way to win or play right to counter this.
Also, you get the feeling that the Stupid Luck opponent doesn’t really care about the game or players which makes it even harder to stay.
I didn’t get a chance to play all weekend. Other commitments. Maybe that was lucky of me considering your experience.
I would be happy to play with you any time. You are a good player. Don’t let it get you down too much.
Hopefully, I will see ya soon.
In reverse order..
Svcmgr.. Yup good phrase “stupid luck”, I’ll be using that one.
And yup exactly right, it is stupid luck that really irritates. You simply cannot play or counter it, what makes it extra irritating is when the same player catches you with stupid luck two tournaments running. It hasn’t got me down mate, just annoyed enough to stop playing the league games for a while.
It’s like this, I don’t need to have to put up with maniacs with “stupid luck” ripping my carefully earned chip stack to pieces. The league games are tough tight ol’games and you can sit there for 60-80 minutes playing strong good poker then along comes Mr 8-2 off and g’night folks.
I can go and play a $20 sit and go with 1st prize of $100 and not have to contend with being sucked out on the river by stupid luck.. And it takes a lot less time to play the game.
You can only play so many hours of poker a day and right now I think I’d rather play my window on tables where the maniacs can’t afford to play. Can’t afford to play because they surely would be broke if they played them regularly.
Just so I don’t ruffle any feathers or anger any of our league members, I used the term “maniac” only in the most endearing way.
Pinkdog,
Pretty much agree with all what you said. Yes it does make it ever so slightly more annoying when you get sucked out by a hand that shouldn’t have even been in the hand yet that player seems to think he made the right play and is somehow justified because he then took the hand down.
As far as how do we play these maniacs, I know for a fact the maniac we are talking about here, would not last 5 minutes playing the sit and go’s me and Lardog and Svcmgr and Lippy played the other night. The maniacs simply would lose too much money playing that style.
Now as for playing them in the league game is very difficult, because hardly anyone else on the tables will up the ante and fight fire with fire. Last Friday I opened up on the loose players and chancers and took them for a lot of chips. I was tournament chip leader for a while and the one really irritating maniac I had knocked down to 350 chips within 25 minutes.
But, I was on my own somewhat, and the other players stayed ultra tight and basically fed him chips when I wasn’t in the hand. Within 15 minutes he had his chipstack back and some, mostly because everyone was folding to his aggressive play. Next time I was in a hand against him he pulled an inside straight on the river.
It was going to happen sooner or later, I can play the odds more aggressively and take the maniac’s chips more often than not, but when the maniac is getting fed chips by more conservative players, he has a neverending fuel line. Then eventually that ’stupid luck’ will pay him out against me.
Making a move or bluff so to speak is an entirely different matter Pinkdog, that is part of the skillset of a good pokerplayer, luck has a part to play as well. No good poker player would consider stupid luck as part of his arsenal though. Any poker player that does is …well… stupid.
I totally agree. I too play the SNG’s. Usually, the 6 or 10 dollar tables. I actually played at a 20 dollar one the other day. First time. Needless to say the pucker factor was quite high. I got third and got some money,so that was good.
At the 6 and 10’s there “generally” isn’t a lot of stupid luck players. If there are, they get found out quickly and get dispatched by most of the players at the table.
At these tables, the players watch things like betting patterns, calling positions, raising situations, and cards played so Mr. Stupid Lucky usually doesn’t last too long.
I too have very limited time to play. I want my experience to be fun, educational, and challenging. If that gets taken away, there is no reason to play there anymore. Hopefully, this won’t happen to me in the League which would force me to move elsewhere.