Bride’s Maid
No that isn’t the typical form. But this isn’t about being princess for a day. It is about being an also ran – twice.
I have been playing that little high-lo stud tournament on UB. It a $3.30 – not quite the Sunday Million. I can report it takes a little over three hours to lose to an idiot. Well, that isn’t quite true. Only one was a total idiot. I’ve been playing it to try to get a better handle on the hi-lo games.
Yes, in the last two, I came in second. Boo! Yea! Boo! Take your choice. After the second, I’m going with boo.
I have concluded that the hi-lo is a very girly game. I attribute my enjoyment of it to the failing testosterone level associated with aging. Others may attribute even less attractive reasons. The horror of this is I’ve come to enjoy it. I even feel I am approaching competence. I have yet to figure out what is a good starting hand. Fortunately, those at my table seem even less far along in that area.
The first girly thing is, of course, that it is a limit tournament. It is impossible to go broke on the first hand. In fact it takes real accomplishment to do it in the first hour. There’s always one or two up to the challenge. That first hour is boring. Well, occasionally the cards are generous and you can swim with the fishes. The low levels turn many hands into family pots. So, I do splash along with the crowd when I have a reasonable though speculative hand. But, even with pot odds I tend to fold the total trash. You can steal my bringin with easy. I should wear a apron and fill the chat with ironing hints. I’m Heloise with a green eye shade.
The thing that becomes apparent with time is that being an idiot about it only rewards the idiots about. If you don’t have a hand that has the chance to scoop, you are chopping pots that don’t really build a stack. And, if you are a speculator, the result is a placeholder under the best circumstances. People are playing with blinders. The agros have to complete and raise with abandon. The enjoyment comes from watching this play out. Gotta take your enjoyment where you find it.
About an hour and a half in, you get to shift out of granny gear. (That what we called first gear back in the days there were three peddles on the floor board.) Now you start to use all those lovely reads you picked up earlier. You might even start playing those high-only hands from time to time. Although, I find it +EV more for others. Yesterday, even my rolled up tens flamed out.
Some get even more stupid aggressive here. On 7th street, over half of everyone’s card are exposed. There will be surprises but the boards are there for all to see. Hands like the quads I showed in a previous blog happen; but, there is a rarity factor that is ignored with abandon. In a NL game, half the field is gone. Here, there might be 10% making the walk. You build a stack here with the school still swimming around. God help you if you are totally card dead. The time between 1.5 and 2.5 hours is one you need to position yourself in. Worst case is an average stack that will bring on added gamble sooner rather than later. But, you can work a short stack but it sucks.
We’ve reached the point the game starts to play like NL. Even the bigger stacks become vulnerable. Many are still playing their hand like they did when playing a hand was a cheap date. They’ll brick and still fire. It can become ridiculously easy. Card death here is devastating.
Limit tournaments are all about gear changes. This goes right over the head of about 90% of the players. Limit is a very tactical game. That’s its allure. Cards are a bit less important than in NL. You can get by on less. I’m finding that making your way toward the end is as satisfying a tournament as you can play. It gives you the chance to exercise all of your game and, yes, make a few more mistakes than NL tolerates along the way.
If you haven’t played limit tournaments, you might be missing some gratification. Yeah, it has it ugly disappointments and draw outs too. But, it is closer to a chess match. It is strange to say but the unknown factor isn’t as dominant. It really lets you exercise all of your game.
ADDENDUM:
The heads up were different. The first was against a total agro. I started out pretty well. It was letting myself push off hands and trapping when possible. I am embarrassed to say that he finally managed to tilt me.
The second was more tactical. We actually managed to play some poker. I repeatedly was able to position myself with promise but could pull it off. In the end, his draws worked and mine didn’t. It was close to minimal gratification. Whoop-de-do.
Afterward, relying on the power of my Stud8b game progress, I moved over to a ring table and promptly lost two buy-ins.
No related posts.
I've heard somewhere that good LImit players know when to fold on the river and save that one bet. Do you agree with this, or is the pot so big that it's worth it to call?
Well, in the absences of a good limit player, I will try to respond.
That is something I’m doing on occasions and sometimes even earlier. But, the thing is that there are often 12+ big bets in the pot. A crying call for the low only has to be right 1:6. And, it makes a bigger crying call if you’ve a hand playing both ways.
At the levels I’m playing at I don’t see the attribute in action very often. I’ll do it at times or even earlier to aggression and see I was bluffed. This usually happens when the board looks to be playing one way but is playing the other. That isn’t an unusual occurrance. What I often do is play the other guy’s tendancies. I am using a tracker program and that gives me more info — although, I don’t use it to its fullest extent either.
But your question meshes with some of the first advice I got from a really good limit player, “It often isn’t what you win but what you don’t lose.” Other advice of his didn’t translate as well. But that’s the difference between 10-20 and .25-.50. I see some of it when I’ll play a juicy 1-2 table but it is just a slightly greater degree.
The thing I’ve slowly come to is waiting to push hands that are good but not quite made early. It is the biggest leak I see for many players. They persist in betting hands that are best considered crying calls. That’s especially true of high hands that are often won with what would be total junk on a regular stud table.