A Boring Poker Story.

From my recent trip to the Hawaiian Gardens Casino:

My first foray to a casino in California. I went with my friend Robin, who was visiting from San Diego. He assured me that the poker games at Hawaiian Gardens were easy to beat. The game of choice was No Limit Hold 'Em, $20 max buy-in, with $1 blinds. With blinds that high in relation to the buy-in, $20 could go very fast. It sounded like a game designed to part casual players from their twenty bucks.

The casino is located near Long Beach, which is about thirty minutes from Los Angeles. The place is pretty nondescript -- none of the glitz or sheen of Vegas, or even Foxwoods. The poker room itself is pretty large and the tables are spaced out nicely. Most of the residents in the area are Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese, and as such most of the staff and half of the customers are Asian. Robin and I didn't have to wait long for a seat. We were seated at neighboring tables.

I sat down and bought my $20 worth of shitty chips -- thin clay composites with little heft. At first I had to battle nerves. It had been a while since I played No Limit at a casino, and that session ended with me getting busted in 20 minutes. I had been way too concerned with outplaying my opponents and 'getting fancy' when I should have realized a few things:

1. At the lowest levels of poker, people don't recognize moves and generally play straight forward poker.
2. There are a lot of people just looking to mess around and have fun.
3. I'm really not good enough to outplay too many people.

Now that I understood these things, I decided just to play straight forward poker, almost as if this were a Limit game.
Problem was, I wasn't catching anything in the early going. Lots of garbage like 4-9 and 3-8. The few times I had a so-so hand, somebody would raise it up and I'd have to dump. People were raising and calling with very speculative hands too. After an hour or so, I had to rebuy. Robin, after some initial victories, eventually lost his original buy-in too. He decided to call it a day and got a ride from a friend.*

Around that time things started turning around. Some of the wilder players had left the table, allowing for more limping (calling the big blind). I started catching cards and hitting flops. Pretty soon I had doubled my money. My confidence was high and I started feeling very comfortable at the table.

Then I was dealt pocket aces on the button.

A few people limped in and action was on me. I raised it up five times the big blind ($5), having the best starting hand and the best position. The older gent in the big blind, who was dubbed 'Mr. Slowplay' by another player, smooth called my raise and everybody else folded.

The flop: 2s 3s 4h

Looked harmless enough. Mr. Slowplay checked. I fired out a $5 bet and he called. Since Mr. Slowplay generally liked to play drawing hands, I figured he had a spade flush draw. Very poor judgment on my part.

The turn: A of hearts

I now had a set (three of a kind) of Aces. The only hand that could beat mine at this point was a straight. He checked again. I wanted to end the hand right here and bet out $10. Mr. Slowplay very calmly went all in. I stopped and thought about it. Maybe he hit a straight holding pocket 5's. Maybe he was still on his flush draw and was semi-bluffing by coming over the top. Maybe he has AK, AQ, or AJ. What made the most sense to me was that he had pocket 2's, 3's, or 4's -- he had his own set, figured that I had something like AK or AQ and would call his all-in now that I had a hand. If by some deranged miracle he had a straight, I had a very slim chance of making a full house or quads if the board paired on the river. Since he had more chips than I did, I called with my remaining $40.

The river: 7 of diamonds

I flipped over my aces. The table oohed and aahed. Mr. Slowplay, with a weird smile, turned over 5-6 of diamonds, giving him the nuts -- a 7 high straight. One could construe his action as a slowroll -- I called his raise, therefore he has to show first and he had the nuts. In a fit of rage, I grabbed my chips and flung them in his direction, then berated him for calling a big raise with 5-6. Actually, I tapped the table and said 'nice hand.' Mr. Slowplay/Slowroll had one of the best hands to go up against Aces or any other premium hand (granted, he was still an overwhelming underdog before the flop with roughly a 23% chance of winning). He had played the hand well and trapped me. It's poker.

*If Robin had stuck it out for a little while longer, he could've been involved in the Badbeat Jackpot that took place at his table. A lot of big poker rooms have Badbeat Jackpots and they work thusly: the casino will set a certain hand as the minimum for the badbeat. At Hawaiian Gardens it's Aces full of Tens (a fullhouse with A-A-A-10-10). If you have Aces full of Tens or better and get beat by either a better fullhouse (say, A-A-A-J-J or higher), quads (four of a kind), or a straight flush, then the Badbeat Jackpot gets paid out. The Jackpot depends on the day of the week and the time of day -- when the Jackpot hit it was around $9000. The winner gets 20% of the Jackpot along with the pot, the loser gets 60%, and the rest of the table splits the remaining 20%.

The player who sat in Robin's seat had A-7 and the player to the left of him had 10-something. The board was A A A 10 4. Four Aces beating Aces full of Tens. If Robin had stayed and played that hand, he would've won at least $1800 as the winner. $1800 at a $20 table!

This could've been Robin, divided by about 4100