♠ Tuesday, April 20, 2004
When You Chase the Fish, Sometimes You Get Schooled
Playing my usual four tables of $3/$6, I find that one of my tables is thoroughly excellent, with two players previously tagged at over 70% VP$IP (voluntarily put money into the pot). I even clue Hdouble in to the pickings, and the two fish go bust, with each of us catching about $50.
A while after one of the fish busts out, I decide to check the buddy list ... he's sitting a $10/$20 6-ring! The $3/$6 tables were so kind </sarcasm>, he apparently decided to go throw away a lot of money.
I'd only sat a $10/$20 6-ring online once before, long before my pro career started. I was in the middle of a great run on the $5/$10 6-rings, and decided to give the next step a try. After winning a $396 pot with a lousy pair of queens, I decided enough was enough and retreated to the familiarity and relative sanity of the $5/$10 games. (In retrospect, that must have been a great game, if there was that much raising going on.)
I start out with my late-in-a-tournament game, trying to take a lot of pots that nobody seems to want, and extra-aggressive with marginal hands. It's a little difficult to isolate Mr. Loosey, because he's on my left, but after a while it becomes clear that there are four good players and two fish on the table. So, I stay out of the way of the good players, and attack the fish.
Unfortunately, with Mr. Loosey in particular, the fish actually had good cards. I thought, on two big hands, of a particular phrase which includes the words "blind squirrel" and "nut" prominently. Mr. Loosey took a bunch of my money, and I took some back, so that when he busted out I was down around $280. Now, the good players started dropping off, no doubt looking for another fish to scale. This eventually left me headsup with the other fish, who had about $90 left. I took a few small pots from him before busting him when my A9 made a full house, and I leave the table down $210.
Oh, and Hdouble shows up after a bit, too, and hits-and-runs after his 88 catches a QQx8x board for a $400+ pot. I think he owes me commission on his $200 profit.
In the meantime, Mr. Loosey buys into a different $10/$20 6-ring for $181, obviously the last of his money. I follow him again, and bust him with TT, although I don't remember how the hand played out. Up $105, I've made back half what I lost on the other $10/$20 game. Now the game looks sharky, as Hdouble called it, and I decide against hanging around and turn to writing this.
And so, following the fish cost me $105, because of blind squirrels and nuts.
- - -
It occurs to me that the way I used to play—raise any two face cards preflop—worked great for the 6-rings, and that's why I did so well (for a while) at the $5/$10 6-rings. My current—tighter— play wouldn't be as appropriate there, and so I consciously had to shift gears to play this shorthanded game tonight.
Detroit 10 @ Cleveland 4
Yay!