Hyperspace

On Monday night I played two of my favourite games - snooker first, followed by poker when I got home. For uninitiated American readers, snooker is to pool what No Limit Hold ‘Em against Doyle Brunson is to nickel-and-dime five card draw against your granny. Its bigger, harder and more frustrating.

During the course of the evening I also had a somewhat testy conversation with the girl I am seeing, via text messages. Technology has come on in leaps and bounds - there are now far more ways to argue than there used to be. The result was that it looks like that relationship is over. Cool, now I can put some more hours in! (A little in-joke there for anyone who has read previous posts).

The hours I put in last night were frustrating. I went about $60 up pretty smoothly, playing with the focus I discussed in the previous post. But I finished the session, of a little under three hours, only EIGHT bucks ahead thanks to losing two decent pots to the same guy in fairly quick succession.

First, I had top set and a flush draw on a flop of 89T. I bet about half the pot on flop and turn, and was delighted to see the river pair the board. However, this Swede raised my river bet. I noted that a possible runner-runner straight flush had appeared, but called, and that’s what he showed. I was absolutely gutted. He had actually flopped the non-nut straight, so it was very nice for me to get to draw to my full house (and flush) by making cheap bets. Not a strong opponent.

Mere minutes later he played another hand very poorly but took the money. I flopped nut flush and straight draws on a KJ5 flop. I turned the flush, bet virtually the pot of $19, and he called. The river paired the 5 to my anguish, and he bet the pot. I folded in the certainty that I was beaten, and for some reason he did show his quad 5’s .

Its hard to think of a worse way to play the hand. If the river had paired any of the other boardcards then he would have to fear that my strong betting indicated a bigger set. There is nothing like bottom set if you want to go broke. In the end, the hand played out such that he called a 2/1 bet on the turn as a 7/3 underdog, and gave himself no way to get any more chips on the end. I make a $20 theoretical profit every time the turn is played like that, whilst he loses a theoretical $1.

Of course, the exchange rate on those theoretical dollars is terrible.

So I was suddenly only a few bucks up and I tilted for about three hands, before regaining my composure and quitting a bit later with my tiny profit. I hadn’t exactly suffered a bad beat, but to lose my winnings to such poor play really hurt me. On the positive side, I learned about the player in question, who is a fairly regular opponent. Whilst it could take a very long time to get your money back from a bad player in limit poker, PLO will likely give me an opportunity very soon to exploit his weaknesses for a large pot.

In general, I was happy with my play. I suspect I got mugged once or twice, when my frequent raising caused one or two decent players to take shots at me on the flop, but I can live with that.

My quest to play different games continued as well. Sadly there was no five card stud game, although I waited for ages, so I ended up playing a heads-up pot limit Hold ‘Em tournament (tiny buy-in). I won it, to make a total profit for the night of - sigh - thirteen dollars.

It’s a while since I played one of these headsup games, but it is something I intend to explore. Clearly, facing just one inferior player at a table is a lovely edge to have. I just need to find out how high up the food chain (eg stake size) I can go before I become that inferior player.

I think the tournament format is a good way to do it, too, since the rake will usually work out cheaper than playing out a lengthy, bruising cash-battle. Further, neither party can hit and run.

The reasons I chose to play pot-limit rather than no-limit are two-fold. One is sneaky, the other perhaps more interesting. First, the sneaky reason, I am certain that most of the people I play in these heads-up pot limit games don’t actually realise it is pot limit! You have to look quite close at the lobby list, since the PLHE is hidden amidst a ton of NLHE tables. So I immediately have a strong chance of playing somebody at a game they don’t know or like - and a game in which, if they are worse than me, they can’t get lucky to win it with one all-in gamble.

In fact, that last bit is the second reason I choose pot-limit over no limit. There’s always plenty of discussion over which is the more skillful game, which will probably be intensified by the debate du jour over the huge fields in today’s big tournaments and the so-called new breed of competitors raised in the online game.

I suspect that between two comparable opponents, no-limit may be more skillful. But there is surely little doubt that a weak player has more chance to beat a more skilled opponent in the no-limit game, where he/she can push all-in frequently to limit the expert’s edge.

This has come to remind me of the ‘Hyperspace’ button. If you’re around my age you will probably remember the videogames ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Defender’. (Sigh, if only I could somehow play these two awesome games on my laptop through some kind of, gosh I don’t know, illegal emulator program…) Well, besides being two of the all-time classics of videogame design, beautifully simply and complex at the same time, ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Defender’ also shared the feature of a button marked ‘Hyperspace’.

If you were in trouble, hemmed in on all sides by rocks or swarming mutants, you could press hyperspace and instantly disappear to be rematerialized in another location. It was like a panic button for when you were outnumbered, overmatched, in over your head. Well, using the all-in tactic reminds me of the hyperspace button. Outgunned by a superior opponent? Go all-in to hyperspace and you will often escape. Now, if I am the swarm of mutants pounding away at a weak opponent, I certainly don’t want him to have a hyperspace button handy.

Still, the designers of those old videogames added a neat twist. Hyperspace was an unpredictable dimension, and sometimes your ship would simply explode on re-entry. A bit like getting your third or fourth all-in called by a big pocket pair - but in poker it costs a lot more than a quarter to play again, and you don’t get three lives.