Wednesday, June 23, 2010

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull"




I'm in a HORSE satellite tournament on Full Tilt. I'm not a great HORSE player, but I can usually keep up with the pack in low buy-in events. In this one, though, I am so far running over a table of weaklings.

The screen shot above illustrates what I mean. We had been playing razz. Immediately after the cards had been dealt, a sign flashed on the screen announcing the new level: Seven-card stud. I had the bring-in, and when I noticed that I had two queens, I opted for the full bet instead of just the regular bring-in.

It was only as I clicked the appropriate button that it occurred to me to wonder, "Hey, how come I have the bring-in with a queen up here?" The answer dawned on me almost as quickly as the question had: We were still on the last hand of razz. The notification for the start of the stud games came at a designated time by the clock, not at the beginning of the hand. (I consider this a flaw in the FTP software. PokerStars eliminates that potential confusion by sending the notice of the new level only at the completion of the hand.)

So I was completing the bring-in in razz with a queen showing, and another one in the hole. Ick. Oh well. Somebody will raise me and I'll fold, with only a small loss.

Nope. Every single one of my opponents folded to my aggression. And they weren't all pre-entered insta-folds, either; the last two both took five seconds or so, apparently thinking about it.

The quotation I used to title this post is attributed to W.C. Fields. I guess he was a poker player.


Addendum

I finished second in the tournament. Only one seat to the biggest event was awarded, so I missed out on that, but I picked up $50. Meh.

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