7/5/2005

Spending time with Kat in San Jose over the fourth seems to have completely flown by. We had a fantastic time. Kat wrote about the first couple days, so you can read that if you’re logging my whereabouts.

Saturday

My entire reason for wanting to be in San Fransisco was to go to Alcatraz. I really should have read the San Francisco travel book Malcolm loaned me before taking off from Austin, because then I would have known that you have to order ferry tickets in advance to have any chance of visiting Alcatraz. When I called on Saturday morning, they were already sold out through Tuesday afternoon. No Alcatraz for me. I guess this just gives me more time to memorize Clint Eastwood lines from “Escape from Alcatraz” before I go. Instead we wandered over to Golden Gate Park. It was a short (less than 2 miles) walk from the hotel to the Park. On the way, we had some tasty cornbread pancakes at Kate’s on Haight St., which I highly recommend to anyone visiting the area. Take cash though, it’s one of those hippie cash-only establishments. We finally made it to Golden Gate Park, only to pass out on the grass from sheer exhaustion from the walk (how pathetic am I?). Golden Gate Park was basically what I expected it to be: a bunch of homeless hippies who probably graduated from being Austin homeless hippies to being San Francisco homeless hippies by trading a malnourished dog to an aspiring homeless hippie for a bus ticket. One interesting thing that I saw at the park was Lawn Bowling. I’m totally fascinated by this sport. I don’t care if the only people that play it are over 75, I want to learn how to play this game.

Saturday Night club-hopping

Since we were in San Francisco, we had to make a stop by the Stinking Rose for dinner. In typical Kat and Gus fashion, we ordered the same entrees and drank the same Viongier wine we had last time we were there. On a side note, Viongier, what kind of a wine snob have I become? After dinner, we headed to a bar to check out the local color. Had a few drinks at the Bamboo Hut (also a place we visited last time I was in town) and then went to some hip-hop club next door. There were a number of people there when we showed up, but we managed to snag a nice people watching seat that we held on to for a few hours. A note to all spiky-haired Asians: the women you are looking for are at this club! In fact, there was a large group of them, waiting for you guys to walk in the door. After the club was packed, we hung out for a while and decided it was time to make our way somewhere else. We headed down the street to VXN, which also turned out to be playing hip-hop that night. I believe I’ve listened to my quota for the year: because you should listen to a lot of different kinds of music. At VXN, some dude asked me what I put in my hair to make it look like it does. I honestly told him what I use, but in retrospect there were a million vile and uncomfortable statements I could have made. If only I weren’t so afraid of confrontation.

Bay 101, I love you

Tuesday I drove Kat to work and headed out to Bay 101 for some necessary poker action. After waiting a couple minutes for a 6-12 seat to open up, I was seated in seat 7 (not my favorite seat, but it’ll do). Seat 1 was a woman I will lovingly refer to as Miss Swan, because she sounded like the Mad TV sketch. Miss Swan had somewhere around $1700 in front of her. Seat 2, was a prop player named Katherine, I believe. Seat 3 was a maniac with $1424 in front of him (give or take a few-not that I was counting). Seat 4 was the unlucky seat that continually busted. Seat 5 was a dealer who was dumping a lot of money and was really upset about it. Seat 6 sat down at the same time I did and turned out to be a tight aggressive player. Seat 8 was continually rotating mainly remaining open. Seat 9 was an older man that seemed to bust out every four or five hands that he played and then rebought for small amounts.

I call seat 1 Miss Swan because one of the first hands I sat down to play she was heads up with the guy in seat 8. He had three bet pre-flop, likely with AK and hit a board that was J-10-x. The turn is another J and it gets narrowed down to the two of them when she re-raised him. Seat 8 thinks about it a while and then says, “I bet you’ve got a Jack”. She replies, “Why you no call, I show you EVERYTING.” (there is purposely no H in EVERYTING). If she just would have said “You looka like a man” it would have been perfect.

The main target at my table was the maniac in seat 3. He had so much money in front of him and was taking down huge pots with terrible hands. All the characteristics were there: Raise with any suited cards. Call every hand to the river, cap any three-bet hand pre-flop no matter what he had. I’ve had extremely good luck running into these types of players at Bay 101 on the tail end of their winning streak. That’s when the money gets passed around. I maintained my usual tight-aggressive strategy, sprinkling in some questionable hands every now and again to keep people guessing. For the most part it didn’t matter though. The people who were paying off my hands were paying them off no matter how I played anyway.

My favorite hand of the day came like so. In middle position, I get dealt Q-Js, I call, four players call behind me, maniac in seat 3 raises, everyone calls. Flop comes 9-10-6 rainbow. Checks to me, I bet, everyone calls, maniac check-raises, and everyone calls two bets. Turn comes 8, check to me, I bet, maniac and Miss Swan call. River comes 7 completing the board straight. Maniac bets, I raise, both Miss Swan and maniac call. Both of them are playing the board. No one even had a jack. Miss Swan didn’t show her hand, but maniac showed 6-2s. Keep it coming buddy.

In live play, I seem to have adopted a table personality that makes people believe that I have always paired something and that they should fold. I’m still trying to decide how good or bad this is. I mean, I’ve had a number of hands where i think I could have sucked some more money out of the table, but I’ve been hesitant to raise when I’m not sure I’ve got a winner. I know this limits the amount of money that I make, but it also keeps me from burning through money like I’ve been known to do in the past. But I’m still not sure if I want to work on changing my table image. Here’s a for-instance:

In early position, I’m dealt 3-3, the old Larry Bird. I call, bust-o-matic in Seat 9 calls, maniac calls, and the new seat 4 (who has proven to be a somewhat tight player) raises on the big blind, everyone calls. The flop comes 3-K-x, seat 4 bets, everyone calls. Turn is a blank (6 I think), seat four bets, everyone but maniac calls. River 4, maniac checks, I bet, seat 9 folds. So the question is, should I have raised on the turn. I definitely think that raising the flop is going to do nothing but narrow the field, and in this situation, I really didn’t put anyone else on a pocket pair or two pair, so I didn’t feel like I had a lot to fear. Plus most everyone was respecting my raises and I didn’t want anyone to fold. All I had to be afraid of was some kind of runner-runner nonsense, which though I have had it happen before, I couldn’t be worried about if my plan was to suck these people dry. I could have raised the turn, but I was really hoping that both the maniac and seat 9 would call and I figured if I raised, everyone but seat 4 would fold (and even he might fold in this instance). I also planned on raising the river, but seat 4 slowed down and let me bet it, which also would have happened if I had raised the turn. This hand may be a particularly bad example to bring this up, but I think there’s something more I could be doing to get more money out of people in winning hands. If you have any ideas on this I’m all ears.

My philosophical hand here also happens to be the last hand I played of the night. It always feels nice to leave at the highest point of the night. I left the table up > $300, for some reason I can’t remember the total amount. Probably because I waited to write the last paragraph of this blog post until after I got back from my 10 year high school reunion. Now I barely remember last weekend. More on my reunion (and real live poker in Oklahoma!!!) later this week.