"I give up, I resign!"

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Last Wednesday was our NLHE tourney at the Palms. Michael from Vegas came down and spent a couple of nights. We got about 30 participants for the tournament. At a $25 buy-in (no juice), the prize pool wouldn't seem to be large, but lucky us, rebuys abound for the first hour, plus the $20 add-on goes directly to the pool. Sometimes these payouts are pretty big, for such a small potatoes tourney.

I never really got anything going on. I didn't get called when I wanted to double up and I did get called when I was trying to steal pots. C'est la vie. We got down to about ten, and I knew I needed chips badly. So when I flopped open ended with a backdoor flush draw in the blind, I went for it. Someone else flopped top pair, no kicker, and it held up.

Michael got all the way down to the bubble by an string of amazing incidents. One of them included someone going all-in with about four times the chips Michael had, on a bluff, losing the hand, and then giving Michael all of his chips and walking away. You'd think he would have won the tourney, with that kind of luck, but the blinds get so high toward the end, that he went from hero to zero in just a couple of hands. He did get some bounties and a rolling suitcase as a special prize (the Palms adds these giveaways, they aren't not taken out of any player funds).

We didn't return to the Palms until Friday night. I'm not a huge fan of Omaha 8, but I know my EV is through the roof in these little tourneys. The competition is extremely loose and passive. I cannot even tell you how passive they are, because you wouldn't believe me. I literally saw a woman check the absolute nuts on two consecutive streets (she is an older woman, and was showing me her hand, since I wasn't in the pot). She was not soliciting a bluff, believe me. She is just that passive. She somehow believes that her stone cold nut hand could be beaten by a better hand, because she doesn't know it's value. Maybe she thinks the board will come runner-runner to beat her. Who knows. I truly think she just doesn't know the value of poker hands.

Anyway, I played my normal tourney game, which works so well against loose, passive players. I was tight during the rebuy period (but still had to make one rebuy), and then got much more loose and bluffed like crazy if I thought I could win the pot.

One by one we lost players who insisted on seeing every flop, turn and river, no matter how slim they were drawing (or dead, in the case of people who cannot understand that if there are not three cards, eight or lower on board, they cannot make a low). One man had never played Omaha before and kept insisting that his three hearts or three straight cards made the best hand. I have to give him credit though, after messing up on that a couple of times, he never, ever did it again. He learned fast. With some people it only takes one or two mistakes. He was one of them, he never screwed up again.

Anyway, the third place finisher let himself get too low, so the BB only had to call 200 more to get a chance to knock him out (the blinds were 500/1000). She actually had an excellent hand in the blind: JQQK and two hearts, I believe. The flop came paint, and his all-low hand was busted. He had a premium hand himself, something like: A235. Anyway, he was out and we were HU.

We were almost even in chips, but I am so much more aggressive than most players, so I kept chipping away at her. Finally we got involved in one pot where she refused to keep betting her flopped set, and I rivered the straight. After that, I had a chip advantage, although anything is possible with these huge blinds and the relatively low amount of chips on the table.

Finally, after one hand where I had her down to about 3000, she looked at me and said, "Okay, I give up, I resign!"

I couldn't believe it, that was the first time anyone has ever said that to me. I could tell she was stressed out playing HU against someone like me, but I have never actually have someone just give up completely.

Anyway, I took my bounties and my first place win, and happily prayed that I would keep running good for a while.

Felicia :)