Live Poker been good...Online Poker been bad

I went to a bar league on Thursday. I haven’t played much online poker lately….except for the WPBT tourneys. I can’t play every Thursday because of hectic home life but I get there occasionally. I’ve been there 3 times so far and made the final table twice. Not bad…I should be there every week! The bar…we’ll call it “Slickey’s” to protect the innocent and its chock full o’ gamble. There is the bar league tournament every Thursday for a scant 40.00 fee buy-in NL MTT….and there are cash games “in the back” for those who want to play. I like the tourney because there are about 50 regulars who gamble and push with a half decent hand. I usually sit back a while and wait to double-up on somebody who tries to push pre-flop into my K’s or A’s. There are a few hands I got lucky on this past week…but who makes a final table without getting lucky at least once?

I had A-5o on the button. I called the 50.00 blind and with 4 other limpers a flop of Ax-Ax-9x falls. One guy folds to my left…the guy next to him goes all in for his last 1350 in chips. Everybody folds to me and I had the 2500 in chips that I started the tournament with. I call……he flips over pocket 9’s…ouch….7x on the turn….5x on the river…I win! The guy to my right was a table captain type…you know….he knows everything and everybody else know nothing…that type. So he nitpicks every move everybody else makes. I’d be dealing and I forgot to continue with the flop etc…he’s like “c’mon dude” we don’t have all night. I put my beer down and muttered “settle down”. He comes up later in the tournament when he is moved to my right after I was moved. I kept getting cards at the first table and was raising quite a bit pre-flop…that usually is enough to take down the limpers and a small pot. The first table I was at was the “back room” and it is really smoky back there. I’m not against smoking but when there is no ventilation it gets bad….and it was hot out to boot! So I get moved and I’m happy as hell to get out of there. The place is setup with about 5-6 tables. One of the tables is a pool table…felt is already there but it does look kind of funny. HE tournaments have brought so much money back into the bars and into charities recently. It’s really a win-win for everybody…except for the lottery commission in MA. NH is going to take all the action away soon if the MA legislature doesn’t lighten up soon. There is a greyhound racing park in Seabrook, NH that runs tournaments on Saturday, Sunday, and now they’re thinking about adding Monday also….all day! They also have Sit’nGo’s and small stakes limit HE…here is the link Seabrook

I started to talk to a girl at the bar before the tournament. Apparently she deals the tournaments in Seabrook! She said that if she deals there she can’t play there…which makes sense. The thing is that she said it’s getting so popular at the Greyhound Park that they don’t have an empty seat for anything! That’s why they are going to add Mondays.
Anyway, back to the tournament…the table captain gets moved to my left and we get a break for about 5 minutes. I run to the bathroom and when I came back to the tournament I announce “Well…it’s time to get going!! Let’s gamble!!” A few of the guys’ ears perked up…most of these guys know each other and they sort of take it easy on each other. I don’t know why I said that but I was there to get some chips and push towards the final table. The two guys on my right were brothers…two Italian brothers who weren’t afraid to gamble. They got knocked out pretty quick though. One of them threw his chips across the table when he went all-in…was called…and lost. His brother was pretty drunk and kind of lost interest and was knocked out soon after. We re-adjust on the table and I get Ah-Ad under the gun. I min-raised to knock out a few limpers and one guy before the button goes all-in. I call of course and I thought that I was all set…he had As-Qd. Of course he rivers a straight and my aces are as good as cracked! I played it perfectly but still it sucks when you are that close to becoming the big stack in the tourney and have aces cracked. (I would exact my revenge on the final table) I think I went on tilt after that…I started pushing with small pairs and A-rag. Nobody was calling though! I did make on huge mistake on a push but I took out the table captain on a nasty bad beat. I was in the SB and he was in the BB…everybody folded to me…I had Kx-6x…hmmmmmm…I thought for a minute and went all-in. Big mistake….he called with Kx-Qx. However, I flopped a six…he threw his cards and left in disgust. I think everybody at the table liked me a lot more after that. That means they are willing to give their chips to somebody they like….and they did.

We had another break and the final table was set to go…I had a better than average stack with about 10,000. There were a couple of guys with more than 20,000 so I would have to be a little careful to make the payout. Top 6 got paid and there were a couple of short stacks. There was one incident that lasted most of the final table. One kid was kind of visibly aggravated about something and he decided to let everybody know what it was. He was getting upset about some of the guys checking down their hands at the final table. The table was still full and 5 or so of the guys at the final table were friends. I noticed that they were doing this earlier in the tournament but like I said…..they were all good friends and would probably love to pound on somebody if one of them got into a fight. So this one kid blurts out to the guy running the tournament….” This is a friggin’ joke…these guys keep checking it down to each other….it’s collusion!”…..all hell broke loose. I felt so bad for the kid because they all started raggin the shit out of him. He was right…but he shouldn’t have opened his mouth…it’s not like we were at Foxwoods. I really thought the guy to his left was going to punch him in the face but he was spared when he got knocked out. The chip leader went all-in after “collusion-boy” raised….the guy had pocket aces and holds his cards to the other half of the table and yells “COLLUSION! COLLUSION! COLLUSION!”….he also called him a “turtle-neck bitch” whatever that means. I really did feel bad for the kid.  I got busted at 4th about a half hour later for about 100.00 profit. I had pocket 4’s and the guy who called had pocket J’s but it was getting late and I was short-stacked. I had Friday off from work so it was about 12:45 at that point. I had fun but that one kid may never come back……