Monday at the Palmerston and it was the start of the fourth and final 13 week season of 2015 and with it all the hope and giddy excitement that pub poker with a clean slate brings.
Turn your sarcasm detector down before I break it.
If you finish in one of the top three spots in the league you win a seat at the Regional Finals and a shot at a trip to Las Vegas. Last season at this venue I managed to finish in 4th spot like a total boss, sigh.
But this was a new season, with new hope, and at the Palmerston you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious. Look, I’m trying to shoehorn in a running Star Wars metaphor here, just bear with me.
It wasn’t that busy with just two tables running. My table consisted of, from my left, Clueless Jay, Girlfriend Beth, Random Fish, Welsh Tony, Poor Heather and Mini-Spittles.
I hadn’t played much with Mini-Spittles previously but he is obviously a reasonably good player and looks uncannily like Poker Pro Ryan Spittles. (What do you mean you’ve never heard of him?) He also, like most half decent players, likes everyone else to know it. I was hoping that having position on him would come in handy at some point.
The Classic Spittles Pose
Brian the Brains is now, somehow, running the Monday night game. This means we frequently start with 51 cards in the deck and a random number of chips. This time we started with 15,000 chips but after a few hands Brian handed out an extra 5k for some unexplained reason. So 20k starting stacks it was for an absurd 400 big blinds. With 15-minute levels I was mostly on my phone browsing the web while we grind through the first few pointless yet painful levels.
After plenty of folding, the first hand I eventually opened was AsTs under the gun (UTG). Clueless Jay hesitated for a second but called so it looked like he had some medium-weak hand. Welsh Tony and Mini-Spittles threw in the call as well so it was likely they felt they were priced in with some speculative nonsense hands.
If you want an excuse for your crappy pre-flop play it is important to announce to the table that you have, reluctantly, been ‘priced in.’ and will regretfully flop the nuts.
The flop in this case was Ad9d6c and I continuation bet my top pair for around a third of the pot. It turned out everyone had a piece of that board as they all called. Brilliant. The turn was a blank and I bet close to half pot this time to charge anyone who wanted to stick around with their draw or weak ace. Welsh Tony folded but the other two called. The river was anon-diamond king and when Mini-Spittles checked I checked behind hoping to get to showdown.
Nope, no such luck, as Clueless Jay threw out a chunky bet and with Mini-Spittles quickly folding I was left pondering the call. Obviously there was not a lot I could beat in that spot but I took a little time to think it through. As I did, Jay started looking at his phone. I’ve been trying to work on picking up tells at the table and that made it an easy read. I folded and it didn’t take too long before he told me he had ace-nine for the flopped two pair. Must be nice.
The rest of the first hour was fairly uneventful apart from getting 83o in the big blind when Clueless Jay limped UTG (which he did nearly every time) and I flopped trips. I managed to win a half decent pot when Mini-Spittles in the small blind called when I bet turn and river and he turned a gut-shot and hit top pair when the ace completed the board.
Another UTG limp from Jay saw me flop a straight with 68o in the big blind. I donk lead and got raised by Jay. I clicked it back but after some sighing he folded. No idea what he had there?
During the final level before the break, with blinds at 200/400, I got dealt pocket aces in early position, and what’s more Mini-Spittles opened the action UTG. No need to mess about so I three-bet to 2,900. I was hoping someone else would give me some action but it folded back round to Mini-Spittles. I was half expecting him to fold too as he had to put me on a strong hand there, but he contemplated his stack for a short time before he called.
The flop was K7Q rainbow and Mini-Spittles made the standard check to the raiser. Hmmm. I really hated that flop and thinking about his range made me check behind instead of the more standard C-bet. The turn was a blank and Mini-Spittles led out for just over 4,000. I asked to see his stack and he had around 5,000 behind. I didn’t think he was bluffing.
Was I really going to lay down aces to a single turn bet? I held the best starting hand in this stupid game for God’s sake, how could I just fold? You only get it one every 221 hands, which in pub poker is practically every two years.
A minute or so ticked by before I tossed my hand face up in the muck to a couple of raised eyebrows. I wanted to know what Mini-Spittles had and hoped that by showing he would tell me, even if he didn’t show his cards, unless it was a bluff and he could then show how badly he had pwned me.
Mini-Spittles tapped the table to indicate a good fold before dragging the pot. He told me shortly after that he had pocket queens for the flopped set.
Not long after that debacle it was break time and some of us trooped out the back for a smoke and a moan. I don’t smoke anymore and I try not to moan. I went cold turkey at the start of October and haven’t smoked since and I keep my moaning for here. I guess I was happy that I had found the fold with those aces. That’s the right way to think if you want to improve I suppose, but I was also pissed off that I couldn’t even win a damn pot with aces.
I started the second session with just over 20 big blinds, which wasn’t disastrous, but I managed to dust them off pretty quickly, which was.
We were in the middle of a heated and fascinating discussion about Justin ‘Stealthmunk’ Schwartz who narrowly missed out on making the November Nine this year. I think’ Munk is hilarious but everyone else think he is a disgusting, rude, toothless degenerate. While I was outlining the reasons that I was right and everyone else was an idiot I opened the action holding Tc8c.
Stealthmunk: An Hero or Villian?
One of several callers was Mini-Spittles and he check –raised my C-bet bet on a flop of Qc9c2x. We get it all in and he turns over Q7o for top pair versus my gut-shot and flush draw. Queen-seven off? Ffs. Who defends with that? Priced in I suppose? All that remained was to see if I could hit one of my outs like a Jedi. (I’ve been neglecting the Star Wars theme so I’d better throw some random shit in now). Can I hit? Is Jar Jar Binks funny? Fuck no. I shake hands, shove the remaining Stella down my gullet and depart.
Week one of Season 4 then started with just the 10 ‘Well done for turning up’ points for me. New Hope? More like the Phantom fucking Menace.
