Northern Colorado Poker Wiki

FunWins

A fun wins is the opposite of a BadBeats story. It is either a time when you totally dominated somebody due to seeing an obvious tell, easily out-psyched an opponent or just out and out drew into the Nuts.

Beat the table jerk

At the $35 sit-go tournment Sunday Nov 13th at the Union Plaza I had the misfortune to sit down with a Phil Helmuth wanna be. I had been off and on sitting with him at various live tables while I was waiting for the tournament to start. Mostly, he was always at a nearby table and easier to tune out. He was a constant chatter stream of how stupid everyone was to play hands against him and how lucky they were to beat the odds. He kept saying that if poker only depended on skill that he'd win every hand. Anyway, at the sit-go tournament I realized that I was going to be stuck with this guy's chatter for the next few hours. Not a pleasant prospect. However, I got a FunWins against him that pretty much set up me to win the tournament a take him out at the same time.

We're still at the start of the tournament, the blinds had just been bumped from minimum 25/50 to 50/100 and I'm sitting in the big blind. We've only lost 1 player so far, so 9 players. The guy to my left was just recently crippled on an earlier hand and is sitting on only $200. At this time I have about 1250-1300 in chips. Loud mouth is sitting across the table. Short stack (who has been begging the dealer to give him any playable hand before he gets blinded out in the next 2 hands), pushes in a raise of $200 - all in. I guess that he found something above average, but it's wide open from pocket rockets to JT since he only had $200 to play with. Everyone folds down to loud mouth. He puts in the 200 and a raise of 400 more. Everyone folds up to me, including the small blind. I look him over and read that he's really looking to isolate against the short stack and pick up the $350 on the table. I look at my hand and I've picked up A-J of clubs, not a great hand but good enough to put in 400 vs 950 pot odds - I call. He's starts pissing and moaning that only an idiot can call from the big blind and before the dealer can even move, he grabs his chip stack and shouts across the table "I'm all in before the flop". Now, I should have been first to act, the dealer starts trying to tell him he can't abuse the action that way. Finally, the dealer just puts the flop on the table. The flop comes down Ace, Ten, Ten. I have a good 2 pair. Now, loud mouth has to commit to his all in call so instead of acting first I get to act last (specifically, the rule is that I can bet or check from my position, but he still has to go all in regardless - so no slimeball play like waiting for me to check and then backing out of his preflop call). I take a few seconds to think through this hand. If he had Aces, then I'm drawing dead. However, if he had Aces I don't think he'd push such a big bet initially. It's possible that he had AK, but for the same reason I think less likely. I figure a tournament player would smooth call both hands on the hope of getting another 200 chips in the pot. So, that leaves A-Q and pocket pairs as the most likely hands he can hold. I'm not worried about any pocket pair except the 10s which I figure is extremely unlikely. I figure that I'm better than 50% to catch him with a pair rather than the A-Q and therefore I'm way ahead. I call his all in. He turns over pocket Queens. However, the short stack next to me turns over his hand and he has pocket rockets. He picks up the 650 in the main pot and I pick up the 2200 in the side pot.

Second Tournament in Vegas

I WON the second tournament I played in Vegas! (Well, chopped the pot anyway). I sat at an all-male table, two of the biggest loudmouth/poker jerks that have been in the room all day are on the end opposite me. I decide to play super tight and hope these idiots knock each other out before I have to deal too much with them. I picked up a couple of decent pots early, so I had plenty of chips to play cat and mouse with.

Eventually it comes down to three of us. One of the guys has an obvious shaking hand tell when he hits a big hand, unfortunately for him it didn't happen much. The two guys were battling it out for awhile, so I tried to only play the better hands and hope Mr. Shaky knocks the other guy out, because I'm pretty sure I can intimidate him. Unfortunately, Mr. Shaky is the one that leaves first, and then it's down to two of us. Neither one of us is very aggressive, so we end up playing pass the chips for a bit, until I offer to chop the pot. The guy is way ahead of me in chips at this point, blinds are $800/$1600, and Keith is sitting behind me rolling his eyes because he can't believe I would actually think this guy will split 50/50 with me when he's chip leader. Of course the guy refuses, so I tell him I can sit there all night if that's what it takes to kick his butt. We play pass the chips for awhile, waiting for the timer to go off to increase the blinds. Finally the guy says if there's not a clear winner by the time the buzzer goes off, we'll split. I agree and almost get wiped out two hands later playing a J/7. Luckily the card gods were smiling on me and I pulled out a J on the flop, leaving my opponent to shake his head in disbelief. Finally the buzzer goes off and we split the $200 prize money. WPT here I come!!!