Short-Handed Pacific $5/$10 Limit HE in an Airport

BWI, unlike BOS, has a tmobile service wireless network. As I wait for my flight back home at this way-too-early-hour, I sat down at one of the new short handed tables at Pacific Poker.

It's not that Pacific didn't have short-handed games before, they just didn't have tables that had a "maximum of 6" until the recent software upgrades (which also added NL HE). So, in the old days, short handed games typical became full games within a few minutes.

I usually try to avoid short handed games online because I don't like the high variance they introduce, and because collusion is much easier to carry out at a short handed table. However, at this time of day, only one full table is running at each limit, so the short-handed game was the only seat I could take for $5/$10, and I was looking only at a very short session.

I see why many other players prefer these short handed games. It allows one to play many more marginal hands more aggressively. Meanwhile, most of the opponents take this as a license to play truly dominated hands and other trash holdings that I wouldn't even play heads-up. The overlay in these games, thus, is very high.

Opponents seem to draw just as much as they do in full games. That behavior (such as flopping a four flush and seeing a river if there aren't raises to pay), is usually correct in a loose full game, because the pot odds basically demand it. When coming heads-up or three-handed out of a field of six, there are rarely enough bets in the pot to justify such draws. These Pacific folks pay to see them, though.

So, merely using a slightly-looser-than full game strategy and not drawing in most pots seems to be quite profitable here. I add this to the fact that my Baltimore visit has seen a quick December 24th buy-in on Pacific turn from $300 to $1455 in a matter of days means I am again scratching my head wondering why the people on Pacific have so much money to throw away. If I can sit down in an airport and make $75 in 20 minutes, what's that say about the people losing all the money that is funding the better players? As I saw someone ask another player in an chat window recently online: "Do these guys hate money?"