The Rest of the Foxwoods Trip

After my phone post from Foxwoods, nick_marden joined me for a day to enjoy the Foxwoods local aquatic life-forms. We played the $2/$5 blind NL HE with a $500 maximum buy-in. I have railed against this game in the past, because they used to have a silly rebuy rule, wherein you couldn't top off your stack until you were below $150(!).

This silly rule has been eradicated, or, at least, it wasn't being enforced in the five hours I sat in the game. I topped off back to $500 about four times, until I was able to build a stack well above it.

The key hand that built the stack was against a bizarre maniac/calling-station hybrid. He turned out to be relatively easy to read, as he had a Caro-classic stare-down tendency when bluffing. He came over the top of me a number of times when I myself lacked a hand strong enough to call with, but finally I decided to make a stand with 87o on a 7-3-2-5 board. He bet all-in at me on the turn, and it was clear he had no pair, after I had already built a strong feeling on from his flop check-call that he had merely overcards. I got worried when the J fell. He was ready to muck, and I felt a bit better; I said "I called you" and waited to see his ATo before showing my cards.

When I made the call (a call of a $200 or so overbet into a $180 pot), it didn't seem that big of a deal, but jaws dropped a bit around the table. nick_marden told me later that he wasn't surprised I called, just that I had done so quickly, pointing out that 4-6 or A-4 was just the kind of hand and just the kind of draw that this fellow had been playing, and I should have considered it longer. Yet, all the pieces -- (a) betting out instead of slow-playing on the turn, (b) the classic Caro tells, (c) the way he called on the flop that seemed to scream "pair draw two times" -- just added up to a clear call for me. As it was happening, it actually seemed rather textbook to me, so that means either I'm over-confident or getting pretty good at this game of NL HE.

Limit HE, however, is a bit of another story. I'm getting convinced that the variance in limit HE is actually more than NL. The problem is you can read people right and they can still get very lucky for single bets and cost you huge pots. I played a lot of $10/$20 at Foxwoods, and was up only for a brief time. The games were beautiful: 4 or 5 people taking each flop, usually going three-handed to the river. But, that's a spot for lots of variance, and I suffered quite a bit.

I just can't give up limit poker though; it feels so less stressful and relaxing. And, it's not to say NL/PL doesn't have its variance as well. More on that soon.