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Cash Game Poker at Seneca Niagara Casino

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 by Phil

For unsaid reasons, I woke up at about 2:30 a.m. the other morning and decided I wanted to go play in some cash games at the Seneca Niagara casino in Niagara Falls. It’s only about 1/2 hour drive from my apartment so I’m really not sure why I haven’t been there in such a long time. I’ve been in internet poker mode for the last 6 months so I haven’t really played live very much. I’ve also been playing really bad online so I haven’t been feeling it at times.

I sat down with $120 at the $1/$2 table and eventually left with about $580. I feel like I should have left with a lot more because I made 2 big mistakes. One of which cost me about $160 trying to bluff someone, the second mistake was just a hand that I think I played very poorly and missed out on a lot of money.

The table was playing very loose and there was some pretty bad players there.The straddle was on and someone raised it up to $20 before the flop. I saw 4 callers in front of me so I decided to see a flop with the 8-9 of hearts from the big blind. I flopped a flush and let it check around. The turn brought an off-suit ace so I decided to lead out for $40 thinking that the ace must have hit someone.

At the time I was thinking with 5-6 players seeing a flop, a pair of aces might check the turn there as well which I didn’t really like the thought of.

I got 1 caller and it really wasn’t someone that I was worried about. He had seen me do some crazy stuff so I decided I might get a call on the river. There was about $180 in the pot and I bet $100. At the time I thought it was a good sized bet, but in retrospect I should have known he had an ace and would not call more than another $60-$80 bet. Online I would argue otherwise… but in low-stakes live games, players don’t consider the pot as much when they think about the bet size.

There are 2 ways that I could have played this hand in which I would have gotten much more value. If I was correct that the ace hit someone on the turn… I could have gone for a check-raise hoping that the other player had the ace of hearts so he would bet… and would not be likely to fold.

The option I really feel like I should have taken is to bet the turn like I did. This would confirm that my opponent either had an ace, a lone heart he was drawing with, a combo, or a flush. For all 3 of these hands (except for a larger flush), I believe it would be more profitable to check because it would likely induce a bet. Then I can put in a raise and try to extract some more value from my opponent.

After this hand his friend starting complaining that I was disrespectful for not showing the guy my hand after he folded in a big pot. After a few hands he thought it would be a good idea to try and be a d!ck still, so I decided it would be an even better idea to just take money that I had won from him throughout the night and leave with it. Let this be lesson #2 for this blog entry; If you want someone to stay at the table, don’t run your mouth like a jackass, especially when the other person is up about 5x their buy-in and ready to make a run for the border.

This was the same guy who asked the dealer to flip my cards over after I got beat and tried to muck my cards in an earlier pot. That was certainly more of an asshole thing to do than simply not show your cards to an opponent who has folded. It’s almost like a rule of etiquette; you don’t ask a losing player to show his hand unless he has to. There is just no need to embarass someone who has just lost a pot. Especially after he has made a bad move, a stupid call, or taken a bad beat.

This isn’t the last you’ll hear about this cash game session because there was a few interesting hands that went down that I will probably come back to blog about in the next few days.