Casino Holdem - Games

A few people asked for my story so I figured I'd share. Writing it out has been good therapy I think.
I first played poker on a camping trip with some friends some 10 years ago when I was 16. We didn't play for money and we used one of those cheapo wallmart sets of chips. None of us had any idea what we were doing. Pretty much every hand was limped family pots and checking down to the river.
A year later my dad's boss invited me to a homegame with his staff. This was the first time I played with someone who knew how to play. It was $10 to play, and my dad's boss won all 3 tournaments he ran that night. For me it was pretty embarassing, folding straights face up because I thought I had a high card. Thinking a straight beats a flush. That kind of thing.
That night I learned that poker was more than just luck, and that good players could make money. So I became determined to learn how to play and how to win.
I started hosting games at my school. I brought my wallmart chip set to school and classmates would play with me on my free periods and during recess. Never for money though.
During this time I started reading some articles about poker strategy online. Or at least that was my intention. After reading some articles about bankroll management and leveling I read an article on continuation betting.
I didn't need to read any more articles because it only took the cbet to make me a BEAST at the school games. Pratically every player in this game was weak-tight and would limp preflop and check/fold any board that they missed. I started to win most sessions just by cbetting 100% of boards.
A couple wins under my belt, combined with my secret weapon (the cbet!), and I knew that I was destined to be a professional.
I started to host real home-games for money (none of us were old enough to play at the casino). Every second Friday we'd play a game with a $5-$10 buy-in (None of us had jobs). It took a few weeks to realise we had to increase the blinds to force the game to end at a reasonable hour, and a few more weeks to figure out a structure that actually made sense.
I tracked all the results of these tournaments over the year, and by the end it was clear that I was the best. I had the largest ROI, the most first places, the most cashes, the most final tables. Every metric that mattered. And it was all thanks to my trusty cbet.
I wanted to go pro. I had no other career aspirations so I stopped paying attention in school and would just day dream about poker. I wanted to play all the time so I signed up to pokerstars under my mum's name because I was still only 17.
Because I had no bankroll on stars I played in the freeroll tournaments every day. The field was usually 9,000 players large, and I played in the 6pm game after school ended but before I went to bed. First place payed $6, so I knew I only needed to win 1 to launch my online poker career.
I quickly learned that 100% cbet was actually not so good against the stations and maniacs that play in freerolls. I had to change the way I played if I wanted to make it to the money.
Eventually, after a few weeks of busting before the first break, I made it to the money and I cashed in at 200th place for 50 cents - which just so happened to be the minimum buy-in for the 1c/2c cash game on stars.
I FINALLY HAD AN ONLINE BANKROLL!
I immediately sat down at a 9-ring cash game and bought in with my prize winnings. It took less than 5 minutes to completely decimate my bankroll. Much to my dismay, the players sitting at the lowest stakes cash game available in the entire country played like poker GODS! What the hell? Every one of my bluffs was called down. Every time I called down a bluff they had it. It was mental, these players were so good. Unlike anyone I had ever played against before.
At this point I knew I'd have to return to my poker studies if I wanted to have any chance at all. So I picked up my very first poker book, "Crushing the Micros", because I was gonna be playing micro stakes of course. One of the early chapters talked about the concept of set-mining and this BLEW. MY. MIND. Needless to say, I didn't feel it was necessary to read the rest of the book.
So, a few weeks later when I cashed my next freeroll tournament and returned to the 1c/2c cash game I completely changed my game. I used a new strategy where I only played pocket pairs preflop against opponents with full stacks. If I missed the flop i'd check/fold, but if I hit my set i'd check raise all in if OOP, otherwise i'd triple barrel pot bet every street if I was IP. It only took a few minutes to win my first stack with a flopped set. So I cashed out of the table and bought in to two tables.
If you've never multi-tabled before, let me tell you, it's the real deal. Twice the hands means twice the speed and that means twice the winnings. It made sense to me that I could scale this as big as possible. Back then, Pokerstars would let you play 24 tables at once - So as soon as my bankroll allowed it I started playing 24 tables at once using my se-mining strategy. The beautiful thing is, it worked!
So, playing 24 tables, only set-mining, I grew my stars bankroll to $1,000. I WAS A POKER GOD and I knew it. I crushed the school games, i crushed the home-game tournaments, and now i was crushing micro-stakes online too.
The day I turned 18 I knew it was time to crush all those fish at the casino. So for my 18th birthday I got my school poker friends (the ones who were 18 anyway) to take a trip to the casino with me.
We each brought $100 with us. 1/2 was too intimidating so the floor offered to open a 1/1 table just for us. Because it was a new table and 1/1 rarely got up, it was just us at the table for most of the night. Luckily for me though, I knew I could crush these guys with my 100% cbet strategy, and throw in a bit of set-mining and my friends stood no chance. I ended up busting every last one of my friends that night yet I only finished $300 up, which didn't make much sense. If I busted them all then shouldn't I be $800 up?
In any case, it didn't matter. I'd just proven to myself I could win at the high stakes casino games. Now I knew beyond a doubt that I could beat any game I played in. Soon I would go pro.
The next year I started uni but because I had no career aspirations besides poker, I'd just stay home and play poker online each day. Sometimes i'd go to class but I'd just play poker on my laptop in class
At some point I picked up holdem manager and imported my hand histories. Over 1 million hands I had a win-rate of 0.5 bb/100 - Yeha I know, I played a shit-load of poker.
It was eye-opening though. I'd played one million hands for pennies, with a win-rate that was hardly even positive. Just imagine if I'd been crushing that whole time instead. If my win rate was 10 bb/100 i'd be up thousands.
So once again, I was determined to get better. I bought books. Lots of books. Like, enough to fill an entire shelf of my bookshelf. And I started reading.
The theory of poker was first. Every time your opponent makes a mistake, you win. Every time you make a mistake, your opponent wins. Yes, got it, basic stuff. What's next?
Professional no limit holdem volume 1. Pot odds, implied odds, stack to pot ratio. This was life-changing stuff. Simple mathemetical concepts I'd never considered before that made so much sense in hindsight. This was it, I didn't need to read any more. Like the cbet and then the set-mine, these concepts were the missing piece I needed to take my game to the next level.
Now I know you're thinking: "Yeah ok, this is great and all but can you get to the part where you lose 200k?". And yes. Yes I can.
So I started skipping uni completely to go to the casino every day. Obviosuly I realised that the rake on 1/1 and 1/2 was fucked, so I started playing 1/3. Even though I was over 1k up online, the buyins for this stake were still HUGE to me and I played pretty scared money. And honestly, I never ended up beating 1/3. I was break-even AT BEST. (I rationalised my results by blaming the high rake. It was unbeatable, you see)
But, I made some friends playing 1/3 at the casino. One guy, Billy, started to invite me to his home game. I LOVED Billy's home game because the rake was lower than the casino's and the buy-in was only $100, which was much more reasonable.
Billy had this rule, where you could buy-in for the max stack on the table. This worked well with my set-mining check-raise all-in strategy so of course I would always buy-in for the max.
One night i'm playing in this game that's been going for 2 days straight and one palyer's got a 2k stack on the table. He's one of the fishier players so I think to myself, why not? And I buy in for my entire roll. 2k.
First hand i get JJ. Flop comes AJ7r. I check, fish bets pot. "Got ya" I think to myself, and I raise all-in.
Snap call. Oh shit. He flips over AA.
I just lost my entire roll that i'd spent the past year grinding for over 1 million+ hands. I'm tilted. Billy asks me if i'm rebuying. That was my entire roll I say.
And then Billy utters the words that you've all been waiting for. "Credit?"
And yeah, basically that's it. I've played in Billy's game ever since. And funnily enough, it turns out I'm not some poker god, i'm just a grade-a egomaniac poker fish. Billy has me for 100k on his books and i've tracked another 100k in losses i've been able to repay. So i'm down 200k over my poker lifetime.
Also, I flunked out of uni. Got married and subsequently divorced due to financial arguments. If you want to know where the money's come from I can assure you it's not my parents or a trust fund or anything like that.
I sell drugs to poker players at Billy's game.

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Our casino has recently got some Pineapple going. I wasn't going to give it much thought at first but then it started attracting massive whales who think A6o or K3s is playable and stack off when they hit their top pair. So I hopped in. Sadly the other 5/10 NL regs have caught on as well, so now the game seems to be split between idiots and good holdem regs. I figure if this is going to become a regular "thing" that I better try to get good at this game!
Anyways, here's two hands. Keep in mind this is Pot Limit Pineapple, $5/5, and the discard occurs preflop but after the preflop betting.
Hand 1: $1000 effective stacks
I'm in the HJ with KK[7], 7 suits with one king. Button straddles to $10. Two fish in the blinds call call. Reg villain pots it to $50. I raise to $165. Folds around to villain who raises to $525
Can we ever get away from Kings in pineapple, 100 BB deep (since there's a straddle)? We got it in and he had AA[J].
I've done some thinking afterwards and my conclusion is that, since AA is 3 times as likely in Pineapple than in Holdem, KK in pineapple is about as good as JJ in holdem in these spots (3 hands beat you vs 1 hand with 3 times the likelihood), and therefore it's unlikely we can get away. Then again, JJ in holdem somewhat benefits from the fact that almost half of the combos willing to stack off against you preflop for 100BB are going to be flipping with you instead of crushing you (AK), and KK in pineapple doesn't have this effect and is more of just a bluff-catcher to a 4-bet. I'm trying to think if I should even 3-bet KK in pineapple for value, or if the appropriate range should just be AA for value and then bluffs. 3-betting and then folding it doesn't seem quite so appealing...
Nonetheless if we 3-bet it and get 4-bet, we're not defending nearly enough combos if we only defend AA[x] and KK[A], are we? We probably have to call some KK's without the A blocker, maybe even all of our KK's...not sure. If we're only going to call with some KK's, the 7 is a nice card to have since it doesn't block any of his natural bluffs...then again, we'd also prefer our discard to not suit with one of our kings for that extra .1% of equity or whatever. Not used to thinking about these situations! Any thoughts on playing KK in pineapple?
H2: Assume $1300 stacks
Button straddles to $10, same guy as before. Two fish in blinds call. Reg pots it to $50. Folds to me
I'm in the HJ with AQ[8] no suits. What would you do here? I feel like AQ isn't really a value hand in this game at all, but the A blocker is nice, and it might function will as a hand to play aggresively preflop similarly to a hand like AJ or AT in holdem being used as a 3-bet bluff. I decide to raise to $150. CO cold 4-bets to $370. Folds to me.
CO is a solid hold-em reg and often seems to use small sizes to put me in a tough spot. I'm not sure I can fold AQ here for $220 into a $820 pot, so I call.
Pot = $820, $970 behind. I discard the 8.
Flop: K 8 5 r.
I check, he bets $260. I fold.

Before the trip
About 8 weeks ago I was casually scrolling though the EPT/UKIPT schedule. I'd never played a major festival event before, and I wasn't really looking for an event to play, just wanted to see if there were any 2-7 draw games going, unlikely, but that's my thing. As I scrolled past the high rollers and main events something peaked my interest. 9pm, Thursday the 16th of October, a £220 deep stack turbo deuces wild event. At £220 it was within the cheapest band of entry fees and subsequently within my budget. I also considered the fact that 2s wild would appear as "a bit of fun" for a lot of less serious players, making for a weaker player pool. Along with that, the fact that the event was right at the end of the festival and at 9pm made me think that if I could sleep all day and be fresh for the event I'd have another small advantage. The thing with small edges... add them up and they can make a significant advantage. Once I committed to the idea of playing the event, I made my travel and living arrangements and started preparing.
Back at uni I played hundreds of hours of home games. About 25% of those games were the later part of 12 hour sessions when things would get less conventional. 8 card omaha, irish, 3 card holdem and most importantly a lot of wild card games. While I'm sure other people have played wild card games, the previous experience let me go in far less nervous, and as I would come to learn, much more prepared than many players in the field.
Before I even got to London I was doing all that I could to prepare. Unfortunately 2s wild is a very popular form of video poker, so searching anything out online was slim pickings. This article however gave me a decent idea about what to expect. I reached out to Will, a redditor who cashed the same event at a different stop on the EPT and we discussed his experiences. I also spent a reasonable amount of time just dealing flops with a deck of cards at a desk, counting outs for different hands containing a 2. Anything I could do that my opponents weren't doing was to my benefit and I pushed that edge as much as I could.
The day before the event
The day before the event I arrived in London. After checking into my room I walked the route from my hostel to The Grand Connaught Rooms, where all the EPT tournaments were held. I took a look inside to familiarise myself with little things. Where is the bar? Where are the bathrooms? Where is the information desk? Little things I didn't want to be worrying about a half hour before the cards are in the air.
My next stop was The Hippodrome, the official casino of Pokerstars at Leicester Square. They did have a free shuttle car service from the two venues which was an excellent thing to see, because the cash games only ran at the casino and due to some legal issues they could only accept cash buy ins at the Hippodrome, so anything to assist players in registering was a good thing. I walked however as it was dry and I had a lot of time. I knew from the promo information that I would need a Hippodrome card and a Friends of Pokerstars card in order to play. A quick visit to reception and the players lounge and I had everything I needed. I paid for my entry with cash there and then, receiving a receipt which I was to use to get my seat at the Connaught rooms later. I then went about enjoying the rest of my day in London. I did try and stay up extra late though, in order to sleep in later.
The day of the event
I woke up around 11am. Got myself up and ready for the day. Before the event that night I had a few more things to prepare. Going into the event I didn't know how long it would last. I had no real idea of what the number of runners would be or how late I could be up. As such, I went out and bought some aspirin, ibuprofen, bottled water, cereal bars and some emergency caffeine. If I felt a headache coming on at midnight I wanted to be prepared. I wandered the city for a while, went a napped a bit in my room, got diner with a friend and then it was time to go to the event.
I arrived at Connaught rooms about 40 minutes before cards were due to be in the air. As there were several events still in play, I took the time for find my table and seat among the 3 or 4 rooms which had tables set up. Screens mapping out what was where made this very easy. I found the screen with our tournament info on. 20/20 players it said. "Wow" I thought to myself. Really small field then?! One of the dealers pointed out it hadn't been refreshed in a while, so I moved past the thought. I peaked my head into the other rooms, saw a few faces I recognised from TV/Web casts, although names escape me. Before long at was 8.55pm, so I headed to my seat at Green Table 10, Seat 4.
The event I took my seat and the first thing I made sure to do was clarify the unique rules for the event. They were as follows.

• Any deuce in the whole cards or on the board can be played as any card in any suit.
• If a player is dealt pocket deuces, they must open their hand when the action is on them. They win the Blinds, the Antes and THE BUTTON
• 5 of a kind is a legitimate hand. It is ranked higher than a straight flush but not a royal flush.

Oh, blinds were 15 minutes and stacks were 15,000.
With the rules confirmed and the other players in their seats the game began. At this time most of the tables had 4 or 5 players, which I found odd. However over the next 30 minutes most of the tables gained more players until the field hit 70 players. After the first level, the tournament director also made the decision to play the remainder of the game with 8 handed tables, presumable due to the smaller field size, but I'm not too sure.
My opening table consisted of 5 players. A middle eastern guy in seat 3 (I'm in seat 4 remember). I could tell as his phones language wasn't in English. Two women in seats 5 and 7, and a middle ages white guy in seat 9. I was pretty happy to get this table draw. While outside of the poker table I don't discriminate or try to make assumptions, at the tables I will use generalizations and stereotypes until given a reason to think otherwise.
Within the first orbit we quickly got a taste of how easy it can be to make a huge mistake. To be brief, the woman in seat 7 raised, and the man in seat 9 called. The action went bet call flop, bet call turn, bet call river. Seat 7 shows 28o with an 8 on board for trips, seat 9 shows AA and lost about 7k of his 15k stack at 25/50 blind level. Pocket pairs really don't have any weight to them. Only on one occasion after that did i play a pocket pair, when the button shoved for 6bb when I had 50+bb and I held KK. He had JJ and I won.
Very quickly it was established that most players weren't playing hands without a 2. But I saw many spots where people were over playing weak 2s. It felt a lot like omaha, where the nuts often ran into the second nuts. Case and point was this hand I played at level 2. The UTG player in seat 3 raises to 3x, (50/100 level) I call with 8c2x. All other players fold. Flop comes 6c5c2x. I've flopped a 9 high straight flush. He c bets 500 into 750. I raise to 2000. I could have any number of straights, sets, flushes, quads. Which means he can have these hands too. He makes it 6000 and I shove for 13000. In hindsight a call of the 6000 would likely have been ok as I has the nuts unless 5 of a kind comes in. Regardless he calls and shows 4c2x for the bottom end of the straight flush. I double up and he is crippled. Coming in I knew I didn't want to play big bloated pots without the nuts and this is why. In this case, 7c8c9c with a 2 all beat 4c2x. Very strong hands were everywhere. 4h2x on a 4x2xJx board is quads. And that happened a lot. One observation I made after a couple of levels was the value of holding any AKQJ or T with a 2. This is because these hands can all make a royal so long as the board contains a 2 and any 2 of the other 4 broadway cards in your suit. This happened surprisingly frequently, putting those hands at a much higher value than 92 and 82.
By the end of the first hour, our table had gained a couple of player, the field was set at 70 and the prize pool confirmed. 9 places paid. A hair under £4000 up top. At this time our table broke. This is because all EPT events break tables high to low and table 10 was the largest number. I move with around 30k to another table. This table has a lot more young grinder type kids which is no fun, but I have a lot of chips compared to several stacks at the table. Over the next couple of orbits I knocked out 4 players when they shove and I call with a better 2x, (and the kkvjj hand from before). I was up to around 80k, still well over 100bb deep before my next table break. Down to 32 players, average is 33k. My next table has several Norwegians who are drinking and chatting. I made my first 5 of a kind on the river and knocked out a player who made a straight flush which was fun. But then the card dead period began.
In 6 or so orbits I saw 1 deuce and managed to steal the blinds a couple of times making use of my evidently nitty image. While I managed to maintain my stack, the blinds were racing up, the antes even more so. Since my initial double up back in level 2, I had simply been avoiding bad spots and pushing my good ones. Cruising my way along watching the field grow smaller. I knew I was getting more tired though. Finding the nuts at showdowns was getting to be trickier. Although this was usually after and all in and call where all 5 cards appear very quickly, rather than me having time to think and act. The dealers and floor staff did and amazing job of making sure pots were awarded fairly and correctly though. Throughout the whole tournament though, I took all the time I needed to correctly assess where I was in the hand and what I held. This was extra important when making thinner value bets on rivers, where a lot of 2s would call with very bad hands and lose to say a straight or flush.
Eventually we broke to two tables. And I could feel myself edging towards the money. When we broke to two tables, we redrew seats. The loud/drunk Norwegians moved to table 2 and I was on table one. While I had just above average at this time, most of the chips in play were at table 2, so I had most of my table covered and there were several short stacks. We began to see the first instances of multiple pre flop all ins with 2xXx vs 2xXx. Often they just resulted in chop pots as any 4 to a straight would make a straight for both players with the 2. I maintained my stack and then soon we were hand for hand. We would be going to a 9 handed final table and 9 places paid so this was the moment we had been waiting for. There were a few very large all ins on table 2, which the bigger stacks spent 2 or 3 minutes deliberating a fold or not. This really hurt with the blinds at 5k/10k(1k) with 15 minute blinds. A player from table 2 did eventually bust and we redrew onto table 1. Now I'm at seat 2 on the final table. 1 of the shorter stacks busted pretty quickly. Then a very important hand happened. I don't recall exactly the hands that got me there but I had about 200k. In the BB i pick up Qx2x. Action folds to seat 8 who shoves for 30k. Seat 9 shoves for 55k and I call in the BB. The hands were 42, 72 and Q2. The board runs out and 72 makes a straight. Seat 8 is eliminated leaving 7 players and seat 8 wins a 150k pot, which had I have won would have put me in a much better position.
Now the shoves are coming thick and fast. There were 4 or 5 all in and calls but they all ended up in split pots or the smaller stack winning. By this time the blinds are 10k/20k(3k) With 1,050,000 chips in play, that's 50bbs on the whole table. Unfortuanelty I catch no 2s that double me up or help me, the blinds go up again to 12k/24k(3k) and I'm all in for 1bb with KJo vs 82. I don't improve and I get knocked out for 7th place for £670.
Ultimately I'm very happy with how I played. I ran pretty well, didn't do anything stupid and had fun. It's a shame a couple of cards didn't come differently for a much bigger score, but given I can now brag about having a 100% cash rate at the EPT and have a good story to tell I'm not going to complain. If this event remains in the schedule I'll do my damned best to play it again that's for sure.
Thanks very much for reading. I know it's a wall of text but in this instance that's kinda the point.
GothicLord
PS- The /poker championship vids will be going up soon. For some reason (possibly the size/length of the videos) sometimes they crash and I have to start the uploads again.