Great night at the weekly 2-5 NLHE poker game I go to once or twice a month; when I made stupid mistakes, I was able to cut my losses to $5-$50 instead of a few hundred; when I got hit with a bad beat (lost to a two-outer on the river in one hand against T4s; had to give up KK v. AK when AQ3 flop hit in another; lost AK v. 43 when the short stack called my big raise from the big blind), I was able to avoid going on tilt, and turn around and take the money back from the same person with a big hand, almost always because the other player was overaggressive.

Example: 6-way pot that had been raised to $25 by the big blind, there was no question I was going to stay in with my 99 small blind. Flop comes J98, two spades. I check; middle position goes all in for $87; cutoff reraises all in for $180 total; I call and everyone else folds; the other two both show KJo, and I win back the money I lost when 43 had doubled up through my pre-flop AK raise a couple of hands earlier, even when the case J comes on the river.

Example #2: lots of limpers, I'm in the small blind with KK, I raise to $71 to clear out the riff-raff, get one caller on tilt. Grrr: flop comes ATA, I bet out so I don't have a chance to get bluffed out, he calls all-in with QJ and is drawing dead.

The game was unusually passive pre-flop, so I ended up limping in a lot of awful hands with tremendous implied odds that paid off with good draws, such as the several hundred dollars I won on 53s (called sizable bet on turn with implied pot odds and 9 outs, third 5 came on river, I get a call on my $150 check-raise), 54s (flush on river) and 65s (two pair on flop, boat on turn, A on river to encourage A6 to go all in).

Big hand of the night: I'm on the button with 77; it's six-way action after middle position raised to $20. Flop comes 573, but all clubs. Checked around to me, I bet $100, original raiser calls, everyone else folds. Blech, I figure I'm beat. Turn, 4 of diamonds. Relatively big stack middle position checks, I'm not putting new money into this hand if I don't have to, so I check. River 3 of diamonds. Middle position all in for $400+. I call instantly, he turns over KQ clubs, and my second-nuts boat takes the pot. Very lucky he misplayed that.

Another lucky hand: I had QQ under the gun, limped, raise from early position, couple of callers, all-in from the small blind, who was capable of doing that with 44 or higher, so it was an easy decision to call that bet, and the original early raiser also called all-in, and I took a big pot when my hand held up against AK and JJ.

There were two clearly subpar players at my table in the $2000 tournament today, so I was happy when the one to my immediate right open-raised to $375, and, after my call from the button with AA, the other called from the big blind. The pot has $1175. Flop is perfect: A65 rainbow. I decide to slow-play, but there's no need. The cut-off bets out $375, and everyone calls. The pot has $2300. The turn is a 7. Ick -- am I behind with only 10 outs now? Hard to see someone calling or betting with 98, but it's checked to me, I bet, perhaps too much at $1500, but the big blind calls. The pot has $5300. The river is another 5, and I never find out what the big blind was trying for, because he folds to my $2500 bet. Perhaps he had 76 and thought he was counterfeited, in which case that 5 was very bad for me instead of giving me the second nuts. Still, I was glad that, when these two busted out, I had gotten more than my fair share of chips from them.

I go into Round 3 with $10k, about 1.5 times the average stack. I have a couple of hands where I lose $1000 or so. I then pick up KK on the button; a tight player has raised pre-flop. (Earlier, the same player folded and showed AKo when I limp-reraised with QQ -- I was in early position, and the walrus-mustached fish had already limped under the gun, and I had been aiming for another player who had regularly been raising unraised multi-way pots.) I figured he'd give me action this time if I reraised him again, so I made it $2300 to go, a slightly bigger than pot-sized raise. He thinks about it and calls. Flop is JT5, two diamonds. He checks, I bet $2500, and he goes all in. It's only another $1075, so I have to call even if I know I'm beat, and I likely am -- either TT, JJ, AA, possibly but unlikely JT or 55, and very unlikely AK or AQ on a draw (with diamonds, the draw is the favorite even) or a mistaken QQ or AJ. Sure enough, it's AA, and I'm crippled, giving up the remaining 1800 of my chips AJ v. AQ.

Not much I can do on that hand. Harrington says that if you pick up KK v. AA, you should go broke in most circumstances, and I did.

Only one other hand I have a question about. Big stack at the table, though not much bigger than mine, raises my $100 big blind to $275 from early position. He's an aggressive player, but seems to be pretty solid. I've been getting good cards and have been playing a lot of hands and winning a lot of pots without having to show down, including both hands with AA, so the table probably reads me as loose. It's folded around to me, $425 in the pot, $175 to call, I have ATo--what do you think I should do?

So, an unsuccessful trip to Las Vegas. I lost quite a bit of money, though not as much as I lost in the stock market this week.

In the last 30 hours, I had my largest winning session at blackjack ever.

Unfortunately, I also had my largest losing session at blackjack ever, and that was twice as big. Rather than run out of money, I'll blog about my six hours in the Wynn Classic yesterday. 270 players, $1000+$60 buy-in no-limit, top prize $93k.

The first few rounds were very nice for me. We started off with 4000 chips, or 80 big blinds. My table has a lot of empty seats, so we're playing fast and picking up blinds from a lot of dead stacks; I even win a couple of pots when we see the flop. As the table grows to seven players, I limped in with a pair of deuces in a multi-way pot, and made a lot of money on a QJ2-K-Q board against Qx.

Four-player hand in raised pot, I have KQ diamonds, board is all under cards with two diamonds, I call a big bet on the flop, and then take it down when a king comes on the turn; I probably bet too much on the turn.

I called a middle-position raiser from the BB with 87s. The board comes 862, I bet out, he makes a small raise, I reraise him all in, and he lets go what allegedly was a better hand, and I pick up another 2000 chips. He mutters about the fish at the table.

Another hand, lots of limpers, I complete my small blind with 5-spades/4-clubs, flop is 853 clubs. Checked around, turn is 2 of hearts. Mutterer bets, I call with my open-ended straight and second pair. River is a high club, we check it down, and my tiny flush beats his set of twos, and now the guy is totally irate. I apologize for my fishy play.

I make a fishy under-the-gun limp with JTo, end up heads up against the big-blind. He calls my opening bet on a T99 board, turn is a 7, I call down about 1000 chips total and lose to his J8 straight.

Blinds are up to 100-200. Two seats to my right, with a smaller stack of 6000, raises to 800; I reraise to 2400 with AKo. He calls, we're heads up. Flop is AKJ with two clubs. Check, I bet 2400, he calls. Turn is 8-clubs, I have no clubs, he bets the rest of his stack, I call, he turns over KT without clubs, and the river doesn't help him.

Last hand of the third round, I open-raise from the button with 900 with KJo, small blind who just joined the table reraises to 4000, I let it go, which probably got used against me later. But I go into the break with 15000 or so chips, a little more than twice the average stack, and enough to play 30 rounds of blinds and antes.

The fourth round wasn't so good for me, however.

Unraised pot, six players, I have the big blind of K6o. Flop comes AK6 with two clubs, my hand can only get worse, so I bet out 900. Folded to short stack small blind who reraises all in; I call those 300, he turns over A3. Turn is 4, river is 4, I'm counterfeited.

Four times I get into a pre-flop raised pot, hit the flop only once and won a small pot when I hit my dominated three-outer, had to let it go the other times.

I call an unraised four-way pot from the button with T8hearts, and spend perhaps too much money chasing an open-ended straight that doesn't hit, and fold on the river when there's a club flush on the board to a blinged-out KFed-lookalike native in the middle of a sixty-minute chair massage. He and his diamond Rolex replaced the former KTo who had been knocked out. (I have no idea if it was Jacqueline Passey's GK in the Rolex, but it's fun to pretend that it was.)

Blinds go to 200-400, 25 ante. I raise to 1800 with AKs from middle position, collect the blinds. Next hand, see AKo. I open-raise to 1900 this time. Folded to small blind, who thinks about it, lets it go; the mutterer in the big blind, reraises all in with 4400 chips, and, with 2.5-1 odds, I call what turns out to be his 55. I have ten outs by the time the river comes (well, eight, because it turns out that the small blind and one other hand folded an ace), but don't improve. A shame it wasn't the small-blind who reraised all in. But he gets me on the next hand: I limp with 66, he reraises from the button all in with 2400, the 2-1 odds and chances that he's reraising with AK or AQ requires me to call, and his JJ holds up.

I get myself back up to 12000: under-the-gun raises to 1200, I discover KK in the big blind, reraise to 3400, he calls that but doesn't call my 2000 bet on the flop.

I'm in the big blind with a vaguely-playable hand, two players are in for 1200, I call, don't hit and fold to aggression. I lose another 1500 chips when I cold-call a pre-flop raise and fold when I don't hit.

Cut-off open-raises all in for 2800. I call with KQs on the button. Small-blind re-raises all in, I let it go, and two AK hands split my money. I get it back a round later when I bust the seat to my right with AQ v. AJ.

I blind away another 900 chips without anything playable, try to steal the blinds from the cut-off with an open-raise of 1200, fold my J9 to a tight big blind's reraise to 3600 that would have pot-committed me.

Near the end of the fifth round, I'm down to under 6000, I need to make a move. Under-the-gun mutterer raises to 1200, I'm in middle position with AJo. I decide to let it go--there are very few hands he'd lay down in that situation, and the majority of the rest have me dominated or leave me with only one live card. But perhaps I gave him too much credit; he could well have overthought it and folded a better hand, and that folding equity plus the chance of a bad beat (and the need to make a move soon) means I should have played, but I didn't want to give him the privilege of busting me. What do you think? As it turns out, it likely didn't matter.

Round 6, blinds are 300-600, antes of 50, and after four unplayable hands, it's folded around to KFed in the small blind, who raises to 2100. I go all-in with AJo, and he calls, turning over KJo, giving me 4-1 odds that only get better after a AK5 flop reduces him to two outs. But he does get that third king on the river, and IGHN in 108th place or so. Or, at least, if not home, upstairs to watch the sunset.

I also played a one-table satellite earlier Thursday morning, but the table was so tight and the blinds moved so fast we were eventually playing bingo. I built up a few chips stealing blinds and winning a pot, knocked out someone in a race, doubled up a small stack losing A9 to AK, was crippled when my A8s cut-off position raise got reraised all-in by a 99 smaller stack in the small blind and I had to call, and got knocked out in sixth place when my KQs lost to A2 on a board of K54-3-x. Wasn't very interesting or fun; too much luck involved.

I had a successful poker night last night at a game in Alexandria. I had to adjust strategy in a few ways:

• I've gotten so used to playing no-limit, I had to make the adjustment into limit; one needs to play different hands, and make different types of bets and calls.


• I'm used to Las Vegas rules of hi-lo split without declaration. In games with declaration, the extra round of betting has to be accounted for. Plus, one has to play different hands. In Omaha, one can normally make calls on the assumption that if one is beaten on the high, there are still outs on the low (or vice versa). But if there is a declaration required, one has to commit to a strategy, requiring a different mix of hands.


• One player kept calling a game of hi-lo split without a qualifier. This seems a huge design mistake: it means that one plays A2 or A23 (and even A3) really hard with an early near-lock low with a free-roll for the high, and destroys pot odds for chasing high hands. (Thanks to the declaration rule, I was saved in a big pot when I was the only one who went low with my pathetic A23J when the 2 and 3 bricked on the board. It was nice pulling A23J in that hand when I announced before the deal that there were no circumstances I was going to call or make a pre-flop bet unless I had A2.) The only danger is being quartered when two A2s get in the hand and both pump up the pot to the benefit of the high hand.


• I hate the rule that a wheel (or other straight or flush) isn't a low. I almost cost myself a scoop one Omaha hand when it my 65 low turned out not to be a low, but fortunately it held up because of a 7 in my hand.


• I learned a new game, "Kenya," a weird combination of draw and five-card stud with three common cards. One starts with a five-card hand, keeps two to five cards, with all face down. The third card is dealt face up or revealed by players who kept more than two cards; then a round of betting; then a common card; then a fourth card; then a second common card; then a fifth card; then a final common card; then a declaration for a seventh round of betting, and players make the best five-card hand. It took me a while to develop a strategy for this game (and I cost myself a lot of money one hand by paying for several rounds of betting to see if my 65 low could compete against two made 64s).

Situation: about a third of a way through a three-table free on-line tournament; most of the maniacs have already been knocked out, and people are playing surprisingly seriously for a free tournament. I have an average stack of about 25 BB, and am in the BB, blinds 50-100.

Folded to loose cutoff with average stack, who calls. Button is chip leader, playing a lot of hands, and raises to 600. I have AKo. The last time I went all in I had AKs.

Do I raise all-in or just call?

It's not clear to me that this James McManus essay on poker and Iranian nukes works, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Nine-handed. Early position raises $4 BB to $10. Two folds, one caller, and I call with two black tens. Two more callers, and the big blind raises to $40, about a fourth of his stack. Original raiser calls with almost all of his stack. First caller calls. I don't have pot odds to play this hand any more, and should have folded, but, mistakenly hoping to isolate AK, I raise to $100. Folds to the big blind, who re-raises all in. Early position calls all in. Caller calls all-in, with slightly more than big blind, and now I'm pot-committed and in trouble. Around the table, it's KK, AA, AJs, and my TT, no one improves, AA takes a big main pot, KK takes a big side pot for a profit, and I take the tiny $10 second side pot vs. AJs.

Later, I got out of position with top pair against a set against the same player, and decided to bluff at the pot on the river with wishful thinking that he was on a draw, and he takes $170 from me, when his smooth call of a significant bet on the flop should have set off alarm bells.

Later, I play J9s from the blind in an unraised seven-way pot. Flop comes JJ5 rainbow, I bet $5, get three callers. Turn is Q, I bet $15 (enough to chase out the backdoor flush draws) everyone folds to fellow across the table who raises to $50. Now, he bluffs a lot, but I should have read this for what it was and got away from the hand; instead, I put him all in, and lose to AJ after a blank on the river.

Another big blind hand, this time in Omaha/8, of JT86, and I get a miracle flop of Q97 rainbow, giving me, oh, twenty outs to hit a straight. I bet out, get five callers. Sure enough, the turn is T, I bet out, the low-chasers fold, one caller, and then a generally sound player raises. I have him on KJ, decide I'm drawing dead and don't want to put another $16-$24 in the pot over two rounds of betting, and fold. Turns out he had the same J8 with a flush draw. Oh well. Still probably the right decision, given the risks of redraws and drawing dead.

Tilting later that evening, I'm in middle position with one limper ahead of me. I pot-raise to $18 with A5o. Cut-off raises to $50 and has a deep stack; I put him (and correctly, I think) on a hand that has me dominated or with only one live card. I can't play this hand without hitting two pair, trip 5s, or a straight on the flop, so I correctly fold, $18 too late.

When I was short-stacked, I had a lucky hand where I raised all-in with A9s a limper slow-playing QQ and spiked an A on the flop.

I had a lucky hand where I had two players all in where I had AQ vs. TT vs. T9. On the flop, however, the case ten showed up (JT6), but I got the four-outer on the river.

I had another lucky hand where I called a regular bluffer's big under-the-gun pre-flop bet from the cut-off with JT. The flop comes AT9 two-suited, and he overbets the $40 pot all in for $105. I call immediately, quite confident from my read that he doesn't have the ace. He doesn't, but he has QT. Fortunately, the 9 pairs on the river, and we chop the pot.

In short, I was lucky to only lose $200-$300 from my mistakes. Otherwise, I played pretty well, and ended up with a profit for the night; I had a nice hand where I flopped the nut flush playing AdQd in an unraised eight-way pot from the small blind, and a lower flush put me all in thinking I was on a draw. But I have to be dissatisfied overall.

Down to the final three tables, blinds are 20k/40k with a 5k ante, and Fossilman's still in it, in fourth place with 3 million chips, which gives him about a 1-in-19 chance of winning the whole thing if the remaining players are evenly matched. 10th through 27th pays between $300k and $600k; final table players are guaranteed $1M each, and first place is $7.5 million. And ESPN has to be salivating at the fact that the chip leader is Mike Matusow, whose confrontation with Raymer last year made for great television and left Matusow in tears. Best web source for news appears to be Pokerwire.

Anyone know if the Tiffany Williamson of London who's the last woman left in the tournament is the same one who's at Davis Polk's London office now and graduated Columbia Law in 1999?

Defending champion Greg Raymer has amazingly clinched a six-digit payday; he even started today in first place, but lost half of his stack on a couple of bad hands, and is now faced with an slightly-above-average-sized stack at the end of Day 4 with eighty-odd players left, about 750,000 in chips, down from a million at the beginning of the day, and 1.5 million mid-day. Of course, after winning last year, he doesn't need investors any more, so this time he'll get to keep his entire after-tax winnings.

Kevin got knocked out of the poker tournament shortly after I left Friday night.

I tried again Saturday night at the 110-pound tournament, with 64 players and a top prize of 2000 pounds, but never really got the cards. I saw three showdowns in three hours; I doubled up when I hit a set with my 44, won the blinds once with a pre-flop raise, won another hand after the flop checked through with an aggressive bet on the turn after a blank hit, then bled chips when I got good starting hands that missed the flop and left me with no outs to play aggressively, forcing me to fold early: AKhearts and an all-club flop won by Q9s against a player with top pair, that sort of thing. I fold AQs on the river to a bet on a T9886 board. I went all in with ATo from the big blind against a 2xBB bet from the button and a call from the small blind, and tied with another ATo, and that split pot was my last profit of the night. I open-pot-raise with 98s two off the button, the button calls, the flop misses me, and I fold to a bet. Down to a 6xBB stack, I have K8s in the big blind, the cut-off raises to 3xBB, the small blind calls all in. The Tube will stop running soon, so I go all in—my utility is worse off getting knocked out at 12:10 then at 11:45. As it turns out, I was better off calling and betting the AK5 flop; the cut-off had QQ, calls my all-in bet, and hits his set on the turn. Even a second king on the river doesn't help me, though it would've beat the A7s small blind.

Eric and I decided to go to the £15 tournament at Gutshot, a poker-themed pub and Internet cafe last night.

Three tables, named Moneymaker, Ferguson, and Raymer. I'm at the Ferguson table. I decide that there's no profit in letting anyone know that Greg Raymer effectively paid for my trip to London. Eric brings me a cold draught Foster's from the bar—how did I go 36 years without ever having a Foster's? Good beer, that.

I started off poorly; I lost a third of my chips with ATo v a small stack's AQ. I had to play tight because a large stack to my left was regularly raising and re-raising all in. Far too often. I noticed that sometimes he'd push all his chips in, and then quickly look away to his left. A guilty tell? Oh, why did I sell my Caro book instead of memorize it? I raised with T9o in the hopes my previous tight play would reward me with the blinds here, but the big stack reraised all in and looked away to the left. T9o isn't a great hand, but I had pot odds against anything other than an overpair and called. Oops: he showed JJ. I administered a bad beat and stayed alive when I got a ten on the flop and a nine on the turn and he didn't improve.

I picked up another chunk of chips when my KQ spiked a K on the flop and QQ and a garbage hand had to fold to my bet.

I open-raised with A7s from the cut-off, and the button, a passive player (and also the only woman in the 23-person tournament) cold-called. Flop is rags, check, check. I bet all-in on the blank turn and picked up another nice pot.

We're now down to the final nine, top four get paid. Eric's survived, also. There's a giant stack at the table with half the chips, but he's bleeding chips by regularly challenging all-ins and losing two-thirds of the time. No one challenges my AKs minimum raise under the gun, and I pick up the blinds, but I'm only at 7xBB or so, so when the big stack steals my big blind, and then also raises my KQo small blind with a 2xBB bet, I reraise all in. He has A7o, unfortunately, but I double up when a king hits.

I stay out of the way as the big stack jousts with other players, and we're down to seven. A small stack in early position raises all-in about 3xBB my blind and it's folded around to me. I have A5o, and he's looking uncomfortable, so I make the marginal call, announcing, "I'm going to hate myself for this." He has KQo, and this time the ace wins, and we're down to six.

The formerly giant stack cripples himself in another race of a hand, and I now have the second-largest stack, only a few chips behind the largest stack. The cut-off raises all in with a small stack, I call with QJs and a medium stack, and the formerly giant stack, in the big blind, also goes all in, and I call that small raise. The big blind has AJ, the cutoff has A8. The flop is JT6; the turn is a 9, which means that I have 10 outs for the side pot and 7 for the main pot, and the 8 does come on the river, giving me the straight, and putting me in the money, as well as giving me the largest stack. The giant stack is out of the tournament and out of the money, when he pretty much had at least second place locked up.

Eric is the small stack, and his QJ all in loses to an AK. He finishes fourth, for £30. I have just under half of the chips.

Three-handed, the player on my right is the second-largest stack; on the button, he says "Call... raise!" and is held to the call. I raise all in from the small blind with AQs. Big blind folds, and so does the dealer after figuring that I have him covered, and I increase my lead.

We go around one and I lose my blinds, which are large enough now that a round of this is a sixth of my stack; the small stack doubles up once through the second-largest stack, but is still a small stack.

I'm the big blind. Dealer, a small, but growing, stack, raises all in. Small blind, the second-largest stack, re-raises all in, and I show my A8o before folding it. The smaller stack is knocked out, and we're heads up. Now that I'm the small stack, I offer a generous deal of £45/£20, which is refused.

First hand, I raise with 75o, and win the big blind.

Second hand, he calls, I raise to 3xBB with QJo, and he re-raises all in, and I have the pot-odds to call the AKs that he actually has. King on the flop, no improvement for me, and I finish second for an £85 prize, and a £70 profit. Final results should be posted later today have been posted.