USA Trip Day 5

Bustouts & disliking shallow no limit holdem ...
Played 2 tournaments ... first the Omaha hi-lo at the California State Championships at the Commerce Casino. There were 146 players & I finished in around 100th place. Interesting table talk with Jerry Buss at the table, so quite a lot of talk about the NBA (Buss is one of the owners of the Los Angeles Lakers). Of course this meant that the TV nearest to Jerry was changed to the Suns v Spurs game (Suns won to win the series 4-0 & likely play the Lakers in the Western Conference finals), and Jerry was consulted whenever someone wanted to do anything to the TV.
I played too weak-tight early & didn't adjust to the structure until it was too late. The small starting stacks (4k) mean that you need to pick up chips early so that you can survive & have a stack to play with through the middle stages. I tended to call much more in multi-way pots in order to minimise any damage caused by bad river or turn cards (which can be particularly brutal in Omaha hi-lo), meaning that the pots I won (or split, being hi-lo & all) were relatively small. This would not be so bad in a cash game, but with the blinds continuing to go up in a tournament this is much more of an issue. Of course when I did adjust & play more aggressively, I managed to find the brutal turns & rivers that you hate to see in O8 & my stack went south ... In particular I am starting to develop a dislike for Barry Greenstein's book, not because of the content, but because of the number of times the dealer managed to find an ace on the river, which inevitably conterfeited what would have been a winning low hand, which at the same time often gave me a decent high hand (the old 'I have top pair/two pair now ... I have to call'). Of course the beneficiaries of these 3-outers were invariably horrible players who would most likely find a way to donk off these chips well before the money (for example one player on the button called my raise from early position, with another tight player calling in between with the O8 monster 5678 with one suit. Of course the flop is Q95 & he calls my bet & the other player's raise (I have a bunch of low cards & a short stack, so get out of the way while the damage can be minimised) to bink the magical 7 on the turn, get in a raise & take down the pot on the river against the opponent's AAxx hand. Love them tournaments ...

Decided to play some No Limit at the Commerce after busting, and sat down at a $100NL table (blinds $2 & $3), thinking it would play similarly to the $2/3 game at the Bike (which has a $100-300 buy-in) or Crown (which has a $50-200 buy-in), however because people call with all sorts of hands & you don't have a deep enough stack to get them to fold, you simply can't play post-flop. This means that if you want to get chips you either have to play very LAGgy & try to hit flops & stack people (but obviously take the risk of being stacked yourself) or be a total nit, wait for a huge hand & hope you get paid off & dodge whatever outs your opponent might have. Either way I find this frustrating & think in future I will stick to limit games at Commerce (unless I can somehow find a big enough bankroll to play in bigger games where you can buy-in for around 100BBs). Needless to say, in spite of a promising start (picked up KK early & won a decent pot), the session was not a good one for the bankroll.

Decided to have a crack at the midnight Bike tournament & had a rollercoaster night, dropping from the 4k starting stack to just over 1.5k before doubling up, then busted some players & was up to almost 10k by the time my initial table broke. My new table proved to be horrible, which wasn't helped by an ill-timed bluff early (flopped a flush draw, played it fast & was called down by QQ on a 7-high paired board). Eventually finished in 15th place from 45 starters.

Next on the agenda: HORSE at Commerce ... and a much more aggressive approach! Methinks it will either be a short night or a very long one. Lets hope for the long night!