1. 2008-03-26 20:35:16

   My First Time (In a Casino, Of Course)

   So I have a confession to make. Until last Monday, I had never played poker in a casino before.

   I should probably back up a bit. Jason, myself, our respective significant others, and a bunch more people all met up in Vegas for the weekend. We stayed at the MGM Grand, bought ourselves table service at an awesome night club, and generally behaved like a bunch of jet-set twentysomethings with full time jobs.

   So now, to the poker. I decided going in that I was going to buy in for $100 at 1-2 no limit, kiss it goodbye, and have a good time. I play fairly tight in an effort to stay in and gain as much knowledge and experience as possible. The two best hands I had:

   1. I get in the big blind, all but 2 players limp and I check. Flop comes . I bet out $12 and everyone folds. Dammit! Looking back I should have just checked and hoped someone had the other king or tripped up a 2.
   2. I get in the small blind. Again, most players limp, including me. Flop comes . I check, one player bets 5, one other calls and I call. The turn is a . Oh yeah, I've got trips with a good kicker, time to get paid. So I make it 5 to go, one player calls, the other raises to 10, and I stupidly make it 20. Everyone folds. I made ~$30 on the hand (sorry if the math doesn't add up, I don't have a spot-on memory for this stuff), but I could have made a lot more. My read said no one had the flush, so I wasn't worried about that.

   The Guitar Hero Effect

   After that, I was up $35. Unfortunately, I didn't get any more good hands and I didn't want to start playing loose, so I did a lot of folding and missed a lot of flops until I was down to $115. Then a strange thing happened, something I like to call the Guitar Hero Effect. Guitar hero is a game of hand-to-eye coordination, timing, and precision. The GHE is what happens to me when I play Guitar Hero late at night. I can't go to sleep because my brain is spinning, trying to process all the information that gets thrown at me during the game. Seriously, I'll involuntarily go through the songs I've played one at a time until my subconscious decides it's dealt with the info.

   I had been concentrating really hard on the game for about 2 hours, trying to read players, decide who I should play with, calculating odds, making sure I posted my blinds, etc., when I lost all my focus. I could feel my subconscious struggling to process all the information I had just soaked up and make sense of it. I ended up folding lots of otherwise decent hands ( , , , etc) because I just didn't know how to play them and I couldn't concentrate long enough to think through it. I folded my way to $104 when I cashed out, then spent the rest of the day in this odd manic-sleepy-but-mostly-sleepy state, kind of like when I finished taking my AP tests back in high school.

   So all in all, not a terrible session. I ended up (slightly) positive and I learned a whole lot.

   Now I can't wait for part B of the Guitar Hero Effect: let your brain process all the info for a couple of weeks, then pick it up again and decimate your old high scores.

   Posted by Ethan at 2008-03-26 20:35:16

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Comments on “My First Time (In a Casino, Of Course)”

1. • Posted by Ethan g 2008-03-28 17:35:03
   • 

   • I folded the jacks either UTG or after a couple people had raised pre-flop, can't remember which it was. If everyone had limped, I probably would have as well and hoped to make trips. Thinking about it now, betting probably would be the way to go, unless there was a big raise pre-flop.

2. • Posted by Teresa g 2008-03-28 17:27:05
   • 

   • I hate jacks. that first time I played in Vegas, that I played for like 7 hours straight, at the end I was folding hands I can't play very well when I can't concentrate. I shouldn't have, because I had chips to play, but that's how you lose them.

     I should play cash games instead, I used up all my tourney luck this year it seems :(

3. • Posted by Jason M g 2008-03-28 17:17:09
   • 

   • Good point, Teresa. It's hard to look at it that way!

4. • Posted by Teresa g 2008-03-28 16:40:27
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   • he just folded the hand because he couldn't concentrate enough to play it

5. • Posted by uzjedi g 2008-03-28 07:30:55
   • 

   • Tight is right at low stakes. You just want to make sure you aren't being too tight or passive.

     So...the JJ was folded under what circumstances?
     A bad flop, a very tight raiser, and preflop reraises at full tables are often good times to let it go. But otherwise it's a damn strong hand.

6. • Posted by Jason M g 2008-03-27 21:00:15
   • 

   • I still wouldn't out-right fold it ;) You don't have to play it like pocket aces, but you can certainly play it aggressively. At least limp and hope to catch a set.

     Remember, only 0.7% of the starting hands are better than your pocket jacks, and only 2.4% of the starting hands are either better than your pocket jacks or have two over cards.

     I sat next to Ethan the whole time he played, and he did very well. A lot of folding... If only I could be that patient.

7. • Posted by Ethan g 2008-03-27 20:51:11
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   • Thanks. I re-read your post, and I feel better about the lay-down now :)

8. • Posted by Krishna g 2008-03-27 06:17:44
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   • You did great!
     First two times I lost my whole buyin.
     Live play is just totally different with big raises.
     Nice fold with JJ.
     Seriously - I mean it.
     Read my post about a JJ hand I totally messed up.

9. • Posted by Ethan g 2008-03-27 02:40:14
   • 

   • Not to risqu??, I just decided I hated it. I've definitely found that the GHE isn't as bad as when I first started playing, so I assume the same will happen with poker.

10. • Posted by uzjedi g 2008-03-27 01:35:21
    • 

    • Awwww, was the other title too risqu" ;)

      I understand that guitar hero effect both with video games and poker. I've finished out long sessions (usually live) having been very alert and focused the whole time, only to find myself having difficulty shutting my mind off later. But as with anything you do a lot, that has faded with time.

      Now I often have the opposite problem. That is being interested enough in what I'm doing to stay alert and play my best.