The Shark Tank

Due to the effects of jet lag on my lovely bride and my general refusal to sleep I found myself with an unexpected opportunity to play poker late one night in Stockholm.  Based on my general experience with Swedish players and the tendency of brick and mortar play to be even looser than online and some reading I had done, I was able to describe my poker approach for this trip to Suited very succinctly:  Never bluff, never fold.  I looked up the address to casino on Google maps using my handy iPhone and, clutching my subway ticket, headed off to the nearest stop.  Being the astute readers that you all are, you probably already are aware that people in Sweden have a charming tendency to speak in a string of gibberish they call “Swedish” which is completely incomprehensible.  It is like a normal language, except that they add decorative symbols to every vowel which is a secret code that indicates that the letter “a” could be pronounced (quite literally) as if it were any other vowel.  As best I follow the rules, the symbol over (or in some cases under) the vowel is combined with the speaker’s astrolgical sign and the day of the week to determine the correct pronunciation for any given word.  Apparently, they also find this annoying, since literally every single person we met (including drunken mechanics) spoke flawless English.

To add to the confusion, they have a tendency to use street names that are at least 25 letters long and try to use as many of the same letters for each name as possible.  For instance, the casino was located on Kungsgatan, which was near to Kungstradgardgatan and Kammakargatan and Kungsbron and approximately 100 other streets that started with a “K” and usually ended with “gatan.”  Although I made it smoothly to my appointed subway stop, when I tried to exit, there were four or five tunnels leading away from the train tracks, with perplexing Swedish ruins indicating random destinations that corresponded to nothing in my notes.  I know from experience that these tunnels could be several miles in length and might open up in Finland, far from my neat “T” symbol on the map that theoretically indicated the location of the subway stop.  I emerged from the metro and to my shock and delight, found that the appointed street was only a few blocks away.  I began to follow the street to number 22, which Google happily supplied to me.  They have another curios habit in Sweden regarding the numbering of buildings.  Like most civilized societies, they use odd numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the other side.  However, unlike most places that reset the numbers on each block to ensure that things are synchronized, the Swedes just keep counting up by two on each side of the street with no regard for cross streets or alignment.  As a result, one side of the street could be 112 and the other side might be 401.  This doesn’t seem to bother them.  So I passed 21 and 23 on the opposite of the street several blocks before I finally arrived at number 20 and 22 on my side.  I thought that they might be keeping a low profile on gambling because #22 looked quite a bit like an office building.  After peering intently at the list of businesses, I concluded that something had gone terribly wrong.  Having made this sort of mistake before, I consulted my map and looked for a nearby street that had a similar name.  I found one about 10 blocks away.  I also asked the iPhone to guess at my current location and advise me and both seemed to agree that I was about the same distance from the correct street and location.  I hiked the long blocks to the other street only to discover that it did not offer a casino either.  Growing highly annoyed, I brought up the website of the actual casino and determined that Google maps simply lied about the location.  It was on the street I first tried, but instead of #22, it was actually located at #65.  Completely defeated at this point, I simply hailed a cab and grunted the name of the casino and was whisked directly there in a few minutes.

Sweden requires you to be entered into some master database of degenerates before you can enter and you actually have to pay an entrance fee before you can lose your money there.  In exchange for the insult of paying to get in, you also get to pay for your drinks.  Drinks in Sweden are apparently made by highly compensated elves, because a draft beer is normally about $15 and a mixed drink could be $20 or more.  However, you don’t have to tip, so for some ITHers it wold work out about the same.  They don’t seem to play limit hold’em, so I took a seat in the first available game which has a 2,000 buy-in.  That sounds like the big time, but actually that works out to a bit over $300.  The play basically the same as in American casinos, except that what they call the “small blind” is actually the same size as the “big blind” at 20 SEK.  This is probably just as well, since no self-respecting Swede would really ever fold from the blind pre-flop anyhow.  Typical raises pre-flop were to 120, although I saw raises as high as 340.  There is really no such thing as blind stealing in Sweden.  Someone will call.  Maybe everyone.  Several people straddled every time they were UTG.  If enough people limped, someone will usually raise.  Generally, most everyone would call that too.  I played about 25% of my hands and was probably the tightest player at the table.  There were a number of “fit or fold” players who would generally limp behind or call behind with any semi-reasonable starting hand and were usually quite dogged if they caught a draw or any piece.  People did not c-bet as often as I am used to, which makes sense if you think of the situation they find themselves in.  You could value bet like a maniac and once you figured out who to avoid (calling stations or fit/fold players that are betting post-flop are usually trouble) and who to call down with anything it was about as profitable a game as you could hope to find.

The rake was fairly brutal, running at 10%.  There was a cap, but it was very high.  On the plus side, there was no tipping and they used autoshufflers.  Table talk was a bit odd.  Some players used English for “raise” and “call” and the numbers, where others used “Swedish.”  Many of the dealers used English more often, but not exclusively.  All of them sprinkled English phrases with their table talk like “2 outer” mixed in with a bunch of Swedish.  As it turns out, very few Swedes actually look Swedish.  However, they all think I look very Swedish.  Most poker stuff doesn’t require talking, so I was very quiet and just played — being very careful to make my bets with mixed chips and respecting their betting line rule.  People would sometimes say something things to me that I could answer with yes or no (these words being in my Swedish vocabulary).  I quickly learned the basic action words and numbers, because the dealers announced the amounts every time.  The dealers were generally fairly competent.  After a couple of hours, I get finally get exposed as a foreigner, when there was a dispute about what the guy next to me said.  He claimed to have announced a raise and the dealer didn’t hear him.  The dealer asked me in Swedish if I heard him and I had to use my pigeon Swedish to ask him if he could speak English.  The dealer said “Oh, you don’t speak Swedish?” and I admitted that I did not.  This caused the table to laugh because I was being asked to confirm what the guy said.  Amusingly enough, I was able to confirm that he said “raise” in Swedish which sounds sort of like her-ja.  This also made everyone laugh and they quizzed me on the depth of my Swedish knowledge.  I rattled off a few words that I had picked up, the numbers, call, raise, sorry, thanks, hello and so on.  Someone asked me if I knew the word for fold, but I said that I hadn’t heard that one.  This got the biggest laugh of all.

I actually had a bad result that first night.  I ended up down about a buy-in.  I lost two big hands where I got it in good.  The first hand the money went in on the turn when I had top set against a flush draw and a pair.  He caught the flush on the river.  The second hand I flopped the flush against a set and we got it in on the flop.  The board paired.  Despite the disappointing result, I knew that I was seriously +EV at this table.  It was late and I was tired, so I called it a night and absorbed my loss.  I knew that the metro was no longer running, which was just as well since I probably couldn’t find it again anyhow — so I just took a cab back to the tiny hotel room.

The next night, buoyed by my tales of poor play, Suited decided to join me after dinner.  She got added to the national degenerate database and joined me on the wait list.  Since I don’t like Suited to see how incompetent I am, we just took a cab from the get-go.  Unfortunately, arriving earlier meant enduring a long wait list.  This led to blackjack, which in turn led to Suited starting out in 1,000 SEK hole before even sitting down.  I gave her the lowdown on the players I recognized and exchanged enough dollars to cover a couple of buy-ins each.  The casino has a pretty good rate and will sell your own dollars back at the exact same rate at the end of the night, if you have any kronor left.  Once again I passed for Swedish for a while, but this time the table was very talkative and I stacked a guy in the first couple of orbits, so I had to fess up sooner.  I was playing well and pretty much in a zone all night and steadily accumulated chips.  It didn’t hurt that I got pretty lucky.  I limped the button with KQs behind 6 or so players and the big blind raised fairly big.  He was actually fairly tightish pre-flop (he called way too much, but didn’t raise that often).  I might actually have folded, but three other players called him, so I couldn’t fold.  The flop was King high with one of my suit.  He led about half his stack and got two callers.  I had everyone well covered by this time, so I just shoved.  The BB and one other called joined in.  The BB had AA and the other guy had middle pair.  I figured to win the side pot, but when the river paired the King, I won it all.  That was my biggest suck-out.  The biggest hand was against the big action player at the table.  There was a straddle and I called with 55 and the action player raised to 220 (the straddle was 40).  When the BB called, I decided to take a flyer with my pair.  The flop was K53 with two hearts.  Everyone had deep stacks, but I covered.  We checked to the raiser, who bet.  The BB check-raised and I smooth called.  This might have set off alarms against better players, but not so much here.  The raiser re-raised and the BB and I called again.  I was pretty sure stacks were going in here and the blank turn proved me right.  They didn’t want to show first at the river, so I tabled my set of fives, praying that neither of them had Kings.  As it turns out they both had AK and I was up to 10,000 SEK or so.

I did get some nice poker complements at this table.  One was overt where the people across the table were talking about a hand where I outplayed the other guy, getting a free card when I needed it and getting a value raise when I caught.  I knew they were talking about me, but wasn’t concerned.  They realized I might know their subject, so advised me in English they were discussing me, but it was nothing bad.  I told them I knew they were talking about me, but I didn’t mind.  They asked if I knew what they said and I said I didn’t, but assumed they were commenting on how lucky I was getting.  He said that was not it, that he thought I “played very nice.  Very elegant.”  I’m not sure what that means, but I like it.  The better complement was the guy to my left, who failed to get maximum value from two pair that turned into a boat when I had a worse two pair that turned into a worse boat.  I knew he was very strong and was extremely pleased to get away so cheaply.  I didn’t have to show my hand, but several people asked him why he didn’t bet more.  Out of courtesy to me, they did this in English.  I was looking at him because I was curious about that too.  He looked back for a minute and said that he doesn’t like to play with me, because I make him very confused.  That might be the coolest thing anyone ever said to me at a poker table.

I wound up winning about 15,000 kronor, which was still a very nice profit even after absorbing some minor losses from Suited.  When I checked up on her during the session, she announced that her goal was to lose more slowly than I won.  Swedes are very friendly to Americans despite their silly language.  I got to use the joke about not knowing the Swedish word for fold to good laughs both nights.  I only made one mistake resulting from the rules, when I didn’t realize there had been two raises and only called the first one.  Once the money goes over the line, it is lost, so I had to call both raises and folded the flop.  I saw worse.  One guy thought his bet on the flop was uncalled and showed his set of Aces in disgust.  Unfortunately for him, the other player had not yet folded (he was certainly planning to).  Under the house rules, an exposed hand is dead, so he lost the pot.

If I have to move from the country because the neo-Fascists like Bull wind up running the place forever, I could do far worse than playing poker in Sweden.  To lay the groundwork for our future immigration, Suited and I met up with Sami the last night of our visit to arrange lodging on his floor should it come to that.  He was kind enough to take a train into the city and meet us at a place we couldn’t fail to find, our hotel.  We used our frequent flier pull to get him admitted to the lounge where we knocked down as many free drinks as we could to avoid the potential million kronor bar tab.  As those of you who were at the ITH convention in Atlantic City know, Sami is a really charming and friendly guy and he was nice enough to help us find a great Indian restaurant near our hotel.  He handled the astrological sign vowel conversion for us and suggested some really outstanding dishes.  We capped it off with a few drinks at a local watering hole and split up in time for Sami to catch one of the last trains back out of downtown.  It was great way to end a great visit, even if we didn’t actually play any poker with him.

I made Platinum this month, thanks to the 2x FPP promo, but I’ve really scaled way back on the playing. Part of it is motivation and part of it is schedule-related. I’ve been saddled with a lot more assignments on the homefront with the never-ending renovations and work has gotten a bit more hectic. Clearly the primary problem is that I just haven’t been feeling it. I’m going to try to buckle down and get in at least a few hours for the rest of the month. I played a very short session this morning on the 5/10 tables and had fun with my loose pre-flop play. I won a couple of very nice pots with marginal hands and got heckled by a Swedish guy for being loose, which might be worthy of some kind of award. I believe he called me “gutshot King” which isn’t a bad title, really. I assured him that the truth was that I was a very bad player, but I’m not sure that is the right answer when heckled. Next time I might ask what a gutshot is.

The Stars 2x bonus promo has me cranking out some hands.  I’ve accumulated abot 5,000 points thus far, which makes me a real slacker.  I’ve also discovered an important tip when 9 tabling 5/10 LHE.  Raises on the turn mean a real hand.  Every f-ing type.  Some of my fancy plays are a very bad idea.

Off to look at art.

For some reason, I seem to find my poker interest fading in the aftermath of the WSOP every year. To some extent it is probably because of its status as the premier poker event in the world. Once it is done, going to back to plain old ring games seems a bit dry. This year, my mood is compounded by my failure to win a seat into the Main Event. It is especially painful because I made two very deep runs in sats on Stars and Tilt at the same time. In the Stars event, I made an astonishingly boneheaded play that quite clearly cost me the seat. If I posted the hand on the forum, every single response would be to do what I should have done instead of what I actually did. If there is one thing that can tilt me, it is making a play that I know to be foolish. It is all the more painful when the thing I most want in poker is on the line. Depressing all the way around.

To top that off, I had the biggest one day loss I’ve ever had in poker. I was following a fish to the 50/100 game and I believe that I was very much +EV on that table, but I got absolutely demolished in a very few hands. I lost set over set twice and with Aces over sevens to quad sevens for the biggest pot I’ve ever lost. I was considering a run to Vegas for the last week of the WSOP to play the limit shootout and take a few shots at sats into the Main, but the timing is terrible at work and the renovation costs are spiraling on me, so I’m going to end up staying home. Fortunately, I do have a piece of three great players, so hopefully I will still win big!

As a result, I’m falling off the SuperNova pace too. I was only Gold in May and I’ve not yet even reached Gold for June. If I can get my act together, I should be able to make Gold tonight, but not much more. I’m trying to get my head in the right place to get back on track next month.

Back to the old grind.  PokerStars had a very nice 30/60 table running tonight with several new faces.  It was quite tasty.  I scooped 1,000 VPPs and won $1,650 tonight.  If only they could all be like this!  I’m en fuego.  I think I hit like four sets tonight and if I remember rightly, most of them held.  I did lose one brutal huge pot with JJ against QT when he went runner-runner gutshot.  If this is a poker dream, I hope I don’t awaken.  I’m going to take a few shots at WSOP sats in the next week or so, so maybe I’ll be back for the Main Event.

It is my thesis that Limit tourneys offer a higher advantage to the skilled player than No Limit tourneys do.  I base this on a number of factors.  First of all, it is my observation that many otherwise skilled players in these events have a limited grasp on proper limit poker strategy.  Namely, they chase pre-flop with hands that might have good expectation in NL due to higher implied odds, but are clear money losers in limit and they miss many very thin value bets.  Skilled limit hold’em players seemed to comprise a fairly small percentage of the field.  I believe that the low buy-in tourneys feature many unskilled players in both disciplines, but the popularity of NL as a tourney event has elevated the standard of play for many players.  In the limit event, it is my sense that many of the players rarely if ever play limit poker.

Furthermore, limit poker provides more play in general, which gives the good players more chances to save an extra bet or extract an extra bet.  Over the long time horizon of a tournament, these skill differential seems to favor the better players more surely than it does in a no-limit event.  A bad player can miss many value bets in NL, but hit one set over set or one crucial overpair all-in pre-flop and make up for a whole day of missed value.  One AA vs KK confrontation will probably not rebuild your stack in limit poker.  This argument cuts both ways, because an unskilled player will often play 200 hands passably well and then manage to give away their stack in one spectacularly bad hand.  Nonetheless, I feel that I have very often looked around at the end of a no limit event and seen the last few tables full of players that I know have played terribly.  In general, the last few tables at a limit table will all be reasonably skilled players, in my opinion.

Having said that, you can still go from an above-average stack to a desperately short stack in a very small number of hands in limit poker.  The ever escalating blinds place extraordinary pressure on your play in the later rounds.  For instance, at the outset of level 11 I was sitting on 23,000 chips which was just over the average stack at this point in the event.  The blinds were at 500/1,000 chips.  I played a single hand that cost me more than half of my stack (13,000 chips).  I saw a hand between Victor Ramdin, Eric Lindgren and some internet player where Victor started the hand with 32k in chips, which was an above average stack at that point in the event.  By the time the hand ended, Victor was sent to the rail when Eric caught a set of Queens on the river to knock Victor’s Kings to the rail.  Ironically, I would have flopped the nut flush draw and busted out on that hand too, had I called pre-flop.  That was about an 80k pot at a time when the average stack was about 30k.  So, there is still certainly luck involved in this form of tourney poker and one hand can really turn your fortunes around.

The equation is magnified for me, since limit poker is my best discipline, one in which I believe that I can play at least break-even with the best players in the world and where I have an edge against even fairly skilled players.  I believe that every one of the regular players in my usual games on PokerStars would be massively +EV in WSOP limit poker events.  The flaws that I know in my regular opponent’s play are minuscule compared to the errors I saw in this event.  I would love to play in more of these events, but the schedule for them is fairly limited and the time I have available to play is also an issue.  I continue to believe that I also enjoy a pretty significant edge in the low buy-in NL events, but that edge is smaller in part because I am not as skilled in NL and in part because the nature of NL poker allows bad players who connect with a few good hands to make a lot of money.

I’m trying to put together a series of trip reports on my WSOP this year, but finding it slow going thus far.  One of these days…

I’m far too exhausted to write any details, and you are probably far too overwhelmed to listen to all the podcasts, so the title says it all. I had to really battle despite having a terribly short stack for a very long time.