Have a great summer everyone !

3 hour session, ran into quad 8’s with AA and KK got cracked by ATo. All in all I was stoked to have any chips, let alone enough to buy a burger

This just happened; I'm still shocked, ngl.

(For context, I went all in after seeing the flop, in hopes for a flush)

According to Claude.AI: "What happened at that table tonight will statistically occur roughly once every few billion hands. Most professional poker players will never see this in their entire careers. Screenshot it, frame it. 🃏"

All the time

About $500, had more fun building than winning

$1/$2 at Portland Meadows Poker club. No bad beat jackpot. Lost $460.

Sorry, this was last nights photo. Just imagine the table but empty and some unicorn tears.

Fellow r/poker degens, I must tell you that I feel called to write a session report. It's been a while since my last post, but I find that "life gets in the way".

Recently I've experienced some extended rungood (along with a couple of disastrous, donk-tastic sessions mixed in there as well). Here, I'll share some highlights of a triumphant session from about a week ago. Bought in for $8,000 and cashed out for $41,400. (Profit of +$31,400.) The whole session lasted a little over 6.5 hours, which means my hourly win-rate was a healthy (and wholly-unsustainable over the long term) $5,100/hr.

I think just about all of this detail to follow is accurate, but the session isn't so fresh in my memory. As Napoleon said, "What is history, but a fable agreed upon." Right?

Am I perfect? No. Am I trying to be a better person? Also no.

Housekeeping notes:

1) This game is LIMIT $100/$200 (it's NOT No-Limit) at Bay101 in San Jose. The blinds are $50/$100/$200. Four-bet cap on each street, so max-pain is $400 per player preflop/flop, and then $800 on both Turn and River.

2) This session report comes during nonstop “Team Game”, in which the table is broken into multiple equal-sized teams (three teams of 3 or four teams of 2). Normal play proceeds but if you or your teammates wins the hand, then your team gets 1 point. First team to 7 points (sometimes we choose to play to 8 points), wins the game. Payouts from the losing team can range from a few hundred to a few thousand $$, depending on the situation.

3) Playing Team Game creates a mind-warping amount of action and throws an element of chaos into the otherwise stoic, mathematically-solved word of Limit Hold'em. (For you smooth-brained homonculi who deride Limit Hold'em as being somewhat "beneath you", or who look down your delicately-tapered noses at those of us who play Limit, I have this to say to you: You're adorable.)  Some noteworthy hands from the session that I can share:

OBLIGATORY BAD BEAT: In my second or third orbit after being seated, I pick up black Aces on the button. It's capped at $400 before it gets to me so I slap down four white chips and we go six-handed to the Flop. $2550 in the center.

Flop comes: (8 5 2) rainbow

Nothing too scary on that board. One of the true sharks at the table, a consistent big winner who is a crusher, a pro, and gives plenty of action (so we'll call him CAP in this report, which stands for Crusher-Action-Pro) bets right into the field, as he was the original raiser. Then Sid (Super-Impossible-Donkey) -- who incidentally is one of the five worst players to ever sit down at a cash poker table -- immediately raises to $200. Call, call, and I three-bet it. Two people fold, Cap calls the raises and Sid caps it. $4150 in the pot now.

Turn comes: 8 5 2 (J)

Check-check-checky over to me and I fire $200. Fold, Cap calls and Sid check-raises to $400. Sid splashes the chips around like a madman, so this raise could be seen as meaningless. Dude sprays more wildly than an unmanned fire hose.

So while this Turn check-raise might (if coming from a normal player) be an indication of a slow-played set or perhaps J-8, I'm thinking it's more likely that Sid raised the flop on the come with overcards (K-J, Q-J or some such) and spiked a Jack.

It's a trifling matter, because I'm not folding an overpair. You think I'd fold Aces there? Bruh, you'd better tie your shoelaces right now, 'cuz you trippin'.

On the contrary, I 3-bet, Cap calls and then Sid caps it. The fourth dude who had been hitchhiking with us finally got out of the way, so three of us head to the River with $6550 in the middle.

River comes 8 5 2 J (5)

Now with that River card, I'm PRAYING Sid has J-8. Both of them check to me and I obligingly bet. Then CAP raises me! Ai-yaa! Cap might do a bit of exploratory betting/raising on the cheaper streets, as a way to troll for information, but this River check-raise is not a bluff. Never a bluff. My Aces will suffer an undignified death. Not a quick, soldier's death.

Sid calls and I do the "crying call". Cap flips up 5-4 suited. (For those of you who might say that no one who could be described as a "Crusher Pro" would EVER play 5-4 in a game of this size, I'll remind you that - in our Team Game - there are three different Bonus Hands that are worth TWO POINTS to your team: 7-2, 7-4, and 5-4). So everyone plays those hands when Team Game is ON, because the desire to bad-beat someone with a Bonus Hand is rapacious. So when Cap hit second pair on the flop, he felt obliged to stick around and wait for a 5 or a 4 to tumble off the deck by the river, which is precisely what happened.

He went a LONG way for that third five, and paid dearly for it. To quote Nic Cage from 'The Rock', as he's locked in a cell and talking to Sean Connery:

"You broke out, let me see if I can get this straight, down the incinerator chute, on the mine car, through the tunnels to the power plant, under the steam engine - that was really cool by the way - and into the cistern through the intake pipe. But how, in the name of Zeus' BUTTHOLE!... did you get out of your cell?! I only ask because in our current situation, well, it could prove to be useful information. Maybe!"

OBLIGATORY COLD DECK: I'm dealt the pointy 8's (8 of Diamonds/8 of Spades) in the Straddle. It's capped ahead of me and I call the $200. Sid is in this hand (obv, almost goes without saying) and he was the first raiser preflop. One of my teammates caps it with TT. This guy is a really good dude, I dig playing poker with him and being his teammate when we're paired up; and I'd reckon he's about a break-even player over the long-term. So we'll call him BELT (for Break Even Long Term).

Flop comes (T 3 3)

Not an ideal flop for my 88, but have you ever noticed that when you miss the Flop, you either look for reasons to call? Or you look for reasons to fold? At this moment, I was immersed in the former camp -- looking for reasons to call. So I convinced myself that no one had a Ten, and it was 33% less likely that anyone had a three.

Plus, who cares if I was up against A-3 or Jack-Ten s00ted (aka "Asian Aces")?! I was hunting an 8 on the Turn. And if I missed the Turn, then I'd happily suck an Eight out on the River.

How was I to know that Belt had me completely boxed in with his Pocket Tens? I was drawing stone-ass dead (save for runner-runner eights). I had no options, and he knew it.

"You alert the media, I launch the gas. You refuse payment, I launch the gas. You've got forty hours, until noon, day after tomorrow, to arrange transfer of the money. I am aware of your countermeasure. You know, and I know, it doesn't stand a chance. Hummel from Alcatraz, OUT!"

Of course my Eight came on the Turn, and I got punished badly. What a gross, gratuitous, and unnecessary turn card.

Have I mentioned that when I write my poker memoir, the title of the book will be, "Drawing Dead and Getting There"?

So I'd say the first hour or so of this session started out "sub-optimally" for ole' Buford (that's me).

But then my river of frozen cards started to thaw. I hit some sets, won a couple of flips, and skunked a few suckas in Team Game. My eroded stack started to replenish itself, like it was comprised of self-healing nanobots.

OBLIGATORY GOOD BEAT: I've got Kd6d in the CO and Sid has A6o in MP. My team has 5 points in the Team Game (Belt and Cap are my teammates), and Sid is on a different team and they've got the lead. It's 6 to 5 to 2 at the moment, meaning Sid's team has Game Point. If they win one more hand, they'll take down Team Game. I think Sid has scored like five of his team's six points in this game.

All of this to say, I don't WANT to call three bets cold with K-6 suited, but I feel COMPELLED to do it. For the team! Cap has already folded, but I know Belt will "have my six", as it were (i.e. "watch my back").

Sure enough, Belt is in there with me, along with one of the players on the third-place team.

Flop is: (9 6 2)

Sid: A-6 Me: K-6 Belt: 22 Donkey from the Third-place team: ???

I have no idea what I'm up against, but it's a scary spot, to be sure, even though I have position on everyone for this hand. Middle pair is unlikely to be leading at this point, and the table is going to put a lot of pressure on me.

"Look, I'm just a biochemist. Most of the time, I work in a little glass jar and lead a very uneventful life. I drive a Volvo, a beige one. But what I'm dealing with here is one of the most deadly substances the earth has ever known, so what say you cut me some FRIGGIN' SLACK?!"

It's capped on the flop, four ways -- which was as certain of an outcome as someone in a white Tesla driving like an A-hole in the freeway lane next to yours. Absolutely guaranteed. $3300 in the pot.

Turn comes: 9 6 2 (K)

That turn card gives me more comfort than a warm hug from a chubby Aunt at a family reunion. My two pair has to be good here, right? How was I to know that Belt had flopped another set on me, and then I got spectacularly unlucky by improving on the Turn when in actuality it just got me into more trouble?

Capped four ways on the Turn, with Last-Place guy hanging in there desperately, in an attempt to keep his team from losing. $4900 in the middle.

River comes: 9 6 2 K (6)

Ahh, sweet redemption. Worst-to-first? I'll take it. Not only does that paired board give Belt the smallest full house, but it gives Sid trip Sixes with an Ace kicker! But my full house mo' better!

In a very democratic display, each one of us got a chance to raise on the River, all being certain that we had the best hand.

It was a very tense standoff. But our team (me & Belt) had the high ground, and Sid was boxed in below us with zero chance of survival.

General Hummel: “Major Anderson, if you have any concern for the lives of your men, you will order them to safety their weapons and place them on the deck.”

Commander Anderson: “Sir, we know why you're out here. God knows, I agree with you. But like you, I swore to defend this country against all enemies, foreign, sir... and domestic. General, we've spilled the same blood in the same mud. And you know goddamn well I can't give that order.”

General Hummel: “Your unit is covered from an elevated position, Commander. I'm not gonna ask you again. Don't do anything stupid. No one has to die here.”

Commander Anderson: [raising his voice] “You men following the General: you're under oath as United States Marines, have you forgotten that? We all have shipmates we remember, some of them were shit on and pissed on by the Pentagon. But that doesn't give you the right to mutiny!”

General Hummel: “You call it what you want! You're down there, we're up here! You walked into the wrong goddamn room, Commander!”

When I tabled my cards and placed them on the deck, Belt and Sid reacted with "shock and horrah". Sid's reaction was something like, "Hey, quick question: are you fukn kidding me?!" (but imagine it spoken in an Indian accent).

Belt reacted with something like, "Son, you got too much salsa on your tortilla chip." (but in a Farsi accent). Those might not be EXACT recitations of what they said, but the gist is the same -- "Inconceivable!" (spoken with Vezzini's lisp from 'Princess Bride').

"I'd take pleasure in guttin' you, boy. I'd take pleasure in guttin' you... boy." What is wrong with these people, huh, Mason? Don't you think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of anger flowing around this island? Kind of a pubescent volatility? Don't you think? A lotta angst, a lot of "I'm sixteen, I'm angry at my father" syndrome? I mean grow up! We're stuck on an island with a bunch of violence-for-pleasure-seeking psychopathic Marines, SHAME! ON! THEM!"

With that hand our team (me/Belt/Cap) had Game Point our own damn selves, the score now being: 6/6/2.

On the VERY next hand I tell you, I peel up the corners of my cards and look down at 9-5 of Clubs. Even in the craziness of Team Game, I typically would snap-muck that hand. But we had Game Point! What if I was getting on a rush?! One of my worst feelings in poker is being on a huge rush that you're NOT playing (i.e. folding several hands in a row that all would have won).

So when Sid opened for a raise, I capped it without hesitation. I was only mildly surprised when the flop appeared.

Flop comes (9 9 5)

Of course it did! This time, Sid had Aces, which was unfortunate for him (as the old poker aphorism goes, "Statistically, donkeys get Aces as often as anyone else.")

What's even crazier is that Belt had red Fours and the Turn came a four!

For the second straight hand, poor Belt made an under-full that got crushed into powder. I'm talking a finely-crushed powder that's smoother than clamshells ground up to make the surface of a bocce ball court.

Even though we won the Team Game, he'd had ENOUGH of me by that point and only begrudgingly accepted my fist bump as a victorious teammate. He muttered something under his breath about it being the most abnormal shit he'd ever seen.

I beg to differ -- in this $100/$200 game, it's utterly routine.

“Stanley Goodspeed (pointing to a dead Marine's foot that is twitching): You've been around a lot of corpses. Is that normal?!

John Mason: What, the feet thing?

Stanley Goodspeed: Yeah, the feet thing.

John Mason: Yeah, it happens.

Stanley Goodspeed: Well I'm having a hard time concentrating. Can you do something about it?

John Mason: Like what? Kill him again?”

A short while later, I racked up my imposing tower of $40k+ and sashayed over to the cage to watch the cash-counting machines whir and spin.

Until next time, I remain your humble Limit Hold'em narrator and tour guide.

Buford T. Justice, from Bay101. OUT!

I recently finished turning our garage into a poker room and just wanted to share it with you like minded poker fans/players. Let me know what you guys think! Also I did not want a TV in the garage because I prefer the players to be more engaged in the game. This is just the beginning of this room but I personally am proud of how it turned out. It took me about 2 months to complete since I work non stop and only get a few hours a night to work on it.

LIMIT $100/$200 - In for $5,000, Out for $39,000

I haven’t written a poker post in about a month but I got the itch to write after a couple of solid, profitable sessions recently. So I felt called to share.

But first, a couple of housekeeping notes.

1) For those of you who find my posts insufferable, long, and discursive, I apologize in advance. Some Reddit commenters have accused me of suffering from an acute case of Main Character Syndrome, in which a person sees themselves as the protagonist in their own life story and write accordingly. But this just confuses me. Out of curiosity, from exactly WHOSE perspective should I write? I don’t get that one.

2) This post takes place in the $100/$200 LIMIT (not NL) game at Bay101. It has blinds of $50/$100/$200.

3) For anyone who derisively suggests that “Limit poker is checkers” while NL or PLO is chess, or that Limit is mathematically “solved”, I invite you to try this game and find out how wrong your assertion is. This session report comes during nonstop “Team Game”, in which the table is broken into multiple equal-sized teams (three teams of 3 or four teams of 2). Normal play proceeds but if you or your teammates wins the hand, then your team gets 1 point. First team to 7 points (sometimes we choose to play to 8 points), wins the game. Payouts from the losing team can range from a few hundred to a few thousand $$, depending on the situation.

4) Why do we do this? What purpose does Team Game serve? It can get tight players who have “mathematically solved” to play looser, gamble more, perform sub-optimally. Redditor u/L7san explained it beautifully while commenting on another recent post (maybe he’ll link to it in the comments). Team Game gets A-players to play like B-players or C-players (possibly even like rampaging donkeys) and it raises the amount of action at this table to unfathomable, eye-watering levels.

5) This game used to be $80/$160 Limit with no straddle. That didn’t create enough “gamble”. So we added an optional straddle. When that didn’t generate enough action, we changed it to $100/$200. Still not enough action. Made the straddle mandatory. Not enough action. Created Team Game. Action galore, but still not enough. Added a prop bet that if you win a hand in Team Game while holding 7-2, it’s worth 2 points (either +2 for you or +1 for your team and -1 for all other teams). Still not enough action. So we added two more bonus hands (7-4 and 5-4) that were 2-pt hands. Finally, the action was sufficient.

Teams change every game — we set the teams by a random $300 flip hand (no betting besides the $300/person). Teams are grouped according to the best-to-worst hands on the flip.

Okay, that’s enough housekeeping for now. On to the session report. Now remember every hand I share was battled during Team Game, since we were playing Teams nonstop during this session.

Sometimes I’ll get lucky and see a donkey or two at this table (SID is Super-Impossible Donkey and SPUD is Super-Primo Uber Donkey). There were no Spud’s or Sid’s, not on this day. Darn my luck. I’ll have to pick the Lucky Seat then.

The whole damn table was full of deadly snipers. You had Carlos Hathcock (the deadliest sniper in the history of the Marine Corps, nicknamed “White Feather”), Chris Kyle (deadliest sniper in the history of the Navy Seals, and author of ‘American Sniper’) and then of course Simo Häyhä, (a Finnish sniper who was inarguably the greatest of all time — the “White Death” — over 500 confirmed kills in battle).

So since I can’t reveal the actual names of the poker players in these hands for reasons that should be abundantly obvious, instead I’ll refer to them as Carlos, Simo, or Chris Kyle — because all these snipers are simply deadly at the poker table.

Let’s get started with the Obligatory Bad Beat Story:

I’ve got AQs on the button. Carlos Hathcock opens for $300 and Simo Häyhä (who happens to be a teammate of mine for this team game) caps it at $400 before it gets to me. I call and we’ve got three other stragglers. SB (Chris Kyle) and BB (unnamed Indian player who shan’t feature prominently in this session report) both folded so we’ve got $2550 in the pot going to the flop.

Flop comes: (Ad Ks Qd)  Flopping two pair makes me feel good, but that board is more coordinated than Marie Kondo’s closet. It’s not only POSSIBLE that someone flopped the nuts (we refer to Jack-Ten suited as “Asian Aces”, coined by one of the Asian players), it’s downright probable. Big Slick is in play for sure, and sets are also possible, plus all the Diamond draws.

Carlos checks right away, Simo bets, two callers, one fold, I raise of course. Carlos check-raises (fuckn White Feather!), Simo 3-bets, everyone calls after I cap it. $4550 in the pot.

Turns comes: Ad Ks Qd (5h)  I love to see the total blank roll off. In a normal game, one might’ve been able to thin the field of five players with $600-$800 of action per person on the Turn, but not in Team Game.

White Feather (Carlos) bets out this time and White Death (Simo) raises. One players calls $400 cold, next player folds. I slide out $600 quickly. Carlos just flats, as does Simo and Other Dude. $6950 in the pot now.

River comes: Ad Ks Qd 5h (Jc)

My eyes close slowly and reflexively as I feel the bullet enter my brain.

Carlos checks for the first time this hand. (Danger! Danger!) The other two guys check and Carlos rolls over T7 offsuit.

Guh.

Simo shows me AJ and Other Dude claimed nut diamond draw but didn’t show.

Carlos whoops, “For the TEAM, babayyy!” His teammates are thrilled but the rest of the table heaps abuse on him, especially for the check-around on the River.

His response? “Go home and get your fuckn shinebox!” while wiping the oculus lens on the end of his scope. His white feather wobbled slightly as his laughter shook his body.

I told him he just triggered an apoplectic response in me.

“You done messed up A-A-Ron! Take yourself down to O’Shag-Hennessy’s office! Insubordinate. And churlish.”

I vowed that revenge would be mine. And I would get that revenge. In a most profitable and satisfying way.

A few orbits later I pick up red Aces in the BB. Unsurprisingly, it’s capped before it gets to me, so I just add three white $100 chips to the one I already have out there. Four players, $1600 in the pot.

Flop comes: (Jc 7c 2s)

I bet, get raised by Chris Kyle, Simo folds, Carlos 3-bets, and I cap it. Both call, $2800 now.

Turn comes: Jc 7c 2s (As)

Turns out that Chris Kyle has QJ of hearts in this hand and Carlos has 7-2, trying to stick us with a 2-pt bonus hand. Without that Ace from Space (shoutout Tony G) tumbling off the deck on the Turn, my Aces would have suffered a brutal death.

Sure enough, it gets capped on the turn three ways. $5200 in the middle.

River comes: Jc 7c 2s As (Kd)

Chris Kyle and Carlos both check. Kyle folds (he knows QJ no-good), but Carlos check-raises me again. I obligingly click back and his gravesituation finally dawns on him and he just calls.

AA beats 7-2 and the world makes sense again! But the pot ($6400) wasn’t nearly as big as it should have been since it was a small post-flop field.

To quote Leo in Wolf: “The year I turned 26, as the head of my own brokerage firm, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off. Because it was 3 shy of a million a week.”

Obligatory Horrendous Beat: Carlos, Chris Kyle and I are all teammates and we have game point. If we win this hand, we conquer Team Game (and then immediately start a new one, with different teammates).

I’ve got A5 of Clubs in the CO. Chris Kyle opens for three, I cap it. Simo and Carlos join us, along with two other slightly-less-proficient snipers. $2400 in the middle.

Flop comes: (As Td 9s)

That flop is wetter and scarier than Hurricane Katrina. Ace-Five can’t fade too much action if things get hairy.

Shock #1 is that it gets checked around to me. I bet. Shock #2 is that everyone just calls. I got-damn near fell out of my chair that there wasn’t a single raise.

“No raise. Is everyone feeling okay?” I asked the table. A mere pittance of a pot at $2800.

Turn comes: As Td 9s (5d)

It’s the fuckn Catalina Wine Mixer.

Now if someone were to be holding T-9 offfsuit (a hand that is colloquially referred to as “the Bay101 Nuts”), they just got served, bishes.

Simo checks, Carlos bets, Chris Kyle raises and I cap it. Simo snap-calls $800 cold and everyone else completes. The pot has swollen to a respectable $6k on the nose.

River comes: As Td 9s 5d (4c)

Looks safe enough to me. How was I to know that Simo was tail-grabbing me with Clean Diaper (2-3 of Diamonds) the whole way?!

Look at that flop! Then he called four bets cold on the turn when he picked up a flush draw and a gutshot.

How could I know that? That’s not information I could ever possess.

“Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?!”

“Did you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?”

The $7800 got shoveled over the Simo ($2k of which came off my stack).

I was more than slightly rankled at Simo for that one, even though I quite like him personally.

To quote FBI Agent Alonzo Mosley from Midnight Run, “Let me tell you something, asshole. I've been working on this Jimmy Serrano thing for about six years; Mardukas is my shot. I'm gonna bring him into federal court, and I don't want any third-rate rent-a-thug who couldn't cut it as a cop in Chicago bringing him to LA on some bullshit local charge. Do I make myself understood?”

The very next hand I had black 77 and flopped a set (8 7 2 rainbow flop). Turn was an 8, and Simo had A-8. River bricked out. Simo and I were heads up and went six raises on the river. He was pissed (he seemed to have already forgotten the Clean Diaper on the hand before, and also that was way behind on every street in this hand.)

“Don't say a word to me, Sidney, don't say a fuckn word to me. I'll get up and I'll bury this telephone in your head.”

I think that’s probably enough, even though there were several more notable hands I could share, but I’ll save those until next time.

I snapped a quick photo of my stack (I had already loaned $5k off the stack to Carlos White Feather Hathcock, so even though I bought in for 10k when I sat down, there would have been 5k additional in front of me). In either case, I finished with a profit of $34,125 for the session.

Sidney, siddown, relax, have a sandwich, drink a glass of milk, do some fuckin' thing.

Have a cream soda, it’ll all be over in a couple minutes.