Foxwoods Trip Report, 9 Jan 2005
Jan. 14th, 2005 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mangosteenThis past Monday, I bought a house.
The day before that, I decided that I should do something more interesting than sit around the house, waiting for Monday to come.
So, The Merry Trio (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaelen, DrJon, and myself) headed down to Foxwoods to play some poker. After several reasonable successes, I decided to move up to 4/8 Hold'em from 2/4, if only because playing 2/4 Hold'em was beginning to look more and more like two-card bingo. If you can't bluff anyone out of a pot, it's pretty much luck of the draw, and if you're cold-decked for a few hours, there's not much to do besides sit there and fold. To wit, it's much like Cosmic Wimpout: "blind luck, only slower." 4/8 played a little bit better, there was more strategy, more bluffing, and generally better play. That all being said, I was down $140 after three hours, and I was cold-decked anyway. It was much like masturbating with a cheese-grater; vaguely amusing, but mostly painful.
One of the things that faciliated removing myself from the table was that they were starting up some satellite tournaments.
Let me 'splain.
If you've heard anything about the poker fad/craze/whatever over the past couple of years, you've seen these huge tournaments where people put down several thousand dollars for their buy-in. Now, while it's true that playing poker has removed some of the novelty of carrying a small stack of hundreds around with me, I certainly can't and won't spend that kind of money on playing a poker tourney. Fortunately, there's another way. It's called a satellite tourney. In short, everyone puts in a small buy-in, and the top few finishers get a "free" buy-in to a more costly tournament. Repeat a couple of times to bootstrap yourself into the really expensive tournaments.
At Foxwoods, they have the "Act" tournaments.
Act I: $60 buy-in, single table (10 players), No-limit hold'em, last three players remaining get a free pass into an Act II tourney.
Act II: $150 buy-in, same format, last three players remaining get a free pass into an Act III tourney.
Act III: $450 buy-in, multi-table (typically around 60-70) players, top 8% of the players get a free pass into the $5000 tourney at the New England Poker Classic at Foxwoods in April.
Okay, end of exposition, moving on.....
I got up from the 4/8 table (Remember the cheese-grater? Good.), put down three $20 bills, and entered into an Act I. They finally got ten people seated, handed us each 1000 points worth of chips (but people call them dollars anyway; it's just easier), and we were on our way.
Observation: No-limit hold'em is actually much more interesting to me than limit hold'em, where you can only bet and raise pre-defined amounts. No-limit is much more out-and-out psychological warfare. This pleases me.
They tell you that the "Act" tourneys last about two hours. The Act I tourney I was in was finishing.... ahead of schedule. There were several maniacs who forgot that stone-cold bluffing only works when people actually have a reason to believe you. That, combined with a betting strategy that worked out to "let's you and him fight", and some actually good cards, and I made it to the top three finishers with very little trouble. They handed me a certificate valid for a buy-in to any Act II tourney of my choice, and that was that.
So, I did a little victory stroll around the premises, got lost (Foxwoods is huge), found myself, got something to eat, and went back to the poker room to try my hand at an Act II. I fetched DrJon from his table and convinced him to sit in at the table, andgaelen came by, having stopped playing at the 2/4 table, having broken even and been overcome with total boredom.
Observation: 7 of the 10 people at the act II table had buy-in certificates. The other three used cash. I wonder about the long-term stats for victory rates of cash buy-ins versus cert buy-ins.
So, after 45 minutes of waiting, we finally had ten people around the table, and we were on our way. This table was a bit trickier. There was at least one pro, a couple of really serious players (including DrJon), and one really obnoxious guy who I almost ended up calling "Fudgie". To be honest, I don't remember most of play. I played tight, I played strong, and I was nervous as all hell.
We got down to five people, DrJon was standing behind my left shoulder, giving me moral support, andgaelen was standing behind my right shoulder, looking imposing as usual. There was a small crowd gathering around the table, and since nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, the gathering got larger. We continued play, the pro knocked out another guy, and I doubled up off the pro a couple of hands later. Four players left. I stole a couple of blinds, stayed afloat, and just watched the pro attack the other stacks. The pro finally knocked out one more player (I think I knocked out only one during the course of the game), and it was over.
We then went over to the director's table to get certificates for an Act III.
Pro: "You know, I had to bail your ass out twice."
Me: "That would be the time you knocked out the other guy, and the time you doubled me up when I called your bluff, right?"
Afterwards, the Merry Trio went out of the main casino, had a wonderful (and quiet. did I mention quiet? as in "far away from the INCESSANT DINGDINGDINGDINGDING OF THE SLOT MACHINES?!?!?!?!?) dinner at an inn nearby, and then made our way back to Boston in some fairly hideous weather, with Phish and Queen blasting the entire time.
...and all the while, I carried in my wallet a piece of paper worth $450, to be redeemed for a shot at the big dance in a few weeks' time. Wow.
The day before that, I decided that I should do something more interesting than sit around the house, waiting for Monday to come.
So, The Merry Trio (
gaelen, DrJon, and myself) headed down to Foxwoods to play some poker. After several reasonable successes, I decided to move up to 4/8 Hold'em from 2/4, if only because playing 2/4 Hold'em was beginning to look more and more like two-card bingo. If you can't bluff anyone out of a pot, it's pretty much luck of the draw, and if you're cold-decked for a few hours, there's not much to do besides sit there and fold. To wit, it's much like Cosmic Wimpout: "blind luck, only slower." 4/8 played a little bit better, there was more strategy, more bluffing, and generally better play. That all being said, I was down $140 after three hours, and I was cold-decked anyway. It was much like masturbating with a cheese-grater; vaguely amusing, but mostly painful.One of the things that faciliated removing myself from the table was that they were starting up some satellite tournaments.
Let me 'splain.
If you've heard anything about the poker fad/craze/whatever over the past couple of years, you've seen these huge tournaments where people put down several thousand dollars for their buy-in. Now, while it's true that playing poker has removed some of the novelty of carrying a small stack of hundreds around with me, I certainly can't and won't spend that kind of money on playing a poker tourney. Fortunately, there's another way. It's called a satellite tourney. In short, everyone puts in a small buy-in, and the top few finishers get a "free" buy-in to a more costly tournament. Repeat a couple of times to bootstrap yourself into the really expensive tournaments.
At Foxwoods, they have the "Act" tournaments.
Act I: $60 buy-in, single table (10 players), No-limit hold'em, last three players remaining get a free pass into an Act II tourney.
Act II: $150 buy-in, same format, last three players remaining get a free pass into an Act III tourney.
Act III: $450 buy-in, multi-table (typically around 60-70) players, top 8% of the players get a free pass into the $5000 tourney at the New England Poker Classic at Foxwoods in April.
Okay, end of exposition, moving on.....
I got up from the 4/8 table (Remember the cheese-grater? Good.), put down three $20 bills, and entered into an Act I. They finally got ten people seated, handed us each 1000 points worth of chips (but people call them dollars anyway; it's just easier), and we were on our way.
Observation: No-limit hold'em is actually much more interesting to me than limit hold'em, where you can only bet and raise pre-defined amounts. No-limit is much more out-and-out psychological warfare. This pleases me.
They tell you that the "Act" tourneys last about two hours. The Act I tourney I was in was finishing.... ahead of schedule. There were several maniacs who forgot that stone-cold bluffing only works when people actually have a reason to believe you. That, combined with a betting strategy that worked out to "let's you and him fight", and some actually good cards, and I made it to the top three finishers with very little trouble. They handed me a certificate valid for a buy-in to any Act II tourney of my choice, and that was that.
So, I did a little victory stroll around the premises, got lost (Foxwoods is huge), found myself, got something to eat, and went back to the poker room to try my hand at an Act II. I fetched DrJon from his table and convinced him to sit in at the table, and
gaelen came by, having stopped playing at the 2/4 table, having broken even and been overcome with total boredom.Observation: 7 of the 10 people at the act II table had buy-in certificates. The other three used cash. I wonder about the long-term stats for victory rates of cash buy-ins versus cert buy-ins.
So, after 45 minutes of waiting, we finally had ten people around the table, and we were on our way. This table was a bit trickier. There was at least one pro, a couple of really serious players (including DrJon), and one really obnoxious guy who I almost ended up calling "Fudgie". To be honest, I don't remember most of play. I played tight, I played strong, and I was nervous as all hell.
We got down to five people, DrJon was standing behind my left shoulder, giving me moral support, and
gaelen was standing behind my right shoulder, looking imposing as usual. There was a small crowd gathering around the table, and since nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, the gathering got larger. We continued play, the pro knocked out another guy, and I doubled up off the pro a couple of hands later. Four players left. I stole a couple of blinds, stayed afloat, and just watched the pro attack the other stacks. The pro finally knocked out one more player (I think I knocked out only one during the course of the game), and it was over. We then went over to the director's table to get certificates for an Act III.
Pro: "You know, I had to bail your ass out twice."
Me: "That would be the time you knocked out the other guy, and the time you doubled me up when I called your bluff, right?"
Afterwards, the Merry Trio went out of the main casino, had a wonderful (and quiet. did I mention quiet? as in "far away from the INCESSANT DINGDINGDINGDINGDING OF THE SLOT MACHINES?!?!?!?!?) dinner at an inn nearby, and then made our way back to Boston in some fairly hideous weather, with Phish and Queen blasting the entire time.
...and all the while, I carried in my wallet a piece of paper worth $450, to be redeemed for a shot at the big dance in a few weeks' time. Wow.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 06:24 pm (UTC)but...a cheese grater?!?!?! in my case, that wouldn't even be amusing. *shudder*
no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-15 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-18 03:58 pm (UTC)Enjoy it. And good luck, whatever that may mean.