When checking out the 2/4 NL games on FTP today, I saw that Full Tilt pro Lynette Chan was playing on several of them. I didn’t really know anything about her, but with a few very important exceptions (Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius), FTP pros tend not to be particularly good cash game players. More importantly, a lot of bad players join games they wouldn’t otherwise play just so they can sit with a pro. So, I joined some waiting lists and quickly got on a few of her tables.
I’m still in my uber-aggressive phase, and I got the impression that Lynette noticed this early on. We played two substantial pots together, and after both she made vaguely critical comments in the chat box, even though I thought my play was pretty standard.
In the first, I raised 8d 7d to $14 from the CO, and she called out of her BB. She checked and called a pot-sized bet on a Qh 8s 5s flop. I don’t think there are a lot of Q’s in her pre-flop range, and having watched her play a bit, I felt she would check-raise the flop if she had one, so I thought a draw was her most likely holding.
The turn was the Jc, and we checked through. The river was something else pretty non-threatening, and she bet like $55 into an $80 pot. I called, and sure enough she had As 7s for a busted flush draw. She had played the hand exactly like a draw, and I was geting good odds to call the river, so it seemed like a fairly straightforward call to me, but she typed “????” in the chat box.
“I can read your soul,” I responded.
A while later, possibly on a different table, I raised to $14 with 9d 8d, and she re-raised to $40 out of her BB. I’d seen her make this same size re-raise with AQo, so although this tiny reraise from certain players is usually an overpair, I figured her range to be wider than that.
The flop was Kd 8s 6h. She bet at it, which she didn’t do with the AQ when she whiffed, but she had position in that hand. I called. A Td on the turn gave me a gut shot and a flush draw and made it easier for me to call her bet of $120 into a pot of about $190. She had $225 or so behind, and I considered shoving on her, but I had most of the draws on the board and didn’t think she would fold many, if any, hands that beat me, so I just called.
The river was a blank, she thought for a while before checking, and I checked behind. She showed 87s, and we split the pot. Immediately I regretted not shoving the turn, but that might be results oriented.
“Really??” she typed.
“Right, you obviously had a set of Kings. You were lucky to get half,” I told her.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen FTP pros behave kind of obnoxiously in chat. Mike Matusow is famous for it. It’s not really a big deal, but as they are kinda like role models for online poker players and certainly are representing the site, I think that Full Tilt ought to rein them in a bit. I really don’t like how many online poker players are complete assholes in chat, and it certainly doesn’t help that these pros are setting a bad example.
(By the way, this is just a broader point. It’s not like Lynette said or did much of anything, she was just vaguely critical of my play. It still struck me as kind as kind of immature and petty for someone who’s supposed to be representing the site.)