The thing that tilts me the most these days is when terrible-for-the-game sour-faced nits get way more action than they “deserve” with their monster hands. I posted a few weeks ago a hand where I stacked off with QQ against the KK of a guy I suspected of being a young guy playing above his bankroll. I’ve now confirmed my read. He took a seat in a 2/5 game yesterday just as it was starting, folded for about twenty minutes, and then quietly racked up. Someone asked if he was quitting already and he said “everyone else is.” One player had moved to a PLO game that just started, and another player changed seats to take that player’s seat. When this was pointed out to him, the kid got red in the face and walked over to a 1/3 game.
To be clear, I’m all for playing within your bankroll and being shameless about leaving a game that isn’t great when you are taking a shot. I just thought it was funny that he felt the need to make excuses for leaving the game, and mostly I was upset with myself for not trusting my gut more in that previous hand, because after seeing this performance I’m near-100% certain that QQ is never good there.
The really tilting experience occurred later that night in a 5/10 game. A seat opened up, and the floor called “Nick M”, not a name any of the regulars recognized. After a few minutes, a woman talking on her phone walked over, put $1500 in the empty seat, and walked off. She sat on the other side of the room for at least twenty minutes talking on her phone, which was upsetting the guys who prefer to play at a full table, especially because the next person on the list was a well-liked regular who hadn’t been to the casino in months because of health issues and everyone was eager for him to get the seat.
Finally they get the floor to go ask this woman what’s going on and apparently she’s locked up the seat for her boyfriend who is “on his way”. There’s a lot of grumbling about that and I personally find it annoying since there’s a separate process for handling call-ins, but most of the regulars who were complaining lock up seats for each other this way all the time.
Anyway, Nick M finally arrives and sits down. He declines to take a hand in early position (posting not required), then gets up and walks over to talk to his girlfriend, missing another orbit in the process. Eventually he comes back, takes a hand in late position, folds for about forty minutes, opens a pot, folds to a 3-bet, and leaves for another twenty minutes or so. After lots more folding, he opens to $35 UTG+2, gets one caller, and I am in the big blind with KK. I honestly do not feel great about 3-betting, but I figure even a nit is going to raise TT+ and probably won’t fold them to a 3-bet. So I make it $165 and then he gets all serious and raises to $420 with about $1000 behind. I look at him and he seems very comfortable maintaining eye contact. I fold, and two hands later he leaves the table again. We discuss the hand and the whole table agrees he had AA.
Technically if you’re gone for more than half an hour your stack gets picked up, though in most cases this isn’t strictly enforced. As you might imagine, though, at 31 minutes the floor is called and this kid’s stack is taken off the table to applause. It may have ended up working out well for the kid though because he got back on the list and eventually bought back in for only $1000, several hundred less than he took off of the table, so getting picked up effectively enabled him to go south with his meager winnings.
In his absence the game has gotten kind of wild. I post a mandatory $20 straddle, and the next player to act raises blind to $75 (re-straddling is not allowed). This kid, on his very first hand back at the table, shrugs and raises to $300. He gets a call in middle position, and the blind raiser calls. Flop comes Q52, check, kid shoves for $700, gets called, and tables KK for the win.
haha, “when terrible-for-the-game sour-faced nits get way more action than they “deserve” with their monster hands”, this describes me exactly when I used to play in a cash game above my bankroll. Thinking back on how I played, I’m a bit embarrassed, but it is amazing how viable this strat can be even in tough games. You only need one or two donators who will pay you off and you can easily turn a profit.
I was sitting to the immediate left of a nit last night. With the exception of a few times I called his preflop open with implied odds, we didn’t play a single pot together for 8 hours. He won 1000BB from the others who couldn’t understand that if he puts money in the pot postflop, he can beat top pair.
Yeah, part of what was annoying about this was, for instance, my having literally the only non-nut hand I’d 3-bet him with preflop, or him playing so few hands but waking up with KK in a blind-raised, straddled pot. Granted he got more than he should have in that second hand, but just getting dealt KK in that spot in the first place was stupid lucky. Like, ultimately his strategy fails because he doesn’t get dealt good hands often enough, but he is riding the top of the variance curve by getting into the rare situations where he will actually win something with his strong hands.