Getting the pole back in the water

I have not been into a card room, online or brick and mortar in quite some time. To be honest, I didn’t feel the pull to play. I have been putting quite a few hours at work, starting up a steady gym routine, and reading books for pleasure. In all honesty, I was a little burnt out on playing cards.

That was all changed last night, after work I had that “itch” to play cards. Just thinking about pot odds, hand values, and reading hands made me giddy. It seems that my “burnout” is over for the first time I went to play cards because I felt like it – not because others wanted to or because I was extremely bored.

Once I got the pole back into the water, the fish were chomping on the bait before I could even get settled into my old fishing hole. Last night featured a few fish types already explored (and exploited) but it also brought a few new fish out of the pond.

“I am good on the internet, but bad luck is killing me here” fish:

A peculiar fish. They speak of their conquests online and the all the money they are winning on Full Tilt. They always claim to play stakes that would be above their skill level. For example last night two of these fish claimed to play 50 dollar SNG’s and win at least 80 percent of their tournaments, yet they fold to any continuation bet and love to play 2nd/3rd pairs. In fact, one was talking of quitting his W-2 job and living “the big life”. Tell me, where were these jackasses when I played the internet seriously?

These players are generally loose/weak donkies with no understanding of pot odds, aggressive play, or hand reading. These fish will almost always check call with any two paint cards and rarely raise. The nastiest trick in their arsenal? Slow playing big pairs. Why so scary? They play these hands exactly like all their other trash. You’ll be sure you are way ahead until they roll over aces and win a small pot.

“The Part Time Pro” fish

These fish are a riot. You will find a surprising amount of them are college students; generally students who are taking minimal credits and class loads. The others are people who have jobs they dislike and dream of playing for a living.

The player last night as “Part Time” pro was a HUGE donkey. I was excited when he donked his way into a decent sized stack (60 bb). This donkey would not shut his yapper about how much he played and how well he was doing. I think the phrase “go full time” or “quit my job” was said at least 62.75 times in the first hour at the table. Let’s say the table was “enthralled” with his stories of playing 5 tables at a time on Poker Stars while watching Poker after Dark. His best line of the night “I won 900 at a dealer’s choice game at XXXXXX last night”. Really? That game has not run in 6 months and when it did it sucked and rarely had anyone willing to actually gamble and make some big pots.

This guy was transparent. He never raises his big hands (but you can read him like an open book from the way his hands move) and ALWAYS put in a mininium raise w/ Ace rag. Flush draws were good for any size bet put into him. He had the strangest logic – Flush draws are worth any bet/call but a straight draw needed some magical sign for a call (perhaps a sign from God? I was confused.

As always comments are appreciated as is word of mouth to your other friends!

Expect a new post in about a week. This week/weekend I move into my new apartment and should be busy with that – though who knows maybe I’ll get a little online poker in and put my first internet fish post up.