Tuesday, August 29: Six-Figures and Climbing

A relatively useless statistic, perhaps, but this blog has now passed the 100,000 hit mark (and no, I won't indulge you in a debate about the differences between page views and unique visitors. My low-tech hit counter says 100,000+ and I'm happy enough with that.) Hard to believe that I've been at this blog thing for the better part of 2 years now; funny thing is that I don't even remember why I decided to start it up in the first place...nor can I really piece together how or when people started reading it, or when it gained any type of momentum; but here we are, I suppose. There were a couple times that I thought about ending the thing; not because I thought the quality was deteriorating, but rather because I felt like I had discussed everything that I had set out to address...and I liked the idea of 'going out on top', so to speak. But I'm very satisfied with my decision to keep at it. Every so often I'll do some internet searches for mentions of my blog, and it's always gratifying to see that it's something that has actually gained a fair amount of independent momentum as something that other people cite as being helpful or otherwise thought-provoking. That's all I've really ever strived to be. And threads like this one, besides feeding my ego somewhat, always give me a little jolt of adrenaline and remind me that this body of work is something that I'm actually quite proud of. I recently met a guy here in Australia who, upon hearing that I was a law student and played some of poker, commented that there was a blog that I should read that I'd find fascinating, and proceeded to give me the URL to my own blog. I felt a little awkward telling him the truth, so I just told him I'd check it out. Anyhow, enough self-aggrandizement for now.

First off, a section entitled: The Game That Cannot Be Beat. I went to Sydney's resident casino, Star City, yesterday -- a mistake that I guarantee will not be repeated. The rake structure there, although I'd heard rumors about it, is indeed one of the most savage beasts imagineable, such that I don't think the limit games there are even beatable. Just how bad is it? Well, I sat down at a 5/10 table while I waited for something bigger, and the rake was, get this: 10% of the pot, capped at $8 (!!!), in addition to a time charge of $5 / half hour. At most American casinos I've been to, there is either a rake OR a time charge, but both!??? That's just unheard of...not to mention an $8 cap!!! Compare that to a typical online $5/$10 rake, which would be in the neighborhood of 10%, up to a $4 cap. Online you're paying approximately 35 cents to 45 cents per hand dealt (rough calculations). At Star City you pay (by my calc's) between 90 cents and $1.10, or thereabouts. Yes, nearly TRIPLE the rake that you would pay online. So just how good a poker player do you have to be to overcome this additional 60 cents / hand you pay in rake? Well, consider that over the course of 100 hands, you'll be paying the house an additional 60 freakin' bucks. That's 6 BB in a $5/$10 game. So unless you were beating the online game for 6BB/100 or more (which is unheard of, by the way), you'll be in the red at Star City. It's nearly incomprehensible how they get anyone to play there consistently, but I guess when you're the only game in town...I guess all of a sudden the Party Monster extra jackpot drop doesn't look so bad.

Anyway, I was there with an Australian 2+2 acquaintance, and we finally got seats at the $200NL table (which had a similarly preposterous rake structure, by the way: a $1 ante from every player every $@#$%#$ hand), and hmmm....I'm not quite sure how to best sum up what I saw there, but I think the most accurate way of putting it is that I was introduced to what can only be considered an entirely novel card game, based loosely on what we in the West refer to as NL Texas Hold'Em. I could say "the players were bad", but that wouldn't even begin to describe the plays that I saw. At the $5/$10 LHE table, there was ALWAYS at least 6 players, usually 8 or 9 to every flop. One hand had 9 to the flop, and the two hands remaining at showdown were 84 offsuit, which was crushed by 72 offsuit, which had flopped 2-pair. These were not blind hands. They were middle-position limps. At the $200NL table there was typically 5 or 6, and at least every other hand a player would call a pot-sized or all-in bet with second pair or worse. It wasn't a matter of these players ranking low on the NLHE skill-o-meter...rather it was as though they had devised their own completely foreign measure of texas hold'em skill. The blind structure and unspeakably shallow stack sizes were also conducive to crazy action. With a $200 max buy-in, and two five-dollar blinds, a proper raise if there had been a couple limpers in front of you would be up to $40 or $50. If/when that was called by the limpers (it inevitably was), it would leave you with around $150 behind, and the pot was also up in the $120 - $150 range...so you really only had one move: all-in for a pot-sized bet, which would nearly always be called by an opponent if he had a pair or any sort of draw. Long story short, in a little less than 2 hours, I left up $500 or so while my 2+2 compatriate left up $1,200. (Keep in mind this is a $200NL table.) There wasn't a single other player at the table who had won a dime while the two of us were there; we had collectively taken them for around 9 buy-ins, and I'm pretty sure there was no love lost when we decided to pack up and call it a day.

Hmmm....I didn't get to any of the things that had been on my mind that I wanted to write about, but they can wait until later this week.