What are the odds?

Besides seeing AA, KK, QQ (me), JJ, and TT dealt to 5 players at a 10 handed table in a tournament (The AA actually held up to win, and I was the only one to fold PF when the action went: me- raise, next re-raise, all-in, all-in, all-in, me-fold, next all-in), the following is probably the coolest thing I have seen:

I was dealt the *exact* same cards in consecutive hands in a PLO8 HU SNG. The odds of this are 270274:1

Hand #45:
Hand #46:

I never did check the odds of AA, KK, QQ, JJ, and TT being dealt on the same hand at a 10 handed table. Lets see if I can work it out. Each individually is 1/221 to get one of those pairs, and 216/221 to not get any of those 5 pairs. There are 10 players at the table, therefore, by my count there are 252 permutations of pair / no pair to the 10 players. Rough calculations have [(1/221)^5]*[(216/221)^5]*252 for roughly 1:2350000000. Wow, either I really screwed up the math, or that was very rare indeed!

Speaking of odds and long shot outcomes, I won the SNG by spiking a 1 outer on the river (mind you I was up 5:1 in chip count at the time) when my trip 5's sucked out on trip 10's to a Tc5c2d board (I figured him for the low+flush draw) and neither of us had low backup.

Ethics

I held a poker game at my place at the end of February. It was a SNG style tourney with 9 players and rebuys for the first couple of hours. I managed to get away from some big hands that were beat (UTG calls, I raise on the button with QQ, BB calls, UTG re-raises, I muck, BB calls, flop comes J62, BB moves all-in, UTG calls. BB=QJ, UTG=AA). Other than that, I grinded and got myself HU against the UTG from that hand. This is where it gets interesting. I get dealt KK on the Button/SB. I call, he checks. He had been raising occasionally my button calls, so this play was worth the risk. Flop is J92. He checks, I bet he calls. Turn is a 7. He checks, I bet, he calls. Sorry I don't remember the exact bet amounts, but in general, he was the slight chip leader to start the hand (about 60/40) and about 1/2 of my stack is now in the pot. River is a T. He just needs an 8 for the straight. He checks, I check behind him. He says he was chasing the straight an only has top-pair and tables J8! I show him my KK, and he says good hand and I start pulling in the chips, now with a close to 3/2 chip advantage.

Was that wrong?! He's no novice. He should be able to read his hand correctly. I've played in cash games with friends where I've had to point out when someone has misread their winning hand. Either cause we're playing crazy home games with wild cards where the hand is hard to read in general, or because they are new and don't quite grasp everything. I've given up pots I was personally involved in before, so it's not like I've only corrected mistakes in hands I wasn't involved in.

In this case, I just couldn't. I got greedy, but isn't that the point in poker, to win the money? I've read "Poker winners are different" by Alan Schoonmaker PhD, and the common theme in that book is that you do what it takes to win. You shut out everything else. It is immoral to be deceitful in real life, but not at the poker table (like slowplaying AA UTG in the hopes of re-raising).

I'd love to hear opinions about this. I don't have remorse, ok maybe a little, but the difference between 1st ($140) and 2nd ($60) was just too great for me to be honest that time.

March recap

It's been an up and down month. I've had too many 2009 flashbacks for my liking. 2 sessions have gone 6 hours deep, with me stuck trying to recover from horrendous beats to start off the session.

In the first session, I lost about $500 playing PS 100PLO8 and UB 200PL8, and in the second session, I clawed my way back to a $14 loss after been over $1k deep at one point. I don't know if it happens in NLHE cash games, but in PLO8 you can find yourself in many situations during a multi-table session where it's monster hand vs monster draw, or best vs second best (hence the title of this blog...). In both of these sessions, just like in 2009, I played my regular aggressive game, and made a few ill timed plays (which I can accept), however when coupled with monster hands getting crippled after all the chips have gone in just drives me insane. When it happens over and over again, I have difficulty leaving the table because I know if I get into the same situation again, the odds are still with me to win.

In PLO8, my two least favorite things to happen are
1) Where you have the best hand, only 1 low card on the flop and your opponents manages to go runner-runner low to chop the pot.
2) Where you have nut low with medium high, and opponent has medium low with good high, and your low gets counterfitted on the end giving the opponent the scoop.

In both of those situations, I feel like money has been stolen from me.

In the second session, I felt that I controlled my emotions better than I have ever done. That doesn't mean there isn't more room for improvement, but I was still able to hold back most of the gamble that tends to creep in late in those sessions where you think "This is the time where I'm going to hit my card and fuck them over". Instead, I kept playing my game, trying to get back into the situations where I was far ahead and they were chasing. It worked when I had 2 solid hands finally hold up right before quitting time (3:30AM) where I won $450 and $550 pots.

Rather than the usual break down (since I don't really have the time to cover all the cases), I'll just make it quick:

UB (mostly 200PLO8, and some HU SNGs): +$2096.56
PS (200PL8, 100PL8, 50PLO8, a couple HU SNGs): ($1521.05)
Total: $597.98 (the delta is some goofing around at the 25PLO8 on some misc OnGame sites)

Think I should be sticking to UB? Yeah, me too....

The killer on PS was the 100PL8 where I lost ($1156.30). Tough mix of idiots and solid players. Routinely, I'd get in good against the donks and lose, and then get caught in bad against the solid players and not catch up. Horrible combination...

Anyway, the month was profitable, to a decent clip no less, and I'm averaging $600/month, which I like. I'm spending some time re-reading Harrington on Hold'em to re-center my NLHE tourney game, which leads me to an interesting story from this past month which I'll post in a separate blog.