In Living Color (Oneida Trip Report)

So the casino right up the street from me finally opened a card room. This is interesting, since many of the casinos in Wisconsin are closing theirs, but I'm never one to complain when things fall my way.

I manage to scrape together a few hours to go check out the action. Now, this casino actually has two properties within 3 miles of each other. There's the main casino, and there's a "slot hall". The card room is set up in the Slot Hall, which initially made me nervous, thinking about how noisy it would be. I was pleasantly surprised to find it rather quiet.

The room advertises betting starting at $2-$4 and going up to No Limit. I found this to be a bit of a misrepresentation. I called ahead to the card room and got a message machine, so I requested to be placed on the $2-$4 list for 6:30. I got there right around 6:30 and found myself on the $4-$8 list. It appears there is no $2-$4 LIMIT table, but rather the NO LIMIT table has blinds of $2-$4. Uh huh. This seems to be a confusing trend in this cardroom, as they occasionally referred to the limit structure as the "bet structure". In any event, the lowest limit game they were dealing was $3-$6, so I bought in for $100 and sat down there.

My first impression was that this game played almost EXACTLY like Party $.50/$1. This, remarkably, was the tightest live game I had ever played at, and it was MUCH easier to get a bead on the other players. Mostly the table was loose/weak, with the obligatory loose/idiotaggressive guy who would raise complete crap just to try to run over the table. The guy on my immediate right was a semi-loose/calling station, but he seemed to have a decent read on the rest of the table and felt obligated to share it with me. He and I immediately set our crosshairs on the LAG.

Of course, my live luck followed me there. After a good hour of mucking garbage, I finally find myself in early position with KQo. I raise it UTG (with a comment from the guy to my right muttering about a raise under the gun) and it's called 4 ways. The raggy flop completely misses me low but the pot is big enough to call the 1 bet for the turn card, which comes a K. Now I'm thinking I'm in good shape, and bet out, eliminating everyone but the small blind, who mumbles some more and calls me. River is an unremarkable 7 and I bet out again and get called. I turn over my top pair, and he turns over 36o for the turned 2 pair. I chew on a couple of words, but decide against saying anything other then "nice hand" and silently stew.

Then the evening took a turn for the surreal.

Later I'm dealt ATo in middle position. 5 people to the flop, which is not that impressive. Early position bets and I call, along with 2 others. 4 to the turn, which brings my ace. EP bets again and I raise to see where we're at. LP cold calls as does EP and we're three to the river which is a K. I start to wonder if I might have run into Slick here, but EP checks. I bet and LP and EP call me. I turn over my ATo.

EP turns over ATo
LP turns over ATo.

3 way split using both cards in hand?! Someone please tell me the odds of THAT happening? I think, after the rake, I actually ended up losing a buck or two on that hand.

A few orbits later I look down at JTo in the SB and get to see a cheap flop, which comes QKA, all spades. I have the ten of spades and the Jack of hearts, so I've flopped a straight and the gutshot royal. I bet out, everyone except LAG and the BB fold out. Turn comes a JACK...of diamonds. BB bets and I curse my luck and call him down to the river for another split.

All said, I managed to walk away about $46 lighter. If I would have won the split pots I'd be waaaaaay up (the AT debacle was a HUGE pot).

I feel much better about my live play this time around. I'm getting over my "oboy we're playing live" jitters and am starting to play my game. This table was VERY accommodating to a tight/aggressive player. If someone raised, it was because they were sitting on paint or a decent pair, with the exception of LAG-boy. There were three or four people who would call down anything, and I identified only one player that I would consider dangerous.

About the room, the things I liked were, well, it's close. Only about 30 minutes from door to floor. They have an autoshuffler built into the table, which makes the time between hands much shorter, but the autoshuffler device was sort of recessed into the table, and occasionally cards and chips would prove difficult to extract. The dealers all were very competent, accurate and quick. No booze at the tables, which I think is verbotten at all the Indian casinos, far as I can tell, but I don't drink at the tables, so that didn't bother me.

There were a few things I found annoying. The rake is 10% up to $5, but I found that the $5 would be extracted from the pot long before there was $50 in there. I adjusted my dealer tipping accordingly. Eventually a player asked for the pot to be counted out because of the rake situation, and it ended up the pot was $45 at the river, so the appropriate rake was taken out, but the full $5 was on the drop before the river betting took place. Also, if you're not playing, they don't allow you to stand in the card room and watch. I imagine this is to keep everyone from crowding into the cardroom to watch the action. The rail is pretty close to some tables, but not all of them. I didn't know this and wandered into the room to sweat the No Limit action. When they called my name to the cardroom I wandered over from the tables and was admonished (pleasantly) by the floorman. No one apparently noticed I had wandered into the cardroom and I was there for about 5 minutes. Whatever, that's really not a big deal. As it was, I really wanted to sit in on the No Limit action, but I didn't have the bank for that yet. I told myself if I ended up $100 up at the 3/6 action I'd pick up and go to the No Limit table, but, clearly, THAT never happened.

As for online action, I've hit a bit of a dry run on cards. I haven't been able to find a real good $1/$2 short table, so I picked up 4 $.50/$1 bad beat Jackpot tables. Yes, I know. I told myself I'd never play there again, but I noticed the Jackpot was up to almost $8000.

What I didn't know is they changed the requirement for hitting the Jackpot. Now Aces full of Kings has to lose to hit the Jackpot. As it was, though, there were plenty of bad beats being dealt out at the table. Your's Truely received a soul crusher.


Party Poker 0.50/1 Hold'em (10 handed)
Preflop: The_ICP is MP3 with 7d, 7h.
UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, 2 folds, MP2 calls, The_ICP calls, CO calls, Button calls, SB completes, BB raises, UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, MP2 calls, The_ICP calls, CO calls, Button calls, SB calls.


Flop: (16 SB) Js, 7s, Qd (8 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG bets, UTG+1 folds, MP2 calls, The_ICP raises, CO folds, Button calls, SB folds, BB folds, UTG calls, MP2 calls.
Turn: (12 BB) Jh (4 players)

UTG bets, MP2 calls, The_ICP raises, Button folds, UTG 3-bets, MP2 calls, The_ICP caps, UTG calls, MP2 calls.

River: (24 BB) 6c (3 players)

UTG bets, MP2 calls, The_ICP raises, UTG 3-bets, MP2 calls, The_ICP calls.

Final Pot: 33 BB
Main Pot: 33 BB, between UTG, MP2 and The_ICP. >

Results:
UTG shows Jd Qh (full house, jacks full of queens).
MP2 shows Tc Jc (three of a kind, jacks).
The_ICP shows 7d 7h (full house, sevens full of jacks).
Outcome: UTG wins 33 BB.

Yup. Bad beat jackpot indeed.

Party Poker's hand history system is fooked up, so I'm probably missing some information from many of the hands I've played in the last day or two. Hopefully they'll get their shit back together and I can get this information to me, but for now, Pokertracker is rendered useless.