Any Chicagoland folks been to the new room at Rivers? Might show up there in the next month.
Copy/Pasting what I wrote in another forum:
"Played about 6 hours of 2/5 PLO. Game was pretty damn good. I ended up being down ~600. Couldn’t hit a hand. Made one medium-sized bluff that worked out, but bluffing too much in that game would have been disastrous. A solid older guy ran 500 to 5-6k in about a hour by hitting hands and holding. There was some pretty crazy stuff going on when the action was at its best. Can have a very solid win rate playing standard TAG/Nitty, but there will be sessions where you lose your shirt and then some. I was definitely viewed as a nit, but still got 3b 3 of the first 4 hands I opened, which coincidentally were all in EP.
The room was very nice. Some thoughts:
• Button/UTG were allowed to straddle up to $20 preflop. It seemed like the dealers didn’t know if the max was $20 or $25, but the first dealer said it was $20, so the table stuck with that. Not sure who has priority if both positions want to straddle.
• Speaking of the button straddle, it was apparent players weren’t used to it. Saw way too much limping/raising from the blinds preflop.
• The dealers were fine overall, especially with some being beginners. One or two admitted they haven’t really dealt PLO before so the table was helping out as much as possible.
• Thank you to whoever suggested parking on the 3rd level of the ramp. Poker Room is a 15-second walk once you enter the casino.
• The room was VERY strict on not exchanging cash for chips with other players at the table. Didn’t seem to care if you were 10 feet away from the table though.
• Phones weren’t allowed to be placed on the table. You can be on your phone, just couldn’t put it on the table/rail. Not a big deal as you can just put it in your pocket but thought it was kind of a strange rule.
Don’t play live too often, but might find myself coming 2-3 times a year."
One more thing to add is that while the waitlist was 15-20 deep, I swear there was an open seat for like ~45 minutes. I’m guessing they just went through a new name every 2-3 min and all the people on the list left by then? Seems like it might be a common occurence. though.
What day of the week and time did you go and how long did you wait for a seat?
Went last Saturday. Got there around 1030. Asked to be put on every list 5/10 and lower. Actually had to go up two more times as they didn’t put me on every list requested. Was annoyed but no big deal. Hung out in the sportsbook until they sent me a text around ~11:05 for my seat. Was initially for 2/5nl, but moved me to 1/2plo and then 2/5plo in a span of 5 minutes. 2/5plo game started about 10 minutes after I sat down (new table).
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Nice, thanks for the report. I’ll be checking it out at some point in the near future. I’m surprised you only had to wait 35 min on a Saturday night. Or was that 10:30 am?
1030am. Should have made that clear. It’s already on the Bravo App so you can get a good estimate of what your wait time will be before you head over.
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I’m going to move the poker derail in the midterms thread here and talk about some of my thoughts about playing with nits. I do have experience grinding out wins at a table full of OMCs while waiting for a bigger or better game.
So, what do nits do? A lot of times, they fold. They usually don’t bluff except for standard continuation bets or semibluffs with strong combo draws (only on the flop with two cards to come, not the turn).
So, when you open for a raise, they respect your raise and fold a lot of hands that other players will call with. They know what a trouble hand is, KJo, a raggy ace. They fold these hands to even a small open, maybe even a min-raise.
But a lot of nitty players, a lot of OMCs will occasionally play these trouble hands in a limped pot. You’re not going to win money off them with AK vs KJ on a king-high board if you raise preflop, but you will if you limp preflop. You’re usually not going to overflush them in a raised pot, but you might in a limped pot because even tight players will sometimes limp with suited cards in late position.
And these tight players are often fit-or-fold, which means you can check the flop and they won’t steal, so your delayed c-bet on the turn will often take down the pot unless they’re slowplaying. Which they do. A lot. But since they don’t float or call you light, your delayed c-bet can be small, maybe a third of the pot. Anytime you bet and they call, you can give up if you can’t beat top pair and don’t have an obvious scare card to bluff at because they won’t punish you by bluffing their missed draws.
You can take down a few small pots at a nitty table that won’t raise behind your limps and grind out a consistent win without ever coming close to stacking someone as long as you’re patient and don’t need the adrenaline rush of big pots to play poker.
Of course, this comes at a cost. If you have several nits at the table, but also some calling stations, you’re leaving money on the table by not making the pot bigger against the stations.
The thing is, given that they play too tight and fold too much, we seem to be leaving a lot on the table by not opening wide preflop. If I were at a table full of players as described, I would probably open on like as close to a 2.2x sizing as I could, knowing they’d either play a wider range pre than they’re used to and let me run them over postflop, or just overfold a ton pre.
You can build a pot and take it away from them after the flop, it’s just that limping creates the biggest pot preflop. These are often the players with the widest gap between what they play for a limp and what they play against a min-raise. As in, I have seen these players fold 22 and unsuited broadway hands to a min-raise.
All of this exists on a continuum. I’d probably raise small like you suggest, if they have a wider calling range. I do think there are tables at lower stakes where limping pre a lot makes more sense and they tend to confound players who are used to being more aggressive.
I admit I sometimes go overboard with advocating non-standard lines more than I actually play them, but my overall theme is that I think people are a bit complacent about accepting conventional wisdom about standard lines and don’t think about alternatives, so you can confuse them sometimes by taking weird lines. It’s the same principle as Alex Fitzgerald talking about opening for 6x in a tournament.
Playing my first live poker in 2 years, have had AAxx 4x in an hour, flop top set with KKcx and made the nut boat in a huge spot.
Shitty lineup though.
That’s how all poker sessions go. You’ve just been away too long to remember how easy it is.
First time playing in the back of a muffler shop, but its all regs and slow.
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So your strategy is to play even tighter than the nits so that you can outflush/outkick them in limped pots.
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I missed that one in rounders. There’s the 30-60 at the Mayflower, the Greeks, the 4 am game at woodside, and the back of the muffler shop.
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Not exactly. It’s to trade what may be a smaller mistake preflop in exchange for giving them a chance to make a bigger mistake postflop
1k effective I cover
Three limpers, straddled pot open AA55ccss otb to 50.
347cc flop MP pots I flat.
3s turn they rip for 600 I fold.
Bleh. Annoying spot, literally can’t have better.
Pot flop
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In theory if you’re not going to play with them long enough for them to figure out what you’re doing, you could limp your suited AX hands and some of the strong broadways and lower pairs and open a really weak polar range with big pairs and low suited cards.
But that’s a pretty extreme exploit that opens you up big time.
Was going to, think I do most of the time, but thought I could still realize equity on most turns, which is probably quite wrong ~225bb deep?
Aren’t you effectively 100bbs deep with the straddle? I’m not that creative and just rip flop all the time with a hand like that with real good equity against everything but the straight which you block. Plus occasionally you knock out hands with decent equity that you would rather fold.