Let's start with some really bad play by Da Mut.
Update 2/22: But first first....
The player in question told me he's not the player I questioned below the fold. Roger, apologies, but the doppelganger thing has some negative consequences....
Back to the original post....
On PokerStars, in the cutoff holding 89 off-suit. UnderTheGun opens betting with two thousand PSD. SexySnaky (not her real name; solid player, a bit passive pre-flop) calls, as does one other before me. It's a family pot, and I've got one of those hands that can get paid nicely if it hits, so I call.
Button folds, small blind folds, big blind folds, so the pot has something like nine thousand PSD in it.
Flop is 89K rainbow. Score!
Checks around to me, I bet pot. UnderTheGun and SexySnaky call. I figure UTG is being DUMB, but SexySnaky worries me. Pot is now something like 26,000 PSD.
Turn is the Ace of diamonds, putting two diamonds on the board.
SexySnaky goes all in, having me barely covered.
My spidey sense is absolutely zinging. It's one of those "I know I'm beat" things, but I could not put her on a hand, and there's a lot of money in the pot, maybe she's just got aces and a nut flush draw, and I flopped two pair, dammit, and, and, and,....
So I duck into a phone booth, put on the outfit, and out comes Dutch My Inner Donkey. I call.
SexySnaky shows pocket kings. The only way I could have won after the flop was runner-runner 8s or 9s to make quads. By the time I called her all-in I was drawing absolutely dead.
Of course, if I'd stopped to think about what I could actually beat that might have elicited her bet, as opposed to worrying about being bluffed, that should have been the easiest lay-down in the history of the universe. I couldn't beat Aces up. Couldn't beat a set. The logical hand for her to have at that point was AK, which nukes me only slightly less thoroughly than what she held. But I called anyway.
That was quite possibly the worst hand of poker I have ever played.
Aside: After slow-playing the kings to perfection, I have no idea why SexySnakey decided she needed to go all-in there; any rational player (and I think she has me as a rational player, because we have taken each other's chips in the past) folds 99% of the time to that raise, with a 1% chance of calling with a total brain fart. Maybe she had me on A8 or A9, and thought I'd caught two pair on the turn, and maybe she was worried I might catch a river ace for a winning boat. If she had me on holding pocket aces then going all-in when the ace hit the turn would have been butt-stupid, because she would then be pushing with one out, and I don't think she's stupid. So I'm perplexed in retrospect.
Bottom line: a donkalicious time was had by all.
But I'm not (and SexySnakey certainly isn't) the Joker referred to in the title.
There's a guy I play with who I'll call Roger. He's an extremely good player, and for the most part I don't mess with him much when he's in a hand. Very tight, very aggressive when he's got a quality hand. Will bluff occasionally, but not often enough to make looking him up on a regular basis a winning strategy.
He is a low variance, high value player. Most of the time I like playing with him. I think he likes playing with me because my style of small-ball poker makes me something of a rainmaker for him.
Unfortunately, he also uses doppelgangers (or sock puppets, if you will) which strikes me as borderline unethical. I've caught him at it a couple of times, because even though he thinks he mixes up his game, the fact is his hand selection and betting patterns are pretty much reflexive, and once you catch on to it, it's hard to miss.
(That "pretty much reflexive" thing isn't a criticism; he's got an extremely effective style/philosophy of play, and good players make good play a habit, I think.)
Last night I'm pretty sure I caught him at it again, but this time he took it beyond simply distasteful by yammering at my already tilting ass, and doing so with some appalling content.
What got me wound up was a different player had earlier got me into smackdown mode by calling me nigger. And not in a good way. DoppelRoger caught the tail end of the original asshole getting dressed down and felted, then he picked up by calling me a racist. (I think my offending line to original asshole was "If I was white I'd be ashamed of you." Which, for anyone who actually knows me, might be amusing from a few different angles.) At which point the Battleship PhantomMut turns the big guns on the new target and opens fire.
So, I'm piling onto DoppelRoger while getting too loose and too aggressive and getting the luck that usually comes when I do that, and other players are taking my money, and DoppelRoger is enjoying the hell out of it. Mind you, he's not taking much of my money, because even though I hadn't yet tagged him as another puppet, I'd recognized the general style of play, and adjusted to it accordingly. But he's definitely enjoying the spectacle of the missed chases, marginal calls, and legitimately bad beats. (Wish I'd saved the chat transcripts, though. Some of that material I could have re-used....)
Took me a while to peg him as Roger, but when I did and I called him on it, he didn't deny it, and after turning veeewy quiet he left the table.
So maybe it wasn't Roger, but I'm thinking it was.
If that's the kind of behavior it takes to stay interested in poker, hey; I guess it's a free world. Wouldn't exactly call it acting right, though.
Roger, we still need to do heads-up at some point. Tried three times last night, and three times someone beat you to the table. No big deal, I won two out of three so made money, but I prefer ring games in general, and if I'm going to risk real money I'd rather do it where the inherent variance is lower than a heads-up SNG. But we'll try again.
BTW: To hypothetical readers who might point out that PhantomMut is an alternative persona, well, yes it is; but it's the only one I play poker under (on multiple sites) and I use it primarily to keep Google from associating my real name with my poker writings. As ActionGomez has shown, finding my real name isn't hard if you want to do a minimum amount of digging. To save critics the little effort it would take, I can also be found at WhatsAPundit. I post under my real name there. Knock yourselves out.
Comments (2)
No crackhouse this week?
Posted by Alceste | February 23, 2007 10:16 AM
Posted on February 23, 2007 10:16
Missed it. I've been feeling under the weather and hoped to avoid full-scale flu-like symptoms.
Alas, for naught.
Posted by Mark | February 23, 2007 1:43 PM
Posted on February 23, 2007 13:43