Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Greetings from Marseille, France (continued)

Last I left off, I was playing in Cassis, France.  I closed out the night with a modest 150EU win, and never really had to face a decision.  The players here are ridiculously soft, having little to no clue about odds, hand strength or hand reading.  Quite often, I saw calls of shoves with top pair no kicker against obvious overpairs, top top versus top bottom, and otherwise hopeless play.  I would go on to play a second night, winning an additional 50EU, only to be sucked out on in my third night by an idiot who was overwhelmingly happy to get it in with a naked gut shot, naturally hitting his four-outter on the turn (straddled 8EU pot where I raised 3 overlimpers to 40EU with 200EU total - get one caller, idiot, in the SB.  Flop is dry 4 4 7 and he leads; I raise all in after careful assessment and he INSTA CALLS 3 5 for the gutter and is SO happy about it).

At any rate, the rules in Cassis are pretty different from the U.S., and since this is a trip report, I'll detail them out here:
  • Seat changes: You *CANNOT* change the order of the table, i.e. your seat position, under any circumstance, unless you are moving to the right and the seat is open and it doesn't change the order of the deal.  In other words, when you sit down, you are essentially stuck in your seat.  Otherwise, you must leave the table for 1 hour and then you can get a new seat.
  • Buying the button: nope.  No such thing.  In addition to me not speaking English, they looked at me as though I was an alien when I merely suggested posting from the would-be BB.
  • Straddles: nope.
  • Rake: Wow!  4% uncapped!  No bad beat jackpot, no nothing.  Just a naked 4% uncapped rake.  I would see drops of 10-18EU regularly.  It was crazy.  Rake happens whether players see a flop or not.  The casino provides a calculator whereby, at the end of each hand, the pot is totaled and the rake is calculated to the nearest .50EU.  Rake is not taken as the hand plays out.
  • New tables: You draw cards from 1 to 10 to determine seat positioning.
  • Getting up for a break: If you leave your stack there, they continue to take blinds from your stack, whether you play or not.  Interestingly, on that note, absent players are dealt each hand, though they are automatically folded.  Yes, this is a CASH game.
I'm still fuming from the gutshot douchebag - he called my shove so excitedly that I thought he had a 4.  I wish I had more money to play there - it would have been a field day.  I had a similar experience with Paris a few years back, where the players were generally donkeys, but this experience took the cake.  It was as if they were there to play slot machines on a poker table.  I couldn't believe how loose each player was with their money.

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