I'm still managing to put in my ~6 hours / week of live poker, although with mixed results lately. It's been a rough run ever since Vegas, though things have been looking up as of late. I'm trying my best to make adjustments, spending time reviewing hand histories, noting key hands, etc. but finding that a lot of the "interesting" hands are largely uninteresting; mostly variance like pair & flush draws not getting there, suckouts, etc. One point I did notice about my play is that I was getting a bit gun shy with bluffing because for a period I was finding myself running into the top of the range for my opponents.
At any rate, this week I was able to sneak in a Saturday night session which was interesting if for no other reason than there was a guy simply dumping money. I sat down at my table, received my $300 in chips and started watching my table mates to assess the lay of the land. No more than 15 minutes in, the player to my right lost (let's call him the tilter, even though it's not a fair assessment; he was not on tilt) a hand and started straddling $15 but also pushing out his newly re-bought full stack of $300 as a blind pre-flop raise. Interesting... for how many hands will this continue? Within the first few hands, a few guys at the table limped the $15 raise and were surprised, and eventually angered when they "found out" that the tilter was immediately raising all in for $285 more. It took some of these guys maybe 3 or 4 hands to realize what was going - they would limp, then fold after seeing the tilter raise all in. One guy was visibly annoyed that the tilter was "ruining the game," and what he was doing was "unfair." Shocked at some of the reactions, I knew what was going on immediately; I folded my speculative hands (i.e. 45s, JTo, etc.) and waited on Ax / pairs / Kx / etc.; in other words, hands that would be decently ahead of the average Q6o hand. Within a round, I hit and doubled through when I was dealt KK, and then hit and +$300 with ATo. The other players who were annoyed eventually racked up their chips and quit the game. I could not believe people were quitting - if the room knew this was going on, there would be a waitlist on the table over an hour long!
Anyway, to the point of the post: the tilter was straddling from every available position. A player with whom I've been friendly decided to "steal" the straddle from the tilter, over-straddling on his button. (Side note: the Horseshoe gives straddle priority starting at the BTN and working counter-clockwise.) At this point, the tilter was verbally annoyed - and announced that he was ending his otherwise reckless money burning party... The takeaway is this: don't mess with the tilter. If you find yourself in a situation like this:
- Don't mess with the mojo. Let the tilter do what he wants.
- If you're not interested in taking 60/40 gambles or 80/20 gambles, quit the game.
- Don't signal to the tilter that you're going to stop him from burning money.
- Don't signal to the tilter that you don't like what he's doing.
- Try to be jovial and enjoy the moment.
- Don't press your luck and insult the tilter.
- Consider going all in blind yourself to encourage the action. (Note: I won't do this with $300, but I would do this with $100.)
- If you see this happening on another table, waitlist yourself to change to that table.
- Free money!!!!
