California’s on my mind…

So I’ve been here for a few days now, been playing the 10/20 NLHE games..it’s been going ok, and yet…I don’t know–I just “don’t get” the LA experience, I suppose. I think I’ve been spoiled by my frequent trips to Vegas and the Bellagio. Some things about LA that I will never understand (in no particular order):

- The use of $10 chips for a $10/20 NLHE game. I know this is a carryover from the longstanding LA tradition of spreading games which look big, because there are “a lot of chips on the table”. In practice though, it just makes the pot harder to count. Besides, if they wanted to make the game appear bigger, they should just raise the minimum buy-ins, which brings me to my next point:

- In Vegas, the minimum buy-in for a 10/20 NLHE game is $800. This is way too low in my opinion. People sit down with the minimum, and play as if in a tournament–mostly fold, wait for AK or some kind of reasonable pair, then ship all the money and hope to double up. They do this once or twice, until they have made a profit (in which case they leave), or until the money runs out (in which case they leave). Here in LA, it’s even worse–the minimum buy-in is $600, leading to even more of the same kind of thing.

I know I’ve been spoiled–when I first started learning to play big-bet poker, back in the original underground card rooms in NY, we played with 2/5 blinds–but it was the biggest 2/5 game you’ve ever seen. Most of us bought in for at least $1000, sometimes even significantly more than that. By the end of the night, there was easily $20K, $30K or more on the table in play. In order to play in that kind of game you had to play POKER. Here in LA, it seems like the game is sit down with $600 and a dream, and hope to hit lucky. In a way, I shouldn’t complain–the players are weak here, and I’ve been doing well..but it is kinda boring.. I may have to try the 20/40 game and see if that’s any differerent.

- Why are the colors of chips here different than everywhere else in the civilized world? Yellow $5 chips is bad enough..but then the $10 chips are…a different shade of yellow? Whaaa…? White $100 chips? And the bigger denomination chips look so drab–a Bellagio “flag” looks and feels worthy of the name and value.

- This complaint of mine is not unique to LA, but I’m gonna make it anyway–these casinos are so dreary, and feel as if they’re in the middle of nowhere. In Vegas, you have the strip if you want to walk around and do something other than play poker for awhile, and there’s plenty of 24 hour supermarkets and drugstores and the like if you want to pick up a few things. Here, it’s as if I’m in some weird twilight zone.

Blah. I could go on (and probably will later on). But for now, how about a hand or two?

- Guy gets moved into my game and takes the big blind as his first hand..four or five limpers to him. He now goes all in for $900 (?). He is called all-in by a smaller stack..guess the two hands? The BB had J9 offsuit, of course…the caller had KT. The BB hits a Jack..some of these guys really know how to play, huh?

- I’m stiffed in from the BB with 98, in a multi-way unraised pot. Flop is 986. I check, the pre-flop UTG caller bets, all fold back to me. I raise, figuring it’s now or never to protect my hand–besides, the bettor has a small stack anyway, so I can’t get hurt too badly in any case. He goes all-in, for only a little bit more than my raise, so it’s an easy call. Turn and river change nothing. His hand: QQ. I don’t know, where I come from, if you’re check-raised in a multi-way, unraised, draw-heavy situation like that, an overpair rates to almost never be the best hand. And besides, if you have a short stack like that, why limp with QQ anyway? Just raise and hope to narrow the field, preferably to a heads-up situation–if an overcard flops, you’ll have a decision to make–but when it doesn’t, your opponent will generally fold to your continuation bet, since your short stack will deprive him of the implied odds he’ll need to continue in the hand. In this case, my opponent failed to raise, and gave me a free look at the flop. I doubt I would have called his raise with a crummy 98-off.