In addition to having a short, losing, session at Palace/Chips in Lakewood this past week, Flynn and Ollie also had spring rolls and bar-b-que’d pork at the casino. They were excellent, and cheap. The poker ~ meh, not so good. Flynn played 4/8 limit, and slowly lost. Then Flynn switched to O/8, and quickly lost the rest. Ollie played O/8 the whole time, and did.. no idea…
The following day they made the trek to Fortune Poker for a long overdue visit. First they stopped for dim sum, because it is four blocks down the street, and dim sum is pretty much the best lunch ever. Fortune has a 1/3 game going all the time, which is Flynn’s favorite game. They also often have a 4/8 O/8 game, which is Ollie’s favorite game. Therefore, they settled in for the long haul.
3 hours later, Flynn was done with the 1/3 game. Just could not get anything going, kept getting his sets busted on the river, and had the ‘poor schmuck’ reputation at the table. When that happens it’s time to get up. Meanwhile, Ollie had played O/8 and done well until the game broke, then moved to 8/16 lhe for a while, did not do great, then went back to O/8 when another game got going. Flynn moved to O/8 just to shake things up a bit, despite the sting from the loss at Omaha the day before.
This game had some weird characters in it. By weird, we mean those that cap it pre-flop every hand, no matter the holding. This begs the question (dear O/8 players), why do this? When asked, the stock answer is ‘to build a pot’. Okay, this is just plain dumb. If you are raising with nothing, you are going to lose. In O/8, even if you keep a good starting hand, chances are good you are still going to lose (or just break even}. If you have to dig out your wallet to re-buy every 4th hand this should be a hint. Seems far more logical to raise/cap it post flop ~ when you know you have a chance, even if you aren’t quite there yet. Then again, Flynn does not understand O/8 intricacies.
Time to employ the defensive Flynn strategy. Play tight. Only enter pots with very good starting hands, cause it’s gonna cost. Stay out of kill pots. Fold post flop when nothing hits. Let the aggros bet the hand when it does hit, and raise the beejeebers outta them. Position does not matter because the action is too predicable. Egos are too maniacal to leggo, so they call down or raise every-single-time. As long as you are cognizant of this, it will work out just fine. But wait ~ the number #1 defensive Flynn strategy: play hands when the aggros are on a bathroom break.
Flynn ended up a rack ahead, and nearly made up his 1/3 nl loss by the end of the night. He should probably write a lame book about his defensive strategy. While no profit was made by either Flynn nor Ollie, they had salmon satay and prime rib for dinner. BTW, Wednesdays at Fortune is prime rib night… 10 bucks and it’s delish.
It’s been fun. But not profitable. Let’s do better next time.
Fin
Flynn