It’s time to see the WSOP properly, so I head to the Horseshoe and the late-night cash games. It’s a less crowded hour, one good to test my rewards parking pass. It works so well at Caesars itself; surely it will be the same?
Getting in is easy. The parking lot is not full. The Paris is quiet. A player blithely crashes into another, consumed by some unknown thought. The employee event is winding down. Min cashers and better are wandering through convention halls. They’ll be in the cash games too.
Poker players are always easy to recognize, no matter what time of the year. The haunted, unshaven men who love grey and beaten sports accoutrement, as if in training for the Illegal Substance Olympics. The dissatisfied women so keen on mid-brow accessories and portable spite.
Something about the WSOP games tends to put me in a bad mood once I sit down. Unlike at the sumptuous Wynn and its band of ridiculous and well-heeled regulars, the WSOP is the true brothers of poker from all over. That ends up being comradely in the end, but the start is usually surprisingly rocky.
It’s no different this time when I iso some limps and a happy dork starts blubbering about how greedy my sizing is. He’ll do this again to some other player’s imperial standard three-bet amount. See, buddy, we’re all players here, your schtick isn’t doing anything for you.
The straddle is another one of my usual come-uppances and punishments. I’m informed we have straddles going and I am strongly encouraged to join. Ok. No one is particularly deep, but okay. I comply for a while, then when another player stops, I stop too. It’s nothing, right?
As Saladin says, it’s everything. I am rolled for two-five, but not five-ten. This means my risk of ruin skyrockets every time I have to play a pot at double stakes. When I inevitably lose a big one with ace-king to king-queen, my buy-in is smoked despite having purchased chips for a smaller game. Maybe I lose the min, because I play well enough. My reward is an intolerant smirk of exasperation. (This woman’s lips are so expressive and vivacious that they flex and downturn like a pair of gymnastic snails.) Yet that is the point – I’ve lost the minimum but it’s too much. Bankroll is everything, and my decision to even sit is still my choice. Badly done, even if expertly done. The straddle matters.
“Makes for more action,” enthuses the Italian when a new player is asked to join. For fuck sakes, no it does not. The game even demonstrates it, to those with eyes to see, as three and four-bets disallow play at the stacks we have. The small blind faces even more pressure; loose calls evaporate. It’s right in front of you, my fellow rubes. Straddles also force tighter continuation on a combo-for-combo basis. I’m literally giving less action than I would but instead I have to hear thousand-year slogans while getting unlucky at the top of my range. Grumpy.
Here’s where straddles do increase action: when action players are in the mix and already present, looking to gamble. The lower SPR rewards those who would already put money in the pot. Drunks, above all, love straddles. This is why we need a straddle theorem: the straddle increases the likelihood of players doing what they will naturally do. That’s why the straddle works like a charm in L.A. but traps LAGs dead in Vegas. The straddle is a signal for action even if it should inhibit it; mid-century philosophers would love the idea.
The Italian tries to bluff me out but instead hits his emergency out after I make a good call of his check raise. It’s an interesting spot and I can probably fold to his suspiciously sized river bet. Frustrating. My only goal is to get even at this point. He and Snail Lips leave, unfortunately: Italian reports a near fifteen-hour while she not far behind. Volume is their friend and mine, if I can catch up.
By now, the brotherly nature of the United World of Poker has overcome the annoying parts. Negative Entropy Man feels less radioactive, if overly ready for a pot. I’m playing with my fellow grinders, and it feels good. If a few more of them understood how cringey their speech-play tactics are and how straddles really work, we’d have had a much better night together. Next time.
Getting even will have to wait, too. The game breaks when the whale, who has been running hot and felting everyone, decides he’s won enough. Should I stay for smaller stakes? It’s going to come to that soon.
Time to check on the parking situation, and it’s no beuno. My card is not accepted, but the staff on the intercom help me. It’s okay because it is three in the morning, but this is a disaster for everyone at three in the afternoon. We can conclude two things from the way the transaction went down.
- The Horseshoe does have access to the correct information manually, but not necessarily through the reader.
- The reader could be the problem, or the software managing the reader.
Either way, a fix would definitely be easy if someone wanted to solve the notorious Horseshoe/Paris parking problem. However, I don’t think the managerial will exists. With the sale of Caesars official, I expect things to only get worse. That’s no slur on the Caesars poker management, who themselves do a good job. The problem, like the straddle, like probably many things in life, is deliberately misunderstood.
-163
im glad someone besides me understands why the button straddle kills the action, and makes the blinds fold more often. the straddle on the button should never be allowed. and the straddle UTG should be mandatory for all or else im not doing it there either.
At one of our local cardrooms, button straddles are allowed. If the button doesn’t opt to straddle, UTG straddle is then allowed. When the button does straddle, action starts with the SB (worst of all worlds). Since I usually don’t VPIP the SB, when the person to my right straddles button, I don’t mind that much but if s/he is two to my right I’ll look for a seat move. If everyone is straddling button, I’ll do it as well but it is a game destroyer.