New Game and other Headlines
WEDNESDAY FINDS A NEW HOME – In an effort to continue to provide the overall best variety in poker entertainment, we will immediately end our Wednesday run at Veranda, which means no game tomorrow night. With this, we will begin a new era of Posh Poker adventures NEXT Wednesday night (9/29) at the Doubletree Roswell, right behind Tony’s. Cards will fly in the upscale lobby restaurant & bar, Café Zest, where there will be a special poker-themed menu, as well as full bar with affordable pitchers and pints of your choosing! Tournament prizes will include gift certificates, and the winner each week wins a free nights’ stay in the hotel! Wednesday final tournament points will continue after the one-week hiatus, and we will still hold our normal Sunday 7pm tournaments at Veranda. Come see me at Tony’s tonight if there are any questions.
PRELUDE TO THE DOUBLETREE GAME – Tonight at our normal Tony’s Grill 8pm tournament, we will spin the wheel of fate for prizes at break, and there will be 2 special bonus prizes, good for delicious meals at the Doubletree!! You will again receive raffle tickets for food & drink, and the first 20 players to arrive get extra! Passcode is MERCILESS and I hope to see you tonight for some Deepstack poker.
THURSDAYS ARE THIRSTY – This is an appreciation notice for the great support you all have given to our game on Thursday nights in Norcross over the first 6 weeks of play, and I know that most of you drive further to this tournament than to those in the Roswell area. Thank you and I hope to see you at Mazzy’s 3 later in the week!
JESSE’S EDITORIAL: DRY POTS – A lot of regular tournament poker players are familiar with the term “dry pot”, but a lot of people don’t understand when many people say “Why are you betting into a dry pot?”. Here are some thoughts:
What is a dry pot? A dry pot is simply a pot where there is multi-way action (3 players or more), where at least *one* of the players is all-in, and there is no side pot. That is, one player went all in, and the others just called. In this situation, the all-in player can only win the current pot, and there is no more money that the other players can currently win.
Why not bet? At this point there is no more money to win, other than what is in the current pot, therefore it changes the circumstances in which you would (or should) consider adding money to a side-pot. Often it is the goal to knock a player out of the game.. and with two of you still in against the all-in player, you have a better chance of doing so. Further, if you aren’t a great reader of hands, you don’t know just how bad you might already be beat. If the all-in player has a good hand, and you might be ahead or you might not and you bet your other opponent out of the hand that might actually beat both of you, then all you are doing is helping the all-in player double up, while not getting yourself a single extra chip. If your non all-in-opponent is of like-mind, he will check it down with the hopes of knocking the player down.
Isn’t that collusion? Yup, it’s what I called “Implied collusion”. But it’s one of those tournament accepted things. You’re not supposed to talk about it while you are in the hand. People who say “Wanna just check it down?”, are actually breaking the rules. So if you find yourself in the situation, just keep it implied.
Why bet? Of course there are times when you want to bet. For example, say you have a straight, but there’s also a flush draw out. You know for a fact (because you have the reading abilities of Negraneu), that your non-all-in opponent is on that flush draw, or maybe two pair with the full house possibility. You know he *can* beat you, and you know that the all-in player is pretty unlikely to beat you either way. That’s when you bet… so that your opponent cannot “suck-out” on you. If the only way you are going to lose the hand is to be sucked out on, then you really have to bet if you can get the other person to fold.
JESSE’S TECHNOLOGY NOTE:
For those of you with smartphones, you might want to try using www.meetup.com/poshpoker. They have a fairly good mobile version of the website that will allow you to rsvp and check future meetups. Further, the Apple App store has a free “meetup.com” application that is very good. It will allow you to add photos, comments, do RSVPs and “check-in” to our meetups on your iPhone or iPod. I use it regularly.