[bolgenmod]

I thought I'd share with you the remarkably stupid thing I did yesterday in my friendly home game no-limit tournament, which is definitely the most remarkably stupid thing I've EVER done in a poker game SO FAR. (I reserve the right to do something even more stupid in the future!) In retrospect, it's kind of funny, but at the time...

As anyone who's seen me play in the chiptalk tournament (I am ratatosk on PS) knows, I am not really good at no-limit or at tournaments. In the last two and a half years since my home game took up holdem, we've played a limit ring game almost exclusively. Besides the chiptalk tournaments, I've played in two live home tournaments and came in second in both. I wasn't terribly good or terribly lucky in either, but my competition in both was totally clueless. So although I can't do anything in a "real" tournament, against my home-game opponents (who have no interest in learning how to play poker for real as opposed to for fun), I can do pretty well.

So we were having a tournament yesterday, first time since last Halloween, new structure, $25 buy-in, T7000 starting stack. I was a little late and a little flustered because of it. The tournament had already started when I got there, so I sat down and tried to get into it. As always, the play was terrible. We started with 20/40 blinds (for a long game), and most of the table would limp in if they were going to play a hand. And if there was a raise, it would generally be to 80 total. Post-flop, the bets were again min bets: 40 no matter the size of the pot.

And if someone did raise, one or two players would call with just about anything. I mean ANYTHING: I saw one of them turn over a K5o after a pf raise.

So I waited for position, a good situation, and/or a decent hand. Soon I found all three. I was on the button with the SB represented by a player who was very late and thus just a stack at this point (very nice for me: I got two buttons each round along with a dead BB to steal from the SB if everyone else folded). The weakest player at the table limped, everyone else folded to me. I had ATs, so I raised. The SB went in the pot and the BB folded, the weak player called. On the flop, I had caught nothing but made a half pot continuation bet when checked to. WP hesitated but called. The turn brought nothing for me, but paired the low card (3) on the board. WP then bet. I looked at her and realized that she had just made trips (I can read my regular home game people sometimes). So I folded. And she did have the trips (I asked, she told me).

The next hand it was the same weak player limping with everyone else folding. In the cutoff (but really the button again) I looked down to red 9s. Again I raise. Everyone looked at me -- why raise so much? they said. 3 times the big blind, said one of the players (a math professor). SB folds, BB and WP call. Flop is 2 clubs, no 9s, but 10 high. Check to me. Again, I bet half the pot. BB folds, WP calls. Turn is K of clubs; board is scary, but again, WP checks, I bet, she calls. River Q clubs. Now WP bets into me. With 4 clubs on the board and KQT and weak player betting, I fold. She flashes A of clubs (along with a red 4!).

This would be a totally normal story: No bad beats, just losing a couple of pots to a really loose player early when blinds are low. Not worth my time or yours. Except for the crucial fact I omitted: the size of my preflop raise. For some unknown reason, instead of betting 3 times the 40 big blind (or 120), I was raising to 1200!!! Somehow it got into my head that the BB was 400, so I thought I was betting 3 times the BB. BUT NO: I was betting THIRTY times the BB, not THREE!! (And even the math professor didn't really get it: he too thought it was 3 times, not 30!) And since my continuation bets were sized to the pot, I was making huge bets on the flop as well. And thus creating and losing monster pots.

I have no idea what I was thinking, but when I realized what I had done, I could NOT believe such stupidity. In the first level, within the first few orbits, I had lost over 5000 of my 7000 stack due to sheer brain freeze!!

And, of course, my incredible stupidity was matched by that of my opponents. Who in their right mind would call a raise of that size with anything less than AA or KK or AKs? The weak player called a raise of 1160 with an A4o and a hand that included a 3 (the card that gave her trips)!! (Not to mention the flop calls with bottom pair or two backdoor draws and an A.) But I was clearly the biggest idiot in the room!!

The story has a moderately happy ending: I did end up placing 3rd out of 14. (And despite her having almost doubled her stack in the beginning, the weak player went out 7th, I think.) So I guess I ended up not too bad for being seriously short-stacked from the beginning. And for being a complete blithering idiot!

Anyway, I thought I'd share. I wonder if any of you have ever done anything remotely close to this, or do I win the chiptalk village idiot prize?

[JM]

were you announcing the amount of your raises or just putting chips in? Seems to me that if you were saying 120, but putting in 1200, the dealer should have corrected you. Though I can't quite figure out how you could be putting in what you thought was 120 but was actually 1200 if you were using standard chip values. 1 black + 4 red = 120, or 4 green + 4 red = 120, or 24 red = 120, but how do you get to 1200 if you've got 5/25/100/500 chips and think you're putting in 120?

[Captn_All_In]

Yeah That was stupid, but it could have been worse. You could have realized your mistake....gone on tilt, then just wasted the rest of your money on some desperate hope, which would only prove that you were stupid.

But you didn't.

Nice job taking 3rd.

[Colquhoun]

Sounds like its time for denominated chips!

[JM]

I still can't figure out how he managed that unless they were using some out of the ordinary denoms.

[bolgenmod]

Yes, our denoms were crazy: reds were 10, blues 25, blacks 100 (the only normal one), and whites were 500. But we had a nice piece of paper displayed in plain view saying what the colors meant. And we've used reds as 10 cents, blues 25 cents, blacks 1 dollar for years. Of course, I now know this is crazy, but when we started all of us thought that was a fine way to denominate the chips, and I was certainly used to it. So I guess my confusion might have stemmed from the fact that I knew the chips were now worth much more in tournament value, so a BB of 4 red chips must have been 400 in my mind, not 40. We did NOT have a blind schedule in plain sight, but I did know the blinds were 20/40. I really can't explain it...And why I didn't make a mistake with the larger chips, I don't know.

And yes, I clearly announced "raise, 1200" before putting the proper number of chips in the pot: two whites, two blacks.

Conclusion: I am clearly some kind of idiot!

PS: Thank you capt for your kind words. It was tough getting to 3rd, and when we started 3 way, I had about 10,000, the other two about 40,000. I stole my share of blinds, but could not get a hand to actually play (as opposed to steal with!), not even a low pair or two high cards, all 83o, J2o, 94o and suchlike. Finally got an ace-7o, raised, got called by 10-2 off, flopped an ace, went all-in, but my opponent had flopped a ten and rivered a 2.

[JM]

Wow, I can't imagine what that caller was thinking calling those huge pre-flop raises!

[whitepotatoe]

That's pretty funny. I can't believe that people would call a 30x BB raise with those hands. Everybody has a brain fart once in a while though.