Sunday, May 20, 2007

Big hands in Vegas




OK, this guy, Amir Nasseri, MD, gets my vote for biggest maniac/action junkie I've yet encountered. Ob-Gyn. Has serious ties to the American Hospital in Dubai. I tell him he should meet my partner. I played with him twice. The first hand I played with him, a $5-$10 NL game at the Venetian, I was still stacking chips from a $5K pot I had just won when I looked down at AA. I raised to $60, he went all-in for $1000 and I called and won. Cool.

I have no idea who this guy was. After a couple hands, I realized that playing with him would require some stylistic changes! He open raised every pot to somewhere between $70 and $120. Well, almost every pot. He missed one or two an hour. Otherwise, he raised with any two cards. This worked out great if you had a big hand, because you would often get paid off. Making a little pot building raise to say $30 though was silly, since one knew that you'd be playing for $130 by the time it got back to you. In any event, I leave the first night ahead $5K.

The next night I buy in for $3K and get it up to $5K. My good doctor friend has over $10K on the table though and I want some of it. He will fold sometimes when people play back at him big, but he will also run bluffs and has done so for several thousand dollars.

So after winning the first hand against him I lost the last one. I get dealt red Kings and limp from the cut-off. He makes it $200 from the button and I call. This is the pot I've been waiting all night for. The flop comes K-T-7, all spades. Almost perfect. Not quite of course because his range is any two cards, but chances are I'm way way way ahead. I bet $200 and he calls. OK, this is good.

Turn is a red brick and I bet out $500. He makes it $1100. Hmmm. At this point, I have to figure he has one spade and as long as the river isn't a spade I should win this pot. If he flopped a flush then I still can have the board pair for me. I didn't really think much about his raise as I still thought I was good at this point. In retrospect, if he had air here he might have just put me all in. This way, I'm pretty much forced to either call or push as folding is not an option. I call.

River is another red brick. I should have check-called here, but I bet out and he put me all in. I had to call another $1200 into a pot that was about $8000 or so. I knew I was beat but since his bluffing frequency is high I thought a call was in order. Sure enough he tables Q4 spades and he had me the whole time.

2 comments:

hdhindsa said...

Dude, don't feel bad--Dubai has taken much of my money, albeit in different ways, in the five trips we have taken there...You have made a contribution to one of the wackiest, wealthiest zones on the planet--now you need to go and visit!!!!

Zak said...

yes my volvo wouldnt have flipped either.

quick econ lesson. weaker dollar can be caused by several things. first is low interest rates. but in our case probably the biggest reason is our levels of debt. as we continue to issue more money to finance war, trade deficit etc it weakens the value of a dollar. just like if the market was flooded with oil right now down it goes. therefore if we shored up our finances and reduce the circulation of dollars the more it strengthens. imagine if china hadn't been buying all our debt. it could be worse. One caveat: it also can be country specific. In this case Brazil is enjoying a huge trade surplas and FDI (foreign direct investment) has been super strong over there years. All this has made our dollar go from 3.4 reais to 1.93 in a little over 3 years.