Winning a piece of the $10,000 Commerce Casino Jackpot

Last week, towards the end of an especially bad session, I was actually at the table when a jackpot hand was won! The losing player had 9s 9h with the other two 9's on the board and the winning player had Kd Jd with the Qd and Td also on the board for a King high straight flush. The somewhat depressing reality was that the table share is only 20% there and at the time there were 6 of us (besides the winner and loser of the hand) at the table so we got 2000/6 ($334) each and for that we had to wait around over an hour for them to validate the jackpot. It was enough to turn a losing session into a winning one though, to the tune of about $30 – lol.

Live Low Limit 2007

For the last few years most of the poker I've played has been online. Even though I'm a Southern California local and there are a half dozen poker rooms within a half-hour drive it is still more convenient (and less rake, and no dealer tipping) to play online.

The last week, though, I've wanted to get back into the live game and see what changes if any there are in the low limit arena. I played a total of about 30 hours at the following limits: $2-$4, $3-$6, $6-$12 and $9-$18.

Much of what was true in 2000 (when Low Limit Holdem Strategy and Tactics first appeared) is still true today about these tables. They're all very loose and many are very passive.

The difference now vs then is a slight reduction in the number of people that will see the flop, especially at the limits above $3-$6. While it's still very common to see 5, 6, or 7 people see the flop in the past there were many tables where every single person would see the flop almost every single hand. In terms of the starting hands for these loose/passive games that are listed on LLHSAT I'm considering a couple of revisions the most notable is to drop the unsuited connectors from the late position list of hands and perhaps some slight tightening in early position.

The drop (which is how the local cardrooms handle rake) ranges from $3 to $6 every single hand (!) at the low limits ($1 of the drop is for the jackpot and the rest is a fixed amount--unlike online rake which varies according to the pot size). What makes it possible to overcome this astounding charge is how badly many live players play both pre and post-flop (calling with 3, 2, and in many cases 0 outs to the best hand after the flop). If you haven't dipped your toes in the live poker action water it's definitely worth doing if only for the experience.

Roshambo? We Roshit you not.

UltimateBet has recently made the puzzling choice to put the popular human game of rock-paper-scissors on its poker/blackjack site. There's been some discussion on optimal rock paper scissors play, but simply having a computer generate a random number between 1 and 3, or rolling a regular 6-sided die and using 1-2 = rock, 3-4=scissors, 5-6=paper will eliminate any edge your opponents have over you. Of course UB, should they rake this game, will be getting an edge over every throw.

Players can sit heads up and play match after match of this game which, while there might be some purpose to playing it live, I can see little or no reason to play it online--except perhaps just to say that you did.