An Exercise in Nut Peddling

Once again, I find myself in the throes of massive busyness, with poor poker getting shoved on the backburner. Well, that's not exactly true, as I have been playing a goodly amount the last week or so, just not my normal limit HE gig.

I've mainly been playing a single table of .50/1 PL Omaha ($100 max buy-in) at Doyle'sRoom/Tribeca. Just one lowly little table. That's it. On my second monitor. And almost always while I'm 99% occupied with other work, so I'm barely paying attention.

No moves, no reads, nothing tricky, just pure and utter nut peddling, on one table. Not very exciting poker, by any stretch of the imagination. So much folding that even the wee baby Jebus would crack under the pressure and finally get impatient and make a move with less than the nuts. If I don't have nuts or odds for a strong draw to the nuts, I fold. If there's a raising war pre-flop, I fold, even with AA xx. If I don't have position on the crazy that loves to build huge pots for the sake of building pots, I fold. If I have the nuts, I bet.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending, by any stretch of the imagination, that it's optimal play. But it's been an interesting exercise, as far as the combination of bad/crazy play at that level, plus the fact that people seem to choose to ignore the fact that I've folded 162,192 hands in a row, and still give me action when I've got the mortal nuts. I'm up nearly $1K in the last week, all from just that lone, single table, that I barely pay any attention to whatsoever.

Much of that is due to favorable table conditions, and one session in particular with a couple of well-funded drunk lemurs, but it's not the worst exercise in the world to subject oneself to.

One of the harder things for me to balance with limit HE is balancing patience with aggression, as my natural tendency is to lean towards the patient side, so I end up occasionally overcorrecting, knowing my tendencies, and sometimes force myself to play hands too quickly. I also constantly remind myself of the old mantra that to get action you have to give action, as far as justifying aggression that turns out to be unwarranted.

It's good to remember at times, though, that most people are there to gamble, and they want to find reasons to bet. In the right conditions you can sit down, afix a large, hand-lettered sign to your forehead that says "I Love to Peddle Nuts", do exactly that in very obvious fashion, and still get action.

Or, much more simply and with much less babbling, patience is a very valuable asset in poker. Couple it with good reads and selective aggression and hey, that dog will hunt.

In other news, all you other Vegas-attending bloggers still suck. Mightily.