Rake the Rake and Boomtown Goodness

So Verge signed up Gene for Rake the Rake, and Gene signed up me. For every pot Gene plays Verge gets a comission, for every pot I play in, Gene and Verge get a comission. For every pot I play in, I also get a comission of the rake back too. Sound like a ponzi scheme? It's not. Online sites pay affiliates for customers by giving them a piece of the rake their customers bring in. Enterprising affiliates passed that profit on their customers to get an edge on their competition. Which brings us to today's market...

Anyway, click the garish yellow blinking thingamachig to sign up. Oh yeah, your comission on yourself is not affected by signing up under somebody (ie you don't lose anything by helping a brother out). So if you play online, and your aren't raking the rake, you should and you should help a brother out too by clicking my link. You'll also be helping Verge and Gene's bottom lines.

Basically it's like going into a casino and they keep track of every pot you play in. At the end of your session they give you money back out of what they earned. Not too shabby. You sign up other people and they give you a smaller percentage of the pots they play. Okay, that'll likely be my sole pitch for that product but it'll be here obnoxiously blinking for a while.

Enough selling, let's get to playing, I played at Boomtown last night. Leaked out 70 in 3-6 waiting for the tournament where I didn't hit anything, including an 8 way pot where I had the nut flush draw, the nut straight draw, and a winner if I hit the low end of my open ended straight pot. I'm fine with not winning that pot certainly couldn't ask for anything more with that kind of action--wasn't even a set out there to hurt me.

Always some colorful play in there. In the 3-6 game, I flop top two, guy who raised preflop drives the action and knowing him to be a loose cannon, I ignore his firing and fire back. So it goes, the river brings the Ace I just call knowing I'm beat. Yep, he flopped bottom pair and bet it like the nuts until it became them. A6 o/s of course he was raising preflop he had an ACE for pete's sake. There's only four of them in the deck. I almost didn't want to get up and play in the tournament. I forget just how juicy 3-6 players are sometimes. Plus, with the smaller stakes everybody is focused on enjoying themselves. It's hard not to laugh at a guy like that drawing out on me. He don't know better as a lady whispered to me and then smiled from behind her mountain of chips. Well, bless his heart.

In the tournament, another "he don't know better" got me to lay down ace-king preflop headsup. Probably a negative ev move, huh? I've done that once in a sit 'n go and the guy I folded to almost shot steam out his ears when I showed him. He had kings and no action. At boomtown guy in the first level raises 3x, we start with so little it's usually an all-in fest, so you have to be ready to throw your chips in, with AK I was content to, and I 3x his 3x knowing full well if he pushes I'll probably be racing. He immediately 3xed that bet for about half my chips. Body language gave me all the information I needed and I tossed my AK face up fold. Geno was at my table so I wanted him to think I was a moron and tossed them in front of him. My ruse didn't work as the other guy almost immediately after, just happy to win the pot, throws his bullets on to the table. He was beaming, not even realizing he was revealing just how badly he played that hand. He was as happy as a midget in an elevator when the flatulent guy gets off. Nice hand. If he had any subtlity he could have broke me. Of course, maybe I shouldn't be preaching I can't win with rockets at that casino if I flop a third ace.

The last hand I wanted to break down I was only in for a second, it was after the tournament in the 1-2 game where I won all my money back and then some. Guy raises in late position. I'm on the button and see pocket 5s. He's deep stacked andI feel like he's got a hand here, so I decide to call hoping to hit my set and double through him. BB is having none of the that, he's also deep stacked, and he sees something he likes. He fires out a reraise. I'm mulling over if I'm about to get priced in with all those implied odds on either side of me. Then LP guy, re-reraises and my 5s fly out of my hand, I know they aren't going to let me in cheaply. BB makes it official and goes all in. There is a hitch, so I know he doesn't have Anna's Ass (AK--Anna Kournikova pretty to look at but she don't win anything, AA--Anna kournikova's Ass, it's so pretty to look at who cares if it wins or not). LP guy, surely must be insta-calling here, huh? He's got to have the Rockets if BB doesn't. We've seen this time and time before it's KKs vs. AAs. Suddenly he goes into the tank.

I'm confused must be that even rarer kings vs. kings. He's not good enough to lay down kings. If he's thinking it's got to be less... Queens, Jacks? Nope. You want to guess the hands?

LP finally calls and he has pocket snowmen, and the Big Blind had 9s. Yeah, 8s vs. 9s with that kind of action. The 8, hits of course, not like there could be any justice on that hand and suddenly the LP is sitting pretty. Ray from Harrahs was at the table, and he me and the four other players that understood the game just started laughing and eyeing each other. The guy with the snowmen didn't have that elation--ooh I just sucked out--he's self-satisfied, vindicated even, because he thought he made the right play even though he was drawing to only two cards. As the guy next to me said, "I'll never be able to play that good."

Of course Mr. huge stack shortly got up and left and then... the game mysteriously ended.