A little while back I went up to a local card room for a tournament.  I got there plenty early and had some time to kill so I decided to play some limit hold ‘em to pass the time.  A little side-note to that, Minnesota doesn’t allow no limit, thus the game that I chose to play.

I had a very similar situation happen to me twice.  Big pocket pairs on the button.  In no limit poker, this is a dream of course.  But as it played out for me, at least on this day, it was a nightmare.

In lower level limit poker, it is not uncommon to see 5-6 players to the flop around here.  Sometimes even more!  So here I am with a big pocket pair on the button and at least 5 people already in the pot.  Without even really thinking, I raise.  Of course no one folded, so there we are with 6 people to the flop.  Of course I lost both times.  Once was on the flop to a guy that hit a set (I got away from that one on the turn), and the other was a river job.

But I’m not here to talk about how these hands played out.  I  am here to ask a simple, yet perhaps quite complex question.  In limit hold ‘em, would you rather have a big pocket pair on the button?  Or under the gun?

The more and more that I think about it, the more and more that I think under the gun.  You’ve seen my scenario about having 5-6 people in the pot already when action reaches me on the button, and of course no one is going to fold to one more bet with those pot odds.  Right?

So let’s reverse that.  I look down on pocket K’s UTG.  I raise.  No one else, except the blinds of course, are in the pot yet.  No one else has acted yet.  So anyone that chooses to call now has to call 2 bets, with the possibility of a re-raise behind them, and then a 4-bet from the UTG raiser.  They aren’t just calling 1 bet with great pot odds anymore.  The likelihood of 5-6 people seeing a flop in this scenario is far less, in my opinion.

What do you think?  On the button?  Or under the gun?

Welcome to birthday month at Showdown Poker Gear!  October is the birth month of co-owners Joel and Erik.  And that means birthday presents.  But not for them, for you!  We here at Showdown Poker Gear will be giving away five separate items all throughout the month of October.

For the fifth giveaway, we are feeling the October holiday season, also known as Halloween.  With that, the winner will get their choice of skulls!  The winner will get to pick from “Poker Face” and “SPG Skulls”.  The drawing for this contest will be some time on October 31, 2011.

Rules & Entry Information:
1) To enter, all you need to do is place a comment at this bottom of this page.  Something as simple as “In” will suffice, or you can tell us how wonderful we are.  That never hurts.  The content of your comment has no baring on your chances of winning.  Although we reserve the right to delete anything offensive, appropriate, etc., so use your head.

2) To complete your registration, you must “like” us on Facebook, if you have not already done so of course.  Click here to access our Facebook page.

3) Tell your friends.  This isn’t a requirement, but would be greatly appreciated.  If we generate enough entries throughout the month, we may be inclined to add an additional bonus “Thank You” giveaway contest.

4) You may only win once.  We encourage you to enter every giveaway, but you may win only once.  We want to share the love with as many people as possible.  In the event that you win more than one contest, we will give you the choice on which one you would like, and we will re-draw for the other(s).

So, that is it.  Pretty simple, right?  So what are you waiting for?

Welcome to birthday month at Showdown Poker Gear!  October is the birth month of co-owners Joel and Erik.  And that means birthday presents.  But not for them, for you!  We here at Showdown Poker Gear will be giving away five separate items all throughout the month of October.

For the fourth giveaway, we are giving away an item that is not even in our store yet!  It is a pink, fleece beanie hat!  Real men wear pink, right?  But this one is probably a little more geared towards out female fans out there.  It would make for a great little gift too.  The drawing for this contest will be some time on October 25, 2011.

Rules & Entry Information:
1) To enter, all you need to do is place a comment at this bottom of this page.  Something as simple as “In” will suffice, or you can tell us how wonderful we are.  That never hurts.  The content of your comment has no baring on your chances of winning.  Although we reserve the right to delete anything offensive, appropriate, etc., so use your head.

2) To complete your registration, you must “like” us on Facebook, if you have not already done so of course.  Click here to access our Facebook page.

3) Tell your friends.  This isn’t a requirement, but would be greatly appreciated.  If we generate enough entries throughout the month, we may be inclined to add an additional bonus “Thank You” giveaway contest.

4) You may only win once.  We encourage you to enter every giveaway, but you may win only once.  We want to share the love with as many people as possible.  In the event that you win more than one contest, we will give you the choice on which one you would like, and we will re-draw for the other(s).

So, that is it.  Pretty simple, right?  So what are you waiting for?

Welcome to birthday month at Showdown Poker Gear!  October is the birth month of co-owners Joel and Erik.  And that means birthday presents.  But not for them, for you!  We here at Showdown Poker Gear will be giving away five separate items all throughout the month of October.

For the third giveaway, it will be the your choice of a Showdown Poker Gear hat!  We have the trucker style baseball hat, and a fleece beanie hat to help keep your head warm for the colder weather that is rapidly approaching.  The drawing for this contest will be some time on October 24, 2011.

Rules & Entry Information:
1) To enter, all you need to do is place a comment at this bottom of this page.  Something as simple as “In” will suffice, or you can tell us how wonderful we are.  That never hurts.  The content of your comment has no baring on your chances of winning.  Although we reserve the right to delete anything offensive, appropriate, etc., so use your head.

2) To complete your registration, you must “like” us on Facebook, if you have not already done so of course.  Click here to access our Facebook page.

3) Tell your friends.  This isn’t a requirement, but would be greatly appreciated.  If we generate enough entries throughout the month, we may be inclined to add an additional bonus “Thank You” giveaway contest.

4) You may only win once.  We encourage you to enter every giveaway, but you may win only once.  We want to share the love with as many people as possible.  In the event that you win more than one contest, we will give you the choice on which one you would like, and we will re-draw for the other(s).

So, that is it.  Pretty simple, right?  So what are you waiting for?

Welcome to birthday month at Showdown Poker Gear!  October is the birth month of co-owners Joel and Erik.  And that means birthday presents.  But not for them, for you!  We here at Showdown Poker Gear will be giving away five separate items all throughout the month of October.

Below is a listing of each contest, and its winner as they are announced.  Remember, we will send out the prizes after all of the contests are concluded.  You may win only once, but if you are drawn more than once, you get to pick which contest you would rather win, and we will re-draw the other(s).  Good luck to you all, and thank you for playing!

October Birthday Bash Giveaway #1  -  Winner is James Semaj

October Birthday Bash Giveaway #2  -  Winner is Joel Smith

October Birthday Bash Giveaway #3  -  Winner is Kelly Laveau

October Birthday Bash Giveaway #4  -  Winner is Dane Milender

October Birthday Bash Giveaway #5  -  Winner is Zdravko Zapryano

Winner Instructions:

• Send an email to contact@showdownpokergear.com with the following information:
• Full name and address, size (if applicable), item choice (if you won a pick ‘em contest)
• Post at the bottom here after you have sent the email so that we can match them up and make sure that we are awarding the prizes to the true winners

Thanks again to all our entrants, and congratulations to the winners.  Don’t forget to “Show Us Your Showdown“!

Welcome to birthday month at Showdown Poker Gear!  October is the birth month of co-owners Joel and Erik.  And that means birthday presents.  But not for them, for you!  We here at Showdown Poker Gear will be giving away five separate items all throughout the month of October.

For the second giveaway, it will be the “Tilt” t-shirt.  We’ve all been there, but this will be the coolest form of Tilt that you will ever see.  The drawing for this contest will be some time on October 17, 2011.

Rules & Entry Information:
1) To enter, all you need to do is place a comment at this bottom of this page.  Something as simple as “In” will suffice, or you can tell us how wonderful we are.  That never hurts.  The content of your comment has no baring on your chances of winning.  Although we reserve the right to delete anything offensive, appropriate, etc., so use your head.

2) To complete your registration, you must “like” us on Facebook, if you have not already done so of course.  Click here to access our Facebook page.

3) Tell your friends.  This isn’t a requirement, but would be greatly appreciated.  If we generate enough entries throughout the month, we may be inclined to add an additional bonus “Thank You” giveaway contest.

4) You may only win once.  We encourage you to enter every giveaway, but you may win only once.  We want to share the love with as many people as possible.  In the event that you win more than one contest, we will give you the choice on which one you would like, and we will re-draw for the other(s).

So, that is it.  Pretty simple, right?  So what are you waiting for?

Welcome to birthday month at Showdown Poker Gear!  October is the birth month of co-owners Joel and Erik.  And that means birthday presents.  But not for them, for you!  We here at Showdown Poker Gear will be giving away five separate items all throughout the month of October.

For the first giveaway, it will be the “I Bluff on the 1st Date” t-shirt, available for men or women.  The winner of this contest will get their choice of style and size for this great design.  The drawing for this contest will be some time on October 8, 2011.

Rules & Entry Information:
1) To enter, all you need to do is place a comment at this bottom of this page.  Something as simple as “In” will suffice, or you can tell us how wonderful we are.  That never hurts.  The content of your comment has no baring on your chances of winning.  Although we reserve the right to delete anything offensive, appropriate, etc., so use your head.

2) To complete your registration, you must “like” us on Facebook, if you have not already done so of course.  Click here to access our Facebook page.

3) Tell your friends.  This isn’t a requirement, but would be greatly appreciated.  If we generate enough entries throughout the month, we may be inclined to add an additional bonus “Thank You” giveaway contest.

4) You may only win once.  We encourage you to enter every giveaway, but you may win only once.  We want to share the love with as many people as possible.  In the event that you win more than one contest, we will give you the choice on which one you would like, and we will re-draw for the other(s).

So, that is it.  Pretty simple, right?  So what are you waiting for?

On Friday afternoon, carrying in to Friday night, I was playing in a Mid-State Poker Tour qualifier event.  The qualifier takes the top 20% of the field to move on to the Main Event, more on this in a bit.  I won that seat by playing in the River Rat Poker League.

We start with 10k chips.  I played real well early moving up a few k before being moved to a new table.  I pretty much stayed even there as I couldn’t really get much going.  As the field dwindled to 20 players remaining (11 got the seat), I move back to my original table with some new faces.  I stayed fairly even there for a while, which at this point is not good as the blinds are catching up pretty fast.

Then lightning struck for me to make a run.  I was in the SB with 2 limpers ahead of me.  I held KdQh and limped to the BB, who checked.  So we have 4-way limping action to the flop.  The flop is all hearts, including the Kh.  I led out about half the pot.  The BB shoves, the other two players fold back to me.  I am holding top pair with an ok kicker and the second nut flush draw.  I have to call this, right?  It put me all in, but how do I fold here to the BB that just limped pre-flop?  He flips over a 9-high flush, so I still have some life.  The turn was the Ah giving me the nuts and the win.  This hand shot up up towards 40k with a 30k room average.

I kept pecking away, slowly building my stack to ~60k.  We were down to 14-15 players when it all started to go wrong.  You would think with the second biggest remaining stack that I could pretty much limp my way to the top 11 and a Main Event seat, right?  The other table was filled with short stacks, but no one would bust.  All of the busts came from our table, and it was very slow.  I didn’t pick up anything for a hand, and didn’t pick up another pot.

We made it down to the bubble with 12 players remaining, and my stack getting dangerously low and in jeopardy of making it.  I was the BB and everyone folded to the SB who limped to me.  I have Jc8c and checked.  The flop came out 9-10-x with 2 clubs.  I am open ended and have a flush draw!  The turn hit my flush draw.  The SB checked to me and I bet out about 2/3 of the pot.  He calls.  The river is a 4th club.  He hasn’t even acted yet and I already feel gut-shot.  He checked to me, and I just know that card screwed me, so I check also.  He flips over the Ac, hitting the nut flush on the river.  He was going to check-raise me of course, so at least I didn’t go broke.

I am now crippled though, and the other table knows it.  I fail to pick up another pot and bust out in 12th place as the bubble.  I don’t ever recall feeling worse after a tournament than that one.  That river card cost me a Main Event seat.  But really, I lost it before that.

When play got down to around 16 and I am sitting there with ~60k, I kind of shut it down a bit.  I didn’t go after some pots that I could have, and folded a lot that I shouldn’t have.  I played “not to lose” being that I didn’t have to win, only survive.  I really, really dislike having to play with that mentality, and I played very poorly as a result.  Sure I got screwed by someone that chased a 4-flush, but it was my own fault to be that low to begin with.

In the couple of days now following that night, I have analyzed how the last hour went down over and over.  Trying to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it.  What really makes me feel so gut-shot about bubbling isn’t that hand that crippled me, it’s because I blew it.  I choked.  It was my own damn fault.

Just like waking up with a really bad hangover and proclaiming that I will never drink again, until the next time.  The hangover is slowly being cured, and there will be another day soon.  This time, it will work out better………..

I am quite pleased to announce that Showdown Poker Gear has integrated their comments sections with Facebook.  In the past there was a generic commenting system that worked ok, but was largely unimpressive.  Now, all you need to do to comment on any blog posting at Showdown Poker Gear is to be signed in with your Facebook account and post away!

Down on the bottom of the page here you should see a somewhat familiar looking Facebook box.  If you are already signed in, you can simply type and post.  It really is that simple!

In the future, we will be running our giveaway contests off of our site instead of through Facebook like in the past.  So please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the new system so you are all ready to go when the game is afoot, so to speak.

Thank you, and have a great week!

Edit:  I should also mention that this is just a plugin.  There is nothing logged on our site about your Facebook account and no one can see anything from your page that your current privacy settings are blocking.

RRPL’ers, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here:  the RRPL has 4 sessions of 4 tournaments per calendar year.  There are 3 buy-in/point events which lead up to the 4th tournament, which is a freeroll for anyone that played in any of the 3 previous tournaments for the session.  The prize pool is incredible as they give out main event seats and qualifier seats to some bigger tournaments in the area, mainly to the MSPT.  Did I mention that they routinely draw 50-70 players for their tournaments?  That’s right, 50-70 players for a home-game tournament.  That is pretty sick!  Even more sick is the talent that comes to play in this league.  This isn’t your ordinary run of the mill bar poker league caliber of players.  These are very solid players, with a few pros sprinkled in too.

Alright, so there you have the format and partially the reason for my journey up north to play.  The RRPL and its members have been pretty good to us here at Showdown Poker Gear since we began to meet them at various MSPT tournaments over the past couple of years or so.  Team Showdown’s own Jess Geesey is also one of the main men in charge of the league, and new Team Showdown member Shari Williams also plays there.  So it just felt right to finally get up there and play with them.  All in good fun, I even placed a bounty on my head for some free Showdown Poker Gear!

The cards started up pretty slow for me for the first few orbits and I was down about 2k from the 10k starting stack.  Then I picked up everyone’s favorite hand, AA.  I usually get my rockets cracked, so I was worried right away, haha.  I led out with a raise, of course.  After a couple of folds, a player behind me 3-bet, and everyone else folded to me.  I 4-bet, of course, and he shoved with AK.  No harm no foul on the board, and I get a little more than a double up to 17k!  A couple of hands later, that player was gone.

Play was pretty mixed for the next few hours as the starting field of 64 players started to dwindle down.  At 31st place and above, we started to accumulate additional points for the freeroll finale.  I made it there all the while nursing my stack around the 15k mark.  I just never really got much of a chance to get going too much as I was pretty card dead most of the day.  Draws never got there, pre-flop raises didn’t get much action, so I was starting to get blinded off as the blinds and antes began to rise faster than I was able to rake in a pot.

Under the gun I look down at a big drawing hand with QdJd.  At this point I’ve been dwindled down to 5 BB’s.  Believe me, I didn’t want to wait that long to shove, but I just never had anything to shove with prior.  So I shove with my suited QJ and get 2 callers.  Great!  A chance to triple up and get back in the mix to make a run!  Or not.  Nothing but blanks and a lowly pair of pocket 4′s was good enough to take that nice sized pot down.  Out at 22 I went to Jeff Wanges and his pocket 4′s to collect the bounty on me.

For my first trip there, I’m not too disappointed.  Sure it would have been nice not to be so card dead, but I was there more for the spirit of the game and the company, than the game itself.  So all in all, it was a very fun trip, and definitely won’t be my last.

Erik