No Focus in New Orleans

While filming Celebrity Poker Showdown (CPS) in New Orleans recently, I had some free time and stopped by Harrah's poker room to hang out. I say "hang out" because whatever it was that I did there - I bought three bottles of Dom Perignon for the players at the table and sat in on the $2-$5 blinds no-limit hold'em game - I would not exactly want to call it playing poker. Sometimes it's not easy for me to play low-limit poker and maintain my focus. I guess I need to have something meaningful at stake before I bring my A-game.

Sitting behind me were my agent, Brian Balsbaugh (from an agency called Poker Royalty); the man who is second in command at the World Series of Poker, Ty Stewart; and my CPS co-host (and former The Kids in the Hall star), Dave Foley. I was trying to give Foley a lesson, but mostly I was hearing myself saying something like, "You really shouldn't play 6-3 offsuit for $20, but I'm going to anyway." In other words, I was employing the strategy of playing almost every hand, which is not a good idea if you plan on staying at the table for very long.

The following situation illustrates what can go wrong when you play every hand. Before the flop, a gentleman raised to $30 to go. I was in the big blind with Q-8 offsuit and decided to call $25 more. What was I thinking here? Q-8 is a pretty weak hand, and the raise was pretty big. The problem with Q-8 is that even if I were to hit my queen, I could run into an opponent with A-Q or an overpair.

Well, the flop was Q 4 4, I checked, and my opponent bet $50. Now I was pretty much forced into calling, since I had top pair and my opponent could reasonably have been betting a pocket pair, like 7-7, or a flush draw, like the A J. The turn card was the 4, making the board Q-4-4-4. At that point, I figured I was pretty much in there like a bear! I mean, it would take an overpair (K-K or A-A) to beat me. Of course, if my opponent had Q-Q or a 4 in his hand, like A-4, that would beat me, as well. But if he had A-Q, or any queen, I had him tied, because we both would have fours full of queens.

So, this card pretty much sealed the deal for me. I checked, my opponent bet $140, and I asked for a chip count. It was determined that he had another $370 left. I believed that a fold at this point couldn't be the right move, and I stand by that decision. I thought I had no other choice than to move him all in. After all, calling his bet wasn't the right play, because if he was drawing or bluffing, I didn't want to give him a chance to hit a card. For example, he may have had A-K, and calling here would have given him a shot at hitting an ace or a king.

So, I moved my opponent all in and he called immediately, which is always a bad sign. Sure enough, he showed me pocket kings, and there were now only two cards in the deck, two queens, that could save me (can you say, "two outs"?). Considering that the other 42 cards would win for him, I was a 21-1 underdog, and no miracle came as the 7 hit on the river.

Looked at in the right light, one could say that my $30 preflop call was a big mistake, one that set me up to lose almost $600 on the hand. Looked at another way, one could say that I was pretty unlucky to have the third 4 hit the board, because it ensured that I would lose another $510 on the hand. In any case, the champagne was good, and I managed to cut my loss to only $370 for the night. Frankly, the way I was playing, I got off cheap! (By the way, I never did help Foley much.)

As for New Orleans itself, they need a ton of money down there to help with the kinds of problems that are still blocking recovery, but it is business as usual on Bourbon Street. The city is encouraging people to come on down and enjoy the French Quarter, which was mostly unaffected by Hurricane Katrina and remains a fun place to hang out and have a few drinks and a nice meal.