Crazy Time of Year

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! This is a super busy time of the year with all of the cooking, cleaning, shopping, tree trimming, entertaining, family visits and working, so I'm not sure how much I will be playing poker this month. The blog may be a little neglected until January when life gets back to normal. I may not be playing, but I'm still thinking poker pretty much all of the time lol. An awesome blog reader sent me a copy of Ed Miller's hand ranging book How to Read Hands at NLHE, which was a super nice thing to do. Big thanks to him, it's a great book.

In the last post, I mentioned we played cash after the tournament. It was pretty uneventful for me as far as cards go, but it was a lesson in tilt control for several others at the table. I don't know if it was a full moon that night or what, but there were some crazy people out, y'all.

It started in the tournament registration line at the Shoe, when I spotted a man in a cash game looking an awful lot like a Nick Nolte mugshot...

His long, greasy hair wasn't as wild as Nick's, but he was very similar looking, shirt and all. What really caught my eye was the little green, hair clip he was using to pin his hair back on one side. The kind mom's put in their little girl's hair. I had the perfect spot to snap a pic, but I totally chickened out. Lame. I know.

Then at Harrah's in the cash game, the first thing I heard the 3 seat say was, "Hey, we're at the WSOP final table. I'm trying to win the tournament! I'll play how I want to." as he tabled his 7-3 offsuit winner.

Should we tell him we're not in Vegas on ESPN, that we're actually in a shallow stacked 1/3 cash game in the middle of nowhere? In my opinion, of course not. I don't have a problem with crazy. I welcome it, entertain it. Be crazy, play crazy. It's good for the game. But there were 3 men at the table who had a problem with Mr. WSOP and just had to let him know about it. He continued to defend himself with talk of final tables, I took his side with a smile and a "nice hand". Who cares if he doesn't play 'correct starting hands' or if he doesn't want to chop the blinds? There are several regs at Harrah's who don't chop. Who cares? Outplay him post flop. I noticed that while his opening/calling range was wide, he was fit or fold and if he did get a piece, he would overplay top pair/bad kicker like it was the nuts. That's a great player to have at the table! But they didn't think so, obv. He took a a long break and just when he came back, it was time for me to leave to go meet my husband. Sad face. I wished him luck as I was leaving, he was the nice kind of crazy, hopefully I'll get to see him again at the tables. I'd much rather play with him than the tilted, ego driven players who were berating him. Shame on them.