Last year I wrote about my painful cruise-ship introduction to limit poker. I played on the “only game in town” principle until I could no longer bear it and resorted to playing blackjack (a game that I barely understand – as several gutshotters can attest to).
Based on last year’s disappointment, my expectations for meaningful poker on this year’s cruise were close to zero. I didn’t even look into it before we set off for Southampton.
My wife (knowing that I would want to play if possible) did check it out, and her web search revealed that “Lightning Poker” would be played aboard ship.
This news barely raised my hopes as my experience is that “poker” games with names that differ from standard nomenclature always turn out to be, in fact, various forms of house games.
They are as close to “proper poker” as video poker, or poker slots. Best case, I thought, Lightning Poker could be an abbreviated form of the game: maybe betting pre-flop followed by dealing all three streets at once (say). I tried to imagine what game I would come up with if I was told it was to be sensibly called “Lightning Poker”.
Still, once at sea, I was pleased to see a Texas Hold’em Sit-n-Go announced and I turned up for that with reasonable expectation that it would actually be poker.
And so it was, and the mystery was solved. “Lightning Poker” turned out to be one of those electronic tables for live-play with no dealer. I have never played such a game before but apparently they were using it for these SnGs and also for a $1/2 No Limit cash game.
Good news!
After a considerable software glitch caused a delayed start, the machine finally powered up and I was quite impressed with the nice solid feel of it all. A big screen in the centre of the felt displayed all the action and the software for betting etc was easy and sensible. The only minor gripe I had was the lack of a slider for bets but I’d easily give it a 9/10 for the interface.
On to the game – it was a 9-man $50 SnG playing 2 places 70/30 after the hefty $10 rake. 3,000 chips starting at 25/50 on a 12-minute clock. With this live/electronic hybrid game it was fairly turbo clock but nothing to complain about really.
What of the other players ? Well the fact is you don’t get novices turning up to these things – you might think that out of 3,600 passengers you would find plenty of poker players but in fact they did not fill the 9 seats and we went off 8-handed.
All the participants were clearly somewhat regular players to seek out the game but after a while it became clear they pretty much all played that very passive game that you often see among less experienced players. I am never completely sure how to counter this but I really like to play aggressively so I decided to really focus on position. I was very tight in early position but on the button I was raising pretty aggressively with any playable holding and then post-flop was able to benefit from the passive and rather predictable play.
This worked out rather well when I re-raised a min-raise from middle position with 86o. The original raiser called the re-raise and the other cold-callers let go. The flop was Q75 rainbow.
The pre-flop “aggressor” bet 250 into 2,250. I called and the turn brought the helpful 4. I raised the next 250 bet (I didn’t dare raise to more than 750). The Queen on the river was helpful as I was not remotely afraid of a house and I was able to get all my money in against his QJ.
By now I was clear that none of the other players was a big threat but of course the 12minute levels go fairly quickly without the rapid play you see online (I am not sure if there was a time limit on players’ actions, but it wasn’t uncommon for a player to not realise it was their go).
The game was very friendly and no one was taking it too seriously (I wasn’t either, except that I was determined to win, especially against this field !). One player who needed to make a trip to the toilet actually asked another eliminated player to take over his cards on the bubble!
Definitely not allowed, but it didn’t seem worth pointing it out. I just put the substitute all-in every hand, confident he couldn’t call under the circumstances.The bubble broke and I found myself in-the-money with a 5-3 chip disadvantage. I immediately squashed talk of a chop (although some of you may say that an even chop in that spot is a +EV proposition). It didn’t last long. First hand, I raised and called his shove with AT. He had a small pair and I hit, to take the lead.
In the next pot, he limped and I checked with the mighty 4-3o. Flop T32 with two clubs. He dwelled a bit then shoved. I called feeling my pair was probably ahead now. So it was, but with 7c5c his play was pretty automatic.
However, a 3 on the turn reduced his outs, and a few moments later my record for electronic tournaments became P1, W1. Hurrah !
