Uncapped Buy In No Limit at the Palace in Hayward

 

Palatial!

You would think after playing poker in the bay area for 22 years I would have been to every poker room in town. But you'd be wrong! You're so recreational at thinking! I made my first trip to "The Palace" in Hayward last Wednesday. What I new about it going in was they had 4 poker tables, offered $4/$8 limit hold'em and a $1/$2/$2 blind no limit game with an uncapped buy in. Given the state of their website it's surprising I was able to gather this much. 

Such a sad website

I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, but my first reaction was that it had all the charm of an off track horse race betting establishment in a Fresno strip mall. I put my name up for EVERY GAME IN THE HOUSE (literally every game in the house is pictured above). I got called for the $4/$8 limit game which played with a half kill first and bought in for $200.

2 stacks of the lowest society

It has been a loooong time since I played a game with $1 chips. Surely I must be a massive favorite in the game right? RIGHT? 

The saddest stack of all time

I played for about an hour, lost $140 and began to question what I was doing at the Palace, why I was playing with red $1 chips ($1 chips are never red) and all the decisions in my life that had lead up to this moment. Finally I got called for the no limit game. Actually they called the name right before mine and right after mine and when I inquired I was informed that there was a regular with the same name, they didn't see him in the room and since he's deaf they never actually call him.

The $5 chips are blue and the $100s are orange!

I bought in for $1,060 including my sad stack from $4/$8 which may be the first time I've ever bought in for 500+ big blinds. I played uncapped buy-in $10/$20 at Bellagio once in my hay day, but certainly didn't buy in for $10,000 and can't remember too many other uncapped games. 

This game had some goofy straddle rules I've never seen before. On the first hand I played the cutoff put out a $5 straddle and the lojack two to his right put out $10. I was in the big blind and rather than asking WTF was going on, I decided to wait and see. The action started with the under the gun player, bypassed both straddles over to the small blind who made it $20, then the cutoff called and then the lojack called. Surely someone had acted out of turn here right? Nope! A straddle will act last after all of the other action and I guess a double straddle will act after the regular straddler. Furthermore in a normal hand you can't just call the $2 big blind. It's $5 to open. In a single straddled pot it's $10 to open and in a double straddled pot you have to put in $20 to just call. The effect of all of this is the game plays more like a $5 big blind game than a $2 big blind game. The stacks were all between $400 and $1200 with the exception of one guy who had ~$3,000 and no idea what he was doing.

The actual hands I played were not all that interesting with one exception. With the $5 straddle on I was in the big blind with T6 suited and 5 people came in for $10. This is a folding spot, but thinking I was closing the action I made a loose call for another $8. Then Mr. 3000 in the straddle made it $40 to go. Gross. I reluctantly put in another $30 in a spot where again I should have just mucked. The flop was amazing - J98 with two clubs giving me an open ender and a flush draw. I'd make a flush or a straight a little more than 50% of the time and was ready to stack off on the flop. I checked over to Mr. 3000 who bet $145 into the pot of $240. Then the next player to act went all in for what turned out to be $180 and it was back to me with a little over $1,000 in my stack. 

This was a tricky situation. I didn't think that if I called Mr. 3000 would be able to raise again as usually the all in raise needs to be more than half of the original bet (at least a raise of $73 more in this case) in order to reopen the action for the original bettor. But who knows in this goofy place! I thought about asking, but didn't want to ask as it may have given away information about me and my hand. There was also a guy behind me who only had $25 left (who knows why he didn't just get it in preflop for the extra $25). It's not all that often that you have a 15 out draw against effectively two all ins and another guy who is totally bananas and could have anything with fairly deep stacks behind. Between trying to figure out how much was in the pot, whether I should ask about the re-raising possibilities for Mr. 3000, and just the general internal juices flowing from being in this big pot I was feeling the fog of war and not really thinking clearly. While it was certainly possible for me to up against a better flush draw and another straight draw or made straight and be drawing dead to a chop, I decided to just get it in and shoved in my whole stack! The guy with $25 called and Mr. 3000 proudly folded JT face up. The turn was a red 5 and the river was...a 7! The $25 guy flashed AT meaning I was chopping, and then the other guy rolled over QT for the nuts. Bullshit! What a stupid hand! Why did I even write so many words about this dumb hand!

I also lost $350 with AA vs T9 on a 984 flop, turn T runout, $100 with AJ vs 33 in an all in preflop spot, and $250 on a raise preflop then big double barrel bluff that didn't work out. The rest of the time I generally just had nothing good happen.

In total I lost $1,020 on the session over 4 hours. My $10,000 starting bankroll is at $8,218 after 19 hours.

Despite the loss, this was a great game and I'll probably be back. I'm also been feeling inspired to visit EVERY POKER ROOM IN CALIFORNIA over the next couple of years. I probably won't make it to all of the tiny ones, but expect to see more posts about different places....stupid T6 suited.