Carpetbagging the British Columbia Poker Championship, Day 1

Emily and I arrived in Vancouver less than two days before my departure for Europe. I’ve been back for a little over a week now, so I’m just starting to get settled in. It seems like a very cool city: mild climate (for Canada- still chilly, but the notorious rain hasn’t actually been too bad in my limited time here), good public transportation and bike-friendly, wide variety of bars and restaurants, great coffee, and just all around vibrant and lively. I can see why it’s one of the most expensive places to live in North America.

We’re renting a suite in a beautiful house in Kittsilano, which seems to be the yuppy district. Our landlords are a gay couple, one a wiry, frenetic, chain-smoking Frenchman and his partner a much more easy-going Czech. It seems like the Frenchman did most of the decorating, because the house and yard, though very well laid out, are cluttered with kitschy knick-knacks.

The main event of the British Columbia Poker Championship is a $2700 tournament drawing roughly 500 participants, so while it’s not something I would have considered traveling to play, it was well worth half an hour on a bus and a train to get there. It’s a real who’s who of Canadian poker (with the notable absence of Daniel Negreanu), though this year a number of American refugees are vying for the title as well. I am one of these carpetbaggers.

The River Rock Casino is a resort in the Las Vegas mold. It’s not themed, but it takes a page out of the “buy up some cheap land, use the word glamorous a lot, and charge an insane amount of money for everything” book. The building itself is nice-looking, but it occupies what is otherwise an industrial waterfront just across the river from Vancouver, so its neighbors are mostly shipping containers.

The tournament is held in the River Rock theater, where upcoming acts include Bell Biv Devoe, Bachman & Turner, and Chicago. Though the $300 rake already represents more than 11% of the prize pool, they withheld another 2% for the staff, so I don’t think I’ll be leaving anything additional if I cash. If they can’t find a way to compensate their dealers fairly with 13% of the prize pool, that’s their problem.

Vancouver is a very, very Asian. I’d heard that but didn’t really appreciate how true it was until looking around the city a bit. Most of the ads for the River Rock feature Asian players prominently, and a full half of my starting table (we were 10-handed all day) was Asian.

It was a pretty soft table on the whole, and I was happy with it. One of the Asian kids was limp-calling K3o and just generally not folding, but everyone else seemed competent, but for the most part only competent. They seemed to be mostly recreational regulars at the River Rock, though two of them were also part of a contingent of recreational players from Calgary who seemed to make an annual pilgrimage for this event. The Calgary guys seemed like a lot of fun. They had think Canadian accents and kept talking about how they were partying every night of the series. There must have been two dozen of them, and the guy on my left kept calling out new players around the room and insisting that they “come oot with us” tonight.

The first big pot that I won was against one of the better Asian kids. Most of the table was playing very straight-forwardly and conservatively, but this guy was one of two who’d shown a willingness to try to take someone off of a hand. There were two limpers, he limped behind in the CO, I completed A9o in the SB, and the BB checked. The flop came Jc 9c 4h, and we checked around to this kid, who bet 450 into a pot of 1000. I raised to 1650, it folded back to him, and he very quickly made it 6100 with about 5000 behind. I only had 13K to my name, so I wasn’t thrilled about playing such a big pot with middle pair, but I was very sure he was on a draw. Nothing else made sense. I stuck it in, and he had Ac 2c, which was about the best that I could hope for. I faded his nine outs and was off to a good start.

One side benefit of playing a hand like this is that you can learn a bit about your table from how they react. Only one player, a twenty-something who looked familiar and was probably a well-known online player, seemed to understand completely why I would stack off with A9 there. Several people shook their heads and seemed to think I was crazy, which was an image I was happy to have.

Not long after, I called a small raise from the oldest guy at the table with T9o on my big blind. The flop came Jc 8c 3d, I checked, and he bet 925 into 1100. I called because a guy like that will always put me on a flush draw, meaning that I can bluff clubs and get paid if I make my straight. The turn was another 8 and we checked it through. An offsuit Q on the river gave me a straight, and I bet 2800, nearly pot, making sure to toss my chips out there a little bit aggressively. It took him no more than a few seconds to pay me off.

The Asian guy I busted was replaced by a stunningly beautiful Asian woman (sorry, no pics). Her face was mature enough that she could have been as old as 30, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she were younger, and her silky black hair cascaded perfectly down around her shoulders. She came to the table short-stacked and after an orbit or two open shoved three hands in a row. The third time, she put 15 BBs in with KQo and I woke up with KK to bust her.

There had been no lame attempts to flirt with her, perhaps because she was so clearly out of everyone’s league, but as soon as she was gone the guy on my left said to me, “Aw man what’d you have to do that for?”

“Yeah, couldn’t you have just folded Kings?” chimed in another.

I smiled. “I had to get rid of her. I couldn’t concentrate.”

Our table broke soon after that, which I wasn’t thrilled about. By that point it was probably only about average for the room in terms of difficulty, but I also had a good sense of how even the better players were playing. I welcomed the devil I knew and would have preferred not to start over from scratch.

My second table was probably on balance better, but it was more polarized. There were two players there better than anyone at my first table, but also four who were worse than most of my first table. It was probably a step up, but what sealed the deal was that there were a lot of chips at this table. I brought a well-above average stack to the table and was probably 4th or 5th in chips.

Interestingly there were no Asians at this table, though there was an old Greek sporting a neat mustache and dapper fedora. He didn’t talk much but occasionally dispensed these little gems of usually wrong, often non-sensical strategy advice in a sage tone. A much less suave older guy with an Eastern European name sat next to the Greek and across the table from me.

One of the best of my opponents was the ginger on my left, who looked like he was about 14. I came to the table with a lot of small denomination chips, plus people expect me to steal a lot anyway, so my plan was to be quiet for a while and get paid off on big hands. After playing nothing for three orbits I got impatient and opened to 750 at 150/300 with 43s in early middle position. The ginger snap 3-bet to 1650, and I called, and called a bet with bottom pair and a backdoor flush draw. Thankfully the board paired on the turn and I check-folded to another small bet, but that was probably the worst hand I played all day.

The dinner break, such as it was, was weird. We had half an hour, which wasn’t really even enough time to go to the buffet. I bought a salad and some sushi from the casino’s coffee shop (believe me, I had my doubts about casino coffee shop sushi but I figured in a town with such a heavily Asian population it would be a little safer and actually it wasn’t bad) and ate it outside with the smokers. Of course it’s not uncommon to catch a whiff of marijuana during the break of a poker tournament, but in Vancouver it was out of control. At the WSOP people at least walk to the far end of the parking lot and half hide behind a building. These guys were just standing around casually smoking joints and chatting five feet from the valet parking. I guess that’s something else the city is famous for.

In the three hours after dinner I mostly stuck to the game plan of waiting for hands and getting paid. None of them was terribly interesting. Towards the end of the day I made a few 3-bets, twice against the other very good player on my right and once again an older guy who actually raised a lot in late position and whom I’d pegged as the best of the amateurs. He beat me into the pot with a 4-bet shove.

Nevertheless, it was a great day. We started with 15K and I finished with 50K. I think the average is somewhere in the 26K-28K neighborhood. I’ll be heading out the door shortly to play Day 2- wish me luck!