I recently went on a poker road trip that took me through Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. I was pleased to visit two excellent poker rooms in the Greater Pittsburgh area: The Meadows, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh in Washington, Pennsylvania, and The Rivers, located right in downtown Pittsburgh.
These rooms each have a lot going for them. They are in full service casinos with all the amenities, including excellent restaurants and other gaming opportunities. The Meadows even has a race track. Moreover, they are relatively new rooms with a high percentage of relatively unskilled players who have not yet lost their money or gotten discouraged and quit. This makes for good games!
I don’t consider myself a very slick no-limit player. I am a grinder who wins most of his money by being patient and playing solid poker against players who play too loosely. Even so, there is a certain type of opponent who practically begs me to steal. He is the tight and timid soul who learned how to play limit and still, to a large degree, plays by those conventions. In these rooms I found this type of player in abundance.
Horace (not his real name) and I had been playing together at The Meadows in a $1-$2 no-limit game for about two hours. I had seen him play two dozen hands or so. Though his stack had been up to about $300 when I sat down in his game, it had dwindled to $175 or so. He had been nursing it along with great passivity for about an hour. I suspected that he was unable or unwilling to replenish it.
He was attentive. I knew that he noticed me. I was not a regular. I had not played many hands either—and when I played I tended to be aggressive. I had won three of the four hands I had played to the River during the past hour. I had won a couple of hands uncontested as well. I had about $400 in front of me.
I was the cutoff. A player raised the blinds to $8—a standard raise in this game. Horace called. I raised to $24 with Jh-Th hoping to put the squeeze on Horace. Everyone folded to the original raiser who, to my surprise, also folded. Horace called my bet. We were heads up.
The flop was Kc-Tc-6c. I hit middle pair. Horace bet $25. I figured that he would not have done that with a flush—he would have checked. I put him on a pair of kings. Normally, I might fold here. But given my read of Horace I decided to get a little tricky. I raised to $50—hoping he would fold. Horace rechecked his down cards and, reluctantly, called.
The turn was the 5d. I paused, looked at his stack, saw about $100, and shoved out a large stack saying, “I’ll put you all in.”
Horace said, “I knew that was coming,” looked back at his down cards, held them up to the guy to his right—a regular like him—and folded. As he folded them I saw that they were Ks-Qs.
I made a similar move against a similar player at The Rivers poker room later in the day. The sessions were quite profitable. The experience reinforced the truth about playing the players more than the cards. And I promised myself that I would soon make Pittsburgh a destination for an entire poker vacation—rather than just a short stop on a long road trip. I hope the games are just as good by the time I make it back.
The Meadows: 210 Racetrack Road, Washington, PA, www.meadowsgaming.com, 724.503.1200.
The Rivers: 777 Casino Drive Pittsburgh, PA www.riverspokerroom.com, 412.231.7777
Ashley Adams is the author of Winning 7-Card Stud and Winning No Limit Low Limit Hold’em. He hosts the radio show House of Cards, broadcast Mondays at 5 – 6 p.m. in Boston, MA, on 1510 AM, and on the Internet at www.houseofcardsradio.com. Contact Ashley at asha34@aol.com.
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