Poker and racing

I knew I'd be gambling today, I just didn't know whether it would be on Thoroughbred horse racing or on no limit Texas hold'em poker. Both are pari-mutuel and either would be fun, but with the former in suburban Cincinnati in Northern Kentucky and the latter in suburban Louisville in Southeast Indiana, my man Frank and I had to choose one or the other.

With an eye to the sky, we were leaning toward poker Friday afternoon, and a gloomy start to Saturday in the Blue Grass has me thinking that we made the right decision. So, we'll be making the 90 mile trek west to Horseshoe Casino of Southeast Indiana to play in the "deep stack" no limit Texas hold'em tournament.

I haven't played poker in a live casino since February. I've played online since then, but live is a decidedly different game. Hopefully it's an easier game. I tread water online (can play on the same buy in for weeks usually), so any improvement in person would likely mean a winning day. Of course, with online poker, you can fire up another game seconds after the last one finishes. That won't be the case today. It's a three-hour round trip, and I can be done playing in minutes. At least there's Skyline in Louisville.

Daily Racing Form briefly published a poker problem during the insane poker craze in the middle of the decade. Then our fearless leaders made it difficult to gamble online and the craze died down enough that DRF abandoned the poker column, but offering it made a lot of sense to me. There are plenty of lessons I've picked up gambling on horses that I use when playing poker and vice versa.

One of the the basic tenets of no limit poker that I learned the hard way is "Big pots for big hands." Put another way, unless your David or Frodo, don't go to war armed with a slingshot.

It's a lesson I've applied to my horse betting, too. I used to put about the same amount into my bets no matter what. I'd go to the track with X amount of dollars and use Y/X for pick four wagers, (X-Y)/X for straight wagers, etc. There'd be some variation to back up real strong opinions, but I wasn't really using my bankroll effectively.

Now, I'm much more disciplined. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a degenerate who craves action plays, but instead of putting the same amount on a pick three that I'm unsure about as I would one I'm really excited about, I save my heavy artillery for the bets I'm more excited about, just I would save my tournament chips for pocket aces versus KQ or 99 (as much as I love those hands).

Evening update: Probably should have stuck to Turfway, as poker didn't go well. Made one real bad call that cost me 15% of my stack, another bad "value bet" for 20% of my stack, and by the third level I was crippled enough that only really good cards could have saved me. I'd rate my play a "D." :(

On the flip side, I'd have been really upset if I drove all the way to Turfway only to find out that it cancelled all of its pick four and most of its pick threes because Kentucky Downs had to cancel its card because of weather.

On the plus side, I said on the Thoroughbred Times Inside Post show that Hold Me Back was a major bet against and that I was tossing him from my tri. He ran (if you can call it that) way up the track, but I only caught the exacta despite the Thoroughbred Times TODAY Ragozin Insider pick winning the race at a juicy price.