Poker in Seattle

I'm not a professional poker player or a coach. I'm a student of the game. This summer, while interning at Amazon in Seattle, I spent my evenings at the card rooms,partly to decompress, partly because I genuinely love the game. Here's how it went.

The Summer

Seattle has a surprisingly active poker scene. Aces Poker became my go-to spot. Most nights after work I'd grab dinner, head over, and sit down at a 1/3 NL table. The players were a mix of regulars and tourists, generally tighter than what I was used to. It took a session or two to adjust to the live pace after mostly playing online.

The Amazon intern game on June 11th was a different story entirely. 1/1 stakes, but the action was wild. That ended up being my biggest session of the summer.

Results

Over 14 hours across 5 sessions, I finished +$3,168 without a losing session in Seattle.

Date	Venue	Stakes	Hours	Result
May 20, 2025	Aces Poker Seattle	1/3 NL	2.5	+$324
June 7, 2025	Aces Poker Seattle	1/3 NL	3.7	+$291
June 11, 2025	Amazon Interns	1/1 NL	3.5	+$1,761
June 15, 2025	Aces Poker Seattle	1/3 NL	2.5	+$169
July 2, 2025	Aces Poker Seattle	1/3 NL	0.8	+$623

Obviously the sample size is small. Five sessions doesn't prove anything,variance is real and I know a downswing is always around the corner. But the results felt earned. I played patient, positional poker, picked my spots, and avoided getting into marginal situations without an edge.

What I Learned About My Own Game

Patience is the edge at low stakes. Most of my profit came from waiting for strong hands in position and getting paid off. At 1/3, players call too wide and bluff too little on the river. You don't need to be creative,you need to be disciplined.

Table selection matters more than I thought. My two best sessions (the intern game and the July 2nd session) came from identifying soft tables early and staying put. The worst thing you can do is sit at a table of competent regulars grinding each other down.

Tilt management is still a work in progress. I didn't tilt this summer, but I also didn't face real adversity. No bad beats, no big losses. I know that when the variance hits, emotional control is what separates break-even players from winning ones.

A Hand That Stuck With Me

This one from July 3rd at Aces kept me thinking for days.

I open AA to $20 from UTG (big for 1/3, but I wanted to thin the field). A loose MP player calls,he's been drinking, barely paying attention. The BB, a tight regular, also calls. His flat tells me he doesn't have premium pairs or strong suited broadways, otherwise he'd 3-bet.

Flop: 8♣ 4♦ 3♠ (rainbow, pot $61). I c-bet$ 20. MP folds. BB calls.

Turn: 9♠ (pot $101). Two spades now. I bet$ 20. BB check-raises to $60. I call.

River: K♠ (pot $220). Third spade. BB leads$ 100.

I'm sitting there with AA and the A♠. I tank for a while and fold.

In the moment it felt wrong to fold aces. But thinking it through afterward, I'm pretty confident it was correct against this specific player. He's tight. His turn check-raise on a board that doesn't connect well with his flatting range screams a made hand or a strong draw. When the flush completes and he leads into me for nearly half pot, his value range is heavy,sets (33, 44, 99), flushes that flatted the flop with backdoor spade draws and got there.

The interesting part is that my A♠ actually blocks the nut flush. That means his flush combos skew toward smaller flushes, and there are more bluff combos in his range than you'd initially think. By MDF (Minimum Defense Frequency = 220/320 ≈ 69%), I should be calling here with most of my bluff-catchers.

But GTO isn't gospel at 1/3. Against a tight player at these stakes, exploitative folding is fine. These guys almost never bluff the river for half pot into a big pot. When they bet, they have it.

GTO Thinking & How I Apply It

I study GTO not to play it perfectly at the table,that's impossible in live low-stakes poker,but to build a framework for thinking about the game.

Ranges over hands. The biggest shift in my thinking has been to stop putting opponents on specific hands and instead think about the full range of hands they could have. Every action narrows their range. By the river, I'm asking: what percentage of their range beats me, and does the price I'm getting justify a call?

Pot odds and equity realization. Not all equity is created equal. Having 30% equity with a gutshot is different from 30% equity with a flush draw because of how often you actually realize that equity across streets. I try to factor in implied odds and position when deciding whether to continue.

Balanced sizing. I've been working on using consistent bet sizes so my range is harder to read. Small c-bets on dry boards, larger bets on coordinated textures. The goal is to make it difficult for observant opponents to exploit my sizing tells.

Exploitative adjustments over pure GTO. At 1/3, most players have massive leaks. They call too much preflop, fold too much on the river, and almost never bluff. The correct response isn't to play balanced,it's to value bet thinner, bluff less, and punish their tendencies. GTO gives me the baseline; reads and adjustments give me the profit.

Multi-street planning. Before I bet the flop, I try to have a plan for the turn and river. What do I do if I get raised? What runouts am I barreling on? What am I checking back? This kind of forward thinking has cleaned up a lot of the spots where I used to make impulsive decisions.

Most of what you'll win at poker is not due to your brillance, but the ineptitude and skill of your opponents. - Lou Krieger