Saturday, February 25, 2006
An all around interesting week on the poker front...
Well, I thought JJprodigy was going to be a front runner for donkey of the year, that is until I read about ZeeJustin's recent bust on PartyPoker for multi-accounting. I've been ceaselessly entertained by the threads over on PocketFives about these multi-accounters but reading about ZeeJ getting busted vaulted him to the top of the donkey heap.
Let us imagine for a moment that we are a person who has used multiple accounts in several of the same online tournaments. We participate on a poker discussion forum which over the last two weeks has been dominated by the issue of JJprodigy and his eventual loss of accounts at multiple online sites fro doing this exact same thing. Would good sense tell you to (a) stop doing it, (b) take your money off the site or, (c) both a and b. Perhaps at this point there should be a (d), as in (d) don't fucking blog about the fact that you did it.
How incredibly watermelon brained do you have to be to watch someone get busted for doing something that you are doing, and then go out and record for posterity that you in fact are doing it?
This multi-accounting issue doesn't fall into a gray area for me. It's obviously against the rules and it does give some, however limited, advantage to someone who is doing it. Some people want to argue about how minimal an advantage it actually provides, but rules are rules, and just because you can get away with something doesn't necessarily mean it should be done. Hopefully any other knuckleheads that have been doing this are getting their money offline as quickly as possible before they also lose a hundred grand because they apparently don't think that they'll get caught.
So from multi-accounting to the Big Game and Phil Ivey absolutely dominating Andy Beal. A lot is being made from all sides of the discussion on this about how good one player is versus the other. Essentially Ivey beat Beal for 177 BB over the course of three days, which is certainly impressive, but not out of the realm of variance for heads up poker. I think the only disappointing things to come out of this are that the general public never gets to see poker like this get played and that Beal has apparently quit poker. How long that "retirement" will last, who knows, but it certainly has brought great attention to the game overall, and for that Beal's contribution should be recognized.
I think the biggest thing that it showed is the importance of bankroll management. Beal is certainly a very intelligent man, and with a lot of practice he acquired a great amount of skill, but he also was able to play good poker because he wasn't playing with scared money. Obviously his is an extreme example but one that I think still illustrates the point effectively.
On the local front, games have been shut down due to an ongoing police investigation into whether or not they are legal. It's really unfortunate, I hate to see these people going through this, but local poker is basically at a standstill at the moment. So all that's been going on are weekly NL hold'em tournaments and and a random HORSE tourney here and there. Suffice to say, my poker habit turns more and more towards limit poker every day that I get to play it more. My NL game is just off lately, I think because I'm just not concentrating enough, which I can chalk up to having lost some interest in NL hold'em for the moment.
Well, I've definitely been slacking on keeping up here but hopefully I can spit out some more regularly timed posts over the next few weeks.
Tip of the Day: If you are breaking the rules, don't publicly record that you are doing so.
Let us imagine for a moment that we are a person who has used multiple accounts in several of the same online tournaments. We participate on a poker discussion forum which over the last two weeks has been dominated by the issue of JJprodigy and his eventual loss of accounts at multiple online sites fro doing this exact same thing. Would good sense tell you to (a) stop doing it, (b) take your money off the site or, (c) both a and b. Perhaps at this point there should be a (d), as in (d) don't fucking blog about the fact that you did it.
How incredibly watermelon brained do you have to be to watch someone get busted for doing something that you are doing, and then go out and record for posterity that you in fact are doing it?
This multi-accounting issue doesn't fall into a gray area for me. It's obviously against the rules and it does give some, however limited, advantage to someone who is doing it. Some people want to argue about how minimal an advantage it actually provides, but rules are rules, and just because you can get away with something doesn't necessarily mean it should be done. Hopefully any other knuckleheads that have been doing this are getting their money offline as quickly as possible before they also lose a hundred grand because they apparently don't think that they'll get caught.
So from multi-accounting to the Big Game and Phil Ivey absolutely dominating Andy Beal. A lot is being made from all sides of the discussion on this about how good one player is versus the other. Essentially Ivey beat Beal for 177 BB over the course of three days, which is certainly impressive, but not out of the realm of variance for heads up poker. I think the only disappointing things to come out of this are that the general public never gets to see poker like this get played and that Beal has apparently quit poker. How long that "retirement" will last, who knows, but it certainly has brought great attention to the game overall, and for that Beal's contribution should be recognized.
I think the biggest thing that it showed is the importance of bankroll management. Beal is certainly a very intelligent man, and with a lot of practice he acquired a great amount of skill, but he also was able to play good poker because he wasn't playing with scared money. Obviously his is an extreme example but one that I think still illustrates the point effectively.
On the local front, games have been shut down due to an ongoing police investigation into whether or not they are legal. It's really unfortunate, I hate to see these people going through this, but local poker is basically at a standstill at the moment. So all that's been going on are weekly NL hold'em tournaments and and a random HORSE tourney here and there. Suffice to say, my poker habit turns more and more towards limit poker every day that I get to play it more. My NL game is just off lately, I think because I'm just not concentrating enough, which I can chalk up to having lost some interest in NL hold'em for the moment.
Well, I've definitely been slacking on keeping up here but hopefully I can spit out some more regularly timed posts over the next few weeks.
Tip of the Day: If you are breaking the rules, don't publicly record that you are doing so.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Donkey of the Week
It's been a while since I've posted an award winner but after following along with the drama at PocketFives and Poker Chronicles this week, it's clear that we have a frontrunner for Donkey of the Year also.
Congratulations JJProdigy... you are the Donkey of the Week!
Not only did you exploit gray areas of online poker and essentially cheat to win the Party Guarantee tourney last Sunday, taking down $140k in the process, but then you went on the internet and confirmed that you had done it.
Smooth move.
Now Party Poker has responded and in the process, you are now out $180k. Talk about your -EV decisions.
Congratulations JJProdigy... you are the Donkey of the Week!
Not only did you exploit gray areas of online poker and essentially cheat to win the Party Guarantee tourney last Sunday, taking down $140k in the process, but then you went on the internet and confirmed that you had done it.
Smooth move.
Now Party Poker has responded and in the process, you are now out $180k. Talk about your -EV decisions.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Bankroll Discussion
This topic has been coming up a lot lately among my group of friends and while I'm now in the midst of a 90BB downswing over my last 3 sessions, it seemed a prescient subject to blog about. But I think I'm going to take a weird, around the bend kind of path to the point, so bear with me a bit.
A few weeks ago I was out to dinner with some friends and saw a couple that I haven't spent much time with over the last year. Eventually the topic of conversation came around to what I've been doing with myself and they were very surprised to find out what I've been doing for a living. The husband started telling me about how he had been playing recently on the play money tables online and about how much success he had by being very aggressive, constantly raising and reraising, and it surprised him. We talked a bit more and I mentioned that I thought that was a very important key to success in poker overall and he countered that he didn't think that he'd be able to do the same thing when real money was on the line.
There's also a player who all of us know through the local games that had been on quite a run since around October of last year. By virtue of what can only be an incredible run of luck he had amassed a pretty huge bankroll, and many of us agreed it was simply a matter of time before he went broke. He was simply overplaying his hands and somehow not losing or making horrible preflop card selections and they still held up. Well, he's been sight unseen for about a month now, and through the grapevine we've heard that he's taking a break because he had a "bad run of cards".
One of the thin lines between success and failure in poker, in my opinion, is the line between confidence and arrogance. Confidence projects to other players, it shows in your actions and leads to ultimate success because you are playing within yourself in a game that you can handle. Arrogance can lead to failure on a number of levels. It can grate other players who may then take it upon themselves to come after you at every opportunity or it can make players who would otherwise play poorly attempt to play solid poker. It can lead you to play games that you are unprepared to play or not properly bankrolled for because you think you can "beat" the game.
So while it's important to challenge yourself by moving up either in limit or buy-in, it should also be done with very careful consideration. Just because you have the money to play $100 buy in heads up matches, or have been on such a monster run you go play $5-10 NL when all you've been playing is $1-2, does not make it the most intelligent decision.
I've been under the weather and slacking again about posting but hopefully I can get things back on track here soon.
A few weeks ago I was out to dinner with some friends and saw a couple that I haven't spent much time with over the last year. Eventually the topic of conversation came around to what I've been doing with myself and they were very surprised to find out what I've been doing for a living. The husband started telling me about how he had been playing recently on the play money tables online and about how much success he had by being very aggressive, constantly raising and reraising, and it surprised him. We talked a bit more and I mentioned that I thought that was a very important key to success in poker overall and he countered that he didn't think that he'd be able to do the same thing when real money was on the line.
There's also a player who all of us know through the local games that had been on quite a run since around October of last year. By virtue of what can only be an incredible run of luck he had amassed a pretty huge bankroll, and many of us agreed it was simply a matter of time before he went broke. He was simply overplaying his hands and somehow not losing or making horrible preflop card selections and they still held up. Well, he's been sight unseen for about a month now, and through the grapevine we've heard that he's taking a break because he had a "bad run of cards".
One of the thin lines between success and failure in poker, in my opinion, is the line between confidence and arrogance. Confidence projects to other players, it shows in your actions and leads to ultimate success because you are playing within yourself in a game that you can handle. Arrogance can lead to failure on a number of levels. It can grate other players who may then take it upon themselves to come after you at every opportunity or it can make players who would otherwise play poorly attempt to play solid poker. It can lead you to play games that you are unprepared to play or not properly bankrolled for because you think you can "beat" the game.
So while it's important to challenge yourself by moving up either in limit or buy-in, it should also be done with very careful consideration. Just because you have the money to play $100 buy in heads up matches, or have been on such a monster run you go play $5-10 NL when all you've been playing is $1-2, does not make it the most intelligent decision.
I've been under the weather and slacking again about posting but hopefully I can get things back on track here soon.
