Life and Times of a Poker Addict

Trampled

2007-04-04T18:34:00.000-04:00

Basically the entire month of March was like a cruel April Fool's joke at the poker tables, live and online. About the only thing that went right was a few tournaments but I was absolutely battered on the cash tables in every game. I took a pretty fair assessment of my play and hashed out some of the more glaring mistakes that I thought I made, but when I went back over my notes it just seemed like I played a lot of big pots with big draws and never made it. I kept missing 15, 18 and 21 outers, and my opponents hit their fair share which never works out to a favorable result come the end of the month. But I know I can look back to a month like last August when it seemed like every time I played a pocket pair I hit a set, and I know it's just variance equalling out.

I played a little bit of everything this month, from $3-6 to $10-20 LHE, $3-6 Omaha 8, $100-$400 NLHE, and $100-$200 PL Omaha. I had a few winning sessions at $8-16 LHE and the $100 and $200 PLO, but those wins were quickly erased every time. I wrote a bit in my last post about how I thought the other players started affecting my play, and even though I know I probably saved bets as a result, I know that I wasn't playing optimally, so that got added to the list of things I need to work on.

I've heard about some mixed games that are going on locally, so I think I'll be hitting those up in another month or two when I'm a little better rolled for them. I've really enjoyed branching out and playing Omaha and Stud more and would definitely like to put more time into improving my games in those disciplines. The sessions I played in NL hold'em this month just confirmed for me how little I enjoy playing it still as a cash game, unfortunately it's just about the only thing going as far as local cash games go. Probably will be taking another trip up to AC with the guys around the middle of the month, so I can only hope that April will be a turnaround month and I can get on a roll in the 10-20 and 20-40 games up there at the Borgata.

Bodog: The 37th Level of Poker Hell

2007-03-26T15:24:00.000-04:00

Seriously. I have never in the last two years seen such consistently bad play across all games at all levels than I have the times I've played on Bodog this year... and that's just my play. There are actually 85% of the players on there playing worse than I do, which is officially ridiculous. I have learned some important things there this week though: I suck at shorthanded PL Omaha (because I apparently can't hit a draw and I have not yet mastered calling with bottom pair and an eight high flush draw to crack top set and nut flush draw with a running straight), I suck at shorthanded NL Hold'em (because I can't beat top pair top kicker when I have top set), and 8/16, 10/20 and 20/40 limit hold'em is a veritable money tree, but you had better be properly bankrolled to survive the occasional super donking session.

Unfortunately for me, lesson #3 was not followed and I was not properly rolled for those games and got groin kicked on Thursday. By the end of that ridiculous day of poker, I was working on a new theorem for limit hold'em which we'll call the Bodog Posit for now. The Bodog Posit states that after 500 hands of limit hold'em play with Bodog players, you will be reduced to such a shell of your former self, that improper play will now actually save you bets, because these players will never fold anything. Anything.

I'm pretty sure that most of these players get to the river on a hand holding some random unpaired Ace or deuces and then think to themselves, "well, Self, we've put in 4.5 BB's here with nothing good... there's a chance that our hand might be okay, what's one more bet?" On Thursday, they just happened to be right enough of the time to put a hurting on me. I personally think my favorite was when a guy limped and called two more bets cold when I three-bet with QQ, the flop comes JJ5, he calls two more cold when he check-calls my raise, check calls my turn bet on a 3, and check calls my river bet when a K comes. He turned over K6 for the winning hand. There are several more sentences that I could now add to this paragraph, but I think just rereading how that hand played will allow you to come up with a summation pretty near what mine was.

Should have gone with Plan B

2007-03-15T13:23:00.000-04:00

A bunch of us headed up to AC for the WSOP Circuit event at Caesar's last week, but I decided that I wasn't going to play in any of the tournaments and instead would play the cash games to try and build up the bankroll a bit more and make some pocket cash.

Naturally I have been playing pretty well in tournaments leading up to the AC trip, so it was only fitting that I wouldn't actually play in any while I was up there. Instead I would get my head bashed in at the ridiculous 10-20 game at the Borgata and then get straight flushed over my Ace high flush in the $2-5 NL game there as well. I saw a glut of straight flushes happen during my three days up there. My buddy, JT, sat in a $1-2 NL game at Caesar's the first night up there and there were two straight flushes in his first four hands at the table. Someone also hit the bad beat jackpot at Caesar's the next night when QJc beat 67c on a 8 9 10 c board, ship the $83k, please.

I'm still trying to decide if there's any possibility that solid play delivers any positive expectation in the Borgata 10-20. I'm pretty certain that you can make more in the 10-20 game than you can in the 20-40, just on the sheer volume of money the people at the 10-20 will put in the pot holding extraordinarily marginal hands. The only thing I fear is that I'm letting that knowledge work against me when I sit in that game and let my play become more marginal also. I've seen the 20-40 at the Borgata get pretty nutty on occasion as well, but I've never seen 5-8 way capped action on three streets like I regularly see in the 10-20 game. I'll be spending a lot more time up there over the next couple months to see how my theory tests out, but I'm hoping to log more time at 20-40 than 10-20.

As I was saying earlier, I didn't play any tournaments even though I've been playing very well in them lately, but all my boys did. And apparently it was the right time to be a Richmond poker player in the Circuit prelims because PokerDon cashed three straight including an (unofficial) final table, JT final tabled a tournament, and Duke cashed as well. We spent a lot of hours in the ballroom at Caesar's cheering one or another of us in the final stages of these events, which was definitely fun.

The only unfortunate side effect to the trip was that I pulled most of my money offline to go, and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do about getting money back online now. This is truly a pain in the ass to deal with and I know there's no way the PPA is going to get accomplished what they hope to because of the sometimes Puritanical society we live in. So for now it'll be a lot of bi-monthly trips up to the city by the shore.

Retarded Hippopotamus

2007-01-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Seriously, should playing poker be this difficult? And by difficult I mean should it be this hard to get money on and offline? Low and mid stakes poker players have been out scrambling for the past two weeks or so buying up prepaid Visa cards in order to get money onto sites, paying about $5 a pop in premiums for a $100 card. This situation is beyond ridiculous and I can only hope temporary as well while the industry corrects itself out.

But for now, I was lucky enough to heed some warnings and get my money from Neteller onto the poker site I've been frequenting lately, now I just have to kill some time until I figure out what 3rd party I'm going to start using now and get my money offline again. But for the time being, I'm flat killing the $10 Omaha 8 single table SNG's. It's long been my favorite game, but I really wanted to buckle down the last month or so and get a lot of hands under my belt and try and play it more proficiently. I've booked 12 wins, 3 seconds, and a third place finish in 21 SNG's so far this month, I just wish they were more popular because it takes forever to get a table going. I've also been putting in some time playing some lower limit HORSE and Razz cash games and have been running pretty well. It seems strange to play at $1/2 limit in those games since I've moved up to feeling comfortable at $20/40 limit hold'em, but I know that I don't play these other games anywhere near as comfortably as I do hold'em, so it's probably the smart play.

I'm definitely not playing as much as I should be, so we'll see what February brings as far upping my activity. But as far as "real life" goes I'm trying to break out of a rut. I'm in year ten of confirmed fat-assedness and I've had it. I started lifting weights again for the first time in about two and a half years which has finally moved from being torturously painful to enjoyable. The weather here has turned fairly cold so I tried walking on the treadmill but it tried to kill me the other night, so that plan has been abandoned. I'm in the middle of a workout, about 17 minutes into my planned thirty minute walk, watching some UFC Fight Night while I go. I have the treadmill set at 4 mph and I'm cruising along with no problem when all of a sudden I hear the satanic machine start whirring in a high pitch and it goes from 4 mph to 12 mph without warning in about 2.5 seconds. It shoots my legs back but I was lucky enough to have reacted in time and grabbed the rails and hold myself up. I kicked a nice hole in the wall behind me since it slingshotted my leg back so fast, I disengaged the safety clip and the damn thing still didn't shut off, so I had to jump off and unplug it from the wall. I'm pretty sure I'm lucky I didn't get pitched out the window behind the treadmill. But all in all, it makes for a pretty funny story. Attempting to curb my fat ass ways and working on my game is about all I've been doing the last three weeks. I also went out with some friends and caught Charlie Murphy when he did a stand-up act around here. It was hilarious, and if he tours by you, I definitely recommend going. I stole the title of my post from his act, simply because every time I think about the phrase retarded hippopotamus, it just makes me laugh.

I seem to have forgotten something...

2007-01-17T02:57:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, now I remember... you're supposed to make posts to these things every once in a while.

Well, I got burned out on poker around the end of October, took a few weeks off to recharge and then started playing again. Started out running horribly and really had nothing constructive to write about, not that I ever really did in the first place, but that brings us to now. Playing sporadically, still not much interesting to discuss but in need of actually getting back in the habit of writing again.

So a belated happy holidays and new year to you all.

So when I started back playing I was completely disgusted with no limit hold'em and only moderately disgusted with limit hold'em so I started trying to play a lot of HORSE and Omaha. The seven card games I really had not much of an idea as far as proper strategy and approach, so I just tried to log as many hands as I could to get some experience, and even started playing heads up HORSE sessions with a friend of mine so we could get used to everything. In the course of doing so we came to philosophical differences over a couple of points in limit poker, so I figured I'd start out 2007 by discussing one of them.

A lot of people maintain that Razz is the biggest kick in the nuts there is in poker, and while tough, I still believe that Omaha 8 (particularly pot-limit) is really the king of disaster in poker. In any event, Dick has come to the conclusion that putting in two extra bets on 6th street in Razz when he feels he has a draw to a better hand is an optimal play. He routinely raises at this point after a bet, which brings up two questions for me:

Is this a good decision for him, and is it smart for the opponent to re-raise here?

This has definitely got to be -EV, to my thinking, because I feel like the opponent has to re-raise knowing he has the best hand here. This means Dick has to call another bet on top of his raise to get to 7th, and he's still attempting to draw to a better hand, and his opponent could almost certainly be drawing to an equally good hand. But as the opponent, even if you know you have the best hand here, is it optimal to be reraising (as I feel you should) if you feel like your hand is vulnerable to being outdrawn?

He thinks this is particularly optimal given heads up play but I think in heads up pots it makes even less sense to do so. I understand the thought process that it may leave more cards in the deck to draw to but it also makes the odds you're up against even more starkly clear, so why raise as such an obvious dog?

Another situation arose in 7 Stud, but I know I'm right about my thinking on that hand, so there's no need to call him out here on that. Hehehe.

Other than that, I've been slowly reworking my no limit game back to respectability and am finally feeling comfortable playing in tournaments again. For a while I've just not at all been following through on plays or instincts I've had and it's been costing me in terms of value I should have gotten or chips I shouldn't have lost. It really is amazing what just a little time off can do to your game.

Here's to hoping the fire stays burning well for a while to come and maybe I'll even get around to making a second post this month. That would be amazing...

Rule #76: No excuses, play like a champion!

2006-10-12T15:12:00.000-04:00

I certainly have not been doing that as of late. When I have been playing at all, I've mostly toiled at PL Omaha, and I've enjoyed it (for the most part). With all the online poker nonsense of the last few weeks, I ended up putting some money on Bodog and trying it out. There isn't a whole lot of action on the site as of now, but it appears to be growing. And the players that do play there, for the most part, aren't very impressive.

The only NL Hold'em I have played in the last few months are the occasional sit n' gos with the guys around here during the week. And there is nothing but holes in my no limit game. Sometimes you look back on a session and your amazed that you lasted as long as you did, that's pretty much how I've felt the last few weeks with no limit. Really, I lost most interest in the game several months ago and started focusing my attention on limit hold'em and Omaha 8/b. I don't know if it was merely a little boredom, but I felt like I needed to add some more variety to my play.

I'm also trying to concentrate on getting those websites I promised months ago up and running. Got sidetracked by life and suddenly it's almost six months later. Funny how that happens, blink and you miss half a year. Poker was a mixed bag in September after a great August, but I think October is going to be a throwaway kind of month. I may try and make an AC trip towards the end of October, but most of the next few weeks I want to devote to site development and other business opportunities. I always ultimately wanted to use poker as the means to move into other business ventures, it's about time I actually started putting in some work towards moving that direction.

Adventures in Oooooooooomaha!

2006-10-07T15:35:00.000-04:00

This should suffice to sum up my last two days of playing Omaha:

$50 PL Omaha Hi

Dealt to BigJohn804 in the SB (As6s6hKh)

4 limpers, button pot raises... all, including blinds, call...

Pot $22.50

Flop (4s 6d Jc)

checks around to button who bets half pot, I reraise the pot which puts me all-in, and is a raise of $38 more to the button, who insta-calls.

Turn (5h)

River (Kd)

I lose. I check the hand history and he raised on the button with Ad2d3h9c.

Chat history:

BigJohn804: Are you serious?
BigJohn804: did you just feel the 5 coming?
Hard Head: who me?
ssf420: he had pocket Aces too
BigJohn804: yeah
BigJohn804: no he didn't...
Hard Head: i was drawing to the nut low
BigJohn804: man, you just made my day... LOL
BigJohn804: this is an Omaha Hi table, not Omaha 8
Hard Head: OMG
Hard Head: guess I can stop drawing to a low then

Hard Head sits out and leaves the table

Prohibition in Our Time...

2006-10-03T17:44:00.000-04:00

Been taking the last few days to digest what all has happened and regretting that I didn't have money on a foreign exchange to short PartyGaming stock all the way down.

While this is certainly a devastating blow to poker in general, I take some solace in the fact that the effects of capitalism are a strong argument against this legislation. $12 billion industries don't simply go away and someone in government is going to be smart enough to realize this and figure out how they want to regulate it. At least that's my opinion. Time being, there are certainly some opportunities for saavy business people as a result of this, and hopefully I become saavy in the next few weeks and figure out how to profit from this.

I find myself not among the throng of people who think the Republican party is the force behind this and therefore the embodiment of evil. But it does represent one of the reasons why I never affiliated myself with one party or the other. Sen. Frist certainly used his position to his advantage in attaching the internet gambling legislation with the port security bill to ensure its passage. As a result, I can only hope that people seeing this display of politics will become more active, and by active I don't mean simply shouting down the Republican party for "banning" poker. This is simply the way the game gets played, internet poker got trapped and check-raised on the river holding the second nuts. For as much responsibility as those who brought the legislation forward bear, so too does the poker community for not realizing what could happen and being more of an instrument against it.

I, for one, will happily at this point take bets that a "pro" will win the main event of the World Series again...

GO!! IRISH!!

2006-09-24T05:51:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm still processing the comeback in the last five minutes of the game Saturday night. On the interception that sealed the game, I'm pretty sure the ball made contact with six different places on both players before it was finally hauled in. That is what I like to call the luck of the Irish!

My dad went to bed at halftime grumbling about how it was going to be another long game for ND. I really enjoyed being able to tell him that he missed an incredible comeback for the "W". Then the Redskins decided to play like a professional football team and I ended the weekend as a very happy camper.

Friday night involved black light bowling and my friends getting mostly retarded drunk while I sat out still recovering from this stupid cold. There's really not much funnier than drunk rednecks, drunk girls, black lights and random 80's, hip-hop and country music. I had talked so much crap to my friend Stacy the night before about her UVA football team that she had promised to mop up the lanes with me. Like any self-respecting male, I scoffed at her, right up until she rolled spare, spare, strike, 9, spare, strike.

Ummmmmm.... uh-oh.

In a performance that I'm sure would have made Dick Weber, or at least Big Ern, proud... I was able to come back strong and win by 12 pins. This led to a subsequent bet where I picked up several free drinks for next weekend and was able to give the full Ric Flair "whooo!" and strut after striking in the final frame of the 10th to seal the deal. There was just something in the air as I bowled next to what appeared to be three former members of Alabama in the dark while "Ms. New Booty" by Bubba Sparxxx played. Ahh, the wonders of living in a redneck paradise.

Fantasy sports decidedly suck this week as I'm going to come up short in both my fantasy baseball leagues since I haven't been able to record a W since the beginning of August apparently. Football is a mixed bag, but there's still time to make up for any lost ground there. I think a few more days of no poker and I should have rejuvenated the brain enough to start looking at cards again.

Sin City: The Poker

2006-09-20T23:13:00.000-04:00

Well, I caught a nice cold on the airplane ride home, which basically sums up how poker went while I was out there. The play was definitely tighter out there, at least in the limit games, but overall I didn't come away too impressed with poker in Vegas. I basically played five sessions while I was out there: 15-30 hold'em (2-3 handed), 15-30 hold'em, 10-20 Omaha 8 with a half kill, 2-5 NL hold'em and 8-16 hold'em.

The 15-30 and the Omaha 8 I played at the Wynn, which was a decent poker room, but didn't seem to have a whole lot going on any of the times I was there. I got seated on a must move the first time which was only 6 six handed and within minutes me and this guy were heads up. Playing heads up doesn't bother me at all, and since there were a lot of empty seats with stacks, I figured we wouldn't be HU for long. Well, I ran into a guy on an absolute heater. In the first five hands he had Kings twice, Jacks, flopped quad threes and flopped two pair. We played HU for about 30 minutes or so before he got moved and I feel fortunate that I only lost around 15 BB's to him. Naturally, I had finally started winning some pots when he got called. I finally got seated in the main game after a long wait and the cards didn't improve much, just couldn't make anything happen when I caught a piece and missed a few draws. The 15-30 was right next to the Omaha 8, and the Omaha table looked pretty good.

I love Omaha 8, and have never played it live in a casino, so I figured it would be a good learning experience at the worst. I got sick, absolutely sick, starting hands for about the first twenty minutes. Aces double suited with a deuce four times, Ace-deuce with broadway cards and suited, and on and on... flopped the nut-nut draw three times... and it all missed. I made a couple mistakes and was lucky to get bailed out, and then right before the table broke I picked up half or three quarters of four monster pots and turned the Omaha into a positive session and made back some of my hold'em losses.

Went back the next day and played some more 15-30 and sat through about five more hours of dead hands before going on a mini-rush and basically making back my heads up losses from the day before, bringing me decently close to even for the trip. Took some time out and went to the sportsbook to watch some MNF where the Redskins promptly sucked balls (though the refs definitely whored over Sean Taylor). Beers, a good burger, hot blonde cocktail waitresses and a screen the size of a house to watch football on is always +EV, though.

Played 2-5 NL at the MGM (where we were staying) the next day, and from what I saw there and watching my friends play on the NL tables, people are still just awful at NL. And everytime all the money went in, the donkey got bailed out. At one point there was about six-seven thousand dollars on my table (max $500 buy-in), and it seems like about one out of every five pots was over a grand. It was insane.

One particularly ridiculous hand saw 10 of the 13 clubs in the deck in play. I had raised in EP, trading off a tight image, with 78 of clubs. I got called in four places and the flop came down Kd Jc 10c. I lead out for about 2/3 of the pot, got smooth called, then raised $200 on top, then the guy to my right smooth calls. I had planned on being agressive with it, but I knew there was disaster looming and got out the way along with the first caller. Turn was a brick, the raiser moved in and the guy to my right called. Queen of clubs on the river, and the raiser turns over AQ for the flopped Broadway and the guy on my right turns over the stone cold nuts with AK clubs. The caller who bailed with me had 56 of clubs. The were more shenanigans at that table, but I left down about half a buy-in after bleeding off a lot of money with middle pairs that never connected and one hand where I had overpair versus bigger overpair.

The last session was at the Bellagio, and there just wasn't a lot going on. I wasn't terribly impressed with their room at all, and the poker just didn't turn around for me either. Couldn't make anything happen with overcards, couldn't make big pairs hold up and twice flopped a set only to have the board run out a straight and chop the pot.

I know I'm bleeding off at least 7-8 BB's a session betting when I shouldn't or being too aggressive where I don't need to be. But I think I've noted a few of those types of leaks and hopefully am improving on them for future play. I definitely feel like I'm moving in the right direction with my overall play again, no matter whether I've been up or down. All in all, Vegas was great (which I'll cover in a second post), but the poker left a lot to be desired.

You Crazy Monkey!

2006-09-08T23:43:00.000-04:00

Apparently when I wrote in my last post that I was looking forward to playing the 20-40 game at the Borgata later this year, I meant about four days.

Went up there and produced another great result in the 10-20 game, which is absolutely and conpletely wild for anyone who hasn't played it yet. I highly recommend it but variance could be high. Anyways, Duke and PokerDon were upstairs sleeping before the start of the $500 tourney and I was trying to make it through the night so I could sleep while they tourney'ed it up during the day. JT finally made it up after work and walked into the poker room about 5am and found me at the 10-20 table. We caught up for a minute and ended up next to the 20-40 game and it looked crazy. He made a comment about me sitting in but I brushed it off at that moment and after he sat in at another table I went back to the 10-20. But I couldn't shake the thought and decided to just go for it.

For the next three days I promptly ran about as hot as I have ever and was killing the 20-40. In my second session, no exaggeration, of the first twelve times I had a pair, I hit a set nine of them. I ended up making about 14 sets in the entire run, and it got to the point where people just expected me to turn up three of a kind of a full house on the river. It was absurd in a wonderful, show me the money, kind of way. I also had my biggest single day loss in my fourth shot at 20-40, when my luck reversed and everytime we got to the river someone hit a draw on me.

I was really just happy with how I handled that session. I think among the hardest things for non-poker players to understand (and even some poker players) is that losing is just a reality of the game. Sometimes it's losing big or losing for an extended period of time, and even though it sucks something terrible, you just have to be able to put it in perspective. For that day when everything was horribly wrong, I was able to keep my concentration and keep playing as well as I could.

The one thing I noticed was the level at which the good players were better than me. Thankfully though, there really weren't that many good players, which surprised me. I expected to find a bit more resistance at that blind level, but I wasn't impressed with too many of the players. But I learned more about limit and poker in general over the last two weeks than I have probably over the last year. The challenge of the game and being up against better players in new situations I think really started my overall ability on the way to a new level.

So hopefully I can keep grinding out at 10-20 with occasional shots at 20-40 for the rest of this year and keep improving my overall understanding of the game. I'd write more about this trip but I only have 24 hours till I leave for Vegas so time to wrap this up and go get to some laundry and whatnot.

Perhaps some live trip reports from Vegas next week.

48 Hours

2006-09-01T12:18:00.000-04:00

"Sir, that's not very friendly. You just sat in and you're already raising my blinds... I don't even know you." '-- PokerDon

"Oh, I'm going to introduce myself." -- Old guy that owned PokerDon

That was just one of the gems that Shep got Don with as the last hours at the Borgata dwindled down. He was very entertaining... the middle aged women that I had to play with throughout the day were not. I've for a long time thought that listening to poker stories was among the least entertaining things going on, particularly while sitting at a poker table, though I unfortunately do occasionally still do it myself.

But during this trip I discovered a new, more grating and unpleasurable experience: listening to poker stories in one ear while listening to old women complain about people telling poker stories in the other. Ma'am, I don't particularly give a shit that you suck at poker and aren't intelligent enough to glean the good information that is being discussed at the table while simply ignoring the stupid or the bad. I don't particularly care that you don't like these young kids that have played poker on the computer for two years and couldn't possibly know everything about poker that you have learned over the past forty years. And no, I really don't care whatsoever that the advent of the ATM machine was apparently a black mark in your overall opinion of American society.

Thank god for the i-pod.

The poker, however, was a good net result. The path to the result was a pretty ridiculous rollercoaster but I am loving this 10-20 game at the Borgata and looking forward to eventually hitting up the 20-40 later this year. Sometimes the guys and I discuss how it's difficult to get people to relate to your poker success that aren't poker players. One of my boys has tried breaking it down to an hourly rate with his fiancee but that still doesn't impress. After a few conversations with another friend of mine, she devised her own system: relate poker winnings as to purchasing power of shoes.

"How'd the trip go?" I made 11 pair of Manolos. "Good job."

I don't think that PokerTracker has the adjustment for BB's to Manolos just yet, though.

In other randomness as I was walking out of the poker room for some lunch I passed by a table with one of my high school math teachers in the three seat, which was a little surreal. Even more so by the fact that it made me realize that my 10 year reunion is this fall. That sure happened fast.

So for now it's three days off, then back to AC for the start of the Borgata Fall Open. Up there for three or four days, then back home to pack and then off to Vegas for a week. I have a distinct feeling that I will have lost all measure of time and date by the time the middle of September rolls around.

Perhaps more on this trip report before the end of the weekend.

If you ain't chewing Big Red, then @#$& you!

2006-08-15T19:07:00.000-04:00

Still getting back in the groove of things as for as posting goes, but twice in one month is a start in the right direction.

A few friends and I got together and got the PPV of the WSOP final table. I've seen a lot of the flak that Jamie Gold has been getting but I really didn't see much that was wrong with his play at all. He had total control of that table other than Cunningham. I thought the biggest mistake he made was by continuing to use his table talk on Allen, the one person at the table who could definitely intuit something from it. But otherwise his chipstack simply allowed him to do all the things he could want to do and I see nothing wrong with him taking advantage of that fact.

I thought most of the other players were not being aggressive enough with him as far as taking control of a hand on the flop or playing back at him preflop. After Richard Lee shipped all his chips to Gold, this thing was pretty much just on a countdown to when Gold would finish it off. He was the one player at the table at that time who had a stack that he didn't need to get overly agressive with Gold, but he did to his detriment.

I felt like ESPN did a decent job with the broadcast as it certainly isn't easy to fill 12 hours of poker with entertainment. All in all, I'd give the whole thing a B-, and suggest that everyone coming down on Gold needs to get over it just a little bit.

As for me, lots of trips coming up over the next month. Two trips to the Borgata, one to try their Super Satellite tournament and then again a couple weeks later for the start of the Fall Open. Then leave from the Fall Open and head out to Vegas for a week. It'll be my first trip to Vegas since I started playing poker seriously, so I'm really looking forward to that trip in particular. Vegas has always been one of my favorite places to go and I haven't made it out there in a few years.

Other than that, life is good and getting prepared for fantasy football drafts. Stay tuned, I may actually get a third or even fourth August post in. I know you're super excited too!

A Borgata Trip Report

2006-08-07T12:19:00.000-04:00

I set the wheels in motion a couple weeks ago to get my friends up to the Borgata for my birthday and a lot of poker. Before I get to the poker please let me throw my whole hearted recommendation behind the Bobby Flay Steakhouse as I truly think it was the best steak I've ever had. Even better because some donkey paid for it.

Started out playing the no limit tables and absolutely could not get anything going. Got paid off when I hit a set and had the right read on a guy in a massive pot, but the river card put to many possibilities on board and I folded, and he showed me that I was right and was still ahead. Thing basically went downhill from there on day one and I was down two buy-ins. No big deal, but certainly not how I wanted to start out.

Wasn't feeling great on day two, so I spent a good part of the day in the room, enjoying one of the most comfortable hotel beds in the world. PokerDon came upstairs to go to sleep and I was heading down and he told me to check out the 10-20 limit game going on. Thank you, Don, for the best game selection advice I've received, maybe ever.

Flat out, hands down, the 10-20 game was filled with awful players. Like action capped eight ways preflop and six ways on the flop awful. So, starting at 12:30 on my birthday and spanning two sessions during that day, not only was I playing with burros but my cards were hot. That's the equation for a lovely day of poker. I killed the game, and but for my big hands not holding up on day three, it could have been a blockbuster trip. But still a very profitable one and I'm looking forward to trying the 20-40 game next time up there in a few weeks, most likely.

WHOA!

2006-07-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

A blog post. It's a, there were a lot of little leaks in my game mazing, I know. So, after basically a two month layoff, I really haven't got all that much to report. I'm in the middle of a slight downswing, but I've been getting my money in almost every time as a heavy favorite. Variance's wonders never cease. As I took a lot of time off from the middle of May to the middle of June, there were a lot of little leaks in my game, and I paid off many small bets that I shouldn't have. Going through those little pains again, while frustrating, was a relatively cheap way of re-emphasizing the imporatnce of not just winning pots, but also saving bets.

I haven't played much in the way of tournaments or live poker during this time either. I've focused mainly on my NL holdem cash games as well as some 3-6 and 5-10 Omaha 8. There were a number of times that I sat down to write but just didn't have the drive to do it for some reason or another, but I think part of it was just being tired of writing mostly about poker. I think that there will be a focus on writing on a wider range of topics, just for the sake of doing something a little different and maintaining my interest in writing again.

Politics and drinking seem to be the two most likely topics to be covered in addition to poker. But for now I thought it important to at least sit down and get something out into the blogosphere again. Hopefully with this return to writing will come a return to more passionate play of poker, because I still have much to learn and accomplish in this game.

A more expansive post to follow at the beginning of the week.

Donkey of the Week

2006-05-18T20:11:00.000-04:00

Yeah, it's me.

I played like a complete and total donkey last night. Maybe I'm so out of practice with NL cash games that it was inevitable but I just made the most basic mistakes you can make, and busted twice because of it. It should have been three times but I got lucky and sucked out on the river on one hand.

If I haven't played badly this week, I've flopped the nuts and lost to runner-runner. But mainly I think I've just played bad. Horrible. Incompetent.

That, and of course PokerDon got me on the river when he was a 4-1 underdog. (Yes Don, I know there was no way you couldn't get your money in on that hand.)

After sessions like that one I try and figure out all this mistakes I made and how I could have done anything differently. After going through last night's session, I'm amazed that I've been playing poker for this long and did those things. I so obviously ignored my own instincts and the tells I was being given that I deserved to bust every time last night. My concentration was completely lacking and most likely because I was underestimating most of the guys I was playing with. I don't know if that's because I know most of them so well but I'm sure that has something to do with it.

All in all, I think that's pretty much the grand summation of my poker play of the last few months, lack of concentration. I haven't been taking my game serious enough every time I play and I can only hope that last night was a strong enough wake up call to get my act together the next time I'm at the tables.

Weekend roundup and one weird hand...

2006-05-08T15:46:00.000-04:00

Played a little loose in an Omaha 8 session on PokerStars as it had been a little while for me in the game, but managed to come back and ended up the session down 15bb's when I whiffed on a monster double draw with trips versus a flopped straight. Had a loss in the family in the middle of the week, so I didn't get a whole lot of poker in. Unfortunately, that also means the SNG challenge might have to be put off as with all the travelling I'm doing this month, I don't see how I'm going to get in 100 SNGs.

Saturday night I ended up blowing off a little steam by going over to Jag's place and catching the De La Hoya fight, which was pretty much fantastic. Mayorga got his pride slapped all over that ring before the Golden Boy knocked him out in the 6th. And as much as De La Hoya's manager doesn't want the fight to happen, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that this leads to Mayweather-De La Hoya, I think that could be a pretty amazing fight.

After the fight, we decided to play a little $10 tourney with one rebuy, but most of the guys were novices. I'm overall a fairly aggressive player, though I have been playing really tight the last couple months (shhh, don't tell the guys, they don't seem to have figured it out yet). However about an hour into the tourney I had to confirm with Footloose that I had in fact not open-raised a single pot to that point. Somehow I managed to make some hands anyways and stay afloat until the wackiest hand I've played in some time cropped up. I hadn't played a hand for about 15 minutes when I picked up J10 offsuit on the button. I limp in, as had the whole table, and Jag raises 25 from the big bling to try and curb the field. Everyone called... so I had to.

The flop came J 10 6, and the pot was already 217. Small blind led out for 30 and the whole table called again. WTF??!?! I moved in on the button for 208 more into the now T400 pot. Small blind calls off his last 93, Jag mucks, MP mucks, the next two are shortstacks and move in about 75 apiece which gets us to Footloose, who in typical fashion decides there is too much in the pot and calls my all-in as he had the whole table stacked. So now we've got 4 people all-in, in a 5-way pot for T1000 and everyone starts turning hands over. Small blind has KQ, Jag mucked AK, Shortstack1 had AK, shortstack2 had AQ and Footloose had K9d. And the other guy had folded an Ace. All the Aces and Kings are dead, so now I only had to worry about 3 nines and two queens until Footloose picked up a diamond draw on the turn. I survived the river, though if a diamond had fallen I may have puked all over the table.

That was bizarre, from beginning to end. I ended up taking down the win and heading home with a little spending money for Sunday. Tonight is the usual two table tourney and I've been running real well, so I hope that continues. I head out to San Francisco on Friday for a friend's wedding and I'm hoping that I may have some time to head out to the Bay 101 and play some poker while I'm there. I promise that a site update is in fact coming, but probably not till the end of May now due to family issues and travel. Thanks for bearing with me.

Poker is an evil mistress...

2006-05-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

You feel like breaking up with her and then she lures you back in. Things went much better on Saturday night at the tables and I made up my losses and more from Thursday. I found pretty much ideal situations in position a number of times and was able to minimize my losses when I had some pretty big hands that were ultimately losers. Messed around on Sunday night and just played some goofy, loose tournies with the guys. But when we got down to three handed in the hold'em tourney, we actually played some poker. That thirty to forty minutes was worth the $20 to play.

Those are the situations that you almost never get to practice enough and that can make a quantum difference in your game overall if you are comfortable with them when they come up. Turned right around on Monday night and I think it made all the difference in the world on my way to another win. I had a good stack and pretty much abused the table when we got to six handed and almost doubled my stack through only preflop raises. I took a real tough beat three handed that left me short, but a well timed pair of Kings got me out of the hole and I used a combination of decent cards and a lot of aggression to carry me through. I really, really love playing heads up poker. The psychology of what's going on is more important than the cards in my opinion. I just leaned and leaned and leaned, and when I felt like I had pushed enough I would back off a bit, give up a few pots and then start leaning again. In the end, it worked and I got my opponent to start pushing with decent hands but I always had the better one.

I'll be playing my sit n' go challenge on PokerStars, as well as the WSoP satellite that I'll be running, which is tentatively looking like either the 18th or 25th of this month. I'll have my first update on the SNG challenge next Wednesday.

Another local cash game?!?!

2006-04-29T16:17:00.000-04:00

Be still my heart... I played in another local cash game, a very loose .50/1 NL game. And I got beat about the head and shoulders every time I put a chip in the pot. Had one particularly interesting hand with Jag, other than that, it was a pretty straightforward evening of mediocre cards and mediocre to poor decision making.

Gave it another few shots trying to get into the Grand Tournament and was summarily executed at every turn. There were a lot of new players brought in by the GSOP and the new $1M guarantee on the Grand, so it wasn't as apparent what kind of clown you were dealing with. I got myself crippled in a couple satellites because I actually came across a good player who didn't push any Ace after a flop of 853. Not that the donkies who pushed any Ace on a flop of 853 weren't connecting and crippling me anyways. The most frustrating was that on my declared last satellite try of this Grand tourney, I made it to Stage 2, made it to 3-handed play, and then ran into a donkey who called my check-raise all-in for most of his remaining stack with A8 on a 772 board and cracked my 10's when he hit a runner runner flush.

This week is not goob for teh poker.

But today I get to sweat my boys in the first flight of the tourney and watch the NFL draft, of which my team will have but one pick in the middle of the second round. So yeah... I'm gonna be bored as hell today.

Aces and Kings and.... threes??? Oh my!

2006-04-27T15:03:00.000-04:00

"How could you make that call?!" - Patrik Antonius

"How could you make that bet? This isn't solitaire, this is poker." - Doyle Brunson

I thoroughly enjoyed that little snippet of last night's WPT telecast. Nothing like calling a $4 million all-in with pocket three's and being a 3-2 favorite. Of course, if every time I raise a pot some former Norwegian catalog model came over the top of me, I might get a little tilty too.

Qualifying for the Grand Tournament

Or perhaps a better header would be, "Getting Nowhere Near Qualifying for the Grand Tournament". Everytime I've gotten close the EV monster jumps up and snaps me off. I've basically just been scraping through to the final six or seven in the MTT qualifiers and then bend over and prepare to get punted straight out of the tourney. I'll make a big push here over the next two days... I'm dying to play this damn thing and really enjoy a truly deep stack tourney. (Plus someone's gotta take a shot at bettering PokerDon's 20th place finish from last time.)

I've also enjoyed the GSOP that they've now built around the Grand tournament, I'm just sorry that I've missed some of these enormous overlays this week. They barely covered the guarantee in the first event, and then had a $50K and $75K overlay in events #2 and #3, and 20 minutes to start time for #4, they are looking at another $70K overlay in the limit hold'em event. The only disappointing thing is that they didn't include a seven card stud tourney. I'm not sure how PL 5 card draw gets an event and stud doesn't but that's something to be addressed for the next GSOP.

A SNG Challenge

I've seen a few of these posted on other blogs I read, and it sounds like an interesting idea, so beginning in May I'll be taking on one of my own. I'll start out with $10+1 SNG's and I'll endeavor to knock out 100 of these things. I'd try and do more, but I'm gone at least 25% of next month on travels around the country, so I think 100 may be a challenge in and of itself.

I haven't decided which site I'm going to try this on yet either. I've got accounts at Party, Stars, Pokerroom, Paradise and FullTilt. I'm thinking I might try it at Stars since I've played so little on there of late, plus it'll make my put some more money on and maybe I'll actually start participating in more blogger events also. If anyone has any suggestions on other sites, I'm perfectly willing to listen.

I'll post my results weekly.

A WSOP Qualifier

I've been promising friends of mine locally that I was going to organize a satellite online for a prelim event at the WSOP this summer. If it's a success I'd like to run two or three altogether. In the hopes of getting more entrants and thereby holding down some costs, I'm also going to extend invites out to readers and other bloggers to participate. I'll have more info available with the site upgrade beginning May 1st. But for now, if you have any suggestions on good sites to host it on, I'm all ears (er, eyes, as it were).

A local cash game and more...

2006-04-26T21:22:00.000-04:00

It's been about three months since I've played in any kind of local/live cash game and it felt good to have that opportunity over the weekend. Booked a nice winner of 45BB's in a shorthanded limit game, which has quickly evolved into one of my favorite types of games. Between my natural aggression and a little fine tuning after reading Matt Maroon's book, specifically his shorthanded section, and I'm feeling really comfortable in those situations now.

PokerDon and JT are currently sitting at the felt in my favorite place in the world, Las Vegas. I'm more than a little jealous but the September trip (heretofore to be known as Armageddon) should more than make up for these few days I'm missing. I didn't participate in the Monday night tournament this week either, even though I've had some really good results there over the last two months. As much as I enjoy poker and playing with my boys, after a year and a half, there isn't much play going on as it is just the same ol', same ol'... and it gets to be a real grind. Oh well.

Jason Berilgen just missed the money at the WPT Championship but I'm sure he'll have a ton of good stories at the wedding. Sooner, rather than later, I hope to have my own stories about sitting on a pile of chips between Phil Hellmuth, Allen Cunningham and Chau Giang.

Speaking of stories, I'm sure David Williams wishes his porn career hadn't jumped into the spotlight this week. But I think it just goes to show how far poker has come along that it actually is such a story that a poker player did a porn at one point. All the writeups I've seen on in mention that this story could have broken a couple years ago, back when Williams was one of the top Magic players in the world. The reason the story got no traction back then? Because Williams was one of the top Magic players in the world.

Well, just trying to keep some content flowing, while working on the site update and trying to qualify for the Grand Tournament this weekend. Hope the cards are hitting you in the face...

It's an avalanche...

2006-04-21T03:19:00.000-04:00

Of posts... I must be subconsciously feeling very guilty for being AWOL the first half the month while working on the site update, which I'm hoping to launch on May 1st.

First off, I am happy to be able to keep pimping the performance of an old friend who's currently doing very well at the WPT Championship. He had a heckuva table to negotiate yesterday and I can only hope that he'll have the story of stories to tell when I see him next month. His lineup for today:

Table 43:

Seat 1 Davidson Matthew 61,000
Seat 2 Phil Hellmuth 40,800
Seat 3 Jason Berilgen 243,400
Seat 4 Jon Turner 110,800
Seat 5 Lee Vaccaro 136,900
Seat 6 Shawn Buchanan 462,100
Seat 7 David Grey 65,000
Seat 8 Don Mullis 84,100

It's amazing what a small world it really is. I stumble into poker a little over a year ago, never imagining what a part of my life it would become. Then as the last year progressed I kept finding out about old friends or friends of friends that were big name poker players, like Jason or Brett Jungblutt. Now I can only hope that with another year or two of working, I can start to enjoy even a fraction of the success that they have.

Ace-Queen: The Scourge of My Poker Existence

As I've posted before, Ace Queen is a blight on my poker world. Can't ever seem to beat it, can't ever seem to win with it. Well, I somewhat reversed the curse last night on my way to a 2nd tourney cash on the day. I thought I played reasonably well all day, just couldn't quite get over the hump at the critical times.

It's also possible that I didn't actually reverse the curse, but rather ran into the one guy who apparently is cursed worse than I am. The poor guy even got moved off the table after hand one and then got moved back on next to me just prior to hand two.

Hand 1:

Seat 1: jim626 ($3,495 in chips)
Seat 2: exparoni ($5,540 in chips)
Seat 3: eman3415 ($3,755 in chips)
Seat 4: BigJohn804 [KS,KD] ($2,050 in chips)
Seat 5: RhesusPieces ($6,170 in chips)
Seat 6: Cheryblossom ($7,787 in chips)
Seat 7: Mr_MBZ ($4,515 in chips)
Seat 8: slothster0 ($5,385 in chips)
Seat 9: jebby32 ($6,660 in chips)
Seat 10: SamoLEvski ($1,325 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS

SamoLEvski posts blind ($100), jim626 posts blind ($200).

PRE-FLOP

exparoni folds, eman3415 folds, BigJohn804 bets $600, RhesusPieces folds, Cheryblossom folds, Mr_MBZ calls $600, slothster0 folds, jebby32 folds, SamoLEvski folds, jim626 folds.

FLOP [JD,10S,KC ]

BigJohn804 bets $1,450 and is all-in, Mr_MBZ calls $1,450.

TURN [KH]

RIVER [4D ]

SHOWDOWN

BigJohn804 shows [ KS,KD ]
Mr_MBZ shows [ AD,QS ]

BigJohn804 wins $4,400.

(Demz quads beetches.)

Hand 2:

Seat 1: jim626 ($1,245 in chips)
Seat 2: exparoni ($3,565 in chips)
Seat 3: Mr_MBZ ($2,015 in chips)
Seat 4: BigJohn804 [7H,7S] ($3,850 in chips)
Seat 5: RhesusPieces ($4,775 in chips)
Seat 6: Cheryblossom ($9,787 in chips)
Seat 7: 5ontheriver ($5,156 in chips)
Seat 8: slothster0 ($3,885 in chips)
Seat 9: jebby32 ($7,810 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS

Mr_MBZ posts blind ($200), BigJohn804 posts blind ($400).

PRE-FLOP

RhesusPieces folds, Cheryblossom folds, 5ontheriver folds, slothster0 folds, jebby32 folds, jim626 folds, exparoni folds, Mr_MBZ calls $200, BigJohn804 bets $3,450 and is all-in, Mr_MBZ calls $1,615 and is all-in.

FLOP [6C,JH,2H ]

TURN [2S ]

RIVER [10S ]

SHOWDOWN

BigJohn804 shows [ 7H,7S ]
Mr_MBZ shows [ AH,QD ]

BigJohn804 wins $4,030.

Alas, even after these great conquering victories over my mortal enemy, I was unable to bring it home when my AJ lost to A7 on a runner-runner flush, and then my K6 suited lost to 62 off when he hit his two outer after I flopped a flush draw as well. BigJohn804, congratulations on your 25th place finish. GG me, IGHN.

I also got the chance to sweat my buddy PokerDon as he tried to navigate the donkies in a tourney last night. As usual, it was entertaining to watch and it delivered us another piece of today's blog post. Belatedly, but happily, I bring you:

DONKEY OF THE WEEK

Yes, ShaggyG, you above all the other players I've played against or watched proved to be the ultimate donkey this past week. It would be entirely difficult to pinpoint which hand exactly proved your worthiness, but I think it was better summed up by your commentary after one in particular. You had just called off 40% of your stack after a raise and reraise all-in about 10 spots to the bubble. And by calling off 40% of your stack I mean you called off T11000 with blinds at 150/300. You showed AJ offsuit versus the Hiltons and proceeded to spike your Ace on the turn. As the table bemoaned the bad beat, you offered up several gems, which I will try my best to replicate here.

"I wouldn't have done it if it were a bigger stack."

"The pot odds weren't that bad."

"It was a coin flip."

Well done, sir... well done.

I don't envy...

2006-04-20T08:39:00.000-04:00

...my old acquaintance, Jason "Doc" Berilgen today during Day 3 of the WPT Championship.

Table 54:

Seat 1 Tony 'G' Guoga 109,475
Seat 2 Can Kim Hua 31,600
Seat 3 Allen Cunningham 45,000
Seat 4 Jason Berilgen 52,075
Seat 5 Chau Giang 80,125
Seat 6 Martin De Knijff 48,400
Seat 7 Brian Haveson 56,775
Seat 8 Peter Eichhardt 44,975
Seat 9 Clint Brotherton 42,325
Seat 10 David Kim 173,250

(info courtesy of PokerWire)

It's not even the murderer's row that is sandwiched around him so much as it would be having to listen to Tony G run his mouth all day long... good God...

Good luck, Jason.

Live Blogging a Tourney

2006-04-20T06:01:00.000-04:00

6:00am: Seated UTG, fold the first hand... 10/20 blinds, 1500 starting stacks, 131 players

6:01am: First player eliminated

6:02am: 78 offsuit in the BB, flop is K 6 4 rainbow, with two others in the pot I take a shot at the gutty and miss, fold the turn... fold the small blind, T1400

6:12am: JJ in MP, raise to 70, called by SB... flop is As6c7c, he checks, I bet 100 into 160 pot, he folds... T1490

6:16am: 44 in the BB at 15/30, raised pot seen with 4 others at T465... flop Kd5c6h, checks around... turn is the 7h, I check it comes back to me to call 120 in a pot of 825... River is another 5... checks around, 99 takes it down... fold the SB, table breaks... T1265

6:21am: 77 in MP, raise to 90, takes it down... T1310

6:28am: Just watched a guy hit his one outer on the river to reverse-Pokerroom someone... two red tens vs AcJs on a 8c6c3c flop... turn is the Ad... river is the 10s....

6:36am: 1010 on the button... 4 limpers, shortstack of T650 pushes... I push... vs. As8s... Tens hold up... T2055

6:40am: I fold 77 in MP when the maniac big stack makes it 500 to go in front of me with blinds at 50/100 now...

6:43-45am: Fold 33 UTG... fold AJ in the BB, fold the SB, there's a theme here, folding... T1905...

6:55am: Blinds up to 75/150... I pick up 66 in the SB, complete for a 5 way pot... flop is AJ7... I check/fold... T1605

7:00am: 1st Break... Average stack T4570, chip leader has T18,495... 43 players remaining... my stack is T1605 (40th of 43), I played 6 hands the first hour... my table is pretty crazy, any Ace, even a naked Ace after the flop gets pushed... middle pair is as good as a set to these guys... just need to pick up some hands, but with less than 10BB left, it's just about time to pick a good hand and start moving... currently listening to "Regulators" by Warren G and Nate Dogg...

7:05am: Blinds at 100/200

7:07am: Dealt J9 offsuit in the BB, 4 way pot, flop comes 356 and checks around, turn is a Jack, I push and get called by button limper who has: J9 offsuit... fold SB, T1705...

7:12am: I pick up KdQd in LP... shortstack moves in for 515 up front, I push my stack in and small blind moves in for 5500... shortstack has 88, SB has JJ... flop 2h6d7s, turn Ks, river 8c... I take the side pot and move up to T2380...

7:18am: I pick up KQ offsuit in the cutoff, folds to me, I raise to T600, folds out... T2580...

7:23am: Blinds up to 150/300... I have a little over 7BB's now after paying the blinds, T2130... c'mon dealer...

7:24-25am: I pick up A8 offsuit and A10 clubs back-to-back, move in and pick up the blinds both times... T3030...

7:31am: Blinds up to 200/400 and I'm down to T2580 after paying blinds... 23rd of 26 remaining...

7:33am: Pick up 33 and move in from MP, get called by KQ offsuit, spike a 3 and hold on to more than double up... T5760...

7:34am: Pick up 99 in MP, raise to T1200, same guy who I double through moves in for T726 more, then the BB moves in for T2800 on top of that... I fold... they have A8 and A10... A on the turn... T4560 with the blinds on top of me...

7:35-36am: Fold 45 offsuit in the BB after a raise (would've flopped the nuts and doubled through top set and overpair *bleh*)... pick up AA in the SB, one limper, I move in and take it down... T4960...

7:43am: Pick up 66 in the SB, move in and the BB folds... blinds are 300/600 now, I have T5160, and sitting 15th of 22 remaining...

7:46am: KQ offsuit on the button, I move in and pick up the blinds plus an early position limper... T5760...

7:48am: Pick up AJ offsuit in LP, move in and get called by both the other shortstacks on the table, 33 (T2600) and 84 off (T280)... flop is 38A... no runner-runner perfect, down to T3160...

7:56-58am: Down to T2280 with blinds at 400/800 I pick up 9d5d UTG and move in... get called by the cutoff and the SB moves in, cutoff folds... vs. 10d10s... Qd3s7d-Jd-7c... I triple up and then pay the blinds... T5980...

8:07am: Break #2- T3980, blinds going to 500/1000 and I'll be in the SB... sitting 11th of 12 remaining... average stack T15,462, chip leader has T43,799... I somehow survived everytime I pushed... but with 3.5 BB's the chances of making the final table (and the money, top 10 paid) look a little slim unless I can find a big hand (that holds up) soon... currently listening to "All Comes Down" by Kanye West (not sure that's a good omen)...

8:14am: After the shortest stack with T720 who's away and trying to fold into the money is forced in by the BB and wakes up with A5 vs KQ and spikes his Ace, I think my chances have passed... I pick up K10 off UTG and move in... get called by 66 and spike a 10... T8660...

8:16-18am: Big stack calls an all-in of medium stack next to me with KQ and runs into AdKd... flops his Queen and dodges all diamonds and jacks on the river to knock him out... and then the other shortstack finally busts... In the money...

8:23am: Blinds at 600/1200, I have T5660... pick up Ad7h in EP, move in and big stack comes over the top with AsQs... flop AhJh10h... can't pick up a seven or a heart and I'm out in 9th place...

(feel free to notice that, as usual, AQ squarely owns every bit of me)

REMODELING

2006-04-16T16:18:00.000-04:00

Hey all, a website overhaul and reconstruction is underway and will hopefully be launched real soon.

Wow, it's been a year...

2006-03-29T09:44:00.001-05:00

I didn't even realize it until I sat down to knock out a post this morning and saw the date, but it's been a little over a year that I've been making my living as a poker player. Looking back with the knowledge I have now, the success that I have had was realized in spite of making this just about as hard as possible on myself.

I was never properly bankrolled to start with, the only thing I had going for me in the beginning was an innate aggressiveness at the tables and I live about 250 miles from the nearest casino. How could I not succeed? (Please note the sarcasm here.) I had a few goals that I had set last year, some I accomplished, most I did not. But I don't consider not acheiving them to be a failure so much as realizing that they were unrealistic goals for my situation. They just need to be set for a time period a little further down the road. In one year I went from playing $10 and $20 tournaments and sit n' go's to a number of $250-$650 tournaments, and playing $.25-.50 PL hold 'em cash games to $2-5 NL Hold 'em, $5-10 limit Hold'em and Omaha. All in all, not bad for about nine and a half months of work, due to that little hiatus I had to take from August to October.

Long nights every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in a smoky room at the Warehouse where I started cutting my teeth will definitely be missed, but in all of it so much was gained. The experience, the friends made and the poker discussions that really accelerated my understanding of this game are priceless assets earned. When you first start seeing poker on TV you think how easy it all must be and then you dip your toe in the water and see how much there is to learn. Now after hundreds and hundreds of hours and thousands upon thousands of hands, the expanse of things left to learn seems even bigger but a challenge so worth undertaking.

Which is not to say that poker isn't extraordinarily boring most of the time. Who knows how long before the hours in front of a computer no longer seem worth it? But I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a chance to explore that possibility.

Now I only hope that I can make as much progress with writing in this blog as I have in playing poker.

I suck...

2006-03-22T03:52:00.000-05:00

At keeping up with this blog lately. :)

In any event, my cash game hiatus continues. After a less than successful trip to AC at the end of January and the subsequent closing of the local cash games due to some legal issues in February, there just isn't anything going on anywhere near here to make some money. The end of February saw a horrible run at the 3/6 tables online and thus was born a short break from cash games that has now stretched to over a month.

I'm still getting plenty of tournament action in around here with the usual suspects, around 2-3 per week. I've been getting my tournament mojo back lately insofar as my comfort level with reading other players and taking down pots with nothing when I need to. The only time I haven't played optimally in the last two months was when I went card dead for about 4 levels about 3 hours into one of our tourneys, got tired and just gave up, getting myself busted when I moved in with middle pair when I was 100% certain I was beat.

Last night, after being the beneficiary of a super spectacular runner runner straight in a 3 way all-in pot, I was off and running to a nice win. I'm gonna put some money back online and try and satellite into the Pokerroom Grand tournament at the end of April. And I may not play a cash game until after that. I've really enjoyed the break and feel like it strengthened my overall poker thinking but I'll have to wait until I get back on the felt to determine if that's actually the case or not.

Had an interesting hand come up when I was heads up with PokerDon at the end of our shorthanded tourney on Sunday night. I had a very slight chip lead, maybe 650-550, at the start of the hand with blinds at 6-12. Don raised to 36, I peeked down at AQ, reraised to 100 and Don smooth called. At that point, I felt 95% certain that I had the best hand. The flop came down Jh10d10d. I fired out 80 into the 200 pot and Don thought for a moment before reraising me to 210. Now I started to consider all his hand possibilities, I didn't think that he had a 10, I thought he would have played it differently. It was possible that the he had a hand like AJ or KJ, but again for some reason I just wasn't feeling like he had hit the board. So if he hadn't hit the board what were the most likely hands that he had? KQ, K9, Q9, 44-99 and AK or AQ. I felt like those were the hands he'd most likely raise with, call a reraise with and then reraise on the flop. If he had an underpair then we were 50-50 and I was likely to pick up more outs on the turn if I didn't make my hand there, everything else I was ahead of with the exception of AK, and I was willing to chance that. In any event, within 20 seconds or so I had decided I was most likely ahead or at worst a coin flip so I moved in.

It surprised Don, but he had likely come to the same conclusion I had, as he called me he said, "I think you have an underpair, so I can't fold this hand." He turned over K9, and the board bricked out and my Ace high was good. He wasn't particularly enthralled with my call, feeling like I should have laid down to his reraise, but I'm curious what other people think they may have done there.

A few interesting hands...

2006-03-04T06:14:00.000-05:00

Didn't play much this week, just a couple live tournies around here with the guys. Monday night we had 18 people play and I got pretty much smacked in the face with cards. Starting stacks are 200, with 20 minute blinds and levels start at 1-2. By midway through level three I had ~T750. PokerDon managed to slip through my grasp the first time when he pushed his shortstack with Ac2c and run into my two black queens. He flopped A2x and I was drawing dead when he boated on the turn... that always makes you feel good. But our interesting hand came when we got down to 5 handed play. He and I have talked volumes on poker and our play and have gotten to know each other's game pretty well. I picked up pocket eights and made a standard raise and it got back to Don in the big blind. I could tell as soon as it got to him he was gonna put me to the test if he did anything in this hand.

So I started watching him, and after about 30 seconds I had figured he was gonna move all-in, but I only had him covered by about 100 or so chips. But then he started going through all these machinations of counting down his chips over and over again. Now, I know that sometimes when he's doing this he's merely stalling and has a monster hand, and is only counting down from 20 to make it look like he's thinking about moving in. But he knows that I know that he does this. So when he takes longer than usual to make his move I have to transition to the next level of thinking. Is he doing this now because he knows that I know he does this? And if so, is he doing this to mask the fact that he really does have a monster hand? Don's "been in the tank" for about two minutes at this point and I still haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do when he moves in, because I still haven't decided what he's got. My gut is screaming at me that he has two overs, something like AK, AQ or KQ. But do I really want to get all my money in on the coin flip here? Another 20 seconds go by and I decide that no matter what I calling an all-in, and if he has a monster so be it, but I'm 95% certain that I have the best hand.

So another 30 seconds go by and he does end up moving all-in. I have that Negreanu-like moment from the Borgata Open in 2004 when he's up against David Williams and he tells him that he knew he was gonna do that but he isn't sure what he's going to do yet. I had decided to call but now I have a moment of hesistation. Then I decide to go with my gut and call and he turns over KcQc. I ask the dealer to kindly put an 8 on board and just end it. He flips up the flop and the 8 is the door card. He spreads 856 of hearts. Double check Don's hand just to make sure it's no hearts, and then the turn is a 7 of spades. Goddammit. 4 on the river and it's a split pot. All that great poker for nothing. Don later admitted he was doing exactly what I thought he was doing. That was pretty much my favorite hand in a long time. I feel like I actually played poker there.

********************************

I ended up coming in third there and then we played a 10 man tourney on Thursday night. I was in the big blind at 6-12 blind level and I was second in chips with around T415 behind my blind. Footloose, the chipleader with around T600, made it 3x the BB and got called by Dave and Uncle Rob moved in his remaining 32. The small blind folds and I look down at Qh6h and I thought for a while about making the call. It wasn't a great hand, but with slightly better than 5-1 odds to call it just didn't make any sense to fold it in my opinion. So with my call we had created a T12 sidepot. The flop came down Qd 7h 3h. I checked it willing to check down and just try and knock Rob out. But Footloose opened with a T125 bet and then Dave smoothcalled, leaving himself another T150 or so behind it. I'm not sure I can voice strongly enough how little I like Dave's play but I'm still unclear as to what I'd do if I were in Foot's position. But with T400 in the middle now I feel I've got no choice but to move my stack in given my hand. So I move in which means another T280 for Foot to call, which he does, and Dave at this point is stuck and moves in his remaining 150 or so. Foot has AA, Dave his KQc and Uncle Rob has 89c. The turn was an 8 of spades and the river was the King of spades and Dave made two pair to take most of the pot, with Foot losing about T100 overall by taking the sidepot between the two of us. I've got no problem going bust there as I'm actually a slight favorite in the hand on the flop:

AsAd 42% KcQc 8.5% Qh6h 45% 8c9c 4%

Dave's play is overall horrendous, which is no departure from his usual play as I have heard it. There's simply no reason to flat call with KQ on the flop and leave 150 behind. As for Foot, he's in kind of an interesting predicament. He's now 4 ways on a horrible flop. Don and I talked about the hand and Don thinks he should just move his stack in to isolate which is one thing I considered I might do in his position. Opening up for a pot size bet also seems good. Dave's smooth call throws me. It certainly could have been a heart draw or another queen, neither of which is great for my hand, but with either if he's going to do anything he should just move in. I put him on the queen, but I still don't think moving in is an awful play for me. But this hand is the one I'm most curious to get feedback on.

****************************************

Then during the afternoon on Friday I was watching JT play on a 1-1 PL Omaha table, quite possibly one of the sexiest tables I've seen for PLO in a long while. I'm not sure there was anyone sitting at that table that really had any idea what they were doing. Then this hand came up where I thought JT made a huge mistake on the turn.

He picks up KcQcKdJd and makes a pot raise to $5. He gets called in two places and the flop came down 10c 4c 5s. He bets $10 into the $18 pot and gets raised to $25 by the guy right next to him, then the other guy in the pot check-calls. The turn was a Q of hearts and it checks through. River was a Ten of diamonds and it checks through again, and JT's Kings up win the pot. I felt like he made a monster mistake by checking through on the turn.

Just observing the table and comments the guy who raised JT was making, I felt like he was just looking to get involved in a pot with JT since they both had the most money on the table. I figured his raise was just trying to take the pot down, but it was a horrible raise, and he was a bad player, so it all kind of fit together. The other guy check-calling kind of threw me off a bit. But as I dissected it I put the raiser on a decent double draw with something like 67 of clubs and a pair and the check call was either two pair or a decent flush draw.

So trying to give them decent hands to be making plays with, I'll give the raiser Ac7c6x and the check-caller Jh5hJc4c. Even given those hands, JT is 36% to win over 30% and 33%. And that's giving out some very generous hand selections. It actually turns out that the raiser had A2Jx and the check-caller had A226.

With $93 in the pot on the turn, and having the second nut flush draw, nut straight draw and an overpair, I feel like I would have bet about $50 on the turn. I would have no problem getting all my money in there.

But I'm also curious to hear some other approaches from the few Omaha players that lurk out there.

An all around interesting week on the poker front...

2006-02-25T16:25:00.000-05:00

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.

Donkey of the Week

2006-02-17T23:02:00.001-05:00

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.

Bankroll Discussion

2006-02-05T04:52:00.000-05:00

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.

Beginning Poker for the Type A Personality

2006-01-28T15:53:00.000-05:00

Or, A Strategy Introduction for the Ultra Competitive Individual.

One of the hardest things for me to develop through this first year of seriously playing poker was the ability to tone down the competitive side of my personality. As much as poker is a game of controlled aggression, it is equally about finesse. And every time I attempted to impose my will on a game through brute force, it usually failed. There are several reasons it wouldn't work, whether it being the general axiom that you can't bluff bad players to the hard truth that you can't will mediocre hands into great hands.

There are two worlds of poker, the tournament game and the cash game, and though both require the same general set of skills they also each require something different be brought to the table. As a lot of writers and strategists have documented previously, the aggressive player in a tournament setting can quickly accumulate a lot of chips and will generally either shoot to the top or bomb out quickly. The aggressive nature is aided in a tournament by the finite number of chips a player is provided as well as the added pressure of ever increasing blind structures. In the cash games though, more care is required by an aggressive player because there is not necessarily the pressure of losing all one's chips and being out of the game, you can always rebuy. So players that might in a tournament setting be less likely to make a stand in the face of your constant aggression may do exactly that in the cash games.

In a very general sense this is the dichotomy of poker. So how then do you tone your aggression to the game you're playing in? When I first started playing, I was obsessed with the bluff. I didn't only want to win the pots that my cards were allowing me to win, I wanted to win all the pots. And I bluffed... and bluffed... and bluffed some more. What's more, I showed my bluffs at every opportunity. Good bluffs, bad bluffs, it really didn't matter to me so long as the player knew that I had beat them. Pretty soon however, people didn't lay mediocre hands down to me. And generally that would be a good thing, except that I still hadn't toned down the bluffing. I got caught a lot and it cost me a lot of money that I didn't need to lose.

The other problem with being a beginner and bluffing is that I didn't know how to bluff correctly. Had I been playing with better players instead of more beginners like myself, I can only imagine how much money I would have lost. The thing I enjoy most about poker is the mental exercise. In poker you are attempting to weave a story for your opponent(s). This is true much more so in no limit poker than in limit poker. After a lot of experience you begin to understand more advanced concepts such as how to represent hands and when to bluff. I had a few hands on my most recent Atlantic City trip that I will recount to demonstrate.

Playing $2-5 No Limit Hold'em, Hero is in middle position with 9 10 of spades and the pot is four ways to the flop with no preflop raise. Pot size is $22.

Flop is J 10 5 rainbow. The flop is checked to late position who makes a bet of $10. Hero and one other call.

Turn is a Q, making a board of Q J 10 5 rainbow. It's checked to the late position bettor and he bets $15 into $52 pot, only Hero calls.

River is a J, making a final board of Q J 10 5 J. Hero checks and Player bets $75 into an $82 pot.

Hero calls and Player mucks, the pair of 10's was good enough to win.

If the Player had only bet about $35-40 on the River, I really don't think I would have called. It would have represented a hand much better than mine that was looking to get a call. But by betting weak on the flop, weak on the turn and then overly strong on the river, his story made no sense. His big bet on the river looks like he's trying to force any good hands out of the pot, instead of looking like a strong hand trying to induce a crying call. Alternately, had he made a stronger bet on the turn, a strong bet on the river doesn't look as suspicious. A stronger bet on the turn makes it look like he hit the Queen and is trying to price out drawing hands to the straight like mine was. Then a strong bet around $50-60 on the river makes sense given pot size and the hand he is trying to represent.

Likewise here is a bluff that I made earlier at the same table. I had developed a tight table image which is a very important factor in making a bluff. People have to believe that you play strong hands in order to lay down medium strength hands to you.

Hero is in middle position with QJ of diamonds and makes a standard raise to $20 with two limpers in front of him. He takes the flop three ways with a pot size of $72.

Flop comes down 10 8 2 rainbow. First player checks, I bet $40, and I get called by one late position player and the original checker. Pot size is now $192.

Turn is a 5, putting a flush draw on the board of 10 8 2 5. First player checks, I bet $125, and both players fold. The first player mucked J10 and the last player mucked KQ.

So why is my bluff successful, even with a player holding top pair? Because I've represented a very strong hand by making successive strong bets that make sense. Your opponent should be reading your actions and thinking, "What hand would I be holding if I were making bets like that?"

If I raised preflop and bet strong on the flop and then stronger on the turn, I'd most likely be holding an overpair. The other important factor for my success was that the player holding J10 was a good player and I knew it. A weaker player may not fold a hand that includes top pair which is something to keep in mind when surveying your opponents at a table. Try and decide what hands someone isn't capable of getting away from. Not only will that net you more money by knowing when and when not to bluff, but also can net you more money when holding a very strong hand. You may be able to bet stronger than you normally would trying to keep a player in the hand when you know you have them beat.

This is the first part in a general poker strategy discussion I'll be doing. I welcome any and all comments as usual, and will be happy to answer any questions or address anything from my perspective about poker.

Looking back...

2006-01-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

So after my successful session at $2-5 NL, I had recouped most of my tourney buy-in and my losses from the Trop on Friday-Saturday. I got some rest and then went back to work at the Borgata tables on Monday around noon. I decided to play some $1-2 NL for this session and I got sat at a mediocre table. There wasn't a whole lot of money but there were three or four guys there that definitely were ripe for the picking given the right situation. But for most of the first few hours I just couldn't find that situation.

About two hours in I pick up Aces one off UTG and make it $12 to go. A tight-solid ex-dealer two seats to my left min raises to $25 and one of my targets at the other end of the table smooth calls. It gets back around to me and I make it $50 on top of the other raise, which elicits a reaction from the tight player. He was clearly uncomfortable with my re-raise but called and I was pretty certain he had KK or QQ. Then the other guy smooth called my re-raise. No clue what this guy has since he's commenting the whole time about how we must both have big pairs. The flop comes down 10 3 3 with two hearts and I move my remaining $150 into the pot. The ex-dealer now is very uncomfortable and starts saying he's certain he's going to need some help and now I'm sure he has Kings. He smooth calls my $150 and then the guy at the end of the table, after more commentary about how we must both have big overpairs, smooth calls also, leaving about $85 behind in his stack.

So now I've got two cards in front of me and waiting to see how two more cards play out, knowing I don't want to see a King and also having absolutely no idea what to root for with this other schmo still hanging around. I settled on two black deuces. The turn was a black five, which in my opinion, was as good as a black deuce. The ex-dealer bets 100 to put the other guy all-in, and he begrudgingly puts his last 85 in the pot. Still no clue. Dealer guy begging for help on the river... and then the river card...

King.

*Vomit*

He immediately turns over his Kings and the other clown pitches his cards and leaves, never to reveal what his hand was. A little shell-shocked I fall back into my seat and pull out money to rebuy as I watch this guy pull in the $900 pot. Such is poker and all, but then the guy on my right says something to the effect of, "Wow, I folded a King..."

Talk about kicking a guy while he's down.

I spent the next three hours making it all back, including making one of the better plays I've made, well... ever. I raised from early position with pocket sevens and took the flop four handed. It came down 10 8 5 with two spades. I bet $20 and got called by one of my other original targets. The turn was a deuce and I bet $40 this time and he called me again. The river was another deuce, but no spade. I was 90% certain this guy was chasing the flush and that my sevens were good. But instead of betting out again, I checked to let him bluff. And bluff at it he did, firing $100 into the $140 pot. It caught me kind of by surprise but after running through all his previous hands in my mind and given the size of his bet I called, and when he didn't react I knew I had him. He looked at me and I said, "I call," again and then he knocked the table and told me it was a good call and turned over KJ of spades.

I usually haven't thought through a hand that thoroughly and given a guy a chance to make a bad play. But most players in that situation don't bet correctly and make a vastly oversized bet instead of one that looks like a value bet. If he only bet $50 at that pot I'd almost certainly have to give him credit for having a ten or maybe even Jacks or Queens. But because he all of a sudden bets so much, it looks like he doesn't want to be called and it certainly doesn't fit the pattern of the hand. If he had such a strong hand he'd likely have been raising me on the flop or turn to find out where he was at, or make a bet to try and get a call due to pot-size on the river. It's a pretty common betting tell, and one that a lot of players don't seem to understand that they are doing.

And then the nightmare began again. I had dwindled down to around $500 in front of me and was trying to decide whether or not I was going to go up and play in the $300 tourney at 11pm in the Ballroom when I got a set cracked by a straight on the turn after getting it in on the flop. The I had two pair and a flush draw miss against a set and for the coup de grace, got my Aces cracked again against a set of nines. In case you're keeping track, that's 1 for 5 with Aces for the trip and the only win netted me exactly $8.

So I hit 11 sets, had Aces in huge pots 4 times and I booked a $250 loser for cash games for the trip. That's pretty damn impressive if I do say so myself.

I love this game...

2006-01-24T21:09:00.000-05:00

I'm about two and a half hours into Event #1 of the Borgata Winter Poker Open and the best hand I've seen to this point is A5 suited. Meanwhile two poker players of equine capability at the table are accumulating stack upon stack, calling all-in with A4 offsuit on an 885 board where the pot has been raised, and the original raiser has now check-raised them all-in. To sum up, frustrating. And then I got it. Pocket nines, the Hellmuth, 9s9c... and I had to pitch it when they guy in front of me made a larger than normal raise, with what turned out to be Kings. And that, readers, sums up my four and a half hour foray into Event #1. A whole lot of nothing punctuated by having to pitch the best hand I got the entire time.

I finally got knocked out in the middle of level five, about four and a half hours in and somewhere around 560th of the nearly 1400 entrants. Quite frankly, I'm just impressed that I actually made it that deep given the cards. Since the Borgata poker room was about 400 people deep, a bunch of us ended up heading over to the Trop to play some cash games later that night. I got Aces cracked for one half of my stack and Kings cracked for the other half, and there was about six hours of poker in between that which amounted to my stack vascillating between $150 and $180. So after running horrible all week up to AC and then a ridiculously card dead Friday, I packed it in for the week.

Stayed in the room and chilled out and didn't do much of anything on Saturday except try and beat this cold that's been dogging me for like a week and a half. Got up on Sunday at like 3am, felt a little better and headed down to the poker room at the Borgata where thankfully, the list had finally evaporated. I ended up giving the $2-5 NL game a shot and it ended up being the highlight of my trip. Not only did I make about $700 for the session but I got a guy on tilt for about six hours.

I have previously written about the mystical powers of TiltBoy Footloose and his magic hand of 47. Well, after the horrible week of cards and not much getting going on the $2-5 table, I look down in middle position to find 4c7c. Since I haven't played a hand in like 30 minutes, I figure I'll try and trade on my table image a bit and raise it up to $20 and get heads up with the big blind. The flop comes down 10 5 6 rainbow and it's about the best i could hope for other than flopping the nuts. The big blind has the lead and fires $20 and I smooth call. The turn is a beautiful red 3 completing my straight and he leads out again, this time for $40. I smooth call again. The river is another 10 and as soon as it hits I can see him sit up a little straighter. Now when he goes to make his bet he's much more deliberate, so I know this ten is about to get me paid off. He fires out $70 and looks over at me. I've been chatting with the guy next to me most of the time and when the guy was loading up for the river bet I whispered to him that my opponent wasn't gonna like this. He looked at me and mouthed, "4 7?" I nodded and then I put on my best semi-confused look, stared at the board for a minute, looked at my opponent again... and then I put the rest of my stack in, another $150 on top. He doesn't hesitate to call and I turn over the Footloose and the guys face is completely blank.

"7 high?"
"It's a straight." (moment of recognition as his A10 offsuit suddenly shrivels up and dies.)
"You raised with 74?" (in a slightly agitated voice)

At this point I put on my most serious face, stopped stacking all my chips and looked the man dead in the eye and said:

"It was suited."

And that my friends, is how you put someone on tilt for an entire session.

Borgata, here I come...

2006-01-19T06:44:00.000-05:00

"Best hand I had all night was pocket deuces... and they got cracked." - Russell

The above quote was offered by the first man out of our Monday night tournament and it was a gem. As usual I came in one to two spots out of the money on both Sunday and Monday night. I think if I ever get a pair above nines I might actually have a shot at these things. But that does mean that I have been playing some pretty good poker. Other than one particular hand. And in the interest of poker discussion I'll give it a rundown for the masses. Things to keep in mind: this hand had me in the running for donkey of the week honors until someone else swept in and put themselves in the running and I was heavily drugged and sick for most of the last week. Okay, excuses made, here we go:

You are "Hero" sitting at the 10-handed final table with a stack around 450 with blinds at 4-8. The table is actually full of legitimate pros and aggressive players, not the usual push with anything clowns. You look down and believe you see KQ diamonds and from middle position you raise to 30 after one EP limper. It folds around to a guy you know to be a solid player from reputation, but you've never played together. With a stack of 360, he smooth calls after taking a moment and the rest of the table folds. Pot size is 80.

Flop is Ad 8d 5d.

Hero leads out for 40, Player takes a moment and reraises to 130, Hero instantly moves all-in, Player instantly calls.

Players turns over AhJc and I turn over KhQd... WTF?!?!?!?!

(Note to self: self, please look closer at cards next time.)

Now, even though I've made a pretty gigantic gaffe, I still like my hand here. It unfortunately bricked out, but I'm very surprised by the other player. He's putting his tournament life on the line with top pair, mediocre kicker and no diamond. He has committed about half of his stack after his reraise but it still leaves him with 200 in chips at the 4-8 level, so he would hardly be crippled by folding.

He's behind so many hands here and even in my error he's still only a 3-2 favorite after the flop. I'm definitely an aggressive player but I'm not sure even I would commit all my money to his hand. He's getting like 1.6-1 odds on his money and risking getting knocked out and he in almost no situation can be that far ahead. Basically he ran into the best hand he could have hoped with all the money in the middle and was still barely ahead. I'm curious to see some others' takes on this.

Other than that, I've been mostly getting kicked in the junk playing heads up limit poker. I'm apparently on the wrong side of two things: variance and poker karma. I've not been able to start out a single session this week on a rush, instead I've been playing out of some huge holes as my opponents have been making their runner runners and 5 outers every time or just pummelling me by hitting every draw. But I've been happy with my ability to stick with the gameplan and make it back or mostly back many of the times I've been stuck. I'm still down on the week and a shorthanded 5-max session of NL broke my back last night. Playing some 2-2, I ran my stack up $150 in the first six minutes on some aggressive play and catching some good flops. Then in back to back hands I got AA and KK cracked and was down $50.

What can you do?

I'm excited as all hell for this trip. A whole lot of the crew from around here is going up to play in the first event or at least play for the weekend at the Borgata Winter Poker Open. Also I see that a nice contingent of poker bloggers is also heading there, so I'm looking forward to meeting some of the more "esteemed" members of the community this weekend. And I mean esteemed in the loosest of moral connotations by some of the stories I've read. Perfect.

So here's to hoping I have a great story or five to tell you all when I get back, or if I get a chance, a mid-trip report live from Atlantic City.

A little cold, a little cough... a little online poker...

2006-01-10T20:40:00.000-05:00

Well, some family matters to attend to and a head cold prevented much poker action this past week or so, but I did get in on the Sunday and Monday tournaments around here. Everything else this week was online. And... drumroll... it was a success.

I dabbled in just about everything but NL hold'em this week. I played my shorthanded O8, heads up limit hold'em and a couple stud tournies. Omaha 8 shorthanded may be my favorite game right now. I love playing 2 or 3 handed and just trying to stay clear of the less informed (read donkies) players when the table is full. I am ultra-ultra-aggressive in limit and for the most part it works, but when if I get sucked out on, it's usually a monster pot.

I dipped my toe in the waters of heads-up hold'em also, nothing very spectacular, just some .50/1, 1-2 and 2-4. I ended up about $75 all told after a bad outing earlier in the afternoon. At one point I lost four pots in a row to one guy, and he hit a gutshot straight on every one of them. That'll damage your psyche if you aren't careful. I didn't mind the swings so much, my aggressive style puts me at risk of that. It was, however, annoying as hell to get hit and run, or have the other guy take the money off the table and sit in short. Oh well.

PokerDon was also kind enough to tell me about the soft 7 stud tournies that he'd played a couple times this week. I tried once and couldn't catch any cards early and then whiffed on a monster draw to get knocked out. The second time around was much better as I went into the final table with a chip lead triple my nearest opponent, and then more than double the table when three handed. We got heads up and I had a 4-1 chip lead and got the guy all in and he rivered his huge draw, but the poker gods were nice and continued to bless me with cards and I pulled out the win a short time later.

So that pretty much makes up for my online losses in December. I haven't played live around here due to everything that's been going on, but with a week in AC coming up, I'm sure I'm going to log enough hours not to worry about it for the month. I'll be playing in event #1 in the Borgata Winter Poker Open, and will be there from Thursday to Thursday. I've seen rumors of several bloggers making the Borgata trip, so hopefully I can get a chance to meet a few of you finally at the tables.

Now onto the most pressing and overdue matter for the blog... Donkey of the Week. It's not often that a guy who comes in second in a tournament could earn this dubious, though esteemed, award. But Tyler Stoneman... this is your lucky day. First off, by forking in $40 and then deciding in hour two that you're too tired to continue playing in a tournament. So you start pushing your stack in at every opportunity to get knocked out, only the strategy backfires and you begin to accumulate chips. This alone might generally be enough to push you to the front, but since there are so many other boneheads we play with that shared your mentality, there had to be more. And more you provided, sir. With a chip stack of around 800 (and what we would find out after was a serious card rush) you began moving your stack in every time, raised or unraised pot. After five consecutive hands you revealed that you had been pushing in with AA, KK, KK, AK and 10 10. Most people hope to get heads up with AA or KK versus AK like you would have been on two of those five hands, but no, you sir have a greater strategy in mind. Tyler, why would you push in all that money with those hands, why not just reraise or try and trap?

"I've just been getting sucked out on so much lately..."

And with that Tyler, you earned yourself Donkey of the Week honors. For because you didn't take advantage of your opportunities when you had them, you came in 2nd, running into quad tens heads up and getting knocked out the next hand.

Just remember, it's all love brother, and nothing can take the place of persistence...

Perge!

And to everyone else, hope the cards are treating you well. I will have a big O8 hand discussion post before the month is over, and hopefully good trip report info from the Borgata tourney.

One last thing,

HAIL TO THE REDSKINS!

Donkey Of The Week

2006-01-03T16:19:00.000-05:00

Due to overwhelming (local) demand, as was discussed, beginning in this January and continuing throughout the year, every Tuesday I will be naming my Donkey of the Week (DOTW). As the poker week for me runs from Tuesday-Monday, I will be handing out this very prestigious award every Tuesday for the rest of the year.

Now, as this was a very short week, the winner of the first LATOAPA DOTW had only a few short days to make his impression... but make it he did. And in a stunning upset over several worthy contenders, Don George is the first Donkey of the Week! Congrats Don!

By calling off all your 415 remaining chips (in the 8-16 blind level) on the turn with AK offsuit on a double suited (none of your suits) and straightened board after being raised on the flop and Matt moving in on the turn and taking 14 minutes in the hand overall, and then going out first in the Monday night tournament, you have passed such illustrious contenders as Bobo the Poker Playing Monkey and Jason Sevino.

This, I fear, is undoubtedly the last time your name will appear on this award, but always take heart in the fact that you were the first, and thereby the biggest... Donkey of the Week.

Way to go, Don!

Cannot... win... online...

2005-12-30T15:56:00.000-05:00

This has been a semi-brutal month for me playing poker. I'm down about $600 on the month, which although not terrible by any stretch, is still bugging the hell out of me because I feel like overall I've played better than average. The losses have been about 3-2 between NL hold'em and some Omaha Hi-Lo. In fact, I've logged a lot of hours of Omaha 8 this month. It is by far my favorite game other than NL hold'em but I've had mixed success. I have been playing mostly 5-max Omaha 8 at $1-2 and $2-4, with a few hours spent playing at full tables. I still need to log a lot more hours playing but I think, as I mentioned in another post earlier this month, that this game could be incredibly profitable. It appears to be the same mix of about 25 players, of which, I think 6 know what they're really doing.

It's been an especially harsh last couple days, my last three sessions being a net loss of 80BB. There are about four pots I can attribute it to also, so I'm not so concerned with the loss. I keep hearing how Razz is such a big kick in the balls, but I'm really beginning to think that Omaha 8 could give a run more the money in that category. When the action is capped in front of you when you're holding the nuts on every street until the river puts a higher straight on board, or pairs, or counterfeits your nut low... well, bruised testes abound.

But overall, I've definitely enjoyed it, I'm learning a lot, and hopefully after another month or so, I'll be much more comfortable with my opponents. On the NL hold'em front, my live play has been very positive. My online play has not translated into the same success. I don't know what it is, but the last two months I can't win online NL ring games, but I have been killing in my live play. It doesn't make much sense to me but hopefully it will turn itself around in '06.

Booked a room for the Borgata Winter Poker Open with some friends. I'm definitely playing in the first event, possibly the second and trying a couple of the supersatellites for the main event. If anyone else is going to AC for the tournament, leave a note, wouldn't mind finally meeting some fellow bloggers.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday, and will have a safe and happy New Year! See in 2006...

Some more review...

2005-12-22T16:46:00.000-05:00

Overall in the ring games I think I played below average, but I still found a lot of good spots and was up $450 overall for the cash games. I took some bad beats, some tough beats and made a couple of really donkey-esque decisions of my own, otherwise I may have done much better. There are a lot of holes in my game but now when I make a mistake I know exactly what I've done most of the time, so I feel like I'm at least making progress.

I think the two biggest problems I have, and one really just contributes to the other, are that I'm not taking enough time to think through what's just happened when a player acts and that I'm still paying off some value bets on the river when I know I'm beat. Paying $25 or 30 more in either a raise or a river bet from another player when I'm almost 98% certain I'm beat is definitely costing me money I don't need to lose. I just need to tighten up in those situations and be willing to pitch those 2% that are winning hands anyway so as not to keep costing myself those bets.

One situation in particular I'm still unsure of whether I really made a mistake or not, but I definitely could have taken a bit more time to think it through. I was sitting at a $1-2 NL table with about $300 in front of me and I picked up pocket kings one off under the gun. I raised to $12 and got called in four places. The flop came down J 10 5 rainbow and I led out for $30. One player mucked and the next one to act raised it up to $80 and the action folded back around to me. I thought for a second and had him on Ace or King with a Jack. I certainly thought he could have had a set as well, I definitely didn't have him on Jacks, Queens or Aces because I am pretty sure from what I saw out of him he would have reraised me with any of those hands.

So I moved in, and after thinking for a second and listening as he started wondering aloud if I had really made top set, I knew I was in trouble. He finally called with his set of tens and I bricked out. I was really confident I was ahead, especially because just a few orbits earlier I had seen him make the same move on a Queen high board with Ace-King and stick himself against a flopped set of Queens.

I really don't know if I would not go broke on that hand even if I played it differently. If I smooth call his raise, which I don't think is an option there, the card on the turn was a 6 leaving me with $200 in front of me and a pot of about $215. I have to bet a decent amount on the turn if I think I'm still ahead because now I have to wonder if he's on a OESD and may have picked up a flush draw. I probably would bet about $100 and if he raises me there he's putting me all-in, the pot is then laying me over 5-1 odds and I have an overpair to the board. Basically I could reraise him on the flop and make it $75 more, which means he either moves it in there or smooth calls me and I'm in the same predicament I just explained.

I think the only way I get away from the hand would be to reraise the flop and pitch if he moves in there. He could certainly have two pair like J-10 as well, so I think I was a bit too quick to move in on the flop, when a reraise would have been the best option. It's certainly not a hand that's impossible to get away from, I just acted too quickly. Love to hear some others' thoughts on what they have done or would do in this situation.

Atlantic City, Part Deux

2005-12-21T23:45:00.000-05:00

I think I can best sum up how poker went on this trip with the following:

We were down to about 25 players remaining in the morning tournament at the Borgata. I had finally picked up some hands and had gotten my stack up around 15,000 or so chips and the level was at 800-1600 with 300 antes. The short stack to my right moves his 2300 in blind as he's about to pick up the big blind and I look down at AQ. So with 7100 already in the pot I move my stack in to try and isolate on the guy to my right. The first two players to act after me fold, and then a guy with a semi-short stack of about 5000 goes into the tank. He eventually talks himself into calling and everyone else at the table folds. After the pots get separated out, the blind hand turns up K4 and the other guy turns up A7. We get an Ace on the flop and now I'm pleading for no seven. My prayers were heard until the river card and A7 scooped a big pot. That dropped me down to 8700 in chips remaining.

That left me under the gun with blinds now up to 1000-2000 with a 500 ante. I look down and find AQ again. Great. I move it in and get called in one place... two places... and then the big blind with about 12,000 behind after paying the big blind moves his entire stack in as well. It wasn't enough to open more raising so both the other callers pay into his side pot and the dealer goes to work. KQxxx. I'm trying to gauge reactions from the other players, but not picking up anything. My buddy Don has come over from his table and we're thinking it's possible my Queen might be good here. I'm very skeptical but hopeful as the two players with chips left check it all the way down. I flip up my AQ, and the first caller turns over pocket tens. Yes! The second caller turns up AJ. YES! The big blind then turns over K7. *enter sound of record skipping and scratching to a halt here* Huh?

Facing an all-in from up front and two calls by people who can bust him, this guy, who will have plenty of chips and an entire round to wait for a better spot puts all his money in with K7 offsuit. It's been two days and I'm still shocked that that's the hand that he pushed with and that it's the hand that won. Oh well.

I'll cover more about the fabulous poker room at the Borgata after I get some rest. Good luck avoiding the donkeys.

The Week in Review

2005-12-15T13:14:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting, but losing, week of poker. My weeks of poker are measured from Saturday through Friday, and I promptly started off the week stuck. Played in a poker extravaganza at Bailey's house, which was a $150 buy-in for at least three tournaments. The first was a freezeout NL, the second was a heads-up challenge and the third was a NL rebuy and add-on shorthanded shootout. You accumulated points throughout the whole thing and the top five point finishers were put in a freeroll NL freezeout.

My poker play was still good but just ran into some people who fit into one of the following three categories: (A) No idea what they were doing, (B) Didn't care what they were doing because they were drinking, or (C) both A and B. But I'd take my chances with that group any day. I finished in 7th in the first tourney, 3rd in the heads-up tourney and 10th in the rebuy tourney, which amounted to me missing the final table by 1.5 points. All told, I was stuck $165 after entry fees and rebuys and a minimal cash in the heads-up portion.

It also prevented me from playing the cash game at Vollmer, which is where I'm primarily going to be making money around these parts. Friday through Sunday I did a lot of experimenting online with a poker niche I'm hoping may be profitable. I need to log a lot more time playing, but shorthanded Omaha 8 is looking like a potential cash cow. I put together a statistically improbable run at the $1-2 limit tables which was quickly humbled by a few forays up to $2-4. But I definitely plan on working my Omaha 8 game as it's very clear that people have even less of clue playing that game than they do with hold'em.

Went deep in a few tournaments online but wasn't able to do anything major at the end of them because I never got cards late and the blinds just ate me up. But I'm feeling really confident with my tournament play and I will be more than happy to trade the last week for a good finish in the Party Poker Million Dollar Guaranteed on Saturday. At last check there are only 486 people registered with about a day and a half to go, so I'm wondering how big the field is going to get for this thing. I can't imagine there are 1500 people that will suddenly plunk down $640, but maybe I'm wrong. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a huge overlay, though I know that's probably unlikely.

Other than that, a little three day jaunt up to AC starts on Sunday, so you'll most likely find me in the basement of the Borgata during that 72 hours. I'll be playing in at least one of the WPT Winter Open tournaments while trying to satellite into the main event there at the end of January as well. And a plan is formulating that may include three to four weeks in Vegas from the middle of March through the middle of April.

On a semi-related Vegas note, most of us in the regular home game were surging with jealousy when one of our buddies Jag came home from a week out there. Not only did he run really well in a bunch of tournaments including the Ultimate Poker Challenge at the Plaza where he knocked out Men the Master, but then he was approached with the dream job. A rep from Full Tilt offered him a spot on the team where Full Tilt would back him in four tournaments a month plus cash games and provide room and board. He spent one night getting schmoozed by the rep and John Juanda and Jesus Ferguson but because of real life back here in Richmond, he was unable to accept.

That has most of us salivating about long dreamt about possibilities. Talk about living the dream...

A Nomination for a New Tiltboy...

2005-12-05T17:39:00.000-05:00

Richard stared hard at the board, 6s Qs As Kd 8s, for a full minute, trying to figure out how he'd just gotten knocked out of the tournament. He looked down at his AhAc again, the picture that he had just gotten fully kicked in the junk developing clearer, and then you could see it begin. The burning rage in his eyes, mouth open in disbelief... a full-on Hellmuthian tirade trying to escape his lips but the words just not coming. "How..." and then he shook his head and walked out of the room. In a daze he drifted towards the living room, turning around halfway and walking back towards the table, "How do you make so bad a play?"

While slowly stacking up chips the answer comes with a slight chuckle, "I know, that was a really bad play, wasn't it?" And then Richard is off again, shaking his head, too angry and confused to say anything more. There's not much more that can be said, Richard is just the latest victim of the one and only, Footloose.

Phil Gordon often writes about an interesting poker concept called implied Tilt odds. I've never seen someone so in tune with that concept than one of the regulars in our Sunday and Monday tournaments, Footloose. The name pretty much sums up his game, and he always stacks a mountain of chips in the first few levels of our tournaments. Last night he was in rare form however. He is the namesake of the hand 74, and recently added K4 to his repetoire, now known as the BigFoot.

On the third hand of the tournament, Foot is in the big blind and Bob is under the gun. Bob is a tight-passive player, and he open raises to $12 it folds around to Foot and he smooth calls. The flop comes down 3h3d5d. Foot checks and Bob fires out $20, Foot smooth calls again. At about this time, a friend of ours who is just learning the game hears the phrase "smooth call" used, and asks a smart ass question to the effect of, "if that's a smooth call, what's a rough call?"

As the dealer slides the turn card, 6c, onto the board, I answer him by saying, "A rough call is what Foot is doing to Bob when he turns over 74 and completely whores out Bob's hand with a straight." Foot checks again, Bob bets $25, Foot raises to $75 and Bob calls. River is a brick, Foot bets $50, Bob calls and turns over Kings, and Foot turns over his hand, naturally the 74 offsuit for a straight.

Bob goes out the next hand to Matt when he runs into Matt's Aces. Two orbits later Matt, another tight-passive player, limps under the gun and I find pocket sevens on the button. I raise to $12, Foot re-raises to $36 and I'm immediately thinking, bullshit. As I ponder how much I'll reraise him, Matt smooth calls from under the gun. Ruh-roh. I call taking a shot that I'll hit a set. Flop comes down 6d8h10s and Foot immediately fires 100 into the pot. Matt slows down for a minute and says, "I've gotta make a bet and find out where I'm at, I'm all in."

I make a very easy fold and Foot sheepishly calls, turning over 79 offsuit for the flopped nuts, knocking out Matt who was holding pocket Jacks. Foot is two for two. We get down to four handed and it's Foot, Richard, myself and Avery (the novice player). And that's when magic of Tilt happened.

Richard has been playing very tight all night long and he would like to believe that he has a very tight table image. However, he has an extremely loose image to everyone because though he appears to be tight, he sometimes gets caught making a big bluff and gets crippled or knocked out. A lot of it has to do with how he used to play months ago, which he has tightened up considerably from, but reputations take a while to change. So he comes in for his standard raise and I fold on the button, and Footloose thinks for a bit before announcing a reraise up to $75. Richard now goes into one of his routines, and I'm trying to figure out which one he's giving us. He counts down all his chips a couple times, looks back at his cards, counts them down again, and announces a reraise of $85 more. Now I'm positive he's holding Aces, this definitely appears to be the Aces show he's giving, but you never know with him for sure.

Foot goes back in the tank, starts counting down all his chips. He asks Richard how much he has behind it and Richard announces $161. Foot counts down his chips again, and then says, "I just don't see how I can lay this hand down." So knowing Foot, I suddenly wonder if he's somewhere between 99-JJ or AK and thinks that Richard is just full of it. Anything QQ or KK and Foot would already have his money in the middle. He counts down his stacks one more time and says again, "I just don't think I can lay this down... I'm all in," before he can finish his sentence Richard has insta-called and flips up pocket Aces. Foot smiles and turns over 7h4s. He had Richard covered by $3.

I think we were all in shock, I know Foot is crazy, but I didn't think he was that crazy. I then dealt out his flush and knocked Richard out of the tournament. I'm impressed Richard didn't go get a weapon to use on Foot. A short while later I busted Foot out heads-up when I got a ridiculous run of cards and finished him off with AA.

But Footloose knocked out KK, JJ and AA with some magical force last night that would have made Phil Gordon proud.

Thank you, Party Poker!

2005-12-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

Computer has been on the fritz this week, so I hadn't been able to check my emails for about four days. I finally get that taken care of earlier this afternoon and as I'm going through everything I click open an email from Party Poker. Since I hadn't played there in a while they had given me a $25 bonus deposit into my account, which brought my grand total to around $28. So after sorting everything out, I decide to fire up Party and see what's happening. I'm feeling really good about my tournament game lately, so I'm going to be playing a bunch of satellites and see if I can get my way into some big events coming up.

Well, as soon as I log on I find a $5+1 rebuy qualifier for the Million Dollar Guarantee that's about to start. I register and proceed to fold for the first level and a half. I finally get a hand, pocket tens and I'm waiting for my chance to act but when it gets to me none of the action buttons are on my screen. So for the next twenty minutes I'm logging on and off Party Poker and my computer trying to figure out what's wrong. I finally get the software to work with about 13 minutes left in the rebuy period. I still have over 1800 in chips since I did a rebuy as soon as the tourney started, and then I pick up pocket eights, limp and smooth call a raise in early/middle position. Flop comes Ace high and I decided to try a stop and go, only this guy had raised with pocket fours in late position and flopped his set, so I'm busted on the first hand I play. Double rebuy with not much time left in the level.

I finally win a hand to get to 2100 in chips at the break and after my add-on I have T3600. The first hand out of the gates I'm in the small blind and pick up Aces. We're at 75/150 and it gets raised to 600 by the guy who flopped his set against me, he gets called in two places and then I push, which he calls with sevens. My Aces hold up and I'm sitting at T7200 and in pretty decent shape. About three minutes later I'm one off under the gun, UTG limps, I raise to 600, it folds around to him, he moves in for 2000, and after I call he proceeds to crack me by hitting a set of Jacks on the turn.

I spent most of the next hour hovering between 5000 and 8000 in chips, and people are rocketing by me in stack size. But I am able to steal here and there, and pick off a few pots after the flop. I got lucky when I pushed with QdJd with about 6BB's left and rivered a set of queens versus the Ac10c that had called me and flopped his Ace. I basically just stole blinds all the way to the final table from there. I saw some truly ridiculous play that never ceases to amaze me on Party Poker. People limping K4 from UTG and check-calling all the way to the river on AKx flop, calling with connectors under all three cards on the flop and going runner-runner straight, etc.

I picked off a few pots when we got down to seven handed then picked up Aces twice in three hands and had moved my stack up to about 65,000 which was good for fifth place. Top two got seats, third through fifth got some cash back. Chip leader had about T110,000, 2nd had about 95,000 and the rest of us we're pretty much even. When we got to six handed I picked up pocket Jacks in the cutoff and raised to 18000, which was 3x the BB. I got called in two places and the flop came J 10 9 rainbow. UTG had called and checked to me, and I led out for $25,000 into the $55,000 pot and he called. The turn was an Ace and I knew that we were going to get all our money in there. I had him on a drawing hand like AQ on the flop, or he had flopped the nuts and I was pretty screwed, but he checked again, I moved him in for another 19,000 and he called, turning over AQ. I dodged the Kings and Eights and we were five handed and I was the new chip leader.

We got down to three handed pretty quick and the 2nd place stack and I worked the other guy all the way down to 2.5 BB's before he caught cards in two big pots and got us all back to even at over 100K in chips apiece. Then the guy who had been 2nd got stuck in a rut and lost all his money in a pot to the other guy.

So after four days of no computer, Party gives me $25 free dollars which I then turn into a free seat in the Million Dollar Guarantee. All in all, not a bad day or a bad tournament to be freerolling.

Something important to remember...

2005-11-29T22:40:00.000-05:00

Many of us have purchased some or all the notable poker manuals out there to glean every nugget of advice we can about this game. From Super/System to the Little Green Book of Poker, we find some useful knowledge to help sharpen up one aspect of our poker or another. You play, practice, read and then practice some more. You feel like your starting to get the hang of things and then it happens.

You're sitting at a $1/2 No Limit game which you bought into for $200 and you raise to $15 from middle position after two people limp in early position, including under the gun. You get called by one other late position player, the small blind and then both the early limpers. Yes, you raised 7.5 times the big blind and got called in four places. Aren't people supposed to be respecting a raise like that? Don't they know that you're only supposed to raise 3 to 4 times the big blind in standard situations, so if you're making it $15, you really mean business?

You're holding pocket jacks and now the flop comes down 7 3 2, with two spades. The small blind and both early position players check to you and, confident from your studies you lead out to shut down any possible draws and overcards, firing $45 into the $77 pot. You get called by the small blind and under the gun chuckles to himself and throws in his $45 as well.

Inside your head you're screaming for "no spade! no spade!" and the turn brings the 10 of hearts. Okay, a deep breath. You dodged a bullet, if anyone had had Aces, Kings or Queens or flopped a set, they would have had to play stronger before the flop or on the flop, right? Jacks are probably the best hand here. Small blind and under the gun both check to you again. What in the bloody hell could they possible have here? Now the pot is a juicy $212 and you have $140 left in front of you. At this point there aren't many betting options available to you but to move it all in. You could bet $75 or $100, but if you get called, even if a spade or overcard falls on the river, there's no way you aren't moving your last $60 or so into a pot that's now over $400. 7-1 odds dictate the money goes in on the river, so now you push your stack in, figuring any kind of draw has to lay down their hand only getting 2.5-1 on their money.

The small blind goes in the tank for two minutes, hemming and hawing and finally pitches his cards into the muck. Then the under the gun player chuckles again, looks at you and smiles and asks if you've got a big pair. You shrug your shoulders still unsure on whether or not you want this guy in your pot, what in the hell is this guy holding, anyways!? He perks up, says to the table, "well, it's almost time to go home anyways," and calls your all-in, having you barely covered. Before you can turn over your jacks the dealer puts out the river card, a beautiful 6 of diamonds.

You're confidently ready to gather in your pot when the other player throws the 8 9 of diamonds out onto the felt, having just completed his open ended straight draw, and starts stacking up your chips in front of him. As one last kick to the groin he throws out a final nugget as he's towering his chips up, "I knew it, I never lose with that hand."

So this is why guns aren't allowed in poker rooms. See, you can do everything correctly, or semi-correctly but there's no accounting for what other players know or don't know about the game, or what ever "feeling" that they might be having. So is the most important thing about poker the nuts and bolts of the game? Which hands to play before the flop, how to price out draws or getting the right value for a made hand on the river? All important certainly, but maybe most important of all is realizing that individual sessions are just that, an individual session in a game that just keeps going and going. So long as you're making the right decisions, the cards and the opponents work themselves out in the end.

Dredging up an old discussion...

2005-11-23T15:53:00.000-05:00

So right about the time the clowns over at Oddjack decided to label me a horrible player and scourge of the blogging community, I had posted an analysis of overall play after returning from AC for the first time. In that post I asserted that 99% of the people playing poker generally have no idea what they are doing. Then an anonymous poster had something to say about me being too arrogant in my assessment, but after three more months and another AC trip I have come to the conclusion that I was 100% correct. 98% of the people I see playing poker have no idea what they are doing.

Good, bad, indifferent... they just don't know what they are doing. They don't have a concept about paying attention to hands limped from under the gun, or being re-raised by someone from that position. Or the proper way to price out draws, or taking the lead on drawing hands or that top pair with top kicker is still a very vulnerable hand. Which, as I said a few months ago, is all very good for those people that are looking to actually make money playing poker.

This also has a counter effect on players that are average to very good, your game has to change to match up against poor play. Analyzing the differences in my two trips to AC, I think the real difference in my success was being more cognizant of the type of player I was up against during each hand. There were plays I was able to pull off because I knew the player I was in the hand with was good enough to understand what hands I was representing. And there were bigger hands I was able to get paid off on by simply letting a less experienced player bet into me the entire way with this TPTK.

That combined with the fact that I think I am a 100% better player than I was even three months ago definitely helped things along. A lot of things kept me from playing as much poker recently as I had been, but I still did a lot of reading, logged a lot of practice hands and discussed a lot of situations with friends. When I finally got back to playing regularly, I felt entirely more comfortable and aware at the tables than I had been before. There were hands and positions I put myself in before without realizing it that I was able to remove from my game that alleviated a lot of unprofitable situations I was getting in. I think branching out and playing some of the other games also helped my hold'em game overall.

I still fall in the slightly better than average group but I think after another couple of months I may actually consider myself in the 'better than average' echelon. For now life is going to be about building the bankroll up, and taking a few shots at the WSOP Circuit and WPT events that are rolling into AC during the next few months.

Anatomy of an 80 Hour Heater

2005-11-17T02:43:00.000-05:00

Remember that post I made a few days ago about being burned out on hold'em? It appears I found part of the cure. It's called an 80 hour winning session, which I stretched out from about 1am on Sunday morning to 8am on Wednesday morning. It all started out on Saturday night when I had been debating whether or not I would go with my friends up to AC the next day. I just haven't been running well in cash games lately, confidence was a little down, as was the bankroll. I decided to go out to the local Vollmer game where I have had a lot of success and see what I could make of things. I'm not entirely sure why I haven't played there regularly as I have posted two huge wins and one mini-loss the three times I've gone out and played there, but I think going forward I'll pretty much be a regular there.

I took $140 out there and arrived around 10:30pm, two people were on the list in front of me so I thought about bagging it and then I saw the money on the table. The game was ten handed and there was about $5000 on the table in a max $300 buy-in game. Someone was hemmoraging money and I needed to stick around. I had to wait two and a half hours and salivate over the thousand dollar pots that seemed to be happening every other hand before I finally got a seat. Of course the seat that opened was between Willy and Todd, the two most aggressive and loose players in the game, so I was going to have to drastically alter the way I played. Nothing really happened for me for the first hour or so and I was down to $100 when I got A4 spades in the small blind. Four people had already come in the pot for $10 so I pitched in my chips and Todd called as well. The flop came down 2s 5c 8s and Todd fired out $25. Everyone folded around to Willy and he reraised to $75. I thought for a minute and figuring I was probably not going to get a better chance to make a move and pushed my $90 into the pot. I was surprised when Todd pitched his cards but even more surprised when Willy, who was now stuck in the pot with only $15 more to call, turned over K6 offsuit and I was actually ahead. Todd had pitched pocket Jacks and I spiked a spade on the turn to lock it up.

I managed to take down a few more big pots after basically just staying out of the way of trouble all night. I left Vollmer at 5:30 am and I had a thousand dollars, so Atlantic City was definitely on my horizon. The three of us got up to AC at about 1am on Monday morning, and I sat at my first $1-2 NL table in the Borgata about 24 hours after I had sat in at Vollmer. Omen? First hand I see is queens in the big blind and the guy in front of me raises to $20, I reraise to $70 and he calls. The flop comes down rags and he checks to me, I fire out $50 and he folds. The very next orbit in the same position I pick up Kings. Same guy raises to $20, I reraise to $70 and he calls. Flop comes rags and he checks, I fire out $50 and he folds. The table by far was like the 'Golden Goose' and unfortunately for Don and I, we had sat in on the tail end of most of these players' sessions. About three hours later Don and I were both up $500 when the table broke.

The next table I sat at was a little tighter and I got in good situations but unfortunately on one hand, someone had Kings to my Jacks on a rag flop and he took about half of my profit from the other table. By the time the three of us got up from the tables at around 10am, I had built my stack back up and session number one was a $500 winner. We got some breakfast and managed to get into our room early, we were all pretty exhausted so we crashed and got up around 5pm and went back downstairs. I played pretty well and scratched out $80 over about ninety minutes before the evening tournament started. It was a $60 rebuy tourney, with unlimited rebuys for the first three levels and an add-on. You started with 1500 in chips. I had really wanted to play a tournament up there, but I'm not usually a fan of rebuy tournaments. I took the plunge anyways and over the next five hours I may have played the best poker I've ever played.

I was in the big blind for the first hand and three people limped in the pot, small blind completes and I look down at pocket kings. Omen? I raise and take down the pot. I then proceed to get a combination of great cards and tight players who let me take down a lot of pots as I'm playing pretty aggressively. I made one mistake when I called a guy's all-in preflop about 5 minutes before the end of the rebuy levels and he had Kings to my Jacks, but he had been playing real loose so I felt pretty good about my hand. That took me down just below 1500, so I rebought and on the last hand of the level I picked up AK on the button and a guy makes a move on the pot from the small blind, I call and he has KJ. So I almost double up there and after the add-on I have about 9000 in chips which is right around third highest on my table.

I steadily picked up chips for the next two levels until they broke my table, and on the second hand at my next table I picked up Aces and knocked out a player when I reraised him all-in and he called with eights. I chipped up here and there and then two interesting hands came up which I'm going to post about separately as part of a hand discussion. But I managed my way to the final table and had about T35,000 with 380,000 chips in play, just about dead on the 'average' chip stack. I stayed out of the way for a while as short stacks got busted and big stacks took away pots, and managed to pick up the blinds and antes here and there to keep myself above water. Before I sat at the final table one of my boys had given me a tip about an old guy he had been sitting with before he got knocked out, letting me know he was raising pots with weak and medium Aces and small pairs. I had watched him for a while at the final table and when he came in raising he either took the pot on the flop or he was giving up the pot to pressure from the other player(s). He made a raise from middle position while I was in the big blind and I called with K9 of spades. The blinds were at 2000/4000 with 1000 antes and I had about 28,000 left after calling his raise to 10,000. The flop came out rags and I fired 14,000 into the pot, which was around half of the pot. He thought for a minute and called. The turn card was another rag and moved my last 14,000 in the pot and he mucked right away. I think that was a pretty critical hand for the amount of chips it bought me just as blinds were really starting to pressure me. Then there were a couple of ridiculous hands where the player to my right sucked out to knock three players out and suddenly we got down to three handed play.

At that point I had about 65K in chips, the guy on my right had about 140K and the other player had 180K. I offered a chop right there which would have given each of us $2700 a piece but the player on my right said he wanted to play and after a little discussion the other player decided he wanted to play as well. Immediately the two of them tangled and And the palyer to my right took some chips from him, then I doubled up through him when I had Jacks to his Ace-King. Suddenly I'm the chip leader with about 260,000 to 100,000 and 20,000 for the other players. The very next hand the guy on my right moves all-in and I have Ace-King, I call and I'm up against Queen-Jack. He spiked a queen on the river to double up and then on the next hand he took out the other player. At that point he has 230,000 to my 150,000 in chips and I offer him a chop again. We work out the deal and I walked away a $3000 winner and a little peeved about that queen on the river. I did take some solace in the fact that the third guy got a little greedy and cost himself $1500 though.

Then it was right back to the tables and I had worked up another $200 in profit when the speed bump in my trip came up. I was playing at a pretty solid table and I pick up 10 8 suited in the small blind, a bunch of players limp in, I complete and the big blind pops the action up another $15. He hasn't played a hand in like forty minutes or so and I'm feeling like it's a monster, AA or KK. It folds around to me and I decide to take a shot at busting him, because if I hit the flop I know I can get all his money in the middle. I call and the flop comes down 10 8 7 with two hearts, about the second best flop I can hope for there. I lead out for $30 and he reraises me to $80, I pause for a second and then I move all-in for another $340. He doesn't even hesitate and moves it all in the middle and turns over Kings. When I turn up my hand I let out a sigh of relief and he tells me good hand, he thought I was trying to just bully him out of the pot. I know we have about the same amount of chips so I start counting mine down to get the final number and then the dealer pushes the chips at him. I had never seen the 7 hit the river and give him a better two pair. So after 20 hours in a row of poker, I think that beat knocked the wind out of my sails. I rebought and though I got good cards, I kept getting into bad situations and an hour or so later I had lost that buy-in as well. That took me up to the morning tournament and again I played pretty damn well. I just never caught the hand I needed in the middle levels to get comfortable and I got knocked out in 12th place, just missing another final table.

I decided to call it a day at that point and went upstairs and crashed for several hours. I knew I was in no shape to sit down in a cash game and play right, but it still had ended up being 26 hours in a row of very good poker. The guys came upstairs around 2 or 3 am, Don polishing off about a 30 hour session and an overall very good trip. I was rested enough to go back downstairs and try and cap off a good trip during my last five hours at the Borgata. The room was fairly dead as it usually is at 3am on a weekday night, but a few tables were going and I got seated at a 1/2 table that was actually fairly good. One guy in particular was who I wanted to get into a pot with as he clearly thought himself the table captain and was not nearly that good. I spent the better part of an hour setting up a play on him, showing him down some mediocre hands and bluffs. Then another guy at the table busted him and all my work was for naught as he decided to call it a night. That basically broke our game and we combined two tables and I got seated at the end of the table with the four token bad drunks from Paramus or wherever they usually come from. The lone bright spot was the stacks they had in front of them. Two of them got picked off before long and then I got a bit of good fortune. A fairly tight player raises from early position to $10, and four other people call including one of the drunks who definitely thought of himself as a badass. I called from the big blind with K 10 of diamonds trying to hit a good flop. Board came out Qd Jh 8d, and I fired out $30 into the $61 pot and as the raiser was getting ready to call, the drunk announces with a flip of his hand, "I'm all-in." The raiser decides to muck, everyone else folds and I call with the straight draw, flush draw and an overcard. He had about $200 sitting in front of him and I'm hoping he isn't holding anything too good, and then like a dream he turns over 56 of diamonds. The board bricks out and I take down the pot with King-high. I made a bunch of top flushes during the next couple hours and then after announcing my last hand I look down at pocket kings, raise from UTG and got no action, and I ended the session by booking another winner of $400.

It's by far the best run I've had in as short a period of time since the third week of March when I went on a tear in tournaments on Full Tilt. I was really happy with how I played, and but for a couple of river cards I might have left New Jersey with about $2000 more in my pocket, but such is poker. I never got all my money in the middle as an underdog, and in the tournament I chopped, I may have played the best poker that I ever have. Aside from the usual breaks you have to catch in tournament poker, I just played really well. So hopefully that was an omen of things to come with my poker game.

I'll have another post soon on some of the more interesting hands I saw in tournament and ring game play for some discussion.

TILT

2005-11-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

Well, I was privy to just about the funniest thing I've seen in poker on Wednesday night. The usual group of us decided to get together and have a little birthday sit-n-go for our buddy Richard. We bought him in and then put a $50 bounty on his head for the evening. As has been the case lately, I was mostly cold-decked for the night. I finally got a spot to make a move on someone and he turned over his one good hand for the night, Aces versus my Ace-Queen, and I was crippled and out the next hand. Not surprisingly, I got knocked out holding Ace-Queen. I'm beginning to see what Negreanu and Doyle mean about that hand.

In any event, we get down to four handed play with JT, Matt, Richard and his brother Jack. Approximate chip counts are: JT with 1000, Richard with 600, Jack with 300 and Matt with 100. Richard picks up Presto (55) under the gun limps in with blinds at 15/30. Jack pitches his hand and JT goes in the tank for a minute. There had been a little glitch in Richard's routine before he bet which I guess made JT suspicious. He raises it to 90 and Richard immediately goes over the top all-in. Jack folds and JT has Richard count it down, after thinking for about twenty or thirty more seconds he calls.

I'll give you a second to determine what hand you think JT might hold in this situation.

And now I'll confirm that there is no earthly way you'll guess that he turned over J 8 of diamonds.

Jd8d versus 5h5s.

Flop comes 10c 7c 2s, turn is the 9s and Richard is now drawing dead.

The look on Richard's face when the 9 fell is something I will forever regret not having on videotape.

Beers: $12
Buy-in: $50
Calling your friend's all-in with J8 suited and busting him: Priceless

Richard stared at the board for about three minutes while the rest of us laughed our ass off, he got up, walked away and then came right back to look at the board again. Matt is dancing in his seat because he just made the money on some bullshit and JT cleaned up the two of them in about five minutes and Richard was still in shock as we cleaned up the place before leaving.

All I could think about as I watched this transpire was reading in BadBlood's blog the other day about a G-Vegas joke about the fictional character Bitch Suckleton. Richard sat down and got it broken off in him by Bitch Suckleton on Wednesday night.

We've got about five hours of talking about that hand ahead of us on the way up to AC on Sunday night.

My prediction: Richard is still on tilt, and if he sees J8 of diamonds while we're up in AC, he'll break out in hives.

Hold'em Burn Out

2005-11-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

It's been building for a while but last week I came down with a full blown case of hold'emitis. There's only so many calling stations, bad plays and lost races a man can sit through before he needs to shake things up and start playing other games for a while.

Been playing a lot of Omaha and Stud lately, even sneaking in a few heads-up HORSE matches with a buddy of mine. Trying to do just about anything to shake out of the poker doldrums before a possible AC trip next week. I've generally been happy with the way I've been playing hold'em lately, but the focus just hasn't been consistently there. One thing I am starting to notice is that I'm at least making a transition toward better play. There are definitely still a few glitches in my game but at the same time I'm pretty aware of what they are, the test is just breaking those habits hours into a session. As one of the common adages goes, anyone can play well for the first hour, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyhow, Uncle Rob has been clamoring for a shout-out and as I finally made it back to the Warehouse last week, I'll give him the dap he's searching for.

Rob has Q 10 in the big blind, $1/2 NL Hold'em with a ten handed table. There is an EP raise to $10 and two callers before it gets back to Rob. Rob calls and the flop comes down A J 5, he checks, raiser checks and the two others check as well. Turn is a K and Rob checks the nuts, the raiser fires out $25, the first caller reraises to $60, a fold and then Rob moves all-in for another $40 over the re-raise. The raiser calls as does the MP player and the river is a brick. Raiser mucks his cards and the other guy turns over AJ, tripling up Rob.

As usual Uncle Rob finds a way to salvage a down night at the 'Wood.

I really enjoyed Double As series of "How would you play it?" and am currently stockpiling hands to steal his idea and do the same thing here. Check it out if you get a chance, it was definitely good stuff.

You put your bad cards in, you pull the poker chips out...

2005-10-23T17:20:00.000-04:00

It's called the suckout, and that's what poker's all about...

At least that's what I feel like lately. And I have been just as guilty of it as the people I've been up against. I don't think I've seen any particularly good hands played but I have seen a whole lot of one and two outers hitting for the people around me.

I got whored out pretty good in the Blogger tourney on PokerStars, but I felt like I played the hand exactly right, so oh well. That's what happens when you go up against a bad player with a lot of chips.

I felt like I owed at least a small blurb and hopefully I'll have something a little more of note for discussion by Tuesday. I'll keep my eyes open for an interesting cash game hand tonight and tourney hand tomorrow.

Hand Discussion #1, Continued...

2005-10-15T22:46:00.000-04:00

Well, I had hoped for more than 2 comments, but they both get right to the chase of the mistake I made.

The original raiser is a very tight player so his leading right off with a bet sent alarms off in my head. My first reaction was that he had hit a higher set than me, unfortunately I just didn't listen to my gut and smooth called his bet. There was one more caller behind me.

Flop: 9c 8d 5c

Turn: 8c

Dammit! Paired the board... why did you have to pair the board, dealer!?!?!

Raiser leads out for $50 and I still couldn't get the fives out of my hand.

The river was a brick and he ended up having 99 in his hand for a better boat which cost me an additional $87 after the flop to see.

I completely misplayed this hand as I should have raised the flop to figure out where I was at. I still don't know that I wouldn't have called his reraise as I would have had him on either an overpair or a higher set, and I think it's incredibly hard to absolutely give credit for him having a higher set. But the action should have been dictated on the flop and not past it. I got myself pretty much stuck on the turn when I picked up a full house.

It was an $80 lesson in how to play a set with that kind of board, so I suppose I'd rather learn that lesson at these stakes than make the same mistake playing 5/10 NL.

Hand Discussion #1

2005-10-13T15:09:00.000-04:00

NL Hold'em:

You are late position with $170 in front of you.

Game is eight handed, blinds at $.50/$1. One early position raiser ($107 in front of him), generally a tight player; to $5, you look down at pocket fives.

Assuming a smooth call (please comment is you'd do something different), you get two callers behind you (both with stacks comparable to yours) and take a flop of:

9c 8d 5c.

First to act is the original raiser who makes it $15 to go. What do you do?

Will follow up with more of this hand after the first round of discussions. Please chime in...

A decent beginning...

2005-10-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

...of the week.

I've been feeling very confident with my game the last couple weeks, even though there has been a dearth of actual playing. Sunday night I popped in to one of the local games and actually had a pretty decent night, racking up a little more than $200 in wins for the night. That game is actually pretty interesting as we play a good mix of games from NL hold'em, NL Omaha Hi and Hi/Lo, $1/2 Stud and Razz. I lost a few big pots in Omaha Hi, which at No Limit is fairly insane, when Matt kept ringing me up with nut flushes to my second nut flushes or set over my set. I did get a measure of revenge when I had rolled up queens in stud to his rolled up tens. That was an action pot all the way to the river.

The next night we played the usual $40 sit-n-go and we were 11 handed. Here are the notable hands:

-Didn't play anything until I got AcJc on the button during the second orbit and I limped in with about six others. The flop came down Jack high with two clubs and checked around to me. I made a 2/3 pot bet and got called in two places. The turn was a brick and checked to me again, this time I bet about 30 and got called by both again. River is another brick, they both check, and I bet 45 this time and only get called by one. Turns out I was up again AJ and KJ, but the other AJ folded and I took down a decent sized pot

-Didn't play much for the next thirty minutes until I got pocket three's and tried to limp in with four other players. The BB was shortstacked and pushed for his remaining T100, he got called by the original raiser and the other three of us folded. Here's how the hands had shaken out:

AK - JJ - 44 - 55 - 33.

The flop came KK4, turn was 5, river was J. That was pretty interesting to watch, I would love to have seen that betting play out differently.

-Got bluffed off a decent hand and was getting shortstacked when I got Ah3h on the button and called with three others with blinds at 5/10 . Flop came with a 7h6h3c and PokerDon made it 75 to go from the BB, I pushed my remaining 131 into the middle and spiked an Ace on the river to make a better two pair than his 67 offsuit.

-Got aggressive and picked up some pots, made some very good reads and then the big hand of the night came when I raised five-handed with two black Aces. Footloose was the chipleader over me by about 80 chips and pushed his whole stack in. My heart rate accelerated to about 200 on that move, and the shortstack also moved in his last 130 in chips and I called. Footloose had Jacks and the shortstack had fours. My Aces held up and I had T1400 of the 2200 in play.

Got heads up pretty quickly with an 1800-400 advantage and was wearing him down with pressure when we got the money in with K4 suited, he had clubs and I had spades. Of course he made his flush but I was able to wear him back down and finally took him out about ten minutes later.

I had had a pretty good feeling about the tourney and was lucky to finally get cards at the end of the tournament instead of the beginning as had been the case as of late. Tonight I will be back at Lucky's to try and earn some more points toward their freeroll.

The next post will be a hand analysis in a few of the different games we've played lately, hopefully to get away from this monotonous crap I've been mostly posting lately.

If there's anything any readers might want to discuss, I'd love to hear about it, maybe generate some worthwhile discussion on here.

Hot damn...

2005-10-02T03:00:00.000-04:00

Two poker posts in a row.

First, a few housekeeping measures. A big thanks goes out to Professional Poker Player™ Chris Halverson who seems to be sending me the most traffic of late. Also, I signed up for the PokerStars Internet Blogger tourney... it came with the correct price tag. So here's the necessary mojo for that:

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 2058511

Okay, so onto local poker news. I have moved on from playing poor poker to taking horrible runner-runner beats when I'm a 90% favorite in hands. That's a lovely change. After reading PokerGrub's blog, I can at least take a little solace in the fact that I'm not alone.

Tuesday I played one of the local ring games and was a little rusty. Tried playing a little Power Poker, forgetting of course that when you play PowerPoker against people who call with anything, you are up against the PowerPoker kryptonite. But I was at least happy with the fact that my reads were usually on point, even if I ended up on the wrong end of things a few times. Thursday night I went to play in the weekly tournament series at Lucky's. I had come in 23rd out of 56 the week before when I got absolutely no cards. It's become very apparent that if you have at least tripled up by the time you get to level two in this thing, you are in serious trouble. This time I came out on top of my game. I went out on level two when I got my first real hand of the night, pocket Aces. I raised and got called by a girl who had somehow accumulated a lot of chips, but I was new to the table. Flop came Q94 and felt a sense of impending doom. She was first to act and moved me all-in. I called and she turned over J9, spiked another nine on the turn and that was all she wrote for me. I watched a little longer and figured out she had gotten all those chips by bad beating people all night. I'd love her move if I thought for even a minute that she knew she was making a power play. Oh well.

So on Thursday's first hand I get a small suited Ace in the cutoff with five other limpers. Ten high flop checks all the way around so I try and take it down and get one caller. He stays with me to the river and my Ace high takes it over his King-Queen. I bluff the next two pots with draws and still take them down. So in the first three hands I've basically doubled up. At that point James comes over to let me know he's busted out already. The very next hand I get Ace-King in middle position. There's an early position raiser who gets called by the guy sitting next to me. Blinds are 25/50 and she's made it T200. I've played with her a few times now and she's a very solid player (and #1 in the points standings overall) but I sense a little weakness in her hand. I reraise up to T500, she calls and the other guy moves in over the top of that with his last 100 in chips. We both call and the pot is laying at T1875. The flop comes K 4 3 rainbow and I have about T900 remaining so when she checks, I move all-in. I had her on a pair between 77-JJ and after my push she gets out of the way. The other guy turns up QJ offsuit and after she sees my hand she kind of acknowledges she was beat after the flop, so I feel good about my read on her. He proceeds to run out 10-Ace for Broadway and I'm left with my 900 which is about what I started with.

He gets wild and takes down a few more big pots from other people and someone gets moved into the seat on my left, suddenly I'm stuck between two big stacks. For the next two hours I never get my stack above T1400 but manage to duck and weave my way out of trouble until I just miss the final table, going out in 11th. I went out with Ace-Jack versus Ace-five suited, and he hit his five on the flop, picked up his draw on the turn and I never improved. At least I'm accumulating enough points to get into the final freeroll.

I then went over to play some more ring game with the guys and promptly had Aces cracked by pocket tens when I got Richard to move into me and he caught a running Q-9 to make a straight. A few more tough beats and I was busted to the tune of about $175, so I decided I'd had enough. Still happy to be playing generally well, and definitely a marked improvement over my play from August.

Still dealing with some illness in the family and whatnot, so poker has been about the last thing on my list which has contributed to a lack of posting. Hopefully things can get back to normal soon.

That's all for now, I'm sure I'll have something more constructive than bad beats to post soon.

At least I hope...

Wait for it...

2005-09-21T16:56:00.000-04:00

You may need to sit down.

This post... is about poker.

There hasn't been a whole lot of it in my life lately, but last week I finally made it out to a weekly tournament series one of the local bars is hosting. Fifty six players get seated every week and the winner gets a prize. At the end the sixteen weekly winners and top forty point winners behind them get into a final freeroll and the winner gets a trip to AC and some spending money. Not too shabby for some free poker.

A few guys I play with also showed up but it was a pretty random gathering and I was unsure of what to expect. You start out with T950 and blinds at 25/50 for 45 minutes. I love the initial structure but it continued as follows: 50/100 (45 mins), 100/200 (45 mins), 200/400 (45 mins), 400/800 (30 mins), 800/1600 (30 mins), 1600/3200 (30 mins), etc. By the last few levels poker was over and it was a shoving match.

As seems to be the case in my tournament game as of late, good cards came early and awful cards came late. The first table I sat at, I didn't know anyone. I picked up 69 of spades in the big blind and saw the flop for "free", flopping an open end straight draw (OESD) and a flush draw. It checked around to me, I bet at it and got one caller. Same thing on the turn and I finally moved him off on the river after completely missing everything.

A couple hands later I picked up pocket fours in a four handed pot and flopped a four on a queen high board. I was first to act and led out, got raised and when the action moved back around to me, I reraised him. He moved all-in after thinking for a few minutes and when I called he turned over Q4 for top and bottom pair. Now I've basically doubled up in the first ten minutes. I picked up Kings the very next hand but only got action from a short stack who had just gotten demolished by pocket Kings a couple hands earlier, leaving her with only 200 in chips.

I have the big stack at the table but there's another player with enough chips for me to be wary of. I pick up K6 of spades in the cutoff and decide to try and bully the table a little when two people limp in in front of me, so I raise it up to T200. I get called by both limpers and the big blind, so I'm pretty much ready to pitch my hand after the flop when it comes down: 6... 6... K. Yahtzee! Big blind checks, first limper bets 300 and the second limper raises to 600. I try to decide what to do for a minute as I'm pretty sure I can get the raiser all-in with me but no clue what the other guys might do. I decide to reraise him all-in, they both fold and the raiser calls his final 800 in, turning over AK. He was none too pleased with my hand. He didn't get any miracle cards and went away on mega-tilt.

Little did I know how much he would help me because he basically went around the bar to all his friends still playing for the next thirty minutes telling everyone what a horrible player I was, staying in with a K6. Nothing important came my way for a while, but I was able to pick up pots here and there from players who I now know were thinking I was playing K6 every hand. In the middle levels I got my money in to knock shortstacks out three times, each time with the best hand, and each time I got rivered. So I basically stayed stagnant and all the money ended up on my table. The top four stacks out of about 26 remaining players were all at the same table. The last big hand of the night for me came with 10 people left when I got K6 of spades in the big blind. The small blind minimum raised to 3200, and with two other people in the pot also, I took a shot and called his raise, and they both did as well. The guy had been raising with some crazy hands all night trying to knock people out, so I certainly felt I could be ahead. The flop came out Q 10 6 with two spades and he immediately moved all-in for his remaining 2000 in chips. I called, the other two folded, and he turned over 45 offsuit... caught him in a stone cold bluff. K6 of spades was very, very good to me that night, and I took down my last big pot of the night.

I then went pretty much card dead as the blinds rocketed up. I managed my stack and made it to fourth before I finally got blinded into a bad situation and didn't get lucky. 4th out of 56 though, I'm not too disappointed. I felt like I played very well the entire night. I never made a single mistake which felt nice. I just didn't get cards when I needed them at the end, and the blind structure forced my hand in a couple situations where I probably wouldn't have played otherwise.

Hopefully tomorrow will go as well and I can post yet another poker related topic.

Hail to the Redskins!

2005-09-20T04:27:00.000-04:00

Though some of my friends deride my belief in my team, I have generally possessed acceptable expectations of what they might acheive. Only once in the last six years have I believed that we had a plus .500 team, that was in 2000, and well... I would rather not get into how that team performed. But I have always firmly adhered to the belief that it takes about three years for a coach to successfully implement their system. Unfortunately, we've not had the same coach for three years in quite some time. Year two is supposed to be a building block and maybe, if a few breaks go your way, a playoff year if you have the right talent.

And for the longest time it has appeared that the Skins have had all the talent except at the quarterback position.

As I discussed with a lot of my friends and family this week, I had a more optimistic view of things after Brunell replaced Ramsey. Is Brunell the same quarterback he was when he took the Jags to two AFC championship games? No. I don't expect that of him at 35. Does he still posses enough talent to take a team to the playoffs? Yes.

When my more cycnical conversation partners asked what it was I thought made Brunell more serviceable than Ramsey I offered them the following: brains and legs. My brother made an offhand comment while we talked on his birthday about how Brunell's arm might fall off he was so old. After kindly reminding him that he was actually older than Brunell, I also offered that while it wasn't great, I didn't think his arm was that bad, either.

Ramsey has the undeniably stronger arm. But one year taking blitzes in Spurrier's offensive scheme broke him. Absolutely, unavoidably ruined him as a quarterback. I hope I'm wrong and that next year when he isn't with the Skins, he'll find a team and be successful (in the AFC). But Brunell can do two things that Ramsey can't: he can run himself out of trouble and he can make the smart decision. Ramsey always seemed panicked in the pocket and more often than not was launching an ill-advised pass that somehow ended up in a defender's hands instead of out of bounds.

Last night I saw something promising. I sat through fifty six minutes of misery. Fifty six minutes of sitting next to Cowboys fans and their celebrating and their taunting and their glee. Fifty six minutes of Skins' offensive penalty after penalty. Fifty six minutes of the Cowboys punter defying sheer physics and statistical probability by pinning the Skins deep inside the 10 yard line again and again and again. Fifty six minutes of horrible football that somehow the Redskins didn't let turn into a rout. And then it happened.

3rd and 27. The blitz is on and Brunell takes off for his life... running improbably for 10... 15... 25 yards.

4th and 2. Brunell drops back, lofts a soft pass to Thrash and it's a 20 yard 1st down.

4th and 15. Brunell drops back again, and suddenly rips a pass down the middle... I stand up in the middle of the bar and quietly whisper, "please God," and the ball falls between two defenders into Moss' hands and the Skins have scored.

I looked at my friends and told them that I was just satisfied that they could get the ball in the end zone. But with more than three minutes to go, and two timeouts, I held out some glimmer of hope that this incredible defense would hold once more and give the Skins a chance. And they did.

The Skins get the ball on their 30 yard line, 1st and ten. Brunell drops back to pass, and suddenly unleashes a bomb down the middle... I stand up in the middle of the bar and quietly whisper, "please God," and the ball threads between two Cowboy defenders into Moss' hands and he sprints into the end zone for a 70 yard touchdown. The Redskins have the lead.

A Bob Uecker-like call from Major League blares in my brain, "the Skins win it! the Skins win it! OH MY GOD, the Skins win it!!!"

But there's more than two minutes to go and I've seen this before. Patrick Crayton, Clint Longley... I've seen the Cowboys come away with enough improbable last second wins to think that this time will be no different. Hell, Dave Campo beat us, am I supposed to believe Bill Parcells can't cook up another flea flicker play to win?

And everytime it looked like the Cowboys had done it, fate intervened. A first down called back by a holding penalty. A pass just a yard shy of a first down until a missle called Sean Taylor blows up the receiver (forcing a fumble, despite what that referee may have believed) and an incomplete pass is called. A punt that stays in bounds and wastes 14 precious seconds off the Cowboys' dwindling chances. And a final perfect open field tackle, a yard shy of a first down, to end the game.

So this is what it feels like?

14-13 is a score with lore for me. But that's a story for another time. 14-13, I couldn't have dreamed it more perfectly.

Brunell saved it with some patience and some smarts, with his legs and with an arm that I may have been underestimating by the looks of it.

2-0. There's a lot of football left and 2-14 isn't out of the question.

After all those years of disappointment, Tom Boswell of the Post summed it up best I think.

"At game's end, Gibbs's face was beaming with joy, a sight seldom seen for
regular season games in his Hall of Fame heyday. Parcells seemed blanched as he
walked toward midfield, while Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wandered around the
field as if lost. Why, this was the night the Cowboys had devoted halftime to
inducting Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith into their sacred Ring of
Honor. How dare the Redskins spoil it?

Heh, heh."

There's something promising indeed. I endured fifty six minutes of a horrible attempt at sport to watch the Redskins play sixty minutes of football. I watched a team that refused to quit.

Hail to the Redskins.

Hail Victory.

Hurricane, part two...

2005-09-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

Now onto the more topical discussion of the "failures" of our government and what else went wrong in New Orleans. I waited a week to get into this so I could hopefully let my high emotions peter out a bit and try to deal more in the facts as we understand them at this point. As an editorial note I should state that thought I am an independent, I do skew in many cases more toward the right, as I'm sure will be apparent in some of my analysis. Also, I will be adding links and corrections into this post as they become available/apparent.

On to the timeline:

Friday, August 26th

-Katrina passes over south Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico, re-intensifying into a hurricane
-Gov. Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana

Saturday, August 27th

-Katrina continues to intensify and move along its west/northwest track towards New Orleans
-Pres. Bush declares a state of emergency exists in Louisiana retroactive to the 26th, authorizing FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts
-Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco leave a voluntary evacuation order in place overnight

Sunday, August 28th

-in the overnight hours, Katrina has jumped from a category two to a category five storm with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph and pressure of 902mb, on a direct path to New Orleans
-Mayor Nagin changes to a mandatory evacuation order for New Orleans in the early morning

Monday, August 29th

-Katrina begins its push onshore as a category four storm, but takes a slight jog to the east, moving the eye east of New Orleans, sparing the city the worst of the hurricane initially
-Pres. Bush declares a major disaster exists in the affected states, freeing up more federal resources to be deployed
-At some point late in the evening, the 17th street canal levee is breached and Lake Pontchartrain begins to flood the eastern part of New Orleans

Tuesday, August 30th

-Katrina has moved out of Mississippi by mid-morning but flooding from breached levees continues in New Orleans, most notable the 17th street canal levee

Wednesday, August 31st

-New Orleans is declared an incident of national signficance by the Department of Homeland Security, clearing the way for rapid deployment of all federal resources to the area
-Evacuation of the Superdome begins in the evening and continues into the overnight hours
-Water stops rising as levels inside that part of the city are now equal to Lake Pontchartrain

Thursday, September 1st

-After a brief interruption due to security concerns in the morning, the Superdome evacuation continues throughout the day
-Crews begin repairing the levee breach at the 17th street canal

Friday, September 2nd

-A large convoy enters New Orleans in the morning, fanning out to the Superdome and the beleaguered Convention Center
-the Superdome evacuation is larely completed as well as evacuation of the Convention Center in the single largest effort ever of its kind on American soil

*********

Analysis:

My initial reaction to Gov. Blanco of Louisiana was not positive. In the press conferences prior to and directly after the hurricane, she seemed overwhelmed and leaning heavily on the directions of those around her. That first impression seems to be borne out by the stories that are starting to come out now. It is apparently at the suggestion of President Bush late on Saturday during a phone conversation that she finally decides to make evacuation mandatory.

When she declares a state of emergency in Louisiana on Friday and then turns to the federal government to activate their relief efforts, the state has not completed critical parts of its own emergency response plan. With the state under a voluntary evacuation, the following steps are required:

1. Activate EOC and prepare for 24-hour operations.
2. Put State Departments and the ARC on standby alert in accordance with OEP Implementing Procedures.
3. Put National Guard units on standby alert.
4. Call all nursing homes and other custodial care organizations in the risk areas to insure that they are prepared to evacuate their residents.
5. Alert FEMA of the situation and advise that the State may need Federal assistance.
6. Establish communications with risk area parish EOCs and test all communications means, including conference call procedures.
7. Prepare a proclamation of emergency for the State so that, when needed, State resources can be mobilized to support risk area evacuation and host area sheltering operations.

Furthermore, the local parishes are to prepare transportation services to be implemented as needed and announce the location of staging areas from which people lacking their own means of transportation will be evacuated. The state is required to aid the parishes with any of these principles that they cannot meet.

When the order is switched to mandatory, the following standards go into effect for the parishes:
1. Coordinate evacuation orders with State and other risk parishes.
2. Instruct persons living in designated evacuation zones to leave.
3. Impose traffic control to funnel persons to designated evacuation routes.
4. Designate staging areas and other facilities as last resort refuges. People at these locations who cannot be evacuated in time to avoid the storm will remain and take refuge in the designated buildings.
5. Assist persons with mobility limitations to find last resort refuge. Mobilize all transportation resources and request assistance from the state as needed.
6. Continue to update EAS and news media with evacuation information at two-hour intervals.

Following are the state's guidelines:

1. Continue 24-hour EOC operations.
2. Consult with risk area parishes to finalize mandatory 01/00 III-6 evacuation orders.
3. Implement mandatory evacuation traffic controls. Convert specified limited access routes to one-way outbound operations. Control main evacuation routes with State resources.
4. Direct the evacuation and shelter of persons having mobility limitations, including persons in nursing homes, hospitals, group homes and non-institutionalized persons.
5. Keep neighboring states informed of status and traffic control decisions.
6. Keep EAS evacuation and shelter information updated on a two-hour basis, or more frequently if information is available on a timelier basis.
7. Keep media informed and updated on evacuation and shelter information.

All of this information is directly out of the Louisiana state emergency response plans which can be found at the following links:

Louisiana State Emergency Operations Plan - 2005

Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan

Southwest Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan

Shelter Plan

I highlighted in red those directives which I found to be most significant to saving lives prior to a storm. The directive in blue is highlighted to illustrate another point on which the state failed to follow through on its responsibility. And the italicized directive in the first section also illustrates the failure of state follow through.

The picture that emerges out of these details is that the state started down its emergency response but then failed to act on its most important points. The government, at all levels, knew well in advance that if New Orleans needed to be evacuated, there would be nearly one hundred thousand residents who would lack the capability to evacuate by their own means. This is why the state had staging areas designated, so that these residents could travel to these areas where they could then get transportation out of the area to shelters elsewhere. The Superdome is one of these locations. However, by delaying a mandatory evacuation order, the governor cost the state about eighteen to twenty four hours more time that could have been used to get people out. What's even more amazing, is that with all those thousands of people standing outside the Superdome to get checked in to the shelter on Sunday, no one thought to just start pulling buses up and getting them out. Instead, the state put them into a corral where they could be as safe as possible, without providing food, water or other material. The Superdome was not meant to be a shelter, it was meant to be a last refuge. A place where the few who were not able to be evacuated in time could ride out the storm.

The pictures have started to show up in the general media. Photos of parish school buses underwater, photos of the city's transit buses in the depot underwater, and yet, no one has yet stepped forward to explain why these resources weren't used to get at least twenty or thirty thousand citizens out before the storm hit. Approximately five hundred and thirty five buses at last count that were left sitting, nearly half of which are located in a depot just one mile from the Superdome. I'd like to repeat that for you, nearly one half of which are located one mile from the Superdome. Hospitals were not evacuated prior to the storm, even though it is explicitly stated in the response plan that they should be among the first taken out of harm's way.

Now we can start to move onto FEMA. There seems to me a great misconception in the general public and in the media about what exactly it is FEMA does. It is not a federal organization that provides the material for assistance in times of disaster. Rather, FEMA is a coordinating agency that provides the link between the state and federal government to fulfill requests for materials that the state cannot provide itself. Further, FEMA helps the state to coordinate the resources it does have at its disposal and get them into the necessary areas while also bringing together organizations such as the American Red Cross with the state to provide aid.

Details are now beginning to emerge that once again, it was the lack of direction from the state of Louisiana that prevented some of the pre-coordinated response from getting to the people in the city of New Orleans. The American Red Cross has been, and continues to be, prevented from entering the city of New Orleans to provide aid. Some aid was provided to those residents stuck at the Superdome and Convention Center, however. But it seems that because the national guard, under the direction of the state, would not allow relief organizations into the city, vast amounts of prepositioned relief could not be brought to bear.

I do want to point out, though, that I am not completely excusing FEMA from any responsibility in the insane delays of getting help to people. FEMA is now a part of a broad new agency in the Department of Homeland Security. The creation of this department has added several new layers of beauracracy that only serve to slow down response in situations like this. Several instances of this have occurred in the post-Katrina aftermath. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, FEMA officials delayed the release of needed ice and water from a warehouse because they had not yet received a phone call from the appropriate official in Washington.

No effort of this magnitude can be served well by having so many layers of clearance to get through. Here is where I find my greatest fault with FEMA director Mike Brown and Secretary Mike Chertoff of Homeland Security. In situations such as these, it is the mark of clear leadership to cut through these kinds of delays and red tape to streamline the recovery effort. And only now, after so many days of missteps, are those streamlines beginning to be put into place. If the state and federal governments are at odds in working together, then a good leader will find the optimum solution to working around those impasses. It seems quite clear that those at the federal level are having as much trouble as the state officials in moving beyond the turf war and on to helping out the people.

I will address more in a third post to come...

Hurricane, part one...

2005-09-03T03:22:00.000-04:00

I first got interested in hurricanes and meteorology when I was thirteen years old. I was on vacation with my family and some friends in Ocean City, Maryland, and about halfway through our trip Hurricane Bob had formed. It was the first time I had ever seen waves so high or the ocean so menacing off the beaches of eastern Maryland. After returning home I quickly began learning everything I could about hurricanes and essentially every other kind of natural disaster that could occur. But my particular fascination was with hurricanes. I could remember the scenes from the news of Hurricane Hugo's demolition of Charleston in 1989 and quickly was filling my head with images of past disasters like the Galveston hurricane of 1900. A year later it was Hurricane Andrew that came and devastated south Florida. I can still see the pictures of Homestead in my mind, flattened, timber everywhere as though a giant hand had come down and swept everything off the land.

Like anything you discover at thirteen it does at some point begin to tail off as you grow up, but it always stuck in the back of my mind. Whenever hurricane season came around I would watch with avid fascination the development and results of these storms. My interest would be stoked again once I got to college and two smaller hurricanes affected even the Richmond area where I was in school. First Fran and then Bonnie, they came and it was my first experience with even the outskirts of one of these powerful storms. The longevity of the wind and rain were an experience unlike any thunderstorm I had ever experienced. It was only a few weeks after Bonnie that Hurricane Mitch roared through the Carribean and slammed into Central America. One of my best friends was from Honduras and the category five storm slammed into her country and brought devastation the likes of which we now witness here. I remember the efforts that were coordinated to send any kind of aid we could down there, and hearing the stories of washed out roads and missing friends that came in from her family down there afterwards. It was my first brush with the fringes of the human toll that these storms can take.

And for awhile, my contact with these storms, thankfully, was limited to the occasional television coverage. Then in 2003, Hurricane Isabel came ashore and roared well into Virginia as a category one hurricane. It was with a certain mixture of curiosity, excitement and fear that I waited along with my roommates for what would happen. We happened to catch a few lucky breaks. Our power lines were buried and we never lost power throughout the night but for a few brief interruptions here and there. We had alerted our landlord to some of the dangerously tall and dead trees that loomed over the house and had the worst one cut down. While we sat in the family room and watched the news coverage of the storm that night, we all at one point felt suddenly compelled to check outside. The winds had shifted no more than thirty minutes before that and as we peered outside, one of the other gigantic trees in the yard had finally given way and toppled over across our yard and the neighbors. But for thirty minutes or not having the foresight to get that one tree cut down, either one would have come crashing down into that family room where we all sat. Providence was all around us that day. We did have the water cutoff and it would remain off for several days following the storm. My parents and my brother and his family had lost power in their part of the city just eight miles to the south and it would remain off for even longer. Driving north with my brother in the days after the storm up to Washington, D.C. and then on to New Jersey, I was astonished by the destruction Isabel had wrought as it travelled up I-95. The trees knocked down, the flooding in Baltimore and Alexandria, the power off for as far as we had driven, stopping in towns up and down 95 trying to find a place to get a hot meal. Things that you imagine being simple, like a salad, you couldn't find because there was no water to wash the lettuce.

The scummy feeling of not having showered for days and not being able to enjoy any of the comforts of life that we take for granted every day is something I still remember. It would not be long before I would be reminded again of nature's inherent power. My parents purchased a home on the west coast of Florida, south of Tampa, in the spring of 2004. It was a house directly across the street from the same family with whom we had been vacationing in Ocean City back in 1991 when Bob loomed over the east coast. In the middle of August, Charley appeared and took direct aim at that area, veering instead at the last moment to the south and bringing great destruction to Punta Gorda and trailing across the state. We breathed a sigh of relief that our friends and the house had been largely spared. A week later the remnants of Hurricane Gaston, barely a tropical depression, moved slowly out of North Carolina into Virginia. I had just returned from Las Vegas and a friend's bachelor party about fifteen hours before when I saw the story about the storm coming toward Richmond. I knew it would be a lot of wind and rain and decided to leave work early so I wouldn't get caught in the traffic on my way home, downtown.

I was living on the fifth floor of a restored warehouse at the time. I got home at about 2pm that day, and at 3:15pm the power went out. I watched out the window as the sky grew dark, and darker, almost impossibly so. And the rain started coming down, steady and droning against the top of the building over my apartment. It drummed on the roof as I waited, thinking sooner or later the power would come back on. Then the wind started blowing and then blowing harder. I could see out over part of the city from my window and as I watched the impossible seemed to be happening, the storm was getting stronger over land. The winds were howling and the rain was coming down in sheets and I started receiving calls from friends in other parts of town. One of them asked me about the flooding downtown that her brother was stuck in, and I, having not ventured out of my apartment yet, had no idea what was going on. I got off the phone and decided to head out to see what it was like. I opened the door to the stairwell and water was pouring down from the roof to the lobby. There was about an inch of water when I got to the first floor and headed outside. My building overlooked a canal off of the James River, and I-95 spanned over the river about a quarter mile away. Traffic was at a dead standstill, and the canal had spilled over out of its banks and there was about four feet of water on the road below. I walked a few blocks to the east and suddenly I could not go any further as there was what I would later find out twelve feet of water piling up at this end of the city. A flood wall had been erected to prevent the James from again flooding the city as had happened many times in Richmond's past. Only now, as water poured down from the hills surrounding this part of downtown, the flood wall was keeping the water in.

I went back to my apartment for a while and the realities of what a storm is really like started to hit home. During Isabel I had never gone through the uncertainty of being completely unaware of what is actually happening. In the dark, alone, listening as the wind whips across the roof of the building above me and wondering when is it going to stop. I called my parents who were visiting family in New Jersey to let them know I was okay because I was certain it would make the national news. They hadn't heard about it yet, but fifteen minutes later it was on the national news. Parts of downtown Richmond were under twelve to fifteen feet of water and throughout the area flooding was causing widespread panic and damage. People had been caught in the evening drive home and had been forced to abandon their cars on the roads and walk home in knee or waist deep water. The rains finally began to taper off around nine o'clock that night. I decided to try and get out and head to my parents' house just outside the city. I got in my car which I had for some reason not parked in the garage but on the street by the building, which meant that my car was not flooded in. Unfortunately, my part of the city was.

There had been fourteen inches of rain in around one hour at the height of the storm. All that water had runoff from the hills of the city that surround the Bottom and piled up. Emergency crews were launching boats to rescue people trapped in offices and restaurants. A mudslide had blocked four roads that led out of the area with about two to three feet of mud, a sinkhole had wiped out two more, and all the other roads were underwater. One road was clear the next day and I got out to my parents' house, along the way passing the destruction that the flood had wrought. Cars piled on top of cars piled on top of buildings. Trash and debris everywhere, some roads still impassable and dramatic stories of overnight rescues filled the news. People who had been trapped in their car by suddenly rising water or at home when a lake spilled over its banks and the courageous rescuers who plucked them from danger and delivered them safely.

And now I sit and watch the news of the last few days and my greatest fears of what might happen seem to be unfolding before my very eyes. When the storm was about a day from making landfall and was a part of many conversations I was having with friends, I was saying that I believed it would be a disaster that would prove worse than September 11th. In the shock of that day it's so hard to imagine anything could ever be more devastating. But when the death toll is finally released, I firmly expect casualties to be double or more of that day of tragedy. A major city has been lost to flooding, almost a million people are suddenly jobless and we face at least a temporary energy crisis of some kind. There are lots of fingers pointing and I'll probably get into that stuff in my next post, as politics runs up there in my top five topics of conversation, but I am still stuck thinking about all those people, and the fear they must have had as Katrina came ashore. Suddenly realizing that this storm was going to be completely unlike any they had been through before and now there was nothing they could do about it. I take the fears that I had during Isabel and Gaston and multiply them by about one thousand to try and start to process how it must have been for those on the Gulf coast.

My prayers and thoughts are with them all, I have already made one donation to the Red Cross and I encourage anyone else who hasn't yet to do so.

The Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org
800-HELP-NOW

Anything you can contribute will help.

A little break...

2005-08-25T14:39:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately "real life" sometimes creeps in and rears its ugly head, so it may be a while before there is anything to post on here again. Haven't played in over a week now and probably won't for the next week or so either. So now I can do my August evaluation and come to the simple conclusion that I played like absolute shit this month. I'd say about 30% of the losses were just bad situations or tough breaks, but the vast majority of my losses this month were out and out bad decisions. Like, monumentally bad decisions that should have been very easy to get away from. Hopefully the time off will get the head screwed back on straight in time to get back to AC at the end of September.

Hear's to hoping everyone else is doing well and the tables are treating you right... I'll probably be checking back in around a week from now...

AC Trip Report

2005-08-20T13:36:00.000-04:00

Well... I guess there are good and bad things to take away from this trip. Overall I think I played well, with one mind-boggling and glaring exception. It seems like everytime I got ahead at the table, I took a pretty awful beat and then a little while later ran into a big hand and lost my buy-in.

The first night we played at Bally's poker room, which wasn't much to to speak of. It had about fifteen or so tables in it, with about five going at any one time. Played for about 13 hours and basically fluctuated between $200-400 for most of the night. I ran into a few hands in a row where I got to the turn and had to pitch so I was down to about $175 when my last hand of the night came up. It got to me in the cut off with AcQd, and three limpers in front of me. I raised to $10 and got called by the small blind and one of the original limpers. The flop came Queen high with two clubs and it checked to me where I bet $30, the small blind called and the other player folded. The turn was a third club and the small blind checked again, this time I led out for $50 with TPTK and the nut flush draw, the small blind called again. The river was a brick and the small blind checked again, so I moved in for my last $85 and the small blind makes an uncomfortable face and calls turning over KK for the win.

The weird thing about it was that he definitely wasn't happy about calling the whole way, even at the end. Just a bad situation I guess, still kind of confused by his play because it really didn't seem like he was trying to slow roll me at all. The same thing happened to me the next day at the Borgata when a guy limped his Kings from the seat after me and I was leading into him the whole way. At least he meant to slow roll it to start with, but he also was putting his money in begrudingly on the river. So I lost $400 to Kings on two hands during my first 25 or so hours of poker in AC.

The last night at the Borgata started off pretty damn well and before I knew it I was up $600 after flopping the nuts about four out of five hands in a row. Take a tough beat when I got my Aces cracked by a double belly buster on the river, and after that hand my night pretty much slowed and went downhill. Lost a big pot with two pair versus a straight, and another one win a huge draw didn't get there. I was still up when I made a monumental error with AQ when I made two pair against a new player to the table. Not even worth writing about how that hand went down, I misplayed it from the turn onward and it cost me dearly. After that hand I was basically back to my orginial buy-in for the night and the table was quite simply full of awful poker players, but they kept hitting their 82's and their J4's, so I ended up losing about $60 on the last 13 hours there.

But I felt pretty comfortable playing in a casino with random players which was good to find out. And I did make some good plays and good reads, so all in all, I'm not upset with how it went. Heading back in September during the WPT event, hopefully I'll make some progress then.

I'm trying to remember some of the silly things I saw happen while I was there, I'll compile those for another post in a day or two.

My stupidity... a hand re-analysis...

2005-08-19T19:18:00.000-04:00

I got savaged by another blogger. Woohoo! His analysis is mostly correct of my post but I thought I'd take a little time to answer in some regard. I write this blog as a hobby, share some thoughts on how I play and any sometimes ridiculous things that happen outside of poker, too. I would, on many days, love to make my living doing this for the rest of my life. I just got back from Atlantic City and playing live in a casino for the first time. As bad as I am at this game still, the overwhelming majority of people are worse. Stunningly so. The hand that Oddjack chose to write about, I horribly misplayed. I wrote the post right when I got back and did it as a way of explaining to a friend of mine where I was at with the hand since we didn't talk about it before I left.

Of course, there are a couple assumptions that are easier for me to make about the players I'm playing with (that I play with four to five times a week every week for about six months now) and thus how to approach that hand than might happen where I don't know the players. Are there a lot of things that are scary about that board? Absolutely. Do I know what the players I'm playing against will do with hands that I'm worried about in that situation? Yes. The players I didn't know were the ones who had flopped the straight. I will delve further into the psychology I had on the hand though.

Can two pair call my all-in? No, at least not if they're smart. Leaving aside the questionable move of pushing with two pair in this situation, by pushing I should knock out anyone holding KQ or KJ. And if my push doesn't do it, then certainly the call by the guy holding Aces after me should. It also pushes out hands like the J10 that Don was holding that could be drawing to the straight. The guy holding 9-10 is an awful position when it gets back around to him, at that point it's hard to believe someone isn't holding A-10 or 10-9 also, so the best you're hoping for is a split and most likely you're beat. It's not easy, but I think pitching the 10-9 there makes the most sense. You've only lost $37, and best case scenario is you're splitting everyone's money, worst is that you're beat too. Calling the second over the top all-in with Aces is pretty awful too. Even though you've already put a lot of money in, he loses another $120 or so drawing almost completely dead.

Had I gone ahead and simply called the $25, I probably would only have lost $37 in the hand. The most prudent play, as Maigrey wrote in her analysis of the hand, is to try and get in on the cheap and catch the Queen or Jack on the turn. Of course the turn brought a nine, so if I had gotten there cheap, I definitely could have pitched the cards after that. I learned the hard way, by making the mistake. As for my thoughts about all-in on the turn, well that was kind of a useless assumption. But I prefer to be in control of the betting on the hand in case I am up against one of the other two pairs that could be out there.

As for my game, I've still got a lot to learn. Hell, I've only been playing for about five months with any real consistency. Should I have lost all my money on that hand, absolutely. As far as me not having hubris, spare me the diatribe, Oddjack. Or perhaps I should say, "Hi pot, I'm kettle, nice to meet you." Because from your post it's obvious someone else is making grand presumptions as well. I share things on this site so people I know can learn from them. I don't care about it being embarassing or otherwise. I've made the comparison in a post on here before, and I'll go back to it now, poker and golf share a lot of similarities. I'm drawing from memory on the percentages, so I may be a little off, but I'm pretty sure I remember. 95% of all golfers can't break 95. Scratch golfers make up .2% of all golfers, players that break 80 make up a little over 1% and players that break 90 are in the top three percent of all golfers. That was something out of Golf Digest a few years ago. Poker is fairly similar in my estimation. You choose the following quote to try and take a shot at me:

"But like 99% of the public, I don’t expect that you’d actually understand
all that you don’t know about poker, which is a good thing. That means me and my
friends will continue to get paid handsomely for a while to come."

Maybe it's more like 98%, but I wouldn't change my statement in any way, shape or form. Most people see poker being played and once they have the rules down think they have an understanding of the game. Anyone who plays the game with any consistency or desire may begin to understand more intricacies and start to understand how much they don't know yet. I fall in Group B. The simple fact remains I know I can beat a $1/2 No Limit game pretty consistently and there are plenty of players there that I'm better than, so much so that I could probably make a good living at it... well, since quite frankly I already do. There's a difference between arrogance and understanding.

The part I find most entertaining though, and the one thing in the entire post that I take most exception to: "We’ll give you even money he was even wearing sunglasses at the time."

Fuck you, Oddjack, I'm insulted to even be considered that guy. I have never, and will never, be that guy at the table.

But anytime you'd like a shot Oddjack, keep track of my blog, I let everyone know where I'm gonna be playing poker at, come sit at a table with me. I've got no problem with that.

Can't... hold... on...

2005-08-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

...to a damn lead in a tournament to save my life.

I knocked out two people in the first twenty minutes last night, and had more than tripled my stack before the end of the 2nd level... naturally, I ended up in 4th place, the dreaded bubble. Just went absolutely card dead after the second hour and had three hands where I ended up running into sets that did me in. All in all, though, my tournament game appears to be just fine and hopefully that means good things for a few of those daily tournaments at the Borgata next week.

Poker trips appear to be limitless in the coming months as people are lining up fall visits to Vegas and AC. Have poker, will travel. WPT Borgata Poker Open in September, WPT Festa Del Lago at the Bellagio in October (I believe) and back to AC for the WSOP Circuit event at Harrah's in December.

Las Vegas seems so, so tempting every day... but for now I'll hold off. It might be worth a shot for a year sometime soon though... who's with me?

Adjustments made...

2005-08-10T18:18:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I got way too loose last week but after a good end of week poker check-up, I'm now back on track and have made back about half of what I lost last week. One of the biggest differences between last week and this week has been hitting my draws finally. Sparky was at the 'Wood last night for what seems to be his monthly appearance and I busted him three times. That's always enjoyable and PokerDon got $200 out of him for a phone call. Yes, a phone call.

We're all sitting around and Sparky starts asking some of the guys if they had seen or talked with his son recently because he hadn't been able to get him on the phone. Then he announced that he would give $200 to the person who could get his son on the phone right then and hand it to him. Next thing you know eight cell phones are whipped out and being frantically dialed. JR got through but got hung up on and for some reason Don's call got through next and Richard decided to talk to him. That's how you offset a losing session.

Afterwards JT, Don and I hit up a little early morning Denny's trip to discuss most things poker, Wedding Crashers and/or general ridiculousness. It's no wonder poker players are so often out of shape. Let's see, I sit around for 8 to 100 hours in a row playing poker which requires almost no caloric output. When I'm done, it's usually the middle of the night/early morning so my options are Denny's, Waffle House or if I'm in a casino, the buffet. Then I go to sleep for 6-8 hours in the middle of the day, get up and repeat. I'm quite frankly impressed most poker players don't weigh well over four hondo.

One of my buddies, 2Lock, decided to try and jab at me and this blog endeavor by posting a little tidbit from the SportsGuy on ESPN.com's Page 2. I'll post the section, in incorrect block quote form, as follows:

While we're here, let's make two other poker pacts ...
1. Now that Jackpot Jay has retired, nobody can write any more poker columns. Stop writing them, stop reading them, just stop. We all know how to play at this point. We know that you can get screwed over on the river ... it happens. We know that you can get lucky on the river ... it happens. But if I have to read one more column about how the writer had three jacks, and he thought they would hold up, but then somebody else was going for a straight, and then when he saw that 7 of hearts, he knew it was trouble ... for the love of God, who cares??? It's poker! When you're at a table where everyone knows how to play -- and by the way, just about everyone knows how to play now -- it's 90 percent luck! You might as well write columns giving the play-by-play of a scratch card you scratched off outside a convenience store. Enough. Please stop. I would rather read 200 holier-than-thou columns about Rafael Palmeiro over another poker column.

(And if you're going to keep writing them, at least make fun of everyone else at your table. Your average poker player looks like he should be holding a squeegee at a stoplight in Manhattan, scalping tickets outside of Edison Field, pushing a hot dog truck in Hartford or chain-smoking outside of a VD clinic waiting for his granddaughter to come out. This needs to be mentioned at all times. Repeat: All times.)

2. No more glorifying poker players. For instance, one of the more famous players has the nickname "Jesus," as you might have heard Norm Chad mention 65,234 times on that World Series show (when the guy really looks like Waingro from "Heat"). Should a guy who devotes his life to deceiving other human beings with cards really be called "Jesus"? Shouldn't poker players only be allowed to have nicknames like "Fish Eye" and "Scumball"? Also, how hard can it be to play poker for a living when Jennifer Tilly, Tobey Maguire and Ben Affleck have won major tournaments? Even in a sport like golf, when the celebrities play with the pros, they're clearly inferior (just watch HBO's excellent show about Ray Romano and Kevin James trying to make the cut at Pebble Beach). In poker, anyone can become a pro -- you just need enough cash to get started and a ton of time on your hands. I mean, have you seen Jennifer Tilly on a talk show? Not a Mensa threat.

I feel the need to savage the SportsGuy here even though he did just do a phenomenal series with NBA offseason awards and Anchorman quotes. First off, anyone referencing Jackpot Jay as a legitimate poker writer immediately loses any credibility on the topic. No, everyone doesn't know how to play. They know the rules. If people knew how to play, then I, who still has a very basic aptitude for the game wouldn't have been able to make my living at it for the last few months. Yeah, bad beat stories do get old and are vastly overtold, point taken. Next, Norm Chad is an assbag. There are very few things that make me mute commentary but his moronic babbling certainly encourages me to do so anytime I'm watching ESPN's poker coverage. He's adding commentary after the fact and still can't appropriately identify what is going on during a hand. But if we can glorify any of the hundreds of athletes that ESPN does every day, poker players can certainly enjoy the same. How hard can poker be to do for a living? Well, let's see. First off, tournament poker and cash game poker are entirely different animals. Anyone can get lucky and win a tournament by getting hit by the right cards at the right time. Or by making an incredibly awful decision and getting bailed out by a river card thus producing one of the aforementioned overblown bad beat stories. But when you come in to work with a half assed column does ESPN take your money away? "Sorry, nice try and all, but we called your bluff and you lost. No cash this week." Or, on the flip side, you write the best column you've ever put together, but the copy editor gets lucky and finds a punctuation error, slips in the change and ESPN pays him off instead because he got lucky at the end. Coming in each and every day with your own money and making the best informed decisions you can based on all information provided by cards and/or players is not easy. It's about consistency, which is why clowns like Jackpot Jay fail.

But like 99% of the public, I don't expect that you'd actually understand all that you don't know about poker, which is a good thing. That means me and my friends will continue to get paid handsomely for a while to come.

I hate you today, SportsGuy, but Goddammit, I respect you...

Demolished all over again...

2005-08-05T03:15:00.000-04:00

Sometimes things just go utterly, completely and ridiculously wrong. Got blasted for another $500 tonight at the Warehouse. And then another $133 by the clowns on Party Poker.

Okay, so where to begin? Buy in for $100 and like six hands in I got J10 offsuit on the button. There were three limpers in front of me and I raised to $8, getting two callers. Flop comes J 10 8 rainbow. Two checks to me, and I bet out $15, which Schneck calls. River is a 7, we both check, and the river is another 7. He bets all in, which has me covered and I had $50 left. I could've let it go, but I didn't, and he had played A9 suited and hit the straight.

Rebuy up to $200, and I'm hanging right around that number when one of the most ridiculous hands that, (A) I've ever played in, and (B) seen played, occurred. I have QJ offsuit in the cutoff, three people limp, so I do too. The button raises to $12, and everyone calls, so I do as well. Flop comes KQJ rainbow. The first two to act both check, and middle position bets $25 into the $60 pot. Here's where we can get all analytical.

I've got the button on Aces. I don't think that there Kings, Queens or Jacks out there because none of the other people raised preflop or reraised the button. If I'm getting tricked by a limp-smooth call, so bet it. It's very possible that there's an underpair of 10's or lower, maybe even two hands like that. Or big Aces like AK, AQ or AJ; which is even better since that would kill all the Aces. I could smooth call the $25, and see what happens, but if Aces come over the top and there are two or more other callers, I'm going to be getting 4 or 5 to 1 on my money to see where I'm at. If everyone calls the $25, now there's $200 in the pot, we see the turn and I have $160 left. If it's a brick, I'm still in the same position. So if I'm going to be in the same position on the turn where I will certainly push all my money in, I might as well take a shot at knocking some players out on the flop.

I push in for another $160, Button calls, early position re-raises all-in for another $100. That puts both the original flop bettor and the button in. Both go all-in as well, the only other player in the pot, in between early position and the flop bettor (Poker Don), folds.

Here are the hands by position:

EP: A 10 spades
Poker Don: J 10 offsuit
MP (flop bettor): 9 10 offsuit
Me: QJ offsuit
Button: Aces

Two flopped straights, an overpair, two pair and a bottom pair with an open end draw. Another Queen had been folded, but I had the best chance at sucking out with four live cards. Unfortunately it bricked out.

Sayonara, Benjamins.

Rebuy for another $200. A little time passes and I get Ah9s in middle position. Two people limp in, and I raise to $12. Schneck calls my raise and the flop comes K85 with two hearts. I bet $15 and he calls. Turn is a third heart, I check, he bets $52 and I come over the top all-in with the nut draw, figuring I also have the Aces as outs. Schneck thinks for about seven minutes before calling and turns over Kc9h. I brick the river and I'm down to $50. Schneck says something to the effect of, "I thought you had it, I was just trying to give you a little money back," a statement which almost got him mauled by a bear.

I double through a couple times and get back up to $150 and then give some away when I make a lower flush than Jag, back down to $48. Get AQ offsuit on the button, and JT, Schneck and Don all limp. I move in and JT calls. Schneck thinks for a second, then calls as well. JT has sevens, and Schneck has K9 of clubs. Flop comes KQx with one club. Turn is the Queen of clubs. River is the Jack of clubs, and Schneck sucks out and breaks me with K9 again.

He made another comment about having tried to get me money back and I said quick goodbyes before I lost my temper in my tilt-a-whirl state.

I'm not even ready to go into the crap that I ran into on Party but it's heartening to know that they can't always suck out on you, right?

I might need to take a week off and get the mind right. This week has demolished my bankroll again, just in time for my trip to AC, which suddenly looks less appealing. I'll be back at it sooner or later...

Trying to get back on track...

2005-08-04T17:03:00.000-04:00

Fire up the PartyPoker limit bandwagon... WAGONS HOOOOOOOOO!

Wow. That's about all there is to describe the play I saw the last two days. And I don't even really know what I'm doing yet as far as limit poker goes. But, wow.

Ran into some ridiculous situations my first day and kept getting smacked around by sets over my pairs, flushes on my straights... etcetera, etcetera. I kind of felt like I might get some birthday luck as far as poker went but August 2nd brought nothing but a $600 loss overall. Last night though, I ran over the Party clowns and got a little over $200 back. Just playing one table for the time being until I find my groove but things look profitable on the horizon, that's for darn sure.

Been trying to maximize my time on FullTilt because of their $10K a Day promotion, but after some early success, I got run over on the $1/2 Omaha Hi-Lo table. Particularly by one guy who was capping every round with like fourth best draws and somehow always pulling out a winner. But his name is noted and I'll get my money back from him eventually. Tonight I hope to earn back some of what I lost at the Warehouse on Tuesday, so everyone keep your fingers crossed for a big crowd. I simply can't make my money back with the number of people that have been coming out lately.

Okay, some more basic poker knowledge for my neophyte poker friends who keep up with this thing. Here's a hand that I saw the other night:

$1/2 No Limit Hold'em with 7 players

Early Position player (EP): 99
Late Position player (LP): AJ offsuit

EP makes it $10 to go with the blinds and one limper already in the pot. It folds around to LP who makes it $25 to go. It then folds back around to the original raiser who stops to think. He asks for a countdown of the other player's chips, which amount to $71 more after the raise. After another minute of consideration, EP raises LP all-in. EP calls almost immediately.

Board comes A9xxx and EP wins with his set.

LP player goes beserk.

Analysis: LP has no clue how to play poker properly. I may be especially harsh because we have all had to suffer through his bitching about this hand the last two sessions and he still doesn't understand why he is wrong.

I have no problem with either player's original action. EP raising early is letting everyone else at the table know that he has a big hand. LP re-raising is signaling to LP that he knows that and still has no problem coming over the top. At that point, the only hands EP has to worry about are AA-10 10. Then it comes down to decision time, do I believe that this guy has one of those hands or was he making a move with perhaps a lesser pair from late position or a big Ace. When EP comes back over the top all-in, LP absolutely must lay this hand down. He is behind all the following: AA-22, AK and AQ. That is 15 hands that beat his AJ, plus he doesn't even have the added benefit of the 30% chance he might hit a flush if he is suited with his AJ. In his best case scenario which is a pair 10's or lower, he is approximately a 55%-45% underdog. Also, he has to put in $71 to win $136, which is 1.91-1 odds. So he's getting slightly less than 2-1 odds to put his money into a pot where he is at best a 1.25-1 underdog. I think you all can handle the math on that one. There is simply no sense in getting all your money in the middle when all indications are that you are already a loser.

When LP turned over his AJ he berated EP for playing his nine's the way he had, exclaiming, "I knew all you had was a small pair. How could you call my raise, it very easily could have been a big pocket pair you were up against," and when the nine hit the flop, "you are so lucky you sucked out on me. What a horrible call."

I wish I had the outburst on videotape so I could run it back for this douchebag. You, LP, are the one who called all your money into the middle with AJ offsuit. You called the all-in, and while your initial play was fine, you should have had the discipline to toss it in the muck when EP came back over the top.

Demolished

2005-08-03T17:07:00.000-04:00

As in, I have been getting absolutely...

Bad session, good session, bad session, okay session, bad session, awful session... and there you have the story of my last week.

Apparently everyone wants to be the hero against me lately, or their draws are getting there and mine certainly are not. Add in a couple of awful all-in calls I made and I was down three buy-ins at the Warehouse last night. I had Kings cracked by Q3 suited, but in the end it was my own fault, I should have known that he had trips when the second queen hit the board on the turn. I put in a few suckouts of my own to walk out down as much as I did... it could have been worse.

So my buddy JR has mentioned once or twice that he wants to see some poker theory or style explanation on these pages. And since we got in each other's ears the other night, I figured I'd put a little something together here. I play a very aggressive style of poker. I usually am coming in for a raise and almost certainly am making a continuation bet on the flop if I don't hit part of it. I may even make another bet on the turn if I have picked up any kind of draw even if my continuation bet got called on the flop. I have picked up a lot of small and medium sized pots in this way which allows me to be a little more loose some evenings with making bigger calls, or pushing all-in with a medium strength hand to apply pressure to someone.

Of course the flip side of this is that after a while people start calling you down with middle or bottom pair and sometimes I get caught on the bluff. But that's just fine because the percentage of the time that I have something compared to not is much more in my favor. The key to successful poker is getting the most value out of your hand at each betting point. This is the thing that I see as the weakest aspect of the players I play against live, most have no idea how to bet properly. There are a lot of guys I go up against who play basically only the nuts or second nuts, which is just fine. But they mostly just check-call there hands down to the river where they overbet and don't get a call they might have gotten if they had just tried to sell the hand for a little less. Moreover, a lot of money was probably lost on the flop and turn where leading out the betting, or making a moderate re-raise could have netted them more money before the river.

I'll post a past hand or two to illustrate some of these points:

Me ($175): AQ hearts
Player 1 ($40): KJ offsuit

I raise before the flop from late position to $6 which is the table standard for the evening. I get called by a player who limped in front of me, and the flop comes Kxx with one heart. Player checks it to me and I make my continuation bet here of $8. I bet here because I've been shown weakness and I've made the original raise, I just want to take down the pot. I also know that if I get called, I could still hit my ace or possibly pick up a second heart on the turn for the nut draw. Player calls my $8 and we go to the turn card which is another low heart. This time he bets $10 and I call and I hit my flush on the river. He checks and I push him in for his remaining $15 and he calls and gets angry because he had me the whole way until that river card.

The player made several key mistakes here. He didn't lead out on the flop or reraise me, which he should have, to find out where he was at. If you are playing a hand like KJ offsuit, I don't know what else you are hoping to hit except the King or the Jack. You ahve to bet there or check-raise, nothing else makes much sense. He could have taken the pot down there. The turn, he could have pushed all-in, and it's debatable whether or not I would have called with just 12 outs getting about 2.2-1 on my money, but I don't think I'm quite that psycho.

So there's a little something for you JR, and I will probably post a little more tomorrow or Friday. The poker gods had their way with me on my birthday, which seems a little perverse, but hopefully I can turn this month around...

To play or not to play, that is the question...

2005-07-26T13:40:00.000-04:00

Big or small, it's been a month of winning sessions, so I've got that goin' for me... which is nice. Job questions are coming in from all fronts. Did you hear about that last job interview? Would you take a job with so-and-so? Are you gonna go on anymore interviews?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm making $24 an hour playing poker live here in the good ol' metropolitan area of Richmond. Extrapolated out, that means that I make $2400 a month in the 100 hours or so of live poker I get in playing around here. If I took a position with any of the companies I've been interviewing with I'd probably make in the neighborhood of $32,000 per year starting out. After you factor in taxes I'd probably bring home about $1875 a month working 160 hours or more a month.

To make it as a successful player and still live in Richmond, I have to go back online and start winning consistently at limit. It seems like 2BB/100 is the statistical standard of success. So assuming I could be a winning player at 5/10 limit for the sake of the mathematics, that's $20 per hour and multiplied by four tables it's $80 per hour. Adding in 25 hours of online play each week for another 100 hours of poker a month, that's $8000 at the assumed hourly rate. Putting together both take home numbers, that is $10,400 per month in income or $124,800 annualized. After tax consideration, that take home should be around $7200 per month.

So the heart of my dilemma revolves around the following: I am already making as much or more playing poker live at part-time job hours as I would getting any of the full-time jobs I had been interviewing for.

For the record, my heart still leans toward playing poker for a living.

Grindin'

2005-07-21T14:39:00.000-04:00

Another big fish got away on Tuesday night but I still managed to double my buy-in once again. Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a karmic payback in poker once you've accumulated a ridiculous number of beats in one location. I had pocket kings and got my pre-flop raise called by Rob. Flop came Queen high with two spades, all the money got in and Rob turned over 64 of spades. He had bottom pair and the draw, I had the King of spades. Rob was favored and so I simply asked the dealer to put two spades on board as nicely as I could and wouldn't you know it, spade-spade. Who knew it was that easy? I think I might have to start just asking for my cards everytime.

After the session spent about ninety minutes talking poker with Don covering some of the interesting aspects of your regular game. Don is a very solid, tight player and brought up an intriguing difference in how players approach the two of us. I'm a very agressive player, playing a lot of pots with lots of raises. I also show a lot of hands, anything from 52 offsuit raised from early position to the stone cold nuts. As such, I get a lot of action in some of my hands but still manage to move people out and pick up a lot of pots with nothing. Don, on the other hand, believes he is universally cursed to get sniffed out when he's making a bluff. Of course the flip side of that coin is that he gets paid off on his good hands nearly every single time, and more often than not, a good hand is exactly what he has.

I spent the last day or so trying to figure that out but I can't really come up with a good reason. Logic would seem to dictate that he would be able to pick off more pots because of his tight table image and I would get called down because of my tendency to show more bluffs. The only discernable thing I could come up with is fear. I think I may have ingrained in these players that on any given hand all my money might be going into the middle and if they want to sniff out a bluff they are going to have to pay everything to find out. All in all, it's something interesting I'll be paying more attention to in the next few weeks.

I also went back and re-read my posts from the beginning which was an interesting look at my poker development. Although a prolonged losing streak from the end of March through the beginning of May prevented my World Series trip, my more long term goal of my first $10K bankroll is nearly a third complete. There is a trip to Atlantic City upcoming which well also hopefully be a boon to the bankroll, so the goal for the end of year I think is going to be getting it up to $6K. My game is still improving at a good pace but it's also bringing me to another critical decision time.

For all intents and purposes I have been playing poker for a living for about five months now. Originally I was out interviewing for jobs but it was a tough haul at first with that and now the interviews are not even on my radar. I love playing this game, getting better at this game and challenging myself to compete at a higher and higher level. But I've basically gotten to the point where I either have to start heading back towards that "real world" or give up all pretense of anything else and devote myself to being a poker player. And if that ends up being my decision, do I want to be an "internet pro" with a few regular live games or do I take the plunge and head somewhere where the live games are always available? There's still a lot of improvements to the game that need to be made before I would ever consider moving but it's certainly something that wasn't really even on my radar and suddenly is.

There's no doubt that this life is certainly not simple and the truth to the adage that it's a hard way to make an easy living becomes more apparent with each session. When you start to realize that one of the keys to success is the monotony making you so numb that AA feels the same as 26 offsuit, you begin to appreciate just how much love you need to have to keep plugging away. Of course a few of these guys I've been playing with for these months are in similar predicaments to me, so maybe we'll all just say the hell with it and move to Vegas together. Move over, Crew... well, I shudder to think what name would apply to us, so we'll just leave it at that.

A few more hours until "work" but I have some things to sort about Norman Chad in tomorrow's post. So nice to have the 2005 Series on now...

I'll leave you with the following bit of advice: Go see Wedding Crashers now.

This life ain't easy...

2005-07-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

I had typed out nearly an entire post the other day but just before I finished it I realized what a whine-fest it had turned out to be, so it got scrubbed. Last Thursday was one of the toughest days of poker I've played. I got well over twenty pocket pairs over the course of the session and felt like I was involved in almost every hand. And the suckouts... oh, the suckouts. I was on the receiving end of every manner of them before finally sucking out on someone else at the end of the evening to finally turn a profit. Thirty bucks. Eight hours of work for thirty bucks but it's a helluva lot better than being down three hondo.

There was plenty else to be happy about though because I think I played nearly flawless poker. I set up my plays well, my traps all worked and of the bazillion times I was all-in, I only got my money in as the underdog once... and won. Strange how that works out sometimes. The one play I will relate easily moves into my top three reads so far in this short career. It was later in the evening and I had received pocket pair number twenty two, eights, in the cutoff. There were a few limpers early, a raise from middle position and then I raised again. Folded to the guy under the gun and he limp-pushes all in for another $80. It folds all the way around to me and I have to laugh as I once again am in a situation like this for about the fiftieth time that night.

The guy was a new player to the game so I didn't have a lot of experience to go on with him but I was pretty sure that he wasn't good enough to have made that play properly with Aces or Kings. I also figured that with any strong to medium pair he would have raised the first time action was on him. So I start eyeing him up a bit, trying to put a bit of pressure on him. I'm talking out loud about how the hand progressed watching him the whole time as he's sitting back in his chair trying to look relaxed. Then I look down at his chest and the kid isn't breathing. He's literally sitting there holding his breath. Um, thank you very much, sir.

"I call."

He turned over pocket sixes to my eights. Since I'm resisting the temptation to post any more bad beat stories, let's just say I didn't end up taking the pot. But it was one hell of a read.

Last night went a little better for me. I had decent cards again and this time was able to avoid most of the nasty donks at the table. I missed a few opportunities here and there but can't be unhappy with a $300 profit. For the last hour we played $1/2 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo which is fast becoming my favorite game. Since I know some of my fellow bloggers are Hi-Lo aficianados I want to post two hands that came up and ask for some analysis/help.

In both situations the game is five handed:

Hand #1:

AAK3, AK suited in hearts. I'm on the button and everyone limps in front of me and I pot and get three callers. The flop comes 578 rainbow and it checks around to me and I bet half the pot, $20 and get called in two places. Pot size is now $100.

The turn is a 10 putting a club draw on board. It checks around to me again so I stay aggressive and bet half-pot again and get called in both places, pot size now around to $250.

I figure player number two for having flopped the straight as he is somewhat inexperienced in the game and is too happy to call to be just drawing at something. The other player I'm figuring for a low, but I don't think it's the nuts so now I'm worried about a quarter. The turn bet puts player two all-in so now any river betting is just between seat one and myself. The river is a brick and I check and so does he. Immediately I realize that I've probably made a mistake.

Should I have pushed the rest of my chips in on the river?

Turns out he had A3 low as well and my Aces had him beat on a high. If I had pushed on the river I would have taken 3/4 of the side pot as well as my quarter of the main pot. I'm pretty sure I should have pushed in on the river but I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this.

Hand #2:

Last hand of the night, I have 589J double suited in red cards. We all take the flop with a preflop raise to $10 and the flop comes down 10 9 3 rainbow. It checks around to me and I bet half pot and get called by three, so now the pot is $125. The turn is a 5 and puts a club flush draw on the board. It checks around to me again and I bet $50 with the open end straight draw and two pair. I get called in two places this time and the pot is at $275.

At this point I'm really not sure where I'm at. It's possible someone has now picked up a low draw and a club draw. I'm feeling like one of them must have hit trips on the flop to stay with the betting to this point. The river card is the Queen of spades. Seat one pushes all-in for $200.

Dammit. Seat two goes in the tank forever. The whole time he's thinking I'm trying to analyze the hand. I've made my queen high straight, but it's only the second nuts. Seat one can be a very crazy player and makes ridiculous draws sometimes. Because a flush draw came out on the turn I can't write him off having KJ in his hands for the nut straight but I'm feeling like he's being agressive. But with the guy in seat two going in the tank in such obvious distress I figure he's made the same hand I have, the queen high straight. There's just nothing else to be this distraught over. So if he calls I feel like I have no reason to call because at best we're splitting it three ways and getting our money back, at worst I'm putting in two hundred more to try and get $80 back and losing $280 to King-Jack. The EV just seems very, very negative to me in this situation. If he folds, it's pretty much the same, but I feel more inclined to call than if we're three ways.

Finally, after about six minutes, seat two pushes his $200 into the middle and I muck. Seat one turns over a Queen high straight and seat two turns over a bottom end straight. He was tired and thought there was a low also which is why he pushed in, so the whole pot ships to seat one.

That one hurt my feelings a little bit.

So any and all comments/analysis are appreciated.

Party: Day Two, Destruction at Vollmer and Greg "Fuckin'" Raymer...

2005-07-12T16:27:00.000-04:00

Alright, so as last we left it, Cornholio went back over the fence and Rick and I put in a couple more hours of drinking before passing out. Wake up the next day and head out to purchase a basketball hoop for their pool. The following hours would prove it to be a solid addition to their home. So an afternoon of drinking, basketball and general tomfoolery follows before the real party gets underway. Did I mention the hot women yet? Yeah, hot women... everywhere... in bikinis.

Eventually the beer pong table gets broken out again and the inevitable domination that comes from the juggernaut known as Rick and Rossi. Throughout the course of the evening we ran our record to 62-0 over the last three parties held at the house. It's sad how little competition there is. Luckily, there are foolish people who are willing to lay it on the line and make bets with us on the outcome. Hot Girl #1, Trish, an avid Yankees fan, decides to make a wager with Rick (avid Mets fan) that ends up with her wearing a "Fuck the Yankees" shirt for the rest of the party. She had been talking smack all afternoon and continued to do so even after donning the shirt. This led to a rematch and this time her partner was Hot Girl #2, Katie. When pregame discussions of a follow-up wager commenced I had a lot of faith in Rick to man up, but as usual, he failed me. In listening to his ramblings on stupid bets involving the Yankees I finally interrupted to make the bet that is supposed to be made in this situation. We lose, Rick and I don your bikinis (yeah right), we win and the hot girls have to open mouth kiss. Agreed. I'm not above promoting lesbianism by hot women at any chance I get.

Rick and I win that game in about four and a half minutes, Katie and Trish didn't even rack it. We should have enforced the naked run on top of the wager but two hot girls kissing will generally make you forget rules for a bit. A short time later our reign is interrupted by Rick's white trash neighbor across the street threatening girls coming into the party because they parked on the public street in front of his house. A couple of unmentionable words, threats and calls to the police later, the situation is at a standstill. White Trash Willy proceeds to sit on his porch, shirtless, drinking a beer and smoking a cig just watching the party. Waiting for an opportunity to... I don't know what he was waiting for actually. There were about 20 guys at that party and almost every one of them was bigger than Willy. He was definitely dominated in every fashion.

All in all, it was an enjoyable trip up to Vienna. The next weekend brought a poker tournament that I was supposed to play in with Don. Unfortunately Don forgot to call and reserve our spots so we got stuck on the waiting list and didn't get in. Way to go, Don. We watched the first two levels before grabbing some lunch and it only served to make me more upset that I wasn't able to play with the assorted donkies that were populating this tournament. A quick example: Shortstack moves all-in and gets called in two places. The two remaining players check to the river where finally this one donkey bets and makes the other player fold. Turn over the cards and donkey had QJ offsuit, for you guessed it, Queen high nothing. Shortstack turns over Ace high and wins the pot. The folded hand would have won. Shortstack ends up winning the tournament. And he was a far worse player than the donkey who saved him.

End up playing in the $1/2 No Limit game that night and I had heard a lot about how solid the play was here. So I come out playing careful and limp in 45 suited in late position and flop comes 355. I bet out, get raised, reraise and she moves me all-in. I really don't like having to make this call but I move in and she turns over 25, the only hand I'm ahead of. Of course the only way I win this pot is if a four comes on the turn or river, and it did. Yahtzee! $80 to $160. Drag another decent size pot a couple hands later when I outkick the same woman on middle pair. $160 to $215. A few hands later I limp Q10 of hearts in middle position with about six people to the flop and hit the nuts. I check it and the turn produces an 8 as well as putting two flush draws on the board. Mike, a local guy who plays for a living, checks, Don bets out $11, I call and Mike check-raises to $33. Don folds and I move all-in knowing there is really no way for him to believe I have the straight. Finally after a lot of counting of pot-odds he calls and shows trip eights. The river doesn't pair the board and I double up again, $450. I proceed to get hit in the face with cards for the next couple of hours before I finally have to cash out long before I want to as I am completely exhausted for some reason. End result, $750 on my $80 buy-in, not too shabby.

To cap off, Greg Raymer is putting on a ridiculous move at the Main Event, and if he gets anywhere near the last three tables it will be one of the best accomplishments in tournament poker, ever. I can't wait to see these events on ESPN in the next few months.

This is not a poker post...

2005-07-05T13:36:00.000-04:00

So Friday night I head up to my northern Virginia to Rick's house. Naturally, the bastard passed out so I had to delve into my seldom used ancient native American roots to track the path to his house. I finally arrive at his place around 11:15pm, get him up and we head off to 7-11 to get some beer before it's too late. Once we get back to the house we realize that we don't have enough cups to play pong with, so back in the car to 7-11 we go. This time when we pull up the owner has some interesting looks for us but by midnight we are all set to get the game underway. We step out into his backyard and are heading up to pull the pong table into place when we pass by a gap in his fence. Suddenly, a head pops up in the blackness and asks if it can come over the fence for a minute. We look at each other quizzically but tell the guy that he can.

This goofy kid pops over the fence with some story about how he's visiting his grandma next door and she told him there were some college kids that live here now and usually party on the weekends. He was going to tell us to try and keep it down, but maybe did we mind if he just hung out for a bit? Uhhhhhhhh, sure. We gather the pong table and start setting it up and he asks us, "So you guys are playing pong?" Scene from Animal House flashes into my head, unfortunately, Dorfman didn't disappear this time when we gave him a funny look.

We start chucking the rock and we're about a minute into a game between Rick and I when this kid suddenly pipes in with, "Have you guys ever played a game called Cornhole?" Everything stops. Now, I don't know what happens in the backwoods of Kentucky or wherever the fuck you're from, kid, but where I come from if you suddenly appear out of the dark of night and then ask two strangers if they've ever played Cornhole before, it's grounds for getting beat down. Or at least for me thinking about it. And then staying with my back as close to the wall as possible.

Apparently while I was inside filling up water cups I missed the part where this clown was telling Rick about being sober for 67 days now, but I walk out to him cracking his first beer which should complete most all the information about this kid you need to know. He's 21, got three DUI's in two weeks, kicked out of his fraternity for being a general fuck-up (again, big blinking warning sign when a fraternity kicks you out for being a fuck-up) and apparently is very into some game called Cornhole. Well Cornhole goes from zero-to-drunk in about eight minutes. As soon as he finished his second beer he's stumbling all over the patio and now I'm wondering at what point we're going to have to fish him out of the pool when he falls in.

There's more incoherent ramblings for a while, something about him wanting to live in his grandma's house when she finally croaks (his words, not mine) and then he passes out in a chaise lounge for a bit. He comes to in time to play once more, at which point he tries to bend over and pick up the ball but instead falls down the steps behind him. That single event made putting up with him for an hour almost tolerable. Almost. Nothing like watching a drunk fall down some very shallow stairs in slow motion to make up for general stupidity.

We finally get Cornhole to go back over the fence and we drink for another couple hours before turning in. And I haven't gotten to Saturday where the white trash neighbor threatened to slash the tires of someone coming over to the party at the house. All that and more in tomorrow's post...

Wanted: Poker Players

2005-06-28T19:12:00.000-04:00

The games that I've been in have kind of dried up lately. The roll call at the Warehouse has dwindled down to a single table, Monday nights have turned into a six or seven handed cash game instead of fourteen person tournaments and I'm tired of beating the same old players night in and night out. That last one was for you, Don.

So it seems I'm going to have to step up and take my game to some new locations, Vulmer and Garland. Apparently the Vulmer games are a seven nights a week extravaganza of poker, featuring $1/2 No Limit, $5/10 Limit, and $5/10 SHOE. I may also be taking on an interesting task of trying to bring some of my friends up to speed on the game. Right now I'm calling it the Poker Developmental League, we'll see if I can make this work.

I've really been trying to work on a few of my female friends to take up poker because of what I feel is the inherent advantage that women have over men with this game. Beyond generally advanced intuition, men just cannot take losing to a woman. Or, better yet, do not want to beat a beautiful woman. As I've been following the WSOP coverage I became convinced of this certainty as there is no way I could concentrate on my cards or tells or anything else for that matter if I were sitting across from, say, Jennifer Tilly. Dealer: "Sir, the action is on you..." Me: "Mmmmm, boobs....errr, uh-". Sidetracking for a moment, if that's the kind of action that pro poker players are getting these days, it definitely encourages me to keep going with this. If Phil Laak can get someone like Jen Tilly, there's something to this mystique, 'cause he is one crazy sonuvabitch.

It's been fairly interesting lately as I've met a slew of new people in the area outside of pokerdom to answer the following question, "So, what do you do for a living?", with, "I play poker." Depending on the person I either get, "Oh, cool," and then they quickly move on or it leads into a thirty minute conversation on everything poker. My parents would certainly not be thrilled that this is where I'm heading but the occasional interview in banking keeps them satisfied for the moment. It's all cash related anyways, right? I'm putting in my eight hours a day, they just happen to be between 8pm and 4am.

Hmmm, 7:30pm.... time to get ready for work...

A $350 Lesson in Poker...

2005-06-24T19:45:00.000-04:00

Don't play when you're tired and your emotions aren't in check.

Cost of that lesson: $350

If I got good cards last night, one of two things happened: someone paired their inferior kicker or got their playing their bullshit cards.

At least three times I flopped a straight with bottom side of the cards and someone got there on the river after calling a preflop raise with K8 offsuit out of the blinds. I definitely cost myself some money as well, though. There were at least three hands that I played that I pushed on the river even though it had flashed in my mind what they were probably holding, and everytime I had been correct, I was beat.

Trip aces with king kicker and the guy spiked his boat on the river. Guy flopped the straight with Big Lick and I thought I had the nut flush draw as well as a piece of the board... I was wrong. That was my biggest mistake of the night and chalk that one up to being exhausted and not in check with where I should have been in order to play No Limit poker. That was $140 gone. Lost another $140 at the end of the night after rebuying (when I should have just gone home) and unfortunately just took a tough one on the chin when my pocket queens ran into pocket aces.

I was much more frustrated last night about how I had played, but after thinking about it a little bit more today I'm not as upset. I made one donkey play, but other than that the donkies at the table just got lucky last night for the most part. I had been reading SuperSystem 2 yesterday afternoon and in a bit of foreshadowing was going over Todd Brunson's into to the Stud section.

He basically boiled it down to the following bit of advice: If you go to a pet shop and buy a dog then bring him home and get upset when he barks, you're the one with the problem. Dogs bark, it's what they do, you can't teach them to meow or moo, so you just have to live with the fact that they will bark. Bad poker players will play bad poker. They will call out of position, play bad cards and yes, they will sometimes get the better of you. You don't yell at them for playing bad poker because that's what you want them to do and if you can't take it, sit at a different game. One that will most likely be less profitable for you.

Okay. Time to get back to rebuilding the bankroll...

Greatest Laydown in the History of Poker

2005-06-22T13:44:00.000-04:00

Before I get to the most ridiculous poker story ever, just wanted to comment quickly on the conspicuous absence of the blog for the last month or so. Quite simply, I wasn't playing a whole lot of poker until the last two weeks. But the game is back on track and we're having a profitable week here at RossiCo, so the bankroll is making a recovery.

Last night I played at the Warehouse with some of the regular crew and a few new guys in and out throughout the evening. In trying to skip straight to the meat of this tale, I will summarize by saying everyone had their foot in Uncle Rob's ass last night except for me. The guy lost four or five all-ins and was down about $400-500 for the night. The last time he lost he doubled up a friend of his who just started playing with us, Eric, to around $350.

So Rob bought another $300 in chips for his stack because there was a lot of money on the table last night. That all happened around 2:30am and play ends at 3am. At 2:45am we start one of the last orbits of the night. I'm in the big blind and Uncle Rob limps from under the gun. Eric raises to $5 from the next seat and we fold back around to Rob, who thinks for a moment before making it $105 to go. No, that's not a typo. In our .25/.50 NL game he limp-reraised to $105.

Action's back on Eric and he's locked up. Cannot decide what to do. He's thinking. And thinking. And thinking. And thinking. He's sitting there and it almost looks like he's gonna come back over the top, and then it happened. Our dealer Bill pulled out the hamster. There's a hamster kept at the Warehouse that sings "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers. It's usually broken out when someone has sat over a hand entirely too long.

So as the familiar refrain of "you've got to know when to hold'em... know when to fold'em..." pipes out of the hamster, Eric looks up and says, "I've got a bad feeling, I fold this..." and throws his hand into the muck face up. I want you to imagine for a second what hand you think would cause you this much consternation in a sometimes very loose game. Pocket eights? nines? Jacks? Ace-King?

Au contraire, bon jour. Our hero, Eric, folded black Aces face up. Pocket rockets. Eke and Ike. American Airlines. The best starting hand in motherfucking poker, and he folded it preflop when he got raised into knowing all the money could have gone into the middle.

Here's what would have happened:

Flop- 2 5 8 rainbow
Turn- 10
River- 8

Uncle Rob had pocket tens and would have crushed Eric's Aces to the tune of $642 in the pot.

Greatest laydown in the history of poker.

How do you know when it's going to be a good session?

2005-05-06T12:22:00.000-04:00

Simple.

You get dealt 7 2 offsuit on your first hand. Bump it up three bucks, get reraised to nine and flat call. Flop comes King high, you catch nothing and you lead out for fifteen bucks and your opponent lays down his pocket Jacks. Then you look him in the eye and say, "This is a little something some friends and I like to call, 'The Hammer'," and throw it face up in the middle of the table as you pull your money in.

Everyone at the table seemed to appreciate it. Sorry, Footloose, it had to be done.

And so it came to pass that I had my first winning session at the Warehouse last night. We were playing $.25/$.50 NL as has apparently become the game of choice on Thursday evenings. I had bought in for $60 but after a couple more people showed up and a few big pots moved around, I put $50 in cash under my chips which put it in play if I needed it. Second best decision I made all night as three hands later I decide to make a move on a pot. I get J5 clubs in Early Position (EP) and bring it in for a raise to $3. I get two callers and the flop comes K74 with two clubs. I lead out for nine bucks, Footloose calls and the other guy folds. Turn is a brick and I lead out for $15 and Footloose smooth calls me again. River is the Ace of clubs. Footloose is a pretty aggressive player and I knew he sensed something was off with my preflop and flop action, so I looked at him and told him he was all-in. I didn't realize he had an additional thirty bucks hidden behind his stacks of chips but he went ahead and called and showed me 79 of clubs. He was more than a little heartbroken, he thought I was trying to buy the pot with a pair of Kings.

Toward the end of the night I got QJ hearts in the big blind and lead out for a $4 raise as had become the table standard at that point. I got everyone out except for one new guy and he had been an absolute rock. I'm talking Stonehenge, I think he had played like four hands the entire time he had been there. Flop comes mostly black and Jack high. I lead out for ten bucks and he calls, the turn brings the King of diamonds, putting two on the board. Without hesistating I lead out for $20 and he stares me down for a minute before he reaches deep and raises me another $40. He seemed more than surprised when I didn't even pause before going all-in. He looks at me and says, "I guess I got a little greedy, huh?" I give him a little shrug and after two minutes he pushes it all to the middle and turns over Q 10 offsuit for an open-ended straight draw (OESD). I think he thought he had the three queens as outs as well when he made his decision but he didn't catch on the river and I gathered in his $130 from the pot. Finally made it into a hand at the Warehouse and didn't get sucked out on. It's a marvelous feeling.

I stopped about fifteen minutes later and all told for the evening, $300 win. $60 an hour ain't a bad salary, I hope it can continue.

More Critical Thinking

2005-05-05T11:29:00.000-04:00

I've still been going over that last hand from the other night trying to decide if there's anything else I could pull from it to improve my game. In doing so, I think I've come to my ultimate conclusion, both Jack and I made bad plays. The decisions we each made are the difference between great play and mediocre play.

After Jack showed me his cards he offered up that he just didn't see how he could lay down a full house, and if I had fours full of Aces or better, well he was willing to lose to a hand like that.

My mistake:

There are three paths of thought on what I can do when that four hits the river and I see all that action in front of me.

Folding

This would be a phenomenal laydown. A professional laydown. There are two hands I can put Jack on after his bet: Ace high club flush or a full house. A full house is clearly a strong possibility given the board, so when he makes his raise over Rob he obviously isn't afraid of that hand. There is no full house that I can beat, I can only hope that he has 4's full of 8's as well and split the pot with him.

Calling

I'm not even considering this as a possible decision. Flat-calling Jack's $60 is tantamount to giving it away. If I think he has me beat I shouldn't bother with the $60, if I think I have the best hand, I need to get all my money to the middle and hope he has a hand that he can't see laying down.

Raising

If I don't have the best hand, I can most certainly represent it by going all-in. Jack has to know at that point that I have a full house and nothing else. There is only one full house on the board that he can beat (And yes, it was the one I was holding, dammit!).

So now we get to Jack's decision, which I also feel is on the same level as mine. He's applied a lot of pressure with his pot raise of Rob. After his bet there is $120 in the pot, after my raise there is $291.75. If he calls the pot goes to $403.50, of which he would have put in around half. He's basically investing $112 of his total of $180 with only one hand that he can beat. He's making a call into a re-raise and I just don't see how you make that call. The smart thing to do is to lay that hand down.

It's certainly not the easiest decision to make and I absolutely don't begrudge him for calling. It was a gamble that paid off but I think we both made poor decisions on how we finished our hands off. And even though I lost, I'm honestly beginning to think his decision may have been a little worse.

The Last Hand: Redux

2005-05-04T17:31:00.000-04:00

Okay. I thought I'd go over a little process on how that final hand played out last night and how it may have been played differently and even if it could have acheived a different outcome.

The game is loose-aggressive, though not all the players are. In my limited experience with most of them here's what I know:

Uncle Rob: Very loose pre-flop to go with how the games at the Warehouse are played. Generally solid play post-flop but not afraid to bluff.

Jack (Don): He is a very solid player. The first time I went to play at the Warehouse Moe was giving me some low down on the players. He told me that if Jack is betting hard, he has a hand. I've found that to be pretty universally true.

Myself: I'm a pretty tight player. At least that's the image I try very hard to cultivate. I can be very agressive however and, thankfully, most of these players haven't caught on to how often I'm bluffing.

Rob and Don were in the blinds and Bill, Eric and I all limped in for $.50. Rob pot bet to make it $2 total to go and only Don and I joined him for the flop.

My hands is 8h4h5d6h and the pot is $6.

Flop comes down 9c8c4s.

Rob leads out for $3, Don calls and I call. The pot is now $15.

I've definitely got Rob on the club draw and I'm not sure whether or not to place Don on a straight or club draw or both.

Turn card is the Ah. Rob checks, Don checks and I check...

Now I definitely have Rob on the club draw as his bet on the flop didn't move anyone so he has to put us on actually having a piece of the board when he has to decide what to do on fourth street. Don's check leads me to believe that he's drawing as well. Here's where my post-game analysis leads me to believe I could have acted differently.

After both players check to me I can make a strong bet. I can certainly believe that my two pair are the best hand at the moment if they are both drawing. If I make any bet it has to be a pot bet of $15. Rob on the draw would still be getting 3-1 on his money with the club draw and if he calls, Don is getting 4-1 on what I imagine is his draw as well. I'm not convinced that I move Rob off his hand and if Rob calls I think Don still calls because he's getting decent odds and he has what he must consider the strongest hand showing with two pair.

The river is the 4c. Rob immediately asks if it was a club. Not sure if he couldn't actually see the card or not, but he has to be on the club draw, and probably a weaker one since he's basically announcing that he made it. He makes a pot bet of $15 which Don immediately pots back at him, making it $60 to go. I'm a little surprised by that as I didn't expect Don to make that move. So now I've got him on the nut club flush or a full house. I think for about twenty seconds before I pot it again, which puts me all-in and makes it $111.75 for Don to call.

Rob folds easily and I can tell Don is stressed. He thinks for about three minutes before finally making the call. I give a crying question, "Do you have clubs?" When he says no I know I am beat. I ask him what boat he has and he shows me fours full of nines to kill my fours full of eights.

So if I pot bet on the turn and they both call, and then follow through with the same river action I still don't think I acheive a different result. The pot would have been $60 going to the river assuming they both call. I imagine that Rob leads out for somewhere in the range of $25-40 and then Don pots himself all-in. I can't see myself laying down my full house so I call and lose.

The ideal situation would be to represent a stronger hand on the turn by betting such that when Don pots on the river and re-raise him he has to consider that I might have already made a set either with the Aces or the Eights and my boat is considerably stronger than his.

But I still don't see him laying down his full house, so alas I don't reasonably believe a different outcome could have been acheived.

Love to hear some other people's thoughts on this though.

Pulse Rate: 65 bpm

2005-05-04T02:26:00.000-04:00

I've been staring at a blank screen for like ten minutes trying to decide how exactly I was going to encapsulate this evening's poker experience.

Tuesday night at the Warehouse with six/seven of us playing.

I buy in for $60, get silly and play a hand blind and end up taking it down. Up to $110.

Get J10 and lose it all after a ten high flop and Uncle Rob, who is clearly on tilt after I extracted his money on my blind hand, had pocket Jacks when I thought he was on a diamond draw.

Rebuy for $60 more.

Proceed to get J10 five of the next seven hands. Lose my final $45 when the flop comes Jack high and I push. Run into Don's (tourney winner from last night) AJ which he had limp-called my raise with.

J10 six times in eight hands. I had J5 on one of the other hands. The only time I didn't have J10 in that series, the flop comes J10x.

Sit and do nothing but watch for about the next forty five minutes. Two people cash out at midnight and leave the table four handed. I watch that for another twenty minutes or so, before I pull out $20 when the big blind comes my direction. That's it. $20 is all I'm reaching for for the duration of the night.

We agree to a PLO/PLH rotation. I drop a couple bucks on preflop action before we get to the PLO series.

I have J10 (hmmm) 47 with the 10 4 being diamonds. Flop comes AKQ. Two checks, I bet $3 into a $6 pot and both call. Turn is the Ace of diamonds, putting two diamonds on the board. Both guys bet out $5 and I call. River is a diamond. They both bet $15, I put in my remaining ten and my diamonds hold up to two sets of Aces. Whoa.

Tripled up to $48.

Next hand I get 99QJ. Flop comes 559 with two diamonds. We check the flop around and the turn is a brick. Uncle Rob leads out with a pot bet of $12, Eric calls and I call. River is a ten of diamonds. Uncle Rob pots for $36, Eric pots back and get his last $45 in the pot, I call with my last $34. Uncle Rob made the Ace high flush, Eric filled up fives full of tens and I take down the main pot with my flopped nuts.

Tripled up to $144.

I turned $20 into $144 in eight minutes and I'm now up four bucks for the night. Utterly ridiculous.

I take down another decent pot in the next PLO series and I'm sitting at around $170. It's about 1:22 am and I announce that I am done at 1:30 am.

At 1:27 am I get dealt 8456, all red cards. Flop comes 8c9c4s. The pot was at $6 and Uncle Rob bets $3, Don calls and I call. Turn is an Ace of hearts. Rob checks, Don checks, I check. River is the 4 of clubs. Rob bets the pot of $15, Don pots for $60, I pot all-in for $161.75. Rob folds and Don takes about three minutes before he finally calls.

I ask him if he has clubs and he says no. He shows me fours full of nines.

1:33am: I'm stuck $140 on the night.

And my heart rate never changed a beat during or after that last hand. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Monday Night (Tuesday Morning) Poker

2005-05-03T14:45:00.000-04:00

*yawn*

It's 4:45am and I'm just laying down to sleep. I'm stretched out in bed and replaying a few of the nights events before I finally pass out. I finally finished in the money again after quite a long drought and overall was very pleased with my play. Nothing I can do about how the night ended for me, felt like I needed to gamble... *I bolt wide awake*

10:30pm

I roll up to the weekly game and it's a packed house. There are 13 of us, far and away the most we've had for this weekly sit n' go. Buy in is $40 so there's a decent payday for the top three. I get seated at a table with a whole range of players. One complete maniac, one moderate maniac, one rock, two guys I've never played against before and a guy who is a very solid player. First hand the total maniac gets into it with the rock, my buddy Matt, and they trade three pre-flop raises and re-raises. The flop comes ten high, and Matt moves all in with Jacks, unfortunately Ryan (Maniac) has Kings. Matt is out in one minute and thirty seconds, thankfully it's his house so he can move on to other things. That set the tone for the first 45 minutes or so, some very aggressive preflop action, but solid post-flop play was taking down a lot of pots from aggressors. I manage to get up about 50 bucks during that time.

The other table was made up pretty much the same as mine and at one point we hear a lot of commotion and then to quick all-in calls. We stop our hand to watch the play unfold. The guys turn over the cards and it's Kings versus Queens, and one of the other players turns up his hand and shows his King-Queen. The flop comes AQ5 and the room goes wild, man hits his case queen to take control of the hand. The guy with the Kings turns and starts to get ready to leave and I pat him on the back and say, "Hold on buddy," as the Jack comes on the turn, "all you gotta do is ask nicely and the ten will come," as the Ten comes on the river. He hits his runner-runner for the straight and knocks the other guy out. I have to say, I have a certain knack for talking the straight runs out of a deck lately, even if I'm not doing it for myself for some reason.

Play slows down for a while after that as we wait for one more elimination to move to a single table. I deal out another runner-runner to demolish a higher pair and we consolidate to our final table. That's where I went absolutely card dead. It was ugly and it last for about 35 minutes. I didn't play one hand that entire time and then finally got disgusted and tried to play. I had a shortstack to my left and I raised his blind with K8 of hearts (best hand I had seen to that point). Naturally he came back over the top all-in and I had to call. So I doubled him up and sat another ten minutes or so before the cards finally came back around. There were a couple big Aces that I took down pots preflop with, or caught top pair with after the flop and got no more action. The in the big blind I look down and I've got Eke and Ike. Sweet, sweet Aces. The shortstack on my left limps, middle position calls, and I raise. Shortstack moves all-in, guy across the table moves all-in and I can only too happily call. I'm up against KJ offsuit and AK spades, flop comes with a spade so I ask the dealer to put a red two and three on the board. The turn and river were a duece of diamonds and a three of hearts. The dealer and I shared a look at how that turned out.

Now I'm sitting pretty and a few hands later I took out a pretty sizable stack when I flopped top pair with AQ and he pushed with the nut club draw but didn't make it. Now I'm just waiting people out and we get down to four handed play with me the chip leader, Don with a pretty big stack, Bob Grizzle and Britton both playing shorter stacks compared to the two of us. After a half hour or so Don knocks Britton out and we're in the money. I have two plans going in my mind. One, as soon as Bob as out I'm gonna chop the pot with Don and go to damn bed. Two, I've been setting Bob up by consistently raising him. A couple times I was able to move him off the best hand and showed him my trash to get him to play back at me. Finally with Bob down to about 150 in chips remaining he limps in to my big blind. I look down at two Cowboys and raise him again. He immediately pushes all-in and I call. He turns over A9 of spades. He seemed very surprised I actually had such a big hand and even though he had plenty of outs, I felt good. Flop comes Q92, one spade. Turn, Jack of spades. River... 5 of spades. MOTHER OF GOD!

I fold away for a bit while I wait for my demeanor to come back to normal. Now it's 3:15 am, I'm tired and I look down at A3 diamonds, I raise, Bob folds and Don calls. Flop comes Jack high rainbow and I lead out for 150. Don immediately reraises me 150. I look down at my stack (very pissed that I'm in a pot with the other real chip stack at the table) and it leaves me with about 215 in chips if I fold. Blinds are going up to 30/60 very shortly and I'm thinking my Ace might even be good. I decide what the hell and reraise him all-in after thinking it over for a few minutes. It cost him another 123 chips, and I could tell he was calling only because he was pot committed, but he certainly didn't like his hand that much anymore. He turns over J7 offsuit and I never improve and I'm out. Still made $60 for the efforts and I head home pretty pleased.

3:48 am

I bolt pretty much wide awake as I'm replaying that last hand and realize I made a monumental error. I had just combined a few of my stacks into three big towers. So what I had said was 150 dollars when calling Don's raise was actually 300. So my re-raise was actually 273 chips not 123, which would have been almost all the rest of Don's stack. At 3:50 am I'm faced with two realizations, I had enough chips to fold and make second still or I had enough chips to put the pressure back on Don and possibly even make him fold. Hands down one of the most boneheaded things I've done because I don't think Don had me covered in reality. And that's what happens when you're in the sixth hour of a poker game during the middle of the night. Stupid boneheaded mistakes.

I'm not so pleased with my play from last night anymore.

Mentally exhausted...

2005-04-29T15:08:00.000-04:00

From trying to figure out how the hell some people play poker. I really have wanted to get away from posting bad beat stories and the like but some of the play I have seen this week really has boggled the mind.

#1: In the small blind with AK offsuit, it folds around to the button who limps in, I raise to 3x the BB. The BB calls and so does the button. Flop comes KJ5 rainbow. I lead out for a pot bet, BB folds, Button reraises me all-in. I call, he shows K7 offsuit. The turn was a 7 and I got no love on the river. Howsabaabltlewoitugnasg???!?!??!?!

#2: Earlier in this same tournament, again in the small blind, I have 10 8 diamonds. There is a min raise from EP, and five callers before it comes to me. I call, as does the BB. Flop comes 852 with two hearts. I lead out for a pot bet of around 1200, and it folds around to the cutoff who calls. The turn is a 3, so I put him in for his remaining 1260 chips which he calls. He had flopped a set of fives.

It's at this point where some jackass pipes in with the following comment, "Calling a raise with 10 8 is asking for trouble," hardy har har. Now, I had just been moved onto this table, and apparently a number of the players had gotten chummy over the first hour of the tournament. The very next hand I took down a decent sized pot when one of his buddies had called my preflop raise with 10 8 suited and didn't make his draw. Nothing to say? Hmmmm.

I did at least get to stick around and see him get knocked out when he called a preflop raise with KQ. The flop came K high. He led out, got reraised and he smooth called. Turn was a brick he led out, got reraised all-in and he called. Guy had Aces and Jackass was knocked out. I took the opportunity to revert to third grade and type in, "That's what you get for calling a raise with a hand like KQ."

"Oh, you wouldn't have called a raise with KQ for 600 chips when you have 7500?"

"Hard to say, but I probably wouldn't have called his reraise on the flop or his reraise on the turn though."

Silence.

#3: Today I was trying to satellite in to the $50K guarantee on FTP. Hand #1 I get pocket queens under the gun and raise 3x. Get called by the next seat, it folds around and the flop comes KJ10. I lead out for a pot bet of 225 and get immediately reraised all-in. I put the guy on a big Ace like AK or AQ. If it's AQ I have to hit one of the three remaining Aces to make a split pot. If it's AK I can't hit any queen, and basically have to hit the three Aces or the nines to win a pot. I just don't like the draw, so I lay it down. He shows AK.

Very next hand I get dealt Aces in the big blind. There are three limpers, the small blind calls and I raise 3x again. The limpers call and the SB folds. Flop comes 642 with two spades. I decide to let them set the action as I figure one of them will get involved. I check, first limper min bets 30, second limper raises to 400, third limper flat calls, I reraise all-in for another 615 chips. First limper folds, and the other two limpers flat call. The turn is an 8 of clubs. First limper pushes in for his remaining 315 which the other guy also has remaining and he calls. First limper had 56 clubs, second limper had 57 offsuit in red. DAORJHQORGALSKMGF!?!??!

He called a preflop raise with 57 offsuit. Then he called a double re-raise with an OESD after the flop with a flush draw on the board, so instead of eight outs, he possibly only had six. The second play is a lot less questionable than his first decision, but still kind of silly to be putting your tournament at risk on a 5-1 one shot when you have to believe you're already behind. You've still got 1000 chips left before you call my all-in. Oh well, he got there and that was that.

Pocket queens and pocket aces and I was knocked out on hand two. What a game.

I'll post more this weekend about the ridiculousness that was the hour I spent at the Warehouse last night. It was entertaining as always.

Sparky's Revenge

2005-04-23T04:37:00.000-04:00

Thursday night tournaments at the Warehouse got even more interesting this past week. Still haven't drummed up a solid crowd but there's enough of us to keep it going till it catches on. Well, Sparky bought in for two tournaments that he wasn't even going to be at. His instructions are as follows:

Tournament #1, NLH: All-in every third hand.

Tournament #2, PLH and PL Omaha Hi/Lo rotation: Every third hand I will raise pot, reraise pot every time I'm raised, and open every round of betting on those hands with a pot sized bet.

On his first all-in, Sparky stole the blinds. On his second all-in, I looked down at pocket deuces. I considered for a long while but didn't like the fact that all his chances were pretty live and folded it. Naturally, I would have won if I had called but, oh well. "Sparky" went on this way for a while before JB finally called his all-in with pocket Jacks. We turned over Sparky's hand and he had pocket fours. Unbelievable. The Jacks held up and Sparky was out of the tournament in ninth place.

I won't even bother with the details of how I bubbled yet again here.

In tournament #2 we start off with Pot-limit Hold'em. On the third hand Uncle Rob decides what the hell and gets into it with Sparky with AJ spades. I "play" his hand and give Rob the bad news that he has two live cards, 10 4 offsuit. The flop comes with a 4 and everyone starts going nuts. Then a Jack comes on the turn putting Rob back in the lead, but it also puts three diamonds on the board and Sparky has a diamond. As we wait shaking our heads and laughing, the two of diamonds comes on the river and knocks Rob out. Sparky has doubled up. On the sixth hand I got A10 offsuit and Sparky and I were in the blinds. I called to limit his pot size raise, and then called the raise. Flop came A94, all diamonds. DIAMONDS! What ever loving curse has befallen me with Diamonds and my hands at the Warehouse?! I have no red cards and I just have a horrible feeling about this situation but I check to get Sparky's pot bet out there and flat call knowing that if a diamond comes on the turn I'm folding. Turn is a 10 making my top two pair. I decide what the hell and get all-in with Sparky. They turn over his hand and he has pocket fives, one of which is the five of diamonds. Sparky has 10 outs on the river, 3-1 odds. Unreal. Luckily a black three falls and I double up through him.

We get into the Omaha part of the rotation and Sparky takes out JB on his first pot-bet play. Three hands after that I get stuck in a hand with BillyKGB and Sparky. I make top and bottom pair on the flop and have a 2-low draw. Sparky leads out, Bill and I call and I know disaster is looming. The turn is a diamond, giving me a King high diamond draw as well as the two pair and the 2-low draw. Sparky leads out which puts him all-in, Bill calls putting him all-in, and it's another 400 to me. After the money that's been put in there already, I have no choice but to call. An eight of hearts comes on the river. We turn over the cards and Bill takes the high with Kings and Sixes to my Kings and Threes, and Sparky takes the low with an Ace to my Deuce. Sparky is back up and I'm back to about even. Three hands later I get into the same situation when I flop trip Jacks for a high lead and draw to a 2-3 low. Bill is leading out, and I get all my chips in on the flop. Bill makes the straight on the turn, I get no help on the river to boat up, and Sparky once again makes the low with an Ace to my deuce.

So now Sparky has had a hand in eliminating the first three people in the second tournament. He has about triple his starting chips and only has to outlast two more people to make the money. I left at that point but I'll find out this weekend if he ended up pulling off the blind victory and report back...

0-3

2005-04-20T22:13:00.000-04:00

Tried two more of the FTP Bracelet Race tournies today. I was out in the first fifteen minutes both times. In the PLO tourney I got knocked out when the flop came J87 and he made J8, I had J7. In the PLH tourney... well, I'll describe that below.

If things don't improve by the end of this month, I think I may just take May off for the most part and try and regroup.

I'm going to post my fatal hand from the PLH tourney tonight:

In the cutoff with 89 spades, two limpers before it gets min raised to 60 by the seat in front of me. I call, one other caller and then the flop comes 567 rainbow. How to play this flop... hmmmm? The raiser leads out for 1/2 pot, I call, other player folds and the turn is a 6 of clubs, putting two clubs on the board. Raiser bets 250, I raise to 750 and he calls. I really, really don't like that. River is the eight of clubs, he leads out for his remaining chips, which barely has me covered. I call, and naturally, he had A5 clubs. Ugh. Maybe I should have seen the flush coming, but I really thought he might have been on the straight draw and just couldn't see laying that down.

But my favorite hand I've seen online lately was in a satellite SNG I played the other day. I folded preflop but here was the action I watched:

UTG raises to 60, UTG+1 calls as do two others.

Flop is Kh 3c 8c.

UTG bets 30. UTG+1 raises to 360. Two others fold, UTG calls.

Turn is Qh.

UTG bets 30. UTG+1 raises to 300 and UTG calls.

River is 4c.

UTG checks, UTG+1 checks.

UTG shows QJ offsuit, UTG+1 shows AJ spades.

Come again??!?!

The Big Bounce

2005-04-17T07:53:00.000-04:00

"I love you..."

"I think you're a really special person too..."

That's what getting knocked out of a poker tournament feels like.

I just had a good feeling all week. I knew I needed to get into this tournament and finally after much ado, I had qualified via satellite. I was in the Saturday $50K/Piece of the Pros $109 buy-in on Full Tilt for the whopping discount price of $6. I was already ahead of the game. I slept from 10am to 4pm when I had my alarm set for, hit snooze and promptly slept through my clock. I woke up at 6pm on the button, dashed downstairs and had missed the first five hands. No big deal.

I had decided I was gonna really work on tournament strategy and play super tight the first hour and play pretty much only the four premium hands: Aces, Kings, Queens and Ace-King.

Hand #6, my first in front of the computer, I got dealt AK. The flop came Ace high and this guy kept betting into me. I even raised him after the flop but he kept coming. I was still so bleary eyed from just waking up that when I tried to raise the turn I hit the wrong button and merely called. Then on the river when I went to raise him again, same thing. He turned over Ace-Jack and I took down a big pot. Missing those raises would prove costly.

Next hand I got pocket queens and I decided to put a little charm on the dealer and asked for a queen high flop. Flop: Queen high. Thank you, very much. Check it, get a bet from the cutoff, which I call. Turn is a brick and I check it again, getting another big bet from the cutoff. The river pairs the board and fills me up, this time I lead out, he raises all-in and I call. Two pair versus my boat. I started with T2000 and on hand seven I'm up to T6100 and in the top three. Stuck with my strategy for the most part, loosening up two times to trade on my table image and take down the blinds from middle position with hands like King-Jack. I took out another short stack on the table with A8 suited from the small blind and at the end of hour one, I was at T8160, good for 12th place. 269 of the original 450 players were left and I had more than met my original goal for the first hour.

Start out hour two and I am getting great cards again. Slowly building my stack up over 10K but I can't get too crazy because there are two decent sized stacks at the table with me. Then, on the second ante level, in the small blind I get dealt pocket Aces. There's a raise from under the gun, folds around to the cutoff (the second biggest stack on the table) who reraises to T1500 and then it's on me. Hold please. Let's make this look like I don't know what to do, when really on the inside I'm dancing a jig. Is there any possible way I can keep the first raiser in this, too? Don't get greedy, ass. Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. I wait for the warning beep that I'm running out of time to go off and then I reraise to T3500. First raiser folds, cutoff moves all-in. JENGA! Aces versus Kings, please Jesus don't put a King on the board! Suddenly I'm at T21000 and in third place again.

I make a few position steals again and I'm talking to a buddy of mine on AIM, filling him in on the details. I'm in 6th place as the end of the second hour is approaching. I had called off some chips trying to take a shortstack out after a flop that left me open ended. We were both drawing, unfortunately his was the higher gutshot variety and he high carded to win. Four minutes before the break and I'm at T16000, exactly where I wanted to be, doubled up during hour two. Then I get dealt pocket tens. Under the gun makes a 3x the big blind raise to T1200, I figure him for a big Ace, and feeling invincible for some reason, I push my entire stack to the middle. Folds back around to him and he calls, showing Ace-King. Flops a king, turns a king and my miracle ten on the river didn't come. T8624; from 6th place to 40th place at the break.

Post game analysis: I'm not sure I ever psychologically got over that hand. This is something I believe I've written about before and have definitely been questioning in my game. I'm prone to being very aggressive with these high mid-pairs and even though my money got in with the best hand, I feel like it would have been smarter to call from such an early position so I could fold to a reraise or fold after the King high flop came. At hour two we were down to 88 players remaining, top 54 got paid. There were some decent stacks at my table and then to start hour three they moved two heavy stacks onto our table.

First hand out of the break I pick up pocket deuces and the flop comes A42 hearts. I check it, the guy in the cutoff moves all-in for his remaining 5000 in chips and I call. He shows pocket Kings, I turn quad deuces and it's over. Back up to T14000, back into the top ten. Playing it tight again and work my stack back up to around T16000 when I get dealt QJ in early position. I limp in along with three others and see a K 10 7 flop. I check, as does everyone else and a Queen comes on the turn. I check, two others check and then the guy who I had gotten into it with on my first hand of the tournament, bets out. I figure him for Ace-ten and call, the other two fold. The river was a nine, completing my bottom straight, I lead out, he raises and I put him all-in for his remaining 3000 in chips. He only too happily calls and turns over Ace Jack, Broadway. Ouch, that sucks.

Then they move the chip leader to my table and the previous top stack takes out another top stack, so in the two positions to my left are T28000 and T45000. Blinds are at 300/600/75 and I'm down to T7500. There are about 70 players left and I'm in 57th position, just out of the money. I'm able to steal a couple times to keep my head above water but the stacks at my table are so big that their raises are a third of my stack and I can't even play some of my more moderate hands. The level moves to 400/800/100, so now each orbit is going to cost T2000. I made a play at one hand with another shortstack but had to fold after the flop and I'm down to T4800.

I probably could have waited and blinded myself down and snuck into the top 54, but I felt like I needed to steal once more, and doubling up would definitely get me in, so when I got A9 diamonds under the gun, I moved all-in for my 4500. Folds around to the guy I was too bleary-eyed to take out on my first hand, that crippled me with his Broadway and he calls with Kings. No miracle Ace or diamonds and I was out. 64th of 450.

YAHTZEE!

2005-04-16T09:06:00.000-04:00

Okay, I normally don't double post, but seeing as how I stayed up all damn night to get this accomplished... I felt it worthy of a second post for April 16. Hell, if things go wonderfully, this might end up a three post day.

In any event, got home from downtown around 2:25am and signed on to Full Tilt. Registered for a $14+1 satellite for this evening's $50K/Piece of the Pro tournament and waited. And waited. And waited. Watched a movie. Checked back; still waiting. Played a pot-limit Omaha tournament, got a final table, still waiting. Finally at 8:01 am I was joined by the requisite nine players.

Let me preface some of these tournament highlights by saying all my poker luck was reversed in this one SNG, because I did some of the most awful sucking out I have ever done.

Hand #3, I'm in the small blind with 63 diamonds with a minimum raise from under the gun, no callers until me and the big blind folds. Flop comes A95, one diamond. I'm first to act, so I figure what the hell, I'll represent it, and I lead out for a pot sized bet of $150. UTG calls and the turn is a K of diamonds. I lead out for a pot sized bet of $450 and UTG calls me again, bringing a third diamond on fifth street. I put him all-in for his last 300 chips and he calls... turning up A10 hearts.

[Quick analysis of what I think is a pretty retarded play by him; as he leaves the room calling me gay. I called your raise... I led out at the Ace high pot... I was still betting when the diamonds came on the board... in no universe should you have felt that your A10 was good. Thanks for playing... sorry for sucking out. But not really.]

About three hands later I fold to a raise and a reraise... then a reraise all-in and the other two call. Turn the cards over and it was Jacks, Queens and Kings. Jack high flop, Queen on the turn, King on the river. I can't even make that shit up. Insanity. Someone else said they folded pocket nines, I folded KJ, so two of them hit their case cards. I've seen some good ones but this one might take the cake.

So in the first six hands half the table is gone and things slow down for a little while. I sucked out again on a hand I can't remember to get us down to three handed play. I have a 8500-3000-3000 chip lead when we start. I eventually work that to 9500-2500-1500 and then I go on a simply ridiculous run of cards. Aces, sevens, eights, KJs, AJs, Aces, deuces, Ace-eight suited. All in the span of about twelve hands. Did I get a single call? Negative, ghost rider.

So I get A2 clubs in the small blind and complete the bet, Big Blind checks and the flop is J93 with two spades. I check and the BB leads out for about half his stack (he was the short stack at 1500 or so). I thought about it for a while but decided that he would have raised a hand with a Jack preflop, so I figured he was on a spade draw and that my Ace was probably good. I reraise him all-in and he happily calls with J10 of clubs. Ouchy. Turn a four and river the five, completing the Wheel and he's out. This blogger would like that player to know that he does feel genuinely bad about that suckout. That was pretty rough, would definitely rank in the soul-sucking category.

So I start heads up play with an 11,000-2500 chip lead. This is the fourth time I've gotten heads up in this satellite with a better than 2-1 chip lead. I've finished second every other time. I decide to play somewhat tighter than I usually do heads up and let the blinds catch up a bit so I can have pressure on my opponent from both sides. Work him down to about 1100 chips when I get AQ clubs, I raise 3x his big blind which he reraises what I thought was all-in. He had min raised which left him 10 chips. Flop is 466, and I lead out for his 10, he calls and shows J2 offsuit. Brick on the turn. This is the part of the story where you expect me to tell you how I closed him out.

Au contraire, bon jour. Jack on the river.

MOTHER OF GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

11,000-2500 again.

Next hand I get 10 9 hearts, raise him 3x the big blind, he reraises all-in, another 900 or so to me. My "TILT" light is definitely on and I make a rather loose call into his K9, he hits his King and now it's 9400-5100.

This can't possibly be happening to me. Again. For the fourth time in twenty four hours.

AJ. Jack high flop. He goes all-in, I call. He had J 10.

ROSSI WINS! ROSSI WINS!

As cool as the other side of the pillow, baby... no worries here...

The Hammer

2005-04-16T04:10:00.000-04:00

There has clearly been one thing lacking in making this an official poker blog. A proper story about the Hammer. For some of my non-blogging readers, the Hammer is the affectionate term for the preflop hand of 7 2. Not coincidentally, that is the worst starting hand in poker. Ever since I began reading the blogs, I have on several occasions had the pleasure of dropping the Hammer on someone, but I had lacked in reporting it here. I wish Full Tilt would allow hand histories to be copied but I guess I haven't figured that out. So without further ado...

As I was on my way to finishing second for the third time in a $50K guarantee satellite this week(insert angry face with expletives here), I was dealt 72 offsuit under the gun. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like the proper time for the Hammer play. I folded and when the deal started for the next hand in the small blind I was delivered the Hammer once again. But there were two raises before it got back around to me, so once again I was denied my wish to play. So then in the big blind, I was dealt... 72 offsuit. The Hammer on three consecutive hands. It's kismet, serendipity, destiny, fate... whatever you want to call it, now there is no way to ignore it. Three hands in a row is a sign from a higher power.

There were three limpers into the pot in front of me, and when I raised from the big blind I got two of them out. The flop came K86 with a pot of $180. First to act and I made it a pot bet of $180, which was promptly called. The turn card was a 10 and as protocol demanded with the pot of $540, I made a pot-sized bet of $540. My opponent thought for most of his allotted time before folding. I was only too happy to click "show hand" and declare: "HAMMER!"

The shower of appreciation I had anticipated for this phenomenal play was strangely withheld. Oh well, I didn't much care, because the effect of the Hammer was felt yet again on my next play. The very next hand on the button I am dealt Aces. Betting goes around and gets three limpers before I raise it a little too much trying to make it look like a play on the bets. I get a re-raise from the guy I just dropped the Hammer on and he puts me all-in. I call and laugh devilishly as he shows AQ offsuit and gets absolutely no help all the way to fifth street.

Not only did I get to drop the Hammer on him but it also set up the hand where I dropped the hammer on him and knocked him out of the tourney. Unfortunately I ended up getting sucked out by a flush to lose but I got to use virtually my entire bag of tricks in this single SNG. It made my afternoon...

Pot Limit Omaha, you are my only friend...

2005-04-15T03:22:00.000-04:00

"Few players recall big pots they have won -- strange as it seems -- but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career." Seems true to me, 'cause walking in here I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking how I lost it."

Okay. Thursday is now tournament day at the Warehouse. Started off slow tonight, only nine of us for a $50 no limit match, but my luck at hold'em continued at its usual pace... and by luck I mean the lack thereof. I was absolutely card dead for about ninety straight minutes. I made one position raise and took down the blinds with 94 suited, which was pretty much the best hand I had to that point.

Finally picked up some decent hands which was my signal that the end was near. KQ offsuit I brought in for a raise from CO+1, got a call from the big blind and flopped KK3. Checked it and got a brick on the turn; the big blind promptly folded when I led out on after the turn. Next hand I had A8 suited and was able to limp in and we saw a KKQ flop. Criminy. Lay it down to three-way action after the flop. On the third hand I pick up KQ offsuit again, this time on the button. I bring it in for a raise of about 3x the big blind, and JB is sitting to my left and immediately goes all-in. He definitely didn't like this third time I had raised his blinds. It folded back around to me and I thought long and hard before finally deciding I probably had overcards to a pair between 99-JJ. Got to win a coin flip sometime in a tournament so I call his all-in and he turns over Jacks. Naturally, I did not catch any of my outs and I was done. JB went on to take down the tournament after three ridiculous hands at the end.

Hand #1: Down to four handed play (top three pay) and three are in the hand when it comes 10 7 4. Pot bet, raise, JB is all-in, Motown folds after much hesitation and Uncle Rob decides to call. JB has A10 clubs, Motown folded Q10 offsuit and Uncle Rob has J10. Action, baby, action. Turn is a Jack of clubs putting two on the board for JB, and he pulls the miracle club on the river to basically cripple Rob.

Hand #2: Patrick is in the big blind, Motown folds, Rob moves in for his remaining chips, JB folds and Pat calls. Pat turns over pocket threes and Rob has K5 clubs, so it's a race. Junior is dealing and turns over the flop with an eight of clubs on top, which puts a smile on Rob's face. At this point Motown throws out a comment to the effect of, "put two three's on the board, Junior," which Junior promptly does. 833 flop, Pat quads up and Uncle Rob is destroyed in two hands.

Hand #3: After Motown gets knocked out, Pat and JB are heads up for a few hands with nothing much happening. Everyone is waiting to start another tournament and grumbling about the lack of action. JB raises out of the small blind, Pat reraises all-in and JB calls. Pat turns over wired eights to JB's wired threes. Brick, brick, brick. Brick on the turn. And ladies and gentlemen, a miracle three on the river and JB takes it all down.

This is the kind of stuff that happens all the time at the Warehouse apparently. Just make it to the river, you'll suck out.

So after a few minutes of debate, we start tournament two, pot-limit Omaha. From the jump I am absolutely running this tournament over. I decided beforehand that the only way to play this was aggressive, aggressive, with a side order of aggressive. I'm moving people off of made hands with two pair only. The only words coming out of my mouth are "pot", "pot", "pot".

Only made about three missteps the whole tournament, and when I get down to heads up it's against Bill (Teddy KGB). Bill starts off 2-1 chip leader against me but I make some aggressive moves post-flop and take it down. Suddenly I've just about caught up when I get all-in and take it down, giving me T16000 to KGB's T2000, approximately. Then we both caught hands, and KGB won three times in a row, so suddenly he's moved back ahead of me.

Not even upset with any of those losses because I know I played them correctly. Then we get into a hand where we checked it pre-flop, and it came 679. I had 58 in the hand and pot at KGB, he pots back at me, I pot back at him and I'm all-in. He shows 7 7 10 K, and I have a tenuous lead. The turn card is 5 and I've dodged bullet number one. So basically I just need to avoid a 5, 6 or 8. And as per Warehouse tradition, as I'm begging the board not to pair, a five (OF FUCKING DIAMONDS) washes me out of the tourney on the river.

Diamonds?!?!!? ALWAYS A DIAMOND!!! I'm really not that upset though, and as Bill and I discussed afterward, that was almost the most fun I've had playing a tourney ever. It was well played, with plenty of action, and I really didn't misplay a single hand. There were a few I folded that I shouldn't have, I got trapped in one hand that there was no getting away from, and other than that it all went swimmingly.

One final positive note: I walked out of the Warehouse tonight with more money than I had put in. Sweet, sweet victory! The day is mine!

Warehouse, Episode III: The Diamonds Strike Back

2005-04-13T01:28:00.000-04:00

So I wasn't even going to play poker tonight. I had a decent afternoon playing some satellites on FTP and was starting to feel good about my game again. I was just gonna go out tonight, hit up Tiki's with my friend who was begging me to go out and then come on home and watch some television. Then my friend blows me off, I'm downtown with nothing to do, so I figure "what the hell," and I head on over to the Warehouse.

I get there about 11pm, expecting to find the place crammed like it usually is on Tuesday night. There were six of us. A nice quiet game. I buy in for $100, the big blind is on me and I look down at 82 offsuit. No one raises the pot so I get a look at the flop for free and it comes with a beautiful 872. Daddy takes it down for about $35. Holy shit! I'm up at the Warehouse!

A few hands later I get into it with Uncle Rob when both of us were chasing a spade draw, nothing happens but I had the nut draw and he was on King high, so I take in another $25. There must be some mistake here, I don't win at the Warehouse. I dump off about $40 when I have AQ diamonds and the flop comes AJ4. I lead in, but not enough, because Taj is playing middle pair and catches his set on the turn and that's all she wrote for my profits.

"You must be kicking yourself for not walking out when you could. Bad judgement... but don't worry son, it will all be over soon."

Uneventful hands for a while until I get pocket sixes. Under the gun pots to make it two dollars, I pot again and make it seven dollars, Pierce calls my seven and Taj pots again to make it $24 more to go. A couple reluctant folds and it's back around to me. I've just watched Taj take down about four pots with stone cold bluffs so I'm thinking I could very easily be ahead in this hand. Or, option B; I could be a 4.5-1 underdog. But this is poker, right? You gotta have iron balls sometimes and just put your damn money in. Especially in this crazy ass game at the Warehouse, where apparently if you are behind, you will win. So I call knowing I need to hit my six to do anything after the flop, Pierce folds, and the cards come J96. YAHTZEE! Taj is first to act, puts the rest of his money in and I immediately call. He asks me forlornly if I hit a set as he turns over his pocket Aces. It was appparently option B: 4.5-1 underdog... I'm one damn lucky bastard. The guys on either side of me folded Big Slick, so his other two Aces are dead.

A big fat $183 pot is coming over to me-- third diamond on the turn... [Taj has the Ace of diamonds] ... fourth diamond on the river... Taj hits his nut flush with runner runner diamonds and takes it down.

"It hurts doesn't it? You can't believe what fell..."

Left me with $4.75 and I get it all in on the next hand with J10 offsuit. I get three callers and the flop comes J73. That feels pretty good. They start building the side pot but after a call and a re-raise, I'm head up with the guy to my right who turns over pocket threes. Turn is a queen, and just to kick me in the balls, the river is a Jack too...

Trust your gut...

2005-04-11T19:32:00.000-04:00

I don't know why it's so hard to follow this simple tenet. Just trust what your gut is telling you to do and 98% of the time you'll move along just fine.

Things have slowed on the poker front lately as I took a few days off to get the brain back in shape. Played in the Motown Invitational on Thursday and even though I wasn't card dead, I just let myself get ground down. There were two critical hands as I remember it, not critical as far as where they would have put me overall, but critical because I ignored what I intially thought I should do.

Hand #1: We started off with T2000 in chips, and with blind levels at 20/40 I had dumped off a few chips on AK with a flush draw the hand before and was down to around T1400. I looked down and had A10 diamonds from middle position and decided to bring it in for a raise. I raised to 150 and got one caller from the big blind. He had thought for a little bit before deciding he would play. Flop came 10 6 4 and I led out for 200, which he quickly raised to 700. My gut immediately messaged in to go back over the top of him all-in. Instead, I slowed down thought about it for a while, and let him get away with what he told me later was 10 7.

Hand #2: I had managed a decent comeback through the rest of the hour and was up to 1800 with blinds at 70/150. Tournament was moving along quickly and big stacks were dictating the action. I looked down at wired Jacks under the gun and brought it in for $500 raise. The next guy went all-in for about 1300 total and then from around the table another guy went all in for his stack of 1900 which had me covered. Again, my gut messaged me, and this time it was telling me to fold. The first raise was something I could think about playing, but the second one was definitely Aces. I thought and thought and thought, finally decided that with the money that was in the pot and the fact that I'd be under T1000 after the blinds went through and may not see a hand as good as Jacks, I called. Queens and Aces. I was screwed either way. The Aces held up and I was out. It may not have been an incorrect decision after examining all factors, but looking back on it now, I'm disappointed because my game has come far enough for me to lay a hand like that down.

During this losing streak I have taken solace in the fact that I have still usually been making the right decisions and I have stayed aggressive in the face of everything else. Three of the best hands I have played have been a result of trusting my instincts and calling with mediocre hands in the face of what a player seems to be representing. Every time I've been right, and have taken down those hands with middle pairs.

Just keep plugging away I guess, and hopefully things start running well again soon. Tonight is the weekly game, could use some love there....

Keeping my chin up...

2005-04-06T03:38:00.000-04:00

But it keeps getting heavier and heavier. And so the cards continue to run against me... actually, hurtle toward me and kick me in the gut is probably more apropos. It's been about two weeks of a bad run so far but as always, the optimist in me keeps finding some good things to concentrate on.

Almost every time I've gotten my money in with the best hand and gotten drawn out on or rivered. They haven't all been bad beats, but all have been tough... very, very tough to swallow.

Example: Tonight I went to play at the Warehouse again. I sat down with $100 and was dealt pocket sevens. Flop came Q 9 7, with two diamonds. I checked hoping one of the other six people in the hand would help me build it (it's a pot limit game). We checked around and a six came on the turn. This time I led out, got two callers and then someone pot bet, two folds, I pot bet back at him (which put me all-in and made it $47 more to go), two folds and then it was decision time. He thought I had the straight but ended up calling anyway with the nut flush draw. I think you all can guess what happened. First hand, all-in... busted.

Reload for $100 more. About fifteen minutes later I look down at two red Aces. I raise pot, get called which gives the third caller the odds to put his money in. He naturally flopped his nine high flush. Positive note: My game has progressed to the level where I can lay down pocket Aces, but it still cost me a bundle.

Down $135 at that point, when I get in a pot where I river Broadway and the other guy rivered his King high flush.

Down $165.

I made a decent comeback when I got doubled up on what I will unabashedly designate a great read by yours truly. Played 89 hearts and then called a pot raise of four bucks from the seat in front of me. Flop came J94 with two spades. Raiser bets out seven dollars, which is about a quarter of what I have left. I've only played with this guy for about ninety minutes but my instincts tell me that he missed this flop and is playing overcards and a draw. I decide what the hell, and pot bet back at him which put me all-in for my last $35. He called, turned over KQ of spades, and shockingly he did not flush out on me.

I made another two good plays which got me back to even on my second hundred bucks, but right before it shut down for the night I put some more money into a 966 flop where I had A9. I still think I got bluffed off of it, but oh well.

Well my friends, there are better stories to be told than my bad beats tonight (even though it indirectly is the worst beat I took all night long). Along about midnight an old guy everyone called Sparky walks into the room. He sits down with a Benjamin and promptly goes all-in blind with the guy sitting to my right. Guy to my right had AK over a J 10 8 board and Sparky turns over Q 10 when he finally gets to his cards. Turn is a brick and the river brings a Queen which stunned the table for a second until we realized Sparky had lost out on All-in #1 to Keith's Broadway.

That's right, All-in #1. Sparky promptly reloads for $100 and is all-in blind on hand two. He gets into it with the guy on my left who turns over pocket Aces against Sparky's AK hearts. Two hearts come on the flop, but the guy on my left (Tight Tony) holds on and takes down the pot. Reload... all-in blind on hand three. Gets into it with TT again, who this time turns over pocket Kings and takes down another C-note. Sparky gets up and leaves and then comes back five minutes later and gets into it again. All-in blind, after the flop this time, except that TT flopped a set with his pocket eights and they hold up to Sparky's straight draw and bottom pair. Fifteen minutes, three hands, three hundred bucks... poof.

How's that a bad beat for me, you ask? My buddy Matt moved from our table to the no-limit table right before Sparky showed up, which means I would have had TT's hands instead. Thanks Matt, you owe me three hundred bucks.

Sparky got involved one more time before he left when he backed another guy at the table to go all-in blind for $100, and the guy lost. So Sparky was there for about 45 minutes and dropped five hondo. Apparently he's the reason the games went from no-limit to pot-limit. But that was definitely some entertaining "poker" to watch.

About 2:30 am as we're playing our last few orbits, Sparky calls in to Uncle Rob and tells him to ask TT if he'll go double or nothing on two blind cards in the middle of the table. Unfortunately, Tony declined.

[Editor's note: If I were Tony, I just might have done it.]

deep breath 10... 9... 8... 7...

2005-04-02T19:08:00.000-05:00

[long string of expletives deleted]

It happened so fast I'm still not sure exactly what happened. Playing the $50K guaranteed on FTP this afternoon, killing time in between my live games. $109, gone. I hardly got to know ya, Benjamin...

I'm in the small blind with J6 offsuit, three limpers so I call and the BB checks it. Flop comes 9 10 J, with two diamonds. First to act, I decide to push it and see what happens. Fold, fold, caller and a fold. Turn is a 6 of spades. JENGA! Pot is 1600 and I have T1380 left, so I go all-in. Called by an A10. Called by an Ace Ten?!?!?

River is immediately an Ace, I lose and the table is broken up so I don't even get to see what on earth possessed her to call. In order to make myself feel moderately better I'm going to pretend that she had diamonds in her hand. Of course, I also watched her call a $250 preflop raise with K5, so I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to convince myself she had the draw too. Ace [expletive deleted] 10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today may be the day of tough beats for me. Played a tournament early this morning and got knocked out when the river made my straight and his flush. Then I hosted a big game this afternoon and was running pretty well after ruining my boy Ryan's afternoon. Caught him bluffing at a missed flop when I had middle pair and took about 2/3 of his stack. Got the rest of it when he had 10 5 clubs in the big blind and I had J2 clubs in the little blind and we both flopped the flush. So we're down to five players (top three paid) and I look down at the Hilton sluts (pocket queens for my non-poker addict friends). I raise to $500, get reraised to $800 and I push all-in. Without hesitation the call comes from the end of the table, so immediately I know I'm screwed and wait to see Aces or Kings. Ace-King. Huh? He didn't realize how much I had left in my stack and thought I was pushing with small pair or smaller ace. He is kind enough to tell me that if he had realized how much I had left, he might have laid it down. No worries, the Ace comes on the flop and I'm out.

Top hands that can go straight to hell as far as I'm concerned:

1. Jacks
2. Tens
3. Queens
4. Ace Ten offsuit [many expletives deleted]

Oh well, one hour and we'll start live game numero dos today. Maybe I can recoup my losses and go out and drink off the anger of getting called with Ace Ten off- er, I mean, diamonds... she had to have the diamonds to call....

The Honest Assessment

2005-03-31T23:15:00.000-05:00

I remember when I was teenager always hearing about how much smarter my parents are going to seem when I get to twenty five. Check.

And the all the educational cliches about how to learn from the mistakes of those that have gone before you. Check.

The last one is the best because no matter how much you take it to heart, you still do all those dumb things until you're popped doing it and finally learn. And such is the development of a poker player.

So the slightly ego-boosted assessment of my own skill is that I'm good with the potential to be much better than good. I possess no real barometer of my skill other than for a few months I've been mildly successful playing online and live against friends and random other opponents. That the first two times I sat down and played a live tournament of sorts, I won.

So it's been easy to get down on myself this week as my bankroll has been getting pummelled. Absolutely, one hundred percent pummelled. But by nature I'm more of an optimist so I've been going back over this week trying to decide what the high points were, what I got out of this mess besides losing several hundred dollars.

1) Baby pairs can't stand a reraise from early position.

I've read that plenty of times but was just stupid enough to ignore it last night and got bounced out of the midnight show on FTP on the first hand. Naturally, it was by none other than a pair of Johnnies. [expletive deleted] Johnnies.

2) Ace-King, no matter what, still only makes an Ace high starting hand.

Read that as well, even preached about the stupidity of online players who overplay that hand no more than a few days ago on this very blog. You may currently apply the stupid sign to this guy right here.

3) It's okay to lose, it's going to happen more often than not, so long as you've made the right decision to get into that situation.

In trying to teach my parents some of the finer points of poker, I've had more than a few conversations with my father about it. I tried to find the best analogy to explain where my poker game was at and found it in one of my other passions, golf. I truly think golf is the close cousin of poker. Both "sports" have winners that come out on top of tournaments only a very rare percentage of the time overall. You can do every little thing correctly and sometimes the cards just come wrong or the ball bounces a little askew, and the expected result is demolished.

I played poker pretty regularly for about four months before I ever looked at a poker instruction book. As I've been applying the principles I learn to the style of play I have, my game has kind of vascillated back and forth between very good and very bad. Kind of like when you go get your first lessons in golf and they change your grip. And your stance and your swing and your weighting and just about every thing you can think of until you are so uncomfortable that you'd rather not even play golf. But then a funny thing happens; it becomes natural to do those things. Suddenly your game is ten times better than it was before. Once you've got those basics ingrained you can start working on the nuances of playing better. Shaping different shots, using different clubs in varying situations and generally being more creative and even taking a few more risks.

Discovering this analogy has been a big help to the evolution of my poker skills. When I started playing golf I used to shoot in the 115-120 range for 18 holes. I started lessons, played more and each year for three years I knocked about 10 shots off my score. Once I got down to shooting between 85-95 regularly, I read an article that said only the top 5% of golfers break 90 for eighteen holes. Suddenly you don't feel so ridiculous shooting 90. The pros are the top one tenth of one percent of all golfers. Then I worked on my game and I found I could do a lot more than used to, I could hit shots exactly as I wanted to, moving the ball in different directions just as I had envisioned. And then I started shooting in the low 80's. I was probably ten times better but my score only improved from 87 to 82. I could go out and shoot three or four under par for nine holes but I'd blow up somewhere on the back nine. Or I'd start out poorly on the front nine and then everything would come together on the back. I didn't have a complete game (still don't).

Seven months or so into this little poker adventure I'm on, I have to say that I think I've started finding some of the nuances. My skill has improved a lot but I still have work to do on making all these things I've learned into natural conditions of my game. Some weeks it all makes sense, like it did two weeks ago when I made six final tables online and won twice, making about $2,000. And then there's weeks like this one where I've lost hundreds of dollars. I've made good decisions, bad decisions and just plain gotten into situations where I lost but made the right decision that put me there.

And such are the bumps and bruises of playing poker... of playing golf... of living life...

Evolution of the Johnny

2005-03-30T22:22:00.000-05:00

I finally participated in a vaunted World Poker Blogger Tour (WPBT) event. PokerStars is a pretty decent site (FTP still the best one going) and the buy in for tonight's tourney was $22 and started with T1500. There were 109 entries this evening and as evidenced by my second post of the day, things did not end as I had hoped.

Things started out decent enough, had to fold a few hands before I finally caught a KJ and opened up for the first time; with no callers.

Then it turns into the hot corner over on my side of the table. I get dealt pocket fives, call the minimum raiser in front of me and four of us see the flop. Queen-eight-seven. Raiser leads out for $120 and I have to fold as the entire board is over me. Turn card? Five. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Two hands later I have 35 clubs in the big blind, three limpers come into the pot and we see the flop together. King-two-six. Guy leads out for $150 which is a little expensive to catch a gutshot so I fold. Turn card? Four. [expletives deleted]

On the next orbit I pick up 78 hearts and get two hearts on the flop. I lead out and the shortstack on the table raises all in for another $200 so I have to call. He has King-high and I river a seven to win. Sweet victory. [dancing]

Next orbit in the big blind I get... Eke... Ike. Lovely. There's a raise from middle position up to $250, a caller from the cutoff and I decide to simply call. Flop comes 672 and I lead out for $300, get raised up to $700 and I go all-in back over the top, which he calls. And the winner is... pocket sevens for a set. [insert game show loser music here] Thank you badblood44, thank you very much.

And then it begins. What's that, you ask? The Evolution of the Johnny. It seems so appropriate being my name and all but it just never treats me right. I get pocket Jacks not once... not twice... but five times in the next twenty minutes! What's even more astounding? I won every single time! If the board was over me, it got checked to me and I took it down. If it was under me, I raised and took it down. Glorious, glorious Jacks! Long live the Johnny!

I lose a hand right before the break at hour one but it was to a shortstack, so minimal damage done. I'm sitting in 14th place with $3306 chips and 66 players are left. If not for the AA debacle I'd be in the top five. Not a bad first hour's work. And then I get moved. [dum-dum-dum...]

I end up on the table with two of the top eight stacks, including the chip leader. HermWarfare has $8165 and Guinness has $4060, and this table is loaded with the blogger elite. Luckily Herm is in front of me, so I have that going for me, which is nice. First hand after the break I got A2 offsuit on the button and raise to $450 which puts the big blind all-in. He decides to gamble and calls, turning over J3 of clubs. Okay, I'm screwed. Screwed, you say? You're ahead 57-43% preflop. Two clubs on the flop. Jesus Christ. Brick on the turn. Now I'm up 66-34%. Here it comes... CLUB! [many expletives deleted]

The luck has turned. Big time.

And then.... drumroll, please... the final hand. I get A10 offsuit under the gun and raise to $450, Guinness calls and HermWarfare calls. Naturally, the top two stacks on the table. Flop comes J 10 5, and Herm leads out for $700 into the $1475 pot. Hmmmm, my sense tell me that it's middle pair, and I have the better middle pair. Not gonna let this chip leader bully me around, it's time to make a statement... ALL-IN! About $1500 more, what do you think about that Mr. Chip Leader!?!? Guinness gamely gets out of the way and after a momentary pause for drama... Herm calls. And shows me... Jack-Jack.

Evolution of the Johnny, I knew those sons-of-bitches were gonna turn on me....

63rd out of 109...

"You're an idiot..."

2005-03-30T19:26:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, the musings of a man on tilt. I'd raised his big blind at least seven times before and about half the time with an actual raising hand. I knew sooner or later he was going to have to pop me back and the eighth time I raised him I had QJ offsuit on a four-handed table. The blinds were at 80/160 and I took it up to 480. Just as I had expected he finally popped me back and went all-in for about 1600 more. As I had been expecting his play, I called his all-in immediately and he had A4 offsuit. I immediately caught a Queen on the flop and then a Jack on the turn and he was drawing dead. Let the shouting begin...

"You're an idiot..."

"You called with the worst hand..."

"You were behind, there's no way you should have called an all-in..."

Okay, sir, since I was playing three tables I didn't have much time to explain to you my thoughts other than to wish you a good evening, thank you for your chip donation and let you know that poker was a game of odds and unfortunately another five cards after the deal.

So what did I think he had? I didn't even give him credit for an Ace, though seeing the Ace-rag didn't really surprise me. In fact, I think his re-raise is the foolish decision here, though exactly the right play. How can it be both? Well, my limited poker experience probably makes this the wrong idea but here's my thinking. Even though I had raised him many times before, any big ace from my position is a possibility on a raise. So if you're re-raising into me, you only have three outs. Same if I have medium pairs. Hell, if I only had a pair of two's or three's, you're still an 11-10 underdog. Those are all the reasons to think you're behind from the start and at best to call my raise, not re-raise me.

Now, for why it's the right play from him. I've raised you at least seven times while you're in the big blind and you've laid it down to me each and every time. If you don't pop me back, hand or not, I'm gonna keep running over your big blind since I know you'll succumb to pressure. So you have to pop me back on a re-raise at some point to slow me down. You look down and find an Ace and figure I'm just popping your blinds again and decide to make your move. All-in. I make the call and we're racing.

Ace-four offsuit versus Queen-Jack offsuit, you have a 56-44% advantage pre-flop. Very nearly coin flip odds and you ended up on the wrong side of the coin. Welcome to poker. Your comments as you left the table, "Well, at least I got my money in with the best hand," does hold some validity (though I think someone's been watching a little too much Celebrity Poker Showdown).

That was my lone success of yesterday. Won a satellite token in that sit n' go on FTP. Other than that I lost $280 between tournies, SNG's and the tables. You might think, "Wow, that's some awful playing, Rossi," but it wasn't all terrible decisions by yours truly. Without exaggerating even a single iota, I lost $180 of that total to pocket Aces. Six (expletive deleted) times. I was bullet riddled by the end of the night.

I tried to find some solace in my now beloved 2am $20 tourney on FTP and I doubled up on the first hand. Chip leader on the second hand of the tournament and from my experience the previous day I knew I was surely screwed. Made a play at a hand a few minutes later when I had come in with small suited connectors and the flop came King high. Put a lot of pressure on the guy that stuck it out and after much debate he finally re-raised me on the turn. My honest opinion was that he was bluffing as well, but his crappy hand had to be better than my crappy hand. I had basically pissed away the money from the double up on hand one, and then I got AQ on a queen high flop and played right into my opponent's hands. How did play right into his hands you ask? Ace-Ace. Two more bullets are enough to kill me for the night....

"To the game, Jeeves..."

2005-03-29T20:35:00.000-05:00

Hopped my afternoon flight back from FLA to Richmond, got in at 8:37 pm on the nose and was picked up by JB and off to the weekly poker game at Mo's by 9:15. That's dedication for you, people. Or obsession. But I'm gonna go with dedication.

We had a full game of nine players with a $40 buy-in. I mucked the first hand, JB was behind me and ended up losing with his AK suited. Second hand I looked at one card at a time... Ace... Ace. Lovely. I raise it and JB promptly re-raises me. I can only hope that I'm not smiling on the outside as much as I am on the inside. Action folds around to me and I put on a little bravado and say "re-raise" as emphatically as I can, hoping he won't believe that I have the one hand that kills him. He calls me and the flop is all undercards. I lead out at the pot, he raises me and I call. Turn is another brick and I lead out, he goes way over the top of me and I move all-in back over him. The table is loving this action, and JB announces that there's only one hand that beats him so I know I've got him caught with KK. Eventually he calls me, and I show him the bad news, Eke and Ike. So in the course of two hands JB has had AK suited and Kings and he's busted out of the tournament. There's no justice in poker.

This did however present a bit of a conundrum. Four minutes into the tournament, my ride is knocked out and I'm chip leader, so I could be there a while. We decide to make this our first ever re-buy tournament. This would prove interesting throughout the night. About ten minutes later I look into the cards and there are the bullets again. To what do I owe the honor, fellas? Three people limped in front of me, I raise and they all call. Thanks, guys. Flop comes 8 9 10, with two diamonds. I'm first to act so I lead out with a modest bet and JT ponders for a long time before finally mucking his hand. While he was debating I had already decided that no matter what I was going all-in over a raise or on the turn, I didn't think I'd be up against anything better than a flush or straight draw. PokerDon folds and then Mo pops back over the top of me for $100. Before he could finish saying it I had moved all-in. A series of expletives and a few minutes later he called me and turned over KJ of clubs. He got no help on fourth or fifth street and suddenly I'm tripled up in the first 25 minutes.

It seemed obvious the poker gods were sitting on my shoulders at this point and it grew even more apparent a little later in the night. I got KQ offsuit and Matt had AK in the seat in front of me. The flop came AK8 and when Matt checked to me, I decided to make a play at him since most of the night I had controlled his action. I led out into him and he re-raised all-in which I called since I was pretty much pot committed. When he turned over Big Slick I could feel my face fall and I told him that he got me as the dealer turned over a Jack. "It's all over unless a ten comes on the riv-" as the dealer turns over a ten on the river. I sat in shock for a couple seconds before showing Matt my straight and I briefly wondered if he were going to strangle me to death right then and there. So now I've got stacks of chips sitting in front of me that look like the New York skyline. And then...

It all went south. I made a horrible call (in my opinion) against JB when I caught K3 on a King high flop with two clubs and went back over the top of his raise and put him all-in; he had K10. Stack one, collapsed. Then I got involved with Matt again (stupid re-buys) when I caught pocket fives on the big blind. The flop came K84 and he checked it to me, so I led out at him trying to represent the King. He called my $100. Turn was a brick but it also put two diamonds on the board. He checked again so I loaded up one more time and fired at him with another $100... which he called. I'm sure the sounds of my brakes squeeling could be heard after he called the second time, but then the ever so lovely 5 of diamonds came on the river. Now I loaded up a shell with a real hand and put another $100 into the pot... and he called again and showed me his King-King... a higher set. Umm, tower, we've got problems here. Stacks two and three, collapsed. Only the fact that a third diamond came out saved me from losing all my money on that hand. So, I'd been chip leader for five hours and some change at that point and now I'm short stacked with about $270 remaining. There's no crying in poker, Rossi.

There's something truly embarassing about having quadruple what everyone has for five hours and then missing the money which is exactly what I was staring down the barrel at. Got lucky and doubled up off Matt with pocket sevens versus his Ace-Queen and then finally, at 4:15am I got knocked out in third place (money!) when I went up against JB's Ace-Queen with pocket two's. That was the second hand I thought I played poorly. JB raised $100 and I figured him on exactly the hand he ended up having. My brain was telling me to simply call and see the flop but somewhere the idiot inside told me to put it all on the line. If I had seen the flop which came with an Ace, I could have folded and been in fine shape to keep playing. Live and learn.

JB finally won about forty minutes later, which he quite frankly has earned with the never ending string of bad beats he has taken over the last few months, particularly from me. Today hasn't treated me so well on the poker front, down a couple hundred bucks, but for some reason I feel really strongly that I'm gonna take down something big soon and make it to the World Series... just got a feeling...

Never play poker with family...

2005-03-27T14:03:00.000-05:00

So over the course of this vacation I've been attempting to teach my family and some close friends how to play. I've covered some of the principles of betting and card selection but apparently I've merely been talking to myself. I tried very, very hard not to let myself fall into that common trap of believing you're better than the game you're playing in. It becomes a very bitter little pill to swallow, though, when you get to the river with your Ace-King and find out your mother called your $10 raise with 83 offsuit and hit the K83 flop. Or when you watch your father call two other people's all-in bets with J2 offsuit, only to hit his 2 and win. After watching all this you can only sit back and laugh and pray to God that you soon get back to a normal poker game where people fold when they're supposed to.

On the semi-normal poker front, my apparent collapse of any and all poker skill continues. I've definitely been playing way loose the last few days. Even though the probabilities have been there for many of my calls, I still should be playing a little smarter and holding my chips for times when I have the hand instead of the gambles to make a hand. I won't get a chance to play any of the big tournaments this weekend unfortunately, but that gives me a week to earn some money back online and hopefully cash in next weekend. Also have at least two big live tournaments this week so hopefully the top three streak will continue there. If I can get in the money in both those tournaments I should be halfway to the WSOP.

Well time to squeeze in a SNG (sit n' go) or two before I get ready for Easter dinner, but until my next post, may all your hands be live and your pots be monst--- damn, I've been watching way too much World Poker Tour...

EV and the Problem with Aces and Maniacs

2005-03-25T12:54:00.000-05:00

Haven't played a whole lot the last few days other than sneaking in a few tournaments. Taught my parents and some other close friends of the family how to play NL and Limit Hold'em yesterday, let me just say, that was an adventure. My mother has an uncanny knack for making her 84 offsuit turn into a winning hand every single time. Any two cards, any two cards will do...

So the first tourney I played last night was the $20 midnight show on FTP. As seems to be the usual routine lately, I was put on the table with Sycophant, a very solid player who the last five times we've played each other has caught monster pairs everytime I'm in the big blind. Well it turns out that most of the rest of this table are maniacs. Early on I got KJ offsuit under the gun, raised it up 3x and got a call from a guy in middle position who called with Q7 diamonds. Naturally the flop came Jack high with two diamonds and he made it on the turn. With most of my money gone I waited patiently and actually got tripled up as a reward. So back up to T1400 and watching more maniac play go down. One guy went all in for 900 chips with a pair of nines and got called by a guy with A2 clubs. As should be guessed, he caught his Ace.

A few hands later I get A10 suited under the gun and raise to 3x (240 chips). Two spots down, reraised to 450 and the guy after him calls the 450. With all that out there I had to take a flop so I called. Flop came ten high. This part will lead into the title of today's discussion. I didn't think either of them had pocket aces, but I did figure at least one of them to have QQ or KK and the other could have AK the way the table had been playing. I had T1000 left with 2100 already in the pot. I knew both would call if I went all-in, so the pot was laying 5 to 1 for me. If I had everything read correctly I had about five outs left in the deck, and with a full ring at the table my odds in the deck were about 5.5 to 1.

I went all-in and soon saw I was up against QQ and KK. I was behind, but still had plenty of chances with two cards to come. Unfortunately there was no joy in Mudville and I got knocked out. This play was absolutely a gamble, as most situations with a high expected value (EV) tend to be, but the odds were good enough to take a chance on a pot that would have put me in the top five. Of course everyone one of the maniacs was going nuts about it, arguing about how I could make a call with 10's only, but in the long run it's the ability to make informed decisions that will let me beat them and I know that it wasn't a terrible play.

Then I decided to try a tourney on Paradise Poker, a new site I signed up for. An old friend of a friend of mine who is basically a pro now plays there pretty regularly. I've got some good stories about him that I'll save for another post down the road. The site is not too bad overall but the table interface leaves a lot to be desired. I do like the layout of their tournament lobbies though, provide a lot of good information about what's going on with the rest of the tables. In any event, I signed up for a $25 NL tourney that got 201 players. I was on absolute FIRE coming out of the gate in this thing. I'm making two pair, straights, flushes, top pair on five consecutive hands and was up to T3500. I also flopped a full house in there but got no action. Then I got KQ offsuit in middle position, raised it up 3x and decided to trade on my table image. I had one caller and the flop came with a bunch of blanks so I led out for a pot bet of 300 which he called. The turn was an Ace. I went ahead and pot bet again for 900 and he thought about it and thought about it before finally calling right before his time expired. Another blank came on the river and I loaded up my third shell and fired another 500 at the pot which put him all-in. He calls and turns over A4 offsuit. Brutal. A little while later I got pocket 3's and called a raise from a guy I figured was on big slick. Flop came with blanks so I moved in for my last 400 chips and he called, bingo I was right, AK suited. Turn was no help and then the unmerciful Ace came out and I was done.

Here's what I see more and more and more of online, overvaluing the Ace. The first guy calling me with A4 offsuit either made an incredible read (something I'm not giving him credit for based on his play the rest of the hour I saw) or just decided Aces are goob and I'm going to play it even though this guy most likely has a better Ace than I do. The second guy qualifies as an even bigger donk. An ace is only a high card, people, it alone does not beat a pair... ANY pair. Far too often I see people take on short stacks incorrectly. If I had pushed all-in preflop for my 675 chips, calling with AK suited is not such a terrible play. Most online players with a short stack will push with any decent painted cards or big Ace. But when they call a raise and then go all-in after the flop, more credence may want to be given to their hand when you merely have an Ace high.

Just my two cents on something to think about next time you're playing.

"I liked my odds..."

2005-03-23T16:39:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm going to sound a little bit like a whiner on this post. But I would like to preface my comments by saying I would have accepted losing on this hand if he had given me the right reasoning for his call. It's the 2am $20 tourney on FTP and as seems to be the norm lately, I made it to the final table (in spite of myself). I have been playing some boneheaded poker the last fourty-eight hours but was able to pull it together early this morning.

With seven players left out of the original seventy-two, prospects are looking good as I have about 13,000 in chips and am one good hand away from moving up to the top. I get dealt AJ offsuit under the gun plus one (UTG +1) and we are at 250/500 blinds with 50 antes. UTG calls and I bring it in for a raise up to 2000. Action folds around to the small blind who completes and the big blind and UTG folds. Flop comes Qh 8h 4d with 5550 in the pot already. SB is first to act and leads out for 2000. I get the sense that this board kind of scared him and even though I'm not on a draw, I decide I can probably take the pot down anyways and move back over the top of him all-in for another 7000 chips. After pondering for a bit he decides to call and turns over pocket 10's. I got no help on the turn or river and I'm out of the tourney in seventh place.

I ask him if he thought I was on the draw and he tells me, "No, I just liked my odds," (record scratches and stops). We are all dumber for having heard this, I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul. You just liked your odds? Your odds were awful. Actually, less than awful. More like somewhere in the neighborhood of the odds that I have of getting Cameron Diaz into my bed.

If you didn't put me on the draw that means you thought I probably had the Queen, which was a very good possibility considering my preflop raise and subsequent reraise all-in after the flop. So by your reasoning, putting another 7ooo chips into the pot at that point, with it sitting at almost 17000, makes your pot odds at around 29%. If I did have the queen then you had no outs other than to hit one of the other two tens in the deck. Which means that you had two cards out of the thirty-one remaining to make you the winner. Those odds you ask? 15.5/1 or approximately 6.5% to hit your cards. So you have to put in 27% of the pot in order to have a 6.5% chance of winning? Thank you, Texas_Reign, I'll be looking you up to play at your table again in the future. Donk.

So close I could taste it....

2005-03-22T11:21:00.000-05:00

So the weekends on Full Tilt now include a $50K guaranteed and a $75K guaranteed tournament on Saturday and Sunday respectively. After winning the 2am tourney again on Friday, I had decided what the hell I'll play. Well after my three minutes of boneheaded moves in the $50K that took me from 30th to out, I wasn't so sure I'd play in the $75K. But as I saw the lineup on Sunday, 255 entrants in total with top 36 paid, I bought in. Fresh off the mistakes of the day before, I kept it tight for a long time. You started off with T3000 chips for this one which I thought was nice. For $216 I'd like to be able to make some plays and maybe even one moderately bad one without being knocked out. I was somewhere between T2300 and T3500 for most of the first ninety minutes. Then I flopped to the nut flush and got supremely lucky when I had a shortstack come up with pocket Jacks on a low board and someone else had flopped two pair. That put me at T5300 and in position to really start making some moves.

I got lucky a few times taking out some shorter stacks and kept on building the pile. Shortly after I entered the third hour of the tournament I started making some huge scores and found myself at T32,000 which was good enough for 5th place at the time. That would've paid me $3500 if I could've just ended the tournament right then. Finally we got into the final 36 and play opened back up. I took on a short stack with pocket sevens versus his AJ offsuit but he ended up hitting the Jack and I was down to T24000.

After getting blinded down for a little while and sitting at T21000 now, it got folded around to me on the button with J10 offsuit. Blinds were at 1000/2000 and antes of 250 so I decided to try and put a move on the blinds and I raised it to 8000. Small blind came back over the top all-in which had me covered. This is the only decision of the tournament that I really question. I had definitely been aggressive all along, raising up to take blinds at some spots and this guy had been on the table with me for a while too. So he could very easily have just been popping me back to make me wary of stealing. My hand was marginal enough to play or fold and as I keep thinking about it, I don't think folding it was really a bad decision but for the situation it left me in as a short stack, it may have been worth a shot at going all-in there. I think if I had been suited I may have just done it there. In any event, I folded, was left at T12000 which was the shortstack overall. Was able to make some plays here and there and get a little deeper in the money but I finally made my stand with pocket dueces when the chip leader raised over me with AJ offsuit. He got two more Aces on the flop and turn and I was finished. 22nd place paid $412 so not a bad outing but still a little disappointing as I had been so close to a few thousand.

One other random part of that tournament which was probably an omen of things to come was when I got pocket Aces during the 2nd hour. I raised up in early position, got two callers. Flop came Queen high I checked, MP led out for $200, Button raised to $500 which I took up to $1200. The MP folded and Button went all-in. I could barely contain my excitement putting him on either AQ or KK, so when I called and he turned over AA as well, it was kind of surprising. Kind of like going out to show off your shiny new toy only to find out everyone else on the block already has it. Oh well.

So the ultimate goal has been set. I want to play in the $1500 NL Hold'em event at the World Series on June 3rd. I need to get my bankroll to $5000 before I'll do it though, currently I sit at $1750. Hopefully I can take down a few more tournaments between now and then, the last week of March shaping up to be a big one in that regard. Flight is booked and two months to make the rest of the cash. Wish me luck...

"The Warehouse"

2005-03-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

So this group of guys that I play hold'em with a few times a week play in this other pot limit game every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday at the "warehouse". They've been trying to convince me to come along for a couple months now but there's just something about playing in a "warehouse" that sounds a little too much like I'm gonna get shot up leaving the place for my taste. And yet, I finally gave in and went over there one night. I ride along with my buddy Motown since no one can really give me directions to this place. We end up over in this industrial section near an area where at least five bodies have been found over the last year or so. Great start.

So we roll up to the (illegal) card game and go behind these two buildings into a secluded parking lot. Card game is in the building on the left and a cop shop is in the building on the right. So suddenly I'm having flashes of Rounders in my head. Motown and I get a little too hot with the cards and suddenly people are asking about mechanic's grips and I'm getting the shit beat out of me and driving back to the city to face Grandma... but I digress.

We have to get buzzed in the security door, go up to the third floor and walk into this room of about thirty or so people. Three tables are running, fully stocked refrigerator with anything you could want to drink and dealers. I feel like I might as well be sitting down in the Phillip Morris plant as much smoke as is hanging in this place.

I ask my buddy who we need to buy in from, he tells me Rob and kind of nods over his shoulder. I turn around to look, and no shit, Rob is a dead ringer for Teddy KGB. So this place is basically Rounders melded into Boiler Room. A bunch of local high school and college kids gambling with their parents' money, a few random guys in their mid-twenties (not that there's anything wrong with that) and then a bunch of 30 and 40 year olds. Just when I thought this city was pretty stale, something comes along and changes my mind.

For the next couple hours I proceed to get decent cards with three handed action that generally go a little something like this:

Everyone's in for $.50, then someone pot raises and two or three other people are in. If I'm in a hand I've got A10, K10, Q10 or J10. And every single time the flop comes 10 high rainbow, with like a 73 or 62 with it. After a couple big lead outs, or pot size raises I'm just about all in on the turn were I'm getting busted up by a bunch of damn maniacs playing 73 or 62, which is called the Simpkins. I'm not sure I like playing in a card game where 62 offsuit actually has a name for its successful use. I'm more than happy to accept the proper use and place of the Hammer but this is ridiculous.

Then I realize that I've walked into a game much like the one my friends and I play. A place where smart poker is not allowed to show its face because everyone knows how everyone else plays. So you have to play crazy cards to make any kind of headway. Meanwhile on the table Motown is sitting, people who know him are still playing right into his spade flush draws and J5 flops.

Net result: Motown leaves up $40, I leave down $110. I played A10 suited and he played J5 offsuit into raises. Somehow life just doesn't seem fair...

I am my own worst enemy...

2005-03-20T12:22:00.001-05:00

Damn you, Rafe Furst! Well, actually, I shouldn't blame anyone but myself. I played one hour and forty four minutes of great poker and three minutes of utterly retarded poker. In no limit poker though, those three minutes are all it takes to undo the previous hour and three quarters.

After the tourney win the night before, I figured what the hell and splurged on the $109 No-Limit 50K guarantee on FTP. Top 54 places got paid and I felt fairly confident I could pull that off. I played some very solid poker to start with, particularly paying attention to playing only premium starting hands. Finally caught break when I got dueces in my hand and flopped the bottom set. Board ended up pairing as well and my boat took down an Ace high flush and another set. Suddenly I had T6350 and had jumped up to 30th place out of the original 355 entrants, which were now down to around 215 people. At that point I figured I could just keep playing good smart poker and probably make it to the money pretty easy.

After another half hour or so we're down to 130 players left, and I've got T3900 when I get unlucky on an ace high flop over my pair of Jacks on some heavy pre-flop betting. Then apparently I caught the stupid virus. I got Q8 offsuit in the big blind, with 100/200 blind levels, two hands after the professional player Rafe Furst got moved onto the table two seats in front of me. Now there was even more at stake because if you knock a pro out of tournament on FTP they give you back your buy-in.

So the Q8 gets one limper and one raiser up to 400, SB folds and I complete and so does the limper. The flop came 984. I thought for a second and figured that both these guys were on over cards, so I led out with a pot-sized bet of $1335. Limper folds immediately and then Raiser comes back over the top for another $1200. This is where my brain went into malfunction. I knew I was beat. I swear that I really knew it. But for some reason I was able to convince myself that he could still possibly be on an Ace-King and trying to buy me out or hope for the best if I called. I've seen that happen plenty of times on FTP. And with $5300 in the pot already, my pot had odds of 5 to 1. I knew I would probably have to hit either the Queen or eight to pull out the win which left me with exactly five outs in the deck. Five cards out of twenty nine remaining in the deck, meaning my odds lay 6 to 1. Now that automatically means fold. The amount you have to pay to see the cards is worse than your odds of catching the cards, fold John fold! Call.

He turned over Jacks and nothing came on the turn or river and I'm down to T2300. Two hands later I get dealt pocket tens. Blinds are up to $150/300, and Rafe Furst raises in front of me to $1000 which was about 25% of his stack. I thought it was kind of a big lead out but figured I was down pretty low on chips and he could easily have a big Ace so we'd be racing on a coin flip. I knew I'd be all-in after the flop most likely, so instead of calling with half my stack now I moved back over the top all-in. Everyone folds back around to Rafe and he calls. Naturally, he turns over Jacks over my tens. No help comes and I'm done. Three minutes of bad poker and I'm out of a tournament I probably could have gone really deep in.

Thought about it for a while after I got knocked out and pieced things together this way. If I had been smart and not called the re-raise on my first bad hand, I still would have had about T3400. Then, went I went up against Rafe with my 10's, I could have called instead of going all-in, and the flop had come King high with three hearts. I could have moved all-in there and most likely taken the pot down. But I had taken that play away from myself for being an idiot two hands before. C'est le vie.

So, after a week of heavy poker playing, here's my analysis. I'm getting much better. Finally I took down my first online poker tournaments and barely missed on a couple more final tables. For some reason I'm unable to make myself play an entire tournament online the way I play a tournament live. I play hands that I never play offline and I can't decide why I do that. But I'm starting to break the habit so that bodes well for the future. Hopefully I can keep playing a lot, and keep playing better, during this next week and get my game tuned up for the return to Richmond. There are three big live tournaments that week I'm going to play in, and I wouldn't mind keeping my live tournament streak of top three finishes going, that'd be worth a few grand to me if I can.