New Year's Poker

The new year began with an almost unheard of event. After almost a year off, our regular “monthly” poker group actually got together and played some poker. To make things a little more special ,we even upped the buy-in from our usual $25/game to $100. We also increased our starting chip stack from $T700ish to $T1500.

We had 13 entrants, and I came in fifth, or maybe fourth. We both busted out on the same hand and I think the other guy had a few more chips than me.

Looking back at my play, I think I played fairly well that evening, with a few exceptions that I’ll get to later. I think luck just wasn’t on my side this evening. With getting into too many bad beat details I’ll just say that I had people dominated and all in on numerous occasions and they would hit their three outer to stay alive and seriously damage my chip stack. I lost an AJ vs KQ preflop all-in when my opponent flopped a straight. I lost AQ vs A9 all-in pre-flop when my opponent rivered a straight, plus a few other smaller hands that I don’t remember the exact details. I say this not to bitch about losing but as evidence that I think I was playing fairly well.


A big moment for me came relatively early on in the tourney. I had recently lost a fairly large pot and was failrly short-stacked. I had A9 under the gun and put in my standard 3xBB raise. Everyone folded except the BB who called. BB is a very loose aggressive player, and not someone who I would have wanted to call me. My plan is to go all in no matter what is on the flop. Its really my only choice at the time. Flop is rags, 236 or something similar. BB goes all in. Crap. He stole my move. He knew that was going to be my move so he had to beat me to the punch. I think normally I lay this down. I don’t think he has anything, but I can see him playing any hand in this scenario, especially from the big blind. He could K6, or A2 or a low pocket pair, and just gotten lucky. Or he too could have missed the flop completely. He could even think he’s bluffing yet still be ahead of me. Ultimately I figured I had to be better than him. If he has something he would have almost certainly checked, assuming that since I raised pre-flop I would bet here. If he has something he risks scaring me away with is all-in bet. So I do make the call, he does have nothing and I go on to win a big pot and coast into the final table.

There was a flaw in our tourney structure. We started with 13 players at two tables, and combined when we got down to 9. I don’t know if people were playing tighter than normal due to the increased buy in amount, or if the larger chip stacks played a roll, but no one went out until the fifth or sixth blind level. By that point the blinds were starting to become painful for everyone.

Once we combined the blinds were so high that any hand you played would almost certainly put you all in. That combined with the fact that the new bigger table meant you could see more hands for free, made everyone tighten up. No one hardly played more than a hand or two each orbit. No one saw a flop. It was real slow, and real boring. I don’t know if it was a fluke or if we just picked a bad chip amount/blind schedule but there was no action on the final table.

This is where I didn’t play so well. I had a lot of decent, but not great hands which I would continually fold. I was afraid that by raising I would run into a bigger hand and be pot committed into losing all my chips. Better to wait for a premium hand while the blinds squeezed out the lower players. The problem was the players with low stacks kept doubling up when they were forced all in, and eventually I was near the short stack list. Instead of taking advantage of the tight play I fell into the same trap as everyone else. When I finally did push, I ran into two hands both better than mine and it was over. The worst part is that had I folded that hand, then blinds would have forced out one of the other remaining players and I would have come in at least third and won some money.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Midweek Poker

My friend Aaron's wife is out of town this week and with his newfound freedom to do whatever the hell he wants he decided to host a small poker game at his house. We've done this sort of thing a number of times recently, where recent is sometime in the last year, and "a number of times" is three or four. It was still a school night so we couldn't play for too long, but we were able to get in a few 6 handed tourneys.

We started off with holdem because that is what we all know and love. I must be rusty because I couldn't find a hand I felt like playing for the first three or four blind levels in a shorthanded friendly, low-buy in game. Finally my cards got better, or I just loosened up and started playing, and things went pretty well.

Nothing really stands out until the hand I got busted on. I had AK on the button, and made a big raise, which Jason called. Jason isn't a very good player by any stretch of the imagination. He plays with us not for the enjoyment of the actual card game, but for the drinking and social aspects. He knows the rules, but not any strategy. He also takes great pleasure is his completely random betting and card selection habits because he knows it frustrates everyone to have no idea what he might be holding. And because of that he's probably a much better player than any of us give him credit for. He has built the perfect loose aggressive random image that I think he actually does a pretty good job of exploiting when he wants to. We all make a big deal out of his willingness to call almost any bet, and the nonchalant smirkiness of his raises but lately he's been laying hands down when appropriate, and only calling/raising when he has a hand. I just don't think we've really noticed, or given him credit.

Of coarse I'm telling you all this to explain why I bet into the nuts when I'd like to think I would have folded to anyone else in the same situation. Back to the hand, The flop is A45 and Jason quickly turns to his neighbor, who was out of the game and asks him a question. I'm fairly certain he asked if aces count as one. At this point anyone with half a brain would have put him on the wheel and gotten out, or at least tread carefully. I didn't do that. I either thought he didn't actually have that hand, or that he didn't realize that it was any good, and bet into him. Again and again, until we went all in on the river. He did in fact have the wheel, and he also had me covered by a couple chips. He went on to win the tourney.

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Round two was Omaha. Omaha still makes my brain hurt, but I think I might be starting to get it. Either that or the cards finally started coming my way. I was drawing to the nuts rather than hoping my two pair would hold up. I was taking advantage of other people's inability to remember they only get to use two cards from their hand, and I was actually getting good cards. I was rolling. And then, I don't even remember what happened, but before I knew it I had a few busted draws, and I fell into another one of Jason's traps, and I was out. Failing to money yet again.

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In the past few meetings such as this, round three was Razz, but our resident Razz expert/enthusiast wasn't there, and I didn't want to have to explain it/remember how to play, so we stuck with a holdem varient and went with pineapple. Or crazy pineapple. I don't remember which one is which and I don't feel like looking it up.

For those of you unfamiliar with pineapple, it is just like holdem, except you are dealt three hole cards. You must discard one of the hole cards either before or after the flop, depending on if you are playing crazy pineapple or just the regular sane variety. We played the version where you discard after the betting on the flop.

I never thought the decision on which card to discard would be so difficult, or have such a significant affect on the game, but it did. There were a number of times when people discarded made average hands to chase something better because they didn't think it would stand up.

On the very first hand I had KK9. The flop was KQJ, which looks pretty good for me, although I'm a little worried about a strait. I obviously discard the 9, and then cringe when a ten comes on the turn. Although, I don't know how confident I would have been having the low end of a strait, it would have been better than no end of a strait. The river was inconsequential and someone with T9 took the pot.

It was quite surprising how often the discarded card could have won the pot for someone else.

I didn't fare any better in pineapple than I in any of the other games. This time I was undone by overbluffing with my 722 which completely missed the flop.

Despite nothing to show for it, it was certainly good to play a game for the first time in quite a while. My wife is out of town next week, so I'll be the one hosting the games. Depending on how many people we have, I think I want to make it a cash game dealer calls it for an orbit. I've never run a cash game though so we'll have to see how it works out.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Small Blind Call and Bet

While my SNG poker game has been nothing to brag about lately, there is one particular move that I've been using with much success. Its nothing new or mind blowingly clever, but it works well.

The situation is this. I'm in the small blind and it has been folded to me. I hate being in this spot. I feel obligated to raise, yet anytime someone raises in this situation it looks like a steal, and it seems like I get called/raised way more than I should. And I never get a good feel for where I am in the hand because I can't tell if my opponent has a hand or is just putting me on a steal attempt. And yet I can't fold. I'm getting 3:1 on my money by calling and he's not going to even challenge me with most hands.

So if you haven't guessed, I've started just calling and then min-betting no matter what on the flop. The min bet actually ends up being a half-pot sized bet. Sometimes I'll make it a full pot sized bet, but usually not.

I've found that my opponents are more likely to fold in this scenario than if I were to raise pre-flop.

Since I only call pre-flop, they are most likely just happy to see a free flop. If I raise they see it as a steal attempt and try to defend, but by calling they see more cards with no risk. Sure sometimes I get raised in this case, but then I've only lost a half bet, and if that happens five times I've still lost the same amount as if I had raised to 3x blinds and got reraised. So I get to see a cheap flop and they get to see a free one.

The automatic bet on the flop is just hoping that they didn't hit anything. Even if they suspect a steal here, they are less likely to try to call my bluff if they've missed the flop as well. And since I just called they have no idea what I have. If the flop is garbage, its possible I called with garbage and hit. If the flop has scare cards, and they don't, then maybe I was setting them up. Either way I've found that more often than not they fold. And if they do call, or raise, and I have nothing, I've risked very little chips and I can get out relatively cheaply.

Nothing too fancy, but I find that it helps me win more than my fair share of blind battles, in a situation where I'm normally not very confident in my hand.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

PokerStars Double or Nothing SNGs

PokerStars has these new Double or Nothing SNG's. I say new but that may not be accurate since I haven't played there with any regularity in over a year, and its possible I just didn't notice them before. Now its almost impossible not to notice them as you have to sift through a billion double or nothing SNGs just to find a normal one.

They were annoying me to the point of curiosity, so I tried a few. The concept is simple. Its a 10 player SNG where the top 5 double their buy in, and the other five get nothing. The entrance fee is about 20% less than the standard entrance fee.

Given that I've been playing pretty poorly lately I figure that I would try these since I should be able to finish in the top half more than half the time, so it should be easy money.

But its not quite the same as finishing in the top 5 of a normal SNG. There is a very different dynamic that occurs. Once you are down to six or seven players, there is almost no incentive to put yourself at risk. It doesn't matter if you have one chip or a million, when five players are left the game is over. Why try and steal a pot when there's a good chance that if you just fold you'll make it to the money?

I only played four so far, but the strategy seems to be fold unless you have a monster, and if you're the short stack wait until you think you can double up. In both times I cashed there were times when the short stack could barely make a full raise pre-flop, but battled back to cash.

It ends up with everyone, but maybe the chip leader playing not to lose rather than playing to win. I really haven't played enough to decide if I like them or not, or if I think they are money winners long term, but you definitely lose some of the excitement factor when all you're doing is folding and hoping the blinds increase to force that last person out. It is worth a try though, as the chance of losing your money is only 50%.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Matrix Poker Part 2

I finally tried one of those Matrix SNG's at FullTilt. Just in case you missed my fascinating post a while ago about the Matrix tourney's they work like this:

9 Player SNG. Each player plays four simultaneous SNGs. 1/5 of the prize pool is allocated via the normal payout schedules to the top three players in each table. The remaining 1/5 of the prize pool goes to the Matrix Points winner. You get points for eliminating other players and outlasting players in each of the four tourneys.

I did a little research online for what other people were saying about the tourneys and the consensus I got from what little commentary was out there was that the format helps mediocre to moderately losing players by giving them access to 1/5 of the pool that they normally wouldn't get, meanwhile winning players will win slightly less than under normal formats.

I don't know if I agree with that or not. I think good players will more often than not last longer in each of the tourneys, thus accumulating more points providing insurance for when they get hit with a bad beat and don't finish as high in as they might normally have expected.

Regardless of whether or not it was +EV, it was fun. I could just be that I was playing four tables again, instead of just the one that I've been doing as I ease myself back into the online poker scene, but I also think the fact that I had the same players at each of my tables helped. There were times when I was looking at the matrix points standings and comparing them to the players at my table to figure out who I needed to outlast more. And I think the fact that busting someone was worth two points, enters into the expected value of any given pot. Finally you can use player's tendencies, or situations on one table against them in another. For example I was in a lengthy heads up battle on one of the tables, and I knew that if I had him with a difficult decision on the heads up table I could easily steal his blinds on the other table.

Speaking of the heads up battle, it had to be the longest heads up match I've ever been in. We got to heads up well before any of the other tables, and yet we were the last to finish up. I think we were at 30/60 blinds when we started and at 250/500 when we finished. That's eight levels. I started out with a 3:1 chip lead, but I just couldn't finish him off. I was playing more aggressively, but fell into the familiar routine of stealing a few small pots, then losing a bigger one when he pushed into my garbage. Eventually he hit a few big hands and I doubled him up. He must have had to go somewhere then because on both that table, and the other table we were still playing he went into all-in or nothing mode. He got bumped from the other table pretty quickly and I once I figured out his new strategy I just waited for big hands for him to double me up. And he did. And I ultimately won.

So I came in first in two of the four, and seventh in the other two. I also won the matrix points pool. It was a $10 entry, and I won $9 for the three first place finishes. Which is $17 profit. If I had entered four separate $10 tourneys instead I would have paid $40 and won $90, for $50 profit, which would have averaged out to 12.5. So in this smallest of sample sizes, the Matrix format was profitable.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Actual Poker Played

Its a Christmas, er Thanksgiving, miracle! We actually scheduled and held a home poker game this week. One of my friends is going out of town to visit his in-laws for Thanksgiving. His wife left a few days earlier, leaving him home alone to fend for himself for a few days. So we had ourselves a little poker game.

We intentionally kept it small, and the goal was to play a bunch of quick small tournaments. I'm not sure how to actually accomplish a quick tournament without turning it into a complete luckfest, but that really only mattered for the first game.

We started out playing holdem, trying to get ourselves back into the routine. In an effort to speed up the game we halved the amount of chips that we normally start with and dropped the blind levels from 15 to 10 minutes. For the first few blind levels everything seemed to go normally, and maybe it was just coincidence but everyone's chipstack was more or less equal. Then all of the sudden the blinds were so high that any legitimate pre-flop raise committed you to going all-in on the flop and everyone tightened up. It turned into an all-in fest with no one really willing to call anything and the tournament dragged on way longer than we anticipated.

In hindsight I think decreasing the starting chips was a bad idea. Giving people more chips to start would allow them to stay in hands longer, without fear of going broke. Staying in hands longer gives them more time to hit a nice second best hand which would lead to bigger pots and faster eliminations.

After that we tried Omaha High. None of us play Omaha or have any idea what a good starting hand is, or when a good time to fold is, so this was more an exercise in comedy than poker play. While I think my hand discipline was better than most, I don't think I actually won a hand the entire time so I didn't last very long.

Our third game was Razz, in which I think I have a pretty big advantage, because I at least somewhat understand the concept. We had issues figuring out what the ante, bring in, and bet amounts should be, and after playing on FullTilt later I think we completely messed it up, but it probably doesn't matter.

We started Razz with a couple people absolutely refusing to understand what they should do. At one point someone said, "Just tell me when I have to put money in, and how much because I'm not folding" He would then start cracking up every time he got another card. I think he endend up hitting runner,runner,runner A25 to win the hand on the river.

I did well in the beginning of the tournament, but I think I ended up chasing a bit too much and went out third or fourth. I think the hand that did me in had me with two pair showing, but staying in. I had pretty good down cards though and I think I still had a ton of outs, but the seventh street brought me a face card and forced me to fold.

About halfway through the game something clicked for our host and he went from tentatively calling whatever bet was out there because he had no idea where he stood, to actually figuring out exactly where he was in the hand and altering his aggression accordingly.

Not bad for Tuesday night. I can think of worse ways to spend it, despite my pretty poor showing. Now all we need to do is find a way to get a weekend game going with a decent amount of participants.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Matrix Poker

I logged onto my Full Tilt account for the first time in quite a while this afternoon. They have an interesting new(ish?) tournament format called Matrix tournaments. Its an interesting twist on tournament play.

It works like this: You join a tournament with 8 other people. The tournament consists of four simultaneous SNGs. Top three are paid in each tournament as normal, except that only 20% of the prize pool goes to each of the four SNGs.

The remaining 20% goes to the overall points winner. You get points by outlasting other players, by knocking other players out and by winning tournaments. Top three points earners are paid out with a normal SNG payout structure.

Its a nice twist on bounty style tournaments, especially for those of us that don't have the attention span for just one table at a time. Maybe I'll try one later and let you know how it goes.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

March Tournament Summary

We had a change in venue for our March Tournament. Our usual host was busy this week, and not wanting to slip into the mode where we wait four months for our next game, we rescheduled elsewhere. We also had to settle for the Easter weekend which cut down on the turnout.

Still, we had 13 and 11 players for our two games, which isn't horrible. I'm a little late with the write up so it may or may not be completely accurate. Its close enough though.

I have a new arch nemesis. My friend Jason, used to be an average player. What he lacked in skill he made up for in trash talking. He wasn't a horrible player but he lacked the patience and discipline to make it in a two to three hour tournament.

I'm starting to think that was an all an act to setup a loose image that he can capitalize on later. At some point last year he just turned a switch and all of the sudden he is winning, not just cashing, at least one tournament per night in our group. He managed to win our point total bragging rights competition last year despite the fact that we scheduled a number of events on days when he was out of town for business.

Going into the night I was leading the points total with two second place finishes, just barely ahead of Jason with his one win. He missed the first game last month because his plane didn't get in on time. So I have to finish ahead of him to maintain my lead.

Things don't start out well. The first hand of the game, I'm in the big blind with 42o, and he's in the small blind. It folds to him and he makes the stander 3xBB raise. First hand of the game, blinds are low, I'm not letting him establish control, so I call and flop two pair. He bets and then calls my raise. The turn is a jack which pairs the board and makes potentially counterfeits my hand. Check-check and the river brings a queen. He bets, and I make the call knowing I'm likely beat. Turns out I probably should have bet the turn because he didn't have a hand until the river and I probably could have taken the pot then. So we're one hand into the game and already he's up and I'm down. Great.

Things turned around shortly after that however. I had pocket kings and my raises and bets kept getting called by the new guy. I haven't played with him before so I didn't know what to expect, but I was certainly nervous when he kept calling. I ultimately went all-in and he called turning of an unimproved big-slick. That hand doubled me up and put me in pretty good shape overall. AK looks pretty and all, but when you are raised pre-flop, and you don't improve by the turn, maybe its time to fold. That mistake allowed the new guy to watch a few more hours of the NCAA tournament than those of us who had to concentrate on cards.

I'm not sure what happened after that. We were playing short handed so the blinds came around often, and I just wasn't hitting flops. Before I knew it I was the short stack and shortly after that busted out in 6th or 7th place out of 13. Very disappointing.

Oh and Jason went on to win.

Game two didn't start out much better. We only had 11 which meant two short tables, and my table was more aggressive than I would have liked considering I wasn't getting cards. I was all set to call it an early night, pushing all in with wired eights oni a king high board, but was generously called by a medium ace that never improved.

Those chips gave me enough to survive to the table combine and then some.

In order to reclaim my first place leaderboard position I had to win and Jason couldn't money, so I had two goals at this point. Jason was crippled on a KK vs QQ hand against his girlfriend, but was taking the chip-and-a-chair mentality and doing well with it. He went all-in on three or four consecutive hands and either doubled up or stole the blinds to the point where he almost had enough chips to start rally playing again.

Then he tried the all-in trick one more time, only this time I had a pair of eights in the hole, and called him. He had two face cards and the board danced all around them, but he didn't improve and he he was out. Phase one complete, now I just had to win.

I managed to cash, but by the time we were heads up I was tired, and willing to gamble a little too much. I pushed with any somewhat reasonable hand and got called by a better one for yet another second place finish.

So on the plus side, I've finished in 2nd 3/4 times this year. On the negative side, my heads up game, which I used to think was pretty good in live poker, has not been performing very well. Maybe its a lack of practice and a sign that I need to start playing online again.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Rapid Tournament Exits

Sometimes its amazing how quickly your fortune can change in a tournament. I was playing the 50-50 on FullTilt tonight and doing ok, when all of the sudden I blink and I'm out. There wasn't any gradual decline, or "I'm going to have to make a move soon" orbit or two, just one second I was playing and the next I'm writing a blog post.

Things started out well for me. We started with $T2000 chips and after a round or two of blinds I was close to 4K. I was expecting better play out of a higher buy in tourney, but I can't say that I noticed any.

Unfortunetely 4K was about my high water mark. I hovered there for a good hour and a half, winning some small pots, losing a few small pots, but never really getting involved in a big hand. We were down to about 350 of the original 970 when my chipstack was first in danger of going below the starting point of 2K, but my opponent folded to my bluff, and I was still in business.

By this point I was in the lower third of the field but still not feeling any real pressure. I had TJo in the BB. The uber big stack who had just been moved to the table made a medium/small sized raise, and was called by two players, but one of them couldn't even cover the blinds so I don't know that he counts.

The flop was Jack high so I lead out. Uber stack pushes all in and the other guy folds. It feels like a big stack trying to bully me, but I'm not willing to risk my tournament life on it so I fold. He turns over QQ and I breathe I sigh of relief as I nearly called. I then start cursing at my computer as a third jack comes on the river,but what can you do? I think I made the right call. The next hand I have A7 and I'm now in pretty bad shape. There's a standard raise ahead of me and I try to steal it by pushing all-in. He has AK and you know how this ends.

So there it was. Two hands and I go from somewhat short stacked but comfortable to out.

Which once again makes me question whether these tournaments are worth it. You almost have to make the final table to justify the time expense versus just playing a normal SNG. In the time it took me to win nothing in this tournament I could have played 2 SNGs, and if I had lasted as long as I did in this tournament I'd be ahead monetarily. The real difference maker is if you actually do make a final table or manage to win one. Do that and you are practically freerolling all your tournaments for the rest of the year.

So I don't play a lot of MTT, largely because I don't have the time, but partially because its way too frustrating to play well for hours with nothing to show. I'll probably still take shots at big tourney's on occasion, but I'm fairly certain that being a SNG specialist is how I'll operate for quite a while.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Thanks Fulltilt

A big thanks goes out to FullTilt for getting me back into poker. Their clever little bonus trick worked, and I managed to earn a full $20 out of the $100 they offered before time expired.

More importantly, I did pretty well in the tournaments that I played in order to claim the bonus. I played 22 SNGs during the past two weeks, a mix of $20 and $30 buy ins, with one $10 just to get my feet wet.

I finished in the money eight times which is about 36%. All things being equal, that is about what you expect. Three places pay in a nine person tourney so an ITM percentage of around 33% is average. The key here though is that I had no third place finishes. I had five wins and three seconds and over the coarse of the 22 tourneys finished up $222. Not too bad.

That's obviously a small sample size so you shouldn't read too much into it, but I'm very happy with where I'm at, and how I played in the past few weeks. To be honest, I expected to be pretty rusty and more or less break even. It was more about getting back into the game than any serious expectations at significant profit, but I surprised myself and actually played really well.

I think I was doing a much better job of reading the situation and playing aggressively than I have in the past. Normally if I miss a flop and my opponent bets I give him credit for top pair at a minimum, but lately, I've been doing a much better job of betting those hands before they act, to make them prove they've hit something, and analyzing the situation to determine how likely it is that they have what they are representing or if they are trying to steal a pot.

Of all the tourneys in which I didn't money, I was only upset with my play in two of them. I was playing them both simultaneously and at the time I really wasn't in the mood to play, I just felt like I needed to in order to keep pace with my bonus. My disinterest cost me two buy ins as I played horribly and exited quite early on.

My bonus period has now expired so I no longer have that pushing me to play, but I think I've rekindled the desire to play, and I have a slightly larger bankroll with which to work, so hopefully I'll keep going. We'll see.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Back in the Game

Even though I've often though about playing online again I still just haven't been quite motivated enough to actually try it. Full Tilt figured out a way to bring me back though, at least for a little bit.

I finally submitted the required information for the ability to request cashouts via check, and cashed out most of my remaining balance. They must have feared that I'd be leaving for good because little more than a week later they dropped a $100 bonus in my account, redeemable in $10 increments at the rate of $.06/FPP. I usually play the $20 SNG's which earn 14 FPPs per tourney, so that means I need to play in about 120 SNGs in the next two weeks to earn the full bonus.

I'm only expecting to get $10, maybe $20 of that bonus, but that's not the point. The point is I actually played some online poker this weekend.

People have been predicting that the games would get tougher since its more difficult to get money into sites these days. They reason that the good players will keep their or increase their bankroll while the fish blow through theirs and don't/can't reload. I have say that is not the case, at least at the stakes I play. There are still plenty of crappy players around.

People are just as obnoxious as ever. It used to be that you would get some asshole criticizing everyone's play and berating the donkeys when they win a hand about once a day. I think I had one at every table I played at. And they get started right away. First hand they lose they call the winning player a fish and predict his early exit from the tourney. Those two then verbally (textually?) spar until one or both is eliminated.

The best one was this guy who complained about everyone's play at the table. I then took a significant portion of his stack with AJ when he check called through the river with A3 and an ace and four other overcards on the board. The following hand was eerily similar except I didn't pair my ace on the flop. He be $T60 into a $1T000 on the turn than went on a four hand rant about how fulltilt sucks when I called it and rivered an ace to beat him. He didn't technically give me a free card but he might as well have.

Finally he's down to about $T300 and loses a pot because he doesn't have enough chips to push people out. And he complains about that fact. I really wanted to point out that if he was half as good as he thought he was he would have had more than enough chips to properly play that hand, but I didn't really want to get involved.

Maybe I just ran into the most passive players ever, but people's head's up game has seriously devolved. In three games heads up I raised every single time I was in the small blind. It was the exact same amount, every time. There is no way I could have possibly have had good hands that often, yet more often than not they just folded. Every once in a while they would push, but I've never seen so much pre-flop folding in a heads up match before. In one case I think I won over 20 hands in a row with none of them gonig as far as the turn. No exaggeration.

Of coarse I lost 2 of the three heads up battles that I was in, so that just goes to show what aggression will do for you. In the first I just couldn't get the cards to put him away and ultimately tried pushing with a flush draw on the flop after he made top pair to double him up. After that I think I got back to a 5-1 chip advantage before losing another couple of races and the match. I'll spare you the bad beat stories for the second match which I also lost after a lengthy battle in which I had a commanding lead for most of it. I finally won the third time, although it was against the guy I beat over 20 hands in a row, so I'm pretty sure my Cat could have won that battle.

Probably no Poker for me for the next two nights, but I should be able to find some time to play later this week to finish off the first level of my bonus. Maybe I can find some time this weekend for a nice long MTT. Yay Poker. How I've missed thee.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Fantasy Sports Sit-N-Goes

One of the problems with Fantasy Sports, especially baseball is that through the course of a full season you tend to get bored with it. There's nothing worse than getting off to a horrible start in fantasy baseball and then having to watch your team flounder in last place for three or four months. You probably end up more or less abandoning your team which makes the league less fun and competitive for the remaining players. Even if you are doing well, don't you get tired of checking up on your team daily or weekly, month after month?

Enter Fantasy Sports Live. This brilliant idea, dreamed up by poker blogger Blinders is the short attention span version of traditional fantasy sports. Each contest lasts but one day, so there's none of the hassles of traditional leagues such as maintaining your roster, making sure your players aren't on the DL, checking the waiver wire etc. You just pick your team for the day and go.

Oh, and did I mention the best part? You get to bet on the outcomes. Bet may not be the correct term. You pay an entrance fee for the contest and can win cash prizes. Its very much like a fantasy sports SNG.


From what I understand, this is perfectly legal even in the face of the UIGEA, and they even take deposits from major credit cards and PayPal. Since anti gambling laws have carve outs for horse racing and fantasy sports, sites such as this could be the new craze for people wanting to gamble test their skill online.




Go check it out. Sign up now and get a $10 bonus on your first $100 deposit to try out the site. Use bonus code POKERWORDS and get $10 for a $50 deposit, $20 for $100 or $30 for $300.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

$75 Challenge Update

So its been almost three weeks since I embarked on my $75 SNG challenge so I figure an update is past due. I'm happy to report that of my starting $75 I still have exactly $75 remaining. Now, while it is possible that I have broken perfectly even in my quest, neither making progress nor decreasing my bankroll, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I haven't played since my last post on the subject. I don't expect that to change in the next few weeks, but never fear dear reader, there is a monthly home game scheduled for this weekend, so I will get my poker fix before the shakes start setting in.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

$75 Challenge

We interrupt this practically dormant poker blog for some actual poker content.

I haven't played online since Neteller stopped accepting transactions for US customers. I think that was mid January. What's the point of winning money if I can't get to it? Well, I can't take it anymore. I miss poker. Plus I know for a fact I can get money out of at least one site. And that is where my $75 challenge comes in.

I cashed out of PokerStars shortly after the Neteller fiasco, but have since earned a $75 commission as an affiliate for signing someone up. I usually get one such sign up every month or two, but as depositing options are becoming scarce I don't know if that will continue. Somehow I doubt it.

So, my challenge is going to be to play that $75 into some considerably larger sum of money. And I'm going to do it playing SNG's. Since that has to last for quite a while I'm going to set a schedule for the levels that I will play at in order to maximize my playing time. If I make it to some of the higher stakes games I'll be pretty happy with myself, but mostly I would expect to slowly climb up in stakes. Especially since I'm still not going to be playing all that often.

Stakes	Move Down	Move Up
$1	$0	$20
$5	$10	$100
$10	$50	$250
$20	$200	$500
$30	$400	$800
$50	$600	$1200
$100	$1000	$2500

So I'll be starting at the $10 level, and have to get my bankroll all the way to $250 before I can move up to $20s. If I don't cash in my first three attempts, I'll be at $32 and down to the $5 level where I'll have to climb all the way back to $100 before moving back up.

I may occasionally enter some MTT's but probably not often because of the time factor and the fact that I have a very tight budget, and can't afford the long droughts that sometimes come with bigger events.

I'll keep you updated on how this works out.

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In other poker news, since our second monthly event of the year won't happen until the last weekend in April, we're having a mini gathering tonight. I've been lobbying for increased starting chip sizes. I've gotten some support as well as the expected "our games take long enough as it is" responses. I'd push the more chips means luck is less of a factor, and skill more of a factor, but everyone seems to think that I'm one of the more skilled players there, so I don't think that would help my cause.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

SNGs and Guarantees

I’m doing OK in my goal of playing more poker this year than last. My monetary results are a bit behind the pace I need to reach my goal, but it’s still early in the year, and I’m not too worried about that.

For SNGs, so far it’s been either all or nothing. I’ve either won, or finished 6^th or worse. I’ve been playing 30+3s and 33+3 turbos on FullTilt and I can’t say that I’ve noticed any significant differences between this level and the one I was playing last year. Hopefully I can move up again soon.

Last night I decided to play in the $25K Guaranteed on FullTilt. It was about a quarter to seven at the time, and the $25K didn’t start until eight, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to win a token for my entrance. Because you know $26 is way over my price range. Even though a normal SNG takes about an hour I thought that I could do a two-table in a little under an hour and fifteen minutes so I could use my shiny new token for the $25K Guaranteed. I figured since the last four win a token and we wouldn’t have to eliminate the last three people it would go quickly. I was wrong. When we were down to six we all had plenty of chips in relation to the blinds, and the short stack kept doubling up. I had already busted out of the $25K by the time I won my token. But at least the next one will be free.

Oh, and for you young players out there, pushing all in pre-flop with AKs in the first 20 minutes of a huge multiplayer tournament, is not really a good plan. Probably the dumbest move I’ve made in quite a while. And I knew it as soon as did it, before they even called. Yes there were two other players in the hand. I told you it was the dumbest move I’ve made in a while. I think I was frustrated by the fact that the token SNG was still going so I was a little more aggressive in the Guaranteed than I needed to be. How much do you have to suck to go out 1200 or so out of 1500ish without suffering a horrible bad beat?

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I think the first tournament for the 2007 wpbt is tonight. Hopefully I’ll actually remember to play. I don’t really have an excuse not to.

[edit] And by tonight I mean two weeks from tonight. And I will have an excuse for missing that as I'll be in Mesa Arizona attending the Cubs fantasy camp. [/edit]

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I don’t intend to play anywhere other than FullTilt and PokerStars this year. I like both sites, and keeping track of which sites I have money at, and where I’m chasing bonuses, and all that is more pain in the ass than its worth, so I’m going to limit it to those two sites. Or at least I was going to. If you haven’t heard, Mansion Poker is running daily $100,000 Guaranteed tournaments. Word on the street is that they are only getting about $50K worth of registrations. That’s a fairly large overlay and might be big enough to tempt me to try them out. Of course everyone keeps mentioning this, so sooner or later they are going to get enough people playing to cover the guarantee, which I guess is the point for them. The only reason I haven’t tried this tourney out yet is because it costs $100 to enter which is a bit over my comfort zone. Still, that’s a big overlay.

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Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

More SNG stuff

I played in two of the longest SNG's I've seen in quite a while this morning. I was two tabling a 6 handed SNG and a full table, and after an hour both were still on the bubble. Its rare that any SNG lasts that long, but two at the same time, and one of them shorthanded to begin with seems odd.

I ended up winning the short handed one, and bubbling out of the full table. I'm fairly certain that I could have one the full table SNG had I not been distracted by the heads up battle on the other table. I still can't understand how people can multitable 4+ tourneys at a time. When they are all in the early stages its fine, because you aren't playing as many hands, and the hands aren't going as fast, but when you get down to three or four players, you are making decisions every few seconds, and I can't believe you can play even close to optimal poker under those circumstances. Maybe my poor little brain just isn't meant to handle the fast paced world of online poker. Maybe I should take up bingo or slots. I don' t think there's much thought required for those.

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FYI I switched over to the new blogger beta. The interface seems better, and now I can tag my posts, which is nice. Maybe if I'm feeling ambitious later I'll go back and tag all the posts in my archives. That sounds like a lot of work though, and I'd have to go back and read all that crap I've written. Maybe not. I'm not sure if blogger will do anything special with the tags, so we'll see.


Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Turbo SNGs

I think I’ve found the key to renewing my interest in poker, and its turbo SNGs. I’ve always resisted playing in them because I was afraid they would be nothing but all-in fests where I could close my eyes and mash on the keyboard and have just as high an expectation for success than if I actually tried.

I gave them a try this weekend because I didn’t feel like waiting for a regular SNG to start, and I found that I rather enjoyed it. The fact that I was three for three ITM certainly helped. There also wasn’t as much random all-ins as I expected. The play wasn’t all that different from other SNGs at the same price level. My opponents just seem to get themselves eliminated earlier. I can’t complain about that.

I’ve given up on ring games for a while. I think my eyes closed keyboard mashing strategy would have yielded better results than my normal play. I don’t know if it was just that I was on the wrong side of variance, or if I was just playing like a donkey. I have a feeling the latter, but either way I needed to cut my losses. So I’m focusing what little poker time I have on tournaments.

I think my tournament play in general has improved considerably in the recent months. I’ve been ITM about 60% of the time. I’m defiantly more confident in my play and that alone makes a big difference. I feel like I’m making the right plays at the right times, and when I do bust out, I’m usually not upset with whatever play I made to end up that way.

So yeah. I guess I still play poker a bit. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Another 180 SNG final table.

Another Day, Another 180 SNG final table.

So far this year I have made the final table in half of the 20 table SNG’s that I’ve played at Stars. Of course I’ve only played in six, but so what?

I only finished 9th this time which is somewhat disappointing, but I can’t complain too much. I came to the final table severely short stacked and pushed with JQs. I met a pair of tens and he flopped a set.

Acknowledging the fact that I have a small sample size and variance will probably see to it that I don’t cash in another tournament for decades, I have to say that these tournaments are very beatable. Most of the players hand selection in these things is questionable at best. It seems like anytime I’m in an all-in situation, I find myself amazed at the crappy hands they are risking all their chips with. Sure I push with mediocre hands on occasion, but only when I’m desperate or I think I can steal a pot. I don’t think most other players at this level realize that. So many players go broke on hands they should have never gotten involved with in the first place.

If anything, I’m too tight, allowing other players to push me out of pots with inferior hands, but a lot of that is because I know if I wait long enough someone will be more than willing to donate his chips to my cause.