A Day in the Life of a Poker Narcissist (who decided to grow up)

Selling My Car.....Here are the Pics

2011-06-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

Hi All. Here are are the pictures of my car that I am selling. It is gorgeous and in great shape. A full description can be found here : http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cto/2440229024.html

http://www.carsonlinefree.com/searchCars/details.cfm?vehicleID=221903

Price is $14000 Or Best Offer.

2010-11-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

GUYS,
HERE IS THE MEETING WITH PROFESSOR GREEN.
UNFORTUNATELY, MY PEN RAN OUT OF INK DURING THE MIDDLE SO THE NOTES ARE A BIT SPARSE BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THE AUDIO.

Prof Green Interview
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 512 6/29/10

2010-06-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

I came in a little late on this one so the audio is off for the first 15-20 minutes but it catches up.

Enjoy

Math 512 6.29.10
brought to you by Livescribe

The best game online, the worst session in history

2010-05-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

So I am posting this because this was probably the worst session I have every had anywhere, at any time. These were by far the most aggressive, reckless, and poor poker players for the game they were in. And somehow, I should have been up +$1000, but, of course, I ran like utter dog shit and was down -$400. Just a little background: this is a $0.50-$1.00 PLO 8 deep buy in cash game with the average pots size for over an hour being $120+!

HEADS UP HANDS:

This one was not a bad beat and I made a bad call on the river but how do you fold this hand in heads up play?

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 2 players - View hand 692688

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN/SB: $335.20

Hero (BB): $89.80

Pre Flop: ($1.90) Hero is BB with 4 2 5 K

BTN/SB raises to $3.40, Hero calls $2.40

Flop: ($7.20) 8 A 6 (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $3, Hero raises to $8, BTN/SB calls $5

Turn: ($23.20) J (2 players)

Hero bets $18, BTN/SB calls $18

River: ($59.20) Q (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN/SB bets $58.20, Hero calls $58.20

Final Pot: $175.60

BTN/SB shows 3 K 2 T (HI: a straight, Ten to Ace; LO: 8,6,3,2,A)

Hero mucks 4 2 5 K

BTN/SB wins $87.30

BTN/SB wins $87.30

(Rake: $1.00)

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 2 players - View hand 692703

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $105.60

Hero (BTN/SB): $80.40

Pre Flop: ($1.90) Hero is BTN/SB with 2 9 3 2

Hero calls $0.50, BB raises to $3.40, Hero calls $2.40

Flop: ($7.20) 2 K J (2 players)

BB bets $4, Hero raises to $8, BB calls $4

Turn: ($23.20) T (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $10, BB calls $10

River: ($43.20) 4 (2 players)

BB bets $14, Hero calls $14

Final Pot: $71.20

BB shows 4 J A 4 (HI: three of a kind, Fours)

Hero mucks 2 9 3 2

BB wins $70.20

(Rake: $1.00)

Back to full ring 6 max, this is the caliber of player I had to deal with:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 6 players - View hand 692706

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $246.65

BTN: $144.90

SB: $87.40

BB: $250.00

UTG: $100.00

Hero (MP): $97.95

Pre Flop: ($2.70) Hero is MP with T 9 8 Q

UTG calls $1, Hero calls $1, CO calls $1, BTN calls $1, SB calls $0.50, BB checks

Flop: ($7.20) 9 9 2 (6 players)

SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $6, CO raises to $13, BTN folds, SB folds, BB folds, UTG folds, Hero raises to $45.85, CO calls $32.85

Turn: ($98.90) 9 (2 players)

Hero checks, CO checks

River: ($98.90) 4 (2 players)

Hero checks, CO checks

Final Pot: $98.90

CO mucks 7 6 2 7

Hero shows T 9 8 Q (HI: four of a kind, Nines)

Hero wins $95.90

(Rake: $3.00)

A perfect example of my competition. Keep in mind this was a $500 pot.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 6 players - View hand 692708
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $247.20
SB: $135.20
BB: $223.85
UTG: $250.00
MP: $100.00
Hero (CO): $142.50

Pre Flop: ($2.70) Hero is CO with Q J 8 5
UTG raises to $3, 2 folds, BTN raises to $10, 2 folds, UTG raises to $32.70, BTN calls $22.70

Flop: ($68.10) 7 3 K (2 players)
UTG bets $61, BTN calls $61

Turn: ($190.10) T (2 players)
UTG bets $71, BTN raises to $142, UTG raises to $156.10 all in, BTN calls $11.30 all in

River: ($496.70) 8 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $496.70
BTN shows Q K 6 Q (HI: a pair of Kings)
UTG shows 2 6 T A (HI: a pair of Tens; LO: 8,7,3,2,A)
BTN wins $246.85
UTG wins $246.85
(Rake: $3.00)

The Next two hands make me want to cut my own throat. Literally.

HAND #1 vs one of the maniac who open pots 50% of their hands and pots 80% of the STREETS they play (not just flops):

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 6 players - View hand 692714
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP: $247.75
CO: $134.30
BTN: $218.45
SB: $250.55
BB: $100.00
Hero (UTG): $142.10

Pre Flop: ($2.70) Hero is UTG with 5 5 3 2
Hero calls $1, 2 folds, BTN raises to $5.70, 2 folds, Hero calls $4.70

Flop: ($14.10) J 4 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $6, Hero calls $6

Turn: ($26.10) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $24.85, Hero calls $24.85

River: ($75.80) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $72.80, Hero raises to $105.35 all in, BTN calls $32.55

Final Pot: $286.50
BTN shows A T 7 5 (HI: a straight, Four to Eight; LO: 6,5,4,2,A)
Hero shows 5 5 3 2 (HI: a straight, Deuce to Six; LO: 6,5,4,3,2)
BTN wins $141.75
BTN wins $141.75
(Rake: $3.00)

HAND #2 against a different potting maniac. A hand that makes me seriously want to sell every possession I own and put the $ online. Yeah this was a $300 pot.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 6 players - View hand 692717

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP: $234.40

CO: $129.30

BTN: $412.65

SB: $270.55

BB: $100.00

Hero (UTG): $140.85

Pre Flop: ($2.70) Hero is UTG with 3 2 3 A

Hero calls $1, MP raises to $5.70, 1 fold, BTN calls $5.70, 2 folds, Hero calls $4.70

Flop: ($19.80) 4 Q 3 (3 players)

Hero checks, MP bets $17, BTN folds, Hero raises to $34, MP calls $17

Turn: ($87.80) 6 (2 players)

Hero bets $65, MP raises to $194.50 all in, Hero calls $35.95 all in

River: ($289.70) 5 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $289.70

MP shows J 8 K K (HI: a flush, King high)

Hero shows 3 2 3 A (HI: a straight, Deuce to Six; LO: 5,4,3,2,A)

MP wins $143.35

Hero wins $143.35

(Rake: $3.00)

HAND #3 where I should scoop a $300 pot but somehow don't. And not because the other super strong hand in the 3 way pot chops with me, but the guys drawing literally to four outs for HALF. Gets there.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 6 players - View hand 692719
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $279.60
UTG: $118.20
MP: $436.25
CO: $236.05
BTN: $112.70
Hero (SB): $91.20

Pre Flop: ($2.70) Hero is SB with 4 3 A T
2 folds, CO calls $1, BTN raises to $4, Hero calls $3.50, BB calls $3, CO calls $3

Flop: ($17.20) T 3 2 (4 players)
Hero bets $16.35, BB calls $16.35, CO folds, BTN raises to $81.75, Hero raises to $87 all in, BB calls $70.65, BTN calls $5.25

Turn: ($278.20) Q (3 players - 1 is all in)
BB checks, BTN bets $21.50 all in, BB calls $21.50

River: ($321.20) 8 (3 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $321.20
BB shows 8 2 4 8 (HI: three of a kind, Eights)
BTN shows Q A 6 5 (HI: a pair of Queens; LO: 8,5,3,2,A)
Hero shows 4 3 A T (HI: two pair, Tens and Threes; LO: 8,4,3,2,A)
BB wins $21.50
BTN wins $21.50
BB wins $137.60
Hero wins $137.60
(Rake: $3.00)

The final hand I bust on. A little bit of a cooler considered my opposition. This one is debatable really. But it was a perfect cap to the session.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $0.20 Ante - 6 players - View hand 692721

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $302.80

SB: $116.80

BB: $481.05

UTG: $231.65

MP: $250.00

Hero (CO): $114.40

Pre Flop: ($2.70) Hero is CO with 4 A Q 2

2 folds, Hero raises to $3, 2 folds, BB raises to $8, Hero calls $5

Flop: ($17.70) A T 9 (2 players)

BB bets $16.85, Hero calls $16.85

Turn: ($51.40) 8 (2 players)

BB bets $48.90, Hero calls $48.90

River: ($149.20) Q (2 players)

BB bets $146.20, Hero calls $40.45 all in

Final Pot: $230.10

BB shows J A Q 3 (HI: a straight, Eight to Queen)

Hero shows 4 A Q 2 (HI: two pair, Aces and Queens)

BB wins $227.10

(Rake: $3.00)

I just do not know what to say.....

Econ 613 3/2/10

2010-03-03T02:33:00.000-08:00

Sorry about this one guys..I came in about 20 minutes late and had to sit near the back....try listening to it on headphones if you cannot hear the audio well. And, of course, my handwriting roxors....

Econ 613 3.2.10
brought to you by Livescribe

MATH 506 1/13/10

2010-01-13T23:18:00.000-08:00

Technically this class is Math 506 but it really is just Math 503 part B, a continuation of the earlier class Math 503.

Math 506 1_13_10
brought to you by Livescribe

ECON 659 1/12/10

2010-01-13T23:14:00.001-08:00

One of the two Economics classes I am taking this semester, 659 is taught my Professor Magill. A seemingly old school guy in all senses of the word, that is, except for his constant streams of profanity.

Econ 659 1_12_10
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 503 11/11/09 REVIEW SESSION

2009-11-11T19:45:00.001-08:00

Math 503 11/11/09 REVIEW SESSION
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 11/02/09

2009-11-06T22:07:00.001-08:00

Math 509 11.02.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 503 11/06/09

2009-11-06T21:58:00.001-08:00

Math 503 11.06.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 11/06/09

2009-11-06T21:57:00.001-08:00

Math 509 11.06.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 503 11/04/09

2009-11-06T00:28:00.002-08:00

Math 503 11.4.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 11/04/09

2009-11-06T00:28:00.000-08:00

Math 509 11.04.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 503 10/30/09

2009-10-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

This one was a rather confusing lecture with the Linear Algebra
review and the rushed Feynman-Kac Theorem discussion. Hopefully, there is follow up on Wednesday's lecture.

Math 503 10.30.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 10/30/09

2009-10-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry about this one, I got to class about 6 minutes late so the first bit is cut off. I think I recovered the vast majority of the information though.

Math 509 10.30.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Note on How to Watch the videos

2009-10-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

These pencasts are synchronized recordings of the audio that is recorded and the notes my pen records as I write them. So the best way to utilize these videos is to watch them and click on certain areas of the written notes to jump to, jump back to, repeat or emphasize the audio of a thing that is written. Example:

If halfway down the first page you see the outline of ITO FORMULA written on the page and you only care to review the ITO FORMULA you can use the red dot to pinpoint those words and click them to jump the audio and written notes to that point in time when the ito formula is being discussed. This obviously allows for a saving of time and a much more pointed reviewing process.

Math 503 10/28/09

2009-10-29T15:29:00.003-07:00

Math503 10.28.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 10/28/09

2009-10-29T15:29:00.001-07:00

M509 10.28.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Econ 652 10/26/09

2009-10-29T15:28:00.001-07:00

Econ652 10.26.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 10/26/09

2009-10-29T15:27:00.003-07:00

M509 10.26.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 503 10/23/09

2009-10-29T15:27:00.001-07:00

Math503 10.23.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 503 10/21/09

2009-10-29T15:26:00.003-07:00

Math503 10.21.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 10/21/09

2009-10-29T15:23:00.001-07:00

M509 10.21.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Math 509 10/19/2009

2009-10-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Bare with me on the audio for this one. It is still a bit soft and hard to focus.

M509 10.19.2009
brought to you by Livescribe

Econ 652 10/19/09

2009-10-29T15:20:00.001-07:00

Hopefully this transfers correctly.

Econ652 10.19.09
brought to you by Livescribe

Shift in Focus

2009-10-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

Now that I am in Graduate School I rarely get a chance to play poker so I am going to shift the focus of this blog for the time being. I am going to start posting my notes from my classes here as essentially a storage space for them. I recorded them via LiveScribe which is a pen that has an infra-red camera and a digital recorder so it records the audio of my teachers combined and synchronized with what ever I write on the page. I may or may not be adding future poker analysis. So if you are in my math classes enjoy, if you are not, you will probably not like this blog for the next year or so.

The End of an Era

2009-06-17T00:51:00.000-07:00

Last week, the old man died. That's right, my treasured 1995 Buick Regal slipped its transmssion and sounded the death knell of an age of revolutionary driving. It was a solemn week for me replete with crying spells and yelling to the heavens "Why not me lord, WHY NOT ME???". But to no avail. He was junked to the salvage yard today.

But on a lighter note, I have a new car now. A 2004 Infinity G35. So far its pretty bomb ass nice. I still have to take it into my mechanic to have a the full work-over done, but as I can tell the engine, brakes, and mechanical details all seem to be in working order. There was a small imperfection in the body kit but I have convinced the used car dealer to fix that on his dime. I just have to go to his place in the valley to have it fixed so I have to make that trek this week.

Out with the old, and in with the new....

Finally Turned in All Three!

2009-05-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

So finally turned in all my graduate applications :

1) Turned in USC application in December 2008. Status: Accepted!
2) Turned in UC Berkeley MFE application in March 2009. Status: Rejected...:(
3) Turned in UCLA MFE application in May 2009. Status: Pending...should know by July 31st at the latest.

As of right now, I have committed to USC but if I get into UCLA I will 80% choose to go there because the UCLA program is only one year long and $27K as opposed to the USC program which is 1.5 years + and upwards of $40K.

BALLING?!

2009-05-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

So I just ordered a MacBook via FULL TILT points. Which brings my total list of things purchased from the point systems of the Pokerstars and Full Tilt:

1. 42 Inch Flat Screen TV
2. MacBook

Drunk Philophical Offerings

2009-04-05T03:02:00.002-07:00

I just wanted to say that I hold the world in contempt. Take that as you will.

FTOPS HORSE

2009-02-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

I just started the Ftops HORSE event so I will try to post interesting hands that happen in relatively real time. This may or may not work so lets see

First ridiculous hand: Stud high A perfect trap gone ridiculously bad!

TheNewMath: K K 9___raises

krazylouie: xx xx 5___brings-in___folds

Billy The Croc: xx xx A___folds

takinabeating: xx xx 6___folds

Will_B_D: xx xx 7___folds

beeffrank21: xx xx T___completes___calls

cobrakai111: xx xx T___calls___folds

4th Street - (11.67 SB)

ChasingIdiot: xx xx J 4___calls

TheNewMath: K K 9 K___bets

beeffrank21: xx xx T 8___calls

5th Street - (7.33 BB)

ChasingIdiot: xx xx J 4 J___checks___raises___calls

TheNewMath: K K 9 K A___bets___raises

beeffrank21: xx xx T 8 3___calls___calls

6th Street - (16.33 BB)

ChasingIdiot: xx xx J 4 J 4___bets

TheNewMath: K K 9 K A Q___calls

beeffrank21: xx xx T 8 3 2___calls

River - (19.33 BB)

ChasingIdiot: xx xx J 4 J 4 xx___bets

TheNewMath: K K 9 K A Q 3___calls

beeffrank21: xx xx T 8 3 2 xx___folds

Total pot: (21.33 BB - 2,560)

Hmmm....rough beat there. I called on 7th because there has to be more than 5% chance he would show up with AAJJ or QQJJ rather than 100% having JJJ44 since my up card is not a K or A its not immediately apparent that he understand I made trip Kings so he might be running his Aces up too fast. Granted that is quite unlikely but I bloated the pot so big when I was so far ahead now I have to call the river. If the pot only has 10 BB instead of 20 I think can fold it much more often.

Also, apparently the stud hand converter I am using does not want to put the suits in the HTML code or the .gif pictures arent transferring. Either way, the only important suits to note are beerfrank has the ten of diamonds and the 3 of diamonds which leads me to believe he calls off on a diamond flush draw on the capped betting.

2nd Hand: Omaha HI/Lo 8 or better: How to Quarter someone

Full Tilt Poker FTOPS Event #14 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Tournament - t120/t240 Limit - 8 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

ChasingIdiot (CO): t3435 M = 19.08

Hero (BTN): t4153 M = 23.07

krazylouie (SB): t4310 M = 23.94

Billy The Croc (BB): t5378 M = 29.88

takinabeating (UTG): t4382 M = 24.34

PrahladF (UTG+1): t4372 M = 24.29

beeffrank21 (MP1): t3097 M = 17.21

cobrakai111 (MP2): t7245 M = 40.25

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is BTN with J J 2 A

2 folds, beeffrank21 raises, cobrakai111 calls, 1 fold, Hero calls, krazylouie calls, Billy The Croc calls

Flop: (10 SB) 4 T 3 (5 players)

krazylouie checks, Billy The Croc checks, beeffrank21 bets, cobrakai111 calls, Hero raises, krazylouie folds, Billy The Croc folds, beeffrank21 folds, cobrakai111 calls

Turn: (7.5 BB) 6 (2 players)

cobrakai111 checks, Hero bets, cobrakai111 calls

River: (9.5 BB) J (2 players)

cobrakai111 checks, Hero bets, cobrakai111 calls

Final Pot: 11.5 BB

Hero shows J J 2 A (HI: three of a kind, Jacks; LO: 6,4,3,2,A)

cobrakai111 shows A 2 Q K (HI: Ace King high; LO: 6,4,3,2,A)

Hero wins 5.75 BB

cobrakai111 wins 2.875 BB

Hero wins 2.875 BB

Obviously, this is a tremendously great spot for me. I think just calling on the button is much better than 3-betting here preflop because I do not want to risk isolating myself against any AAxx hand in which case I am a dog even though my hand is pretty. With only an A2 and no low back up my hand is not spectacular without some flop help. That being said, I got one of the best flops I could possibly hope for. Nut low draw, with nut flush draw, and an overpair that has chances of being good against the original raiser (beeffrank) who's an idiot. Then the turn brings in my low and I have the only other player crushed to 6 outs. He has no low insurance to counterfeit my low and he cannot catch the K of hearts or the Q of hearts. But he can catch one of the remaining two aces to crunch me with AK>AJ. But having him dead to 6 outs is a great scenario. The J on the river is only icing on the cake.

ARGRGRGRGGGRGR DONK BLASTED!!!!!!!!!!

So I busted out on an infuriating hand. I accidentally closed the table also so I don't have the hand history to post but I have the relevant action still in my memory. We are playing 250/500 stud 8 and I am shortish with 1950. I am not committed with these chips but I can't really expect to play too many hands without getting them all in. So I pick up (A3)5 off when no Aces are shown and it folds to me, complete to 250. A new player to the table with alot of chips raises to 500 with a K up. Then it comes around to Beeffrank (refer to above two posts!) who then reraises to 750 when he only has another 700 behind and he is showing an 8. I call the 500 more with the best current low draw and most likely a live A, the K then puts the cap on it for 1000 total and we both call. Now the pot is 32-3300 and I essentially cannot fold unless I catch brick on 4th and brick on 5th for one bet. Even then its quite close. So of course, I catch a good 7, the K catches a Q, Donksteak 5000 catches a J, the K bets, donksteak raises all in, I call, and the K calls.

So the boards look like this:

big stacks: xxKQ

beeffrank: xx8J (now allin)

Hero: (A3) 57 where no one has two of the same suit showing.

I catch a 7 on 5 street, KQ catches a brick and bets, I raise the 1/3 bet more that puts me allin. Now here are the boards for the allin:

big stack: KQKQ9

beeffrank: 398J7

Hero: A3577

I catch K 3 for a final hand of A3577K3 or just 7s and 3s no low, beeffrank ends up with Q high I believe and KKQQ scoops the overly bloated pot and eliminates two people.

Thoughts on the hand you ask? Well, my hand is certainly playable. 3 connected low cards with an A is usually a better hand in the long run vs KKQ especially multiway. The problem is I have very few chips. But since the end of the previous razz round the table has gotten manaical. Ever pot was huge and people were just throwing chips around without regard. I was not even able to play a hand in the preceding stud high round because every pot was raised or reraised ahead of me. This was due in no small part to beeffrank's obvious tilt/drunk/idiot/chip dump/cheater strategy. All in all, I was way correct to put my chips into the pot at every point in this hand even when I was all in on 5th street. If you do not believe me you can check out http://tinyurl.com/c2q5fo

Essentially, beeffrank putting all his dead chips in the pot forced the KK to overvalue his hand (which just reveals the KK's lack of knowledge about stud 8) but once he hits KKQQ, he is not going anywhere given the pot size and my chips situation. This caused a chain reaction of me being forced to go to the end as well which invariably made the variance of the numbers from the above website much, much, much higher than they needed to be. Stud 8 is not supposed to be high variance game,in fact, it is theoretically the lowest variance game when you play a strong low-based game because so often you are getting at least half the pot back and sometimes hogging the whole pot. Hence the comment at the beginning of this hand. The donk, beeffrank, got me donk blasted and left me no maneuverability and caused the variance to eat me up. It must be reiterated, though, that my chips WERE below average prior to this hand and I was approaching the danger zone so it is not as though I went from chip leader to rail but I think my point is clear.

END RESULT: 535/703- VERY DISAPPOINTING!

A Small Shift

2009-02-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

In an effort to move slightly away from poker and also to hopefully have a more often posted blog, I have decided to add some non-poker thoughts if and when I have them. Essentially, this is an attempt to make my blog a normal blog. Bear with me.

So as some of you may know, I am currently applying for graduate school in financial engineering and/or mathematical finance. I have been more concerned with these topics as of late our economy continually spirals into oblivion. Now this may be my naivete talking, but the #1 goal of Alan Greenspan during the very prosperous golden age of economics during the late 1990s (under Bill Clinton) was to pay down the deficit. Clinton moved quickly on this topic and the deficit was under control quite early in his presidency. From there on out, we had a healthy surplus and the biggest quibbles of the government were how to spend the extra money. A great set of problems to have.

But now, the current national deficit is larger that it has ever been (by far! Debt Clock now) and we are still going to be deficit spending with the new stimulus package not to mention the still mounting war costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. Personally, I agree with Mr. Greenspan in that paying off the national debt is the foundation of a solid, healthy economy. That being said, we cannot start paying off the debt while banks are failing, houses are still being foreclosed upon, and businesses are receiving a fraction of the consumer traffic they need in order to survive. So I look forward to seeing what transpires and how we as a nation can pull our heads out of our asses despite how far the Bush administration's foot has kicked it up there.

2008-11-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

Guess I need to shut the hell up sometimes. Posted that last hand which put me up to 28K when the average chip count was 12K. Then promptly lost AK all in vs JJ when board was Ac 7c 3c and he had JJc. Turn club. Then made two big bluffs which down in flames when a guy calls a 2/3 pot sized bet on the river with AK when the board is 23467. Then of course KK< As3s. And in the span of about 45 mins I go from 216th in chips to out in 2613th place. Man that was so stupid.

Really Really Nice read (i think ) in FTOPS main event

2008-11-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

Almost streaming....this hand happened 5 min ago...im rolling hard in this event

Full Tilt Poker FTOPS Main Event No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t100/t200 Blinds - 9 players

The Official Hand History Converter

BTN: t14500

SB: t9642

BB: t8232

UTG: t19315

UTG+1: t3125

UTG+2: t2959

MP1: t5105

Hero (MP2): t18980

CO: t15561

Pre Flop: (t300) Hero is MP2 with T K

4 folds, Hero raises to t550, 2 folds, SB calls t450, 1 fold

Flop: (t1300) 3 J J (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets t750, SB calls t750

Turn: (t2800) 2 (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets t1450, SB calls t1450

River: (t5700) K (2 players)

SB checks, Hero bets t1500, SB requests TIME, SB raises to t6892 all in, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls t5392

Final Pot: t19484

SB shows 9 9 (two pair, Jacks and Nines)

Hero shows T K (two pair, Kings and Jacks)

Hero wins t19484

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKK

2008-11-09T23:35:00.000-08:00

Eek: Definition: to act like a timid mouse and sniff around looking for scraps of food all the bigger, stronger animals leave behind.

Example: $322 Buyin NL Hold'em Tourney FTOPS Event #9.

5370 Entrants - 738 paid spots

729......
730......
731 TheNewMath = $418.86
732.....
733.....

I played this tourney fairly poorly. I was lucky enough to have a very fishy first table but I didnt really accumulate at all until I reached my 2nd table. My 2nd table was actually much more difficult but I flopped the nut flush in a 3 way pot against an aggro player who tried to bluff all in and I started amassing chips. Then I decided to donk off a few making over aggro players after falling back to sub average chips I also decided I wanted to have a 2 or 3 in my hand for numerous orbits while I blinded down. Thankfully, I got mad eek skills and folded some big hands on or near the bubble to eek into the money and then promptly bust on the very next hand all while maintaining an M of 2. Yay!

So I Got Barred from Hustler for 30 Days

2008-11-04T02:51:00.000-08:00

Wow.

I am now officially barred from Hustler Casino for 30 days. A dealer was extremely rude to me and I complained to the shift manager about it. After interviewing the dealer and the wife of a player at the table (who is ALSO a dealer at Hollywood Park), the shift manager threatens me before even hearing my side of the story. He then explains that he has corroborating evidence from "numerous" (read: 1 person not in the game) players in the game, the dealer, the floorman, and that all these angles agree I was bullying/abusing the dealer. I explain the situation that occurred which resulted in genuine confusion that had me paying 3 blinds instead of just small and big. When I corrected the dealer he made some rude remarks that I didnt appreciate and then later interrupted a conversation I was having with my neighbor about he situation. I brusquely told him "Just deal" as I was not interested in talking to him or hearing anything he had to say. This came back around as I told him to "Shutup and Deal" and that I abused him.
I spoke with Paulie the floorman after I was barred by Jacob the shift manager and Paul had no idea of what was going on. Therefore, Jacob the shift manager DID NOT have the story of the floorman at the time (I did not call Paul over at the time, nor did the dealer complain to the floor about me) nor did he have any of the viewpoints of the players in the game besides an onlooking off duty dealer (biased? No comment).
As far as I can tell, I broke no rules that should result in a 30 day barring. I did disagree with Jacob the shift manager as to his lying and poor handling of the situation. Obviously, had I not brought up the situation to Jacob in the first place, there would have been no controversy. Richard, the rude dealer in this instance, had not complained of his own accord and merely espoused his grievances only when prompted.
I will be following up on this hopefully with other casino personel that aren't going to be so jaded and heavy handed with their actions.

2nd try....

2008-10-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Full Tilt Poker $11 + $1 Matrix 4x Sit & Go No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t15/t30 Blinds - 9 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): t1500

BB: t1500

UTG: t1500

UTG+1: t1500

UTG+2: t1500

MP1: t1500

MP2: t1500

CO: t1500

BTN: t1500

Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is SB with 7 7

UTG raises to t90, 6 folds, Hero calls t75, 1 fold

Flop: (t210) 4 7 2 (2 players)

Hero bets t65, UTG calls t65

Turn: (t340) 9 (2 players)

Hero bets t225, UTG calls t225

River: (t790) A (2 players)

Hero checks, UTG bets t390, Hero raises to t1120 all in, UTG calls t730 all in

HMMM

2008-10-21T12:28:00.001-07:00

Ignore that last post....Obviously haven't figured out Hand Converters yet...

TEST POST: Hand converter

2008-10-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

Wow... that was a total space waster....got rid of it and figured out to work HTML for online hand postings...WHEW

I Hate Flying Blind

2008-07-17T02:40:00.000-07:00

Flying Blind is extremely dangerous as a pilot. (DUH) You can't see what you are dealing with so your choices and direction become either extremely risk averse or essentially flying into the storm and hoping for the best. The same can be true in No Limit Holdem some times. I am back in Los Angeles from my WSOP stint in Vegas, which I may blog about in the future if I find something of interest to say about the trip. So I make my first trek back to Commerce Casino, in which they have instituted a new game. Alongside the the typical $400 buyin game there is now a $500-1500 buyin $5-$10 blind game. So I sit down at a table that looks ok and I get shuffled around for a few minutes as sit changes occur and I view a few hands, nothing much of interest. By the time, the button passes me, I post and get the Kd 5h. A person limps ahead of me, I check, the button limps, the small blind completes and the big blind checks. $50 flop comes down Ks 5s 8c. I flop top and bottom pairs which is pretty strong. Sb, BB, and first limper all check to me, I bet $50 and the only caller is the Small Blind. Although I am a very regular Commerce player, I have never seen this player before. I have been told the 5-15 buyin game has been attracting alot of new faces, some good, some not so the fact that he is an unknown to me is not all that surprising.

Anyway, he is the only caller on the flop. Of course, I know nothing about him and can't really deduce much about him because he is asian, probably thai or phlipino. Before you label me as some sort of ethnic stereotyper, it must be known how asian rich the commerce is. Some are tight players, some are crazy gamblers, some are good players, and some are just outright stupid. So I did not form any opinion of this guy because of all the possibilities. So right now I know nothing of his possible range. Turn comes the 3c putting a board of Ks 8c 5s 3c. He checks and I bet $110 into the $150 pot. He now check raises me to $500 total. I had bought into the game for $1000 and he had $2000+ in front of him. Yay, right back to flying blind. I know nothing of how this guy plays, I have no ranges on him. He could have anything from KK to As4s and everything in between. So I start canceling out all the extreme possibilities. I cancel out KK, AcXc, a dry AsXs, and 33. I think if I include these in my range calculation it will skew them too much in one direction. So now he could have K8, K5, K3, 55 (less likely), 88, 85, 83, 53, Ak, 8s3s, As8s, As3s, some sort of spade/straight draw or club straight draw like 6c7c or 6s7s (clubs would make a bit more sense on the turn check raise but spades are still a tricky possibility) or KcXc. There is also a possibility he could just be trying to bully the new guy at the table with K9 or some random K hand or worse. I also was canceling out total air as a possibility but not an overplayed weak hand like the KJ or something like that. As you can probably tell my hand is a big favorite against this range but the problem remains I have no idea if this is his complete range or if he is the type of player that would only do this with K3+ in which case, my range and equity drop to very small. These situations happen more often than I would like to admit in No limit, where I have to make a disgusting play what ever the result. I figured that I cannot call as that if i call the turn I have to call almost any river given that the pot will be $1150 and if he bets my remaining $450 I would be getting odds of $450 to win $1600 or slight better than 3.5:1.
This boiled down my decision to re-push all in or fold. Folding made me feel sick but in hindsight, it seems it is the more strategically sound play. I chose to push back all in for a few reasons. First off, the mere mathematics of the situations dictate that I most likely have the best hand. Now that usually is not the only determining factor in my calculations but its really all I have right now because as the title of this blog will tell you....Im flying fucking blind. Secondly, I did not want to convey the image of someone who will put a decent amount of money into the pot and then fold to someone playing back at you. I think all players at the table recognize this at least unconsciously and it makes them play a little more comfortably against you, which is a bad thing. I wanted players to feel that if they played against me (assuming I survived the hand) that there was to be no fucking around. Thirdly, and this is probably my undoing, I gave a little too much credence to the possibility that he was just trying to bully the new guy out of the hand. While it is common to find that in deeper bigger games with good players, I had no evidence or reason to believe this guy subscribed to this philosophy.

Long story short, he called and the Ad came on the river and he had K8 and I lost $1000 in 1 hand in 5 minutes and went home.

STATE CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

2008-06-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

I guess 4th time is a charm! After playing in the SCCF state championship candidates tournament 4 years in a row and barely missing it each year I finally clinched a spot in the State Championship! I had a great chess tournament as well. My first game I got paired with FM Eugene Yanayt as black but got lucky that he blundered early. Notch me up a win over a 2280. Then, 2nd round I got white vs Gregg Small. If you have been reading my posts religiously, then you may remember I had a couple good games in the past versus him. This one was no exception. He allowed me to setup a nice positional advantage game where he was quite passive. Took me a while to finally break through but I managed to get to a Knight + Bishop + 5 pawns vs Rook + 5 pawns endgame where I ground him down and queened a pawn. Notch me up a win over a 2264.
The next morning I was on board 1 as black vs my friend and sometimes coach IM Jack Peters. I started out with a very poor opening and he was probably beating me in the middle game but then I decided to sacrifice a pawn to get some activity. Jack maybe handled it not the best way and then all of a sudden all my pieces started to fly to good squares and my threats more than made up for my lost pawn. He eventually had to trade off some pieces and let me regain my pawn to stop my threats. We reached a minor piece endgame where I had a Bishop + Knight + 4 pawns vs his 2 Bishops + 4 pawns and objectively I think I was a tad better. We ended up drawing the game though because it was difficult to find a win and I was in time trouble. Notch me up a draw with a 2441. The last round was interesting as it was a logjam at 2.5 points with 7 people and another 6 people at 2 points so it was going to almost certainly come down to tiebreaks to see who snagged the top 4 spots. I got paired as white versus Ron Bruno. We played a very bookish line of the Queens Indian and I obtained a small advantage in space. The downside was that we traded queens and he offered a draw. I went to Randy Hough, the director of the tournament, and asked to see the current tiebreak standings and was delighted to see that I had the 2nd best tie breaks behind only Jack Peters. So I checked out the other games of players in contention and seeing only one decisive looking game, I took the draw. Notch me up a draw with a 2355.
Since our draw was fairly quick at about an hour and half, I stayed and played blitz and just hung out until all games were decided. There ended up being only one decisive games between the 2.5s meaning there was only 1 person with 3.5/4. I was fortunate enough to maintain my second best tie break standing and qualified in the top four spots to go to the SCCF STATE CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

Vegas so far: 2008

2008-06-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

So I am back in Los Angeles for about a week after spending two weeks in vegas for the beginning of the World Series of Poker. It was pretty hectic as usual and I didn't get off to a good start either. My cash game play was pretty bad at first with a bunch of solid losing sessions then i picked up and got it going in the middle. By the end of the two weeks I was down about 1100 in cash games which isnt as bad as it sounds considering some of the horrible sessions i had. I did not get a chance to play any World Series events yet this year. I did play one Caesar's Palace Mega Stack event. Those tournaments are great, I must say. The structures are incredible. I was doing really well in the mid stages of one mega stack no limit tournament but then i got super over aggressive and decided to bluff 60% of my chips into the nuts. That kind of got me a bit tilty and I was out soon after that. But the tournament has tons of play and I super recommend it. I also played the PLO8 event at the Golden Nugget. Don't really want to talk about that one too much. I started out at a 10 handed table with 1 absolute idiot and probably 7 pro omaha players. It was like pulling teeth to get chips at that table once the idiot promptly busted. I even had to lay down a full house early. It was the blatantly obvious play given the circumstances and I did it but you know you're at a bad table when you have to do things like that. Didn't go very far in that one.

I did get a chance to play one single table satellite for World Series Events. I have kind of a funny story about it, too. We were still 10 handed when 4 people limped in on my BB. The small blind lifted his cards so I could see them, he had J 5 off and called. I had J 8 off and checked my option. The flop came down J 10 6 rainbow. Everyone checked around. The turn was the case J ! Now the SB led out for 300 into the 350 pot. I decided to raise him to 700. Now, I raised because I was possibly afraid of letting in a KQ or 89 for a straight draw as well as trying to get max value off of the J5 while my kicker played. Maybe it was erroneous thinking and I should have just called to try and get more people to call drawing bad. But, of course, he reraises all in and I call in dominant position until the river 5 comes out. Still not sure if I should have just called or raised. The line of thinking that I have more information than my opponent would favor just calling because I can make more profitable decisions than him on further streets (i.e. being able to fold and only lose 300 if/when a 5 comes on the river). That, of course, is only limited to heads up play. But if someone does come in behind me I know they dont have a J so they either have a made boat already, a 10, or a draw. In which, case I could probably fold some scary rivers like a 9, 6, or A if needed. Conversely, there was no rush to get the money in either, as the J5 is not folding to any river. This seemed like an unexperienced player as well as a satellite situation so, like I said, he probably isnt folding even if a straight card does come in. All of these factors probably favor me just calling the turn and hoping a 2,3,4,7, or 8 falls on the river if we are heads up and a non straightening card (i.e. 2 3 4 or 8) falls if we get a straggler behind us to call).

So I am probably going back to vegas in the next week. Most likely going to play the state championships candidates tournament this weekend for chess. Then maybe leave monday or tuesday. There is also a small chance I would skip the chess tournament and leave for vegas tomorrow night. Not quite sure yet.

More updates later.

An interesting Hand

2008-05-21T04:31:00.000-07:00

This hand occurred at the Hustler 5 -5 blind NLHE game. I have about $2000 at the beginning of the hand and the villain ( who is reasonably tight) has about $1500.

I am in the Small blind with 3s 5s. UTG limps, 2nd position (villian) limpts, and fold around to button. Button is a tight but predictable guy who raises to $25. I call and so does the villain, UTG folds. $80 flop comes down Js 10d 4s. I check my flush draw and villain leads into the raiser for $20. Raiser sighs and folds and I call with my flush draw. Turn brings the 7h. Now I have a flush draw and now a hidden gutshot straight draw. I decide to lead with a blocking bet and mimic 89 to try and slow down the bettor a bit if he has a J. I bet out $40 into the $120 pot. He promptly and with little thought raises to $140. So he obviously didnt believe me on the 89 and he likes his hand. Since we have so much money behind and I have a hidden straight draw along with my flush draw i figure my implied odds are quite high as I really do not put him on 89 of any variety. So I decide to call this $100.
The river comes the 10s for a final board of 4s Js 10d 7h 10s. I have made my flush so I lead out $250 into the $360 pot. He insta/turbo/without thinking or hesitation moves all in for $1200 +. Sigh....I know that I cant call $1000 for this small pot on this board. I can't really find a hand that I can beat. I can barely hope he bet out into the preflop raiser on the flop with a low straight draw 89 on the flop and is putting me on A10 or something like that but he has to have at the minimum AsXs here.
It was rather stupid of me to lead out into the paired board when my obvious flush hit when I am out of position. HIs range of hands has to be J10, all sets, Aj, AsXs, 89 and maybe KQ. Of those hands, I am beating only KQ and AJ. Neither of which this player would snap raise all in for 4X the pot on the river. So of his possible range I am really trying to value bet the very bottom of his range. Praying for a call from AJ or an oddly played QQ, KK, or AA. I can't put him on a dry 10 to lead into the tight raiser with just second pair on the flop. So in essence, I can't beat anything that he can call me with. So once again, I play a flush badly versus a boat. This time though the session on a positive note although I lost about $450 on that hand.

Danyul

ALWAYS TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS!!!

2008-05-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

In No Limit Hold'em, all of the great players have developed the instinct to pick up more of a ethereal part of the game that can't always be expressed succinctly after the fact. This is one of those masked qualities that tends to rise out in necessary situations in successful players. I have seen it come about in me at various times. The key is to realize when you have to trust it. Just right now I took a hard knocks lesson as to when to trust myself. A hand will illustrate what I am trying to say perfectly:

6am 5-10 NL game @ commerce casino. Game is fairly loose passive and I start the hand off with ~$750.

UTG limps, I limp in 2nd position with As6s, cutoff and button limp, SB completes and BB checks. 6 way $60 flop comes down Qc Js 2s. Checked to me and I bet out $45. Folded to SB who min raises to $100, BB calls and then folded to me and I call.

Now before I go on, I will say that I have not played with SB very long at all, maybe 10 hands max and I had not seen him win a hand or showdown a hand as he just moved to our table from a broken game with more $$ than me but I had the feeling he was very tight.

The turn card in the 3 way $360 pot came down the Qs for a board of Qc Qs Js 2s. I now have the nut flush. The SB is sweating and twiching now and bets out $100 and the BB calls $100. I decide to raise here for 2 reasons. First, off, I know the BB is a bad player and will pay me off with a worse flush, a bare Q, or maybe something worse. Secondly, I really felt like the SB had Q2. Everything in my gut told me he had Q2. So if he were to reraise me or call and then bet/push the river, I could be sure and easily fold. But, no. He just calls and unfortunately, the BB folds. Now the river comes the 3c. He checks while still being quite twitchy and agitated. Now I am super confused. Is he really pulling this move on me with me only having $350 left in a $900+. Is he really trapping here with me being pot committed and having to call his river value bet? (or so he should have thought)? I thought there was no way this could possibly be the case. Did he have AQ/KQ, a lower flush, a worse Q, J2? Somehow all this clouded my crystal clear read of 10 seconds prior that told me he had Q2. So, of course, this new found bungled thinking bewitched my hand into pushing my last $350 into the pot as a voluntary bet. And, yes, of course, he called and showed me Q2.

I sometimes have the instincts. Now I need to learn how to listen to them.

Addendum to "Absolute Bitch Post"

2008-05-17T04:11:00.000-07:00

Adding another serious runner runner beat to the list:

My hand: 9h 9d My opponent's hand: Qd Qs

Flop: 9c 4d 7d (both parties all in) Turn: 2d River: 6d

Sigh......

Hustler Thursday "Deep Stack" Tournament

2008-05-16T03:14:00.000-07:00

Tonight, in my continued preparation for the tournaments this summer, I played the $255 buyin Deep Stack tournament at Hustler. It is a pretty well run tournament that starts each player off with 5000 in chips @ 25 -50 blinds. The only down side to this is the rounds are fairly quick at 25 minutes. This edition of the tournament saw a healthy turnout of 113 players. I feel as though that's a very managable number of players as far as my ability to win and have it be worthwhile. Less than 80 players and the prize pool is too shallow to allow anything less than top 2 and more than 300 players (without better structure requirements) requires a much greater luck factor than is indicative to tournaments to begin with.

This tournament, however, didn't go well at all for me. To begin with, my table was full of maniacal idiots. Which is usually a good thing except when you are card dead. I got a bad beat early that lost me 600 in the 25-50 stage. I was in the BB with 10 6 and five people limped in, the SB completed, and I checked. So we saw the 7 (!) handed flop with 350 chips in the middle. Flop comes Js 10s 6h. SB checked and I decided to check because I really felt that even an overbet here would elicit 2+ calls and then I would need a very bricky card to come on the turn for me to push on. I don't want to see an A, Q, K, J, 9, 8, 7 or spade. So I checked. It checked around to a guy in middle position who bet out 175. The guy directly behind him (who I had already learned was a complete and utter dumbass) raises to 575. It folded back to me and I elected to just call here. Again, with 5K starting stacks I think it is better to call here rather than reraise or push. For one thing, its early and my hand is super vulnerable. Secondly, I know I am up against a loose bad player who very well may not lay down his QJ here for a 4200 rereraise. QJ or similar hand is still about 25% against my hand and thats not discounting the original bettor's calling intentions with any sorts of draws. Yes, against more skilled opposition I would be more likely to push here because AJ, QK, or even an unlikely QQ would be able to easily fold knowing they were behind. But against a player who I had already seen demonstrate his lack of understanding there is little upside to taking on more unnecessary risk with a vulnerable hand early in the tournament. I felt as though I could have found better spots to get it all in. For instance, if a safe card comes on the turn then I would feel much more comfortable about getting it all in as all his possible hands that aren't ahead of me (such as J10 or an unlikely 66) now are way behind mathematically with just one card to come that the payoff is now justified for the diminished risk. That being said, I called the 575 and the original bettor called as well. The turn brough the beautiful Jc and I checked, Original bettor checked, and raiser turbo bet out 1500. Of course, I folded my dead 3 pair hand and the original bettor calls. River comes 3h. Original bettor checks and raiser instantaneously goes all in for 2K more and bettor takes 10 seconds to call with AJ on the JJ 10 6 3 board. The all in guy's hand? K 10, of course. I was never really in doubt that I had the best hand on the flop but I was fighting the vulnerability of my holding and the "accidental" equity that the raiser's range held against me. So my first place holding on the flop immediately went to 3rd place on the turn. Surprisingly enough, the J is the only card in the deck that puts me behind both players.

After that hand, I didn't get a hand for a solid hour. I blinded off a bunch and lost a few tiny bets (limping with 33, raising with KQoff and getting reraised 8K over my 300 bet preflop). This was not a table where you could steal or try to win some small ball pots. Every pot was 3+ to the flop and I mean every pot. Not once did we not see a flop. I think the deep stack structure gives people more confidence to play flops. Which is great for me because the people REALLY REALLY sucked after the flop but it required hands. There was such unbelievable value waiting for any hand that made it but no chances to outplay people with marginal holdings appeared. It essentially became a game of patience. Luckily, I had that in spades but I kept getting blinded down without having won a single chip. Then in 2nd position I pick up AsAc. Since I had been folding for the last hour I decided to limp/reraise as my early position raise probably would have been given more credit than I would have liked. The blinds were only 100-200 ante 25 and I was in no mood to just win the 550 out there. So I limped and, of course, tons of other people limped as well giving us 6 people to the flop. Naturally, the 6 handed 1450 pot came out as bad as it could for my hand Qd 9d 5d. It got checked all the way around which was a good sign. The turn was an innocuous 3c and the SB bet out a pithy 500. I only had 2500 left and I decided there was no way he had a flush and I shipped it and prayed not to get called by anyone except QKd which i doubted was out there. No callers. Finally, I won a pot and got almost even with the starting stack. The next hand I get another playable hand!!!! Woohoo. KhQh Under the Gun. I thought about raising here but again, I was going to get 3+ callers and I didn't want to have to show weakness if i missed. It may sound like I am playing timidly in this tournament but I kid you not outside of the last hand this was a showdown poker table. So any continuation bet wouldn't work and I would be forced to make a hand out of position. So I limped and again we got a 6 handed 1450 chip flop. Apparently the dealer had a thing for flushes because the board came out Ks 7s 4s. The two blinds checked and I decided I was going to try and win two hands in a row and bet out 800. I got everyone to fold except one guy who I had observed to play really oddly. The turn came a dispicable Qs. So now the board is Ks Qs 7s 4s and I have KhQh. I checked to him and he made a tiny bet of 700 into the 3050 pot. Getting over 5:1 to call with my 4 out boat draw I called. Turn bricked out the 10h and I checked again. He made the same 700 chip bet on the river. So I had to call 700 to win 5150! Such a huge disparity really irked me. I was getting better than 7:1 but of course his chances of having a flush were so high that I really didn't think he was bluffing. I folded in disgust and of course he showed me the 7d 6h. Obviously, I think I have to call there as only the As or the Js has the balls to bet just 700 on the river begging for a call. The Js can do it because it is quite unlikely that I would have the As and check the river.

Then again, I felt like an idiot folding given that price and would have felt like an idiot if I had called and been shown the As3d. So I was damned if you do, damned if you don't but needless to say, a "bad" call there would have lifted me up to close to 8K which would have been an average (and formidable) stack in the tournament. Instead, I was reduced to a baby stack at around 3100. The blinds went up to 150-300 with a 50 ante and I was getting hit hard quickly with that 50 a hand. I folded for another 1.5 orbits because I couldn't get a hand and there was always a raise or limps before me so I couldn't just push/steal with fold equity. Then I get 3s 6s in 3rd position when I only have 2000 chips left and the pot is 950. I had a super tight image, the blinds were both tight/weak players, and because very few of these people understood Ms or tournament math I felt I could steal this pot and survive another orbit and maybe pick up a few more pots uncontested. Of course, my all in gets called by both AK and QQ and I lose. I busted in 70th place out of 113. The tournament paid out 18 places for the final two 9 handed tables.

The tournament overall I think is a great value as the vast majority of players are so horrible and the stacks are deep enough to be patient. The quick rounds are a bit of a pressure so you have to capitalize in the first 4 rounds to have some buffer chips in order to go far. I will probably play this tournament a couple more times before vegas.

It also didn't hurt that I went and sat in the $300-$500 buyin 5-5 blind cash game and killed it for $1400+. That always makes the soul feel better after a tournament bustout.

HORSE event @ commerce

2008-05-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

So last night was the HORSE event of the Heavenly Hold'em Poker series at Commerce. I was really looking forward to this event (and so far has been the only Heavenly Hold'em event I have played) because it is the first HORSE event Commerce has held since I started playing there. The struture was super interesting as well. The original structure that is. See, there were some big problems and even bigger complaints so it had to be restructured on the fly. The original structure had 8 hands of each game being played and then switched and limits raised. But the flop games and the board games maintained the same limits. I know the last two sentences were confusing so I will give you an example.

Ex:

Game Ante Bring-In/SB Complete/BB Limits

Hold'em -- 50 100 100-200

Omaha 8 -- 50 100 100-200

Razz 25 50 200 200-400

Stud Hi 25 50 200 200-400

Stud 8 25 50 200 200-400

Now this all sounds like a phenomenal structure except for the fact that at 8 hands an orbit, we would raise the levels twice every 40 hands (once after 16 hands for the flop games and once every 24 hands for the board games). To compensate for this, the management started us out with a whopping 10,000 in chips! The big problem was a miscalculated attempt
to arrange for everyone to be in the same game concurrently (for table breaking purposes) that after 8 hands each table had to wait for all other tables to finish that orbit. Well, needless to say after the first 8 hands there was a public riot. So, Cheri Doken, the chief TD at commerce decided to make the structure PHENOMENAL on the fly and eliminate the 8 hand rule and make each game orbit a 20 minute level. Combine this 20 minute level with the limits only being raised twice every 5 levels (100 minutes) and the fact that we start with 10,000 chips and you have a super deep, play filled structure.

Unfortunately, I was only able to place 95th out of the 168 entries but I busted 6 1/2 hours after the tournament started. 6 1/2 hours and only 70 people busted! In fact, when I went back up stairs around 4am while I was playing cash afterwards, they were just winding down for the day and they still had about 6 tables (~48 players) coming back for day 2!

My play during the tournament was pretty decent although it had some huge holes. My Limit Hold'em game is atrocious. People are just recklessly agressive in that game and you have to be to a degree with marginal hands in order to get full value. I probably have some residual apprehension from No Limit that is holding me back from playing AJoff for capping betting out of position and the like. I also leaked a ton of chips in Omaha 8/B. While I feel as though I can play that game well, today was not a shining example of it. I just couldn't make a decent two way hand. My lows got counterfeited alot and my draws missed while my weak high hands were either behind or got quartered. My razz game was good as I picked up alot of chips in that. My stud hi game was minimal as I just didn't play many of those hands based primarily on the fact that I only had a few good starting Stud Hi hands and I still have trouble reading hands in that game. I probably made the majority of my chip profit in Stud 8/B and that's just because im in practice with it and most people don't play enough of it to hide their hands. People just play so badly in that game that its easy to make reads.

Right now I am very tired and headed to bed so I don't have any interesting hands from the tournament to share but I might in the near future for an update. But all in all, I REALLY enjoyed this tournament and I will definetly be playing one if not more of the HORSE events in Vegas this summer.

Absolute Bitch Post

2008-04-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

I hate to make bad beat posts and I especially hate starting the new blogging year (admittedly 4 months late) off with bad beat posts but this is getting a bit ridiculous. For some reason, springtime (april in specific) does something to people. It could be the extra tax break money burning a hole in their pocket or the spring time hormones fueling their chasing/pushing aggression at the poker table but I get the most and most astonishing bad beats during the spring time. Last year from about March 25-May5 or so I lost about $20K on severe ridiculous beats and the tilting aftermath of them. This year, March has been my best month ever, but April is just sickening. Fortunately, I have been getting all these ridiculous beats at "opportune" times. "Opportune" meaning these beats are turning my winning sessions into break even or small losing sessions for the most part. Alot of the times I will be up in the game when these things happen. It would seem that softens the blow but if you think about it, those winnings were still mine before I get beat.

Here is just a cross-section of some of the ridiculousness, by no means all of.

My hand: 2s 2c My opponents hand: QcQs

Flop: 2d 10d 9c Turn: Kh River: Jh

My hand: 7d 7h My opponents hand: Ad As

Flop: Kd 10d 7c Turn: 5d River: Jd

My hand: Jc Jd My opponents hand: 8c 3h

Flop: 10c 2d 4h Turn: 6c River 5h

And my new best selling favorite ass fuck brand beat of the month:

My hand: 8d 9s My opponents hand: 8c 4c

Flop: 5c 6d 7s Turn: Ac River: 7c

A Squeeze Play that Actually Worked!

2007-12-20T22:08:00.000-08:00

I just woke up from sleeping off my 18 hour session at Hollywood Park last night. It was a very weird session indeed. I started out at the $400 game and made a litte progress up to about $1000 off my first buyin and then yoyoed back and forth on that until I left that game with about $900 on my original $400 and went to go play in the $500 unrestricted buyin game which is usually a much better game. This specific instance was no different and I bought in my 2nd $400 buyin to give myself about $1200 to start with because there were some incredibly bad players in the game and I wanted to get full value on any bet I made. Well, throughout the night I wasn't able to play too many hands but I was making a small profit in a game where any second I could win $2000. Unfortunately, that second never came and all the bad players eventually busted to this funny Bostonian in town for business named Fred. Now Fred was the big stack at the table and the only other one besides me who had any idea of what he was doing. Like I said, he managed to bust the majority of people who didnt leave with money and I didn't get any of it. In fact, we got down to 3 handed and I managed to lose a good majority of my stack and got stuck down to about $400. Then the only fish in our 3 handed game left and it was Fred and I. There was no $400 game going and neither of us wanted to play heads up NL so we managed to change the game to heads up 10-20 Limit o8/Stud8 mixed game. We played that for about an hour and I was up nicely in O8 but managed to lose all my o8 profit and a little more back to him in stud 8. Fred ran pretty ridiculous in stud 8. In 10 hands of Stud 8 play he managed to show up with trips 3 times and a boat once. 60-70% of our hands were contested high only (as is more likely in heads up) and I was "stuck" with Aces up vs trips, Kings up vs a hidden boat, etc... So i was down some after our mixed game session. Then I decided to teach Fred how to play chinese poker. Which sounded like a good idea at the time. We played for $5 a point with naturals and the first hour or so he paid me $200-$250. To be fair, though, he is a very fast learner and my early hands were monstrous with something like Boat-Boat QQx so even an experienced player would have trouble not getting scooped there. As that Chinese session rolled on for about 3-4 hours he again managed to come back and break me. I was down to $30 in the early morning (7-8am) when Rick walks in surprisingly. I managed to borrow $200 from Rick, win a double scoop on a special 1 hand only 3 way Chinese hand between me, Fred, and Nick ( a daily regular in the $500 NLHE game) while the NLHE game was starting up. That put me up to about $280 and since I was technically part of the broken game from the previous evening I was able to sit in the $500 game with a short buyin. Fortunately, I started off nicely when on the 5th hand of full 9 handed play I had 5-7 off in the BB when it was limped around. Flop comes 8-6-4 with two hearts in a 5 way pot. I checked and it went around to Fred on the button who pots it for $50. I c-raised him $95 more and Rick (who decided to sit in the game) told me later he folded the A high flush draw in the cutoff vs my c-raise. Fred put me all in for the ~$140 I had left and his 6-8 didn't outrun me.
After that I played my usual game as I was back up to about $600 and the quality of the table was fairly low. Made a few hands and stole a few pots, nothing too special to speak of. I had managed to build my $600 up to about $1000 when this nice hand came up. Nick (the regular day player who is mildly crafty) had a big stack of about $1600 and limped in 2nd position, two other people limped in , and it came to me on the button wtih Kh 10h and I also limped. Richie who had about $1100 (another regular but much less skilled than Nick IMO, was a bit steamy) raised to $75 out of the SB. Nick called, one limper folded and one limper called so I was getting >3:1 with Kh 10h on the button with deep stacks so I called. Flop comes pretty for me: Ah 8h Qd. Richie quickly leads out for $200 into the ~$300 pot. Nick calls fairly quickly. Now, I have monster draw with as many as 12 outs to the nuts (9 hearts plus 3 non-heart Jacks) so I can easily call here without a second thought. If I am seeing both the turn and the river, then I have most likely about 40-43% equity in the pot (assuming I am not up against a set which full house redraw potential). Now obviously, I have no fold equity if Richie has AA or QQ and most likely if he has AQ. He is fairly straightforward so I did not think he would raise SB after 5 limpers with 88, and Q8 was definetely out of the question. I would have said A8 was out of the question as well but he claimed to have had it after the hand. Anyway, I was thinking about how to play the flop and as I am thinking Richie tells me, "you can make alot of money if you hit your heart". Now I thought that was a weird thing to say, in that, he is trying to convey strength to me but I read it as weakness and with Nick only calling behind I didn't give him credit more anything more than AK at best. So I figured my fold equity to be up in the 40% area as Richie would be the type that could and would fold AK if he thought he was behind. So I pushed all in for about a $700 raise on his $200 and Richie thought for a long time. I was trying to represent 88 as that would be the only legitimate hand I could represent, but it was also the most logical for it to be 88 or a big draw. After a long think, Richie folded and so did Nick. Richie claimed to have A8 while Nick claimed to have AK. Afterwards, Richie said he would have called if we were heads up but he said that since he was squeezed between me and Nick and very well Nick had an A so if I indeed had 88 he was drawing to 1 out. During the hand, I also pushed because I thought there was a chance that Nick had something like QhJh or a similar heart draw that might be stealing some of my outs so the chance of me making my hands would be slightly decreased. Therefore, a fold by both parties would have been a more desired result. This is a clearcut example of a Squeeze play although I was surprised to learn that A8 folded, if he indeed at that.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR......Found him

2007-12-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is the punk who pushed allin over the top of my 3/4 pot sized bet with Ad10d when i had Ks3d on a KcKJc board at the $3000 NLHE event at the 2007 World Series.

http://www.cardplayer.com/online-poker/players/855?showbio=1

Needless to say, the turn was a Qh and the river a 5d.

Back............or NOT?

2007-11-27T22:11:00.000-08:00

So it seems I have not posted for a few months. This is mainly because I have always thought of this blog as a way to voice concerns, thoughts, and main points of interest i come across in my poker and chess life. As of the last few months, however, I have found few interesting things to comment on. There have been tournaments to annotate and analyze (and i still have them and should share them when i finally quit becoming lazy) but I have not had to many mind racking hands in cash play. This forum has never been one to post and bitch aboubt bad beats with no moral to be learned or just a log tally of my wins and losses for everyone to see. It has been more of an intellectual endeavor for me to voice my thought processes and opinions. Lately, those have been on the decline as I feel I might just not be playing very good people or situations have not dictated themselves to be much more than basic.

That being said I finally reached my Xbox 360 goal of 40K FPPs on pokerstars. Ironically enough, the day after i hit it, the Xbox 360 was taken off the list of possible prizes to claim!!! I did not order it exactly the time i hit 40K because it was 3am or so and i was tired and just turned off the comp and went to bed. At no point in time did i suspect that I was missing my last opportunity. I just received this email from the FPP VIP store guy...

Hello Daniel,

The Xbox has been removed from the VIP FPP store as there are worldwide
supply issue.  We do not have an estimate as to when they will be
available again.  I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Regards,

XXXXXX
PokerStars VIP Team

So as you can see I am a little annoyed. Hopefully they will be back on the list soon or I will have to keep saving up for 140K or something like that for a big screen TV.

Hopefully more optimistic and thought provoking posts to come soon.

Danyul

Online Poker and the GOLDSTAR approach to wellroundedness

2007-08-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted for a while. True, but then again I haven't played too much live poker in a while either. One could say they go hand in hand. Since my last diatribe I have attempted to regulate myself emotionally and rectify some of the glaring leaks in my "non-poker game" game. I apologized to the guy who I threw cards at and he was oblivious to what I was referring to. I contemplated going and finding the verbal jouster with which I fought with but having been informed by an acquaintence that he is a maniac that threatened to kill said informant, I opted away from socializing with him altogether.

As far as live poker goes, I played once this week at the Hustler and posted a nice $1200 profit (its been way too long) and I met my sister, robert and his family in vegas last weekend and played a little NLHE and O8 but still came out down about $200 due to a bad play at Green Valley Ranch. The majority of my recent poker activities has been online. For the past month and a half I have been playing pretty regularly on PokerStars. I don't play NLHE at all online for various reasons but I do play almost every other game. Online play is being used to practice and refine all my skills in Omaha 8 or better, 7 card Stud, 7 card stud 8 or better, Razz, H.O.R.S.E, Pot Limit Omaha 8 or bettor, Pot Limit Omaha High, and to a degree Limit Hold'em. I do play NLHE in tournaments online and I can say without a doubt that although the majority of these tournaments are crapshoots they have some massive overlays and are a great opportunity to make some money if you fade some idiots taking every longshot at you.

I must admit though that I am becoming addicted to the FPP system. Its pretty ridiculous to be playing 50% for the money and 50% to accumulate Frequent Player Points. But the allure of prizes is really much more tempting then their actual value. For instance, one of my goals is to hit 40,000 FPPs to get an Xbox 360 Elite console. Now after 1 1/2 months of playing online I have reached about 9000 FPPs so at the rate im going (now that I have reached GOLDSTAR, more on that later) I should be able to reach in 40K in 2-3 months. The thing itself is only worth around $400. Now I am sure you can appreciate the colossal inefficiency of this pursuit but somehow the idea of directly getting a prize for "free" rather than taking $400 of my own money and going out to buy it is too tempting. Yes, you could argue that it is merely a bonus to the money I am making online. Unfortunately, I am still playing fairly low stakes to what I am compared to and since most of these games are not my forte (although I am rapidly improving) I am still only slightly better than breakeven online. I started with $500 on Pokerstars, sold off about $120 and am currently sitting at about $540 for a profit of about $160 over the past month and half. Depressing, isn't it?

On the bright side though, I am reached Gold Star Status. Which just means that I have played 4000+ raked hands in a month. Its not that big of a deal except for the fact that you get an accelerated rate of return on your FPPs. I started out as a Bronze Star which gives 1:1 on FPPs for VPPs or raked hands, then last month I progressed to Silver Star which gave 1.5:1 on FPPs, and now as of a few days ago I managed to hit Gold Star which now gives 2:1 on FPPs. So on my meaningless and time wasting FPPS quest I am moving right along. Some other FPP goals outside of the Xbox is a 270K 60in plasma High Def TV or a 3 million FPP Porshe. Needless to say these latter two goals will take much much longer. The next FPP step (and highest) is Platinum Star which pays 2.5:1 on FPPs but also required 10,000 VPPs in one month which is asking quite a lot. If you can hit 100,000 VPPs in one year you become a Supernova which pays 3:1 on FPPs and if you are insane enough and socially inept enough to somehow obtain 1,000,000 VPPs in one year then you can become a Supernova Elite which pays 3.5:1 on FPPs along with some other perks. I don't intend or expect to ever be a Supernova Elite as that would require putting in about 40-50 hours a week for a whole year multitabling about 4+ tables that get raked almost every hand. Needless to say, this honor is bestowed on only the most dedicated of online poker professionals. It might be nice to maybe become Supernova next year ( no chance this year as I just started) and maybe to hit Platinum Star a few times. All pessimism aside, though, I have found numerous opportunites to make money in the ring games online as low as 1/2 limit games. If you multitable 3-4 tables and know your games well then you can make anywhere from $10-$20 per table per hour which equates to $30-$80 an hour on a good day. 40 hrs a week for a year at that rate will net you anywhere from $60K to $150K, plus of course the FPPs :).

Anyway, enough BSing about online poker. I am probably going to play at the Hustler in an hour or two and grind out some bankroll building cash. My depleted bankroll has caused me to move down for a little while to smaller limits. I played the $100-$300 buyin 2/5 blinds at Hustler a few days ago and posted a nice $1200 profit as I said earlier. Besides being a nice establishment with a horrible clientele, the Hustler has a lower rake then Commerce, better food (although its not comped) and a player's card. Plus, the players at Hustler are all passive and let you know when they have a big hand so although the pots are generally smaller then other places unless you are building it, you have much more control and therefore less risk. The key at this type of establishment is realizing when your opponent is strong enough to call a bet and when they made some bs catch like 2 pair on the river and not betting it. It boils down to essentially refinded value betting combined with patience. There is no running over these tables because you have very little fold equity unless you have shown monsters. It takes alot of the weapons away from a competant poker player but greatly enhances the remaining ones, namely starting hand selection and value betting.

Until Next Time

P.s. Oh and if you want to play with me on POKERSTARS my screenname is TheNewMath.

Loss of Composure

2007-08-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know if its the weather, girls, the "burden of knowledge" in poker, an insatiable urge to gamble (mine or others), an emotional imbalance, my overall tepid results for this year, or whatever else has been combined to create my psyche but its cracking. I have lost alot of my composure over the last two weeks and I can't seem to remedy it. It sounds like one of those incidences where someone recalls being outside of their body and watching themselves perform some act that they either wouldn't or couldn't perform normally. On one particularly aggregious beat last week, I managed to stand up and yell my outs for the river as they bricked out after getting it all in on the turn when my opponent hit his miracle card. Another thoughtless occasion saw a ridiculous player call multiple raises and an allin with nothing only to catch runner runner in the name of gambling. In this incident, I managed to stand up, throw my cards across the table at said player, and walk out all in one fell motion as I was all in. Then just tonight I proceeded to get in a verbal sparring match with a rather large fellow who got real lucky when he spiked a J when we got it all in preflop after a bet, raise, reraise, reraise, and all in with AA vs JJ. I pulled out the timeless (and quite tactless) "Let's go play heads up for $5000 and see how many sets you hit" after he made sure the entire casino knew that he outplayed me by getting all his money in a 4.5:1 dog.

Yes, all of these are bad beats inflicting on me. But that point is of zero consequence because I have taken all of these and worse many times over in the past 2 years. They used to never affect me. I was able to lose thousands of dollars when people nailed their gutshots against my top set and keep right on playing without a hitch in my step. I must say I am more ashamed of myself now then I have been in many years. I have violated every rule and thing I try to impart on others who look to me for advice. I am denigrating the integrity of what is supposed to be a fun recreational pursuit. Worst of all, I know there is no basis for any of this and for one of the first times in a long, long while my emotions are starting to take control of my logical faculties. I have become more and more results oriented which is a HUGE leak in poker player's game. I am watching myself associate a player's game play with their immuatable characteristics; i.e. when they make a bad play, somehow I find myself thinking that this person is in fact stupid and not just a bad player. This is not only a horrible way to jade and bias your poker playing but its a psychologically damaged way to view the world and really is a trademark of a lack of introspection. Which again worries me greatly as a misanthrope and recluse as that should be and always was one of my better qualities.

Most players who go through something like this associate it with playing too much and just take a nice healthy break. That makes perfect sense except for the fact that I havent played more than 40 hrs a week in at least a month since the WSOP much less any 12 hour or 24 hr sessions. In fact, about 50% of my "sessions" last less than 2 hrs and I am out the door in a huff and a hurry. So I really can't contribute it to "overworking". Maybe I am out of physical shape so therefore my focus and endurance with regards to patience have waned considerably? Again, I really can't say.

There are people who can play cards well and there are professionals. Those who play cards well know when to bet, raise, and fold but they don't know how to create an atmosphere or game in which to best maximize their winning potential. Professionals are such people and they are the ones who last in this most fickle of businesses. Players such as Doyle, Chip Reese, Barry Greenstein, and Phil Ivey didn't get to where they are by letting their emotions ruin the atmospheric elements of a game and the human interaction between players strong and weak alike. My behavior has been at best unprofessional and at worst downright insensitive and childish. I will do everything in my power to try and remedy this. In fact, I am contemplating doing something that I would NEVER have done in the past. I may go to the casino tomorrow and search out the guy I got into a feud with and apologize to him. This is unheard of for me as my "opponent" is a loud egotistical guy who reveled my defeat. I know this not only from his reactions but because I recognized so much of his lack of etiquette in my own behavior. This should be the first step in the right direction.

Back in Los Angeles

2007-07-13T12:07:00.001-07:00

Ok. So first off, my apologies to my loyal readership for not updating more than once in the last month especially seeing as how I was in vegas for the WSOP. It was a little hard for me for a few reasons. First of all, when I am in LA I have a fairly structured way I approach playing poker. I am close to casinos, I regulate my hours, I sleep in my own bed, and I try recount as much of the interesting encounters in this venue or via Poker Proteges forum. But in vegas that whole routine was thrown out because of the hubbub of the WSOP, my odd schedule of sleep, and just the out-of-townedness of the last month. That being said, vegas poker just has a different feel to it than LA poker. I guess I can't put my finger on it but Vegas poker just seems to be much more technical. I don't know if the players are better in vegas but I rarely get the same sort of situational factors to take into account that I do in LA. Factors such as realizing that player A is mad at Player B for a beat B put on A and therefore is very likely overplaying his hand currently and B knows this and is making some loose calls because of it, all the while I am sandwiched in between with the 4th nuts which is probably good, etc... In vegas, however, I find that people play much more straightforward but somehow command more respect. I know that seems a bit vague so I will try to illustrate with an example. In LA, in a 5 10 unrestricted buyin game of NLHE if someone raises to $50 in middle position and one person calls then "pot odds" compels anyone with a playable hand and deep stacks to come into the pot resulting in a trainwreck of 4-5 and sometimes 6 way action. In vegas, however, many pots are heads up or 3 way when raised. Like I said, I don't know if this signifies that vegas players are "better" per say, maybe just tighter. Pot size and big mutliway pot wins are ways to make huge profits so to fold good drawing hands here seems to be a wrong play that I see being made in vegas alot. Anyway, enough abstract characterizations.
My WSOP trip in general was a disappointment as I started off the trip amazingly up about $15K in cash games and satellites. Then I played a few $300+ buyin events at the Venetian's Deep Stack Extravaganza, one Binions $150 buyin event, and the $3K NLHE event at the World Series. I went deep in the limit event at the Deep Stack and was an early chip leader at the $3k even but managed to bust in both of those before cashing. As I have always said, tournaments are really not a strong suit of mine and not surprisingly, I still have not even cashed in non-homegame/non-satellite tournament yet even though I have probably played about 10-15 of them. Anyway, after I played some tournaments I went back to my bread and butter in the cash games and just had a horrific go at it dropping about $10K in a week. The hands themselves were mostly uninteresting except for a few hands I posted on Poker Proteges where I had big combo drawing hands but the stacks were deep and the pot was smallish so I think it justified a call down instead of push down.
Now that I am back in LA I have relegated myself to the always fun (not) bankroll rebuilding stage to make up for the $$ lost at the WSOP. So far, it has been fortuitous as I posted a $1500 profit 2 days ago at HP and then next day I dug myself out of a $1000 hole to go on a massive rush in 30 minutes to leave up $2000 again at Hollywood Park. So in the two sessions back in LA I am up $3500 and well on the way to rebuilding a healthy bankroll. I am planning on going over to Hawaiian Gardens in a few minutes because my nephew Robert (of Poker Protege fame as well) leaves near there and I will hang out with him either during or after playing.

My thoughts on the WSOP overall this year:

As always, the Rio and Vegas in general during the WSOP was a madhouse. Unlike last year, no one I knew made any sort of serious run at a tournament so I didn't have to sweat anyone. That being said Chess Grandmaster Walter Browne is apparently a poker player making two WSOP final tables coming in 7th (i think) and 2nd to cash for more than $200K. That is probably about what he has made in chess earnings over the last 40 years of his life. :0
Every poker superstar and subsuperstar was on hand and taking part in the madness at the Rio. Even if you don't have the bankroll to play either cash or tournaments I highly suggest everyone gets out to the WSOP for at least a weekend to be a part of the crazyness. That being said, I think Harrah's is still quite successful in its ongoing attempt to ass rape any semblage of respectableness left in the World Series. This year in the first event they introduced a new deck of "Hole Peek Cards" that were designed to be good for hole cams but were so hard to read that all the players made a huge protest immediately. Within two days, 30,000+ of decks of cards had to be replaced. We all know the problems with UIEGA killing off alot of online poker business. It was generally assumed that this loss of online business would also affect the online entrants to WSOP events, most notably the main event. Well, Harrah's decided to one up the US government by disallowing any third party registration. This means that online sites can no longer register satellite winners directly into tournaments and instead makes it so now the sites themselves have to just give the equivalent money directly to the accounts of winners. Its not a problem for the sites or the players but what it does is it gives the option for satellite winner to just take the money and run instead of taking the money and traveling to vegas and playing in the tournament. Its not so much a philosophically bad thing for Harrah's but it seems to be a poor business decision as you can assume at least 50% of those that win $10K+ Main Event packages online will just take the winnings instead of putting it back into the main even now that Harrah's has made that option available. I credit this to be one of the main reasons why the Main Event this year only had 6600+ participants instead of besting the 8700+ from last year or getting anywhere near the projected 10,000+. While the starting chips have been doubled for every tournament, the structures of the lower buyin events are still fairly stilted as it requires a massive amount of luck to get through these 3000+ fields in the $1500 event with the amount of chips in play. I wouldn't even venture to play in these as it is an incredible crapshoot as all pros have deemed them. Most notably, Jamie Gold, current world champion (for another 5 days) who in all respects is as crapshooty as anybody. That being said, the real gem of the WSOP this year was again the $50K HORSE event. A plethora of giants competed and although the final table this year wasn't as tremendous as last year's, it was a HORSE final table and not played as a NLHE final table. Congrats to Freddy Deeb on winning. I always knew he was a pretty good player but I now respect him incredibly more. This was no soft spot tournament, 5 days, 100K starting stacks and hour rounds against the best players in the world in a mixture of 5 games is going to flesh out a great player. I cannot wait do see this on ESPN.

I may have some more rants in the near future but I think it's time to go play a little.

Vegas

2007-06-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

So I have been in Vegas for about half a week so far. Once again, its a mad house because of the WSOP. I have yet to play any of the events because 1. I want to get warmed up tournament wise before I play some so I plan to play either satellites or one of the Deep Stack Extravaganza events. 2. I have been playing cash so far and it has been semi successful. I say semi because while the games have been really soft and great I did have a hugely losing session where I just got buried. I have played 4-5 sessions where I have won everytime except for one. I even had a very nice +$5K session at Caesar's Palace when there were some big stacked drunk guys who wanted to bluff every hand. It also helped that one of the drunk guys picked up KK vs my AA and wanted to play a $6K+ pot all in preflop. But my buried alive session was gross because I was up and being the big, big stack at the table I managed to double almost everyone at the table up once. I just kept getting coolered. I flopped two pair about 10 times that night and managed to lose about 8 of them. I also misplayed a few hands which is natural for a losing session. I even flopped the second nut straight vs an over pair in a 3 way reraised pot and tried to get trappy. Well the third person in the hand had second pair on the board (7) with a K kicker in a reraised pot preflop and managed to catch runner runner boat to win the $3K pot. So in hindsight, if i played simplistically and "protected" my 90% equity I would have won the $1K pot . Instead, I took a 10% "gamble" to win a much bigger pot. Anyway, I don't have much to talk about for that session as I have ruminated enough on it already. It was a close call between two of the biggest poker decisions. Stay in a game where the players are bad and the opportunities are available to win or leave a game where you have taken a few hits to your emotional stability? In this case, combined with the run of cards I managed to choose the latter incorrect one.
I am staying with Arnulfo and Mae instead of renting a house on my own. In the end I like this option alot better. I did want to have my own pool to get some physical exercise on a daily basis but I get to hang out and do non-poker stuff with them and Arnulfo is always up for an intellectual discussion; poker related or not. This is a welcome refreshment from the usual poker droves that I would be stuck with and helps to keep my head in the "real world".
The games here are quite easy as very few people put pressure back on you. It essentially comes down to game selection as always because you can look and find really sweet, soft tourist games no matter what your stakes. Or you can find local, grinder games where no one but the house wins because everyone is a rock. Worst case scenario there, or 2nd worst is you can find a strong game with Loose Aggressive Players (LAG) who give action but who play tricky enough and aggressive enough to bust you on a mistep.
I have been talking with my cousin Jason and he is planning on coming out for my birthday (June 29th) with my aunt. So I look forward to that as he is a very adept poker player and fun to be with.
More updates coming later.

A Pretty Decent Chess Showing

2007-05-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to a casino in a few days. I spent the last three days playing chess at the Lina Grumette Memorial Day Classic held over at the LAX hilton. My play was quite good in my opinion. In the open section, my 2024 put me squarely in the bottom half of the bracket to start the tournament so (thankfully for me) I was paired up for the majority of my games. Unlike poker, chess is a game where I want to challenge myself against better players. I pray to have every poker game I sit in be a table of me combined with the worst players in the world. In chess, however, I feel nothing but contempt and feel like I am wasting my time when I get paired with a bad player. There is little to gain and lots to lose and for the most part, unless they allow some sort of bizarre brillancy, its not fun. My first game I was paired with Jeremy Stein (2144). As I was perusing the advanced entries list, I concluded that Stein was a very likely candidate for me to play in the first round and I was hoping that I would play him. I have played him once about 2-3 years ago when he was a budding 16-1700. I beat him but I have seen him progress for a while and I just feel comfortable against him. He doesn't have an imposing style of play. If I could make a poker analogy, he would the type of player who doesn't bluff too much and plays fairly good starting hands. Technically, he can play his cards well but his deceptive factor isn't high. The analogy is a bit loose but it works because I am never really afraid of him sacrificing a piece or going into unclear melees. In fact, he played the opening imprecisely and I was able to make an improvement on a game I played against an FM 3 years ago to get an equal position as black. The upside, however, was that I was comfortable and knew exactly what I was going for. He on the other hand, fumbled around a bit looking for a plan. I eventually "sacked" a pawn that netted me two pawns back 5 mov.es later with a much better position. He had some slight drawing chances but I played carefully and managed to trade down to a winning R + 2 pawns vs R + 1 pawn winning endgame and won it. The next game I was paired as white on Board 2 vs Michael Casella (2344). Casella is a very adept player. I am 0-1 against him but the last game we played was also 3 years ago. He allowed me to get into a favorable side line of the Samisch King's Indian and then managed to misplay an early ...b5. My position was great and I achieved a decent Kingside attack as his Q was bottled up on a5 for a few moves. When my kingside pressure started to mount, however, I mistakenly decided to reroute my g3 N to d4 via e2 instead of just pushing an immediate f5. The game got real complicated and coupled with time pressure I started to lose the thread and thus the advantage. My iniative dried up and I sacked a pawn and then eventually a piece trying to mate but his defense was more than enough to defend everything. :(
The next day I came back to see I was paired as white again against Gregg Small (2245). Overall, this is great pairing. I have gotten black against the player(s) I have been most comfortable playing against and white against the players that are most likely to give me trouble and beat me. Once again, I am 0-1 against Small but I played him about 1.5 years ago. I played a simple opening and Small decided top play 1. d4 Nf6 c4 Nc6. Well, he preceded to play rather poorly in the opening and give me a nice positional advantage through the game. I became a bit overly concerned about the minor piece endgame that was possible if we iniated trades and managed to allow him to develop an attack. This attack turned out to be pretty good but he misplayed it. So we traded mistakes. He finally gave me a chance to liquidate some of the attacking pieces. I won a pawn at the cost of breaking my kingside pawn cover. With both Queens, all four Rooks and one minor piece each still on the board, my extra (doubled) pawn was not all it was cracked up to be. I did have one nice passed d pawn, though. We both had less than 5 minutes to make about 6 moves and I managed to reach the time control in what can be considered a better position. My king was loose and I had an extra passed pawn on the 5th rank. But he had a slightly safer king (I did have a few threats) and a bit more activity. I blundered on move 41 by playing my pawn on d5 to d6 which then opened up the a8-h1 light squared diagonal. Four moves later he was able to put his Q on a8+ which mated me very soon. It was a complete oversight as I did not even consider that option thinking that with my d pawn running I would be able to Queen quickly or liquidate the remaining annoying pieces. Two games against masters that I kind of threw away when I had the better of it.
My fourth game was the only game I was paired down in the tournament. I played a B player Yu-Kai Chou (1749) as black. He played very quickly in the opening and made some inaccuracies allowing me again to easily equalize and get a very solid position. The position was quite locked up with all 16 pawns still on the board. I had a very nice N posted on a the d4 square blockading his backward d3 pawn and a strong light squared bishop with almost all of my pawns on dark squares. Conversely, he had his g2 Bishop (light squared) with pawns on e4, d3, c4, b3, and a2. So as far as the minor piece struggle was going I was killilng him. But as I said, no pawns had been exchanged and all heavy pieces were still on the board so it wasn't going to be easy to enforce my minor piece advantage. It became a little dicey for a while as I made a misguided attempt to open up the kingside at the wrong point in time giving him a small amount of play. I managed to reroute my Rooks to the g and h file in time for the opening of those files. Once there, they managed to deftly win a piece and therefore the game. He made the simple oversight of losing a pawn but also opened all the files around his king and allowing total penetration. I won the N and then quickly liquidated everything to a won N and pawn up endgame.
My 5th game I was again paired up as black against Joachim Van Leeuwen (2078). He allowed me to take a free c4 pawn but which gave him a bit center with e4 and d4. I think I was able to neutralize his center play though by trading off my N for his dark squared bishop and gaining the bishop pair. I was traded off a N he had posted on e5 so the pawn structure was interesting. I had pawns on c4, c6, b7,a7 on the queenside for a 4-2 majority vs his b2, a2. But he had a strong advanced kingside majority with pawns on e4, e5, f4, g3,h2 and a 5-4 majority against my h7, g6, f7,e7. We eventually traded some pieces off and I let him take my c4 pawn back in order to activate my rooks on this 2nd rank. It again got a little dicey when he was able to get two connected passers on the 6th rank but I was able to get my rooks behind them and force him to make a committal f7 pawn push passed pawn on e6 and f6) and then blockade everything with Ke7! After that it was a matter of technique as my pieces encircled the immobilized pawns and ate them. That put me at 3 wins and 2 losses on the tournament.
My last round game I was paired as white against Tatev Abrahamyan (2289). I just want to mention again how lucky I was in the pairings. Every "easy" opponent I had I was paired with as black and every master opponent I had I was paired with white. Anyway, back to Tatev. She played the Benko against me, I hate the Benko Gambit! I usually play an e3 sideline that Jack showed me but I am still working that out as its unusual. So I decided not to experiment with her and I played the solid b6 Benko declination. I obtained what I thought was a pretty good game that included a lot of space and decent piece placement. Afterwards, we concluded that even though she had problems developing and it took her 15 moves to get everything out, I really couldn't exploit that too much. I sure tried though. I pushed the thematic e5 break around move 20 or so and put some pressure on her that took her about 30 minutes to figure out how to get out of. She eventually did and I was busted as once the tension in the center was relieved so was any and all of my advantage. Miraculously, without all of those pawns in the way HER pieces were better placed and soon jumped into action. I ended up in a middle game where I got her Rook and a pawn for my crucial centralized Bishop and Knight. Her raking two bishops cut up my king and gave her a huge space advantage that I could do nothing to stop.
So three wins and three losses netted me a tie for 17th place in the open section and I actually gained 14 points to move up to 2037. Overall, I was happy with all of my openings as in all 6 of my games I was either clearly ahead or just comfortable. There were no spots were I was fighting an uphill battle before move 20. Now if I can only enforce my advantages when I have them then I could be a force. My next tournament I plan to play in two weekends at the National Open in Las Vegas while I am there for the World Series of Poker.

My Best Session Ever and Back in Black

2007-05-19T05:08:00.000-07:00

First the good news:

I sat in the softest game ever.
I had the best session ever, playing wise and takehome wise.

I am now in the black (+) for the year.

Now the bad news:

I am still making some mistakes I can avoid.
I was way way up instead of just way up and managed to misread my hand lose $2000 in a $4000+ pot.

I am very proud of how I played in the $500 unrestricted buyin at Hollywood Park from Thursday evening until Friday morning. I saw Keith seating in it but he got up right as I got there. As I surveyed the game, I saw only two players I had ever played with before. Skinny Jeff who I have known from Commerce for almost a year and half now and Grumpy Richard who is always grumpy. Jeff is a good player but outside of that I saw no real threats on the table and relatively little money for this game. So i decided to sit because I figured it would be an easy table to run over. Well. Yes and no. Very early on I noticed that I had the worst position on the table. I was in seat 1 and in seat 2 was a guy named Dean. Now Dean was absolutely horrific. In almost every sense of the word. He saw almost every flop no matter the raise and did some unbelievable things. For instance, after I sat down but before I posted a blind I saw this occur. Someone in early position raised to $105 (semi-standard in this game), Grumpy Richard (herein referred to as GR) called, Dean called on the button, and the SB went all in for $450 or so. The early position raiser wasn't happy but also went all in over the top for $1060 total. GR folded and Dean on the button decided to call the all in. The early position raiser really really wanted to run in 3 times. The all in small blind decided to go once and after Dean was explained what running it 3 times meant, he finally decided to do it. So the main pot was contested on the first full board while the turn and river would be dealt three times for the side pot. Well, the cards were turned over. Early position raiser had QQ, SB making a move had 10d 2d, Dean had 4 6 off. Despite some scares, QQ managed to win all three and scoop.
Now, back to the fact that I had horrible position. I realized early that Dean was the table target and was on my immediate left so while the other players were not super smart they were able to recognize the fact that isolating Dean was a great move. So I was going to get nailed everytime I came into a pot without a super hand as this was a semi-aggressive table. Add in the fact that while i bought in for $1000, there were about 4-5 people at the table who had me covered. So i played it cool for a few rounds and called a raise with AK off in the BB. Board came A Q 4 rainbow and the raiser started pounding and I just called until he bet $400 on the turn when i only had $640 left so I got it all in vs his AJ and he doubled me up to about $2000 or so. From there on out, I again played it cool until I could change seats. I moved to seat 4 which was the best seat in the house. Dean was in seat 2, Skinny Jeff (herein referred to as SJ) was in seat 3 and was easily the biggest stack and best player at the table (outside of me of course) but he was also tight. So this now meant that I could be the first to isolate Dean as long as SJ wasn't holding a pretty good hand. He knew this and probably saw that he would have to play solid as he was sandwiched between me and Dean. I isolated Dean a couple of times when I got KK preflop and won some nice pots. Then this hand came up. Probably one of the hardest hands I have ever played.
The button is on Seat 8. GR is in the SB, BB is in seat 1 and Dean is UTG. Before I get into it, I should mention Dean has been playing a ton of pots but he has also been getting pretty lucky and had a penchant for getting people to bluff into him as a calling station. So he was deep stacked here. Ok back to it. Dean raises UTG to $60. SJ calls the $60. I pick up KK and raise to $260. Everyone folds to Dean who calls and suprisingly SJ calls as well. So now with $800 in the pot the flop comes down A Q 2 rainbow. A pretty shitty flop for me. Dean checks, SJ checks, and I quickly check the multiway pot. The turn brings the 2h putting two hearts up there. Dean checks and SJ bets out $500. Now, most people just muck here but I am not most people :). I start to think about it. Jeff and I know each other well and our games. I know he is isolating Dean with AA, KK, QQ preflop. So right off the bat I know he doesn't have those hands. I also know that he respects me and wouldn't come after me with a hand that wasn't nut possible for a reraise preflop. He is folding AQ and down there to me without a question. There is a 50-50 chance he folds AK to me there as well. So once he calls me preflop I am almost certain he has a pocket pair and he trying to make a set. I have already ruled out AA-QQ and while he is trying to make a set he wouldn't call me with 22 in that position either. The presence of two deuces on board helps to confirm that idea. So what is he betting with. I have him on a very narrow range of hands here. I can say with certainty that he has a pocket pair 77-JJ 90% of the time here. 10% of the time he would have AKsuited. I am pretty sure he would fold AKoff for the $260 reraise. Like I said, he is tight but good and wouldn't come after me when I am showing so much strength without a nut hand (PP trying to make a set) or a multiway nut hand like AKsuited. So common thinking would say here is that 10% of the time where he has AKsuited. But wait. I quickly checked the flop. He knows I probably would not do that in a three pot involving Dean the calling station. If I had a set of AA or QQ which would be consistent with my preflop reraise then I would want to slowly build a pot with the calling station. So I would probably bet something callable on the flop like $300 into the $800 pot. So he can probably rule out those two hands for me. Its much more likely he thinks I have KK or JJ. And with the nasty nasty Ace on board, if he was right I would have to muck my KK here. I called the $500 fully expecting him to have a pocket pair and be trying to make a move and check it down on the river. Well, another wrinkle came into play. Dean called as well. The $2300 river card brought the 9h for a board of A Qh 2 2h 9h. Dean checked and SJ now bet out $1000 into the $2300 pot. This was a bit of a surprise and I took everything in and started considering. I was almost positive that SJ was making a move on me because he knew I had KK and thought I had to lay down here. Everything in my gut told me that was the case. He had enough money behind (roughly $3000) that he could afford to do this and he had the cogniscience to pull this off as well. I kept running through the action in my head and remembering his face and mannerisms on each street to see how his reactions could have given me more clues. All the while, I am keeping him in my periphery view and observing him. Someone calls the clock on me and i tell them I have am fine with that. For some reason the floorman is late in coming so I have a long time before the clock gets there and i have my minute. During this time, Dean gets up and essentially tells me through body language that he is done with the hand. Whew! So I dont have to worry about the calling station being in there with a backdoor flush draw or a ragged Ace. I just have to figure out whether or not SJ has AK or a pocket pair. There is some table conversation about the clock being called and a few jokes being made. I observe SJ as he interacts with the others in conversation and I pick up a few small tells that I remembered from Caro's Book of Tells and I am now sure without a doubt that he moving on me. The clock finally gets there and it starts to count down. At 30 seconds I call the $1000. Dean promptly folds and SJ says "Kings are good". I turn them over and he mucks. Someone asks to see his hand and the dealer turns over his JJ and then pushes the $4300 pot to me.
Now the whole table is pretty much kissing my ass and congratulating me on a spectacular call. I can see the newfound respect in their voices. This bit of information helps in the next hand as well. I had been playing pretty solid premium hands so far mostly based on the randomization of the cards. I was getting lots of grade A hands or nothing. Lots of KK, QQ, and AK and very few 66 or J10s. So the majority of the time I was the original raiser or reraiser. This hand I got AsKh in the BB after 6 limpers. I raised $200 more to $210. Bob in 2nd position and the first limper called as well as Dean on the button. Before the cards came out I asked Bob how much he was playing because I couldn't tell how much the bills he had behind were worth. He refused to tell me! He did it all in a joking manner but he didn't tell me. The $670 3 way flop came down Ks 10c 4s. I bet out $600 with top pair, top kicker. He then informed me that he was playing $2800+, I said "Thank you, unless that's how much you are betting". He laughed and about a minute later after thinking he said "Yeah" and put it all in for a raise of $2200+. Dean folded and here I was again having to call $2200 to win a pot of $4000+. I didn't have a huge read on Bob but I had seen some hands. The only hand he had moved all in previously was when he had a set (He had set UNDER set and was able to get the top set to run it three times with him and he hit his one outer and took 1/3 of the pot!). I knew he didn't have a set of Kings, or AA and I felt he didn't have a set of 44s as I didn't think he would call $200 more as the first caller preflop. So my range of hands I had him on was a set of 10s, AK also (but probably unlikely that he would be all in with just top pair), or a big huge draw. This is somewhat like the hard call I had a few days prior with KJ as top two pair. I am way behind to a set of 10s, chopping with AK however unlikely that is to happen, and only slightly ahead of a big huge draw. My pot odds are no where near as good as what I had in the KJ situation. I looked at him and he was staring a hold into my neck. I could just feel his mind telling me to fold. He really didn't want a call. I finally showed him my AsKh and then folded about a minute later. I talked him up a bit too. I only showed my hand and talked him up a bit because I wanted him to convey to me all the info I could. He did and showed the QsJs afterward. I can tell that he was scared of me didn't want to play the hand after ward. Not a bad move at all. With that hand he is 49.60%, well worth it combined with his fold equity and the amount of money in the pot.
There was one more hand that I wanted to post about. I raised to $60 in late position with AsJc and got 5 callers. The $360 6 way pot came down Jd 9d 6h. Everyone checked to me and I bet out $300. Bob in the blinds called my $300, Wayne who was UTG called my $300, and Dean called my $300. So all of sudden the pot was $1500+. The turn came down Kh for a board of Kh Jd 9d 6h. Bob checked and Wayne thinks and finally moves all in for $3000! Dean folds and it is back to me. Now, I am folding. My mind is made up. But I don't just fold. I need to understand this sitaution. Wayne plays often at HP so I need to understand what the hell he is doing. Why would he limp/call preflop UTG, check/call a pot sized bet in a multiway pot on a draw heavy board, and then lead bet all in on the turn for 2X the pot! My final analysis was that this could only be a sophisticated play by 6h7h. An open ended straight draw that picked up a flush draw semi bluffing on a scare card. I iniated a lot of table talk after that hand ended (somewhat heated) and Wayne said he had the nuts with Q 10 and was scared of the two flush draw out there. I suppose I believe him but I think if he was drawing to the nut straight and got there he would want to get some value out of it. Granted he needs to protect his hand so he is not going to bet some measly $400 into the $1500 pot. But a bet of $1500-$1600 seems like the way to make some money. If I had a set of KK or JJ then I have to call, if Dean had a straight draw or flush draw he would probably call. He is still making it mathematically incorrect for anyone with out Q 10 to call all the while making profit if they do. It was weird because if the pot was $800 and the same situation occurred would he have bet $1600?? I find it interesting that the pot size becomes a variable to change the action taken. In cash game play, I don't think that usually is supposed to be a variable. One of the explanations given by Wayne and also by SJ was that if he bet out $1500 and got called then what does he do on the river if a scare card (diamond or heart) comes out. Would he fold the almost $6000 pot for only $1500 with the nut straight? No, you call there but I think that is besides the point. The point is not to be scared of calling if a -EV draw calls and gets there but rather to make sure that a -EV draw has a chance to make a -EV call no matter the pot size.
All of this occurred in about 4 hours. The game got short handed with me, Dean, GR, and few people who came in and out. I got super hyper aggressive short handed and was terrorizing the table for another 8 hours. I yoyoed up and down picking on Dean alot. I misread a hand and managed to pay off GR for $2000 when I thought I had top pair with a straight that got there on the turn when in fact I only top pair with a gutshot straight draw on the flop and turned an open ended straight draw. He flopped a set and we got it all in on the turn and I didn't get there. I bought in $1000, at one point got it all the way up to about $9200, and after 12 hours of changing gears from tight aggressive to loose aggressive and back again, I left with $7665 for a profit of $6665 and an hourly rate of $551+. My best session to date.
That proudly put me over the coveted even mark. As it stands, I am now $3K + in the black for 2007.

H.O.R.S.E.

2007-05-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

Some quick thoughts about the HORSE game monday night. First of all, YAY! we finally got it going. Thank to Rick for hosing, you did a great job and everything went off without a hitch (that I know of). I was very pleasantly surprised to see two (!) tables running at once even if one was a low stakes learning table. I don't really have any hand analysis because our game moved quickly and I was still trying to get accustomed to the games to be able to recall all the action and situational variables as well as the cards in some of the games. I do know, however, that 7 card stud High is by far my worst game. I did the best in Razz. I am not sure if I am necessarily good at that game, though. I was gifted with starting with a bunch of 2 3 4s and related holdings that made it alot easier. 7 card stud Hi Low I did decently well in and Omaha 8 I did decently well in. Split pot games I like because there always seems to be some dead 3 way action that gets split between two winners. I scooped a couple of pots but that's not because I had nut high and nut low. One omaha hand I had nut high with no low possible and one stud 8 hand I had nut high beating another high chaser with no low chaser. So, again, not too convincing. I did hemorrage a bit in Limit hold'em and definetly in Stud high. I found myself chasing a bit too much in both of these games based on pot odds with not enough cards odds to get there. I think my biggest problem in Stud will just have to be tightening up on 3rd street. Supposedly, hidden 66s and related hands are not too useful against a raise if your upcard is not threatening. Something like 66 4 with the 4 up is going to cost you in the long run as you have no scare cards. That I need to work on.
All in all, I liked the $3/$6 cash game format and so did everyone else at the "high stakes" table. We should probably continue in that vein. I had to buyin twice but I made a surge on my second buyin and ended up only down $16 on the night. Not too shabby considering. I look forward to the next one. Hopefully, we can make this a weekly occurence and we can get in 1-2 more HORSE nights before I head off to Vegas for the WSOP.

Another Brickhouse and a very tough call

2007-05-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

So like a few weeks ago I had another brickhouse session where I sat down and just got rolled over by the deck. I originally went to Hollywood Park but as I got there the $400 game broke. Shows what I know going to a casino at 1am. But, surprisingly, the $500 unrestricted was still going strong with 2 tables. The second table was short handed and pretty aggressive so I didn't want to sit down in that. I had heard that not long before I got there, there had been a $30K pot followed directly afterward by a $15K pot. I sure wished I would have been there for that. But I decided to go to Commerce instead. It was quite a good decision. I sat down at a very good table with some weak people i had played with before. On my second round at the table I limped with 4d6d in position and someone made it $20 and 6 people called including me. The flop came 5c 7d 9d giving me an open ended straight draw along with my flush draw. Someone led out for $45 followed by a call and I went all in for about $375. No one called and I took down the $200 pot. Then another round later I called an early position raise in the SB with AKoff. The 4 way $120 flop came down Ac 7c 7s. I led out for $80 and it folded around to the button who was an incredibly bad player who min raised to $160. Now I knew he wasn't on the draw most likely. So he either had a 7 or an A. I was in check call mode unless the bets got huge. So I called. The $440 turn card was the beautiful Ad. I checked, he bet a measely $50, I checkraised to $200 and he went all in. I called and figured it was a chop that he got lucky on but no he turned over K7 and doubled me up to about $11-1200. Then about 6 hands later after 3 limpers i raised to $60 with KK and it folded to the UTG limper who I have played with before who isnt too good. He made it $160. Now I had another $1100 behind at this point and he had about $8-900 behind so I didn't want to give him a chance to catch up if he was behind and I didn't want to get stacked if he had AA so I reraised him $200 more to $360 preparing to fold if he went all in. He was confused and quickly called without thinking. Whew! I knew he didn't have Aces. The door card was the As and my heart sank until the rest of the flop came out. As K h 9c. He checked, and I checked figuring he either had AK or QQ, JJ. In which, he had 2 outs and I wanted to make him feel comfortable and make him think maybe I had QQ. So i checked back. The turn brough an off suit 8. He bet $200 into the $750 pot. I raised him all in here as he only had about $5-600 more. He called and had AK and I scooped the $2000 + pot. I then won a $300 plus pot with the nut flush 5 hands later. So I was rolling heavy in just an hour and half period with these big pots combined with a few small pots steals along the way.
Then this big one comes up. One player limps in, the cutoff ( a fairly tight player) raises to $45. I have Ks Jc on the button, not a great hand but I was rushing and I had the button so I called. The BB called and so did the limper. So we took the 4 way $180 flop of Kh Jh 4d. BB checked, first limper checked, Original Raiser bet out $125. I then raised to $325 for value and the BB folded. All of a sudden the limper in the pot goes all in for $1630. I had seen him do something close to this about an hour before when he went all in for $500 on the nut flush draw in a big multiway pot but it was much less money comparitively. As I am thinking about this, the original raiser regretfully puts all his money in as well! He only had about $700 total (my $325 plus another $375). So here I am with top two pair and two all ins in front of me. I have to call $1305 into a pot of ~$2700-$2800. I am getting 2:1 with top two pair. I know based on the original raisers mannerisms that he is not happy. So he doesn't have KK or JJ. He either has AA or AK, with the outside chance of something like AhQh. I didn't think the big all in guy had AA, KK, or JJ as I think I would have heard something from him preflop based on how I had seen him play so far. So I had him on 3 hands. Either KJ, 44, or a big draw (AhQh, Qh10h, Ah 10h, or AhXh). I didn't really think he would have had J4 or K4 but I would have been delighted if that was included in his range. So out of my analysis, I was chopping with one, needing a 4 outer against the other and ahead but needing to dodge some outs against the draw. Mathematically its hard to say which is the best option. I gave a little more credence to the drawing option as I had seen him do something similar. So i put him about 45% on the draw, 35% on KJ, and 20% on 44. After the original raiser put his extra $600 into the pot I felt my 2:1 pot odds were enough to gamble with so I called after a long think. It turns out the $1600 all in guy did indeed have KJ and the original raiser had AA. The AAs didn't improve and we chopped up his money in the $4200+ pot. I am still not sure if that was a good call or not. The pots odds generated by the AAs dead"ish" money were too great and compensated for the possibility of me being behind.
After that hand, most of the action players left and while there was lots of money on the table, it was in the hands of tighter players. I am still in rebuilding mode so I went against my mantra of riding the rush and decided to call it an early evening and ended my 2 hour session up $2400+.

Its All About the Big Pots

2007-05-12T02:38:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, NLHE and especially my brand of NLHE is played for the big pots. I posted this hand on my email forum which was pretty much the only interesting hand of the session. I will reprint here.

So I was playing at the $500 unrestricted buyin at Hollywood Park and this nice hand comes up. The cutoff who is pretty steamy right now raises to $45 after 2 people limp in. The button folds and I am in the SB with QsJs. I think about reraising him but I notice that a good strong sophisticated player has limped in under the gun so I just call and prepare to fold if he reraises. The BB calls, UTG calls, and the other limper calls. So we see the 5 way flop with $220 in the middle. After calling the preflp bet I have $650 left, Steamy McSteam has about $350. The flop comes down Jh 10s 3s. I bet out $225 because i want to play this pot big with steamy. BB folds. Now the UTG limper raises $500 more to $725, the limper who was in the pot before steamy now goes all in for her last $350. Steamy folds and its back to me. The pot is $1425 and it would cost me $425. I know the BB is folding so I don't get any more equity there. Now, I know the $500+ UTG raiser has a strong made hand. At the absolute bare minimum he has QQ. With the more likely scenario that he has a set. I discount AA and KK as he would probably have tried to isolate preflop with two callers after steamy. The interesting part is what does the other limper have? She is a fairly straight forward readable player. During the hand though after she goes all in she keeps telling her neighbor, who she knows well, "its time to go home, its time to go home". I have played with her on at least 2-3 occasions and I have never seen her play a draw like this, but I am not at all positive she wouldn't have done this with spades. Something like AsKs would not be out of the question as well. If I had to break down her range it would be 33, J10, 10 10 (less likely as she most likely would raised preflop but possible), Not JJ as she plays those fast all the time, with maybe 15%-20% chance she has AsXs, although like i said I had never seen this from her. She would almost certainly not play a straight draw like KQ or 89 like this.
As far as the made hand goes I am almost drawing dead to running QQ or backdoor straight cards. If I am sharing spades with the limper then I am most likely drawing dead. But if not then I am getting 3.4:1 on my draw in an $1850 pot. After a long think I finally call. The hands turn over, My QsJs, the UTG's 10 10, and limper's J 10. Thankfully, she is drawing dead to the case J. And all my spades are live! Cardplayer has me as 34.55% equity which is more than enough. Turn and river come 5c 6c and I miss.
So I lost $1000 in that session. Boo. But I think I had +EV there so no biggie.

Todd Brunson was Right

2007-05-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

Maniacs can be dangerous! But they can also be quite profitable as well. You just have to have a little heart and a lack of reserve in order to profit from them. I think this primarily comes from reading people and seeing what extents they are capable of. There were a few maniacs in my session last night at Hollywood Park. They came in two separate instances.

The first $400 table I sat at was pretty weak tight. In fact, there was very little action at all. Most of the pots were small and it played like a $100 or $200 game where 4-5 people would limp into a pot and see who hit the flop. Not my type of game. So I raised a few pots and took the small ones down. Then I raised with AhKc to $45 and under the gun limper reraised to $200. I knew he had a big pair but I didn't think with the lack of action he would do that with AA or KK because there wasn't really an anticipated raise coming. So i felt as though it was QQ or JJ and I put it all in which wasn't too much more. Well, I was wrong, he had KK. I rivered an A to bad beat him. I primiarly put it in without any fold equity because what happened after that was what I was gunning for. The table loosened up and action flowed. The KK guy left with his last $400 because he wasn't too happy but everyone else started playing more hands for raises preflop. So all of a sudden we developed a poker game. The players were bad so this was a perfect table for me. I made a few good hands and got up to about $1000 when the first maniac of the night sat down.
I forgot to mention that i had met Rick for dinner prior to the HP session and we then went in separate cars to the casino. I beat him there and got my name on the list before him. Rick decided to play $200 while he waited and I decided to walk around and peruse the $400 game(s) and the $500 unrestricted game and get a feel for them (which we both had our names on the list for) instead of getting right into the $200 game. Well, Rick had a guy on his $200 game which I had played with before who had gone all in on his first hand and got no calls. The next hand he raised to $50 and check/folded the flop when called. All on a $3-$5 game. After Rick came to my table and got a nasty beat (J9 losing to AQ when all in on a 9 9 3 A board with a river A) and left, this maniac came and sat down to my immediate right. So he came in on the BB and I limped UTG with 88. I was actually still in a bit of rush state so I almost raised with it but i decided against it at the last minute. 4 other players limped including the SB and then when it got to captain manaic in the BB he goes all in for $400. Now this was an obvious attempt to establish himself as the table captain. He had done this at the $200 game and also the last time I had played with him at the $400 game. So I was almost positive I had him beat at this point in time and I was not worried about anyone behind me as they played their hands straightforwardly. The problem is, I would have to put in $400 to win $860 and even a straight out bluff like K9 would have me racing 50%. So I prudently folded and decided he would indeed give it away later. But I was in tune with his psychological state. He does this in order to create action but also to peg himself as a maniac and then try to tighten up a bit later and get paid off. This is what he did at the $400 game the last time I played with him. So its not entirely such a bad idea. I do the same thing to a much lesser degree to create action on non-actiony tables (read above with AK vs KK). But the point is he wanted to wrest the table captaincy away from me. All ego aside, this is an important idea in NLHE. When there is a loose, aggressive player on a table with tight weak players it is such an advantage because they abdicate to him and allow him to walk on them unless they have a monster. They do this by either call/folding too much or lashing out with weak hands. Both are characteristic chances to take all of their money. I want to be the recipient of all this dead action and I don't want him edging in on it. Which explains the situation on the next hand.
Since he was BB last hand, he is SB now and I am BB now. Everyone folded to the SB and before he looked or I looked at my cards I asked if he wanted to chop. He said no and raised to $30. I looked down to see JJ and immediately went all in. He thought for a long time and finally called and won when his KQ off paired a King on the flop. No biggie. I had no problems. But I started to bully him after that. The next hand I called his $40 cutoff raise with Kh8h on the button. We were heads up and the flop came down Q 5 3 with two spades. He made a weak CB and I called with the intention of taking it away as I thought at best he had an underpair to the Q. The turn came an off suit 5 and I made a 2/3 pot size bet after his check and did my usual table talk to feign weakness when, in fact, I was weak :). He folded and i was able to show my Kh8h. Two hands later, he was the only limper ahead of me when I got AhAd. I raised to $50 and he was the only caller. He checked in the dark and I immediately bet $60 in the dark ala Negreanu from High Stakes Poker as seen here.
The flop came down Q4Q and he folded. We didnt dance together for another 30 minutes or so but we continued our rousing table talk where he would make a play at supremacy and it would all come tumbling down after my clever retorts. As Craig routinely points out, my best poker attribute is my adept use of the needle. Sidenote: before I talk about the big hand vs this guy. The needle is not supposed to be used against anybody. In fact, generally it is a -EV play. I like to keep the flow and mood of the game quite smooth for the weak player so that they are enjoying themselves and having fun while slowly dieing a financial death. But when someone comes in and disrupts the flow of the game ( and the consistent flow of money to me) with massive all in overbets preflop and the like, then it not only disrupts the flow of the game but it negates the skill advantage I believe I have, and it can upset alot of the tigher, weaker players. Enter the Needle. If I can break this guy off both chip wise and psychologically, not only will the flow of the game return but I stand to be seen as somewhat of a hero by the table (which happened after this hand!).
So back to poker. I was in the SB and one of the tightest guys at the table made a raise to $25 in 2nd position. Four people called in front of me including our villain on the button. There were $135 in the pot so far and i had $5 in already, so i had to call $20 to win $135. My 45off wasnt too spectacular and neither was my position but my almost 7:1 pot odds made up for it. I called and so did the BB. So we took the $175 7 way pot off and it came down As 5c 9h. I checked, BB checked, Original Raiser checked kind of huffy, two more checked to an older lady in the cutoff who bet $45 into the $175 pot. Our villain made a casual call on the button saying something like "let's just see what's going on". I noted his behavior as he did this call. I had to call $45 to win $265 so about 6:1 with my bottom pair and backdoor wheel draw. I made the call and the BB folded as well as the original raiser who folded his KK face up in a flustered state. The other two in the pot folded as well. The turn came the 4h for a As 5c 9h 4h board. I now have bottom two pair in a $310 pot. I hadn't checked yet when the cutoff lady started putting chips in the pot. I informed her it was my turn and after a few seconds let her bet. She bet a measly $75 and the villain on the button then went all in for $465 or so. It was a pot overbet but not too out of line. Based on the casualness of his flop call i didnt feel like he had an A so he didnt have A4. 94 I had ruled out and anything strong on the flop was already out of the question (such as 55 or 99). Which left me with only a few possibly hands. Some gutshots one which got there (23), a weak 9, a pair with a flush draw, or a draw that picked up a flush draw. There was a small chance he had Ahxh but I really didnt think so. The cutoff lady only had $240 or so behind so I didnt have to worry about her. I ended up calling after some table talk to find out if he had a draw. He essentially told me with his body language he had a draw and after I called and and the lady mucked he said he had a draw. I then told the dealer no heart and said "Shit" when the 5h came on the river before I realized i had a full house. He, indeed, had the 6h7h for a gutshot on the flop with a picked up flush draw that turned into open ended. So not a bad move on his part with a 15 outer. That busted him and he left the table after which the status quo returned and I was able to win anoter $200 or so in the next 40 minutes just from making some moderate hands and stealing some pots. Once the table broke and I had to go to the must move table i had about $1700.

The second table had a higher calibre of player on it but also a good amount of action with more money behind. Everything was fine and good for the first hour and a half or so, I didn't play too many hands. I raised with AsQs and got two callers and hit a board of Qh Js 3s. Bet and got called and got a Jd on the turn. Checked and the only other player in the pot made a weakish $100 bet into the $350 + pot. I called figuring he was on either a flush draw (which I would be ecstatic if he hit), a straight draw (which was drawing to only 6 outs because of the present flush draw), or a weak Q. Given this range he can only hit a non-spade K or 8 to beat me. So i didn't raise as he would be scared off. The river brought an offsuit 3 for a board of Qh Js 3s 3d Jd. I probably should have value bet a weak Q ( i was first to act ) here but I checked hoping that he will try to represent a J and he checked and my AQ bested his KQ. Outside of that i didn't play many hands in the interim before maniac #2 sat down. This guy had come from the $500 unrestricted game that had just broke. Now he was a different manaic then the previous one as this one was more up beat with a devil may care attitude and penchant for gambling. The previous maniac wanted to bully control through betting. There is a huge difference. This guy saw almost every flop, would open raise UTG with 6s2s for $100, and would call almost any raise preflop if he was going to play the hand. He went through his first buyin pretty quick but made a few hands and got up to 900 quick. Then he got AK back to back in which case he was all in preflop. The first time he won about $100 in blinds and the second time he lost $500 when he got called by AA. Then a few hands later on the button before anyone had looked at their cards he moved all in. Now he was out of turn and blind but he put his chips on the line. A few people limped in and I limped with QsQd because I didn't think this was the type of guy who would clam up at the last second and retract it. And he didn't. He was all in blind for $280. The BB was surprised that he was in blind and called pretty nonchalantly. The 2nd position limper (an incredibly inexperienced player) also called which put him all in for $275. I saw the BB had about $6-700 more and there was already over $900 in dead money so I went all in (at this point I had about $2700). He folded his AdQh face up. So bad that I lost a Q but good that an A was dead. The board came horrible with something like 4h 7h 9h then 5s and 4s. The inexperienced player had KdJd which I thouroughly beat but the maniac had 10d 4c which rivered me. Nothing to do there. I played a bunch more hands, like one where I think I lost not too much ($320) with JJ vs KK against the tightest player on the table on a 8 high board. I made a full house against a flush which garnered me some pocket change. But the maniac was taking all sorts of pots from the table. He never really nailed me too bad after that but I was getting nickeled and dimed for a while. I eventually left when I had a little less than $1800. So I stayed for 7 hours and made a $1365 profit on two great tables. I definetly made a few mistakes that I could have avoided but I think I made some good moves/calls that more than made up for some of the adventurous things.

Another Yucky Short Session

2007-05-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

Not much to talk about in this one. Got to a nice, relatively passive table and saw a few flops and folded. Raised with AKoff and won the blinds. Then 45 minutes in I limp in 4th position after two limpers with As6s. There ends up being 5 total players seeing the $50 pot that comes down Ah Qh 7s. An early position player (who is very easy to read) bets a very weak $20 into the pot after which the player directly after him calls quickly. I know the first bettor is weak and will fold an A that is lower than A 10 and based on his play he doesn't have even that. The second guy i know is on a draw. So i raise to $85. The first bettor debates and finally folds whereas the second player promptly raises me all in. I was taken aback but I still thought he was on a draw as this particular player would have raised with AK-AJ preflop and would raise the first bettor if he had A7 or a set. So I had about $180 left and the pot was already $240+ so I quickly called and turned over my hand saying "No heart dealer". Of course he turned the 10h and then rivered the 2h and the other player had 5h6h. No biggie, but he had flush draw written on his forehead and if he thought about it, he would have realized he had no fold equity in the hand. But what can you do?

The Art of the Call

2007-05-08T00:53:00.000-07:00

Common sense and all poker authorities say that being the aggressor in most situations is the preferred way to play. The notion being that you can win the hand by your opponent folding or you having the best hand. I can say, for the most part, that makes sense. But this really boils down to a much more basic somewhat philosophical argument outside of poker. I see it more as the classic Irresistable Force vs Immovable Object question.

Through my poker travels and trevails, no matter how much my logic tries to convince me the above idea is true, other things seem to creep in. For instance, I have found that in order to win big pots it is much more crucial to be able to make a good (?) call. Basically, what I am saying is that by being the aggressor and getting your opponent to fold the pot is relatively small, but when a good or brave call is made then the pot grows much bigger. If you can win with those calls then you can most likely be +EV because your wins will be huge. I will give you a bunch of situations where the aggressor fails due to brave or good calls. The pots are all big so by calling and becoming the immovable object, big pots are won.

First Hand: Two nights ago I am playing at the Commerce $400 game. I have a decent size stack with about $1100. The table in general has been great with lots of action and showdowns at the river aka calls. This hand, however, it was folded to me on the button where I picked up 9d9s. I standard raised to $40 and both of the blinds calls. The $120 flop came down Jd 8c 2d. Both players checked to me. As the preflop aggressor, with only one relatively non-threatening overcard (as opposed to an A for instance) and the presense of a couple of draws I bet out $75. I got called in both spots. The $345 turn card came down the 7d. Now being called by two people with a J out there, a straight draw that got there, and a flush draw that got there I can reasonably assume that I can't beat anything. The SB bets out a meek $100 and the BB folds. Now, generally i would just toss this one out and say "Shit, he got there." But, I just started looking at the SB. He is a somewhat tight player preflop but post flop I had observed that he was very weak. He was twitching and giving off a whole lot of anxiety vibe. So I just didn't think he liked his hand. But I couldn't figure out what he was trying to accomplish. Was this $100 bet which gave me 4.5:1 odds meant to be a value bet with a high flush? Or was it a blocking bet with something like Ad8h? Or was it an all out bluff? None of it added up, I couldn't put him on a credible hand based on his previous play, he was giving off nervous energy left and right, I was getting 4.5:1 with a pair, 9 high flush draw, and a gutshot, so I called. I didn't know where I was but I just instinctively felt like a call was right, either I had the best hand, I could take him off his hand on the river, or I just felt really comfortable against this guy. Well the $545 river card came down the Ad for a board of Jd 2d 8c 7d Ad. Now I am watching the SB as he watches the Ad come down. He is clenching his teeth, gulping and swallowing, maybe even trying not to sweat. Basically he is very unhappy or extremely good at giving off false tells (very unlikely based on this player). But he bets out $200 into the $545 pot. He is giving me 3.5:1 odds to call with my 4th nut flush. I don't understand. If he made his straight draw with 9 10 on the turn then he obviously wouldn't bet the river. If he had a K or Q high flush he probably wouldn't be so nervous about the bet. If he had a 10high flush, he most likely wouldn't bet it and I can't see him calling preflop with something like 10d8d in the SB based on his preflop tightness. So I am quite confused and therefore I call. He asks "Do you have a diamond?" and I confidently turn over my hand and take down the $945 pot. He later said he had JJ. I suppose it makes sense for him to be nervous on the turn and river if he had planned to slowplay his set. But the immovable object (me) made some good calls which also turned out to be quite brave in my opinon based on the situation. If he hadn't been dripping with tells I probably would have let this one go. But the ability to call down won me the nice pot.

The next set of hands came from today's session at Hawaiian Gardens. The table was fabulous with lots of money on the table and some pretty loose play. I raised in middle position to $40 with 10 10. The button called as did the BB and the 2nd position limper. I have about $1400 behind, the button has a about $1050, the BB has about $800, and the 2nd position limper also has about $800. The $160 pot comes down J 7 4 rainbow. The two in front of me check to me and in contrast to the previous hand I decided to check. I checked for two reasons, there are now 4 people in the hand instead of three as in the previous so there is a larger chance that a J is out there. Two out of the three other people in the hand came in for full price as opposed to the previous situaiton where the blinds called with a discount so there was a chance that their hand was slightly less than normal calling standards. The other reason being that i was no longer last to act on successive streets so a CB might not be as effective if I were to be called by the button as I would have to show weakness by checking on 4th street. So after i checked, the button got kind of all huffy and bet out $140 into the $160 pot. As soon as he did this I got a sneaking suspicion. With such a dry board, I couldn't understand why he was betting so aggressively to get us to fold and acting like it as well. I was positive he didn't have a set because he wouldn't be that aggressive with it. It didn't feel like he had a J, and if he did, he really wanted to end the pot there. It felt like he had either a 7 or a small pocket pair below Jacks. In fact, I had seen him do a similar move about 2 hours earlier in a big pot where he put the preflop raiser on AK and moved in on him with something like 55 on a J 22 board. The guy called with 99 and won. So I really didn't think he had a J. The BB took a long time and finally called after staring into space and what seemed like looking at the pot to count it. So I figured he had 56 for the open ended. The 2nd position limper folded. I thought I could raise here and take it but I wanted to wait for a safe card on the turn and most likely a check down to keep the pot small figuring I had the best hand. So I called. The river brough the 5d putting 4 suits on the board. Now this wasn't a good card if the button had 55 obviously and it would have improved the BB's draw to a pair and a straight draw. BB checked and I checked keeping with my plan of keeping the pot smallish. The button now bet out $375 into $580 pot. The BB reluctantly folded. Now here I had a conundrum. I still believed that I had the best hand. But if he held a small pocket pair he very well could have a straight draw now and the betting lead as well as position. If he held a J, I didn't think he could call off his remaining $550 or so with it. I always do acting when I am in the hand because you never know when it could come in handy, so when I had called on the flop I had asked how much he had left and tried to act like I would if I had JJ on a J 7 4 rainbow board. I said "I just call" and did that whole bit partly as a preparation to move on him on the turn if need be. Well, now that he had put some more money in, I wanted to end the hand because the pot was big enough and my hand was small but still good in my opinion. So I went all in. He sighed and was visibly upset saying "you have a set of Jacks, huh?" He finally called anyway. The river came a 6 and he turned over 7s 4s to win the almost $2400 pot. Now he played it well, in hindsight, all of his bets made sense because bottom two pair is very easily counterfeited ( believe me I know!) and his hand was well hidden so I couldn't give him credit for that hand. He made good plays and made a good all in call as he beats pretty much all credible hands at the moment outside of JJ. Point being that again, the immovable object (not me) bested the irresistable aggressive force (this time me). That knocked me down quite a bit and about 30 minutes later this hand came up. I was in the BB with about $300 left and the 9 10 off. 4 people limped in and the SB folded and I checked. So the $50 pot came down 10 8 5 rainbow. I checked and everyone checked to the big stack (a fairly sophisticated player) on the button who overbet the pot $75. I felt like he had a draw to play this fast, maybe 67 or J9 so I called. Everyone else folded. The turn brough a 6 putting 4 suits on board. Now the pot was $200 or so. I now had top pair, marginal kicker, but I had a gutshot straight draw to go along with it. If he had J9 he didn't improve, if he had 67 then he had a pair with an open ended but he only would have 11 outs as a 7 would make my boss straight. So I figured he either couldn't call my all in or I would be a nice favorite. So I pushed all in for $230 into the $200 pot. He thought for a while and told me "I put you on a draw, something like 97 or 86. But I am going to make a donkyish call." He called and the 4 on the river didnt improve me and his A 10 won. Again, his hand was pretty good and it wasn't too much money to him but he had put me on a range of hands which all beat him and I had shown interest in a fairly well connected board. But yet the immovable object bested the irresistable force. And again the ability to make a good, brave, or bad call won a nice sized pot. It was the call not the aggression.
This last hand came from Commerce later on that night. After losing at Hawaiian Gardens I went to Commerce on the way home. I sat down at a table and saw two very nice big pots before I played. Through table talk and another player praising me with his fear before I even played I had convinced the table that we were going to be playing loose and aggressive for big pots. Or continuning to as was the case. So I limped and folded a couple times. Then on my 6th hand or so, UTG player (what seemed like a bad player so far) raised to $40 and the guy directly to my right called. I looked down to see AcKc. As I looked at it, I thought about how I wanted to set the stage for the session. I wanted it to be really fast and loose and I didn't care so much about this hand as what I wanted the atmosphere to be and my image to be. So I went all in for $370. Everybody folded around to the UTG who was not happy. He only had about $300 more. After talking himself into calling saying "its probably a race" he called and the other player folded. I asked if he had a pair and he said no and I showed my AcKc. He turned over his Qs 10s and said it was a small race. Well the board came out 9h 5s 8s. The turn came a 2s and I was drawing dead. No bad beat bitching stories here. I was only a 3-2 favorite when all the money got in. That's not the point. The point is that again, the immovable object (the call) bested all the aggression the irresistable force could muster (moving all in for 4.5X the pot).

I think aggression is a bit overvalued. Of course, you need to protect your hand and what not but the more I look back over my big wins, the more i think they came at least 60% in part from making some big calls in big pots. Some were good like the 7s4s call and some may have been as brave as the Qs10s (though I wouldn't like to admit it). If you can perfect the art of being a calling station then you can definetly be +EV.

Just Card Dead

2007-05-05T23:36:00.000-07:00

I went up to HP tonight rather early around 6pm and sat in the $400 game. I was doing well when I raised with AsKh and the board came Ks Qs 8s and got it all in vs 10s 7s on the flop and caught a Ad and 3s on the turn and river. We got down to short handed and I got a huge bad beat. On a board of 997 rainbow, I got it all in vs 89 with my 9 10 in a $900 pot and the turn came 3 and river came 8. That was nasty.

After that hand, the table broke about 20 minutes later and I went to play in the $500 unrestricted game. The game was great with over $30K on the table. There was alot of action too, but I was getting NO HANDS. I got a few suited Aces (Ah4h, As6s) and an AJoff or two but outside of that I got no hands to play in good situations. I sat at that table for 2.5 hours or so until I saw the 3 action players get busted on some ridiculous hands. For instance: After three limpers, the SB (an old, big stacked bad player) raised to $50. Jon (an experienced good player) called as well as one other on the button. The flop came down 5 7 2 rainbow. SB bet something like $125 and only Jon called. The turn was a 9. SB bet out $350 and Jon raised to $1100. They both were very deep stacked. SB called. The river came another 2 ( the board has all 4 suits) for a board of 2 5 7 9 2. The pot is about $2600 and the SB goes allin for $3400+. After a long, long study Jon finally calls the $3400+ bet. After the SB turns over his KK, Jon shows his 86off for the straight and rakes in the $9500+ pot.
I was no where near any of these types of pots :(.

A God Damn Foot on my Neck

2007-05-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Every fucking time I start to put something together, I hit a massive wall. I was starting to make a comeback and was almost even on the year. In fact, I was -$715 as of last week. I had a few bad days in there and then tonight hits. I played a 40 minute session at Commerce. In that 40 minutes, I played 4 hands not counting posting/folding a few blinds. The first hand that I play: A semi-short stack openraises to $30 in early/middle postion. There are two callers ahead of me and I have AhQc in the BB. I just call because I don't know very many players at the table including the three in this pot. The $120 flop comes down Qh 10s 9h. I check, Original Raiser bets out $75 and both limpers call the $75. Seeing that the O. Raiser has only $175 or so left and feeling that the other two were definetly drawing I went all in for $285 more. The original raiser calls and the other two fold. I show AQ and he says "You're good for now" turn comes 6c and the river comes Ks and he turns over AJoff for Broadway.

2nd Hand I play: I am down to about $110-$115. Two hands later on the button, after two limpers I have AhQc again, I go all in trying to either get in a race or take the $35 and start rebuilding. There is no sense in raising here and getting someone into the pot when my CB would have no strength if i missed the flop. Both blinds fold and the first limper calls me and shows his AsQs after i show mine. Board comes innocuous and we chop.

3rd hand I play: About 6 hands later I am in 2nd position with the same $120-$125. I have Ah Ks. UTG limps and I want to make some money and get into a confronation, but I decide to limp as well and obviously push/call any raise. If i miss the flop and fold then I only lose $10. Well, it gets 6 limpers and the SB makes it $150. After UTG folds, I immediately call and everyone else folds. After the dealer makes the pot right, I ask if he has a pair and he responds "What does it matter?" and I say "I just wan t to know if my Aces and Kings are live" as I show my AK. He says "They're live". The flop comes down Ac 6c 3d. Turn comes 9c. He then says "you're good". The river comes Qc. He says "I have a club" and turns over his 7h 2c for the winner.

4th hand I play: After rebuying and and watching a few rounds go by without playing a hand I see some just ridiculous things. The table is just horrible. The AJ from the first hand has gotten super lucky and played his good hands badly and won, his bad hands badly and won, and everything badly and won. He had about $170 before the 1st hand listed was played and in the 25 minutes since then has made Quads, a gutshot, counterfeited someone's hand, and counterfeited another person's hand to build up to about $2000. After a setup has been called, a few people get up to smoke while the dealer checks the deck. They haven't returned yet so we take this hand 6 handed with me being UTG. I get 7c7h and usually raise it here but just limp. Our hero (AJ) limps and the button raises to $70. The two blinds fold and I call because i get the feeling just by the way he raised that he really didn't have a pair. But I still had $350+ so i didn't want to race off here for no reason. To my suprise, AJ calls the$70 as well after just flippantly limping in the first place. Well, my plan here was to lead out big if there were no cards over a 10. The board comes 7s 6c 3d. Well, no reason to play this too fast. I don't think the button has a big pair so I doubt if i lead he will raise. So i checked, AJ bets a pathetic $30 into the $220 pot and the button only calls the $30. So I know AJ has some weak draw (I assumed 89) and the button was just phising with big cards as assumed. So i wanted to keep them in and I raised to $100 (only $70 more). Big mistake. They both called. So going into the turn, there was $520 in the pot. The turn was the 8c. Not a fun card but one that almost certainly did not kill me. I went all in for $210 and AJ makes it $500 by putting in a whole rack. Button folds and I ask do you have a straight? Of course, he turns over 9s 10s for the gutshot and the 10c doesn't improve my set.

I can't count how many of these little shit session of <1hour I have had where people will not lay down a hand and my boss hand will not hold. Its just draining to see this day in and day out. I want to play in games where the stacks are deeper and people have more of a reason to fold but I just can't build a bankroll big enough for that without running through these games.

Check-Raise? No, CheckMate!

2007-04-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't played poker since Thursday, so therefore, I haven't posted about it since then. Friday I intended to play but I ended up hanging out with Gwen instead. Yesterday (saturday) and today I played in the Los Angeles County Chess tournament.
I ended up with 3.5/5 but thats not as good as it sounds. I took a bye in the first round so I got .5 points and played a scrubby 1700+ in the 2nd round. He played as passively as possible and after about move 7 he started mirroring my moves and i was black! So i just quickly equalized, took advantage, and ground him down for the win. My 2nd round game I played a scrubby 1900+. I played like a jackass and blundered within the first 10 moves and never could recover. We eventually got to a Rook endgame where I was down a pawn and I couldn't hold.
Today I had two worthless games. The first was against a 1700 who played the Budapest Gambit against me. Not only did he play a poor opening, but he played it poorly and after 10 moves I was able to consolidate and keep the pawn without him having any of the usual compensation. He saced a piece for no attack and I won easily.
The second game was a Bf4 Grunfeld with me as black. For the third time I was up against a 1700 in this open tournament. He managed to hang an entire piece on move 13.
All this is, of course, very uninteresting. What i found odd was that in my 3 games against the 1700s, everyone of them played on for at least 10 moves in positions that were without question lost for them. The first game I had B +4 pawns vs B +1 pawn and I had to Q before he would resign. The 3rd game I was up a Bishop + 3 pawns and he waited until one move before mate to resign. The last game he played down a piece for about 20 moves and then finally resigned when I was up a piece and 3 pawns with a pawn on the 3rd rank primed to promote.

All in all, with my 3 wins, 1 loss and 1/2 point bye I am losing 3 rating points to go from 2024 to 2021. Yuck.

Update

2007-04-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

So apparently i haven't posted for a few days and everyone is up in arms. I had a good session over at HP a few days ago where I just got hit like a brickhouse. I played for only 1 hour and hit massive hands and made +$2445 in one hour!! Basically I made 2 pair over 2 pair, top two vs overpair, etc... and was getting paid off. My best hourly rate yet.

Tonight, however, was a bit of a different story. I played in the $500 unrestricted buyin. The game was not spectacularly good as there were a few tight regulars. Fortunately, there were a few marks in the game and i did well but got nailed by one everytime. A guy named Kevin. He was not a good player in any respect. He wasn't too aggressive, in fact, he was a bit of a calling station. But he liked to chase and he always seemed to get there. He was playing tons of hands despite raises. I got a decent amount of hands, QQ twice, KK twice, AA twice. He made the nut flush on me when I had KK. He made the nut flush on me when I had AJ raised and hit an A (he had Kd10d). On one hand I raised to 60 in early position. Kevin called in position and we saw the $130 flop heads up. It came down 9h 7h 3d. I bet out $115. He called. The turn came the Kc. I was almost positive he had a flush draw so I bet out $225 into the $260 pot and he called. The river brought the Jh and I checked and he bet enough to put me all in. I had about $440 left. I folded because there was no concievable hand I could beat. The heart flush got there, if he was phising with high cards like AK on the flop he got there, if he had open ended and called two bets with 10 8 he got there. I could beat A9 and 1010. Both wouldn't warrant this type of action and like I said, he wasn't too aggressive. I am sure he made the flush.

Anyway, I couldn't beat him in a bigger pot. I took down a few small pots off him but that was nothing because everytime the pot got big he got there. He was doing this to everyone though so I can't really bitch too much.

Later on, we got down to short handed and a guy came from the $400 game. Everybody immediately identified him as a bad player who was a "hit and runner" and not really up to par with the $500 game calibre player. So, he came in already with no respect. Then, he started hollywooding on every freaking decision whether it was a preflop limp or a river $70 bet. We were all immediately annoyed, so I just went after him. I limped with AA and broke him off for $400+ when he flopped a K and I slowplayed him. Then I checkraised him with two pair out of the BB and he paid me off with top pair. He, somehow, got paid off big with a big hand and got up $2000+ on his $500 buyin. He eventually lost it all to Timmy (rich ex-NHL player) in a $3800 pot when he went all in for $1100 more over Timmy's $500 turn raise on a board of Ks Jh 5s 5h. This guy had KJ to Timmy's 5d9d.

As for me, I lost a preflop race to this guy when he was short and I had 1010 vs his AQ before he got his big $2000 pot. After he was busted, I bluffed a few pots and took a big draw against Timmy that missed. I ended up losing a little less than my 2nd buyin and was down about $1100 in the game. Again, there weren't many interesting hands. Since most of the pots are multiway there isnt lots of thought that can go into a hand because its reallly hard to put more than one or two people on a hand. I really wanted this blog to be what it was in earlier posts where I go in depth in the dissection of a hand. Unfortunately, those have been in short supply recently. Hopefully, I can witness more of these and not just be reporting all the superficialities of sessions.

Unclog as Promised

2007-04-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the Todd Arnold "Unclog your Brain" article from Card Player as promised in earlier posts. I suggest reading this one and contemplating the mindset and point of view he suggests. Its not necessarily philsophically revolutionary but its concise to the point where although all his points are logical they still need to be heard.

http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/16662

I've Got My Intimidation Back!

2007-04-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

Spent my Friday night with a nice session at Hollywood Park. I sat down with two buyins to the $400 game. I managed to lose my first buyin on the very first hand I played. I was dealth Ac 10c in the cutoff and limped after one limper, the button folded and the two blinds stayed in. We saw the $40 pot come down Qc 10s 2d. Everyone checked to me and I bet out $30 because I figured no one had a Q and I had the best hand in position. SB folded and the BB, an old woman with a ton of chips, min raises me to $60. Now I wasn't too happy about this, I'm never happy about getting raised, especially minraised. Then the first limper calls the $60 (He's S#G from previous posts). So all of a sudden I know I am no good but the pot has $190 in it and have to call $30 getting over 6:1 with 2nd pair top kicker, back door broadway draw and backdoor nut flush draw so I call. I figure no one is out there with AQ so unless the KJ is lurking (maybe S#G) then I have an A as an out as well. Well the turn card hits me pretty hard. Kc. Old woman checkraiser checks, S#G bets out a meek $60 into the $220 pot. I figure he may have KJ and now has top pair 2nd kicker with an open ended but he isnt too confident. I could raise him here with my 3rd pair, gutshot royal flush draw but its cheap enough and I have no idea where old woman stands even though she checked. So I just called the $60 into the $280 pot getting over 4.5:1. Then old woman check raises again to $300. I really don't like the double check raise too often, its quite a presumptious play that rarely turns out to be good. S # G is really unhappy and folds. Now all of a sudden There is almost $640 in the pot and I have only $270 left. Again, I have Ac 10c on a board of 2d 10s Qc Kc. I have the nuts with any J, any none pairing club and possibly an A or 10 as well. I am getting about 2.8:1 to call. I know she doesn't have AJ as that wouldnt make sense to min checkraise on the flop with a gutshot and I feel like she has a set of 22 either. So if she has one of the most reasonable hands, KQ, Q10, 10 2, or Q 2 for the BB then my A is drawing way live and in the case of KQ or Q 2 my 10 is drawing live as well. The best case scenario is if I am up against 10 2. Ironically, I have the least amount of direct outs to beat her but I have lots of counterfeit outs. Against 10 2, directly I have 8 clubs (all 9 -2c), 3 nonclub Jacks, and 3 Aces for a total of 14 direct outs. But I also have 6 counterfeit outs with 3 Kings and 3 Queens which would give us both two pair and my A would play. This 20 outer jumps me to a 45% equity making my call correct, of course. In the 2nd best case scenario if I am up against KQ I have 18 outs and 39% to win so its more than +EV to call. Third best scenario is I am up against Q 2 and I have 17 outs to win (every out I had against KQ except the 2c is now dead). Q 10 being the worst where I have no 10s as outs but all the club outs for a total of 15 outs and a 34% to win.

After a minute i went through the majority of this and called. She ended up having Q 10 and the 6h on the river obviously didn't improve me. S #G was pissed because he laid down KQ. He should be pissed at his mom and dad for lying to him as a kid telling him he was a boy when, in fact, he is a pussy. I still liked my call here.

I made $100 off the old lady on my second buyin when on the very next hand I raised with AKoff and she reraised to $100 out of the SB and I pushed allin for $400. She folded 10 10 face up. Then I made a full house out of the blind on her 7 10 on a board of 7 5 5 2 2 with my 56 and took another $100 or so off her. Then she left and I couldn't get all of my money back. But within about 30 mintutes I had gotten my full $800 plus $30 more. By then most of the action on the table had died and there wasn't too much money out there so I table changed to the other main game where there was lots of money on the table and a decent amount of action.

I played one hour on the first table and 4 hours on the second table. The second table was a perennial poker player's dream because since Alex (from the forum) and Joe (a regular at HP) were there I was given respect and I swear I showed down no more than 6 hands in that 4 hours. I played maybe 50 pots, stole around 25 of them, went all in about 5 times and called not once. I didn't really win any huge pots. I think the biggest one was maybe 700 or so. But I was just grinding the whole time. The risk on this table was very very low because i had tons of fold equity. Once i started accumulating chips it became easier. It very much helped that i had a great read on every player on the table so whenever someone came into a pot I could put them in a reasonble comfort level and range of hands and take them off alot of them. I swear, I made a few hands but nothing spectacular. I hit two pair a couple of times but never showed it down. I made a straight or two but they ended up being small pots that were shown down. Most of the time I was just taking $100 pots left and right, sometimes with the best hand, sometimes with a nice draw, or sometimes with nothing. This is what it used to be like about 6 months ago when i was running well. I played fewer hands back then but I got respect and was able to steal all the unwanted pots ala Doyle in Super System. I am not sure if anything has changed. Maybe my demeanor at the table exudes more confidence than it did during my rough patch so I am now much more intimidating than before. Possibly, or maybe I have just noticably improved in reading ability over the past few months? I hope so, either way, I'm looking to have this be a constant situation. My past few sessions have not really centered around the big pot as I was able to take down a bunch of mediums and never got into the big pot. But I stick by the philosophy of stealing mediums and smalls to use for cannon fodder in the big pot. That cannon fodder can stack up to a nice session sometimes though :). Also, my sessions have been shorter as of late. The reason for this is primarily I judge a table by the amount of action and the amount of money. Usually if the action is low but the money is high, I stick it out as the action can usually pick up. But the if the money is low then the action would have to be great in order for it make up for the low implied and bluffing odds. So after about 40 minutes of limped pots last night I decided to call it quits because the money was lessened and the only ones with alot of it were me and a few other tight players who seemed uninterested in playing. So I had no desire to try and steal blinds for a while and decided to leave after 5 hours with a nice $1300 profit.

Pot Limit is Fun!

2007-04-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

I went up to the Bike tonight to play in the Stars and Stripes Pot Limit Hold'em tournament. I would have liked to play more of this tourney series because the buyins are pretty low and they arent that bad structure wise. $120 buyin got me 1500 in tournament chips with levels going at 30 minutes and starting on 25 25 blinds. The escalation wasn't too bad either. It went 25 25, 25 50, 50 100, 75 150, 100 200, 150 300, etc... I busted on level 6 but after that it was still fairly good.

Pot Limit Structure is most commonly associated with Omaha High but Hold'em played Pot Limit structure is preferred by lots of technically sound high limit players. Players like Bob Ciaffone are fans of Pot Limit because it allows the same type of chasing and mathematically incorrect calsl that are associated with the loose betting structure of No Limit but without as many big overbets and tough situations. Also, slowplaying is less common in Pot Limit (but it still exists) because in order to win that big pot on the river you have to build it a bit before you can get it all in. Although before today I had never played this betting structure I had read a bit about it and was looking forward to playing it.

My starting table was ridiculously tight. For the first level and a half (45 minutes!) no hand went to a river showdown. I don't think this was do to a large skill level at the table, in fact, if someone didn't have a big hand they didn't bet. I stole a few pots here but I didn't really make any huge headway. By the third level I had about 1600 when I hit a set of 6s. I didn't get doubled up but I was able to take about 500 or so off the initial raiser. A few hands later with the blinds at 25 50 I get AcAs in the BB. 2nd position, an aggressive player opens for the pot 175. The button calls the 175 and the SB folds. Now I put 2nd position on a decent hand and since this was a fairly tight table post flop i didnt want to risk not making money if he had AK or JJ and the flop came unfortunate for him. So I repotted. In order to raise the pot you have to first call whatever the bet to you is, so after I call the 125 more over my BB 50 there is 175X3 + 25 SB in the pot. Thats 550 in the pot so I put in my 50 + 125 for the call + 550 more for a total of 725. 2nd position calls and surprisingly the button calls as well. It is surprising because he leaves him self with only 475. The board comes Ks Jh 6s. The pot has ballooned to 2175 and I only had about 1200 left ( which had both of them covered) so I potted all in. 2nd position kept asking me if I had AK and I kept asking him if it was good. He finally folded his QQ face up not knowing the button was still in the hand. Stupid K killed my action. The button says "I'm sure you have me beat but I only have 475 left so you can't rob from me." He called his 475 into the 2650 pot and turned over J 10off. I turned over my Aces relieved I wasnt up against a flush draw and the turn drops the 10c right off the bat. The 4h on the river did not save me and I was down to about 600. A few hands later the only short stack lower than me, min-raised to 200 when we were at 50 100 blinds. I decided to try and isolate him and maybe pick up some loose chips or try to race. I had a moderate KJoff but based on the tightness of the table and his tightness I might have had a very live hand. I repotted for 600 allin and everyone folded back to him and he called for 500. He turned over the worst hand for me. KQ. The board came all numbers and I was down to one $100 chip which would be 1 BB. Thankfully I was in mid to late position so I had about 5 hands to find something to "call" all in with . I folded three trash hands in a row until i was in 2nd position. I looked at the clock and there was about 15 seconds left so I had to make a move before i couldnt even cover a blind. Thankfully I found the 9s7s which is a very live hand in most situations. So i pushed my mountain of chips all in got called by 4 people. The 5 way pot came down A 9 6 with 2 diamonds and the board ran out 4 5 with no more diamonds. I liked the fact that it got checked all the way down with 4 active plaeyrs. No one had an A and my 9 won the $500 pot. I quintipled up and then our table broke after that hand ended.

I go to a new table and I sit down and have to take the BB. Two people limp and the SB calls and i see the Kh 5h and check. The board comes yahtzee 557 rainbow. I check as I am talking to my neighbor, the table chip leader leads out by potting for 400. The button after him calls the 400 and I call my last 400 and am all in. The turn comes a 4 diamonds and the original bettor pots again for a 1600 and the button folds saying he had a 7. The bettor turns over the Ks6s for an absolute move that turned into an open straight. My 5 held as the 9h on the river didn't improve his K high. So I more than doubled up to 1600. A little later I was feeling frisky and raised in late position to to 250 on 50 100 blinds with the 9c6c. I got 3 callers and we saw the $1000 flop come down 997 rainbow with two spades. It got checked to me and I bet out 550 or so trying to get called by a draw. I then got raised allin by the table maniac in which case I called saying "I only have a 9". He turned over two red 3s and my trips held again. That was a huge boost and I was up to about 3600. For the next level I really didn't play many hands, I bluffed once and lost. I raised with AQ the board came QQ325 and I split another AQ as we both got it all in on the river. From there I tried to pick off a few pots and had mixed success. I stole a few and lost a few. The blinds raised again to 150 300. I got 99 on the button and potted for 900 after one player limped. He called and the board came K 10 3 and he put me all in by potting before it even got to me. He was the same guy who potted with K6 earlier and botted on an A high board going into a the original raiser with just a gutshot. So i thought for about 2 minutes as to whether or not I could call off all my chips here. He hadn't played a hand for about a level after getting the overall tournament chip lead. The opposite of what you are supposed to do with the chip lead. Based on his lack of recent play I decided he was probably not making one of his reckless moves and folded. This put me down to about 1600. I potted after that with AK and picked up the blinds. I blinded off a round or two and limped once with 22 only to fold . I shouldn't have limped with 22 because i couldn't spare the chips to try to win a pot. Anyway I got down to about 1500 and after two limpers at 150 300 I saw the BB of 10c 5c and checked. The 1050 flop came down AA10. Based on the two limpers and their previous propensity to raise with big Aces I didn't think either had an A. So I potted for 1050. One folded and the other one repotted putting me all in for my last 450 or so. I called because I still didnt think he had an A and maybe I could chop against a 10. He did turn over Q10 so we chop with an A, K, or running pair. He hit the Q on the turn and I was done.

I was happy with my play in this tournament although I could have been a bit more aggressive in some points as there were a lot of limped pots or blind vs blind pots that could have been picked up. But overall i enjoyed it and I liked the structure of pot limit.

i went and played cash in the 300-500 $5-5 NLHE game at the Bike. I sat for 1 hour and 45 minutes, made a few sets, and stole a bunch of pots and left up $960. Not bad at an hourly rate of about $540 an hour :).

Sometimes Shorter is Better

2007-04-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

I went up to Commerce tonight with 2 buyins. The first table I sat at immediately became short handed before I played a hand. I then shifted into short handed mode and started playing my hands in a much more aggressive manner. This didn't work out well because I lost a buyin in 10 minutes with top pair Q kicker vs top pair A kicker. That table broke and i went to a great table. I started off the with AK my first hand, raising and CBing and taking down the pot. Then the very next hand i got AcQc, raised hit an A and CBed and took down a nice pot. This pretty much set the standard for that table. It was a fairly passive table with one kind of maniacal player. So i was able to run over the table for a little period. There was one passive guy who i busted twice. I limped with Jh10h UTG and it got limped around 5 ways. The board came Kh Qc Kd. It got checked to and led with half the pot. It got folded to our villain in the SB who just called and the BB folded. Now based on how passive he was i put him on a weak K immediately. I was checking this one down. The turn brought the Ac giving me broadway. He checked again and since I was positive he had a weak King I was going to push him. So i led for 100 into him and he just called. The river brought the 6c putting a flush out there. He led out for a $100 and he only had another $150 behind so i put it all in and he called with K5 and gave it all away.

Later, against the same guy i had another big hand. I limped in early to mid position with Kd 10d. Again, it was passive limped with him in the BB who checked. The board came 10h 3c 5c. Both blinds checked and I led for $35 into the 5 way $50 pot. Everyone folded but our favorite villain in the BB who called. Again, I didn't have him on a flush draw, although it wsa possible. I put him on a 10 with a decent kicker, something like Q 10, J 10, K 10 as well. I figured with A 10 he would have led into it. The turn brought the interesting 10c. So the board is 10c 10d 3c 5c. He checks and I again led with $100 because not only did i feel as though I was value betting a lesser 10 but if he had something like Jc 10s I didnt want him to backdoor into a flush. He called and the river brought the absolutely fabulous Ks. He checked and I pushed all in, he only had $250 left and had to call $250 to win about $550. He called and I again broke him.

I did get into a situation with the maniac. After 3 limpers, I was on the button with 4h 7h and i limped as well. Both of the blinds stayed in so we saw it 6 handed. The $60 pot came out 10 10 9 with two hearts. SB checked, BB checked and the maniac in UTG checked. 2nd position bet out $30 and I called to take one off in position with a heart draw. Since the bettor was fairly tight I thought i was up against a 10 and could get some passive action from him if the heart comes. UTG maniac called as well when the two blinds folded. The $150 pot turned the Jh. This seemed like a pretty good card for me. UTG maniac immediately pushes all in for $450 into the $150 pot!!! Original Bettor folds and there I am with a 7 high flush against a known maniac (I had seen him play earlier in the night) getting 1.3:1. I was befuddled. Based on how he played trips earlier I decided he did not have a boat or a 10. That leaves the straight, flush, and a total bluff. Obviously, I beat a bluff and a straight but if he has a flush its most likely better than my 7 high flush. I told him he makes some money if he bets less as I show him my 7 high flush and he triumphantly presents his Qh 8c. He did have a nice redraw but that was a bit ridiculous.

On a side note, listen to how he went broke. He limps on the button with about $6-700. Both blinds stay in and the three way $30 pot sees a flop of Qc 6s 3c. It gets checked around. The turn brings the 4s. It again gets checked around. The river brings the 10c. So the board is Qc 6s 3c 4s 10c. Both blinds check and our hero maniac bets $200 into the $24 pot. The SB starts talking to the maniac and eventually goes all in. Before the BB can even fold, the button immediately calls all in and triumphantly turns over his 5c 7c. His nut turned straight was good until the river as the SB shows his Kc6c. And the $24 turn pot becomes a $1300 raked river pot for the SB. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After he went broke , he left and the only other money/targets on the table left. As I was feeling a bit groggy and didn't really want to grind against all the short tight stacks or move to a new table, I decided to call it a short session of only 3 hours. I still made $545 which is a pretty good rate of just over $181 an hour for 3 hours.

Ride Right through the Beat

2007-04-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

I got a rough beat tonight. One that I still don't understand. I was into the Hollywood Park $400 buyin $5-10 NLHE game for $800 and had accumulated around $1600 total for a nice $800 profit. I was only 4 hours into the session and the table was absolutely fabulous. I was either 2nd or 3rd in chips, was comfortable with everyone on the table and taking lots of small pots and once in a while dragging a nice big pot. I dragged a $1400 pot with a turned straight when someone could not let go of their two pair. Everything was going good until this ridiculous hand comes up. I am in Middle Position, maybe 2-3 from the button and get AQoff. I raise to $45 after UTG limps. The button, SB, and UTG limper all call. So we go to the flop with about $220 in the middle. It comes out Ah Qd Kh. The small blind leads out for $200. Now, before I continue with the action I'll describe the small blind. He has only been at the table no more than an hour but I had already seen him play enough hands to know he was not good at all. Twice I had seen him slowplay what he thought were big hands (trips and a set) and only meekly bet his good but not great hands such as top pair good kicker in big pots. So for him to come out swinging like this smacked of oddness. I knew he didnt have a set or AK and like I said if he had something like J 10 I think he would have slowplayed it so I immediately put him on a draw. I looked at his stack and he had about $440 left after the $200. After the UTG limper folded I raised to $600 and the button folded and SB called almost instantanously. I was a bit surprised at the speed of it. The turn comes 10c and the river is some offsuit brick like 5c. He turns over Jh 7h. Afterwards, as I am trying to regain a little composure after such an odd call he trys to defend himself to the table by saying he was committed after he put in the $200. He was asking people if they would have done the same, and of course, the people who answered were savvy enough to say "yes" so that he would keep doing it but, of course, they would never make the same play. That knocked me down a bit to a little over $800. From there I composed myself because this was a great table and I would say at least 6 out of the 8 other players were easy targets. So I didn't want to do anything stupid and not take advantage of this. I sat back and limped with Qs once only to reraise one of the guys on tilt to have the other guy on tilt push into me. I called and the Qs held against his 77 or 99 or something. After that I just made a few hands and a few good CBs until 2 more people left. Then we got down to short handeded (sometimes 6,5, or even 4 handed). I was left with such passive players that I just steamrolled them shorthanded for about an hour. Nothing excessive, just picking up unwanted $50 pots and making raises preflop, getting heads up and then CBing and taking it down. Those things add up. I think in the hour of short handed play I made about $400. I didn't lose one single show down hand and I only made a big hand once and the guy folded on the turn. Normally, shorthanded play becomes difficult for me because people become super aggressive (as you should) and really put pressure on you to make hands/calls. Here it was a walk in the park and I was the only one applying pressure.

There weren't too many hands of actual discussion interest as I said, most of the table was easy money and it was just a matter of making a hand at the right time. I did notice quite a bit a of overbetting at a certain time space on this table that I was displeased with. For instance, after one limper 2nd to act would open raise for $75 or after a few limpers someone would make it $100. I am not a big fan of this play because its an action killer. Its one thing if you are in the BB and 7 people limp to you and you make it $100, thats totally reasonable but to open the pot for 7-8XBB in early position doesn't make sense. Lots of people do this and while I like the fact that they are probably not getting any profit off their big hands if indeed these are big hands, I don't like the fact that it makes it that much harder to get big pots with big hands because the preflop action is so stifling. It still baffles me that someone is much more happy with winning $20 with AA or whatever instead of trying to win a big pot by either raising a little more than the pot and playing a flop or limping. This type of strategy is not very exploitable at the $400 game unless there is alot of money on the table but if someone did things like that with big hands in deeper games like the $500 they would get slammed so quickly. I guess that's why some of these people are at the $400 and not higher.

Continuation Bet or Disquise?!? Mwahaha!

2007-04-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

I went over to Hollywood Park last night around 8pm with two buyins to the $400 game. I usually love to play the unrestricted $5-10 NLHE game there because its $500 min and no max which means there is at least $10,000 on the table and lots of times much much more. The great thing is the game is so loose and populated with bad players that you can really develop your post flop game and exploit mistakes in that area of betting. For those of who you who aren't familiar with it, post flop is where the boys get separated from the men. It takes no great skill to put someone on 88-QQ and push all in AK preflop. No big deal, but run a three bullet bluff on every street takes a bit more courage and tenacity. As well as making large bet calls with marginal holdings that happen to be the best. But, anyway, since the bankroll is still in the rebuilding phase I cannot afford to jump into that game with my usual $1000 buyin. Rick went up earlier in the day and was playing in that $500 game and was doing phenomenally. I think he said he was in $1000 and left $3800. Pretty damn good, if you ask me.

I had similar good fortune at the $400 table which is the same structure as Commerce's $400 $5-$10 game. The first hand that I raised I had JhJd on the button after three limpers. I made it $45 and got two callers. The flop came 4h 10c 9c. Both checked to me and i bet out $85 and after one fold, the remaining player goes all in for about $20 less than what I have. The guy was an Englishman who I have played with before on the $500 game but we were never really involved in any hands against each other and at the previous times he had much more behind so I had no idea of how he played his short stack. I discounted 1010 because he was the cutoff and just limped after one in front and also didnt get credence to 99 for the same reason. I asked him if he had a set and he kind of nervously responded to me so I figured he had a 10 or a club draw or something like QJ. So I ended up calling and although the club came on the turn he said he just had a 10 and I doubled up. However much I dislike the idea of calling big raises with hands where your opponent knows where you are at and you have no idea where they are at, the $400 game doesn't really allow too much for that unless you have a few buyins in front of you. Here for instance, I was very unhappy about calling but I pretty much had too.

For the next hour or so after that I had all fairly easy decisions, I saw that Bobby, an egotistical Persian who I play with often, was playing a bit faster than he should have so I limp reraised him with QQ and he pushed with 99 and I took all his chips. Another time I raised with AQ and hit a Q and took down a 5 way pot on a non-threatening board. I made a few raises preflop and made a CB and took the heads up pot down. All really easy decisions and slowly built up my stack for about 3 hours. I only really had two interesting hands that need some sharing. The first came when after a few limpers, Mr. Englishman (who had rebought and gotten above even, sitting on ~$1200 where as I had ~$1400) raised to $50 on the button. He generally was raising with solid values but those ranged from 99-AA and a few big aces. I had KsQc in the SB. I was wary about calling here because there was a lot of situations I could get in trouble but I felt as though I would easily lay down when i was in trouble because I planned on probe betting if I hit a K or Q and laying to any sort of overt plays by him. You might say that this would be weak play but this type of players would let me know if he had JJ or KK on a Q 7 3 board by folding or raising. After I called, Bobby (who had also rebought) called and so did one other limper. As Bobby was calling, however, he said quietly but still rather audibly "Let's Gamble". So, with a $200 pot the flop came down J 10 7 rainbow. I checked fearing that not only was it very possible Mr. Englishman hit either a set or had an overpair but I couldn't slow him down with a probe bet if he had 10-AA and there was too much behind both of us for me to justify building this pot with just an open ended straight draw out of position. After I checked, Bobby decided to go all in for $310 into the $200+ pot. The other caller folded and after a bit of a pause Mr. Englishman called the $310 and started saying "If you flopped a straight I need the board to pair", and exuberantly told the dealer "Pair the board". Now this was interesting because he knew I was in the hand still and I was interested and contemplating as he was saying this. In fact, although I was not looking at him I could feel his eyes on me trying to get me to fold. So, this led me to believe that he, in fact, did not have a set of JJ or 1010 but had an overpair. You know, the whole strong means weak and weak means strong mantra. Well, it rang true to a tee here. So my situation was this. I had an open straight draw to the nuts with two overcards against two people. One person had an overpair so, at best, only one of my overcards MAY have been live and I very well may have been drawing dead on the overcards if he had KK or AA. Secondly, if he had AA then I would have only 6 outs vs him. Thirdly, if he had QQ or KK and an A or 9 came on the turn it would be unlikely that he would pay too much off as the A would be an overcard and the 9 would put a one card straight on the board. Against Mr. Englishman in the possible sidepot my implied odds were quite low. Now back to the main pot. What in the hell did Bobby have and why did he way overbet the pot before the original raiser made any sort of claim to the flop. I think I can reasonably conclude that Bobby knew Mr. Englishman had a strong hand and most likely an overpair so he wouldn't be playing something like AJ or KJ in such a way so he probably had an over pair beat. He did say let's gamble as he limp/called a raise out of position so he very well could have had connectors such as 89 or J10 both of which had an overpair in bad shape. Personally, I wouldnt have overbet the pot with the nuts on a rainbow board before the Original Raiser could speak but I am not everyone. So by picking that information up, i could see that I most likely needed to hit my straight in order to beat Bobby. So if I was up against Mr. Englishman who would happen to have QQ then even hitting my K would not win the main pot for me. After taking all this into account, I did the pot odds calculation and saw that I had to call $310 to win a pot of ~$830 which would be a little better than 2.6:1. There is a 3:1 chance i make the straight if I saw both turn and river and I felt that I probably would get a check from the Englishman if I called. All of the above info led me to fold. Of course, right out the gate was the Ah followed by the 10h. Bobby indeed had the 89 for the nut flop straight and Mr. Englishman had the KK. But, of course, we don't do results based thinking so I was happy with my analysis and my laydown.

The second hand was a hand that I won. It involved two people besides me who have yet to be mentioned in this blog. One i will call the Sleeping Giant and the other I will call Old Blue. S#G and O#B for short. A little background first, S#G had been at the table since I had gotten there about 4 hours prior to this hand and from what I could gather from table conversation had been there for a long time, possibly bordering on 24 hours. His play was quite unimpressive, the only hand I saw him raise was QQ and when he hit two pair on the turn in the blind with 10 8. He had about $15-1600 when I had gotten to the table and now was at about $1100. He also occasionally fell asleep while in a hand, hence the name. For O#B, I had observed him make an unsophisticated bluff on the other $400 table where an Ace flopped and the preflop raiser showed weakness and he pushed all in only to get called by a ragged Ace behind him. He mucked on the flop without even seeing the cards ran out.

Then this hand occurs. O#B limps UTG and I am in late position with 6s6h and raise to $45. S#G calls on the button, both the blinds fold, and O#G calls as well. The flop comes Ks 9s 5d. O#B checks and I figure that with the image I have I can probably CB here and lots of hands may fold such as 1010 or AQ or even a 9 from a tight player like S #G that I otherwise wouldn't want to see a turn with. Plus I could get a read as to whether my opponents were on a K or a spade draw. Surprisingly, i got called in both spots. So my thinking was that I am done. There is a chance I was up against a spade draw or straight draw but it was very unlikely that I up against two draws. The turn brought the 6c! O#B had about $240 left and S # G had about $8-900. I bet out $ 260 into the $370 pot and got called by S#G as well as by O#B. The manner in which O #B haphazardly called led me to believe he had a spade draw. But at that point it was probably moot as if he hit his spade draw I still might be able to build a bit of side pot with S #G whom I figured to have a made hand, and probably a reasonably strong one at that. The turn brought the beautiful 2d. I pushed all in because not only was the pot $1150+ and S # G only had another $600 or so but with that kind of card if S #G liked his hand on the turn he can't think that this changed anything. He called and slammed his cards down in disgust when i showed my 66 meaning he probably had me beat on the flop with something like AK or maybe even 55?!

Point being that with larger stacks behind CBs with marginal holdings make sense because you haven't committed yourself to the pot as much as you have when you CB on shorter stacks.

Peanut Butter Wolf and an a good article for me and everyone like me

2007-04-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

I didn't play or even think about poker at all today. It wasn't a plan or accident. I just decided to go see a live DJ set and hang out with friends instead of playing. KCRW hosts a once a month gala at the Getty Center entitled "Fridays off the 405" where they get an artist to perform in the museum courtyard from 6-9pm. Tonight was a DJ by the name of Peanut Butter Wolf. I am a fan of his work and also of his label Stones Throw Records .

That was fun and it was cool because I went by myself and just met some cool people. There were quite a few attractive women there that I talked to, so needless to say I am pleased with myself. The set itself was pretty sweet as PB said" since this is an all ages event , I can't play any songs with curse words so I'll just play all old school stuff". That's exactly what he did, most of the set was comprised of rare funky disco and 80s hip hop so the vibe was hitting me good. You know you're rocking when a girl in a wheelchair with a cast on one leg keeps getting up and dancing one footed until she has to either fall or sit back down. That's admirable enthusiasm right there. I can't say that I would have that kind of commitment.

After I left the Getty, I went to my friend Jody's and stayed there drinking with him and his friends. He lives in westwood although he's a through and through Trojan. His brother Josh came into town who is quite an interesting guy and we talked about various topics from film, to YouTube, to pedophilia, to viruses from Cat Shit, to the Prague Revolution, to the subtleties of rural Japanese speaking. All in all, a fulfilling eventful evening for all parties involved.

Now that I am sitting on my couch at home blogging, I am reading a very well stated article from Todd Arnold in Card Player magazine. Its in the newest casino edition from April 11, 2007 with Larry Flynt on the cover. The casino editions come out so quick that the website cannot keep up so I cannot link you to the article as of yet. Its entitled "Unclog Your Brain", and essentially it involves what I am have been trying to do for a while in this blog. He states lots of things he hears not only his students say that are meaningless but tons of commonly occurring "facts" that are heard across a poker table that are, again, meaningless but also negative. These types of comments tend to ruminate among players running bad and lead to negative mindsets that curb favorable results. More on this later, I will update and post a link when Card player finally updates its site.

A day in the Garden

2007-04-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

I went over to Hawaiian Gardens today and while the games weren't that good overall I managed to lose a buyin. I was playing in some marginal situations and making what I thought were good calls and raises but a few of them i got into trouble. One hand I was in the BB with Qd 3c and there was 1 limper and the SB. We saw the $30 flop of Qc 8s 2c. SB checked, I bet $20, the limper called and the SB raised to $80. Now the SB was not a bad player. I really had a feeling that he would not be doing this with a Q bigger kicker or even in fact with two pair. Why check raise in such a small pot with a club draw out there when you can easily assume that no one has any interest in this pot. I didn't put him on a steal by any means but I felt like he had a good hand but it was still behind mine. Simply stated, I didn't think it was a kicker problem. If he had just a Q he would most likely check the turn after I called his $80. In fact, I put him on a combo hand like 8cXc. I didn't think he would fold this type of hand as he only had about $300 to start the hand so I wouldn't want to give him the chance to see both the turn and the river here and instead let him see the turn and miss and give him a chance to fold. So I called the $80 and the limper folded. The turn brough the 7s. He took time and took a long time to bet out $130. He had only $100 behind so I had no fold equity by raising him. I stuck with my read and called him with the intention of calling the last $100 on any river card outside of a club or 8. The river brough the 6s and he put the $100 in and I called. He turned over the 7c8c for 2 pair. So again, my flop read and general read overall was right. If he were not in the blind I could conceivably put him on 6c8c or 7c8c and possibly fold but in the SB he very well could have had Kc8c, 8c4c, or any other combination of 8cXc based on my read.

The second hand also came against the same player. I limped UTG with Ad8d. About three others limped and the SB called and then our villain in the BB makes it $65. I was feeling loosy goosy and i felt like i could easily outplay him because i was sure he had a pair 10s-Qs. Yes it was a bit loose but there was about $40 dead in the pot so I was almost getting 2:1 and I was comfortable against that player. The flop came Ks Jh 3h. He checked kind of meakly. I could have tried to win it right there and represented AK which would have been consistent with limpcalling a nice raise UTG but i thought that he very well may have hit a set of Jacks or was scaried with QQ or 1010 so I would get a few chances to hit my A or i could represent a heart flush. So I checked. The turn brought the 8h. A great card for me as I could represent the heart flush and have outs if called. He bet out a meak $80 or so and I just could feel his two red Queens trying to get through the hand cheaply. So I raised him to $200. He very reluctantly called and was not too please with it either. At this moment, I was 100% sure he had either QhQx or 10h10x and if it didnt come a Q,10 or heart I was moving in for my last $420 on the river. The river brough the horrific Ah. He bets out $100 into the $560 pot. I know my two pair is no good and he has the 2nd nuts. Would he really believe me if i pushed and fold the Qh. i asked him if he beats two pair and he said yes and showed me the Qh before I even folded. I folded and he showed the QdQh and surprisingly said "If you go all in on the river I would have had to fold." I was taken aback a bit by the this but again I credited myself with making a good read and taking the initative on it. But he got bailed out from having to call a huge bet on a flushed over card board by the river Heart.

Commerce to the Rescue

2007-04-12T03:47:00.000-07:00

Finally Commerce rekindled its relationship with me. We were on the fritz for awhile (and no i don't mean the chess engine). I met Rick up there for some mid-to -late night poker action. The first table I sat at seemed fairly tight and there were a few players there that were bickering so I signed up for a table change immediately. I called a $40 raise in a 5 way pot with 33 UTG after limping and the board came 10 8 3 with two spades. A 10 in front of me led with $100 and I raised to $225 before it got back to the original raiser. I feared that by just calling there would be over $400 in the pot so no one with a flush draw will fold to my all in on the turn or if a raise comes from the original raiser it puts too much money in the pot for a draw to get out. The original raiser took a long time and finally folded and the A 10 folded as well. Shortly after that I took my $240 profit from that table and changed tables. The table i went too was fabulous. It had the Armenian guy who's name I don't know but who I play with all the time. I have an incredible history with him as I can read him like a book and he gives me respect so I either value bet him when i have him beat or i bluff him when i don't. He's marginally aggressive too so the pots are of nice size that i take off of him. I usually look to be on a table with him. Also on the table was a semi-regular maniac by the name of Jon. He is the type of player that will call or bet with any sort of holding and makes completely illogical plays. So needless to say that he gets paid off when he calls with bottom pair on the flop and turn and trips up on the river. He is the type of player that can be stuck in the $400 game $3000 or be up $5000 depending on the action and the table. Plus he brings a certain amount of action and unstability himself making those around him much more prone to gamble it up. So this table was set to be great.

My first real hand was getting 9s9c on the button after a tight player raised to $60 in mid position after 2 limpers. I called and so did everyone else in the pot bringing the pot to a 5 way $300. The flop came Ks 10s 9h. It got checked all the way around to me. Now how much to bet? The pot is big but I still have about $600 in my stack from taking down a few medium pots at this table (once trapping Jon with a flush) so I do want action but not too much as this is a draw heavy board. I bet out $175 in the $300 pot because while I was supremely confident I had the best hand I wanted to get called and have a blank come off and then have the hand end. I got one caller directly before the inital raiser and then the raiser folded. So we are heads up in a $650 pot. The turn brings the ugly Qd and he puts me all in for my last $345 ( he had me more than covered). So all I could think about for the first 10 seconds were my posts about sets vs straights. I finally got that pessimism out of my head and settled down to think through the hand. Based on his mannerisms and the hesitancy with which he called the flop I knew he was not slow playing any thing big such as 1010 or QJ. So the question came down to did he have QQ,KK, KJ, KQ, or some draw that contained a J. I canceled out QQ and KK because this seemed like the type of player who would open raise that preflop ESPECIALLY since Jon limped UTG directly in front of him. KQ I obviously was not worried about as he would have 4 outs and it was a definete possibility, probably, the most likely holding in my mind. KJ worried me a little as he very well may have checked this hand on the flop to try and show it down while keeping the pot small but calling because he had top pair with a gutshot in a big pot. I talked to him a little and he said "Naw, not KJ, I wouldn't call 50 preflop with that". I was convinced. So now to figure out if he had a draw containing a J. It really helped that I had the 9s because that would cancel out any pair + flush draw possibilities on the flop. He very well could have had a huge draw like the AsJs. Again, I didn't see this type of player as calling the raise preflop from early position with a suited J like Js8s so if he did have a spade draw with a J it would have been AsJs. I again I had the 9s and I had ruled him out as having QJ so QsJs is out as well and since the Ks and 10s were on board those weren't candidates either. So it boiled down to three hands in my mind. Either KQ, AsJs, or AsQs. I was killing KQ to only 4 outs, I had 10 outs on AsJs and I was ahead of AsQs although he had 9 outs to make a flush or straight that didnt pair the board. I was beating 2 out of 3 of those hands and the third I was a 3:1 dog. The pot was $650 when he put me allin meaning I had to call $345 to win $995 so I was getting a little less than 3:1. Despite the scare card I opted to call and the 4c on the river didn't help him as he mucked to my set of 9s. I did get derided a little from that player and some at the table for taking so long with a seemingly easy decision but I didn't think it was as easy as it was made out to be.

A disappointing hand occurred as well. Tony the really annoying tight ass came to sit at our table and this happened. I was in middle position and it was folded to me and I raised to $40 with 88, there was one caller behind me and then Tony on the button pushed all in for his buyin of $400. Jon directly behind him immediately pushed in his rack containing about $280 and then it came back to me. Tony is super tight and there is no way I would play this with him even though I was fairly sure I was killing Jon. I folded and the Tony showed KK. Jon had Ah8h. The board came A 8 3. ! Brick Brick on the turn and river. Had I just limped and Tony made a sensible raise that was just called by Jon I would have taken all of both of their money with the case 8 on the flop. Not to say I don't like the raise with 88 there, I like to stick to the mantra of "if you are first into the pot in middle position or farther then it should be for a raise." If there are limpers ahead of you that changes the story a bit, you don't have to raise and if you are in early position you can raise or limp at your leisure.

Anyway, that being said, the big pot came about 45 minutes later. Jason, the ex-marine Korean had joined our table after Jon busted and went to another table. Jason plays a fairly straight forward game and while tends to overbet some hands does not take precaution to add any disguise to his play. I like playing with Jason if I have some money behind as my decisions are not hard. So this pot starts with Jason in the BB and me UTG +1. UTG folds and I have 88 again. I decide to limp here because the table has gotten a bit more passive in the last 20-30 minutes so I figured I would have much less fold equity then I did earlier when I raised with 88. Also, Tony returned to the table after missing his blind and posted $15 in the cutoff so there was more money in the pot and i didn't want to open myself up with 88 in early position. So after I limped 5 others limped and the SB completed the $10 bet. Jason in the BB raised to $100 total. Given the amount of money already in the pot, my comfort level with Jason, the apparent weakness of the hands behind me, and the very compelling feeling I was getting that Jason had AK coupled to cause me to call teh $100. Surprisingly, the guy who limped behind me called the $100, the guy after him went all in for $105 total, Tony called the $105 and the SB completed the $105 saying those beautiful and tragic words "pot odds". So all of a sudden we have a 6 way pot with $640 in the middle. I have the all the players in this hand covered with the 2nd biggest stack being Tony who has around $500. I had about $1200. The board comes 772 rainbow. SB checks and surprisingly Jason checks. Now I am 100% positive that he has AK and I am still surprised he didnt ship his last $250 in with two big overs given the pots size. I go allin as the original raiser has shown weakness and i was fairly certain no one had an over pair to this board. I told myself that if someone hit a 7, 22, or 99 I was willing to pay them as I play for big pots and i found myself smack dab in the middle of one with a pretty good hand based on my feel of the table. As soon as I went allin, Tony starting moaning how i didn't have any of that and I simply responded that "if you don't think so then im stealing the pot". The limper behind me folded and Tony begrudgingly folded as well and the SB folded and Jason called off his last $250 bitching and moaning. The board came 7 4 and he missed his AK and my 88 held up for 7s full of 8s. The allin $105 mucked and I raked the $1100
+ pot. Tony apparently showed his neighbor 99 before he folded. What a pussy.

After that I didnt really play any hands for about 20 minutes until i got an AdKh and raised and got the board Kd 3d 7d. I got about $275 off of QhQd before he folded to my allin on the turn. If I knew he was that dead I would have played it a bit slower but I only left him with another $200. After that I table changed primarily because I had taken almost all of the money off the table. There were about 4 or 5 people with less than $250 and one tight player with about $900. I didn't feel like going rat hunting and trying to clean up all the little ones so I decided to chip up my profit in whites and table change to Rick's table.

While there I saw Rick make an aggregious play. After three people limped into the pot he was in the BB with AdQd and raised to $60 total. Only the button called. Rick had informed me earlier that this player was pretty tight, although I had witnessed no first hand evidence to say either way. So they saw the heads up flop of As Kd 9c with about $140 in the pot. Rick checks. The button bets $100 and Rick calls. The turn brings the 8s. Rick checks again and the button then racks up and sends it in with $420 into the $340 pot. Rick gets up and does a little zen walk in the 5 feet of personal space he has and finally folds his AdQd face up. In reply the "tight player" lays his 56 off on the table. This begs the question, what in the hell was Rick doing? Was he trapping and then lost his nerve? Did he start seeing ghosts? Was he too mesmerized by his apparenty characterization of the player that he wouldn't bet into him even though he had taken the lead in the hand and flopped top pair, best possible kicker and a somewhat unthreatening board. My only guess is that he was trapping and then lost his nerve. Which brings up a very important nugget of wisdom that I have heard through the grapevine. If you are going to INDUCE a bluff then you have to be ready and willing to pay off the bluff bets. Not everyone is willing to bluff the same size as they value bet so they very well bet BIG in order for you to fold. So if you start off a hand checking in the effort of check/calling then check/call the whole way. Don't start seeing ghosts just because the bets get big.

As for me, I ended the session with a nice tidy profit and I plan on riding the high tomorrow at Hawaiian Gardens if I can get up at a reasonable hour. 5pm has been my rising time for the past two days and I think a little earlier would be better.

Comments?

2007-04-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

No comments? Come on post comments people, don't make me look like I have less friends and/or blog stalkers than I really do!

Wow

2007-04-11T04:05:00.000-07:00

I saw some ridiculous hands tonite. I'll just leave it at that because most of my hands were uneventful. So the chip leader at the table ($2500+) raises to 45, a late position player calls, the BB makes it $145 the original raiser calls and the late position player calls. I don't really know much about these players because I have only been at the table 15 minutes or so. Flop comes Jc 6s 3h. BB bets $150, original raiser instantly says $300 and BB goes all in for $260 more for a total of $560. Late position player folds in between. Raiser grimaces but calls. Turn comes 7h and river comes 5h for a Jc 6s 3h 7h 5h board and BB doesn't turn over because Original raiser says ship it and turns over Jh 8h to rake the almost $1600 pot.

Next big hand. Its limped around, maybe 5-6 players. Flop comes 4c 5c 7d. SB who is the 2nd biggest chip stack with a little more than $1900 bets $60 which is about the pot. One middle position player calls and the button (our Jh8h player) raises it $250 more for a total of $310. The SB then raises it $500 on top for a total of $810. The button then goes all in for $3000. Actually, SB only has about $1100 remaining. He thinks for a long time and finally calls. Button turns over his 3d 6d before the cards come out and turn comes Jd and the river comes the 4d. SB turns over his 44 for quads. After his reraise gets pushed on by the only other big stack at the table I think I can probably lay down bottom set on that board. He claims he was committed AND he was getting odds. But this just is another example of people misusing math and poker terms to justify bad calls. When the Button pushes all in the small blind has to call $1100 more. The pot is massive with $810 from each, $60 from the folded flop caller, and $60 preflop. So he has to call $1100 to win $2030. Not even 2:1. But yet if he is up against a set, he has one out and needless to say is not getting his necessary 25:1 to odds. If he is up against a straight then he is not getting his necessary 3:1 odds. I suppose on the outer realm of possibility he could have reasoned that the button had a two pair and was overplaying it after seeing the above hand. All draws wouldn't make sense as even something like Ac7c or 6c7c would just call the $500 reraise. I can definetly understand raising $250 more with either the Ac7c or 6c7c but there would be very little point in rerereraising allin with it once somone has said they have a monster. So he has to think he is up against either 55, 77, 36, or 68 with the way the action has built up. Again you can factor in a very small probability that he would be up against 57. But yet he still calls and gets lucky.

So in both of these cases, the utter wrong decision got grossly paid off.
Luckily for me I had AA in the small blind when a late position player raises to $45 and mister Jh8h reraises to $145 so I go allin for $305 and raiser goes all in for $315 so of course Jh8h says I have to call with JJ. Its AA vs KK vs JJ. Flop comes A 10c 4c. Turn comes 7c. So Now i have to sweat because im up against KsKc. Thankfully it comes a spade on the river and I triple up. Outside of that, however, very little good came out of the night as Jh8h went broke about an hour later going from about $3000 to $0 in the course of 90 minutes and so did the action. So when ever i did get a decent to good hand I only won small pots and all my bluffs got called. Outside of the bluffing I think I played well, I played very tight in the beginning but i guess I can't take too much credit for that as the table was very actiony with lots of preflop raising and reraising so I wouldn't have a chance to come in.

The more I think about it, i could be considered an action junkie. Meaning as long as there is action I am happy. I am perfectly content sitting and playing no hands for 2 hours if there is raising and action around me. But when the table dies down and no one is playing a hand, all of a sudden J9off in late position becomes a raising hand. I think I have programmed myself to play big pot poker so it seems nonsensical to play 45 minutes of $5-$10 NLHE limping and seeing who can hit on a $30 pot first. I cannot tell if this means I would be good at tournaments or not. In the opening rounds it would be quite a bit of small pots so I could get in trouble there but as the blinds and antes escalate i think I might have a much better handle on the situation as long as the structure allows for some fold equity. Im not sure, frankly, I have never been in that situation to test it out. I am planning on playing at least one or two of the Stars and Stripes tournaments at the Bike coming up because they are pretty cheap. I might even play the O8 tournament because its only $100! Here's the schedule STARS AND STRIPES

STOP, GOD DAMMIT STOP!!!

2007-04-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

ERG!!! For the 5th or 6th time I got into the made straight vs set situation and I lost again. It doesn't matter which side i am on, if I have the straight the board pairs, if i have the set it comes offsuit 2 3 on the turn and river. This time a mid position player raises to 40 and the guy right behind him calls, I call with Js8s in the cutoff and we see it 3 handed. The board comes Qc 9h 10h. Raiser checks, second guy bets 140 into the about 130 pot so I know he is strong but scared of the hearts. Based on how I have seen strong nut hands in the past I am almost positive he doesnt have KJ but I was willng to go broke against that if he did because I only had 400 behind. So I raised to 320 to get value and he went all in and I called. Turn comes 2c and of course the river comes Qd.

I was only there for 45 minutes. Outside of that debacle i made a decent play with a blocking bet earlier. I had 6c7c in the SB and it was limped around. 4 of us saw the flop of 4h 5h Jc. It got checked to the guy in position who bet 35. I called and the other two folded. The turn brough the Qs. I figured he had either a J or a flush draw so I most likely wouldnt have gotten raised. I decided to do a blocking bet and bet 40 into the 110 pot. He was taken aback and just called. The turn brough the 3c giving me the nuts. The pot was 190 and i bet 120. He didnt call so either he had a weak J or a flush draw. The blocking bet worked but unfortunately he didnt have a strong enough hand to call. Other than that I reraised someone with QQ and took it down preflop.

BLAHHHHHHHHA

What to Say....What to Say...

2007-04-08T04:34:00.000-07:00

Went to Commerce tonite with one buyin and started on an absolutely great table. There were tons of pots that were raised with 6 people going to flop. I never made any big hands during this period, just raised with Queens and when it got to the flop there was 300 in the pot and it was 10 high. A 10 got it all in against me and i won. I played quite conservatively on this table for about 4 hours as there was very stealing to be done with so many people in the pot. I was running well for a while and got up to about $1300 and then I made a total gambling call. A decent player raises to $45 in UTG or UTG +1 and a few people call infront of me, I have 10d 5d on the button and I call as well. There are 5 total going to the flop. The board comes 7d 4d 5c. The original raiser goes all in for $435 and it gets to me. Now, obviously this massive overbet is weird. I have played with this asian guy a bunch and he does this move with overpairs and with Big Aces such as AQ or AK if he raises them preflop. He likes to overplay his AK alot. So I wasn't getting pot odds expressly as I would have to call $435 to win ~$670 giving me odds of only about 1.5:1 but against AK I am a nice sized favorite (even against AdKd I am a 51%-49% favorite) and against anyover pair except 10s I am essentially 50-50 depending on if the overpair contains one of my diamonds or not. So it is a pretty break even situation as there was only one person behind me and I made sure to check his body language to see if he liked that flop at all before calling. I did call and it came 7 A with no diamonds and he had 9h 9s that held up. Again, not too bad of a call but it was a gambling situation and I felt i was running good at that point. Shortly after the table died down a little and wasnt as actiony as it had been because a few of the juicier players left. I managed to make a one card straight flush on a board of 6d 7d 9d 10d. I was on the button with 6h 8d. When an early position player bet out $60 into a $140 pot the guy to my immediate right claimed to fold the Ad after the hand. He was a crotchety older bitchy gentleman and I somewhat believed him though I would never subscribe to his philosophy. I was able to get a crying call on the river for $225 from a the Kd. Since the action died down a bit I became a bit more aggressive and tried to steal some pots and that didnt work out so well and after about 45 minutes of some missed pots and a few badly bet hands I was down to about $600. Then the 99 player from before raises to $40 UTG and the maniac on the table calls him. I have AsAh and I make it $120 because I am almost positive UTG has a pair but maniac has a well justified reputation of making ridiculous hands and obscure two pairs and I didnt want him to be in there too cheaply even though I was hoping to trap UTG. Both called and we saw the $360 flop come down Q J 7 rainbow. UTG checks quickly and I can see he is uninterested so it missed him and Maniac goes all in for $175. There is an outside chance UTG may have had something like AQ or AJ so I take a few seconds and call the $175 without raising to isolate and UTG folds 88 face up. Turn comes a 10 and river comes a 6 and maniac turns over the K 9 for the second nuts gutshot. 2 hands later I get my last $200 or so in with K9 against maniac's A9 on a 9 high board and he slowrolls me to boot! Once we get it all in on te 9d 4c 2d board, I say "I just have a 9" and he doesn't respond. And then when the 6d comes on the turn i say "Shit, you got me" and he responds "No you have the winner." The Js comes on the river and I turn over the K9 and then he triumphantly turns over the A9. Well if i just have a 9 and he has A9 how in the hell could I possibly have the winner? A good question indeed.

I don't regret much about how I played tonite. I did have one mistakenly played hand. After two limpers and the SB completing I raised to $55 with JsJc out of the BB. The limpers called and the SB folded. The $170 flop came down Ah 10h 7s. I checked because a woman called and the maniac called so i very well though the woman had some sort of ragged A and the manaic had the button and very well would have put it all in with 89 or anything if i bet. Both checked behind me. The turn brought an offsuit 9. I checked because I showed weakness on the flop and i was afraid that if i bet here I would be taken off it by an astute move from the maniac. I had most likely the best hand if no one had an Ace (and no one bet the Ace) but i also had a gutshot now. I had planned to check/call this card because of my position and the texture of the board but it went check check. The river brought an offsuit Q. And again it went checked all around and I turned over my JJ. Button maniac mucked and the woman showed Qc8c. She very well may have called with her open end on the turn if i bet so the result would have been bad for me but at least I would have been putting more money in with the best hand. I did not want to be bet out if i did bet the turn. Most likely i would have won the pot if I CB the flop but when there is more than 2 people in the pot and an A comes in a raised pot its usually -EV to CB out of position with no real draw. Its true that I could have value bet any broadway gutshots or heart flush draws to protect but that was easily counterbalanced by the possibility of the Aces hitting someone. The turn was a different story as the initial raiser (me) showed weakness on the Ace and those in position did not make a move at the pot.

I didn't lose a lot on the hand, only my initial $55, so I'm not beating myself over it. But every little to medium pot counts. If you can up your medium sized pot takedowns but 1-2 an hour that could be an extra $80-$150 an hour not too mention you could utilize it for cannon fodder in the big pots. That's precisely what I was doing in the 10d 5d hand ala Doyle's advice in Super System. The little pots are great but the living is made on the big pots.

Oy, well that was fun

2007-04-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

2:30am. I decide to go to Commerce with 1 buyin and play. I am not tired or restless or in any state that would prohibit me from playing as this is my prime time. I get there, sit down at a nice table, get a bunch of limping hands 78s, 89s, J10 on the button, A4s. Make it one round and then on the 10th hand in my small blind I get two Red Kings. One EP limps, the button makes it 35 I raise to about 80 because I am down to about 260 at this point and I dont want to lose him. EP folds, button goes all in, I call and he has Aces. It comes 10 high and I call it a night.

Exciting? Yes I know.

Full tilt Commercials

2007-04-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone has seen the new line of full tilt commercials (all 9000+ of them) but i really like them. First of all, they are all in black and white so they've got a great film noir sense about them. Secondly, they really put a sense distinction on poker and emphasize not only the strategic and competitive aspects of the game but it also brings a sense of pristine beauty. If only life imitated art.

Chicago and the beginnings of April

2007-04-06T17:26:00.000-07:00

From Friday until Tuesday, I was in Chicago primarily for my grandfather's 80th birthday. He had a nice catered party at my aunt Sherrie's house in Lake Forest, Illinois. I saw some relatives and family friends that apparently I had met when I was a baby. I must be getting senile because for the life of me I couldn't remember most of them. Unfortunately, my grandmother's Alzheimers has gotten really bad and now she can't walk and is confined to a wheelchair. It was quite disturbing to see how drastic of a change there was since the last time I saw her in July of 2006. It was semi-noticable at that point in time but at least she was able to move about and you could have a conversation with her. I am just hoping I will be able to see her again.

So enough depression. I got back and played at Hawaiian Gardens on Wednesday and Thursday as I said I would in the last post. Wednesday sucked. I was at a table and I got almost no hands. Literally, I think my best starting hand was JJ once and AK twice and once I got AK allin preflop with 6 2 and lost. Now for those of you who know me, know that I can't stand people who bitch about not getting cards so I won't give you the song and dance but there were a few other factors that contributed to my losing session. The table I was at was decent. For the first half of the time there were two juicy actions guys there and the rest were tight grinders so all I had to do was aim for the juicies and stay out of big pots with the nuthuts (translation: pussies who play the nuts only). Well, the first big pot i played worked out badly. I was in the cutoff and there were two new players who posted the BB, 1 SB, and one regular BB before the hand started. One player limped in front of me and I had AsQc. Now there is essentially $45 in dead money in there as only 1 of those $10 players chose to be in this pot so I raised for value/isolation to $65 and the BB called as well as the limper. I really wanted heads up but at least I had position with a very playable hand. The flop came down Kc Qd 5s. Both players checked to me. Now generally I would continuation bet here but for some reason I just felt as though a King was floating out there. And if I was seeing ghosts and they had something like 99 and 77 then seeing a free card was probably not too detrimental . Point being, I really didn't want to bet myself out of this $220 pot . So we all checked. The turn brought the Jd. Not really the best card in the world because something like QJ, 9 10, or A 10 just outran me but it did give me an obvious gutshot to the broadway nuts. BB checked and the other player in the pot bet out $100. Now I was unhappy about this as I was getting 3:1 which is a pretty good price for second pair, top kicker, overcard, and nut gutshot. The problem is I had no idea where this guy was. My pansy check and lack of continuation bet put me in the dark. I reluctantly called and the BB folded. The pot is now $420 and the river brough the Ah. As soon as that card came off, I didn't like it. The villain bets out $200 into the $420 pot and again I was getting 3:1 to call with top and 3rd pair. I made a horrible crying call and he turns over the Ad10d for the nuts on the turn with the royal flush nut redraw. If i make a standard CB on the flop WITH THE BEST HAND at that point he most likely would not have called with his gutshot. So again, bad flop check.

That was the only "interesting" hand that night. The rest of the time was spent trying to steal pots against the nuthuts with incredulous disappointment. As I mentioned earlier the best starting hand i got was JJ and I saw guys routinely limping in with AA, KK, QQ, etc... One nuthut limped in with QQs three times in one hour and KK twice that night. Every time he either went to the flop in an unraised pot or limp/reraised someone. One guy limped with KK and AA and made a river set on both of them. When he made the KKK set he didnt bet it because he was afraid his opponent in the hand made a ridiculous straight. I remembered that so when I got into a hand with him on a K J 10 6 A board he called me on the river with his AA. Of course, I had nothing.

The moral of the story is that once the juicies got busted we were eternally stuck 7 handed as all 4 of the $500 games that were running were short and I couldn't change tables. I was stuck with all tighties, I was stuck, and I wasn't making any hands. An absolutely horrible situation. Numerous things can be said here. I could and should have ended the bleeding once the juices got busted. Took whatever I had left and got up and went to a $300 game for a while until I could have gotten into a $500. I could/should have done something to get out of that game. Its not as if I was building an image because I wasn't winning any decent sized pots and turning over a loose holding. Every decent to big sized pot I was in I was leading in the betting and getting called and my opponent turning over some ridiculous monster. So by all logic I had a good hand and was getting coolered. At least it could have appeared that way in the minds of the others at the table. So even if I hit a big hand there would be no guarantee that I would get paid off unless someone else had a monster. I was losing against the worst types of opponents with no real "redraw" on winning it back. Take note: Your opponents are the most important factor in the game outside of yourself. The cards are irrelevent.

Thursday, on the other hand, was entirely my fault. I again met Rick at Hawaiian Gardens. He said he didn't like it the first time but he suggested we go back there. I knew he couldn't stay away from the action. I was playing great for the first 2 hours or so. Then this kind of arrogant cat sits down and just goes haywire. Making pretty aggressive and what i consider quite bad moves. Reraising big preflop with AJ and AQ. The problem is, he was hitting like a brickhouse. He would raise big preflop with 8 10. The flop would come J 9 x, someone would lead strong into him. He would reraise and the lead bettor would go all in and the villain calls and hits the Q on the river. Stuff like that makes you go insance. I don't believe in fate or any bullshit like that ESPECIALLY when it comes to poker but its a bit dizzying when a guy plays extra fast with marginal hands and hits. He was there for maybe an hour and he went from $500 to $2500 easily. He hit a gutshot on me and took $400. I learned he is generally a $300 table player and it showed with his lack of regard for his own chip safety. I definetly admire and try to model myself after the aggressive unpredictable type of player but this guy was aggressive but predictable. I could nail him down to his hand most of the time (the gutshot was an obvious exception). One hand he limped UTG and I was in late position with 10 10 and I raised it to $45 and the SB called and he made it $145. I called because I knew he had a big Ace and the SB called as well. The flop comes A Q J and he goes all in for $1200. Both of us fold and he shows the AQ and triumphantly says "I knew I had the best hand". Good fucking read, Sherlock. The best part is I think he meant preflop and on the flop. I was licking my chops for this guy the whole time but as soon as he hit about $2500 his asshole tightened up to nothing an he didnt play a hand for another 45 minutes until he got up and left. Another commonality among players. Lots of them tighten up so much when they become a big stack because they are afraid of booking a loss especially when they have such an advantage. Logically it would make sense to keep pressing when you have that advantage so as to make the most out of it. In fact, Barry Greenstein mentions something to this effect in ACE ON THE RIVER. He says to be a winning player it is absolutely essential to keep your opponents on the run, don't let up when you reach an advantageous position. Since I have a huge gay crush on Greenstein and I really agree with almost all of his logical arguments I also subscribe to this philosophy. It got me into trouble on Thursday though.

After the lucky $300 player went on his mad streak, the table got really actiony and I was able to score big and in the next 3-4 hours I was up to a nice $2200 stack after two buyins. So I was sitting on a $1200 profit. I was planning on leaving about 30 minutes after I counted. I felt comfortable about the table and I wasn't scared of anyone. In that 30 minutes, I lost about $1300 making three marginal calls. One to a slowplayed AA, the second to a runner runner backdoor straight vs my top pair and lastly losing $500+ by calling with top and 3rd pair vs top set in an oddly played hand. This put me on a bit of tilt and from there on out i was playing a bit looser than my standards and not getting very much luck. For instance, I bet with 6c7c on a board of 6 4 9d 3d and got called and the offsuit 5 came on the river giving me the straight. I bet $100 and a tighty on the table raised me to $200. The pot was only about $300 so I was a bit annoyed that I got 2nd nutted to his nuts but I called anyway as I felt that there might have been some chance he had a set, two pair, or we were chopping but no he had 7 8 of course. I guess I can take a little pride in the fact that someone has to make weird hands or play them weirdly in order to get paid off by me. But I ended up going broke and leaving -$1000 instead of +$1200. Very disconcerting. I can't tell if there needs to be some happy medium between Greenstein's approach and the semi-ratholing approach of many people I know who leave when they get up $1000 or some other predetermined number. Obviously, the tilting was of major importance as well.

I'll probably be going to Commerce tonight. So maybe that will be a little better for me. Also, i talked to Greg and we are interested in renting a house for June in Vegas for the WSOP. Ideally, I would like to find 3-4 guys to get a 3-4 bedroom house. He said he would be back from Hawaii May 29th or so and could go straight to vegas if need be. He will be there for 6weeks shooting for his lead role in Dante's Cove.

On a brigher note, I just got back from the dentist's office and I got the cute little dental hygenist's number. I think she's Mexican so I know Arnulfo is happy. :)

In the Garden(s) of Eden

2007-03-29T23:08:00.000-07:00

I met Rick at Hawaiian Gardens today in the afternoon. I usually dont play afternoon sessions mostly because I am just waking up but I find that people tend to play a bit "better" during the day. Well, that's a bit of a moot point at Hawaiian Gardens. HG can sometimes be more action than Commerce depending on the table. I can't count the number of times we had 7+ people to a flop today. Despite this surprising fact I had only 1 (!!) bad beat. That got evened out by my getting lucky once. I got lucky when i raised with JJ out of the BB and got called by only the UTG limper. The flop came K J 10 with two diamonds, I bet big, he raised all in and I called. The board came 9 Q and he turned over Q9. I went runner runner to chop while still having all my boat outs. When I got bad beat I got it all in on a board of 6 9 10 2 with 69 out of the small blind and surprisingly got called by a J 9. Of course the river was not a J but a 10 to counterfeit me and he beat me with a higher KICKER and not a higher two pair. That hurt a bit but i was running good the whole day and making some pretty decent hands while getting paid off. I essentially had no tough decisions and stayed 5 hours and walked out up $2000+. That's the type of poker I like.

Since I am leaving for Chicago tomorrow morning for 5 days I will not be playing any serious poker and most likely not blogging until next week. But when I get back, I definetly will be heading back out to HG which is a bit of a drive for me (30 minutes with no traffic, 1hr 15 minutes today with traffic). Now that the upcurve seems to be making a realistic comeback I can close the month of March on a high note. While I am currently in the red for 2007 its not that much. Only about $5000. So my goal is to have an awesome April and get back even for the year and maybe squeak my way into the black before may. I want to have a stellar May in LA before I go out to vegas for the WSOP for a month or so.

I play on playing a few of the Stars and Stripes events at the Bike coming up in mid april because they are relatively cheap and i want to work on my tournament game a bit before the WSOP.

More on that next week when I get back.

My Bad

2007-03-29T03:24:00.000-07:00

So this was pretty much all me who screwed up this session. I started out playing extremely tight. Which worked for a while because i doubled up when i turned a straight and then stole a few pots. My image was squeaky tight and I ran a three bullet bluff on a guy that ended up not working. From there it was still fine because I was still up about $100 or so. Then I made a big hand where i flopped top and bottom against top pair with a big kicker and again doubled up. This put me to about $1100. A pretty good sum for only about 3 hours into the session. Then two hands later i call a small raise with 7d8d and the flop comes Ad Jd 2d in a 5 way pot. We eventually get it all in on the turn when the 5c comes out and of course he was trapping with Kd Qd. I lost $650 on that pot. :(:( !! After that I pretty much went on tilt. I tried to power poker a few pots and wasn't able too as someone with a flush draw went all in. I knew he was weak but he was probably stronger than me as I had no pair or even an Ace. So i had to fold. Then when i got down to $180 I limped with 10 8 and the so did 5 others giving a 6 way pot that came down 6 7 8 rainbow. One guy bet 30 and again, I knew he couldn't call my allin. The problem was the texture of the board, the fact that so many limped in and there were still 3 behind me. Tilt came in again and I went all in and prayed no one called and I could take down the $100 or so and start rebuilding. Even if i got called by something like 6 7 or 7 8 I could win with a 9 or 10. One guy called and the turn came a 10 which gave me some hope. The river 3, though, made his flopped 4 5 straight just a bit longer. This still may be the tilt talking but I really don't respect flopping the nuts as a blind monkey can play it. Also, I am starting to hate taking the lead in betting without an absolute monster. So many people call that you can never be comfortable with your holding, even in No-Limit. I think I would shoot myself if i played limit. At this point in time I think I may be too tempermental for that type of betting structure. I sure hope that, again, this is the tilt talking.

Blah

2007-03-28T03:12:00.000-07:00

So tonight I felt as though I played moderately well. I made two mistakes (that I can immediately tell were mistakes) and thats about it. I potcommited myself by raising preflop with 78s and making a contination bet after flop a gutshot on a 5 high board. When someone moved in with Jacks I was getting over 4 to 1 to call and my reasoning was that since the board had two diamonds there was a chance he could very well have had two diamonds and overcards in which case I could have had 7 outs. Even by that logic its a bad to marginal at best call, the main reason I called is because I think it would have really looked bad if I built a 300+ pot and couldnt call 80 on a 5 high board. But in the end all i did was waste another 80. The second mistake I made was not pulling the trigger and trusting my read. I had A 5 on the button and the J 7 4 rainbow flop was checked around, the 5 came on the turn and this kid bet out. I called as I was about 90% sure he had just a 6 and was betting on the draw. The river brought the 6 and he checked. I checked and he did turn over the K 6. I had the right read but I didn't make the necessary bet to get him off the 6 on the river. All in all, the hand was a bit weird. So those were my two mistakes.
The 7 8 hand got me short kind of early on and I had to struggle and steal some limp blinds to get back up to about 160 or so and then got it all in preflop with Korean Mike (a Commerce staple) with Ad 4d. He said he had AJ but he was moving fast the last hour or so and kept telling me how he wanted to double me up by going after my short stack. But anyway, he said he had Ace high before the flop of Qd 7d 4c and after the Kh and the Qs came he mucked his hand, so I believe AJ. That table broke two hands after the A5 misstep on my part, so I went to a new table. My first hand sitting on the new table, two people limp in and I get Kh Kd in the cutoff and raise to $45. Dudley (another Commerce regular) asks how much I have and if i want to gamble. I replied, "It depends, what do you have?" Fully trying to emulate weakness, apparently it worked becuase he went all in and I called. He turned over AcKc. So, naturally, I was happy. Of course, as the dealer opens the door card its the Ah. Then just so I wasnt to feel like I had a chance the board came Ah 4c 7c giving Dudley top pair, top kicker and the nut flush draw. We're not done yet. The turn brings the As. Now I am drawing dead to win the pot as the case Ks would give him the higher boat but interestingly enough I case Ad brings a bad beat jackpot so we are all yelling Ace. No, just the 7c to bring the nut flush to improve his unbeatable trip Aces to an unbeatable Ace high flush.

Whatev, I'm still postive.

Fuckers.

A Small Hiccup

2007-03-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

So the upcurve is still on its way up but i hit a blip today. I was at the 400 restriced buyin at commerce (my most often played game and therefore my most comfortable game) and I was just card dead. The best hands I saw were AQoff UTG and AQsuited in early position. That's it. The only "significant" pot I won was calling with 10h4h on the button after UTG opened for 30 and two callers before me. Flop came 5 6h 7h and it got checked to me and I bet out 75 into the 130 pot and got no callers. Other than that I pretty much got blinded off because not only was I playing tight but I had nothing to work with. This is one of the pitfalls of the short buyin game, you have to gamble early (much like a rebuy tournament) to get some working chips and I couldnt seem to do that. In fact, my only real regret on the whole night is only a semi-regret. Recently, I have noticed that I have a love fetish with suited connectors and I tend to play them out of position for raises too often, so I vowed to stop calling raises out of position without a solid read on the raiser. So, of course, a new guy raises to 40 two before the button and there is one caller before me and I have 8d9d in the small blind. I reluctantly fold and the flop comes K 9 9 with two clubs. A nice CB comes from the raiser and gets called. Then the 9h comes on the turn. The raiser ended up having a nice pair for a boat or the king because he checked the turn and bet the river and got no call. So i guess i can't rely on results oriented thinking due to my new resolution.

Tomorrow will be better.

On another note, I have noticed that when I try to put myself in a positive mood its not as genuine feeling as I would like. So I am trying a little experiment. A lot of times when I play I start the day off by loafing around the apt for a few hours and really doing nothing until I go play. Sometimes I have a restless/lethargic feeling when I play. My hypothesis is that if i can occupy my day preceding playing somehow and achieve some sort of accomplishment, however small it may be, it will improve my playing outlook and overall mood. This includes just running necessary errands, doing laundry, cleaning the house, cooking, or some sort of physical activity such as Basketball or weightlifting. As a psychology major, I always read about therapies for depression that involved small victory steps each day and I could logically make the connection but it seemed very hard to empathize with. Now that i am trying it myself, I feel as though its not as much touchy-feeling bullshit as I thought.

Further Results Pending.

The start of the UpCurve

2007-03-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be fitting to start this new blog on a positive note. For those of you not in the know, the last 5 weeks have been the worst continuous period in my poker career and for a while it was start to bleed over into my everyday life. Everything that could go wrong did, the cards, the reads, the situations, the mindset, the emotions, and finally the confidence. But fear not intrepid readers, last night I formulated a plan (with some assistance). I took it upon myself to not only play well (which is a primary goal in all my endeavors, duh) but to maintain a positive mindset and persist with it no matter what happened. I did, and I was able to play very well and turn a nice profit to the tune of what I am used to.
You have to understand that throughout my life I always look for weakness and how to exploit it in numerous activities. So it's only natural that I would be able to use this on the felt to a great advantage. But recently, I have been finding so much weakness that I am quite literally licking my chops to get into hands. Well, for one reason or another my impulse control has been severly lacking and I start making moves and going after weakies with essentially no hand. Sometimes it would work but most of the time I would get in trouble when a few people would make brave calls with marginal hands. Such is life when you are afflicted with the "run over the table" virus. Thankfully, it's curable. I didn't try to run over the table, I tried to refrain from being too judgemental in my mind (thus keeping emotions out of the fray), and just focused on the job(s) at hand. It worked!

Now the point of order is to rebuild from the past month. As a professional poker player or semi-professional, I usually take a chunk of my winnings and put it into my bank account and use the rest to supplement my playing bankroll. Well, at least for the next few wins I will have to forego the personal cuts and really replenish the bankroll. Due to the past 5 weeks and some debatable money management decisions, I am still skating on moderately thin ice for the game I play. I play almost exclusively 5 10 No Limit Hold'em in Los Angeles area Casinos. Commerce, Hollywood Park, The Bicycle, Hawaiian Gardens, etc... These games range from a 400 restricted buyin game to a 500 minimum unrestricted max game. So depending on the game I may need 400 or 1600 to feel comfortable. I found (to my great displeasure) that I was quite unable to take the 200 game at Commerce (2-5 blinds) as seriously not only because of the continual short stack feeling I had at the lack of money on the table but also at the seriously confined structure of a two street betting game. Implied odds for the most part vanish. The same is true in the 400 game as both games sport a 40X BB structure but for some reason the 400 game feels much more comforting because there is so much money on the table. It could just be numerous soft spots in the 400 game that make it much more worthwhile to play. Or it could be the naive fearlessness of the 200 players who will raise with trouble hands like QJoff in a multiway pot and push it through when they hit a Jack like they hit top set. Again, based on the structure this is not entirely a bad idea but as poker thinking in general goes, its dry, predictable, unimaginable, and to me an utterly disgusting way to play.

Ooops. I was supposed to stay postive. Well, let's just say that low stakes games with little room for maneuverability are not for me.

I'll leave it at that and hope that I can continue to rebound.

Danyul