Shot Takers Anonymous

2007 - Year In Review

2007-12-27T20:55:00.000-08:00

Wow, I haven't posted anything on this blog in over a year. Writing a blog about something you do everyday, even though you may like it a lot, can quickly become tedious. There is also an issue of not wanting to educate my opponents, especially as the games have gotten somewhat tougher since the UIGEA. I do, however, think that posting about my hands, in the absence of being able to discuss them with people who's opinions I trust and respect, really helps me with my play, so when I am up for it I will post hands and/or thoughts from time to time.

The past year has been incredibly trying, both in life and in poker.

I lost two of my six siblings months apart after having been out of contact with them for more than ten years. Watching a loved one die is not something you get over quickly, and though it happened in June it's still as though I was in that hospital room just hours ago. It may or may not be related, but after shaving my head at least once a week for about 12 years straight, I decided to let it grow out so I could actually have a functional haircut and discovered I am already going grey. I'm 27 ferfucksakes.

On the poker side it was an ok year. There were some extended periods of running bad which led to bad play and I don't feel I've grown much as a player, but I can only believe that 2008, in both life and poker, will be a better year.

One thing that has definitely gotten worse in regards to my poker play is bet sizing. I've playing pretty much 100% on Full Tilt the last three months and the 'Bet Pot' button has resulted in much laziness, which has caused sloppy play and goofy bluffs when I easily could have won the pot by betting smaller on previous streets. MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY!!! No more bet pot button for me.

BOOMSWITCH

2006-11-21T03:15:00.000-08:00

Very small sample obviously, but it's difficult to log tons of hands on party when there is only one $200 PLO table going at any given time on Party and I have hardly played this month. Check out that monster VP$IP. The games are so loose passive that it is profitable to play almost anything. Other than opening and 3 betting, I didn't make a single pot sized raise preflop over the course of these hands. Mostly I'm raising 3-5BB with some pretty speculative hands, bluffing occasionally and getting super super paid when I smash the flop. I guess I busted pokertracker because no, my WTSD is not 141%. PFR should be quite a bit higher, around 40%. but it dipped drastically over the last 250 hands or so of my session tonight when the table became infested with shortstacks.

Tonight was the swingiest session I've had in a long time. At one point I was stuck $1600 between $200 NLHE and PLO, none of it due to tilt. Within a couple hours I rebounded and booked a $1200 profit, which is good, because I am fiending to buy a Wii. I don't know why but I wannnnnnts it.

This is how good the games are on party right now: (Thank you Bill Frist, you sack of donkey cum)

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$200 PL Omaha - Wednesday, November 15, 01:53:57 ET 2006
Table Table 126336 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 3: diplopia ( $99 )
Seat 4: Hero ( $442.85 )
Seat 9: jamboree12 ( $537.60 )
Seat 1: dboy88 ( $447.28 )
Seat 10: ruallinyet2 ( $122.20 )
Seat 8: JEMAPA ( $52.50 )
Seat 5: RJT0408 ( $287.77 )
Seat 2: Muzuri ( $95.14 )
Seat 6: Asonev ( $0 )
Seat 7: lucol ( $449.73 )
ruallinyet2 posts small blind [ $1 ].
dboy88 posts big blind [ $2 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL Muzuri, $2
diplopia folds
RAISE Hero , $9
CALL RJT0408, $9
lucol folds
RAISE JEMAPA, $41
CALL jamboree12, $41
ruallinyet2 folds
dboy88 folds
Muzuri folds
CALL Hero , $32
CALL RJT0408, $32

Flop: (Pot: $169)
[ ]
BET Hero , $166
RJT0408 folds
ALL-IN JEMAPA
RAISE jamboree12, $332
ALL-IN Hero
CALL jamboree12, $69.85

Turn: (Pot: $736.85)
[ ]

River: (Pot: $736.85)
[ ]
jamboree12 shows [ ]three of a kind Sevens .
Hero shows [ ]three of a kind Sevens .
JEMAPA doesn't show [ ]two pairs, Aces and Sevens.
Hero wins $780.70 from side pot #1 with three of a kind Sevens with Ace kicker .
Hero wins $200.50 from the main pot with three of a kind Sevens with Ace kicker .

Omaha Only

2006-11-11T14:52:00.000-08:00

90% PLO this month so far. The rest Limit Omaha H/L (at which I have finally accepted I suck) and a tiny bit of NL. It has been a lot of fun playing omaha again even if the swings are tough on the stomach. I had two days last week where I was stuck in the neighborhood of 10 buyins only to finish + on the day. Anyway, here are my midmonth Omaha stats for bragging purposes I suppose (click on pic). I am lazy and ok with that. I am going to try to ramp up how many hands I play for the rest of the month. I ordered a digital camera and a ipod with my FPPs today though. Very nice.

Also, here is a hand where my opponent, who is a 19/10 solid type TAG made very confusing flop and turn calls. I would almost never play AAxx this way FWIW and I would hope he would know this. Strange!

PokerStars Game #6982414733: Omaha Pot Limit ($5/$10) - 2006/11/11 - 14:47:05 (ET)
Table 'Gliese' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: BuklaH ($1337.75 in chips)
Seat 4: beset7 ($1137 in chips)
Seat 6: kappa124 ($1626 in chips)
Seat 7: BMryan ($1005.65 in chips)
Seat 8: pierre507 ($1589.50 in chips)
Seat 9: regista8 ($690 in chips)
regista8: posts small blind $5
BuklaH: posts big blind $10

Holecards:
Dealt to beset7 [ ]
RAISE beset7 , $25 to $35
FOLD kappa124
CALL BMryan, $35
CALL pierre507, $35
FOLD regista8
FOLD BuklaH

Flop: (Pot: $120)
[ ]
CHECK beset7 :
CHECK BMryan:
BET pierre507, $117
RAISE beset7 , $351 to $468
FOLD BMryan
CALL pierre507, $351

Turn: (Pot: $1056)
[ ] [ ]
BET beset7 , $634 and is all-in
CALL pierre507, $634

River: (Pot: $2324)
[ ] [ ]

Showdown:
beset7 : shows [ ] (a pair of Aces)
pierre507: shows [ ] (a straight Five to Nine)
pierre507 collected $2321 from pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot $2324 | Rake $3

Board:
[ ]

+160k Month

2006-10-30T17:35:00.000-08:00

I took second in the Sunday Poker Stars Million for 140k (3-way chop at the end leaving 40k on the table) and had a good month in the cash games to boot.

In the tourney, I ran hot when it mattered and played solid poker. Most amusing part of the day for me was that I registered for the tournament in an act of tilt after a seemingly never-ending downswing playing 2/4 and 3/6 PLO. Then, I almost un-registered at the last minute because I had forgotten I needed to pick up my wife--but, I was too late as they were already seating for the event. So, I called her a cab and settled in to see if I could build up a stack.

I was average in chips, picking up medium sized pots and doubling up a number of times, winning a number of coinflips as well as cracking KK with AK all-in preflop, well into the money. I got my money in bad on one other occassion but was saved from being more or less crippled when the board made a straight.

Then, when there was around 70 people left I went on a major heater, going from about 175k in chips to 1.3 million over 20 hands or so. Then I stole blinds like crazy building it up to about 3 million and the chip lead. I was moved to a very tough table on the final table bubble and lost a lot of chips and showed up at the final table 8th in chips. Then, I ran pretty well and got lucky that some of the other players were in a hurry to bust. When it was down to 3 players, we were roughly equal in chips and after some haggling did a 3-way chop leaving 40k on the table. I made it to heads up and then got ran over by the deck and a LAG opponent. It would have been nice to take down that extra 40k but I'd say I am content. Huge score for my family and puts us in a nice position as I prepare to retire from professional poker in May 07.

Thanks to everyone who sweated me, especially Bugstud who provided me with a lot of good tips. I have played very few MTTs and even the most basic end-game problems confuse the fuck out of me.

And now for a public service announcement...

2006-10-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

What is best in life? THE MOTHERFUCKING WIRE.

I am a huge media whore. I probably have somewhere around a 1000 books, 3000 comic books and graphic novels, 8 magazine subscriptions, a 60GB Ipod that is all full up, every currently available video game system and I madly download just about every decent television show on a regular basis. I would give up every single one of these cherished items just to watch a single episode of the Wire. Fuck that, a single motherfucking scene.

The Wire has been claimed by many to be the single best television show of our generation. They are not reaching far enough. It is the best fucking anything ever. Better then your first blowjob, your last cigarette, or the first time you scooped a $2000 pot.

What is The Wire? It's a cop/gansgta drama set in current day Baltimore. The viewer, through five seasons, has follow the day to day lives of police, bangers, politicians, junkies and all of the people they cross paths with. The Wire examines the entire American system, from drugs laws to education reform, at a microscopic level.

Plus there's this badass motherfucker named Omar that I would love to be when I grow up, except for the whole gay thing. That's Beset's ambition.

The following is quoted from the very first episode of season 1, and I think it's a pretty good indication of strength of the acting, direction and writing on The Wire:

The episode opens with Detective McNulty questioning a homicide witness in the street, sitting on the curb a few feet away from the body.

McNulty: "So your boy's name is what?"
Banger: "Snot"
McNulty:"You call the guy snot?"
Banger:"Snot Boogie, yeah"
McNulty:"Snot Boogie... he like the name?"
Banger:"what?"
McNulty:"Snot Boogie... this kid, who's momma went to the trouble to christen him Omar Isiah Betts... you know, he forgets his jacket, so his nose starts running, and some fucker, instead of giving him a kleenex, he calls him Snot."
McNulty:"So he's Snot forever. Doesn't seem fair."
Banger:"Life just be that way I guess."

McNulty:"So... who shot Snot?"
Banger:"I ain't going to no court. Mothafucka didn't have to put no cap in him though."
McNulty:"Definitely not."
Banger:"I mean he coulda just whipped his ass like we always whipped his ass."
McNulty:"I agree with you"
Banger:"Gonna kill Snot, Snot bein doin the same shit for I don't know how long... kill a man over some bulllshit"
Banger: "Look, I'm saying... ever friday night, in the alley behind the cutrate, we rollin bones, you know, I mean all them boys from around the way and we roll till late."
McNulty:"Family crap game right?"
Banger: "Like every time, Snot, he fade a few shooters, play it out till the pots deep, then snatch and run."
McNulty:"What, every time?"
Banger:"Couldn't help himself."
McNulty:"Let me understand you... every Friday you and your boys would shoot crap, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snot Boogie, he'd wait until there was cash on the ground, then he would grab the money and run away? You let him do that?"
Banger:"We'd catch him and beat his ass, but ain't nobody never go past that."
McNulty:"I gotta ask you... if every time Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away, why'd you even let him in the game?"
Banger:"What?"
McNulty:"Well if Snot Boogie always stole the money, why'd you let him play?"
Banger: "Got to."
Banger: "This America man."

The series is currently in it's 4th season and I think episode 6 just aired in the US. In one of the greatest piracy coups ever, someone managed to get the entire 4th season online in the last week. I have now watched the entire season well ahead of the actual release dates and I am fucking fiending for more.

Get out there and buy the DVD's. Download the show if you have to but make sure you spend some cash on this show at some point. These people deserve your money. Do not, I repeat, do not, watch the series out of order. It is incredibly densely plotted, with plot points from the first season paying off in subsequent seasons.
If you don't like the first episode, keep watching. What seems simple and possibly boring at first will come to fascinate you as the plot unravels. Pay attention. This is not a show you can watch out the corner of your eye while playing 360 or jerking it to the latest Lohan nipple slips.

MUST... PLAY.... HANDS....

2006-10-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

I am too busy playing a gazillion hands in between (barely) taking care of my other responsibilities to post on this Blog. That being said, I am deeply saddened by the recent legislation--I am, however, committed to taking it easy and watching how things pan out. It is clear that for the dedicated player playing online is not going to be impossible once the banking regulations are promulgated. What is more frightening is the effect the changes will have on the games. We shall see. In the mean time, the Party Poker NL and PLO games have gotten a lot softer over the last week as many of the conservative; TAG regulars have done the prudent thing and cashed out. I, however, will be 6-tabling when they turn out the lights. I will post graphs once Bush puts pen to ink and initiate my last Party Poker cash-out. I feel like I have been fired from a very high paying job.

September Results Post

2006-09-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

+3k live and +1500 from rakeback and -1100 from PLO (like 900 hands) for roughly 16k for the month. I'll take it! Click above pic for graph of online hold em' results.

And the award for SpewMonkey 2006 goes to....

2006-09-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

Carddead for this entire SNG. Played exactly one hand prior to this. A shortstack moved in on the button for 950 or so and I called with AK. A5 flopped two fives and half my stack was blown. I was looking for any reasonable hand to put my last two BB's in with on the bubble and then this happened.

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
NL Texas Hold'em $109 Buy-in Trny:29229891 Level:5 Blinds(200/400) - Monday, September 25, 23:09:06 ET 2006
Table Speed #1290788 (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 6: MegaB1te ( $6740 )
Seat 9: Hero ( $880 )
Seat 10: zac777 ( $9040 )
Seat 4: tlbcaptain ( $3340 )
Trny:29229891 Level:5
Blinds(200/400)

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
ALL-IN MegaB1te
FOLD Hero Yay me, I have a hand I can actualy fold. I am probably calling with about 60% of my hands here, including any pair, any ace, any king, Q8 or better, J8 or better and maybe some suited connectory (is that a word) kind of hands, hoping to be live.
ALL-IN zac777 UMM WHAT? The original raiser had been playing pretty tight and the caller was even tighter. I was desparately hoping party handed me some kind of miracle AA vs KK situation.

FOLD tlbcaptain

Flop:
[ ]

Turn:
[ ]

River:
[ ]
MegaB1te shows [ ] a pair of threes .
zac777 shows [ ] a pair of threes .
zac777 wins 2300 chips from side pot #1 with a pair of threes with ace kicker .
zac777 wins 13880 chips from the main pot with a pair of threes with ace kicker .
MegaB1te finished in fourth place.

OKAY! WTF is going on here? Megab1te pushes with KJ UTG to steal blinds that amount to about 9% of his stack. His push is completely retarded as there is an 8BB and a 2BB stack at the table. Both of us are calling with a huge range of hands because we have little choice. He could have raised to 1000 or maybe 1200 and evaluated from that point, but that would not have gotten me into the money, so thank you Megab1te.

Then onto the call. Zac777 risks most of his stack in a bubble situation when he is about 44% to win against a range of hands including AA-22, AQ and AK. Unless he has a pretty good read on Megab1tes pushing range there I think he can fold his AK pretty safely. If he loses the hand, he's got like 6BB's left. He already has a good sized stack and can steal blinds pretty aggressively. Some people may be able to come up with ICM numbers that show AK as an easy call but I personally think he could easily have folded.

So I ended up squeaking into the money, got all in vs the second shortstack on the next hand and my 33 held up against J5, then pushed again with K2s against his BB. He called with Q6, I turned a 2, and I secured second place. I actually managed to build my stack up to 8000 or so when AK=thenuts guy pushed my BB with A2 against my 77 and rivered an ace. Oh well, $300 I wasn't supposed to have anyway.

Full Ring No Limit Texas Hold Em

2006-09-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

Last year I used to play a lot of full ring NL. I liked the low variance and the ease with which I could multi-table it. I got bored, moved on to play short-handed and realized how much I prefered it and that the games were generally better.

I have been running very hot for the last couple weeks and I am very solid at 2/4 with regular 3/6 shots at this point. I did, tonight, however, feel quite tired and I had a lot on my mind. Recalling how I used to enjoy the fold, fold, fold of full ring NL, I fired up 10 tables of 200NL full ring and let it rip. Bloodshed ensued.

Click below for an overview of the carnage.

I don't know if it is WSOP and High-Stakes Poker on GSN or what, but these games were crazy good. Many terrible tight players and lots of gambling fish. Granted I ran hotter then hell but if/when I find myself busted down in BR again I would not hesitate to 10-tabling this junk until I could play higher again.

In other news, I have been supporting my family of four playing cards for exactly one year.

TheRempel VS Beset: HU FOR BANKROLLS

2006-09-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Last year around this time Beset and I did a 7 SNG challenge. 6 different games:
Limit Hold'Em - TheRempel won in a stunning upset. I have played probably 100 hands of LHE in my entire life.
No-Limit Hold'Em - I won again, what a surprise mr professional NL player.
Pot-Limit Omaha - We played this twice. I think we were planning on playing Razz, but it was before either of us played on Full Tilt and there was no Razz on Stars at that time. We each won once. Beset lucksacked his win as usual.
Limit Omaha-8 - I was clueless and he lucksacked I am sure, so he squeaked one out.
Stud - Beset managed another lucksacking (stud is the game other than HE and PLO that I am most familiar with). I remember at least one hand where he capped 5th with a pair of 6's against my (XX)KJT8 board and caught a running flush.
Stud H/L - The tiebreaker. Two words: BESET MOTHERFUCKING OWNED. Okay that's three or four words, but you get the point.

So tonight I'm bored and I wanna do some foolish slightly -EV gambooling. Beset agrees to one flip for $25 at a private table. For people who don't read 2+2, that means we both sit down with $25 and put all the money in preflop no matter what we have.

Here's how the initial hand went down:

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with as 7h
Beset raises all-in $24.9, TheRempel calls all-in $24.75.

Flop: 3h tc 5c ($50, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $50)
Turn: 6c ($50, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $50)
River: kc ($50, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Results:
Final pot: $50
Beset shows 2c 9d (a fucking flush)
TheRempel doesn't show As 7h (ace goddamnmotherfucking high)

So that wasn't good enough. I have quit when behind once in my life and that's because I sobered up and realised she was my cousin.

Subsequent hands:

******* Hand 1 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with 8d 7d
TheRempel raises all-in $24.9, BB calls.

Flop: 4d tc qh ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Turn: td ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

River: 4h ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Results:
Final pot: $50
TheRempel shows 8d 7d
BB shows 8s Ks

******* Hand 2 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with kd 6c
TheRempel raises all-in $24.9, BB calls.

Flop: 5h 7h as ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Turn: 3s ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

River: 5s ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Results:
Final pot: $50
TheRempel shows Kd 6c
BB shows Kh Ah

Notice a disturbing trend yet?
******* Hand 3 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with jc qc
TheRempel raises all-in $24.9, BB calls.

Flop: 6d 4d 3s ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Turn: th ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

River: kc ($50, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $50)

Results:
Final pot: $50
TheRempel shows Jc Qc
BB shows 2s 8s

******* Hand 4 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with 6d ah
SB raises all-in $71.9, TheRempel calls all-in $48.75.
Uncalled bets: $23 returned to SB.

Flop: 9s 7c 8d ($98, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $98)

Turn: 6h ($98, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $98)

River: 8c ($98, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $98)

Results:
Final pot: $98
SB shows Ts 5s
TheRempel doesn't show 6d Ah

We moved up for more gambool.

******* Hand 5 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with 3d 9c
TheRempel raises all-in $99.5, BB calls all-in $99.

Flop: 4h 4s 2h ($200, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $200)

Turn: ts ($200, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $200)

River: 8h ($200, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $200)

Results:
Final pot: $200
TheRempel shows 3d 9c
BB shows Qs Qd

******* Hand 6 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with ad 9c
TheRempel raises all-in $99.5, BB calls.

Flop: 5h ah kd ($200, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $200)

Turn: th ($200, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $200)

River: 3s ($200, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $200)

Results:
Final pot: $200
TheRempel shows Ad 9c
BB shows 5s 5d

HUGE FUCKING SURPRISE

******* Hand 7 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with js jc
TheRempel raises all-in $99.5, BB calls.

Flop: 3c 5c 2d ($200, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $200)

Turn: 8s ($200, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $200)

River: 9d ($200, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $200)

Results:
Final pot: $200
TheRempel shows Js Jc
BB shows Ts 5s

******* Hand 8 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with qc ah
SB raises all-in $197.5, TheRempel calls.

Flop: ts 3c 5h ($396, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $396)

Turn: 2h ($396, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $396)

River: 3h ($396, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $396)

Results:
Final pot: $396
SB shows Jd As
TheRempel shows Qc Ah

So at this point we moved back down to $50. I don't know why. I have an odd problem with party and private tables were it will not allow me to reload if I bust unless I leave the table and come back.

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with 7s 6d
TheRempel raises all-in $49.75, BB calls all-in $49.5.

Flop: 4h ts 9c ($100, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $100)

Turn: 9s ($100, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $100)

River: ks ($100, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $100)

Results:
Final pot: $100
TheRempel shows 7s 6d
BB shows 8c 6h

******* Hand 2 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with 6d 3s
TheRempel raises all-in $49.75, BB calls.

Flop: 5h 4d ac ($100, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $100)

Turn: qs ($100, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $100)

River: td ($100, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $100)

Results:
Final pot: $100
TheRempel shows 6d 3s
BB shows Qd 9s

ARGH. Stuck like $250 on some bullshit coinflips. WE NEEDED TO PLAY REAL POKER AND THIS IS WHERE I SHOWED WHAT I AM MADE OF.

******* Hand 1 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with 2c 8c
SB raises to $2, TheRempel raises to $6, SB calls.

Flop: 8h 7c 6c ($12, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel raises all-in $39, SB calls.

Turn: jd ($90, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $90)

River: 2h ($90, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $90)

Results:
Final pot: $90
SB shows Tc Kc
TheRempel shows 2c 8c

Besthand won. Nuff said.

******* Hand 2 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with 5s as
SB raises to $2, TheRempel calls.

Flop: tc ah 7s ($4, 2 players)
SB bets $2, TheRempel raises to $7, SB raises all-in $66.3, TheRempel calls.

Turn: 4d ($140.6, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $140.6)

River: 5d ($140.6, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $140.6)

Results:
Final pot: $140.6
TheRempel shows 5s As
SB shows 6s 8c (faggy backdoor straight wtf)

Mr.Lucksack wins again.

******* Hand 3 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with 2h ah
SB raises to $2, TheRempel raises to $6, SB calls.

Flop: jc 4c 8h ($12, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel bets $8, SB calls.

Turn: 4d ($28, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel checks.

River: as ($28, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel raises all-in $42.95, SB calls.

Results:
Final pot: $113.9
SB shows 9s 9c
TheRempel shows 2h Ah

FREE CARDS IS A BITCH TYLER.

******* Hand 4 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with tc 5d
SB raises to $2, TheRempel calls.

Flop: 5h 5s 4d ($4, 2 players)
SB bets $2, TheRempel calls.

Turn: qd ($8, 2 players)
SB bets $5, TheRempel raises to $22, SB calls.

River: 3h ($52, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel raises all-in $48.15, SB calls.

Results:
Final pot: $148.3
SB shows 7s 6c
TheRempel shows Tc 5d

Bah FU.

******* Hand 5 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with ah 5h
SB raises to $2, TheRempel raises to $6, SB raises to $24, TheRempel raises all-in $68.6, SB calls.

Flop: qc tc 9s ($149.2, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $149.2)

Turn: 3h ($149.2, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $149.2)

River: kc ($149.2, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $149.2)

Results:
Final pot: $149.2
SB shows Js Qs
TheRempel shows Ah 5h

60/40, 80/20, 95/5, odds don't matter, if it's all in preflop Beset is the goddamn motherfucking king of suckouts.

So again we moved up so I could chase my losses:

******* Hand 1 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with qs ts
TheRempel raises to $3, BB raises to $9, TheRempel calls.

Flop: kd jh 3c ($18, 2 players)
TheRempel checks, BB bets $10, TheRempel calls.

Turn: ad ($38, 2 players)
TheRempel checks, BB bets $20, TheRempel raises to $50, BB calls all-in $48.5, TheRempel calls.

River: jc ($175, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $175)

Results:
Final pot: $175
TheRempel shows Qs Ts
BB shows Ah Ac

Quelle surprise sir, quelle surprise. 20/80 is the new 99/1. Fucker.

******* Hand 2 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with ad 9s
SB raises to $4, TheRempel raises to $12, SB calls.

Flop: 9d 2c qd ($24, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel checks.

Turn: 2d ($24, 2 players)
SB bets $15, TheRempel calls.

River: 5d ($54, 2 players)
SB bets $30, TheRempel raises all-in $78.3, SB folds.
Uncalled bets: $78.3 returned to TheRempel.

Results:
Final pot: $84
TheRempel shows Ad 9s (a flush ace high)

FLUSH IN YOUR ASS BITCH.

******* Hand 3 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with 7h 9d
TheRempel raises to $3, BB calls.

Flop: th 8h 4c ($6, 2 players)
TheRempel bets $5, BB raises to $20, TheRempel calls.

Turn: js ($46, 2 players)
TheRempel checks, BB bets $35, TheRempel raises all-in $125.7, BB folds.
Uncalled bets: $125.7 returned to TheRempel.

Results:
Final pot: $81
TheRempel shows 7h 9d (a straight jack high)

KEEP FIRING THAT SECOND BARREL WHORE

******* Hand 4 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with jc jh
TheRempel raises to $4, BB raises to $12, TheRempel calls.

Flop: 8h 9c 7d ($24, 2 players)
TheRempel checks, BB bets $20, TheRempel raises all-in $198.2, BB calls all-in $93.7.
Uncalled bets: $84.5 returned to TheRempel.

Turn: td ($251.4, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $251.4)

River: ah ($251.4, 0 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $251.4)

Results:
Final pot: $251.4
BB shows 7h 8d (two pairs, sevens and eights)
TheRempel shows Jc Jh (a straigggggggght, jack high mothafucka)
Oops. Sup now bitch.

******* Hand 5 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with td 8d
SB raises to $4, TheRempel raises to $12, SB calls.

Flop: 5s 8h kc ($24, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel bets $20, SB raises all-in $80, TheRempel calls.

Turn: jd ($184, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $184)

River: 9s ($184, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $184)

Results:
Final pot: $184
TheRempel shows Td 8d
SB shows 9c 7c

Once again tight flop call is followed by river bullshit. YOU GO GIRL, YOU GO.

******* Hand 6 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with kd 9s
SB raises to $4, TheRempel calls.

Flop: kh 4d 6d ($8, 2 players)
SB bets $6, TheRempel calls.

Turn: jd ($20, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel checks.

River: 2h ($20, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel bets $15, SB calls.

Results:
Final pot: $50
TheRempel shows Kd 9s
SB doesn't show 8s Ah

VALUE PWNAGE. ACE HIGH NO GOOD SIR.

******* Hand 7 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with th kc
SB raises to $4, TheRempel calls.

Flop: jh jd 5c ($8, 2 players)
SB bets $6, TheRempel calls.

Turn: 3s ($20, 2 players)
SB bets $15, TheRempel calls.

River: 9c ($50, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel checks.

Results:
Final pot: $50
SB shows Ts 4c
TheRempel shows Th Kc

BUT KING FUCKING HIGH DAMN WELL IS.

******* Hand 8 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is SB with 9h ad
TheRempel raises to $4, BB raises to $12, TheRempel calls.

Flop: ac 8d tc ($24, 2 players)
TheRempel checks, BB checks.

Turn: th ($24, 2 players)
TheRempel bets $15, BB calls.

River: 8h ($54, 2 players)
TheRempel checks, BB bets $40, TheRempel calls.

Results:
Final pot: $134
BB shows 6h 7h
TheRempel shows 9h Ad

HOLLA AT THAT RIVER CHECK.

******* Hand 9 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with 2s 2d
SB raises to $4, TheRempel calls.

Flop: ks jd 2c ($8, 2 players)
SB bets $6, TheRempel calls.

Turn: 2h ($20, 2 players)
SB bets $10, TheRempel raises to $40, SB calls.

River: ah ($100, 2 players)
SB checks, TheRempel bets $56
[23:19] beset: 2 ?
[23:19]TheRempel: no I do not have a 2
SB calls all-in $56.
[23:19] TheRempel: I HAVE FOUR
[23:19] TheRempel: MOTHEFUCKER

Results:
Final pot: $212
TheRempel shows 2s 2d
SB doesn't show Js 8s

So this finally put me up like $31 on Beset after his miracle flip suckouts and donkass bluff river smashes. He cried until I agreed to one more flip for $31.
******* Hand 10 ********

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
2 players

Pre-flop: (2 players) TheRempel is BB with kc 7h
SB raises all-in $30.5, TheRempel calls.

Flop: tc 3h qh ($62, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $62)

Turn: 5d ($62, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $62)

River: ad ($62, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $62)

Results:
Final pot: $62
SB shows 4d 2s
TheRempel shows Kc 7h

Yeah huge surprise.

The Return Of The Ueber-Fish

2006-09-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

The last month I have played around 25k hands of 1/2 and 2/4 NL. I have seen a lot of bad players. I had not, however, until last night, seen any truly ueber-fish. It was common to sight these players online circa 2003 in just about any game at any level. The games are still great don't get me wrong. It was refreshing, however, to play against a 100vpip call down with any pair good old fashioned degenerate.

$400 NL Texas Hold'em
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: Ueber-Fish ( $1613.05 )
Seat 6: Hero ( $1299.05 )
Seat 1: istinkface ( $555.66 )
Seat 2: machinae ( $436.10 )
Seat 3: Phu11 ( $629.70 )
Seat 5: H0nest ( $428.50 )
machinae posts small blind [ $2 ].
Phu11 posts big blind [ $4 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE Ueber-Fish, $8
FOLD H0nest
RAISE Hero , $25
FOLD istinkface
FOLD machinae
FOLD Phu11
RAISE Ueber-fish, $34
CALL Hero , $17

Flop: (Pot: $90)
[ ]
BET Ueber-fish, $4
RAISE Hero , $65
CALL MBT23111, $61

Turn: (Pot: $220)
[ ]
CHECK Ueber-Fish
BET Hero , $150
CALL Ueber-Fish, $150

River: (Pot: $520)
[ ]
CHECK Ueber-Fish
CHECK Hero
Ueber-Fish shows [ ] a pair of sevens .
Hero shows [ ] a pair of jacks .

Or, examine this expert fold on the river with $19 remaining by a tilting TAG that ueber-fish had put on TILT.

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, September 21, 05:28:22 ET 2006
Table Monster #1279323 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Troubador ( $442.10 )
Seat 4: Ueber-Fish ( $2341.47 )
Seat 5: TAGonTILT ( $466.87 )
Seat 6: Hero ( $640.65 )
Seat 3: Whammmmmmmmm ( $200.55 )
Seat 2: nguyen82 ( $356 )
Ueber-Fish posts small blind [ $2 ].
TAGonTILT posts big blind [ $4 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE Hero , $14
FOLD Troubador
CALL nguyen82, $14
FOLD Whammmmmmmmm
FOLD MBT23111
CALL Blugold_Star, $10

Flop: (Pot: $44)
[ ]
CHECK TAGonTILT
BET Hero , $30
FOLD nguyen82
CALL TAGonTILT, $30

Turn: (Pot: $104)
[ ]
CHECK TAGonTILT
BET Hero , $50
RAISE TAGonTILT, $128.69
CALL Hero , $78.69

River: (Pot: $361.38)
[ ]
BET TAGonTILT, $269.69
ALL-IN Hero [ $467.96 ]
FOLD TAGonTILT
Hero does not show cards.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 21 2006 05:29 ET
Hero wins $1095.53

I can't recall the last time I saw someone at 2/4 check/call the flop and check/raise the turn and not be on a draw. My theory is that people must fold to that line a lot or it is a common psychological response to missing your draw on the turn. I lean toward the later theory as people don't seem to like to fold pairs in this game.

Holla Back At Me

2006-09-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

After taking the summer off from poker to focus on a high-paying summer associate position at a law firm I am back to the grind. I am playing NLHE and PLO from 1/2 up to 3/6 blinds, live LHE up to 20/40 and online triple draw and Omaha/8 when the feeling strikes. I am 8-tabling and just grinding it out trying to make a steady 10k a month nothing flashy.

I am considering making a weekly post to this blog. First, I would like to take a little interest poll. Are people still checking this? Do my thoughts on poker interest you? Leave a comment let me know.

As per The Rempel. He is also grinding his ass off 8-tabling cash games and playing some MTTs. I want to publicly thank him for keeping the blog interesting during the summer. I asked him when he was going to post here again and he informed me that he doesn't particularly like blogging about grinding away in low-mid stakes games. Understandable! I will try to twist his arm a bit as I felt like his posts made very good reads.

Anyhow. Leave a comment. Pm me at 2p2. AIM me at beset77. Whatever works for you.

Hardcore Cooler

2006-07-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

I'm just glad I wasn't deeper on the table. Also, thanks buddy in EP for leading out, that sealed my doom.

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Friday, July 28, 21:50:11 ET 2006
Table Table 95234 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: Hero ( $116.60 )
Seat 8: locomosquito ( $123.07 )
Seat 2: niatross99 ( $210.93 )
Seat 10: kleinteufel ( $209.80 )
Seat 6: MISSIN ( $104.45 )
Seat 7: jojoletsgo ( $72.08 )
Seat 3: Dead2morrow ( $87.27 )
Seat 4: will_be_pro ( $92.95 )
Seat 9: J9off ( $44.75 )
Seat 5: tuscany2 ( $99 )
will_be_pro posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
tuscany2 posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL MISSIN, $1
CALL jojoletsgo, $1
FOLD locomosquito
FOLD J9off
CALL kleinteufel, $1
CALL Hero , $1
CALL niatross99, $1
CALL Dead2morrow, $1
FOLD will_be_pro
CHECK tuscany2

Flop: (Pot: $7.5)
[ ]
BET tuscany2, $6
FOLD MISSIN
FOLD jojoletsgo
CALL kleinteufel, $6
RAISE Hero , $31.15
FOLD niatross99
FOLD Dead2morrow
FOLD tuscany2
CALL kleinteufel, $25.15

Turn: (Pot: $75.8)
[ ]
CHECK kleinteufel
CHECK Hero

River: (Pot: $75.8)
[ ]
BET kleinteufel, $72.80
ALL-IN Hero [ $84.45 ]
CALL kleinteufel, $11.65
kleinteufel shows [ ] four of a kind nines .
Hero doesn't show [ ] four of a kind, fours.
kleinteufel wins $241.70 from the main pot with four of a kind nines .

You'll get rich but life expectancy is about thirty...

2006-07-27T23:15:00.000-07:00

Current BR = $4286.45 (Net $=731.86)

Generally I start playing around 3:00 pm and play on through the night until I get tired with somewhat frequent breaks. I don't like playing early in the day, at least on party, because the games are generally shitty and there are rarely more than 3 tables going at any one level.

Today I woke up around 1:00 pm, feeling like crap. I don't get enough excercise, so I decided to take a walk and grab some lunch. Ended up walking all around the city for three or four hours and was fairly tired when I got home. I took a nap, watched a couple episodes of TV shows I'd downloaded last night and then finally decided to jump on the tables. My goal for the day was to make $400 or so, enough to clear the $4000 mark. In the first 20 minutes of play I won 3 big pots and was almost there, then went card dead for two hours and found myself eeking back down to about $250 profit. I stuck with it as the games were very good and won a few huge pots toward the end of the night to well clear my goal.

Not really any especially interesting hands tonight. Here's somewhat of a gambool:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Thursday, July 27, 22:47:05 ET 2006
Table Table 97477 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 1: Ninnu111 ( $96.42 )
Seat 2: ilikekitties ( $96.95 )
Seat 8: Tulkku1 ( $340.10 )
Seat 9: sweetdjam ( $66.11 )
Seat 4: Hero ( $126.05 )
Seat 3: bstar777 ( $110.76 )
Seat 7: neverfold456 ( $32.02 )
Seat 5: The_Nut_Low ( $114.55 )
Seat 6: fnords ( $96.50 )
The_Nut_Low posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
fnords posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL neverfold456, $1
FOLD Tulkku1
FOLD sweetdjam
BananaFarmer has joined the table.
RAISE Ninnu111 $4.50
FOLD bstar777
CALL Hero $4.50
FOLD The_Nut_Low
FOLD fnords
RAISE neverfold456 $18.50
RAISE Ninnu111 $60
ALL-IN Hero
ALL-IN neverfold456
ALL-IN Ninnu111

Sometimes I'll reraise here but this guy was autostacking with any four big suited cards preflop so I initially decided to lower the variance a little. :)

When the shortstack reraised and the lagabee three bet, I decided I was probably a favorite (double suited connected pairs vs AA vs four big cards usually are) and pushed. I could've just called and evaluated the flop but I wanted to see five cards.

Flop : (Pot: $90)
[ ]

Weeeeeeeeeeee! Awesome flop!
Turn: (Pot: $90)
[ ]

Ok, definitely very good turn, I could be behind the AA guy if he has AA3 or AA78, but if not, I got outs.

River: (Pot: $90)
[ ]
Ninnu111 shows [ ] a pair of twos .
Hero shows [ ] a full house Fives full of twos .
neverfold456 doesn't show [ ] two pairs, aces and twos.
Hero wins $29.63 from side pot #2 with a full house Fives full of twos .
Hero wins $128.80 from side pot #1 with a full house Fives full of twos .
Hero wins $94.56 from the main pot with a full house Fives full of twos .

Ship it!

And now for the WTF Hand of the Day:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Friday, July 28, 01:59:14 ET 2006
Table Choco Chips (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 2: locomosquito ( $267.95 )
Seat 9: Hero ( $257.55 )
Seat 1: Arendack ( $48.63 )
Seat 7: Sky11 ( $103.91 )
Seat 5: Campoguy ( $103.95 )
Seat 4: iowafan05 ( $167.28 )
Seat 8: nasty25 ( $110.55 )
Seat 3: wgp123 ( $136.55 )
Seat 6: MTNMAN88 ( $32 )
nasty25 posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
Hero posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL Arendack, $1
CALL locomosquito, $1
CALL wgp123, $1
CALL iowafan05, $1
FOLD Campoguy
CALL nasty25, $0.50
CHECK Hero

Flop: (Pot: $6)
[ ]
CHECK nasty25
BET Hero , $5.70
CALL Arendack, $5.70
FOLD locomosquito
CALL wgp123, $5.70
FOLD iowafan05
FOLD nasty25

Turn: (Pot: $23.1)
[ ]
BET Hero , $21.95
CALL Arendack, $21.95
RAISE wgp123, $109.75
RAISE Hero , $175.60
ALL-IN Arendack
ALL-IN wgp123

No real hands on this player so I have no idea what he's calling the flop with that is suddenly worth a push. Against a very tight player I could fold here since he certainly would have the nuts + flush freeroll but this guy had been pretty donkish so far so I can't even say he's got a straight here.

River: (Pot: $352.35)
[ ]

Crap, shitty card.

Hero shows [ ] a straight four to eight .
Arendack doesn't show [ ] a pair of fours.
wgp123 doesn't show [ ] a straight, three to seven.
Hero wins $67.70 from side pot #2 with a straight four to eight .
Hero wins $175.84 from side pot #1 with a straight four to eight .
Hero wins $145.89 from the main pot with a straight four to eight .
ilikekitties has joined the table.

Oh wait, PWN3D. I guess if he thought I was enough of a retard to get it all in here with a bare 56 then his push is good, but there is no way I'm potting the turn here into two callers with only 56 and a four card straight on the board.

Lazy is the new Lazy

2006-07-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Current BR = $3559.09

Soooo, since my last post a lot of stuff has happened. I've been playing 3000+ hands per day on average and have been lazy in relation to everything else.

On June 15 or therabouts I started working at FutureShop. For non-Canadians, FutureShop is a Canadian version of BestBuy. For the first week I was stuck in a windowless backroom reading training manuals. It stunk. I talked to my manager every day about actually filling out my new hire forms and he stalled me every time. By the second week I was out on the floor dealing with customers and was appalled by the lack of organisation and knowledge of FutureShop staff. Nearly every employee there, especially the managers, are completely clueless fucking morons. The only emphasis is to push product service plans on customers whether they want them or not.

June 28th I woke up extremely sick and with no voice. I ended up AIM'ing a buddy and getting him to call in for me late in the day. Note that I was six hours late for work and nobody even called. I spent two days in the hospital, heavily medicated, and was finally able to take to my manager on 30th. He told me to talk to my doctor and get back to him when I'd be able to come back to work. Meanwhile, I hadn't been paid. My pay was supposed to have been deposited on the 30th and nothing had happened. Given I had no poker income at this point (my staking deal specified no cashouts), I was fairly stressed as a result. The Manager, Scott McClelland, told me that I would definitely be paid by Tuesday of the following week.

By the following Friday I had spoken to my doctor and had been given the go ahead to go back. I still hadn't been paid so I again spoke to Scott and told him the situation; I'd be happy to come back but wasn't going to work for free, they could either courier me a cheque or guarantee payment within three days by direct deposit, or I would walk. To this date I have yet to be paid and have declined to go back.

Pokerwise, the end of June and the beginning of July sucked ass. I have apparantly gotten terrible at NL or I was running worse than I have ever seen someone run. I will not be playing NL again until I can devote some time to serious study.

Last thursday the BR was at $1200 or so. Friday I lost $200. Saturday I had a fever or heatstroke and didn't play. Sunday I did a 'rampage' at $50 PLO, ran it up to $300, moved that to two $100 tables, and ended up winning about $1200 on the day. Monday I won about $150 after a couple of sessions. Tuesday I ran superhot and won $1100 again, pushing the BR up over $3K.

Yesterday I had the nightmare variance session from hell. Started the day playing 3 $100 tables and 4 $50's, won $400 very quickly, then went back to even after two or three more hours, mostly missing big draws and misplaying a couple hands against shortstacks. Playing against shorties that float the flop a lot is probably the most infuriating study on pushing thin edges you can imagine. At about 2:00 am all my tables broke and I ended up playing HU and three handed with a few of the same players on four or five tables. An hour of cold decks later and I was stuck about $500. Luckily I rebounded and by 4:00 am I managed to book a small $220 win for the day.

Here's a hand that amazed me on several counts:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Wednesday, July 26, 23:58:32 ET 2006
Table Choco Chips (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 3: crusader3 ( $141.47 )
Seat 4: partyskin18 ( $105.95 )
Seat 5: fnords ( $89.30 )
Seat 6: jordanflug ( $224.93 )
Seat 9: Hero ( $219.35 )
Seat 10: locomosquito ( $60.58 )
Seat 8: madfishman ( $77.36 )
Seat 1: Darmuid ( $57 )
Seat 7: ping2331 ( $19 )
Seat 2: DMacFive ( $25.30 )
locomosquito posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
Darmuid posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
FOLD DMacFive
FOLD crusader3
FOLD partyskin18
FOLD fnords
CALL jordanflug, $1
CALL ping2331, $1
FOLD madfishman
RAISE Hero , $4

This is a pretty loose raise. You'll notice I also didn't raise the full pot size. For many reasons I like to make these smallish raises preflop and keep the pot somewhat small on the flop.

FOLD locomosquito
FOLD Darmuid
CALL jordanflug, $3
CALL ping2331, $3

Flop: (Pot: $13.5)
[ ]
CHECK jordanflug
BET ping2331, $12.85
CALL Hero , $12.85
RAISE jordanflug, $30.70

This is an extremely weird raise. This particular player is extremely tight but would never do this weird smallish raise with the nuts. He would either just call hoping for a safe turn card or he'd raise the pot. In other worse, he never has 79 here. He would never raise two pair (even with a draw, like 89TJ, and there's no flush draw out, so he has to have a set.

ALL-IN ping2331
CALL Hero , $17.85

Turn: (Pot: $87.75)
[ ]
CHECK jordanflug
BET Hero , $50

Money! Why don't I bet the full pot? Because if I'm wrong and he did happen to raise the flop with a bare 79 I want to get some value out of him. If he does have a set he's getting incorrect odds to call anyway.

CALL jordanflug, $50

River: (Pot: $187.75)
[ ]
ALL-IN jordanflug

WTF? This is not a small bet. He has close to a pot-sized bet left, and as I've said previously he is an extremely tight player post flop. This bet just doesn't make any sense. I felt like he would have been happy to get it all in on the turn with a set + flush draw, especially since I could easily be semi-bluffing the turn. If he flopped the nut straight and hit a backdoor flush, he would not have minraised the flop. He is most aggro on the flop of all streets. I couldn't think of a single combination of cards that has me beat and so, despite his stats (his river aggression is pretty low) I felt like I had to call.

ALL-IN Hero
jordanflug shows [ ] three of a kind tens .
ping2331 shows [ ] a straight six to ten .
Hero shows [ ] a straight seven to jack .
jordanflug wins $5.58 from side pot #2 with three of a kind tens .
Hero wins $400.60 from side pot #1 with a straight seven to jack .
Hero wins $55.60 from the main pot with a straight seven to jack .

Can't Knock Tha Hustle

2006-06-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

Current Bankroll: $1610.80

Played 1949 hands of $50 6max NL today for a $245.55 profit plus another $60 or so at $50 PLO when someone kindly pointed out an ubertard was sitting at a $50 table deepstacked.

One of the things I love about poker is just plain old getting to somebody. Getting them so pissed off that they start just giving you stacks and stacks.

Part 1: The Bluff

$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, June 27, 16:10:34 ET 2006
Table Table 109793 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 1: Hero ( $69.02 )
Seat 4: snirk111 ( $46.81 )
Seat 2: FFLASH ( $30.50 )
Seat 3: swedelite ( $50 )
Seat 6: NYCguyPhD ( $49 )
NYCguyPhD posts small blind [ $0.25 ].
Hero posts big blind [ $0.50 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
FOLD FFLASH
FOLD swedelite
FOLD snirk111
CALL NYCguyPhD, $0.25
RAISE Hero , $1.50
CALL NYCguyPhD, $1.50

Flop: (Pot: $4)
[ ]
CHECK NYCguyPhD
BET Hero , $3
CALL NYCguyPhD, $3

Turn: (Pot: $10)
[ ]
CHECK NYCguyPhD
BET Hero , $8
CALL NYCguyPhD, $8

River: (Pot: $26)
[ ]
CHECK NYCguyPhD
BET Hero , $22
NYCguyPhD: lucky stupid XXXXXXX
NYCguyPhD did not respond in time.
FOLD NYCguyPhD
Hero does not show cards.
Hero wins $46.70
99% sure he had 99. Usually I don't bluff like that against call stations but I was certain his hand couldn't stand any heat and he'd fold. Not sure if he tried to disconnect cheat there or not, but apparantly he doesn't have any DP's left!

The very next hand:

$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, June 27, 16:12:28 ET 2006
Table Table 109793 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 1: Hero ( $81.67 )
Seat 4: snirk111 ( $46.81 )
Seat 2: FFLASH ( $30 )
Seat 3: swedelite ( $49.50 )
Seat 6: NYCguyPhD ( $36 )
swedelite posts small blind [ $0.25 ].
snirk111 posts big blind [ $0.50 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL NYCguyPhD, $0.50
RAISE Hero , $3
FOLD FFLASH
FOLD swedelite
FOLD snirk111
RAISE NYCguyPhD, $5.50
CALL Hero , $3

Flop: (Pot: $12.75)
[ ]
CHECK NYCguyPhD
Horst_Fuchs123 has joined the table.
BET Hero $12
RAISE NYCguyPhD $24
RAISE Hero $24
ALL-IN NYCguyPhD

Turn : (Pot: $72.75)
[ ]

River: (Pot: $72.75)
[ ]
Hero shows [ ] a pair of aces .
NYCguyPhD doesn't show [ ] a pair of kings.
Hero wins $6 from side pot #1 with a pair of aces .
Hero wins $70.75 from the main pot with a pair of aces .

With his little gay minraise preflop I knew he either had something or had just decided he was going to 'outplay' me on this. Pretty hard when I have AA in position, but oh well.

Maybe 10 hands later:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, June 27, 16:19:49 ET 2006
Table Table 109793 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Hero ( $113.17 )
Seat 4: snirk111 ( $45.66 )
Seat 2: FFLASH ( $31.90 )
Seat 3: swedelite ( $68.20 )
Seat 6: NYCguyPhD ( $26.25 )
Seat 5: Horst_Fuchs123 ( $54.10 )
NYCguyPhD posts small blind [ $0.25 ].
Hero posts big blind [ $0.50 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL FFLASH, $0.50
FOLD swedelite
FOLD snirk111
FOLD Horst_Fuchs123
CALL NYCguyPhD, $0.25
RAISE Hero , $2.50
FOLD FFLASH
CALL NYCguyPhD, $2.50

Flop: (Pot: $6.5)
[ ]
CHECK NYCguyPhD
BET Hero , $6
ALL-IN NYCguyPhD
CALL Hero , $17.25

Turn: (Pot: $29.75)
[ ]

River: (Pot: $29.75)
[ ]
Hero shows [ ] two pairs tens and fives .
NYCguyPhD shows [ ] two pairs jacks and fives .
NYCguyPhD wins $50.35 from the main pot with two pairs jacks and fives .

Oops, I guess he outplayed me on that one.

An hour later, I haven't been winning any decent pots and my continuation bets are getting called by bottom pair. Then this happens:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, June 27, 17:19:31 ET 2006
Table Table 109793 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Hero ( $70.51 )
Seat 6: NYCguyPhD ( $47.04 )
Seat 2: wise85dm ( $83.10 )
Seat 5: NICKSS0N ( $51.70 )
Seat 4: Egeberg ( $50.50 )
Seat 3: Wheelman93 ( $51.75 )
Wheelman93 posts small blind [ $0.25 ].
Egeberg posts big blind [ $0.50 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE NYCguyPhD, $2
RAISE Hero , $6
FOLD wise85dm
FOLD Wheelman93
FOLD Egeberg
CALL NYCguyPhD, $4

Hmm. I typically wouldn't reraise with JJ but this guy was pretty nitty so his preflop raising range is relatively tight. If he just calls I can put him pretty squarely on 99-QQ or AK.

Flop: (Pot: $12.75)
[ ]
CHECK NYCguyPhD
BET Hero , $10
CALL NYCguyPhD, $10

He knows I raise a lot of hands like JT sooted so there is no way he's smoothcalling this flop with QQ or 99, so his most likely hands at this point are TT and AK. The reason for this is that he would be happy to get it in on the flop if he was very sure he's ahead. With AA-QQ and any set he is straight up pushing to my flop bet assuming I'll call, since I called him with Ace high previously.

Turn: (Pot: $32.75)
[ ]
BET NYCguyPhD, $15
RAISE Hero , $31
ALL-IN NYCguyPhD
CALL Hero , $0.04

HMMMM.
Now I know he either has AK or TT, maybe AQ of spades but there is no way he's playing it this way with a set. He would limp with 55, 66 and 88 preflop.
River: (Pot: $78.79)
[ ]
Hero shows [ ] a pair of jacks .
NYCguyPhD shows [ ] a pair of tens .
Hero wins $92.83 from the main pot with a pair of jacks .

GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!! I came close to typing 'well, you got outs with 10 10, let's gamble' in the chat box but was 6 tabling and had too much shit going on with IM to be able to type it without timing out.

The First Downswing

2006-06-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

Current Bankroll = $1304.85

Haven't had much time to post in the last few days.

On Friday I decided to give 6 max NL a whirl and things didn't go well. A combination of beats and spewing led to a 8 buy-in downswing. Normally I'd drop down or quit as soon as I hit a 2 or 3 buy-in swing, but unfortunately I got hit all at once, losing a few deep stack pots on different tables and was stuck $800 before I knew it. I moved down to $50 NL and still got buttfucked, which left me in fairly bad shape.

After quitting for the day, I played long hours on Saturday and Sunday and managed to recoup a large chunk of my losses.

Back to the Grind.

Fuck a Title Part II

2006-06-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

Total BR = $1900.94

Shitty day for PLO. I dropped about $250 between the $25 and $50 PLO tables. Luckily I pwned n00bs at some $50 6-Max NLHE games and had a good day. Had one hand where I folded KK preflop. I raised UTG, 10/2/3 dude raised OTB, I reraised, he pushed for 300BB and showed AA when I folded.

Once again I have to work early and have no real time to post.

Fuck Stupid Titles

2006-06-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

Total BR = $1576.16 (Net: +$257.87)

No time for a real post today as I worked at my crappy new job until 10pm, got home (I have no car; I have to walk) at 11:00pm, played $1000 hands of $25 and $50 PLO and 100 hands of $50 NLHE and now I'm going to bed because I have to be back at the fucking shit factory at 9:00am.

It's not my fault you live in a Campground

2006-06-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

Total BR = $1302.44

Kinda off day. Got home from work and sat down to play and just wasn't feeling it in my usual way. The tables were good though, so I stuck it out and booked a small profit. Hit the $1250 point, which allowed me (as per my bankroll plan) to play one $50 table.

The title of this post refers to a pretty hilarious conversation that took place at a $25 table last night.

Lag raises with 88ATds, tight-passive limper calls in EP. Flop comes K85, the money gets all in and the limper, of course, has KK.

LAG: Limping with KK eh? That's a good idea... like never
Limper: I'm sorry you lost your rent money.
LAG: Yeah, $20 is my rent money.
Limper: It's not my fault you live in a campground.

Awesome pwnage by a total unimaginative nit.

No really interesting hands today, so I'll just post one I thought was a luckbox but was really me talking this guy to valuetown:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$25 PL Omaha - Wednesday, June 21, 00:33:23 ET 2006
Table Table 95414 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 7: Hero ( $38.91 )
Seat 1: BlackhawkII ( $49.10 )
Seat 10: kraulis ( $15.06 )
Seat 4: drsthundza ( $16.74 )
Seat 3: vernors7 ( $25 )
Seat 5: ScabbyBear ( $36.84 )
Seat 6: JTB012 ( $40.61 )
Seat 8: bigrednycPP ( $9.25 )
Seat 9: jastackhouse ( $24.75 )
Seat 2: mmmwxyz ( $25 )
bigrednycPP posts small blind [ $0.10 ].
jastackhouse posts big blind [ $0.25 ].
mmmwxyz posts big blind [ $0.25 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL kraulis, $0.25
CALL BlackhawkII, $0.25
CHECK mmmwxyz
CALL vernors7, $0.25
FOLD drsthundza
RAISE ScabbyBear, $1.85
FOLD JTB012
CALL Hero , $1.85
FOLD bigrednycPP
FOLD jastackhouse
FOLD kraulis
FOLD BlackhawkII
CALL mmmwxyz, $1.60
CALL vernors7, $1.60

Flop: (Pot: $8.25)
[ ]
CHECK mmmwxyz
CHECK vernors7
CHECK ScabbyBear
BET Hero , $5
CALL mmmwxyz, $5
FOLD vernors7
FOLD ScabbyBear

ScabbyBear is a 20% PFR, so I'm pretty comfortable I'm ahead of him at this point. Any callers and I'm checking behind on the turn and folding the river to a bet.

Turn: (Pot: $18.25)
[ ]
CHECK mmmwxyz
BET Hero , $7
CALL mmmwxyz, $7

Except when I suck out.

River: (Pot: $32.25)
[ ]
CHECK mmmwxyz
BET Hero , $13
ALL-IN mmmwxyz
Hero shows [ ] a full house Kings full of tens .
mmmwxyz doesn't show [ ] three of a kind, tens.
Hero wins $1.85 from side pot #1 with a full house Kings full of tens .
Hero wins $51.85 from the main pot with a full house Kings full of tens .

Zoooooooooooooooooooooooooom!

Put'Em Up Put'Em Up

2006-06-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

AMENDED: I couldn't sleep so I sat down and played another 200 hands or so and won $98.
Total Bankroll = $1147.65 (Another $102.35 and I'll add one $50 table)

Today was a kinda meh day. Very very swingy. In my first 800 hands I was up 8 buy-ins, took a break, then dropped 10 over the next thousand hands, only to pull it out at the end, win some decent sized pots, and book an alright win. By my math, I need to play 11K more hands at $25 PLO before I can fully move up to the $50 level. My retarded ass can do that in about a week.

Typical hand from earlier this evening:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$25 PL Omaha - Tuesday, June 20, 00:05:54 ET 2006
Table Table 95201 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 8
Seat 9: Hero ( $32.30 )
Seat 5: iamkingsosa ( $14.15 )
Seat 4: DetLijebaley ( $36.14 )
Seat 6: pcmiii ( $20.30 )
Seat 10: phenglee111 ( $4.41 )
Seat 8: alexbra1 ( $24.70 )
Seat 1: Sweisman2 ( $25 )
Seat 2: bigro14 ( $25 )
Hero posts small blind [ $0.10 ].
phenglee111 posts big blind [ $0.25 ].
bigro14 posts big blind [ $0.25 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE bigro14, $0.25
CALL DetLijebaley, $0.50
FOLD iamkingsosa
FOLD pcmiii
CALL alexbra1, $0.50
CALL Hero , $0.40
FOLD phenglee111

A lot of the time I'll just go ahead and reraise this right out of the small blind, but I'd been getting great coordinated starting hands all night that were going nowhere and costing me beacoup d'argent.

Flop: (Pot: $2.25)
[ ]
CHECK Hero
BET bigro14, $0.25
FOLD DetLijebaley
FOLD alexbra1
CALL Hero , $0.25

Now he's gone and gay bet the flop. I don't have a lot of history with this particular player but I was pretty certain he had KK here for some reason. It just felt like KK. It is possible that he has AJT but KK jumped out at me.

Turn: (Pot: $2.75)
[ ]
BET Hero , $2.65
RAISE bigro14, $5.30
RAISE Hero , $15.90
CALL bigro14, $13.25

Best possible card, since I have the nuts and all of my other outs would've given me the second nuts. His minraise seemed pretty consistent with his past play and by no means indicated he had the same straight.

River: (Pot: $39.85)
[ ]
CHECK Hero
ALL-IN bigro14
CALL Hero , $5.70
Hero shows [ ] a straight nine to king .
bigro14 shows [ ] four of a kind kings .
bigro14 wins $48.70 from the main pot with four of a kind kings .

Yeah I could've folded the river and saved my self the price of a fast food supper. It's funny how looking back at the hand now, it's pretty obvious he's a hold'em player and that he thought his two sets somehow gave him a huge lock on the hand.

I told you don't ever ever come around here no more

2006-06-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

Today was the World Blogger Championship on PokerStars. I played, and I think I played pretty well. I was chipleader for most of the tournament after the first hour, played a lot of small ball, never getting all-in until the blinds were absolutely huge, and then losing 4 or 5 huge coinflips that would've had me in good shape if I'd won any of them. I ended up finishing 16th for a $370 satellite seat. Hopefully I'll be able to sell the seat for W$ as I'm pretty sure I couldn't get to Vegas to play in the WSOP ME anyway.

In other news, I have a backer and my br domination plan has started. I really wanted to play 2K hands today but some random internet malfunction had party lagging like a motherfucker for the last few hours and I couldn't stand it any more.

It felt like it was going to be a pretty crappy day overall. Within the first 200 hands I dropped two buy-ins fairly quickly, once with top set vs wrap/flush draw and the second time with 89TJ double suited vs AA34 (no suits) all in on a 887 flop.

I'm going to try to discuss hands I played and why I played them that way on a regular basis from now on. Today there weren't really any tricky hands or ones I thought I played especially well, so I'm just gonna post the biggest pot I played.

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$25 PL Omaha - Monday, June 19, 03:21:29 ET 2006
Table Castlemaine (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: N0_VASELINE ( $59.80 )
Seat 2: jastackhouse ( $53.75 )
Seat 3: JTB012 ( $21.35 )
Seat 4: pokercsavo ( $24.40 )
Seat 5: Nosupe4u ( $33.50 )
Seat 6: Hero ( $121.08 )
Seat 7: tyler3343 ( $95.74 )
Seat 8: BetRaiseNuts ( $24.40 )
Seat 9: rccardshark ( $24.75 )
Seat 10: allyglafner1 ( $0 )
tyler3343 posts small blind [ $0.10 ].
BetRaiseNuts posts big blind [ $0.25 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
CALL rccardshark, $0.25
FOLD N0_VASELINE
FOLD jastackhouse

CALL JTB012, $0.25
FOLD pokercsavo
RAISE Nosupe4u, $1.35
CALL Hero , $1.35
CALL tyler3343, $1.25
FOLD BetRaiseNuts
CALL rccardshark, $1.10
CALL JTB012, $1.10

This is definitely a junk hand, but $25 PLO players typically overvalue high cards so generally if I hit a good flop with this hand (two low cards) I'm going to have a great draw all to myself.

Flop: (Pot: $7)
[ ]
BET tyler3343, $3
FOLD rccardshark
FOLD JTB012
FOLD Nosupe4u
Its_Gooood has joined the table.
RAISE Hero $15.65
CALL tyler3343 $12.65

And this is an excellent flop for me. Any Ace, deuce, three, four, five or seven gives me the nuts and a six gives me the second nuts. I raise both to get a free card and to disguise my hand. This is all rudimentary stuff.

Turn : (Pot: $38.3)
[ ]
rccardshark: lol]
rccardshark: take him down
BET tyler3343, $20
CALL Hero , $20

Villain in this hand was lagging it up and this turn bet made zero sense. Raising here is foolish because with 15-18 outs I'm a dog to any one pair hand, and I don't think this guy is folding. This kind of turn bet usually is two pair or bottom/middle set, but he could have a similar draw to mine.

River: (Pot: $78.3)
[ ]
rccardshark: idiots
ALL-IN tyler3343
CALL Hero , $58.74
tyler3343 shows [ ] two pairs queens and fours .
Hero shows [ ] a straight two to six .
Hero wins $192.78 from the main pot with a straight two to six .
rccardshark: crazy betting with no made hand

Jackpot! I really don't understand the villains line here. There is 0% chance that I smoothcall that turn with any set. The only possible hand I might fold that's ahead of Q4 is Q9, and even then I'm not raising the flop without some kind of draw to go with my ONE PAIR and that 5 is more likely to have helped me than hurt me. At any rate, I think it's one of the largest pots I've won at $25 PLO and I love the comment from the nit at the end. There are actually people that play a lot of PLO (I have 4000 hands on this guy) that think raising with a draw is somehow wrong.

Sunday Picks

2006-06-18T08:34:00.000-07:00

Been very busy with my internship so I haven't been playing much poker except live a couple times to unwind. Online poker is a Class C Felony in Washington State now. Yuck. Anyways, been betting on MLB, MLS and of course the World Cup. I've been doing fairly well (I'll post stats later). I'll start posting some of my picks here. Soccer fans who like to gamble: familarizing yourself with MLS might very well be worth your time.

Sunday 6/18/2006

World Cup

Brazil -2 +130

MLS

Chivas +140

MLB

San Diego +140
Seattle -110

All 1 unit plays except Chivas which is 1.5.

Help TheRempel (Seriously)

2006-06-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

I am legitimately looking for a backer.

Without a backer it will be at least a few months until I can play again. If there is anyone out there willing to back me for $500-$1000 I will agree to play within their bankroll restrictions and be 100% transparent in our dealings. I will not cashout a single dollar until the end of the previously agreed upon backing period, at which point the backer will get back 100% of their original stake and 50% of the net profit.

40 hours a week 6 tabling at approximately 50 hands per hour = 12,000 hands per week.

Assuming a WR of 10BB/100 on average per level (this is actually much higher, but I'll be conservative), here's how my BR plan would work:

BR LEVEL Weekly Net Time to Move Up
$1000 $25 PLO $600 Two Weeks
$2200 $50 PLO $1200 Two Weeks
$4600 $100 PLO $2400 Two Weeks
$9400 $200 PLO $4800 Two Weeks
$19000

At this point, after approximately two months, we would chop the profit ($9,000 each) and the backer would get back the original investment of $1000. I think the best thing to do would be to simply agree to split the profit after two months anyway, regardless of what happens.

I have no problem grinding and I will not take shot's with someone else's money. I will not cash out during the backing period and will not move up at any point, regardless of BR size without discussing it with my backer first.

If anyone is interested or has questions, feel free to email me at cardplaya72@gmail.com or PM TheRempel on 2+2.

For the haters: I'm asking because this would allow me to get back into play quicker. I am certainly willing to wait a couple of months and put myself back into play, but would be happy to be earning right now for myself and others.

Done-zo

2006-06-13T17:50:00.000-07:00

So my $500 in rakeback money went nowhere and I start a new job tomorrow.

I could sit here and moan about bad luck and all that crap but when it all comes down to it, I put my entire bankroll on the line and lost out of a foolish sense of pride and frustration.

A few days ago, in one of the irc poker rooms, I posted the link to my previous post and was laughed at by a couple resident 2+2 jackasses. "You threw away that money" they said, "If I ever lost $20,000 in a night I think I'd kill myself". Personally I've never been too hung up on money. As long as my bills are paid and my stomache is full, everything is cool with me. I can't say that losing $20,000 didn't affect me; it certainly did, but it wasn't losing $20,000. It was going broke. As long as I am still in the game I have massive earning potential. Everytime I was taking a rational shot at a bigger game I kept this in mind. Sit down, understanding that I've effectively lost the $1000 or $2000 I'm buying in for already, and see if I can make a good day a great day.

I've remarked to Beset several times that the one thing I really need in my life is a wife. I have no real family in the place I live, and the people I've considered friends in the area have turned out to be far less. It'd be nice, on occasion, to forcibly remove me from the computer on those rare nights I feel that suffering a loss is the worst thing that can possibly happen.

Unfortunately this means I'm done with poker, at least for a few months. I'm going to go hump some $10 an hour job, deal with people I can't stand, and get up at 7:00 am every day just to get by.

I don't think I can effectively play at the <$100 buy-in levels anymore. It really shouldn't matter, but the lowest levels on both party and stars are full of loose-passive players. This means that, while pushing small edges is good since you'll often be in multiway pots, you never ever have fold equity. Someone is always prepared to call you with the 4 high flush. The only way I can manage to play these levels is to 10 table, and even then I am bored as fuck.

As a result, I will have to save until I have at least $1000 to throw on party and will probably not be posting on 2+2 or this blog for quite a while. If any of you rich bastards out there wanna entertain the idea of a staking arrangement, I am all fucking ears. PM TheRempel on 2+2 .

Peace, bitches.

Kill Me Please (BUSTO BUSTO BUSTO)

2006-06-07T01:01:00.000-07:00

Just over three weeks ago I was making $2000+ a day, every day, playing 3-400 hands at the $400 level and some $1000 shorthanded on UB. Everything was cool. I had $5000 in the bank, which is 3 months living expenses (I'm single; no real obligations).

Up until 3 months ago I had $30,000+ in personal debt. Playing poker was helping me make the payments but the balance wasn't going anywhere. April was my hugest month ever though, and I was able to cash out a minimum of $3000 a week while still increasing my bankroll. Most of that money went to paying my debt.

On Tuesday , May 16th, I talked to the final two companies I still owed and convinced them to accept a one time payment of $2500 each on approximately $8000 of debt in total. I was free and clear. My total BR online was still $20,000+ and I planned on cashing out another $4000 at the end of the week to ensure I had some padding in my bank account.

Wednesday May 19th, I decided not to play. I wasn't feeling great. I went to a movie (Scary Movie 4, sucked ass), came home, and saw a friendly female was logged into MSN. We started talking, I quickly got bored and decided to check out the games on Stars. A certain giant flounder was playing $2000 PLO so I decided to take a half-buy in shot. That quickly went south when darwinism called my flop checkraise all-in with a double gutshot and caught running two pair against my aces+ oe straight draw. Pretty quickly I dropped the $4000 I had on Stars.

99% of the time after I do something so foolish I turn off the computer and walk away, but if I get the right combination of tired and angry, sometimes I push myself. For some reason any time I've had a losing day on Party or Stars recently I've made it back and then some on UB, so still talking to this random girl over MSN, I log on to UB. I ran up $3000 in a 6max PLO game right quick and do the right thing; I quit. Then the little bastard in the back of my brain says "Nah, don't go to bed, you're just getting started" and I randomly make the decision to sit down in a $50/$100 6max PLO game with average pots of $4500. I buy in for $2500, drop it quick on a straight/flush draw, then rebuy. Double up, win a couple small pots, and suddenly I have $8500.

I call a raise from the UTG player on the button with AcQcJ8. Both blinds fold. The flop comes out Tc 9c 7d and UTG pots it. I repot with the nuts plus a bunch of nut redraws. He smoothcalls. I'm praying the board doesn't pair, but against this particular player I don't think I can fold if it does.

The turn is the 8h. He sets me all in. I, of course, call. The river is a 7, hearts I think, and he shows 6788, no clubs, to take down the $17K pot.

I, of course, percieved this as a great injustice. I quickly spewed off the last $3000 I had on UB and closed the site. Now at this point, I could have gone to bed a $11K loser and still had enough of a BR to multitable the $200 games on Party. At 40 hours a week playing 6 tables, I'd generally expect to make anywhere from $5000-$10,000, easily enough to rebuild so I could get back to the $400 Level.

Did I do this? Of fucking course not. I had about $9000 on party. I sat down at a $2000 table with an uberlag and proceeded to lose with every draw and made hand. When I get this way I don't really start playing badly, I just start playing much more aggro in very thin situations, raising a hand I know to be 40% to win on the flop when I also know I have no fold equity. When I start hitting these croocked coinflips I'll stack the whole motherfucking table. When I don't I spew like mad.

After dropping $4k, I, for some reason, started playing $200 a hand party blackjack. I don't like blackjack. I don't like table games at all really, and I certainly don't like playing them online unless it's for bonus whoring.
I quickly won $1500 playing BJ while the $2000 table I was still at tightened up considerably and most pots were won on the flop. PLO becomes a very tedious game when the pots are generally small and you have a few calling stations. The action wasn't big enough for me, so I soon focused back on BJ.

Within an hour I'd busted all of the money in my account except what was on the PLO table, and ten minutes after that, that $2000 went too.

At about 7:00 am, I found myself almost completely broke, with my only saving grace that UB takes so goddamn long on their cashouts that I still had $2000 pending.

I woke up at 5:00 pm the following day and deposited what I had on Party. I was so angry at myself for what I'd done the night before that rather than sit down and grind as many $50, $100 and $200 PLO tables as I could play, I started playing BJ again. Something in me had snapped.

Within an hour, I'd run that $2000 up into $7500. I was determined to hit $10K. Of course that never happened or I wouldn't be telling this story. A few hours later, I'd gone completely bust.

I'm sure there are a lot of haters out there that are going to be overjoyed to read this, and I know I've disappointed quite a few people in my life. All I can do from this point on is move on one step at a time.

I am not done playing poker. I fucking love poker like nothing else. I'm gonna take one last shot on stars when I get my rakeback payment and hopefully I'll be able to run it up quick. If not, nothing really lost. Now to find a job...

Shill Shill Shill

2006-05-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

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

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

My Bottom Bitch

2006-05-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

Hand #31317931-4675 at Wilton (Pot Limit Omaha)
Powered by UltimateBet
Started at 17/May/06 00:21:38

kurti is at seat 0 with $513 .
blward is at seat 1 with $904 .
Rempzilla is at seat 2 with $1427 .
-Raisor- is at seat 3 with $3378 .
DrCaligula is at seat 4 with $2150 .
ACES2117 is at seat 5 with $557 .
The button is at seat 3.

DrCaligula posts the small blind of $5.
ACES2117 posts the big blind of $10.

kurti: -- -- -- --
blward: -- -- -- --
Rempzilla:
-Raisor-: -- -- -- --
DrCaligula: -- -- -- --
ACES2117: -- -- -- --

Pre-flop:
kurti folds. blward folds. Rempzilla calls.
-Raisor- folds. DrCaligula raises to $20. ACES2117
calls. Rempzilla calls.

Flop: (board: ):

DrCaligula checks. ACES2117 checks. Rempzilla bets
FOLD $60. DrCaligula calls. ACES2117

Turn: (board: ):

DrCaligula checks. Rempzilla bets $180. DrCaligula
calls.

River: (board: ):

DrCaligula bets $250. Rempzilla goes all-in for
$1167.

DrCaligula: I guess I'll fold a straight.
DrCaligula: It's so sad that you don't even know how to play that hand.
DrCaligula folds, showing 8d Qh 7h 8s (a straight, queen high).
Rempzilla is returned $917 (uncalled).
Hand #31317931-4675 Summary:

$3 is raked from a pot of $1040.
Rempzilla wins $1037.
Rempzilla: Nut flush draw. Kiss my ring, bitch.
Rempzilla left the table.

Veni Vidi Vici (aka TheRempel is Pretentious)

2006-05-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

So Friday May 12th was my final day at work. It's a pretty crappy underpaid but also very slack job I had for two years and I am not at all sorry to be gone.

To celebrate, I got a new tattoo and totally shitfaced. Getting a needle jabbed into my skin by an angry biker is my idea of a great time.

I won't be posting much over the next few weeks as I am going to ease into my new life as a 'professional' poker player (how can anybody that is literally masturbating when they scoop a pot be referred to as a professional?). I haven't had any sort of vacation since I was fifteen years old and as such will be playing about 500 hands a day, or making $1000, whichever comes first. The remaining 22 hours a day will be spent sleeping, eating and shitting.

In two weeks, when I sit down and start the long grind, I will be attempting to play 10,000 hands of PLO, 3000 hands of NLHE and 500 hands of 7Stud a week, every week. That's about 35 hours 6 tabling PLO, 10 hours 4-tabling 6-Max NLHE and 6-8 hours learning to play stud. With my workrate at $400 PLO being about $120-$160/100 hands, I should be able to bring in anywhere from $5000-$15000 a week, depending on how much I dump playing HE, Stud and Party BJ. I can live extremely well on $1000 a week (no dependants, no woman, only minor addictions, free healthcare), so as soon as I take care of the last vestiges of my student debt from a bazillion years ago, I will most likely be increasing my bankroll fast enough on a weekly basis that I'll have a hefty br for the $2000 PLO games on stars and party by October. Other than the juicy $1000 games on UB, I don't see much point in playing the games between $400 and $2000 as they seem to rarely go and are generally rockfests.

One thing I don't understand though; both Party and Stars limit their cashouts to $10,000 per week. What do the big game players that win consistently do on those sites? Win $10K a week and then quit?

In other news, RIBBO = BUSTO

Donk all day

2006-05-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's not even a double up, but man was it fun. I broke my $10,000 PLO cherry!

Hand #31317915-3049 at Cleveland Heights (Pot Limit Omaha)
Powered by UltimateBet
Started at 07/May/06 00:31:56

Magglio is at seat 0 with $27496 .50.
Gulden Draak is at seat 1 with $29398 (sitting out) .
Rempzilla is at seat 2 with $1648 .
drycreek is at seat 3 with $5000 .
Pauillac is at seat 5 with $24759 .
TheJungleCat is at seat 8 with $9989 .
The button is at seat 0.

Rempzilla posts the small blind of $50.
drycreek posts the big blind of $100.

Magglio: -- -- -- --
Rempzilla:
drycreek: -- -- -- --
Pauillac: -- -- -- --
TheJungleCat: -- -- -- --

Pre-flop:
Pauillac folds. TheJungleCat folds. Magglio raises
to $350. Rempzilla re-raises to $1150. drycreek
folds. Magglio calls.

Flop: (board: ):

Rempzilla goes all-in for $498. Magglio calls.

Turn: (board: ):

(no action in this round)

River: (board: ):

(no action in this round)

Showdown:
Rempzilla shows .
Rempzilla has : straight ten high.
Magglio mucks cards.
(Magglio has .)

Hand #31317915-3049 Summary :

$2 is raked from a pot of $3396.
Rempzilla wins $3394 with straight ten high .
----------------------------------------------------------------

John Daly Stuck 50 Million and Stars Table Mod

2006-05-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

$5,000 Slot Machines?

I stole this article from Threebet33's blog. I thought I was sick. Link.

Very nice Poker Stars table modification I just discovered. Props to Waffle from 2p2/#sstakes. It's nice to not have to stare at the puke yellow and brown. Just remember to run the .bat file to star PStars instead of clicking the regular .exe file or it will automatically undo the modifications.

Click Here

Beset = Monkeyboy

2006-04-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

I am sure there are very few people that read this blog for my posts, but I don't give a fuck.

I'm up over $18,000 playing mostly $200 and $400 PLO on Party, Stars, and Ultimate Bet since April 17th. I'm definitely running hot, but this is also the first time I've been bankrolled to play as high as $400 without doing my usual open-ass shottaking that I am so good and also so terrible at.

I'm giving notice at my job on Friday. I've worked a crappy desk job for the last two years and would gladly take a kick in the balls if it meant I could walk away a free man. Thankfully I'm quitting with a $20,000 bankroll, my debts paid, and $10,000 in the bank.

SHIP IT, BITCHES

Exams

2006-04-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

I save up living expenses for 6 weeks and then cash out 90% of my roll during exams. Since I'm not playing poker I'm not posting. I'm sure we've lost whatever few readers we had. Sorry!

Lastly, poker vacations are the shizzle when you've been playing 50k hands a month.

beset

MACHIAVELLI

2006-04-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

RUMOURS OF MY DEATH ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED BITCHES

WHAT A WEEK (or, "Variance")

2006-03-18T20:18:00.000-08:00

Click on graph. What a week. I didn't play all those different limits just too lazy to select them individually. Mostly 1/2 and 2/4 NL with two tasty shots at 5/10 and 10/20. Can you spot them!? ;-)

Classico

2006-03-14T22:18:00.000-08:00

Best Party Is Rigged Post Ever

2006-03-13T15:57:00.000-08:00

From 2p2 BBV Forum:

People who think Party is rigged are thinking waaay too small.

It's as if Newton got hit on the head with an apple and then decided gravity was somehow caused by trees and fruit.

Party, rigged? It doesn't need to be. Poker is rigged. Life is rigged. Math is rigged. Randomness itself is a conspiracy cooked up by God to squeeze the maximum amount of pain and suffering out of his little flock of toy souls.

Yes there's a conspiracy, yes it involves Party, but only to the degree that it involves every other atom in the universe, which are all somehow magically lined up to produce, in the recursive awareness of human consciousness, the most exquisitely complex and fragile work of art and engineering conceivable and then, simultaneously, dump into this miracle an infinity of foul excrement - the 5 horsemen of BBV: ignorance, addiction, superstition, anger, and greed, and then ultimately pulverize it into a smoking heap of dead, oblivous, meaningless matter - BUSTO.

Poker is just one tentacle of the universal conspiracy called Entropy. But if we try very, very hard, we can make the leap from being one of its oblivous patsies to being one of its boot-licking junior functionaries.

So, shhhhhhh...

25k Hands in 25 Days

2006-03-13T00:33:00.000-08:00

Starting tomorrow. I need a new challenge.

I've been running fairly bad. Luckily, I took a break to do some casino whoring and ran super hot doing sticky bonuses and a few cashables. Casino whoring + rakeback--who needs to win!?

I'm not on a big downswing or anything just winning at a low rate and experiencing a lot of variance. That is poker.

Anyways, I'll post an update everyday for my little mini challenge. Probably mostly 1/2 and 2/4 NL for now. I've turned into a bankroll nit.

I leave you with busto, busto and busto.

The OId Order Comes Crashing Down

2006-02-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

ZeeJustin is BUSTED.

In other news, Gigabet is BUSTO.

The Curse of the Final Table

2006-02-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

Pokerstars Game (?) Tournament #19966384, Hold'em No Limit - Level XIII
(1500/3000) - 2006/02/24 - 07:51:53 (ET)
Table '19966384 2' Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: naipe24 (135187 in chips)
Seat 2: veemoney (77005 in chips)
Seat 3: DDingo DK (80522 in chips)
Seat 5: Hero (61766 in chips)
Seat 6: JTOConnell (45224 in chips)
Seat 7: pfnm (37398 in chips)
Seat 8: Semi-Bluff (73007 in chips)
Seat 9: NL-nostra (147391 in chips)
naipe24: posts the ante 150
veemoney: posts the ante 150
DDingo DK: posts the ante 150
Hero : posts the ante 150
JTOConnell: posts the ante 150
pfnm: posts the ante 150
Semi-Bluff: posts the ante 150
NL-nostra: posts the ante 150
Semi-Bluff: posts small blind 1500
NL-nostra: posts big blind 3000

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE naipe24, 6000 to 9000
FOLD veemoney
FOLD DDingo DK
RAISE Hero , 52616 to 61616 and is all-in
FOLD JTOConnell
FOLD pfnm
FOLD Semi-Bluff
FOLD NL-nostra
CALL naipe24, 52616

Flop:
[ ]

Turn:
[ ] [ ]

River:
[ ] [ ]

Showdown:
naipe24: shows [ ] (two pair Nines and Threes)
Hero : shows [ ] (a pair of Threes)
naipe24 collected 128932 from pot

Grinding Through The TIlt

2006-02-22T15:02:00.000-08:00

Dropped down limits to grind out rent and it's been good. Just playing two thousands a day of ABC and I'm right on track. When I get my rakeback payment next month I'll move back up to 2/4 NL probably.

Also, I have finally taken the first step and admitted I can't seem to avoid playing MTTs all together. The prospect of turning a toothpick into a lumber yard is just too seductive for me. Plus, I played a couple 109s and a 215 on Party this last week and its amazing how much DEAD MONEY there is in these things. People are absolutely terrible! Anyone who has half a clue is massively +EV in these things just might be a while before that translates into dead presidents. I guess I should probably read HOH V.2 but I'll probably just play a bunch of them and trying to figure out how to stop getting busted with 88-TT on the bubble.

In An Act of Solidarity...

2006-02-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

I went on monkey tilt playing 20/40 Omaha8 on party and spewed 2k. Basically, all the money I made patiently grinding over the last two days. The Rempel may still be a shot-taker; but, I am done. I will be drastically over-rolled for every level I play now. I'm sick of it. It's 200nl and 5/10 limit games.

I'm just not balanced enough to handle shit like this. It pisses me off super-bad and then costs me lots of money in the form of opportunity costs. I will not be able to play poker for at least 3 days now.

Seven Stages of Monkey Tilt

2006-02-19T15:12:00.000-08:00

This post is from The Rempel. He is stuck at work and asked me to post it for him. It is a very good read.

---------------------------------------------------

I have what a textbook type a personality. While I am not always driven in all aspects of my life, when it comes to any sort of competition, I have a need to win that outweighs everything else.

When I was very young my parents refused to play any sort of board games with me because I would not quit until there was a clear winner. Any game of Monopoly could not be decided until one player had bankrupted everyone else. Every videogame I ever played required hours in front of the television until the final credits scrolled.

This attitude has carried on to my poker ‘career’ and has caused minor problems to say the least. I play Pot Limit Omaha with a very high variance style and often somewhat under bankrolled, a recipe for disaster. Generally I don’t tilt at all. PLO is full of situations where a strong hand is only a 5% favorite (or dog) on the flop against a reasonable draw and a player that got angry when his set got cracked or his giant draw didn’t hit wouldn’t last long before his head exploded. If I run bad for an extended period of time it can lead to a form of retarded aggression I call SUPER MONKEY TILT.

As I stated in a previous post, I was running very very well in the $400 6 Max games on party. So well that I’d almost quit playing the $100 games altogether. My bankroll at the end of January was about $6000 and would have been $10,000 if I hadn’t withdrawn along the way to make some purchases and pay some debts from my university years. It was insane. There were at least twenty players at those tables out of the roughly five-hundred I’d played with that would play eighty percent of their hands preflop and raise with half of those. Obviously fifteen buy ins is no where near enough in that kind of game, especially when people are backing their stacks with middle pair and the fourth nut flush draw, but like I said, I was running good. The $400 6-max games are gone now, but I think I’d probably need at least $25,000 minimum to sit down there on a regular basis.

On February 3rd I cashed $2500 out of Party and deposited $600 on Full Tilt and the remaining $1700 on Poker Stars (Neteller really screws Canadian customers, taxing our money for 3% each time we deposit or withdraw from a site). I’d decided to take the weekend off and then go back to grinding on the $100 tables on Party and Stars while learning a few new games on Full Tilt as I cleared the 100% deposit bonus.

Things went pretty well. I played a few hands of LHE and Razz on FT on Saturday, February 4^th, winning a little. I use MTH on Party which auto sorts the tables for me and lets me use the keyboard (the primary reason I haven’t been playing on Stars much) instead of having to use the mouse. It makes things substantially easier and lets me play more tables without giving the huge diminishing returns you might normally see playing 4 tables vs 7-10. Going back to point and click on Stars and FT was an exercise in frustration for sure, but that night I actually fell asleep at about 10:00 pm, very odd for me, since I generally don’t go to sleep before 1:00 am even on a week night.

I woke to 6:00 am and found my buddy Chris messaging me through MSN. I’d transferred him some money on party the night before and he was confirming he’d gotten it. His wife works very early and doesn’t drive so always finds himself up very early on Sunday mornings to drive her to work. We went out, had a nice breakfast and talked about some of the struggles he is having in finding the right spots to gamble while playing PLO. Chris is an ultra-conservative player for the most part. When we first started playing hold’em, he was one of the type that could never understand why you’d fold any two cards preflop, since there is always a chance you can hit a big flop for your hand. Over the last few years he’s switched almost entirely the other way and has become very easy to bluff, especially on the river. He’d frequently fold hands like JJ on a T9643 board on 5^th to a 1/4^th pot sized bet or fear quads and the nut boat when he held TT on a T886J board and the loosest jackass at the table made a big bet on the river. I’ve gone the other way, I started off very tight preflop and very tight-aggressive post flop and have morphed into a complete loose aggressive gambooler in PLO.

At 8:00 am we went back to my apartment. I’d just bought a new HDTV the night before to go with my new XBOX 360 that I’d purchased from Chris’s store. He wanted to play on party so he went into my office while I tooled around with some games on the new TV. I was sticking to my plan not to play outside of Full Tilt. After he’d played on party for a few hours, we ended up having a marathon gaming session, playing some Dead or Alive and Tiger Woods 2006 until about 8:00 that night, at which point Chris left.

Here’s where the monkey tilt started. I was trying to clear the freaking stupid achievement points in Dead or Alive (a fighting game). Achievement points are kind of like badges you get for doing various random shit in Xbox Live games. One of these entailed beating the final boss of the game. I tried with every character but couldn’t do it for the life of me. Fighting games (excluding Soul Caliber) are usually not my thing, but I was getting pissed. By 10:00 I’d had enough and decided to go play on FT. I actually took a sleeping pill (they usually take about forty-five minutes to an hour to work) as I didn’t intend to play long.

I played one table of $200 PLO, one of $0.50/$1 Razz and one of $1/$2 LHE. For the first hour I won hand after hand in HE, broke even in PLO, and lost playing Razz. Then I started losing all at once and as my blood was boiling, I would not allow myself to concede defeat and simply get up from the computer. At 11:30 I went broke on FT. Not a huge thing, 10% of my bankroll and money I hadn’t really included in my main roll anyway.

I couldn’t let it go. I hated going bust, even in this type of artificial situation. I sat down on Stars and played 4 $200 PLO tables. There was no action whatsoever. I don’t know if I managed to take the seat of the action player on all four tables or what, but the average pot was about $15 on each table. I soon got frustrated and sat down at a highly action oriented $2000 PLO table with $900.

First hand I get AcAh Kd Jd in the BB. Random player I’ve got no notes or stats on makes it $70 to go UTG, Chufty and I both call. Some people would argue for a reraise here OOP, but given how loose aggressive Chufty is and that I can only put about 30% of my stack in preflop, I think calling is the best play given all the outside factors.

The flop came 5h 9d Td. Pot is about $230. I check, Random checks, Chufty pots and I push for most of my stack. Very high variance play because I’m about 45% against a set and coin flipping with a decent draw. I think I should be about 60% vs something like top two pair, no draw, which is a fairly common chufty hand. The only way I’m truly fucked here if he has top two pair and the nut flush draw, a set and the nut flush draw, etc, etc. I expect Chufty to call with a lot of strange hands here, but I don’t think I’m often in much trouble. His hand range is so huge that I have no idea what kind of card is going to help him on the turn, so I went with the easier (and higher variance) decision to check-raise for 90% of my remaining stack. If I pot here, I only have 3 nut outs, the four queens, Virtually any card on the turn could make a loose player like Chufty a better hand. If I check call, I’m in the same situation.

The turn is the 8h, I go all in for my last $100, Chufty, calls. The river is a brick and he shows Ad 6d 78 and of course, IGHN. This was a fairly trivial beat but combined with the DOA and FT bullshit, my blood was boiling. I quickly left the table (smart) and sat down at a $1000 NLHE table short with $400, half of my remaining Stars money. As often happens with short stack desperation moves, I busted with an outside straight flush draw versus top and bottom pair.

Since I was now on Super Monkey Tilt, I could hardly call it a night there. I found four very active $400 PLO 6-max tables on party and sat down at all of ‘em. Each table had two or three players that were raising at least 30% of their hands, which meant that virtually every pot was getting raised and lots of big bets were going in on the flop. My middle set + nut flush draw couldn’t outrun a flopped bottom straight, none of my big draws were getting there, and I soon found myself broke on Party too. At one point I was so angry with myself I moved in on the turn on a K78K board after raising preflop with AAJJ double suited when a LAP player had called preflop (as on every other hand) and called my continuation bet on the flop (as he’d do with absolutely nothing, but probably a king here). He bet $100 into the $180 pot on the turn and I chose to move all in, not because I thought I had the best hand but because I WAS PISSED OFF. Definitely a +EV move in the long run.

By 2:00 am I was totally broke, basically. I still had $200 left on stars and $300 left on party, but after weeks of playing $400 PLO with occasional shots at $2000, that seemed like nothing. I attempted to make a minor comeback the next day, deposited more to bolster what I had, and ran bad at the one $400 table I was playing and all of the $100 tables. Between 8:00 pm on February 5^th and the same time the following night, I had blown $6500.

Will I continue to take shots? Yeah, that will never stop. People that know me know I have no fear of gambling it up as long as the potential benefits outweigh the losses. Obviously I need to control the frequency and extent of the shots I take to a far greater degree. My biggest problem is getting away from the table when I’m playing bad due to lack of sleep or bad mental state. Bad play and great play can be hard to distinguish in PLO.

Currently I’m not playing at all. If I can get some seed money, I’ll probably grind some of the new $10 and $20 SNG’s on party, since the average party player is not at all used to a higher structure. I’ve always had decent results in low limit SNG’s but pretty much stopped playing them altogether when I started playing PLO almost exclusively.

Regarding the $50,000 challenge I made with Beset, it’s over. I conceded and he graciously forgave the bet. He’s good people.

10/20 NL 6max? LETS TAKE A SHOT

2006-02-13T16:03:00.000-08:00

#Game No : 3548919804
***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$2000 NL Texas Hold'em - Monday, February 13, 18:08:10 ET 2006
Table Table 85395 (6 max) (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Kvelerslange ( $3411.50 )
Seat 2: Shavlick ( $3165 )
Seat 3: LitleBastrd ( $2000 )
Seat 4: toolittle111 ( $3343 )
Seat 5: flakslodd ( $2214 )
Seat 6: Hero ( $940 )
Shavlick posts small blind [ $10 ].
LitleBastrd posts big blind [ $20 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
FOLD toolittle111
CALL flakslodd, $20
RAISE Hero , $100
FOLD Kvelerslange
FOLD Shavlick
CALL LitleBastrd, $80
CALL flakslodd, $80

Flop:
[ ]
CHECK LitleBastrd
CHECK flakslodd
BET Hero , $300
FOLD LitleBastrd
ALL-IN flakslodd [ $2114 ]
ALL-IN Hero [ $540 ]

Turn:
[ ]

River:
[ ]
Hero shows [ ] a full house Kings full of tens .
flakslodd shows [ ] a flush ace high .
flakslodd wins $1274 from side pot #1 with a flush ace high .
Hero wins $1987 from the main pot with a full house Kings full of tens .

Also, 2-7 TD pwnage

Hand number: 1533875-3408
Level: $5/$10
Players:
SB($493) seat 0
Hero($324) seat 2
UTG($195) seat 3
CO($561) seat 4
Button($197) seat 5

Button at seat 5

Hero posts. UTG posts.

Hand: 55672

Round 1(0.75BB)

CO raises. Button calls. Hero re-raises. UTG folds. CO calls. Button re-raises. Hero calls. CO calls. Hero takes 1. CO takes 2. Button takes 2.

Hand: 5672J

Round 2(5.75BB)

Hero bets. CO calls. Button
raises. Hero calls. CO calls. Hero takes 1. CO takes 2. Button takes 1.

Hand: 56724

Round 3(8.75BB)

Hero bets. CO calls. Button
raises. Hero re-raises. CO calls. Button re-raises. Hero calls. CO calls. Hero stands pat. CO takes 1. Button takes 1.

Hand: 56724

Round 4(19.75BB)

Hero bets. CO folds. Button
calls.

Showdown:
Hero shows 76542
Button mucks 97543

)#()HIODSAHSDAIOQ()#$39032

2006-02-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

David Sklansky Vs. The High Stakes Forum

2006-02-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

David has engaged in a war of poker theory versus many of 2+2's most respected high stakes NL posters. The threads are great fun.

The Battle Started Here

Continued Here

...And Took A Lighter Turn Here.

Enjoy!

Exercise In Humility

2006-02-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

I'm going to post a hand I played badly every few days just to keep myself humble (read between the lines: I'm running hot again). Villain in this is a total rock. I should have never open-limped, I should have folded preflop to the raise and when he call the flop raise I am FUBAR. I should have check and called a turn bet. He's a big puss so he probably would have given me odds. But I decide to get stacked I guess.

Party Poker ($2 no limit). Hand converted by Check Raised hand converter

HERO ($209.70) (UTG)
MP ($200.00) (MP)
CO ($263.80) (CO)
BTN ($226.80) (BTN)
SB ($273.88) (SB)
BB ($40.00) (BB)

Hole Cards:

Preflop (6 players):
SB posts small blind ($1.00).
BB posts big blind ($2.00).
HERO calls ($2.00) [1.50:1].
MP folds [2.50:1].
CO folds [2.50:1].

BTN raises $9.00.

SB folds [1.75:1].
BB folds [2.00:1].
HERO calls ($7.00) [2.00:1].

Flop (10.50 bets ($21.00) in pot, 6 players):

HERO checks.
BTN bets $15.00.
HERO raises $55.00.
BTN calls ($40.00) [2.27:1].

Turn (65.50 bets ($131.00) in pot, 6 players):

HERO bets $99.00.
BTN raises $162.80.
HERO calls ($46.70) [6.16:1].

River (219.75 bets ($439.50) in pot, 6 players):

BTN shows [ ] and won $436.50 (109.13bb)

Also, click below for month to date stats. I'm not going to make 50k hands this month. Hoping for 35-40k.

Also +$450 in RB.

c

Roy West Is Creepy

2006-02-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

I loved his low-limit 7-card Stud book but the opening lines to his Cardplayer articles are getting creepier and creepier.

"Hi. Come on in. It’s a cool winter evening here in the Las Vegas valley. Let us go out on the patio and soak in the hot tub while sipping hot apple juice and musing over various aspects of our beloved game."

Sitting in the hot tub with Roy West sipping hot apple juice? Ugh.

In all seriousness, I like his article this month. Roy's Rule #1 sounds retarded (Play Happy or Don't Play At All) but there is a kernel of truth there. I don't have the option of taking it literally since I try to play 100 hours+ a month. I'm just not happy that often. But, the idea that a central tenet of playing poker should be to refrain from emotional imbalance such as tilt, anger or all-encompassing distraction or to minimize playing time is an excellent one and translates directly into $$$ in my opinion.

Head Pops Out Of Arse

2006-02-06T11:38:00.000-08:00

I was truly stumped.

I had been suffering unparrelled break-even stretches, my variance was going way up and I was just plain out having a hard time adjusting to mid-stakes NL games. I had beaten 100NL 6max over 40k hands for 8ptb/100. 100NL full ring at 7ptb/100 over close to 100k hands. But once I moved up to 1/2 and 2/4 NL, my WR dropped down to between 3-4ptb/100 and my swings/breakeven stretches went way up. Often breaking even for 10-15k stretches and one week I had an 8 buy-in 15k hand downswing. Something I’d never experienced before (I’d dropped that many buy-ins a number of times but never over such a long stretch).

Now, some of this is obviously just a function of the games being slightly tougher. That being said, they are still basically fish ponds and I was not happy at all with my results after 40k or so. So, I decided to spend most of a full work day reviewing hands from my 100nl days and comparing them to my more recent hands from 1/2 and 2/4 NL to try and see what, if anything, I was doing different etc.

I made a shocking discovery.

I had turned into a weak/tight little bitch.

I'm not sure how it happened but I'd tightened WAY up, even in position. I had stopped playing draw heavy flops hard. I wasn't getting any action on my big made hands because I wasn't giving any with draws or air. I had gone super-passive with marginal made hands just hoping to call down and win. I seriously don't know how this happened. I suspect that when I moved up (even though I had played these levels successfully last year for a few months) I subconsciously decided to tighten way up while I adjusted to the new games. Then, I tried to integrate my game again but was only partially successful and ended up with a skitzophrenic style twitching along somewhere in the nether regions between a fully functioning TAG, a confused positional LAG, and a loose/passive Automatic Teller Machine.

So, I made a list of all the things I was doing wrong, played a session of only 4-tables, started playing 10xAggression, way more hands in position, switching gears, etc etc. All the shit I used to do. Suddenly the rocks and TAGs weren't peeling light on the flop and stealing pots from me anymore. I began padding my stack with lots of little pots so I could take the occassional Brunson free-roll when caught semi-bluffing with strong draws. I started getting action on my sets again. I stopped playing marginal hands OOP and passively calling off my stack with marginal hands and big draws.

It's wierd how grinding online like I do (I play 30-40k hands a month) you can settle into auto-pilot, develop some wierd/bad habits and turn into a marginal winner/break-even player. I'm not sure exactly how it happens but it sure as hell does. I'm just glad I was able to figure out where I was leaking and stop the bleeding a bit. I'm dropping down from 6-8 tables to playing just 4-5 (6max. Full ring I can still play 8 and remain sane and integrated).

I'm looking forward to the rest of the month.

Yesterday

2006-02-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

I had a fun session yesterday. Click below for the gory details.

Poker = The Suck

2006-01-31T17:37:00.000-08:00

This swing would be trivial playing LHE or PLO but for NL its quite the rollercoaster. My overall WR in the 1/2 (40k hands) is 7ptb/100 with a standard deviation of 42ptb/100. So running at 3 or whatever is no big woop at all. But the way I got there is fairly nuts. Here are the three hands that provided me with that crazy upswing at the end:

Sets Are Still The Nuts
Flopped Trips Are Over-Rated
I am On This Guy's Buddy List

You'll note my party SN is undisguised there. I am changing my screen name in two days so I don't care. If anyone has played with me I'd appreciate any feedback. I tilt from time to time and sometimes act very bizarre in chat, usually on purpose. Anyways. Thanks in advance.

I think I need to work on my seat selection. I reviewed all the big pots played during the 8 buyin downswing and about 5 of them were lost at tables where I had loose agressive players on my left that were making me lay shit down, putting me to the test and going to war with marginal hands on draw-heavy boards. I also tilted a little. Oh well. I started out at the 2/4 last week and then decided to play 1/2 for a while. 6-tabling I'm making about solid coin. I'll move up to 2/4 probably next month after I pay a few bills and pad the br.

Goal for february. 100 hours, 50-60K hands. NO LHE and NO MUlTI-TABLE TOURNAMENTS. Also, going to get up to tulalip for the 5/10 NL game on the weekend. Heard its been jumping off.

One last hand. File this is the funny hand category.

How Am I Going To Get My Stack In Here? OH WAIT! THANKS!!!!111

Have you seen this Monkey?

2006-01-31T02:17:00.000-08:00

LOST MONKEY, AKA RIBBO, AKA RIBS, AKA THEREMPEL's BIZNATCH

http://www.pokerhand.org/?230560
http://www.pokerhand.org/?230552
http://www.pokerhand.org/?230551
http://www.pokerhand.org/?230548
http://www.pokerhand.org/?230546

Big Chiiippppsss

2006-01-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

So Beset and I continue to make goofy prop bets. I lost my half of the smoking bet on the 15th after I won $2500 in 15 minutes and had to celebrate. Beset is probably going to win his. I decided to make it more interesting after he claimed to be better than me at Pot Limit Omaha. I crossed his stop smoking bet with a 3:2 bet on a series of 5 heads up SNG's; Limit Stud, Limit Hold'Em, Limit Omaha 8B, No Limit Hold'em and PLO.

I am almost completely unfamiliar with limit betting. I started poker by playing NLHE SNG's and continued from there into NL and PLO Ring Games. Playing Limit is like trying to translate Latin, I understand some of the words but most of it is just giberrish.

Anyway, we played the first SNG on Stars Friday Night. Beset won the Limit O8 event. Not one to go out on a losing beat, we quickly played the 7 Stud event, in which I TOTALLY OWN3D his bitch ass, sucking out trips on the river TWICE with some baby pair and a big draw to take most of his chips. 1-1.

Yesterday we played the LHE event, which he should, by all rights, hand my ass to me at. Again, he GOT PWN3D, including this beautiful hand:

Pokerstars Game (?) TOURNAMENT #18836885, HOLD'EM LIMIT - MATCH ROUND I, LEVEL I (10/20) - 2006/01/29 - 05:27:04 (ET)
Table '18836885 1' One on One Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Hero (1360 in chips)
Seat 2: beset7 (1640 in chips)
beset7: posts small blind 5
Hero : posts big blind 10

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE beset7, 10 to 20
CALL Hero , 10

Flop:
[ ]
CHECK Hero :
BET beset7, 10
CALL Hero , 10

Turn:
[ ] [ ]
CHECK Hero :
BET beset7, 20
RAISE Hero , 20 to 40
RAISE beset7, 20 to 60
RAISE Hero , 20 to 80
>>>Betting capped
CALL beset7, 20

River:
[ ] [ ]
BET Hero , 20
RAISE beset7, 20 to 40
RAISE Hero , 20 to 60
CALL beset7, 20

Showdown:
Hero : shows [ ] (a full house Threes full of Deuces)
beset7: mucks hand
Hero collected 340 from pot
>>>Hero said, "**"

SUMMARY:
Total pot 340 | Rake 0

Board:
[ ]
Seat 1: Hero (big blind) showed [ ] and won (340) with a full house Threes full of Deuces
Seat 2: beset7 (button) (small blind) mucked [ ]

Days Go By (And Bitches are Still Bitches)

2006-01-29T13:35:00.000-08:00

Wow, busy month.

I am terrible at blogging. I think I've had at least five blogs by now where I've started it up, gone crazy in the first week, and then just lost interest. Sorry!

Anyway, on to the newz.

Current Bankroll: $4,175

Two weeks ago I had $300 on party and was playing the $25 PLO games. I ran freaking horrible bad for one session and lost $250 playing 10 tables. Needless to say, I was somewhat dismayed. Yeah, I play a high variance style, but I have NEVER EVER lost more than 4 buy-ins in a single session playing $25 PLO. NEVER. My job pays my bills and allows me to live comfortably as a single guy, but I hardly have a bunch of money to pour into poker. I also had a computer that I was paying off in installments (a 2 year old POS Presario that cost me $150 a month).

So anyway, I didn't know what to do. Do I transfer the $50 over to stars and play $0.01/$0.02 or something until I have enough to get back into the $25 games? That doesn't sound terribly fun and is not likely something I would do. Instead I did an instacash on Neteller for $300 and sat back down in the same games that night and made $100 back over the next hour or so. The catch? I didn't really have $300 in my bank account to cover the instacash. It was a few days a way from payday and I knew I could cover it if I *had* to, but that's not how TheRempel rolls.

That Friday, I crushed the $25 tables a bit more and took a shot at $100 PLO, buying in for $50 on two tables. By Sunday, I had $900, enough to cash out $600 to cover my neteller account. I need $300 to cover my pending EFT (Neteller will not let you cash out unless you have more than you 'owe') plus the $300 to cash out on my ATM card and put in my bank account. I squeaked it out and my foolishness was rewarded.

A week after that, I'd managed to build my roll to $1800, mostly through playing $25 PLO with some irregular shots at $100. On Saturday, January 14th, I ran into some harsh beats and somewhat tilty play by myself and ended up playing from 3:00 PM until 6:00 AM Sunday morning. I went through a continual torturous cycle of lose-get even-lose-get even-win-lose for 15 freaking hours. My Buddy Chris showed up at 6:00 AM because I'd given him a key so he could get in and use my computer while I was sleeping. He showed up and I was still playing, so he sat back on my office couch and sweated me.

By 10:00 I'd broken even again. It was probably the most frustrating night of poker I'd ever played. It seemed as though people were calling ridiculously thin (2 outs, 3 outs, 5 outs, 1 outs...)
and hitting, always taking a large portion of my money. Finally, in frustration, I scanned the Party Poker lobby and found a $400 PLO table where the average pot was $350. I sat down with a monkey buy in ($100) and got AhsAJs9h on my first hand in the BB. Raised preflop, got two callers, potted the Q93 flop, got raised all in by QQxx, called for my last $30 with an overpair, a backdoor straight draw and the nut flush draw. The turn came Ad and the river was the beautiful Ac and I won a $250 pot.

A few hands later I have KK63r in late position. I limp after 5 or 6 limpers and we all take a flop of 665 or 664, I can't quite remember. It's checked to me, I make a pot-sized bet and get 1 caller. On most turn cards I'll simply check behind if it's checked to me. The reason being that in PLO, with a high pair in your hand along with trips, you're either slightly ahead or way behind. I had no reads on the other player so I had no way of knowing whether or not he'd check-call with something like A678, which has me in a world of hurt, or if he'd do the same with just an overpair. I'm basically looking to take down the hand on the flop since I have five outs at maximum to improve to a full-house.

Anyway, the turn was a great card, one of the two remaining Kings, giving me the stone cold nuts as my opponent could not possibly have quads (not usually much of a concern anyway). He checked to me, I bet about 60% of the pot and he smooth called again. I'd make this same bet with something like 689T if I feel like I'm drawing live and of course I'd also make it if I hit a great card and have my opponent drawing dead. The river was a 7, he lead out with a pot sized bet, I raised all-in, and he called with 6789. I'd broken even and closed the table, planning on going to bed. I became involved in a big pot with an OE straight draw and the nut flush draw versus two obvious sets on a $100 table and took it down, hitting my straight on the river. I've never been one to leave during a rush so after a few minutes I sat back down at the same $400 table, this time with $200.

I doubled up my second hand back with the nut flush versus a ten high flush (no kidding!). Next hand I flopped middle set vs a shortstack that pushed an OE straight draw and took it down to build my stack to $528.

Then the deciding hand of my session:

UTG raised to $14, almost always KK or AA when he's raising in this position. The button reraised to $40 which could be almost anything as he had reraised at least 15% of his hands at the table. I called in the BB with QJ9T ds and the UTG player reraised to $124. The Button called and I also called, figuring to win a big pot if I hit the flop hard. I'm unlikely to be a big dog since there's about a 90% chance that both players have pairs here, probably KK and AA, as long as my cards are mostly live. The pot was $429 to the flop.

The flop came and hit me hard: 9d 6d 9h. The UTG player bet the pot leaving himself with $15, the button called all-in, and I raised for UTG's last $15. The turn was a fantastic queen of spades and the river the seven of spades, and my full house was good for a $1579 pot, the biggest pot I've ever won to my recall. I played two or three more hands, turned a straight with a wrap draw against a LAG with top two pair, and won another $900. At 11:00 am, I closed Party Poker, having won $2500 in 15 minutes. My absolute crazy shot taking paid off.

I cashed out $1000 to finish upgrading my computer so I could take the original parts that belonged to the presario, throw them back in the original case, and send it back to the company I've been 'purchasing' it from, not spending another dime on the horrible POS. I did so, bought a new monitor, mother board, chip set, and RAM and now have basically a brand new computer for my gambooling efforts.

Two weeks later, a few more shots at $400, two shots at $2000 (one good, one bad, break eve altogether) and I have a nice comfy bankroll for playing the $100 games.

Sometimes crazy works out for you.

PWN3D!!!

2005-12-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

[16:24] beset: well dude. i have good/bad news
[16:24] therempel: yeah, what's that
[16:24] beset: i played some LHE last night
[16:25] beset: at the casino
[16:25] beset: :(
[16:25] therempel: w00t
[16:25] beset: only had 8k hands left too

20k

2005-12-22T23:40:00.000-08:00

I have 2k more hands from UB/Stars that I haven't logged in. But, I've had a couple downswings and break-even stretches. Such is life. WR has dropped down to about 6ptb/100.

It's a liveable WR but I think I can beat 100nl 6max for more like 9-10ptb/100. I've had a few monkey tilt sessions and a lot of bad luck so who knows, the true WR might be up in that range or I might not be as dominant in these games as I thought. Who knows. Sample is still super small. I logged about 90k hands playing 100nl last year but I don't have the DB anymore. I think I was at about 7ptb/100. $35/hr or so. Was $45/hr, but no more rakeback :( My affiliate got busted using individual trackers.

But I've also discovered some leaks. I call too many pot-sized bets on the flop with draws and no implied odds. I was also open too light UTG+1 and putting myself in crappy spot with weak top pair type hands and draws that require position to be +ev. I check/raise AI on the flop with combination draws in spots with no fold equity and I 3-bet too liberally on the button in spots where getting pot committed is not such a great plan. Weee! Plugging leaks; who woulda thought.

Anyways, 10k to go and I can move back up to 1/2 with occassional shots at 2/4.

Weak 1: Anal Fissures

2005-12-20T20:32:00.000-08:00

And so the first week of the bet has finished. I started with $250 last week and promptly lost $100 on the first day. I've been playing $25 PLO and $25 and $50 NLHE on Party for the last week but due to some health issues related to my recent decision to quit smoking I have had some issues with long term concentration. Basically I play for a few hours and everything starts to run together. It's getting better over the last few days and I should be more alert by this weekend.

I've played 2500 hands of $25 PLO and netted a big fat $150, or about 12 PT BB/100. Not shabby, less than normal. For whatever reason the PLO games on party have been nutty as hell lately while the same games on pokerstars seem to be cracking off. I never bothered to get poker tracker for hold'em (I will soon), but I've made roughly $160 over 1500 hands at the $25 and $50 levels, both full ring and 6 max. There is some goddamn attrocious play in those games.

Can't get the converter working, but here's an example:

Seat 1: Hero (Small Blind) ( $86.90 )
Seat 3: UTG ( $11.30 )
Seat 4: UTG+1 ( $22.50 )
Seat 7: MP3 ( $6.30 )
Seat 9: CO ( $34.55 )
Seat 10: BUTTON ( $24.50 )

Hero posts small blind [$0.10].
UTG posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ 9c Jd ]
UTG+1 calls [$0.25].
MP3 calls [$0.25].
CO raises [$0.75].
BUTTON calls [$0.75].
Hero calls [$0.65].

Pretty loose call OOP here on my part. Sometimes you just have to take a flier and if you never showdown a mediocre hand you'll have difficulty getting paid off when you're strong. At any rate, I was getting 4:1 on my money for the $0.65 call so I don't think it's terrible. I'm looking for two pair minimum in terms of a showdown hand.

UTG folds.
UTG+1 calls [$0.50].
MP3 calls [$0.50].

** Dealing Flop ** [ 9h, Jc, 2d ]
POT = $4 - rake

Hero bets [$2.50].

Banzai! Top two pair, a decent sized pot, and opponents that will call with underpairs. I bet out because I want to play this pot to the river against my calling station opponents. I bet out relatively strong because they tend to equate a strong bet with a weak hand. I would make the same bet here much of the time with a draw as well.

UTG+1 folds.
MP3 folds.
CO folds.
BUTTON raises [$11.30].

Boom! What does this mean?

On a previous hand, I had raised his flop bet into a T84 board with my AT. He reraised me and checked the rest of the way with his JT. I had a niggling feeling that he would have put his entire stack in if I 4 bet him on that flop.

Hero raises [$32.60].
BUTTON is all-In [$12.45]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 7c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 4h ]
Hero shows [ 9c, Jd ] two pairs, jacks and nines.
BUTTON doesn't show [ Qh, Qc ] a pair of queens.
Hero wins $11.35 from side pot #1 with two pairs, jacks and nines.
Hero wins $48.95 from the main pot with two pairs, jacks and nines.

Man I hate his play here. Beset likes to defend fairly loose calls some donks make in these games by saying "that call is usually correct at that level". Sure, if you aren't paying any attention to you're opponents. This guy made the fundamental mistake of no limit play... he went broke because he tried to get tricky preflop and outplayed himself. I can't imagine what he thought I could have that he was beating when I 3 bet him on the flop.

So with hands like these and as much PLO as I can play on stars as soon as I get some money transferred over, my BR should grow signifigantly over the next few weeks.

Current Bankroll:

Original Stake : $250
PLO: $152.33
NLHE: $161.98

Total BR: $564.31

Unfortunately, as lame as this is, it is the holiday season and I find myself having to decide between buying gifts or filling my stomach, so I have cashed out $200 out of my bankroll. I will not be making any more cashouts barring rent difficulties until mid January.

So the real Total BR: $364.31

DAY 1: AND SO IT BEGINS!!!

2005-12-13T20:46:00.000-08:00

I can't deposit until tomorrow, but Beset transferred me some money on party to get started. -$100 playing $25 PLO in 90 minutes of play. W00000000000000000000t!!!

13k Update

2005-12-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

I thought I was much further along then this. UGH.

I went through a sucky break-even stretch. I was running bad but I was also experimenting with playing more tables and just playing real tight. It didn't work for me. Back to playing 3-tables using my more natural approach to the game (LAG preflop, TAG postflop).

Click below for stats and graph.

Give him money to eat, then next week he's broke

2005-12-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

Beset and I like to make prop bets to motivate each other. As he posted, I made a bet that he can't play 30,000 hands of 100 NL Full Ring without playing any other game at any other limit, including MTT's and SNG's. This is harder than it sounds.

As turnaround, we've made a bet that I can't deposit and make $50,000 in by June 30th. I have a rakeback payment of roughly $400 coming in mid to late december, and will be depositing roughly $300 next week. If I make $50K by April 1st, Beset owes me $1000. If I make the $50K by June 30th, it's $500. Alternatively, if I make less than $50,000 but more than $25,000 I owe him $500, and if I make less than $25,000, it's the full $1000.

Is it possible?

Here's the plan:

6 Table $25 PLO on Party for 2-3 Weeks, approximately 40 hours a week, hopefully ending up with roughly $2500, which is the minimum BR I require to play $50 PLO. I will then play up to 6 tables of $50 PLO (Full Ring, my 6 max BR needs to be roughly $5500, no joke.) until I have the $10,000 I need to play my style in $100 games on both Stars and Party. If I can get to this point it should be smooth sailing. The real issue is whether I can play $25 and $50 PLO for nearly two months. It's an aggravating grind. There are very few decent players at these levels and not much room for outplaying your opponents after the flop. Once I hit $100 PLO I should be able to make $2000-$3000 per week running at 10BB/100. This is a conservative estimate but given how I've been running as of late it may be overly optimistic. After that I merely have to play until I have $20,000 or so and move up to the $200 games. Playing four tables forty hours a week (160 table hours) I could run fairly bad (4-6 PT BB/HR) and still just squeak in.

We've been fucking around with bankroll requirements lately, using the formula:

ROR = exp(-2*BR*WR/VAR)

Ideally you want your ROR to be as low as possible. I am willing to accept a 1% ROR but I have built in an additional factor to allow me to drop down if necessary. At any given time, my bankroll will be the total amount required for me to have a 1% ROR at my current level, plus the amounts necessary to have the same ROR at all lower levels.

For instance, if I want to play $100 PLO I know I need about $8000. My variance is uber-high in this game. To play $50 PLO however with the same risk of ruin, I only need about $1500. That's a huge difference. 30 Buyins vs 80! My $25 PLO stats tell me I need only about $500 to have the same one percent chance of going broke so the total bankroll I need according to my plan for $100 PLO is $500 + $1500 + $8000 = $10,000. Seems like a lot, but I like to push very small edges and get a lot of money in whenever I percieve that tiny little marginal value.

The time off has been going well. I haven't been doing much but it's given me a lot of time to get away from the game and just relax in a normal (well, close to normal, probably 3 sigma's out) life for a while.

I will be posting my results on a weekly basis. Wish me luck, you fucking assholes.

5k Down - 25k To Go

2005-12-03T02:10:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling the nausea already. Running decent. This is 4-tabling.

Click on the picture below for stats.

A 100 NL Propisition Bet

2005-12-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

I have accepted an even money bet with TheRempel that I can play 30k hands of .5/1 NL 6max on Party Poker without playing any other game or limits until the 30k is complete. This is a smart bet on his part because I like to play higher and also a variety of games. But, my bankroll has been fluctuating like a motherfucker so I've accepted the bet to practice discipline and to PWN TheRempel. Also, I make about $60+/hr 4-tabling that fish pond so the money ain't bad.

I will post updates. I think near the halfway mark I will start to go crazy. We shall see. I estimate this will take me 4-5 weeks.

WHORES!!! ALL WHORES!!!

2005-11-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

So I continued my weekend tradition of hemoragging money out the ass tonight and lost a bunch of key hands where I was either a huge favorite or getting a very good price in a multiway pot. Lost two different hands in big pots with top set where the eventual winner had two pair and a backdoor draw of some sort I would post some of them but I never want to fucking look at them again. I'm taking some time off from poker and probably won't play again until after Christmas. FUCK Y'ALL ALL Y'ALL.

Ray Zee Wisdom and a Stud H/L 8b Hand

2005-11-26T11:35:00.001-08:00

“Great plays come about by pushing marginal hands and making fantastic calls on the end through his ability to read hands. Poker is fun played this way. But no longer is the tight player inside the body. All hands start to look like they have value, and with skillful manipulation winning the pot is easy. He begins to believe that he can play bad hands for profit where in reality he can't. The player has taken a big step backward and a long leap forwards at the same time.” Ray Zee

There is a certain stage in a poker player’s evolution where his hand-reading skills take a huge leap forward. Predictable/average opponent seem to be practically showing you their hand in common situations. This evolutionary phase makes it possible to maneuver the numerous marginal situations arising during each session with deft expertise. The NAP (Newly Advanced Player) start to make razor thin value bets, precise folds and “big” calls. Like Zee observes, poker is fun played this way.

However, there are two phenomena that appear to proceed from this evolutionary step in most players:

The Newly Advanced Player Begins to Seek Out Marginal Spots.

You start 3-betting on the button with K9o because of a testicular desire to isolate the fish who raised UTG. You start playing just about anything pre-flop (or on 3^rd street or pre-draw) in position. You start relentlessly value betting middle pair, check/raise semi-bluffing 5^th St and trying to force your opponents to break pat 9s. The memory of that 20bb pot you won with ace-high has become imprinted on your mind and you start justifying marginal river calls or bluff-raises based on the pot-size. You took two steps forward and then three steps back. You’ve forgotten that while you might be able to show a small profit with hands that a new player would be certain to get creamed with, there are many starters that are just intrinsically –EV to play pre-flop, on third street or pre-draw. Instead of just recognizing that marginal spots arise of their own accord, giving you plenty of opportunity to make strong reads, you’ve started to fiend for marginal spots like a junkie—anxiously awaiting the next opportunity to value bet bottom pair on a board showing four to a straight. All the while, you are leaking chips. A few BBs here, a buy-in or two there, and before you know it you are breaking even or losing in games you "should" be crushing.

The Newly Advanced Player Runs Good Versus Idiots and Mistakes This For Mastery.

This situation is even more dangerous. The NAP runs dreadfully good. He’s tearing it up. He’s dragging big pots, making precise reads, value betting marginal hands, playing damn near blind on the button and in the cut-off. He starts to imagine himself to be a poker jedi, capable of transcending the range of expected value an average/decent player can expect to squeeze out of common poker situations. It’s not hard to imagine what will come of this when the variance lottery decides to draw a different number for a few sessions. Perceived mastery soon becomes a cold comfort as the bankroll starts to disappear and the ego refuses to permit the NAP to drop down in stakes.

I’ve been in both of these situations over the last year. Luckily, I’m self-conscious enough that I’ve been able to identify some of these behaviors and make some changes. Tight, or solid, aggressive play is my goal and I feel like I’ve been able to re-orient myself away from seeking out marginal spots for the thrill of it, or imagining myself to be some kind of poker god.

A Stud8 Hand

How many bets you think I missed on 3rd and 4th st? In the long-term theoretical sense of course. I think check/calling 7th was OK but there may be a thin value raise on 6th. Anybody care to comment?

7 Card Stud High-Low ($5/$10), Ante $0.50, Bring-In $2 (converter)

3rd Street - (0.70 SB)

Seat 1: xx xx 2___brings-in___folds
Seat 2: xx xx 7___calls___calls
Seat 3: xx xx J___folds
Seat 4: xx xx 5___folds
Hero: 4 4 4___calls___calls
Seat 6: xx xx 3___calls___calls
Seat 7: xx xx 3___completes

4th Street - (5.10 SB)

Seat 2: xx xx 7 8___calls
Hero: 4 4 4 6___calls
Seat 6: xx xx 3 T___folds
Seat 7: xx xx 3 A___bets

5th Street - (4.05 BB)

Seat 2: xx xx 7 8 4___raises___raises
Hero: 4 4 4 6 2___raises___calls
Seat 7: xx xx 3 A 9___bets___calls___calls

6th Street - (16.05 BB)

Seat 2: xx xx 7 8 4 9___bets
Hero: 4 4 4 6 2 T___calls
Seat 7: xx xx 3 A 9 K___checks___folds

River - (18.05 BB)

Seat 2: xx xx 7 8 4 9 xx___bets
Hero: 4 4 4 6 2 T 7___checks___calls

Total pot: (20.05 BB)

A Cranky Old Friend

2005-11-22T23:22:00.000-08:00

Decided to revisit my roots the last few days and play limit poker, mostly hold em and Stud H/L 8 or Better. It's been fun. Actually, its been eye opening. It's clear to me why limit games are so much more sustainable in the long term. The 1/2 NL games I was playing last week, while not tough by any means, required a lot of focus, good table selection, etc. A careless player didn't stand much of a chance. Playing the 6max LHE at party and the 5max at the new Eurobet, however, it was painless to find tables with 35-40% avg vpip and atleast 2 to 3 donks literally hemmoraging money. Good thing is that they drag a few pots instead of getting slaughtered by set farmers.

Remind me to keep my LHE game in shape.

The Stud H/L situation on the other hand was not as promising. The 10/20 and 5/10 at Party were very very rockish. Usually just one or two players tops chasing lows and spewing. Due to the low ante it just becomes a tedious waiting game. They really should have a higher ante structure in the red chip games. The rake was the only winner in a majority of the pots.

Anyways, been clearing a bonus and trying to be conservative so I multi-tabled 3/6 and 5/10 LHE today. Since I didn't play any hands that I considered interesting, I'll post my totally unsustainable stats (click on the picture).

Before anyone says anything I am painfully aware that I go to showdown too much at the 5/10. I just have this thing about calling/raising with ace-high on the river. I got addicted after dragging a few 10bb pots. Also, the game marked just "3/6" is the 5max at Poker Room, if the butthole puckering rake didn't tip you off...

Allow me to reintroduce myself...

2005-11-21T20:38:00.000-08:00

Murdered the whole month of April just to take May Off (Part II)

2005-11-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a second hand from the same session. I hadn't been playing quite as laggy on this table as on the others, but my opponents mostly suffer from the same passive play as at the other table.

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Saturday, November 19, 23:16:37 EDT 2005
Table Table 66280 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 10: Hero ( $249.95 )
Seat 3: Turnis ( $88.70 )
Seat 5: frdoc22 ( $15.60 )
Seat 6: ragscpd ( $169.17 )
Seat 1: bestlucky ( $117.55 )
Seat 2: phidragon ( $54.05 )
Seat 7: caranza ( $17.20 )
Seat 9: daytrader777 ( $106.31 )
Seat 4: GenCon ( $42.50 )
GenCon posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
frdoc22 posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]

A total junk pair of ten's. I can hit a few bad straights and a bad flush, but I am again mostly playing this to flop a set or get out. My opponents are fairly passive on flush/straight boards though so I may be able to win the pot with nothing if I feel my they haven't hit.

CALL ragscpd, $1
CALL caranza, $1
CALL daytrader777, $1
CALL Hero , $1
DCP48 has joined the table.
RAISE bestlucky $7.50

I have the worst possible position on this guy but I *know* that he only raises AAxx here and I will a good chance of manipulating him post flop, so I choose to call, especially since the pot will likely be somewhat big.

FOLD phidragon
FOLD Turnis
CALL GenCon $7
FOLD frdoc22
CALL ragscpd $6.50
CALL caranza $6.50
FOLD daytrader777
CALL Hero $6.50

Flop :
[ ]
CHECK GenCon
CHECK ragscpd
CHECK caranza
CHECK Hero
CHECK bestlucky

I could try to steal the pot here. I know my main opponent will fold AA without a diamond or wrap wheel draw, but people tend to play retarded hands on the flop for big bets but fold the same hands on the turn with one card to come. If the PFR bets here, I'll fold, if he lets me see a turn card that's not an ace, king or queen and it's checked to me again I will probably pot it.

Turn:
[ ]
CHECK GenCon
CHECK ragscpd
CHECK caranza
BET Hero , $37.55

This is actually a good card for me. I have two tens so it is less likely that someone has a straight and no one has thrown a bet in. My flush draw is possibly good as well, though i am not likely to call or make a big bet if I do manage to hit it.

CALL bestlucky, $37.55

Whoops. I would guess he has T9 here since I can't imagine smoothcalling with the nuts in a pot this big, especially since I haven't been firing big bets on the river with nothing. I don't think that he's loose enough to call with a bare flush draw. He might have AAJx with diamonds or something similar that would give him a gutshot.

FOLD GenCon
FOLD ragscpd
ALL-IN caranza

Buddy pushes in his last $10 and it's of no consequence.

River:
[ ]
CHECK Hero

I made my hand but I have no idea if it's good. I made a fairly big mistake in not betting at all here since the pot is so big he will probably have to call a $20 bet with a straight, and I have given him free reign to bluff my ass off. Fortunately he is a standard weak partypoker slowplayer.

CHECK bestlucky
Hero shows [ ] a flush queen high .
bestlucky doesn't show [ ] a straight, ten to ace.

Well, thanks for letting me make my hand, I guess. Did he think we were tying? The chance of me having AT with him having AAT in his hand is very small. He gave me infinite odds to hit my flush because he either got greedy or was too afraid to play back at me.

caranza doesn't show [ ] a pair of sixes.

No comment. :)

Hero wins $55.70 from side pot #1 with a flush queen high .
Hero wins $65.60 from the main pot with a flush queen high .

Murdered the whole month of April just to take May Off

2005-11-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was a fairly good day, up a bunch of loot playing the $100 games. At some point I'll actually be bankrolled for these games again and won't be playing with short money, but for now I'm willing to gamble it up a little bit.

I was only playing two tables, down from my usual four to six, but was experimenting with playing a little bit more LAG pre and post flop. I have always been aggressive post flop but I typically don't reraise preflop unless I know I have my opponent in a bad spot and can get him to commit a lot of chips. On these two tables I was raising and reraising a fair range of hands in a lot of different positions, trying to upset the rockishness of the other players.

The best thing about playing this way is that reasonable players start making horrible plays against you.

Case in point:

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Saturday, November 19, 23:01:16 EDT 2005
Table Table 65090 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: pesnyary ( $114.20 )
Seat 2: bestlucky ( $108.65 )
Seat 5: gopherajg ( $100 )
Seat 9: Hero ( $363.58 )
Seat 6: Turnis ( $66.30 )
Seat 10: OBEH30 ( $320.60 )
Seat 3: chinpokermon ( $90.80 )
Seat 8: NYCbuddha ( $100 )
Seat 4: a8poker ( $75.30 )
Seat 7: ddeeff ( $81.20 )
chinpokermon posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
a8poker posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE gopherajg, $3.50

His raise under the gun probably means a big pair like KK or AA, even possibly QQ. I am certain he would not raise jacks, a run or any other hand here.

CALL Turnis, $3.50
FOLD ddeeff
FOLD NYCbuddha
RAISE Hero , $15.50

Why raise? A few reasons. I have been reraising a ton of hands in and out of position. If I call here and smash a flop with two hearts and/or a queen, I am going to give away my hand somewhat. It will be much easier for him to put me on a set of queens or a heart draw and fold / call as appropriate. I'm basically taking a shot here at gaining control of the pot knowing he will not likely reraise. If he has AA and choses to go with it, I'll probably fold. My hand isn't strong enough to run up against AA against a small stack.

FOLD OBEH30
FOLD pesnyary
FOLD bestlucky
FOLD chinpokermon
FOLD a8poker
CALL gopherajg, $12
CALL Turnis, $12

It's clear here that he doesn't have AA. I am certain he has KK or possibly another QQ.

Flop:
[ ]
CHECK gopherajg

He thinks for a while and checks. He either has a set or a flush. Either way I want to play for his stack.

CHECK Turnis

Now this is interesting. The second player also thinks for a bit and checks. It is possible either one of them flopped a set, a flush, or even the nut straight. The pot is approximately $50 on the flop and this guy only has $50 behind. If he has ANY of these hands he should be open pushing here. 3-handed he is likely to have the best hand here.

BET Hero , $45.60

Again, I represent strength with a strong bet when I am very very strong. Too many people slowplay strong hands and win small pots or lose big ones. In this case I have a feeling I can get both of them to push in their entire stacks. I happen to know that no straight flush is possible since I have the six of hearts.

CALL gopherajg, $45.60

What an odd call. The guy has about $85 left in front of him and he smooth calls the flop in a $100 pot. What hands could he be doing with this?

Knowing this is party poker, it could be a set, the straight, or a flush. It's possible that he might smooth call here with air and push the turn but the pot is too big already and I don't think he is sophisticated enough to make that bet, even if the conditions were right (we'd both have to have large stacks).

Turnis: damn
FOLD Turnis

Well, I guess he folded the straight. If he wouldn't call here with a set then he needs to re-up his retard medication.

Turn:
[ ]
ALL-IN gopherajg

What could he be pushing here that he wouldn't push the flop with? If I have air on the flop I am certainly not going to call an all in, but I am also not *that* likely to bluff at that flop, even three handed (there is the remote possibility of the naked ace bluff). I also cannot fold for his last $40 in a $190 pot if the board pairs, so he is not going to win in that situation either. If I have a worse flush than him, I am probably forced to call the flop but I may fold the turn. In any case, it's a terrible bet and it happens over and over.

CALL Hero , $38.90

River:
[ ]
gopherajg shows [ ] a flush king high .
Hero shows [ ] a flush ace high .
Hero wins $214 from the main pot with a flush ace high with ace kicker .

He got a little bit cold decked here, but he played it terribly. If he wanted to maximize his wins and minimize his losses, he should have either bet or checkraised the flop. His check-call turn push is the worst possible play.

I don't fuck wit muts

2005-11-19T23:02:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of talk on 2+2 lately about starting hands in pot limit omaha as beset mentioned below.

The simple truth is starting hand values mean almost nothing in this game. The only difference between KKJQ double suited and KK38 rainbow in a multiway pot preflop is that KKJQ has about 5% more equity against four random hands. 5% equity is certainly nothing to shrug at, but if you can make money with the hand regardless of whether it is coordinated or not, there is no argument.

Several posters have stated that raggy big pairs are marginal hands that should not be played in early or middle position unless you play very well post flop and are capable of making big laydowns. They are definitely marginal hands... most PLO hands are. Excluding AAxx, you should expect to make about 1BB/Hand on average with your winning starting hands.

The best line used was "if you are playing these hands against players playing with better sidecards, you are effectively playing handicapped". Uhhh... wrong. Big pairs and possibly hands containing a suited ace are probably the only one way hands I would ever suggest playing preflop, and only because you are either going to hit the flop and get as much money in as possible, or fold. Position is certainly critical, but weak players in PLO get eaten up like kibble. If you are afraid of having to make decisions it is likely that this game is not for you.

Here's are some hands I played tonight out of position against a weak player.

$100 PL Omaha - Saturday, November 19, 21:09:48 EDT 2005
Table Table 66280 (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: frdoc22 ( $147.60 )
Seat 3: tpipal ( $135.50 )
Seat 4: drifwood ( $166.35 )
Seat 6: DrZizmor ( $89.95 ) The Mark
Seat 8: bobmckewl ( $51.50 )
Seat 9: sikerimsizi ( $88.17 )
Seat 10: Hero ( $59.90 )

Note my shortstack, I like to buy into these games short when I first sit down, especially when there are a few players I haven't played with before, it allows me to gamble more on the flop and to set up a loose image.

Seat 5: RAM_ITS ( $99.35 )
Seat 7: pesnyary ( $98 )
Seat 2: soonkala ( $100 )
bobmckewl posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
sikerimsizi posts big blind [ $1 ].
soonkala posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]
RAISE Hero , $2

I actually have a very coordinated hand in this case and choose to start building a pot. Other than the obvious broadway draw (which generally is not a great thing, it's a pot splitter) I have two flush draws and a nice little wheel draw.

FOLD frdoc22
CALL soonkala, $1
FOLD tpipal
FOLD drifwood
FOLD RAM_ITS
RAISE DrZizmor, $9.50
CALL pesnyary, $9.50
FOLD bobmckewl
FOLD sikerimsiz
CALL Hero , $7.50
CALL soonkala, $7.50

Flop:
[ ]

An okay flop for me. I've flopped top pair (doesn't generally mean much), the nut flush draw and a backdoor straight draw. I know the preflop raiser is fairly passive post flop, however, and will likely not call a big bet without QQ, 99, or some kind of wrap/flush draw. If he has AA or KK and decides to go with me, we are pretty much flipping a coin.
BET Hero , $37.55
FOLD soonkala
ALL-IN DrZizmor

Oops, he has a big hand, most likely QQ. I had about $12 left behind so of course I have to call. Whether I win or lose here, I will gain in the metagame sense since I will be able to make similar bets in the future with much stronger hands on the flop and he and others will have a much wider range to put me on than I am actually playing.

pesnyary could not respond in time.(disconnected)
A disconnect cheater, always nice.

ALL-IN Hero

Turn:
[ ]

River:
[ ]
Hero shows [ ] two pairs queens and nines .
DrZizmor shows [ ] a full house Queens full of nines .
pesnyary doesn't show [ ] three of a kind, nines.
DrZizmor wins $30.05 from side pot #2 with a full house Queens full of nines .
DrZizmor wins $99.75 from side pot #1 with a full house Queens full of nines .
DrZizmor wins $37.55 from the main pot with a full house Queens full of nines .

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=1356299
pokenum  -o ac jc qd 3d  - qs 7s ah qh  -- qc 9d 2d  / 8h 9c ts js
Omaha Hi: 666 enumerated boards containing Qc 9d 2d
cards          win   %win  lose  %lose  tie  %tie     EV
Ac Jc  Qd  3d  267  40.09   398  59.76    1  0.15  0.402
Qs 7s  Ah  Qh  398  59.76   267  40.09    1  0.15  0.598

If you look at the numbers here, I wasn't even that much of a dog and I am winning that pot on the flop the majority of the time. He has to wake up with a big hand to call/raise there so I have fold equity most of the time, and against someone that is generally uncomfortable playing for big bets post flop without a very strong hand I have a lot of fold equity here. He ended up winning in this spot, but a few hundred hands later my play paid off.

***** Hand History for Game (?) *****
$100 PL Omaha - Saturday, November 19, 21:48:45 EDT 2005
Table Table 66280 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 8
Seat 1: pam_jam ( $42.90 )
Seat 2: soonkala ( $83.20 )
Seat 4: drifwood ( $178.85 )
Seat 6: DrZizmor ( $177.55 )
Seat 7: pesnyary ( $82.25 )
Seat 9: sikerimsizi ( $78.22 )
Seat 10: Hero ( $123.05 )
Seat 3: Turnis ( $99.75 )
pesnyary posts small blind [ $0.50 ].
sikerimsizi posts big blind [ $1 ].
drifwood posts big blind [ $1 ].

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero [ ]

A totally uncoordinated junky pair of jacks. I am going to see a flop with this hand to see if I can flop a set, that's it. OOP I am not terribly happy if I flop the nut straight since I will win or split a small pot most of the time. I know my opponents are somewhat weak and will go too far with bad draws and made hands though, so I will invest a little bit preflop in this dog hand.

CALL Hero , $1
FOLD pam_jam
CALL soonkala, $1
CALL Turnis, $1
CHECK drifwood
RAM_ITS has joined the table.
RAISE DrZizmor $7.50

I can win against this guy in more ways than just flopping the best hand and I may get some callers behind if I call, so I decide to go with it. We both have deepish stacks.

FOLD pesnyary
FOLD sikerimsizi
CALL Hero $6.50
FOLD soonkala
FOLD Turnis
FOLD drifwood

Oh well, no callers behind.
Flop :
[ ]

Great flop! Now I have to decide how to approach the betting. I basically have three options.

1. Make a weak bet like I am trying to bluff him out cheaply. This generally doesn't work and I don't want to give him even close to the right price if he has a flush or straight draw.
2. Check-raise. This can work. He may check behind though, since it's HU and I have a pretty huge range preflop. If he didn't hit this flop I don't want to give him a free card on the turn to hit an overpair and break me. It is also fairly obvious and will give away the strength of my hand. If I check-raise, he smooth calls the raise and a diamond or straight card comes off he will be able to bet into me with impunity and may cause me to make a wrong decision (doubtful, but there's always a possibility).
3. Bet out. In the previous hand I bet out with a relatively weak hand. In this case I am very strong and betting strong will actually mask the strength of my hand.

BET Hero , $18.55
RAISE DrZizmor, $74.20
ALL-IN Hero
CALL DrZizmor, $41.35

Turn:
[ ]

River:
[ ]
DrZizmor shows [ ] high card ace .
Hero shows [ ] three of a kind jacks .
Hero wins $247.60 from the main pot with three of a kind jacks .

So what happened? I got him to over commit a lot of money, especially relative to the pot size, with a seven out flush draw. In this case I was a 75/25 favorite and he had no reason to believe I would bet out and fold. Players that are as easily manipulated as this play every limit and are the reason I will continue to play crappy big pairs in EP until the day I die.

This and That

2005-11-19T13:44:00.000-08:00

Interesting 2+2 Thread on dry big pairs (TTxx-AAxx) In PLO High.

Granted, my experience with high-stakes online Pot Limit Omaha (which I define as 5/10 blinds and up) is fairly limited, I think the toughness of these games is greatly exaggerated. Maybe I'm just a lousy loose-aggressive player who runs well. But, it's still poker; the best five card at the end wins. A caveat: a lot of my play in the "big" games has been on a short buy, flopping sets and check/raising all-in on the flop. So, ignore me at your will, but I'll be playing QQ24 UTG even if a rabid monkey on crystal methamphetamine who has memorized everything written by Stewart Rueben is on the button.

A Funny Omaha8 Hand from another blog. The 30/60 and 75/150 games on Poker Stars have appeared to be especially live lately. I've always been a little nervous about collusion in higher stakes Omaha8 but the wierd play I've seen in these games is clearly donkery and nothing more.

Lastly, there's Ribbo Making a Fool of Himself. I've been putting up with reading this guy since I used to lurk on RGP. It's painful how the internet allows individuals like Ribbo the opportunity to indulge in their fantasy worlds. I've seen dozens of hands where this guy gets stacked playing like a complete moron yet people appear to respect him because he is good at one of the most mechanical poker games (biased: not much of a PLO8b player) ever invented. Well, I feel like as a moderator I shouldn't really enter into the fray too much with these flame fests as long as nobody is violating the T&Cs of the web site. But I've enjoyed reading it.

Running Good and Gambling Hard

2005-11-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

Been gambling especially hard lately. Taking shots at bigger games, making outrageous sports bets, playing some pit games… The problem is that I've been rewarded for it. I think I've pulled myself together but I check in regularly with a few of my poker buddies and give them honest updates on my behavior. I'm back, thanks to a successful shot at a particularly juice 10/20 PLO High game, to playing at limits I feel comfortable with.

I had a hard time dropping down after my downswing in early October. I'm just not the "grind it out playing small stakes" type of guy. Personally, I don't even think there is much value in the experience of working your way up fron nano-limits to small then medium stakes games. The micros will teach you discipline but its boring as hell and there are much better ways to make a few bucks an hour.

Anyways, I'm in the thick of writing a 50 page research paper for the law review. Thanks to interview season I find myself way behind the writing process. But, I've got that nice warm and fuzzy 2k a week job lined up for the summer to keep my warm at night as I pull my 3rd all nighter in a row (DaVinci Sleep Cycle right now) trying to get at least a semblance of a rough draft together.

I also, just want to add, that I can't wait to quit playing poker for a living. Thanks to online poker I can make a fantastic hourly wage. But, I've come to believe that I am simply not cut out to be a poker pro. I get tired, frustrated, I tilt to easy, I have a proclivity to partake in -EV gambling, and I simply enjoy being more active--out in the world doing shit with people that matters to them. I'm grateful for poker, as it has allowed me to provide for my family while working a schedule of my choosing during law school; but, I can't wait for this phase of my life to come to a close.