Oops...

Oh yeah, the guy that got bounced by me on the freak hand at the blogger tourney that mentioned me in his blog was DoubleAs (http://doubleas.blogspot.com/)

Getting out there

I was reading the News Aggregator at Damning the River (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dtr/aggregator/) and I came across mentions of either my name or my blog or both at two different blogs. Playing in the blogger tournament has really helped get my name out there a little bit. I guess the guy you bounce out of an important tourney on a freak hand will always remember you, but it was nice to see JD from Cheap Thrills (http://cheapthrillsjd.blogspot.com) mention that he heard how juicy the Intertops Freerolls are from my blog. There was also an anonymous comment I left at Life's a Grind (http://lifesagrind.blogspot.com) which I confessed was me got mentioned.

So if you are writing a blog and want to get readers, I suggest reading other blogs and making comments, especially if they are decent, thought provoking comments. Also participating in any blogger events. The blogger community is fairly tight. A lot of very intelligent, very likable people. And for God's sake, one of them needs to teach me how to link with a label. Putting the URL after the name isn't style, it's ignorance!

In poker news, all the hands I played towards my rakeback program at Royal Vegas turn out to be bogus. Apparenlty RV doesn't have their shit together enough to maintain a rakeback program, so it was cancelled. I fucked it up at first when I didn't fill out a form, but after that RV's reporting just fell apart. I ended up playing there for about three months and got ZERO rakeback. Poker Source Online, generous as ever, offered to give points to anyone who thinks they got screwed in the deal, but I seriously have NO idea how many points I am due. I sincerely doubt RV gave PSO anything for all the points I should have gotten when I screwed up the form thing, even though I signed up at RV properly and the points should have been accruing the whole time. And since I don't know the exact point was when I fixed the form problem, it could be anywhere between 100 and 10,000 points. Since that falls anywhere between $1 and $100, I just told PSO to give any points that I might have gotten to someone who feels like they really got screwed. After all, I didn't play there much because I never got any feedback on the rakeback program, and I did make about $400 while playing the shit-ass players they have on that site. It's almost a shame to do it, but I withdrew all my money and have quit every Prima site now for good. They do have some crappy players dying to give away their money, but so does Pacific and Party and everyone else, apparently. Hopefully Absolute does too, and after that Ultimate Bet. Maybe someday there will be a Prima site that has a decent interface and has their shit together. So far, NONE of them do. The Gaming Club pissed me off. RV did too now, and Aztec Riches wasn't very impressive either. Maybe it's Prima in general. I think the best thing would be for me to stay away from Prima sites altogether.

Bonus Whoring is Good

I started another bonus whore event on Monday while Mrs. Bogey was at work. I bought into Pacific Poker using PokerSourceOnline.com as a referral affiliate.

Pretty sweet deal, actually. Too good to pass up. I had originally heard that Pacific software sucked ass, and that you had to see a flop for a raked hand to count. Well, they were half right. The software does suck, but according to the membership at PSO, you don't even have to put money in the pot for a raked hand to count for you. I've been looking for someplace that evaluates raked hands like Party Poker, and Pacific is it.

I deposited $100 from Neteller and was immediately credited with $25. I would have to wager $500 to withdraw the $25, but could play with it immediately. Far superior to the Party System of releasing bonuses only after the hands are played. After my first positive session with 130 raked hands, yet another $25, this time from PSO, was deposited into my account. So I was up $50 without even winning a hand. I played my way up to 203 raked hands on Tuesday and finished the 250 hands required by PSO on Wednesday. My account rests at 265, so I won $115 in three days and got $50, plus $60 worth of bonuses from Pokersource online. That's a $225 profit in three days, totalling about 4 hours of play time.

I mostly played $1/$2 Hold Em, as nearly every hand was raked. I can only remember two hands that didn't make the rake. I also played some $.50/$1.00 Omaha Hi/Lo because I like the game and with 7-9 people seeing every flop, the rake was about as consistent as $1/$2 Hold Em. You cold go to one of these Omaha tables and fold every hand for 300 or so hands and be guaranteed to make money on this promotion. You would probably lose $30 or so in blinds, but since you get $50 in cash and $60 in GCs, you would still be ahead $80, even if you don't know the first thing about poker.

The extra $25 from PSO at Pacific Poker ends on Sunday night, so if you want to try it, hurry up. Use DuggleBogey as your referral at PokerSource and you will get half the referral cash in your Paypal Account as soon as I get it in mine. That's another $5-$10.

No more comics for a while...

The hard drive of my work computer ate itself. Like a dummy, I only had a copy of the bitmap template on that computer, and not backed up anywhere. Not even emailed to anyone.
So my choices are to use a crappy jpeg and try to make it work, or draw poor ParPo and Fish again in MS Paint, which wasn't easy in the first place. Especially because I have ZERO artistic talent for drawing, and Paint doesn't help much. I even had an idea for a new one today. Now the drawing and my idea are both gone. Hmph.

Poker was lousy this weekend as well. I bought into a Pot Limit tourney at Royal Vegas, just because of the soft spot in my heart for Pot Limit. I do think it hurts the truly bad players more than no limit, when they can out-aggressive their poor play. But I think the limit hurt me more than it helped me.

Of course it was a rebuy tourney, so that added a level of frustration. 150 players with a total of 165 rebuys and add-ons. Pot limit so it takes a lot of raising and re-raising to get all in early, maybe 8 rounds. These two guys at my table do it, and I'm expecting to see Aces vs Kings, or Queens at least. What do I see? A4o vs KQs. Idiots. I "innocently" type into chat "Does anyone know of a poker game going on around here?" to a few chuckles. The loser, who's KQs didn't improve, lost to Two pair, aces and fours replies "Screw You Idiot, KQ is a good hand, he got lucky to catch that second pair." Second pair? He didn't need the FIRST pair to beat your shitty hand. His ACE HIGH beat your sorry ass. "My bad, good hand." Is my reply. He had the guy out chipped by 70 and worked his way back up to 110 before I took him out with a pair of 8s. Then came the routine taunt begging us to come play him in a private cash game so he can prove how great a player he is. Maybe I brought this on myself when I typed "Please Rebuy..Please Rebuy..Please Rebuy.." after he got knocked out. Who knows?

I don't think I ever got above the average but somehow ground my way down to 12 players left when I got AJ on the small blind with about 9K left, third smallest stack. Payout starts at 10. I raise the max to try and steal the 400 blind, but the BB would have none of it. Flop was J89 rainbow. I bet the max again and the BB again called. TPTK wasn't too bad and the turn was a meaningless offsuit 2 that completed the rainbow. I still like my jack so I get the rest of the way in. BB calls and turns over KTs, calling with an outside straight draw. I can't fault him, he had 50K chips to my 9K, so I couldn't hurt him that bad no matter what. He of course caught his King on the river to beat my Jacks. 12th place when I could easily have folded past the bubble and made a 5x profit at least. I should know better than to play AJ in that position, or to attemt a blind steal with the smallest stack at the table. Winning it would have virtually guaranteed me 7th place or better, and the money got much better at that place. So I gambled, and lost. Oh well. At least I didn't rebuy or add on. 165 people can't say that.

Suckouts Galore

Well, I noticed a lot of people who commented on Iggy's site (http://guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com/) that they enjoyed the Blogger Tournament because the quality of play was so much higher and you don't have to put up with people going all in with crappy hands. I only have one thing to say to that...

What the fuck?

It started when I, in the chip lead at the time, called an all in with 88, and the all in player held....72....the HAMMER! Of course it won when he hit the 2 on the flop and the 7 on the river.

I had gotten the lead when I called a pre-flop raise with TT and spiked a T on the river. The other player goes all in on the turn with his 99, and is drawing dead against my set of tens.

After my foolish attempt to defeat the hammer, I called an all-in pre flop raise with my QQ. Raiser shows TT and catches a T on the flop.

I call another all-in pre flop soon after that with AK, he shows AJ and catches a J on the river.

I played a few hands from the button when the big blind slow played Aces and Kings two rounds in a row. He slow played the aces against 5 (FIVE!) players. Quality poker there.

I expected to play against better players than normal. I mean, even if most of these people (they got 133, which is a TON more than they expected) don't write about poker in blogs, at least they READ blogs and learn something about poker, right?

NOPE. I saw all the same awful plays over and over again that I see playing in all the Aquariums. Maybe they were just screwing around a lot because they were slumming in such a small tournament. There were some quality players there, and I assume they did very well.

Best hand of the night was when I knocked out DoubleAs (http://doubleas.blogspot.com/.) I held A7 in the big blind and DoubleAs was on the button. He attempted a blind steal, raising from 200 to 600. I called quickly and the flop was A74. I checked, and he bet 1000. I put him all in and flipped over my A7, reducing him to 2 outs that never came. The worst possible flop for him, there was no escape from that trap.

Poker Comic #8

When real life interferes, it's never good.

I was supposed to travel to Kansas City last weekend for my monthly home game with the gang at King Lucky's house, plus some marathon casino poker. I had taken Monday off of work, so I was ready for some serious poker. Unfortunately it never happened, but it's a very small disappointment.

I was on the phone with King Lucky Friday night, sweating him in a Stud8 tournament on Poker Stars. I was enjoying the action and increasing my Stud knowledge at the same time. King Lucky was hanging in there, stealing hands here and there to stay in front of the blinds. I was on my speaker phone and he was on his, and he told me he was going to step away from the phone for a minute. Not unusual, he sneaks out for a smoke occasionally. A few moments later I heard some noises on the other end of the phone, and then I heard touch tones. Only three numbers, and it sounded like 911. "Uh-oh," I thought to myself. 911 is never good. "I'm still here," I said, knowing that something was going on. "I need to go, something's wrong with my Mom," he said. He was very clearly rattled, forgetting that I was even on the line. I hung up, but I knew things were really REALLY bad.

King Lucky has been taking care of his mother for more than 5 years. Every day he would get her out of bed, move her to her TV room, feed her, basically do everything for her. Once in a while after he put her to bed at night, he would head out to the casino for some gambling. That's the real reason for our late night poker room adventures. He wasn't able to leave during the day because he had to take care of his mom. He works from home, so his days are spent working and taking care of her. The casino is pretty much the only outside the home experience he has longer than an hour or so trip to the supermarket. It's the only time he socializes with other people in person, except for the monthly poker game he hosts. Things hadn't been going well with her lately. She was not eating, and practically wasting away. He told me his back was bothering him after he had to literally carry her to the doctor recently when she had a problem with her leg.

He called me back Saturday Morning, because he knew I was going to leave to drive to Kansas City around noon, and he wanted to catch me before I left. He told me that he checking on his Mom when she mysteriously passed out. She was completely non-responsive so he called the paramedics and did CPR until they arrived. They could not revive her and she passed away that night.

In one way it is sort of a relief, as it seemed his mother was suffering and was a great burden on him. I never once heard him complain about having to take care of her. But I knew there were things that he wanted to do that he wasn't able to because of his responsibilty. But it is still very difficult to lose your mom. He also lost his father earlier this year. I can't imagine how difficult it is to go through that kind of thing twice in one year.

I talked to King Lucky today, just before he left his home to travel to St. Louis for the funeral. He seems to be handling things very well, but I wouldn't expect anything differently from him. I'm not sure how I would handle the situation he has been in for the last year, or even the last 5 years. I do know for sure that I never met anyone that handled the resposibilty better and more nobly than he did. I can't think of anyone I respect more than I respect him for that.

Poker Comic #7

Tough way to bubble out

#Game No : 1071290413
***** Hand History for Game 1071290413 *****
Hold'em Trny:6565940 Level:6 Stakes (150/300) - Sunday, October 17, 21:24:37 EDT 2004
Table $500 Weekly Freeroll(108447)
Table #3 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the buttonTotal number of players : 10
Seat 1: RiverRatxx99 ( $1470 )
Seat 2: Wil007 ( $980 )
Seat 3: DuggleBogey ( $820 )
Seat 4: JUST9896 ( $3900 )
Seat 5: FEEVES ( $1480 )
Seat 6: drexcito ( $1365 )
Seat 7: MI109227 ( $1925 )
Seat 8: BobbieeeeLee ( $305 )
Seat 9: RAMT6937 ( $420 )
Seat 10: BANDYCOOT ( $290 )
Trny:6565940 Level:6Stakes (150/300)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Qh Qd ]
MI109227 folds.
BobbieeeeLee folds.
RAMT6937 folds.
BANDYCOOT folds.
RiverRatxx99 folds.
Wil007 folds.
DuggleBogey raises [300].
JUST9896 folds.FEEVES folds.
drexcito calls [150].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, Ks, Js ]
drexcito bets [150].
DuggleBogey raises [300].
drexcito calls [150].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kd ]
drexcito checks.
DuggleBogey is all-In.
drexcito calls [220].
** Dealing River ** [ Jc ]
drexcito shows [ Kc, Ad ] a full house, Kings full of jacks.
DuggleBogey shows [ Qh, Qd ] a full house, Queens full of kings.
Player DuggleBogey finished in 62 placed
rexcito wins 1715 chips from the main pot with a full house, Kings full of jacks.
DuggleBogey has left the table.

Flopped a set of queens, but wasn't worried about the spades or the straight. When the kings paird on the turn, I wasn't worried about the spades or the straight at all. I should have been worried about the board pairing, but I wasn't.

Poker Comic #6

Oops!

I accidentally confused Pauly at Tao of Poker with Grubby from Poker Grub. I fixed it in the post, but it got sucked up by the blog aggregator at Damning the River before I could fix it.

If you like reading blogs, I reccomend Damning the River's aggregator highly.

Damn, I need a blogroll. Maybe I should just steal Iggy's?

Just kidding...

Tao of Poker - http://taopoker.blogspot.com/
Poker Grub - http://www.pokergrub.com/
Damning the River - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dtr/
News Aggregator - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dtr/aggregator/

Two hands, both queens

Well, I received Queens, or "ladies," or "The Hilton Sisters," or (my favorite) "Four Tits" twice tonight. Once I played them right, once I played them wrong.

First time was at "The Aquarium." I got QQ in early position and limped. Normally I would raise pre-flop with queens, but I had just been talking about queens with KingLucky and we talked about how TJ Cloutier says you should play queens like a middle pair. Two spots after my limp a player raised to $3. Another player called and the original raiser was a bit of a maniac, so I re-raised. I was trying to isolate the maniac, so I raised almost all in (pot limit). Both players called the $12 raise. I hit a queen on the flop and pushed the rest of my stack in, a big $1.12. Both called of course, and my set of queens held against AA and KQ. A Pauly ( http://taopoker.blogspot.com/) special, Aces cracked by The Hilton Sisters. I should win something.

The next time I got queens was at Royal Vegas. I raised to $2 pre-flop this time and again got raised, this time by a "raise or fold" bettor who pushed me to $7.50. Player 3 calls and I call. Flop is Jack High with one club, so I push all in for $30. Mr. Raise-or-Fold says "nice bet" and folds and Player 3 calls with A5 of clubs. Runner runner clubs come and I am busted. Raise-or-Fold said he dropped AK. These fish and their flushes, completely insane.

So I played my Queens COMPLETELY wrong and won $40, then played them exactly right and lost $30.

Wow man. Poker. Yeah.

Much love for the Aquarium

Here is one of the reasons you have to love the Aquarium:


0/0 TexasHTGameTable (PL) - Thu Oct 07 18:18:58 EDT 2004
Table Play Happy (Real Money) -- Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 7
Seat 1: Jensaman ( $42.67)
Seat 3: OklahomaDug ( $53.75)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to OklahomaDug [ Tc, Kh ]
Jensaman calls (0.50)
OklahomaDug calls (0.50)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Kc, Qh, 5d ]
Jensaman checks.
OklahomaDug bets (0.50)
Jensaman calls (0.50)
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Jd ]
Jensaman checks.
OklahomaDug bets (0.50)
Jensaman calls (0.50)
** Dealing River ** : [ 9c ]
Jensaman checks.
OklahomaDug bets (4.00)
Jensaman calls (4.00)
** Summary **
Board: [ Kc Qh 5d Jd 9c ]
Jensaman balance $38.92, lost $5.50 [ Ad Ah ] [ a pair of aces -- Ad,Ah,Kc,Qh,Jd ]
OklahomaDug balance $65.15, bet $5.50, collected $11.10, net +$11.40 [ Tc Kh ] [ a straight, nine to king -- Kh,Qh,Jd,Tc,9c ]

He played aces, in early position, and NEVER ONCE bet them. He did call when he knew he was beat, in the desperate hope I was bluffing with a 10. And this was at an incredibly LAGgy table where any and every pre-flop bet was called, and nearly every pot was bluffed at. And he sits on his aces.

Poker Comic #5

Poker Comic #4

Don't Talk Smack

Here's an example why I don't trash talk at Poker.

I've got Q5c on the big blind and I get to see the flop for free early in a Limit tourney (freeroll). The flop is QK5 rainbow. I bet, two callers. Turn is a 10, I bet again, player one calls, player 2 folds. River is a K and I check, getting counterfeited on the river. Player one bets and I call, he shows QJ to out kick me.

Player two complains about folding his King and says to player one "You suck." I defend player one, saying he had second pair and an outside straight draw, so it was a legit call. Player two says something about how bad a play it was and he should have known he was beaten until he got lucky on the river.

Later in the tournament, around bubble time and the limits are 150/300 and I raise UTG with A8 suited. Flop is Ace high with a a Jack. I'm betting and player 2 is the button, calling all the way until he is all in. Turn King and River Queen makes his K10 into an ace high straight, and I say "You suck." He starts complaining back and I say "I'm only using your own criteria to judge you."

He had almost the exact same hand as player one in the first hand, except he had second pair and an INSIDE straight draw, yet called all the way to the river. The stakes were much higher, he had a WORSE draw by half, yet he called all the way with a pair of kings, and should have known I had at least an ace.

I'm sure in his mind he is a better player than player one. Even better than me, since he eventually outlasted me in the tournament. Really he's just a lucky hypocrite.

Haunted, then dead

There's been a death in my family. It's not like I should be surprised my computer died when I named it "Kenny" after Kenny McCormack. (Oh my god, they killed Kenny!) But it was still quite a blow to me. Kenny's been with me for amost 3 years, which is a long long time for me and one computer.

It started Friday night. I was playing a tournament and talking to KingLucky on the phone when I opened up Internet Explorer to check something, I can't remember what. Kenny just locked up and wouldn't respond to anything. That is very odd behavior for Kenny as he has been solid as a rock for a long time. I rebooted, rejoined my tourney after missing my big blind, and everything went normally. Saturday afternoon, my very next visit to the computer room after going to bed, saw Kenny with a blue screen. Kenny has never had a blue screen before. Reboot attempts were futile. He would get to the windows startup screen and freeze. Safe mode was no good. One time he booted up correctly but locked up. I was late for a tee time so I shut Kenny down by holding the power button for 5 seconds and took off for golf. Maybe the cool time will make Kenny feel better.

When I returned to Kenny, he was running, locked up during windows startup. "Weird, I thought I turned him off, I guess I forgot." I turned Kenny off again and went to bed. In the morning, Kenny was on again. I was on the way to go shopping with Mrs. DuggleBogey, so I shut Kenny off and left. When I returned from shopping, Kenny was on yet again. This time, though, there was no video at all. All my reboot attempts produced no video response. An old, yet still functioning, video card produced no difference. A different monitor produced the same results. Kenny was in fact DEAD.

So I ordered a replacement for Kenny. I probably could have spent a few days troubleshooting and would have started with a new motherboard, but it was so much easier to take a chunk of cash from my poker accounts and just buy a new complete system. A Compaq. My brother works for Compaq/HP/whatever they are called now, I think his original job was with Digital. So at least I am keeping it in the family. The other benefit is that my homemade machines tend to be LOUD and I hope this machine has some proprietary quietness that I never put much of a priority on until Mrs. DuggleBogey said it sounded like there was a jet airliner landing in the computer room.

So I am relegated to an old PC that Mrs. Dugglebogey used before she got a Compaq Laptop for school. How slow is the processor? At one point I had this computer in the living room and the CPU fan was making a funny noise so I removed it and figured if it overheated, so be it. It NEVER overheated so it doesn't require a CPU fan. If you remember those days, you know how slow this PC is. But it runs Party Poker well enough, and honestly, isn't that all a computer is for?

Poker Comic #3

I'm not a very good poker player.

I'm not a very good poker player.

Which is not to say I'm not a profitable poker player. I'm quite profitable. But I still don't think that means I'm good.

It's like the defense people use online when someone complains about a suck-out. One player says "You're a terrible poker player." The inevitable response is "Yes but I have more money than you." As if to imply "I'm winning this one particular game at this one particular moment, therefore the logical conclusion is that I'm a better player than you." That's a pretty silly conclusion to draw from what is essentially one hand of poker.

Just because I make money playing poker doesn't mean I think I'm a good player. I do think I am improving, and someday hope to be a good player, and am incredibly grateful that we have a game where I can make money at the same time as improving.

How do I make money even though I'm not good? Because being at a poker table is like being in a group of guys being chased by a bear. You don't have to be the fastest guy in the group, you just can't be the slowest.

One skill I have developed is quickly identifying who the fundamentally bad players are at the table, and figuring out how to separate them from their money. The only real flaw in this system is that if they are horrible players, you are fighting with the rest of the table for that money.

Now a fundamentally bad NL player is completely different from a bad limit player. A limit player can play badly for a long time on a small bankroll, and can catch enough cards to extend that time period. A bad limit player can even know he is a bad player and continue to play badly.

A fundamentally bad NL player must THINK he is good, but actually be bad. He must think he can make up for bad play with more aggression. He must think that he deserves every pot, and can take it with the appropriate bet. These are the true cash cows. This is how I make money at poker.

I can buy into a table and grind and grind my way to a profit. This is how the majority of my poker playing goes. But occasionally, even frequently, I run into these aquarium dwellers and make a big score. I love the buddy list system at Party Poker so that I can "run into them" a bit more often.

Another advantage at Party is that the lowest limit NL game you can play is $25 max buy in $.25/$.50 blinds. That's pretty high compared to most sites that offer a $.10 or $.02 blind game with a max buy in below $5. So the merely bad players cannot work on their game at these micro-levels. They must pony up a big $25 if they want to play. I have to assume that many of the 60,000 Party Players don't even know there are other sites with lower limits for them to play. The $50 minimum buy in amount at Party doesn't hurt either.

I hereby motion to delcare the official nickname of Party Poker and it's affilliates at Intertops and Empire be "The Aquarium." Heretofore, if anyone calls a poker site "The Aquarium" they shall be referring to Party Poker or an affiliate site.

So let it be done.