Poker Comic #13

Freerolling

Al had better buy a piece of himself, just in case he wins. At this rate he will get nothing if he wins.

Thirty Percent sold so far! Go Al Go!

Bubbled out of an MTT last night with 870 of my close friends when I had my all in with JJ called by 97. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTED! He caught a straight on the river, and I finished just out of the money. I guess I should have folded my shortstack into the money even though that would give me no chance of winning.

After that I played nothing but Omaha Hi/Lo with KingLucky at Pacific Poker. The biggest problem with Pacific is they cannot keep tables from disintegrating. If you have a couple of people sit out at one time, or two people bust out on one hand, the rest of the table starts breaking up and you suddenly find yourself paying a blind two out of every three hands. We moved from table to table trying to sustain a game. The Omaha crowd there is INCREDIBLY stupid. I saw one table had 94% rate of players seeing the flop. AT A FULL TABLE. SERIOUSLY. It's like playing scratchers for these people.

I got down early, but caught an incredible rush that included quad aces made at the river, flopped quad eights and a straight flush on the river. The SF was the best because I had a zillion draws (I know, welcome to Omaha) and got the perfect card. Well, one of two because I was open ended. I need to bet my draws better at Omaha. It was the no low makingest omaha table I ever sat at. I had A234 and A2A3 double suited (or like hands) so often, and no low would be possible EVERY TIME. I won a lot of highs, but don't recall barely ever winning a low. Incredible.

King Skillful

I didn't play any poker yesterday, but I did sweat KingLucky in a MTT at Pacific. He finished 23rd and in the money out of more than 800 people. All while playing in a stud tournament at Poker Stars.

Which was a poor performance compared to earlier in the day when he took first in a 300 player MTT. Pretty nice accomplishment, especially since he had the final table dominated and went heads up with 290,000 chips to 10,000. I'd say there was not much of a possiblity of a chop.

KL plays in a lot of MTTs and hasn't been doing very well lately, until yesterday. While I've never seen anyone as unlucky as KingLucky (ironic, isn't it?) he's a very solid player and basically has to get unlucky to get knocked out of these tourneys. He has more outdraw/bad beat stories than I have ever heard. Insane stories that always involve Queens for some reason. That's why when I was on the cruise, the souvenir I brought for him was a card protector that had two queens on it. He called me a "son of a bitch" when I gave it to him.

The Producers

Has anyone seen "The Producers?" I haven't seen the stage play with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, but I have seen the Mel Brooks film with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

If you haven't here's the plot in a nutshell. The producers of broadway plays come up with a scheme to make money. They oversell a percentage of their play. They get investors to buy more than 100% of the production. After the production costs, they get to keep the money the additional investors have contributed. It's a foolproof plan, but ONLY IF the play doesn't make money. If they actually have to PAYOUT profits, then they are screwed, because they will have to payout more than they made. So the producers come up with a surefire bomb of a play called "Springtime for Hitler." Of course it is a HUGE success as a comedy and the producers are screwed.

This is the major argument against someone selling a piece of their poker tournament on the internet. There's no real way to tell if they are selling more than 100% of themselves, thereby FORCING them to dump the tournament in order to NOT LOSE money on the deal. Along with guaranteeing them a profit. There is no way to enforce a 100% limit on what a person sells of themselves, so the only thing a person has is his personal credibility.

Enter DUTCH BOYD. His credibility is already shot. Who is buying these percentages?

All that being said, I have nothing but confidence in Al Can't Hang.

Buy a Piece of Al

I got my piece of Al's Auction

This is worth $3.30 just to leave feedback for Al Can't Hang on his eBay account.

How to get linked

Felicia has an interesting post about how to get linked from her website. I don't know that a lot of people use her links because she has gone private. But anyway, the criteria are interesting. Here's what to do or not to do if you want to get linked and probably read by Felicia:

1) I'm not going to link you if you talk politics in a so-called "poker journal," unless it has specifically to do with poker law, or is just a one-time comment.

I notice a lot of George W bashing close to the election, and some more now for the inauguration. I enjoyed these, as it lets me know where most players are coming from. I commented on some, and it doesn't bother me one bit. I don't do it, because I try to keep my content "poker only."

2) I'm probably not going to link you if you don't have me linked in return. Just too much work, nothing personal.

This one is easy, and most people that really care about the world of big-time tournament poker have already done this, whether she links back or not. I think linking just so you get linked back is pretty whorish anyway.

3) I'm not going to link you if you are an Internet-only player (there is nothing wrong with this at all, believe me, some of the best players I know play on the Internet. It just doesn't jive with my journal, which is about live play, and is too much work these days with literally hundreds of Internet-only blogs).

I agree that there are a TON of internet only players and that reading about a live game is a lot more interesting, but whether you play live or not doesn't affect the quality of the writing, which I consider a much more important factor. I'd say that if you've NEVER played live, you need to.

4) I'm not going to link you if you provide tons of Internet hand histories.

I still like reading hand histories, but I understand how they can become tedious. I post them once in a while, but I wouldn't call it tons. Tons would suck. If you are putting them up for information purposes or as an honest inquiry of the quality of your play. If you are just showing off your straight flush, a screenshot is a better idea.

5) I'm not going to link you if I have a feeling that you are an ad-site (this is hard for me to tell sometimes because in my ten years on the Internet I've learned to overlook ads and obvious "pay" sites altogether).

Spam sucks. This goes without saying. I have one ad on my site, but they DID give me a free cruise and offer a ton of comps for players, so I really offer the ad as a service. If you are playing online without any rebate or comp at all, you are the sucker at the table.

6) I'm not going to link you if you go around to other blogs and flame them in their comments and/or in your own blog, unprovoked.

Okay, I am guilty of this. Ironic though, the reason I flamed someone is because of the way she attacks Felicia. I certainly wasn't provoked, but I still feel the post, flaming though it be, is justified.

I don't really care about any of that stuff when I link someone. All I look for is interesting and TIMELY content. I hate reading the first few posts of a really promising blog, and then NOTHING. I've noticed a lot of women in particular start blogging and really set up an interesting premise, followed by NOTHING. I'm sure I'm just remembering selectively and lots of guys do it too.

I get sick of reading about people's fantasy football results. If I gave a fuck I would be in your league. Sports picks are only slightly less annoying, at least there's gambling involved. I usually skip those sections.

The best posts are ones that review something. A poker room, a restaurant in a Casino, whatever. Tell me what it was like and what you liked and disliked about it. I'll read that and appreciate it.

Basically, if it's interesting and talks about poker occasionally, I'll read it.

O8 is great!

I've still been playing Omaha Hi/Lo pretty much exclusively at PokerNow. I find it fairly addictive.

I dropped in on SirFWALGman (link at right) at his usual $5/$10 short handed table and chatted with him. He noticed the name change right away (I am GoBeRude on PokerNow, DuggleBogey on Intertops and OklahomaDug on Party) and said hello and we talked about O8. He said he hated the ring games, but loved the tourneys. I told him I've never even played a tourney. He said I should, the players really do suck. So I tried one out. He couldn't have been more right.



I ended up taking first, going head to head 7k vs ~1K. The guy folded (it may have been a good fold, I had a pretty nutty hand) with T172 left. The next 4 hands were click-free, because he was all in on every blind. After 3 splits, I finally won a whole.

Nice Payoff for an O8 beginner like me.

PokerNow vs. Party Poker

I have been getting emails and comments asking how to do this. Since so many people are interested, here are the instructions on how to open a new account at PokerNow if you already have Party Poker installed on your computer:

Registering on New Poker Site By Deleting Account history

1) Select TOOLS at the top of your INTERNET EXPLORER browser window.

2) Select INTERNET OPTIONS at the bottom of the TOOLS menu.

3) In the GENERAL tab, click DELETE COOKIES in TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES.

4) Click OK for DELETE ALL COOKIE IN THE TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES FOLDER?

5) Click DELETE FILES in the TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES FOLDER.

6) Check the box DELETE ALL ONLINE CONTENT, and click OK in the DELETE FILES window. Be patient...this may take a while to clear all of them.

7) Click CLEAR HISTORY in the HISTORY section at the bottom of the GENERAL tab.

Click YES to ´ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT WINDOWS TO DELETE YOUR HISTORY OF VISITD WEBSITES?


You will also need to complete these steps – it only take a minute


Go to Start Menu at bottom of screen and click on RUN

type REGEDIT and hit ENTER

In the Registry Editor window, on the left highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and double click. Then highlight

/SOFTWARE/ and double click

/CALCULATOR/ double click and to get into MODE item

In MODE, on the right hand side of the screen you will see UCID.
Right-click on UCID and hit DELETE.

One person also said they had to do this:

within regedit, run a search for "partypoker" and delete those lines and the folders also

Register new account on new poker site

I just used a computer that didn't have Party or Intertops installed on it yet. If you have Empire or Intertops or Eurobet you might have to make some adjustments to this procedure.

O8 till your daddy gets home

In working off the 500 hands at PokerNow so I can start earning rake rebates (and get the $50 match bonus) I have been playing pretty much O8 only. Two tables, about 50 hands an hour.

The reason Omaha is the best game for working off bonuses is that so many people have NO idea what they are doing. While there are FEWER good opening hands in Omaha than Hold Em, more people see the flop in Omaha. Sure they catch their goofy ass 57 straights once in a while, but they end up splitting them with two assholes that quartered their A2.

The idea to play O8 to get raked hands for a bonus occurred to me after reading this from Poker Pro Paul Phillips:

What really had me laughing is “After you play a couple hundred thousand hands, you get over the thrill and learn a grind that is reminiscent of MMORPGs but with a more lucrative outcome for the investment.” I think of all the hours I spent in college waiting for monsters to regenerate so I could slay them and level up, and come to think of it is rather similar to sitting at an online omaha table waiting for the nuts.

I have had some MMORPG experience, but not to that extent. But what I gathered from the statement is that the only real way to win at limit Omaha is to play only the nuts, and patiently wait for them to come. They will come twice as often as in Omaha, so at least that's something. If you press a weak hand you will get creamed. The bonus is that you will ALWAYS get paid off.

Ah, the life of a bonus whore. But I only bought in for $50, am above $100 already and have over 300 raked hands to my credit. Variance would have to kick me in the balls to keep me from getting to the bonus now.

Rake Rebate

I finally got into a Rake Rebate situation I have been looking for. Those of you who play at Party would do well to copy me.

PokerSourceOnline recently started offering PokerNow as a Frequent Flopper affilliate. PokerNow is a Party Skin, so same games, same players, same FISH!!! I signed up with PokerNow through PokerSource Online's new page, http://www.FrequentFlopper.com.

The difference between this and most other rake rebate programs is that it counts even if you don't contribute to the rake. As long as you were at the table and received cards, you get a portion of your share of the rake back. If there are 10 people at the table, your share is a tenth.

PSO also upped the rake rebate from 20% to 27.5%. For example, every hand that is raked $3 at a full table will give me $.30 share of the rake, of which I will get 27.5%. This counts even if you folded pre-flop and watched two maniacs go all in against each other. Whenever there is rake taken at your table, you get a piece.

Now this rebate doesn't come in cash, it comes in PSO points which you have to spend that the PSO store. But the stuff at the PSO store is pretty great, and they are adding stuff all the time. And you can get Amazon, eBay or even American Express gift cards/certificates, which are basically as good as cash. If you get $50 in rebates, you can get a $50 gift card, straight up.

People have been getting $100-$200 worth of rebates per 2-week period. If I can get $25-$50 per month I will be ecstatic. Some people got more than 100,000 points in a 2-week period after raising the percentage to 27.5%. That's over $1000 in rake rebate, people. For TWO WEEKS!

If that's not enough for you, they just started giving 100% deposit bonus up to $100. It might even be higher than $100, but I know of at least one person that got the $100 for his $100, 1000 raked hands required. If you're like me, you can get 1000 raked hands in a few days. Unless I multi-table, then I can get it in less.

If you decide to give it a try, please think of putting me as a referral on your PSO account. I will only get $5 for the referral, but if I get any more referrals from your for other PSO promotions (which are great and you will want to try) I will split them 50% with you.

Also, you will not be able to create a PokerNow account if you already have Party installed on your computer. There are ways around this. I can send them to you via email if you post a comment requesting it. If enough people ask, I can just post them here.

If anyone is interested or has any questions, just post them in the comments.

Trip Reports

Somewhat belated but still very entertaining trip reports coming in about the cruise from Life's A Grind. That guy is FUN to play poker with.

Seems like the furor over Stripper is pretty much over. I doubt that anyone called him/her, but if they did shame on them. I wouldn't put it past him/her to make something like that up to garner sympathy, however. If you are ACTUALLY afraid because you think someone might hurt you after you criticized a poker play, get over yourself. Just more evidence that you are a drama sucking dumb-ass.

And to those who disapproved of my language in the post, Fuck you. It's an adult world and this is an adult blog. Stop pretending to be offended. There are billions and billions of things in the world more offensive than the word "cunt." Get a life and get over it.

Those of you that defended him/her, you are not, repeat NOT going to get LAID because you kiss someone's ass who is probably pretending to be a stripper. Imagination is a wonderful thing, isn't it? I can't imagine anything more pathetic.

"You just don't get it, do you?"

I quote the blogfather, the first person to comment on Stripper's idiocy.

"You just don't get it, do you?"
Iggy

She didn't get it, and she still doesn't. After all the comments and the posts by other people who actually know what they are talking about, she still thinks that we are telling her that she should play the hammer.

What a dumbass.

We are not saying that raising with the hammer or even playing the hammer is always a good play. She gives us NO CREDIT for brains at all. She still thinks we are trying to apply peer pressure to get her to play a certain way. She, of all people, should know that we don't give a shit about how, where, when or what she plays.

We have two points, which I apparently have to spell out for her.

Point 1: Sometimes raising with any two cards can be a good play. If you are playing your opponent instead of your cards, then your cards don't matter. Condeming this is ridiculous.

Point 2: (THE MORE IMPORTANT POINT) Never condemn another players game based on a single play. Especially when it's highly probable that the players you are criticizing are MUCH better players than you are. Don't pretend like you have nothing to learn about poker, or anything else for that matter. Grow up and realize that there are still MILLIONS of things you have to learn in your life.

Why I love 7-2

I used to hate 7-2. Everyone did when they started playing poker. Everyone knows it's "the worst hand in poker" if they watch poker on TV. Even Vince Van Patten won't call it "A real Hand."

Now I love 7-2. 7-2 is the HAMMER. Why? The HAMMER is liberating. 7-2 is indeed the most powerful hand in poker.

I got interested in 7-2 by reading blogs. "How can these people raise with 7-2?" I would ask myself. They know they probably won't win. Statistically they have the worst chance of winning against ANY other hand. Why do they do it? How can they do it.

I remember the first time I ever played Texas Hold Em. It was in a casino, and I was scared as hell. I had screwed up the bet so many times the rest of the table had to know it was my first time. I started to get the feeling that the rest of the table knew what I had at all times. So I thought I would mix it up. I bluffed at a pot. And I WON. The rush was incredible. It was almost incomprehensible to me that I could win without having the best hand. There is no other game in the casino where you can win with a loser. That moment it all came clear to me why poker was superior to every other casino game out there.

That is the essence of the HAMMER.

Everyone starts playing Hold Em the same way. As a fish. Call with any connected cards, any suited cards, any paint. You learn, slowly, that you have to be more choosy with your starting hands if you are going to make money and stop bleeding it all away in blinds and chases. You get tighter and tighter until you are folding more often than when you do laundry.

But then something happens when you reach ultimate tightness. Others take note of your tightness and you stop getting action. You aren't winning with weak hands because you aren't playing them, and you aren't winning much with your premium hands because you aren't getting any action. If you have AA and you raise pre-flop, everyone folds to your aggression. But you don't get AA or KK enough for that to pay off. Suddenly it dawns on you. I never get to a showdown with my AA or KK, so why do I need AA or KK?

You don't. You just have to know when you can play aggresively and take a pot without the cards. And the only way to learn this is through the progression of playing tight and knowing when a bluff is the right move. You cannot skip the tight stage and just start bluffing at random times trying to crack that lock. You'll never find the correct combination and you'll lose your ass trying.

I heard a commercial promo for the tv show "Tilt" during a basketball game on ESPN2 last night and the announcer said, "You're playing cards. They're playing you."

That is what the HAMMER represents to me. They are playing their cards, I am playing them.

Hammer Time

I have been commenting on other blogs for a long time that the twenty-ish moron over at Stripper by Night is a stupid know-it-all cunt. Most online poker nerds are taken by the fact that she has been a stripper, and therefore overlook the fact that she has no idea what she is talking about.

For me it started when she began criticizing Felicia Lee, who is very critical but writes one of the most useful blogs in the poker community. This is a person that actually FIGHTS for the rights of poker players not to get ripped off by ridiculous vigs/rakes and unfair (sometimes borderline ILLEGAL) decisions by Poker Room Managers/Tournament Directors. And this dumb ass sex-industry worker has the gall to ridicule her. If she was REALLY a professional poker player, she would comprehend that some of the issues that Felicia deals with are extremely serious.

Now this dumb bitch that goes by the name Taylor has outed herself by calling ALL OTHER BLOGGERS "stupid" for playing 72.

Talk about not getting it.

She calls herself a "professional" poker player, but limited herself to playing 5 person tournaments where 3 people get paid. You actually LOSE money for finishing in third place in these tournaments. I'll go out on a limb and say you will NEVER be considered a decent professional poker player if you make all your money playing these crap-shoot garbage tournaments.

She is TOTALLY unable to grasp the concepts of playing less than ideal starting hands. She has never developed past the stage of poker development where "tighter is ALWAYS better." Anyone who thinks they can always behave in the same way and be successful in the real world of poker is obviously ignorant to the point of idiocy. Maybe when she grows up a little and gets past that "know-it-all" stage in her twenties, she will read back on this and realize what a stupid CHILD she really was.

Feh..

The weekend was the weekend. I got assaulted by the deck early, doubling my buy-in in less than 10 minutes.

Only one notable hand, however. I'm dealt KK and raise pre-flop. Five come along and the flop has two 7s. Turn is a third 7 when my phone rings. I take my phone off my belt and mute the ringing. The dealer declares my hand dead for accepting a phone call in the middle of a hand. The winner had a full house, sevens full of jacks.

Let this be a lesson to you. If your phone rings in the middle of a hand, and it is a really loud and annoying ring, DON'T try and be nice to your fellow players and shut the phone up. Just laugh at them and say "I'll make it stop if you all FOLD!!!"

I figure the dealer could have shown leniency since I obviously didn't do anything wrong and nobody at the table cared. But he didn't. Second time a dealer at Ameristar gave me a reason NOT to toke. I may never toke there again. Maybe my goal is to be the least popular player among Ameristar's incompetent dealers. I'm considering a never toke again policy. What exactly would be the downside? The dealer might not give you a break when you need it, but apparently I'M NOT GETTING THAT ALREADY. So maybe I'm not toking enough. And if not toking enough is the same as not toking at all, then I'll just eliminate it altogether.

So next trip to Kansas City, I will not toke at the poker table. (I will continue to toke at Craps, those guys really work hard. Besides, all my tokes there are two-ways.) I'll let you know if there are any ramifications.

On a more local note, I will be heading to an Oklahoma Indian Casino tomorrow night to try out their poker room. I will give a report, but please don't expect much, they are just beginning.

Happy New Year

It's hard to get back into the swing of things after being gone for so long. Pretty much the entire month of December was either a trip or getting ready for one. The cruise, Kansas City and Jacksonivlle. We even stopped in Shreveport LA on the way back from Jacksonville but I only went into one "Casino" if you can even call it that. A tiny room with about 25 video poker machines is not a casino. It's not even an arcade. It's a shithole. I wish I had time to go to one of the real casions there, even just to shoot craps. No way would there have been time for poker.

It's hard to get into the swing of blogging, of working, even of playing poker. I tried to play some last night as I was ripping some DVDs, but it was a frustrating experience. There was a complete ASSHOLE at the table who called everyone else "buddy" and at every hand he said "raise" or "re-raise" or "fold" or "Call". Nevermind that it's CHEATING, it's really fucking ANNOYING. I should have left there, but I was desperate to bust him. I did, but it wasn't very satisfying because he was pretty short by the time I got a shot at him.

I kind of have this attitude at the table, that if someone is acting stupid then they ARE stupid and I should be able to take advanage of that. I don't know if it is just looking at easy prey or if I am trying to enable some kind of karmic justice on these fucktards. But I feel compelled to bust them, when I would be much better off reporting them as cheaters and moving on to another table.

It really didn't matter because a minute after he left I had to quit and get dinner ready so it would be in time for the Orange Bowl. And what a National Championship game it was.

I usually empathize with whatever local team of the area I inhabit, but I just can't make myself like the Oklahoma Sooners. Their fans are the height of arrogance, when they have NO RIGHT to be. They play NOBODY all year, their conference is absolute SHIT. The one ranked team they actually face is Texas and they get lucky to win 6 to zero and suddenly they are the greatest college football team ever. I could almost understand it last year when they again only played shitty teams but they beat them by 70 points or so. So I was glad to see them not only lose last night, but get totally EMBARASSED. It was joyous for me to listen to the radio on the way into work, hearing the lame-ass local sports guys say "We're not trying to make excuses, we are just looking for the rationale." Rationale? Your team never played anyone worth a shit, so you never found out that they actually SUCKED. How much more rationale do you need? Shedule a decent non-con opponent once in your life, and maybe you will know they quality of your team before a championship game, for once.

And now it looks like my travleing days aren't over yet. I'm heading back to Kansas City this weekend. My new Texas Hold Em table top is scheduled to be delivered by FedEx on Thursday, so it would be really cool if I could bring that for the home game at King Lucky's house. I ordered that and a bunch of poker chips from Poker Source Online using my PSO points. The chips are being shipped UPS so I don't expect them to make it by this weekend, but I have more confidence in FedEx.