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.

Blogger Table

As a function of my vacation and the ability to stay up late (thank god I don't have to hear the alarm go off at 5am every morning) I actually got a chance to play at a blogger table last night.

I was playing at an Intertops Freeroll around 10:00 and I thought about the blogger table. I knew SirFWALman always played at these things and always with his actual name, so I searched for him. Sure enough, he was at a table full of bloggers. When otis took off it opened up a spot for me.

How was the table? BRUTAL with a capital BRUTAL. 98% of hands were raised pre-flop. Even more flops were bet. A huge number of bluffs, and an even larger number of suck-outs. AA was garbage (except when I raise into it with my 72.)

My ONE goal for the night was to win a hand with 72. I bet I raised with it 6 times, and finally won a hand with it when I raised to $3 pre-flop and bet $10 on the flop. This hardly makes up for the time I spiked a 7 high flop and called the $10 bet against AA. Ugly. Fortunately I won the buff against the same guy, so it was a big like rubbing it in his face. For my own money.

Two hands were particularly brutal. On one I made my flush on the turn with K6 of spades but only called a $6 river raise to see Ace-Ten of spades. I was very suprised to see someone play Ace-Ten of spades without a pre-flop raise at this table. Way to NOT protect a good hand. I guess it was the flush or nothing for that guy.

The other was my final hand for the night. My Ace-Five of spades was all in when I got my flush on the turn. There was a pair of Tens on the board so my nut-flush wasn't a sure thing. Especially when moron calls me with a pair of sevens and spikes a seven on the river. Nice call shit-bag.

I do not reccomend the blogger table, unless you just want to show off and have fun. The blogger tourneys are a better idea. I'm not sure why they don't play a weekly league or something, if all of them show up so regularly every night. There was Iggy, Pauly, Otis, Poker Prof, Maudie, the aforementioned SirF, and a bunch of others I can't remember. All funny guys, but playing at these small stakes makes them pretty crazy.

In honor of the bloggers

Hold'em Trny:8203408 Level:2 Stakes (20/40) - Monday, December 27, 21:22:41 EDT 2004
Table $2500 Guarantee (182715) Table #18 (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 2: DuggleBogey ( $1515 )
Seat 3: CDF_99 ( $2205 )
Seat 4: RTD2ROY ( $920 )
Seat 5: JTB_21 ( $915 )
Seat 6: Luucas24 ( $915 )
Seat 7: FredGarvin99 ( $915 )
Seat 8: ALE47491 ( $925 )
Seat 9: Jimbo1998 ( $980 )
Seat 10: Shockey_80 ( $710 )
Trny:8203408 Level:2
Stakes (20/40)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ 2d 7c ]
Shockey_80 folds.
DuggleBogey raises [40].
CDF_99 calls [40].
RTD2ROY folds.
JTB_21 folds.
Luucas24 folds.
FredGarvin99 folds.
ALE47491 folds.
Jimbo1998 calls [20].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9s, 3h, Qc ]
Jimbo1998 checks.
DuggleBogey bets [20].
CDF_99 calls [20].
Jimbo1998 calls [20].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6h ]
Jimbo1998 checks.
DuggleBogey bets [40].
CDF_99 folds.
Jimbo1998 calls [40].
** Dealing River ** [ Kc ]
Jimbo1998 checks.
DuggleBogey bets [40].
Jimbo1998 folds.
DuggleBogey shows [ 2d, 7c ] high card king.
DuggleBogey wins 310 chips from the main pot with high card king.

Yes I showed....I love how the table reacts after that play.

Predictable is the best

I trust everyone had a safe and pleaseant Xmas. I only call it Xmas because it pisses off the "super-christian" folk I work with. Otherwise I would just say "holiday." Go be rude, eh?

I have only been able to play a few hands so far at my in-laws, playing on dial up is like torture. Slow torture. I actually tried to download a file and play at the same time. BIG mistake. The one-meg file took forever, and poker was almost completely halted. I bet my table-mates loved that it took 20 seconds for every fold or call.

Here is my favorite hand so far, however:


***** Hand History for Game 1354429425 *****
$25 PL Hold'em - Monday, December 27, 13:36:48 EDT 2004
Table Do the freak (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 5: davekf123 ( $36.55 )
Seat 9: flatrate ( $44.88 )
Seat 10: itsonyou22 ( $24.8 )
Seat 4: DuggleBogey ( $15.95 )
Seat 3: rwcapitol ( $32.85 )
Seat 8: transito ( $13.05 )
Seat 2: Madbax01 ( $27.65 )
Seat 1: FRALES ( $24 )
Seat 7: coach1 ( $4.5 )
Seat 6: cbmertz ( $13 )
rwcapitol posts small blind [$0.25].
DuggleBogey posts big blind [$0.5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ 3s 2d ]
davekf123 folds.
cbmertz folds.
coach1 folds.
transito calls [$0.5].
flatrate folds.
itsonyou22 folds.
Madbax01 raises [$1].
rwcapitol calls [$0.75].
DuggleBogey raises [$4].
transito folds.
Madbax01 calls [$3.5].
rwcapitol folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6h, 8h, Js ]
DuggleBogey bets [$10].
Madbax01 folds.
DuggleBogey shows [ 3s, 2d ] high card jack.

Yes I showed. Madbax01 had done that STUPID .50 raise pre-flop for all of the 6 hands he had played so far. I pledged to raise him on the next hand, which happened to be my big blind. I did it anyway, even though I only got 23o. Predictably, he called my raise and folded on the flop. I should rise his BB .50 every time now, but I'm not that rude.

I'm off

Some people will tell you I've been off for a while...

But I'm off to Jacksonville. Be back next year. Hopefully there will be an update before then, but you never know...

MERRY CHRISTMAS CHARLIE BROWN!

New Personal Record

I haven't posted for a while again, because I've been out of town so much. One week on the Poker Cruise, a long weekend in Kansas City and I leave Thursday for Jacksonville Fla. for the rest of the year. I will be able to post from there, but I probably won't be playing any poker so I don't know what I will write about. I heard they have poker at the racetrack (greyhound) so I might check that out sometime and blog about it.

The weekend in Kansas City was fun. Not profitable but still a blast. I won at nearly every game I played in the casino EXCEPT for poker, the game I usually win at to finance all my other games. I won money at Craps, Let it Ride, Video Poker, Roulette, something new called "Texas Shootout" and Pai Gow Poker. I think I dropped $5 into a quarter slot machine while King Lucky was in the restroom. I didn't win at that, and what's worse it took me so long to get my money in there that just as I pressed the button for the first spin, KL was already finished in the restroom.

The new personal record was hours spent gambling. I left OKC at noon on Saturday, arrived at King Lucky's house at 5:00 and we started playing poker around 6:00 PM. We played until midnight, and I got my ass kicked. I think Omaha did the most damage, but I did win a pretty big pot in Screw Your Neighbor and made a late comeback to preserve my dignity. Straight from that game to the Casino, and straight to the poker room. I sat at a completely silly table where guys were raising blind hands and hitting unreal hands. Like raising blind on every street and flipping your cards to find a straight flush. That kind of silly. After that moron hit that, he raised almost every time the action came to him, no matter what he had. He acted right after me, so it was very frustrating. After the fourth time he limp-reraised, I said "Fuck it" and stood up and left. I took a little bit of pleasure in leaving on my big blind, so it screwed up the blinds something fierce. I moved to the table that King Lucky was playing at, and I immediately busted out for the rest of my buy in. I re-bought and immediately won my first buy-in back. Even got quad nines. Checking after flopping three 9s was absolutely the right play. We left the poker room and I felt tremendously lucky to be even.

From there I caught up with KL and we went to Craps and all the other games. I took a pretty healthy profit back to the poker room, where I gave it all back and then some. I gave up after raising with AK and hitting a king, but getting beat by two pair 5s and 7s, by a guy that acted AFTER me. If a raise can't get 57 out at this table, then it is pointless to raise unless you are holding the nuts. KL and I ate a nice comped breakfast around 9:00 AM and we went back to the casino tables. We played a good long time at Crapless Craps and video poker. Eventually we went to the Steakhouse for a good comped dinner of Prime Rib. After a bit more action we left and got back to KLs house around 11:00 PM. I crashed and headed back to OKC the next morning after doing some shopping in an Outlet Mall in Olathe Kansas for Xmas presents.

Twenty-Eight straight hours of gambling is a new best for me. I haven't even played that long in a row when I went to Vegas. I came out -$150 but had a fun time.

Check out the new animated PokerSourceOnline link to the right. It now includes an automatic referral for me. If you click on it and I get some referral cash out of your account, let me know in the comments or via email (dugglebogey@casinomail.com) and I'll send half the referral bonus to you via PayPal.

What's your Name?

Poker Tables are kind of funny about names. You never really learn the names of the people you play with live in a casino. They always end up in blogs with descriptions instead, like "Creepy guy with bad hair," or "Mr. Raises Every Pot Pre-Flop."

On the poker cruise, however, we were required to wear nametags. Seems kind of juvenile, but apparently CardPlayer (the company sponsoring the cruise) didn't want to let non-members into the card rooms. There were 1300 people on the cruise, but only 400 were part of the CardPlayer group. Since there were usually lists for every game, they didn't want non-members keeping members from playing. So they issued nametags, and requested people wear them whenever in the poker room. It was kind of nice. I liked being able to refer to someone by their name, and I liked people knowing my name. Since my real name is fairly unique, everyone quickly knew me, or at least heard about me. That might have something to do with how I played, but maybe it was just the name. The tags also said where you were from, which was also nice.

Some people just flatly refused. Maybe they figured they were "too good" to wear a nametag. I guess only people who listen for the fry machine to beep wear nametags. But that was also helpful, because anyone who refused to wear a nametag ended up being a jerk. It was nice to have the advance notice.

One such lady was absolutely unbearable to play with. I was sitting at a table and the floor seated her just across from me. After about four hands the table began to break, and she called the floor over and completely berated him about always putting her in games that are about to break up. I had to laugh and tell a fellow player that had previously taken her to task for abusing a dealer. He laughed and said "Some people can't see the forest because of all the trees." This lady was a witch with a capital "B."

But for the most part the people playing poker there were great. The aforementioned fellow, named "Kirby" was a barrel of laughs. We sat together at $4/$8 tables consistently until he gave up hold 'em for Omaha. I think it was after I cracked his aces with 89s. I flopped the open ended straight-flush draw, and caught an offsuit 10 on the river to take down a considerable pot. I also met another player from Oklahoma. He was glad to see me because a previous player from L.A. had told him that nobody was on the cruise from Oklahoma because nobody LIVED in Oklahoma. He dragged me over to her table to prove her wrong.

There were plenty of fish on board, most of them older people who were just learning to play. At the lower limits you kind of feel bad taking so much money from them, like you are fleecing grandma for her dead husband's insurance money or something. But when they catch an incredible two-outer on the river, all that guilt goes away. One little old lady went all in against me but forgot she had a chip protecting her cards. "What about that $1 chip there on your cards," I asked, and she tossed it in the pot. After I won the hand, she said "He even had to go after my last dollar!"

Sadly Ecstatic

I'll paraphrase the response that the PSO poster had to my posting:

"I know I can't play this way in bigger games, but I have no interest in playing in bigger games."

I just don't get this. Why would you never want to play in bigger games? Why would you be content to only being able to beat bad players?

I guess the poker explosion has spoiled a lot of people. There is a seemingly endless supply of horrid players out there to fleece. I guess if you always look for the right table and the right situation you can always find one where the play is bad enough that you can win playing the same tight game raising only with Aces or Kings every time. They need to be pretty bad, because they need to be completely oblivious that you are only playing nut hands.

But even then it's no excuse. If you are getting 10 to 1 pot odds on a hand but you still lay it down because your cards don't fit into your predetermined set of "acceptable starting hands" you are costing yourself money. And why would you be resistant to a play that is proven by SIMPLE MATH is the right thing to do? To preserve table image? You have already put yourself into a situation where table image MUST be meaningless because you only play nut hands. To get any action at all, people need to be pretty ignorant of your image.

I don't get it. But what really bugs me is when they comment on other people's play and assume they are a fish because they won a hand with less than a top ten starting hand? "How could he have stayed with Jack-Three? Please tell me his name so I can add him to my buddy list." It never even occurs to them that playing Jack-Three might have been a perfectly acceptable play. And after flopping quad threes, all that's left is the complaining.

When we were playing on the cruise, Krager and I overheard from some random table yeller that "Half of poker is complaining," or some such comment. I wish I could remember the actual quote, because both of us thought the same thing at the same time, that has to go on the list of funny comments heard at the poker table.

Please people. Don't be satisfied by the fact that you make money playing poker. Always be trying to get better. Always be working towards playing in BETTER games and beating BETTER opponents.

Anyway, I added some folks to my blogroll at the right.

SirFWGALMan is the most prolific blogger in the universe. He rambles on and on, even when he's taking a poker hiatus. But it's usually pretty fun and funny stuff.

Felicia is a must read for anyone. If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance you've read her blog. She's taken comments off her blog because she has been getting rude comments. She needs to know that the HUGE majority of people that read her love her and her commentary. She's highly critical of the poker industry, and that's a GOOD THING. Too many people just go along and take abuse from every direction. Felicia stands up for poker players. If I were to start a Poker Association that represented players, I'd make Felicia the leader WITHOUT HESITATION, except that I think the job might kill her. Felicia, you are one of the good guys. (A certain STRIPPER can shove her twentysomething know-it-all attitude up her ass.)

Life's A Grind was on the PSO Cruise. He's a good ring player and a great tourney player. Also a really great guy who knows how to have fun at a poker table.

Tight Limit Players

Posted by a very prolific member of Poker Source Online's forums (he's almost caught me in posts!)

I play both limit and no limit and have found both to be very profitable. I'm just picky about the cards I play. Doesn't matter if it's no limit, or limit, I don't see that many flops usually. I've sat at limit tables for over an hour without calling the blinds a single time. I just don't play the dink cards, any two suited, connectors, or any of that kind of thing. I need two paint (suited or not), a/? suited, or a pocket pair to see a flop. Aces are where I'm currently tweaking. Ace/Facecard is an easy call. Ace/8-Ace/9 I'll call the blinds most of the time Ace/5 or less is a toss hand for me most of the time. A/6-A/7 is what I'm tweaking right now. So yes, I'm very picky about the cards I play, but I have the time to be picky. It works for me and I have no complaints . Of course, like anyone else, I might play something like 10/9 suited if I just get bored or want to change it up a bit, but it doesn't happen often.

My response:

Again, I am not trying to insult you.

But I LOVE playing against people like you at limit poker. Tight players that only play certain hands are the easiest to beat, and you can ask Lifesagrind or Krager, I EAT YOUR TYPE OF PLAYER FOR LUNCH at limit poker. They have experienced it first hand.

For the simple reason that I always know what you have. If I always know what you have, I always know what it takes to beat you. Sure you are going to catch a set once in a while with your pocket pair and beat me, but most of the time I can lay down a hand VERY CHEAPLY and get out of your way.

But since you are playing so few hands, you have to play them very aggressively in order to make your play worthwhile over time. I can either catch good cards to beat you, or get out of your way. But I will steal your blind every time it comes to you. You will never get to play your small blind EVER, unless it is a monster.

The best hands you make with Aces or Kings is usually top pair or a big two pair. But if you get a lot of callers, you are going to get rivered by straights and flushes constantly. And if you are in late position with your aces and kings, you are going to get lots of calls from the limpers in front of you that only have to call one more bet with their suited cards, and their unsuited connectors. And those hands, in multiples, are GREAT HANDS against TPTK or some such hand. If you are only playing Ace and a face or better, it is very easy to tell when you've hit or not. You might as well be playing your hands face up.

Your strategy of playing only the highest quality hands works great in No Limit or Pot Limit poker where you can protect your hand with a decent sized pre-flop raise. But you can't get the speculation hands to fold with a one-small-bet raise. It's just never going to happen.

If what you say is true, that you make good money playing limit this way (and I don't doubt that you do) then it is only because you routinely play profitable tables against poor opponents who call way too long with no hand and no draw. But you will NEVER be able to move up into mid or high limit poker with your style of play. The LAGs will eat you alive.

I know it sounds like I am putting you down, but I'm not. In fact, I bet you're not the rock you say you are, because I want people to THINK I'm a rock when I play, when in fact I play more like a fox. But the rock image can be valuable, if you need people to lay down hands. Conversely sometimes I show REALLY BAD cards early if I think I am going to want action. Sometimes I even raise with 7-2. Once you have shown your 7-2 after raising it and betting it the whole time, guess what? You are going to get TONS of action on your big hands. Again, ask Lifesagrind and Krager. They have seen this strategy at work.

The best part is that you are the easiest guy to spot at the table. You are the guy who folds his big blind when there are 4 players that called a raise in front of you. Or you fold your small blind when 8 players limped in front of you.

If you think everyone that calls with J3 in limit poker is an idiot, then you SIMPLY DON'T know what you are talking about. There are OFTEN times in limit poker where calling with J3 is ABSOLUTELY the right play to make.

In fact, I won a HUGE pot with J6 last week, and a guy BLEW UP at me for beating his aces with it. All I had to do was call one small bet ($4) pre-flop to get into a $40 pot from the big blind. Guess what? The flop had a J6 in it, and I let the guy with aces bet himself silly and then raised him on the river when the board didn't pair. But the trick to the hand was knowing what the guy had, and knowing what I had to beat. This guy played a hundred hands without raising. What else could he have had?

Everyone learns to play tight. Against bad players, it may be the only way to win. I think playing tight is a necessary part of the progression to becoming a better poker player. But at some point you have to progress past the point of playing tight aggressive poker. One thing about being GOOD tight player is knowing when someone is playing a good loose aggressive game, or if he is just a wild maniac playing everything and catching cards like crazy. Because if you do it right, it's not so easy to tell.

The Cruise

I need to start writing about the cruise, but you can expect a few posts on the topic. I'll write what I think of, but I can assure you I will think of other things later. I will keep posting them, because so many really hilarious things happened, I'm sure I will not be able to get them all in one post.

The Cruise was really a blast. I'm not sure that much poker in one week is healthy, but when is an opportunity like that going to happen again? We arrived in San Diego on Saturday afternoon and got right on the ship. Mike had warned me that the line for getting on board can be long and boring, but we walked right on. After checking out our room, we met all the PSO folks at a party hosted by CardPlayer Magazine, the folks that sponsor the cruise. On a ship of nearly 1300 people, about 400 were there as part of CardPlayer Cruises' package. I got to meet Mike, Peter, Steve, Travis, John, Tom and Travis. We had a few free drinks and found out that the poker room opened at 7:00 that night.

I started out playing $4/$8 Limit. They spread a lot of different levels, but the only games in town were Hold Em and Omaha. The lowest level that wasn't a beginner game was $2/$4, and the highest I saw was $10/$20. There was an NL $200 buy-in game that I only tried once.

I quickly learned that this was going to be a profitable cruise for me. The play at the $4/$8 game was very tight so there were pots to be had if you had the guts to make a move on them. I played until around midnight on Saturday and wound up ahead almost $200.

Again on Sunday I played $4/$8 most of the day and broke even, until an amazing rush late that night put me ahead more than $100.

But Monday, I made a mistake, and the cruise would never be the same for me after that. I sat down at a table and received my cards. I put out $4 to play, and heard the dealer say "Raise." Uh-oh. I had accidentally sat at a $2/$4 table, thinking it was a $4/$8. I tried the $2/$4 table the day before but quickly gave it up when I got called down to the river by UNIMAGINABLE hands. There was just no way to make a good hand stand up when people were drawing to and hitting any possible outs, no matter how slim. That time I returned to my $4/$8 game where I was comfortable. This time I looked around for an easy escape route from $2/$4 hell. But I saw Tom (Lifesagrind) was at this table, and he was getting pretty chatty with some folks at his end of the table. So I stuck around for a while and things really started to happen. I was really having fun. Tom raised a hand, and I said to the table "I have the hand to crack those aces." I didn't crack them, but sure enough, Tom had aces. Then I got Ace King and the flop had an Ace and a Queen. An absolute ROCK had raised pre-flop so I put him on queens and played cautiously. I announced to the table that I was only calling the flop because I was up against a set of queens. When another queen hit the table on the turn I folded my Aces and Queens with top kicker and said "I can't beat four queens." Another poor soul held on with his Aces, showing aces full of queens to get bad beat by FOUR QUEENS and the table looked my way in amazement.

I soon realized that I knew exactly what everyone at this table was holding at all times. I knew when I was beat, and I knew when I had the best hand. Tom adjusted pretty well, because I was basically telling everyone what they were holding before they showed it, but the rest of the table continued their rocky behavior. I decided that if I was really going to make a difference in this game, I was going to have to get a little crazy. And I went VERY crazy, BLOGGER style. That's right, 7-2 meant raise, EVERY TIME. The HAMMER plays folks, and the hammer WINS.

The first time I raised with 7-2, I got called all the way to the river by AA. And she almost folded it too. I proudly showed my 72 and the whole table laughed. The winner was Jennifer, a Prosecutor from San Diego.

The second time I raised the 7-2, the flop was 7-7-2 and the whole table exploded. "Wow, I bet you wished you had 7-2 this time!!" they all cackled. Everyone folded on my river bet and I showed the 7-2 and I had them rolling on the floor.

After that the table changed completely. No raise got any respect. Nearly every player at the table raised with 7-2 at least once. One player named George didn't seem to be having a good time, but it was difficult to tell. Sometimes he seemed downright grumpy, and I couldn't tell if he was enjoying himself or not. On the second to the last hand of the night, he raised pre-flop with his 7-2 and I knew, he was having a ball.

At one point I had won a pretty big pot and was busy stacking my chips. I pulled one to give to the dealer when I realized there was a dealer change between the hands, and a brand new dealer named Keith had just sat down. I tipped him anyway and announced to the table "This is the trick to getting good hands, toke the dealer before he even does anything." He had a quizzical look on his face until I said that, to which he agreed completely. He dealt me a monster 9-3 offsuit. I considered folding it but told myself "You gotta have faith," and opened for $2. The flop? 8-3-3. Keith smiled when I raked the pot, and Tom sent a toke his way for the next hand. Which Tom won.

That was probably the most fun night of poker I have ever had. I bought in for $50 and rebought for $100, and ended the night with exactly $150. I was dead even, but I felt way ahead because my sides hurt from laughing that much. Maybe it was because I had been playing poker for about 15 hours that day and it was 5:00 AM Central Time when they kicked us all out of the poker room.

My routine became playing $4/$8 early in the day or evening to get ahead, and playing $2/$4 with the same riotous crowd until they forced us to leave every night. The main cast was always the same: Tom, Travis, Ray (An ex NFL football player), Jennifer the Prosecutor, and Me, along with a few innocent bystanders who had no idea what they had gotten into. We laughed and carried on like we were drunk, but I don't think any of us were actually drinking. At least we weren't until we went up to the Crow's Nest bar with all the dealers after the Card Room closed. Those folks are off-the-hook.

Funny little weirdness.

First I want to pimp another blog, from my buddy Lifesagrind at http://lifesagrind.blogspot.com/ . I will be meeting him on the PSO cruise tomorrow afternoon. Check his blog if you want to find out whether he is as excited as I am.

Last night I was packing clothes and generally getting ready to go, since I knew I would be busy tonight playing in the final night of the PSO poker league. (Currently in 10th place.) I heard chips flying around. At first I thought Mrs. Bogey was in there playing poker, which would be odd since she has never played online poker and I believe she is completely terrified of the idea. Then I remembered that I had signed up for a freeroll at Intertops.com the previous day and had left the software running earlier that day. I looked at the clock and it was 50 minutes past the hour. "Perfect," I thought to myself. "You can come in when the blinds have gotten to a decent level and really start playing." WRONGO! It had been running for An HOUR and 50 minutes. I was at a table where every player had more than 9000 chips and I had .....45. Yes, that's forty-five chips. Oh well, it's a freeroll. Doubled up UTG. Quadrupled up on the BB. Doubled up again. Quadrupled up when I caught a Flush when I called all in pre-flop with K8d.

Holy crap! I have the tournament average! Sweet, I'm almost in the money!

Well, I finished 18th when my Aces got cracked by a pair of 8s who caught a set on the river. But I made the money, since the tourney paid through 30 places. I bet I made more money per hour than the winner did.

Funny, funny stuff.

Poker Cruise

I leave Saturday morning for the Poker Cruise I won from Poker Source Online . I got the details in the mail yesterday, and it looks like a pretty sweet deal. My flight arrives in San Diego at 1:00pm and Mrs Bogey and I will take a cab to the dock. The ship cruises at 5:00pm and the card room opens Sunday morning.

There will be three tournaments, on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. The first is a limit tournament with $150 buy-in. I may buy into this one, as I have had particular success playing limit tourneys lately. The only trick I know is extreme patience, and I plan on having a very relaxing trip, so patience should be aplenty. The next one is No Limit, and Poker Source Online is paying the entry fee for this one, another $150. If I cash in either one of these two, I will buy into the $230 main event, another NL tourney.

Otherwise the card rooms are open from 9:00am to 3:00am whenever we are not in port. There are three ports of call, and I will spend that time with Mrs. Bogey. I have warned her there will be lots of poker on this trip, and she is prepared for a week of relaxing and saloning.

I will be bringing a $2000 bankroll, so we will see how I do at the tables. They claim they will spread whatever games are requested, and there should be a couple of hundred card players on board, if you believe their advertising. I expect plenty of low limit and no limit tables. There is also a poker seminar scheduled, I expect I will attend that. Anyone who reads the forums at PSO knows I love to talk about poker theory.

The ship returns on Saturday morning. I expect to be exhausted and rich. Then only ten more days of work and I am off to Jacksonville for Christmas with Mrs. Bogey's family.

There is an internet cafe on the ship, so depending on availability and pricing, look for some posts from the ship!

Poker Comic #12

Thanksgiving Weekend

Not much poker over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Relatives visiting and Thanksgiving hassles, along with some holiday shopping made it unlikely. I did squeeze in two freerolls at the same time, along with one SNG before bed Sunday night.

The freerolls were at Intertops, and I moneyed in both of them. Intertops mysteriously doubled the prize pool in one, so I made twice as much for my 5th place finish as the payout schedule indicated. My 20ish finish in the other netted me a big $.75 score. Still, it’s an infinite amount more than my buy in.

The other game was a SNG at Pacific. They are amazingly easy. I got a nice early lead with I held AJ in a J high flop. I called an all-in in front of me and turned a J and rivered a J. Pacific doesn't show you the loser's cards, even in an all-in, so I don't know if I sucked the guy out. I imagine I did, hopefully Kings or Aces. I got a big lead early, blew it, got the lead back, blew it again, then got a HUGE lead. Quads showed up 5 times in one SNG, once on the board to counterfeit a guy’s pair of jacks who was all in on a flop of 444. A moron called him with king crap offsuit. He did end up finishing second to me for the tourney so at least he got paid and the moron went out on the bubble. I think he just got tired of playing because we battled for so long. The other 8 players were pathetic. If you aren't playing tourneys at Pacific, you should be. And if you do, remember the referral code DuggleBogey for $90 worth of comps from PokerSourceOnline.com with a $100 deposit.

The only other "pokery" thing I did this weekend was watch movies. I got the special edition of "Rounders" on Friday with a Best Buy gift card (Thank you PSO) and watched it with the "poker pro" commentary running. Phil Hellmuth did most of the talking, of course. Johnny Chan and Chris Moneymaker were also pretty interesting. Chris "Jesus" Ferguson said about 10 words, only when Phil forced him to. When there were poker hands going on in the movie, they had plenty to say, but the rest of the film had them stunned into silence.
The other movie I watched, based on a recommendation from a PSO forum poster, was "Shade." What a piece of crap this movie is. Never mind that they completely misunderstood the concept of "table stakes" the central theme of the movie is "the best cheater should win." No legitimate card player would find this movie at all entertaining. Maybe a slight-of-hand magician might. And if you bought Sylvester Stallone as the ultimate card shark, you're a fool.

Poker Stars Freeroll

For the record, Poker Stars has the worst freerolls in the business. They're even worse than Party, and Party doesn't HAVE freerolls. I played in my first Poker Stars last night because King Lucky called me and we wanted to screw around. I asked him if PS had freerolls and he said "We missed it, they start at 5:00." I said "It's only 4:55." I think he was the 6000th entry. So He and I, along with 5998 of poker's finest set sail on a journey to win one of NINE seats into a tourney with the grand prize of $100. WooHoo!!

A small note about the quality of play in these. I am dealt AQo on the button, and I raise maybe 4x the BB. Two come along for the fun. Flop is AJT rainbow. Woohoo, top pair. I make a decent sized bet, both call. Turn is an offsuit Q, giving me 2 pair but a K kicks my tail. It's checked to me and I check also, hoping for an A or a Q and fearing a check raise. The river is an offsuit K. The board has the NUT. It checks to me, which is odd, so I go all in. I figure one of these morons will fold so I will at least get something out of this pot. THEY BOTH FOLD.

All those folks that told you the players at Poker Stars are the best on the internet were yankin' ya.

(I know I know, freerolls. But still, quite a hilarious hand.)

Craps Concerns

A lot of people were concerned about my playing Craps for my casino whoring at Reef Club Casino. Apparently there is a line in their policy that says that low risk Craps and Roulette bets will not be counted towards your bonus.

I took that to mean that if you bet both the pass line and the don't pass line you will not get credited with a bet towards your bonus. Same goes for betting black and red at the same time at Roulette. These are both terrible bets that you can't win but can lose. I guess they want to discourage this for bonus purposes. Otherwise I'm sure they want to encourage it.

One player even sent an email about his bonus requirements and the said he was $21 short because of a few Craps bets he made. This concerned me greatly. So I asked the live chat if Craps counted towards my bonus as long as I bet it straight, and the support person said yes. I was prepared for a fight when I did my cashout, but lo and behold, the money was deposited into my Neteller account yesterday, no questions asked.

So my Craps scenario is 100% valid and validated by me.

Another MTT Victory

"I am the best limit tournament player I
know."

DuggleBogey

This is a quote I actually said about myself on the forum at PokerSourceOnline. It's a bit misleading, since I'm the only person I actually know who plays limit tournaments. All my friends play NL exclusively, except maybe KingLucky who plays stud and omaha tournaments too. But he hates limit. That's what everyone says. "I hate limit tournaments."

I posted before about how usually a person hates a game because they are not very good at it. There's more to hating limit than not being good at it. You can be good at limit and hate it too. Because it's less exciting than NL, or because it requires patience. A LOT of poker players are action junkies. I wouldn't say that all bad poker players are action junkies, but I would say that all action junkies are bad poker players. Patience is not the first virtue you are likely to find in a roomfull of poker lovers.

Limit poker is all about patience. It's tough to put you off your tough hands with raises, so if you have the patience to let the good hands come, you can make it very far into a limit tourney. Sure you need luck to win, just like every poker tournament, but you can wait longer for the luck to arrive in limit. It also helps when your opponents play poorly.

I got to the final table out of 236 players in dead last place, just over T12,000 in chips. The blinds were 1500/3000, and I was next on the BB. When you are short stacked in a limit tourney, you usually have to make a pre-flop commitment to play a hand all the way no matter what flops. I got 99 and made that commitment. I raised to 6000 when 6 or 7 limped, and they all called. I prayed for a 9, but instead got a flop of 667, two clubs. I checked, hoping to get a lot of players to come in. A couple did, when the chip leader raised to 6000. I re-raised what I had left, and everyone folded. He was on a draw with JTc.

This is a huge mistake on his part. He basically isolated the all-in player when he was on a draw. No club came and no Jack or Ten came, so he lost a pretty huge pot to me. He could afford the chips so that wasn't the problem. The problem is an ace came on the river and I'm sure one of the other players had one. He had a chance to knock out a player and improve everyone's take, and he decided to bluff them out of the hand. And you never know who you are letting back into the game when you do this. He let (modesty aside) the best player in the tournament back into the game. His punishment for this error? From an overwhelming chip lead, I knocked him out 4th.

With over 40K I soon took over the table and got to heads up, quickly increasing my lead to 210,000 chips against 20,000. I am a heads up DEMON lately. It helps that I have been a rock for the last hour and hopefully that image lingers in the mind of the opponent as I raise, raise, raise. Judiciously showing a pair of Kings here and a pair of aces there, I want him to think I am still a rock on an incredible card rush. I'm not showing the 42s he folded to when I raised pre-flop. When I finally won a huge pot when I made two pair on the river with my 23o, and rivered a straight with 57 after flopping OESD, it's too late for him to recover. I had the 10 to 1 lead at the fourth break, and it was over three hands later when the board showed four diamonds, and my Kd trumped his 9d.

The tournament took a total of four hours and eighteen minutes. You are going to get a lot of good hands in 4:18. If you have the patience to wait for them, you can do some serious damage.

The post that never was

I was going to post about the home game from this weekend, but nothing positive would come of that. I wouldn't be able to resist talking about the argument I had with another player who claimed that the dealer didn't have to be on the button. He apparently got upset at the last home game when the big blind skipped someone that wasn't him. I won a save and felt lucky to get anything.

These games are supposed to be fun and therefore I honestly don't expect to win them. If I were to play my real game there, nobody would ever play again. I soft played everyone at the table on almost every hand. Of course it came back to bite me in the ass, but I expected that. What I don't expect is for someone to have his head up his ass about the rules, and want to get into a brawl over it.

We had a lot of people cancel at the last minute and still had ten people playing so he may never get invited back. If there ever is a game again. I'm not sure I'd miss it that much. I'll play in any game they have, I'm already committed to that. But if nobody had another game, I'd probably be happier. One person suggested we find six regulars and have a dealers choice game once a month. I could live with that, if we got the right six people. And the pickings are quite slim. Maybe Maudie has a game I could get into that isn't full of people desperate to NOT have a good time.

On top of that I read too many blogs today. So many judgemental assholes out there, so little writing talent. Idiots in their early twenties that think they not only know everything there is to know about poker, but also about life. Trust me, they don't know shit, including proper spelling and grammar.

Poker Comic #11

Casino Whoring

We will take time out from the regularly scheduled Poker Bonus whoring for some Casino Bonus whoring. I have done the casino whore bit at PlanetLuck and Starluck casinos. They are both owned by Party Poker and there was an unbelievable promotion through Poker Source Online . The actual bonus wasn't as good with these deals, but the deal was better so I gave it a shot.

The PlanetLuck/Starluck deal was that you deposited $100, got $100 in bonus cash and got a $50 Amazon Gift card, as long as you wagered $1600. You had to play blackjack. I made about $150 on those deals combined, plus $100 in Amazon gift cards.

This one was at Reef Club Casino . What made this deal better was the fact that they had Craps. Anyone that knows a little about craps knows that if there is an amount wagered bonus element, then the thing to do is shoot craps, and to play "wrong." I like to play "wrong" in the casinos, but sometimes the shooter gets mad at you, because basically you are betting that the shooter, if he is betting on himself, and he usually does, will lose. I usually respond to a shooter who gets mad with a good ol' "Fuck you. If you don't like it, don't play."

A little background for the non-craps players out there. Craps seems intimidating because of all the different kinds of bets and all the yelling and screaming and jargon and whatnot. It's a very simple game. A player bets and rolls the dice. If he makes a 2,7,11 or 12 you either win or lose the bet. If a 4,5,6,8,9 or 10 are rolled, he continues to roll until he rolls that number again, or rolls a 7. That's the whole game. Will the shooter roll the same number twice without rolling a 7. You either bet that he will or he won't.

It gets more complicated when you talk about the bets, and that's because of odds. The real reason craps is so popular is because after the point is established (one of those numbers that isn't a 2,3,7,11 or 12) you get "true odds" on your bet. That means you will win the same amound depending on the chance of that number rolling. Say the point is 4. There are three different ways two six-sided dice can roll a 4, but there are six different ways to roll a 7. So you get double your money if you are betting on the 4.

The converse is true if you are betting AGAINST the 4. You have to bet $10 to win $5, but there is twice as much a chance you will win it. There is no house edge on these bets.

At THAT's the most important factor in this casino whoring story. If you can wager twice as much and have twice as much chance of winning, and THE AMOUNT WAGERED is the most important factor in the bonus, you can essentially bet HALF as much as necessary.

I played craps for about 20 minutes, betting "wrong" the whole time and had $1000 wagered with ease. I even profited $64 while doing it, so I actually cashed out $264. I don't know about you, but $164 profit for very little risk in 20 minutes is a GREAT deal for me.

The Really Exciting Part

When I got home from Kansas City, I logged on to check my email and to check on the reaction to the flaming post I left on the PSO forum. One thread had the title "We are giving away a cruise trip in the next 24 hours." Interested? I sure was!

It turns out that one person who won the cruise tournament suddenly cannot go. They hadn't issued the tickets or bought the plane tickets yet so they decided to just give the cruise package away to someone who was SURE they could go. They said they wanted to give it away to someone who participated in the forums a lot, someone who won the 10,000 PSO point prize in the last few months would be given the most consideration. I won it two months ago, so I fit pretty good in this category.

The second category was a person who had participated in the most Promotions. When Absolute confirms my raked hands on their next report, I will have done THEM ALL. Nobody could surpass me in this category.

The third category was a tie breaker, based on the number of posts in the forum. I have the most posts in the forum of any customer, by almost a third. Nobody else is even close on this one. It's nice to know being opinionated and having a big mouth, along with some slow time at work can pay off.

So when I entered, they basically called off the contest and gave the package to me. I really tried hard to win the cruise in the tournaments, even to the point of getting RZ to play in the last one Saturday night because I couldn't make it. He finished 180th out of 399, so I figured my chances were gone. Never give up!

When I started playing poker online last year, I just thought it would be a good cheap way to kill some time and have a lot of competition and fun. When I started winning and learning and getting more involved with the community, it started looking more like a full fledged hobby. But when I got associated with Poker Source Online this really started to take on a life of its own. I started talking about poker a lot more, thinking about poker a lot more, and enjoying the community of poker players a lot more. I have gotten a lot of my friends into poker, and all of them have taken advantage of Poker Source Online in one way or another. Free chips, free tournaments, free poker tables, everyone is profiting, and having fun. But this takes the cake. I am getting a FREE CRUISE TO CABO SAN LUCAS, all expenses paid, just for participating in their site, and playing poker. I would have played poker anyway, and I participate in their site for myself, to keep myself entertained and to talk about poker with people. I would have done it for nothing. This is all too much.

Thank you Poker Source Online Again I say. If anyone is playing poker online with any frequency, and they are not part of an affilliate program, they are stupid. If it's one different than Poker Source Online they are just playin CRAZY.

Absolute Insanity

This weekend was absolutely insane, in every possible way. Well, in every possible GOOD way. Almost.

Things started poorly on Friday night when I was the FIRST person eliminated from the poker league. I had done so well the week before that people were gunning for me. Third or fourth hand in I got AT on the big blind, and Actyper (another PSO regular) raised from 20 to 100. I called and hit an ace on the flop. I checked, he bet 100 and I raised to 400. He would later say that that raise was WAY too high and he thought I was trying to buy it. The pot was already 310, so I don't think it was that outrageous, I was just trying to send a clear signal that said "I HAVE AN ACE." He called and the turn was a 10, giving me two pair. There was also a queen on the flop, so I thought momentarily about KJ but dismissed it. This time I led out with another 400, and he still thought I was putting a move on him. I have only posted about a zillion times on the forum that I play TIGHTER that TIGHT early in multi-table tournaments, but he ignored this and called again. The river was a disaster. A queen counterfeited my pair of 10's and now I was beaten by Aces, Tens or any Queen, along with KJ. He had me outchipped and went all in for my last 600, and like a stupid fish, I called. I was so upset that he was stupid enough to call my first two bets, it put me on tilt. Maybe I was pot committed with 800 in the pot already, but I came back from 600 last week, there's no reason to think I couldn't do it again. Instead I took that opportunity away and called to see his KQ. Yes, he called with a pair of queen and a king kicker to a big raise after the flop with an ace on the board. Yes, he called a big bet on the turn with only a pair of queens and a gutshot straight with an Ace and a Ten on the board when the straight could already be made. He made two fish moves, and I made one.

The good news is he took this MONSTER chip lead and finished 21st out of 45 people. Good show. Don't worry Actyper, you're not a fish. I flamed him pretty hard on the forum, but I was really just kidding. He had a pretty good comeback with "You like Hellmouth so much you're starting to act like him." Touche. (No idea how to do the accent over the "e")

I played a STT on Pacific to console myself. I only had a few bucks in there because I cashed out my original deposit so it was just a 10+1. It was an incredibly dominating performance. I had 4500 of the 8000 total with 6 players left. I had 7200 with three left, and knocked the third place player out with 72 (The HAMMER!) I dominated the heads up game and basically got the guy to fold until he was all in on the blind. I bet those guys hated me. I was pushy, greedy and all kinds of mean. It felt GREAT!

On Saturday I drove up to Kansas City for KingLucky's home game. I started out very poorly. I even had to reload after about an hour. But then someone called a round of Omaha and everything turned around. I made a bunch of my draws, usually with a dozen outs or more, and even when I didn't I won anyway. That got me healthy, and things just got better and better. By the end I think I had doubled or tripled my buy in. It's a very small stakes game, but it's still nice to win once in a while. I had gotten abused the last two times out, but I made up for it both times by hitting big at the casino. I joked that I would probably lose at the casino this time because I won at the home game.

But that turned out to be false. My first hand at Ameristar Casino was 88, which I like to call "The Crazy Eighty-Eight." (Any Kill Bill fans out there?) I caught an 8 on the flop and got the boat on the turn. I never touched my buy in money again. I was up $250 on my first session of Hold 'Em, and took a break and played some Let It Ride with King Lucky. I lost $20 playing LIR, but won that back at the craps table. It was a real struggle, and considering how much I got down originally, a $20 profit was a real accomplishment.

I returned to the Hold 'Em game and won another $150 in pretty short order. There was plenty of Laundry to be done...at one point I asked the dealer if they sold ski gloves in the gift shop for the cards he was dealing. But I won a few monster hands that made the whole game worthwhile. I only bought back in for $80, it's what I had in loose bills and I figured I could reload if I needed to. I did get all in twice, but won both of those. Once I held 77 on a kill hand. A kill is when someone wins two hands in a row at 3/6, and the game becomes a 6/12 game with a forced bet of $6 by "the killer." I just called the $6 with my 77 but got raised afterward to $12. I went all in (limp reraise!) for $16 and got called by the original raiser and another player. The flop was Q7Q. Just what you want when you have no more money to bet, a flopped boat. It got worse. The original raiser bet out and the other player folded. We flipped our cards and I apologized to the raiser when he showed AA. The turn revealed the case 7, and suddenly my heart raced. "If there's an ace on the river, you've got the bad beat!" I said. We quickly added up the pot and realized there was enough in it to qualify, and I screamed "COME ON ACE!" It was a 4, but wow, what an exciting hand. The Bad Beat Jackpot amount was over $38,000, and my share would have been nearly $10,000. The AA player would have won $19,000+ and each player at the table would have had over $1,500. The table mumbled and grumbled about it for a good half hour. Nothing like a close shave with $10K to get your heart pounding! Instead I won $48.

But I came back big with that $48 and left the table when my plays made my neighbors irate. When I check raised the guy to my left when I caught my KKKJJ boat on the river, he said "Were you ever going to bet your hand?" I replied "Why would I, you were doing just fine!." I pissed off the guy to the right of me when I held TT and called his pre-flop raise. He bet all the streets and it got down to just he and I, with the only over on the board being a King. I said "I think I'm beat but I have to call," and he showed 77. As I was stacking my chips I said "I was almost positive you had me beat that time," and he said, very unhappily "Then why didn't you fold?!?" I was thinking "There was $80 in the pot and it was just $6, what do you think I'm a fucking retard?" But all I said was "The pot made me. Too much odds." This didn't satisfy him and he started getting more and more irate. Time for me to go.

Session three ended up dead even, but the table was a ton of fun. I was really sweating being put at the same table, because the same two guys were there. Luckily they started a new table and everyone was there to have a good time. I really enjoyed it, and broke dead even. After tips even, so I was happy.

From there we went to Harrah's Casino so I could take a look a the brand new poker room over there. It was really nice. Quieter than Ameristar's room, and everything was shiny and new. The Plastic cards glided over the brand new felt like there was no friction at all. The rounded edges on the $5 chips made chip shuffling a breeze, and I was happily shuffling away as I fold fold folded my way along. I barely saw a hand worth playing, and my starting hand requirements are VERY LOW in a casino. Like fish low. Like I won a big hand with 47s earlier in the night. Scaly. Smells like tuna. Anyway, I did manage to win a big pot with Q9 that ended up being the nut straight from the turn.

We got back to KingLucky's in time to see the Simpsons, so we were out from 2AM to 7PM. I slept Sunday night and drove back to Oklahoma on Monday. That's when the really exciting part started.

Blog Problems

Well, it finally came time to address two major problems with my blog.

Problem number one was that when I started posting the poker comics, it moved my sidebar all the way to the bottom of the screen in Internet Explorer. I didn't notice immediately because I was using Foxfire, and the problem didn't occur on Foxfire. Well, there was a different problem where the Poker Comic and the Sidebar text would overlap, but that only existed when the Poker Comic was at the top of the page. When my laptop hard drive ate itself, I never reloaded Foxfire and got to see what was happening in IE, and it was pretty darn ugly. Of course all that was missing was my counter, and who cares about that besides me. But then I decided that I needed to address problem number two, and that would make problem number one much more important.

Problem number two was that I didn't pimp any other bloggers in a links section. I knew link sections were easy to do, I just never got off my ass and did it. I am mentioned in a ton of other bloggers' blogrolls, and it is just plain RUDE of me not to reciprocate. But in order to have a blogroll on the sidebar, you'd actually need to be able to SEE my sidebar.

Problem one was solved by tinkering with the blogger template for a while. Problem two was even easier, I stole the formatting from someone else's blog. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know.

So now the blog works correctly, I think. Probably not at all screen resoultions or in all browsers, but screw all that, I'm not enough of a geek to care.

Poker Comic #10

Tourney in a nutshell

#Game No : 1156199249
***** Hand History for Game 1156199249 *****
Hold'em Trny:7057010 Level:6 Stakes (150/300) - Monday, November 08, 22:32:47 EDT 2004
Table $250 Freeroll(129289) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 2: ELguapo420 ( $295 )
Seat 3: ERIC3988 ( $715 )
Seat 5: BNB2003 ( $1930 )
Seat 6: chrisguy ( $1385 )
Seat 7: DuggleBogey ( $2864 )
Seat 9: Growlrrr ( $1980 )
Seat 10: INYOURQUEEN ( $5895 )
Seat 1: allus ( $940 )
Seat 8: JBONE74 ( $1865 )
Seat 4: CMENOW ( $2155 )
Trny:7057010 Level:6
Stakes (150/300)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Ah Ac ]
Growlrrr folds.
INYOURQUEEN folds.
allus folds.
ELguapo420 folds.
ERIC3988 folds.
CMENOW calls [150].
BNB2003 folds.
chrisguy folds.
DuggleBogey raises [225].
JBONE74 calls [150].
CMENOW calls [150].
** Dealing Flop ** [ As, 7h, 3h ]
DuggleBogey checks.
JBONE74 bets [150].
CMENOW raises [300].
DuggleBogey calls [300].
JBONE74 raises [300].
CMENOW calls [150].
DuggleBogey raises [300].
JBONE74 calls [150].
CMENOW calls [150].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 5d ]
DuggleBogey checks.
INYOURQUEEN: dam
JBONE74 bets [300].
CMENOW calls [300].
DuggleBogey raises [600].
JBONE74 raises [600].
CMENOW raises [900].
DuggleBogey calls [600].
JBONE74 is all-In.
** Dealing River ** [ 4s ]
DuggleBogey bets [300].
CMENOW is all-In.
DuggleBogey shows [ Ah, Ac ] three of a kind, aces.
JBONE74 shows [ 6h, 8h ] a straight, four to eight.
CMENOW shows [ Ad, Kc ] a pair of aces.
Player CMENOW finished in 129 place
DuggleBogey wins 245 chips from side pot #2 with three of a kind, aces.
DuggleBogey wins 580 chips from side pot #1 with three of a kind, aces.
JBONE74 wins 5595 chips from the main pot with a straight, four to eight.


#Game No : 1156239925
***** Hand History for Game 1156239925 *****
Hold'em Trny:7057010 Level:7 Stakes (200/400) - Monday, November 08, 22:41:24 EDT 2004
Table $250 Freeroll(129289) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 2: ELguapo420 ( $285 )
Seat 3: ERIC3988 ( $1540 )
Seat 5: BNB2003 ( $2830 )
Seat 6: chrisguy ( $985 )
Seat 7: DuggleBogey ( $1922 )
Seat 9: Growlrrr ( $1530 )
Seat 10: INYOURQUEEN ( $5347 )
Seat 1: allus ( $340 )
Seat 8: JBONE74 ( $5245 )
Seat 4: diodukio ( $7109 )
Trny:7057010 Level:7
Stakes (200/400)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Qd Qs ]
JBONE74 folds.
Growlrrr folds.
INYOURQUEEN folds.
allus folds.
ELguapo420 folds.
ERIC3988 folds.
diodukio folds.
BNB2003 folds.
chrisguy folds.
DuggleBogey shows [ Qd, Qs ] a pair of queens.
DuggleBogey wins 300 chips from the main pot with a pair of queens.


#Game No : 1156258898
***** Hand History for Game 1156258898 *****
Hold'em Trny:7057010 Level:7 Stakes (200/400) - Monday, November 08, 22:45:30 EDT 2004
Table $250 Freeroll(129289) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 2: ELguapo420 ( $285 )
Seat 3: ERIC3988 ( $1540 )
Seat 5: BNB2003 ( $1945 )
Seat 6: chrisguy ( $2670 )
Seat 7: DuggleBogey ( $1922 )
Seat 9: Growlrrr ( $1230 )
Seat 10: INYOURQUEEN ( $4147 )
Seat 1: allus ( $340 )
Seat 8: JBONE74 ( $7145 )
Seat 4: diodukio ( $5909 )
Trny:7057010 Level:7
Stakes (200/400)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Ac Ah ]
ELguapo420 folds.
ERIC3988 folds.
diodukio calls [200].
BNB2003 folds.
chrisguy: wow, jb
chrisguy folds.
DuggleBogey raises [400].
JBONE74 folds.
Growlrrr folds.
INYOURQUEEN folds.
allus is all-In.
chrisguy: lol - dodged another bullet..
diodukio calls [200].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, Qc, Th ]
diodukio bets [200].
DuggleBogey raises [400].
diodukio calls [200].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2d ]
diodukio checks.
DuggleBogey bets [400].
JBONE74: had the best hand i thught intill that queen came up
diodukio calls [400].
** Dealing River ** [ Qd ]
diodukio bets [400].
DuggleBogey calls [400].
diodukio shows [ 8d, Qh ] three of a kind, queens.
DuggleBogey shows [ Ac, Ah ] two pairs, aces and queens.
allus doesn't show [ 9d, 8s ] a pair of queens.
Player allus finished in 84 place
diodukio wins 2520 chips from side pot #1 with three of a kind, queens.
diodukio wins 1120 chips from the main pot with three of a kind, queens.
this is silly
allus has left the table.
Game #1156264427 starts.

Everyone shoots angles...

One kind of annoying thing did happen during the PSO League that got under my skin.

While the tourney was going on, many PSO members participated in the Online Chat going on at the PSO Chat site. I was enjoying the chat, as several people from my table were on there, and they are pretty funny guys.

When the last person on the final table that was also in chat got knocked out, I started talking more in chat, just because I knew it would be more fun and entertaining for them and myself. I was talking about hands a lot, not necessarily during the hand, but certainly afterwards. The other heads-up player was called Zagnut99, and there was no Zagnut in chat, so I assumed he wasn't there.

I was completely wrong. I also assumed that if he was there, he would have identified himself a long time ago. Also not true. There were a few people in there that had different names in Chat from what they were in the Poker Game, but they were careful to tell who they were. One person even put his chat name next to his poker site name with a pipe between them. It was very clear that you were supposed to identify yourself in chat. He was JD something in chat, and when the game was over with he typed into chat. "Thanks for the game, I'm Zagnut99." He had been in the chat the whole time, listening to everything I had to say about how I was playing, and just kept his mouth shut.

I don't mean to imply that he broke any rules, or that he even definitely gained an advantage. Hell, if he didn't catch his 35% flush, I doubt he would have won the tourney at all. I'm just saying, that's a SHITTY way to be. This was a VERY friendly small stakes tourney. The prizes available outside the prize money are probably worth a total of $20-$35. It's not worth being a shit about, that's for sure.

Poker League Event 1

Well, I contiuned my bonus whoring activities, but this time I opened an account at Absolute Poker so that I could Participate in the Poker Source Online Poker League event that kicked off Friday night.

The structure was good. Around 43 people, which is not bad for a first time event, started at 1500 chips. I dislike the 9 max tables at absolute, but that was one of just a few things wrong with absolute.

I have heard people complain and complain about Pacific Poker software. It's a dream compared to absolute poker. The only thing that is better about Absolute is that you can run multiple tables at one time. If your system can handle it. My new computer, running at 3GHZ and 512meg of memory was struggling to run ONE table at absolute. I heard someone say you could run 7 tables at once, but I think that would choke a Cray.

Anyway, I deposited $100 there, got $35 bonus cash (play 100 hands, get $10 released at a time, I dunno how the last $5 gets released.) I played a few hands before the tourney so I could get a feel for the site. The sounds are shitty, the look and feel are shitty. Playing at absolute is like wading through waist deep shit, basically. I quickly lost $10 at a $.50/$1.00 table, that I played because I couldn't get into a $1/$2 table, and nobody was playing at $2/$4 tables. The 6 max tables seem to be popular. Not with me, however. Finally a spot opened on the $1/$2 table (35 minutes on the waiting list) and I won my money back, plus enough to pay for the league entry.

In spite of the software shortcomings, I did pretty well at the League. They will be playing 4 events in 5 weeks (Thanksgiving weekend is off) on Friday nights. I took second in Event 1, which won me 500 PSO points and put me in good position in the league standings. It seems like if you can make the final table in all 4 events, you will have a good shot at winning the whole thing, which is more PSO points. The buy in is $5+1 so I also got nearly $50 for my second place finish. That should help me clear my PSO bonus at Absolute, which requires 300 raked hands for 6000 PSO points. When I clear it I should have 27000 PSO points, and no idea what I want to spend them on. Plus whatever I win for playing in the league.

Two critical hands I played were one where I got myself way way overcommitted with only Ace high, but somehow I won the hand when the other player checked behind me on the river and couldn't beat the ace.

When we were down to 3 players I got AJs with the chip lead and the board flopped AAJ. I min bet and the second place player min raised me. I smooth called and checked the turn, which was the worst possible card for me. Another J. While it guaranteed me I couldn't lose, it made it either a sure split or easy for my opponent to lay down his hand. He made another bluff attempt and I just called again, which was probably a mistake. I should have min raised him. He might have called it, although any aggression here probably would have induced a fold. Hoping he would feel pot committed and maybe representing bluff, I went all in on the river, and he layed it down easily. He came back and beat me in the tourney when he had a slight lead and I didn't play my Pair of Jacks with an Ace kicker aggresively enough and he caught his flush on the turn. T3 of hearts beat AJ for the title.

PSO Sweetens The Deal

If anyone out there isn't working with an affiliate program, now is the time.

Poker Source Online has upgraded their promotions. Now instead of getting a free 300 piece chipset, you can get a 500 piece chipset. Really nice clay chips, about $100 in stores or ebay. Or you can take their PSO points. Instead of 6000, you get 9000, which equates to $90 in their online store. You can get Amazon or Best Buy gift certificates, or they have a good selection of poker supplies and books. You can even get American Express gift certificates, which I think work just like AmEx travellers checks.

I have convinced RZ to finally do a promotion through them. Here's the deal. He is going to deposit $100 into Pacific Poker. For referring him I get $20, which I split with him. He receives $50 in bonus cash from Pacific Poker, and then $90 in PSO points. Altogether we will be getting $160 in value, and all he has to do is play 250 raked hands of poker. He doesn't even have to contribute to the rake, any raked hand he is dealt counts. He could theoretically go play Omaha Hi/Lo and fold every hand for 250 hands (great thing about Omaha Hi/Lo, even at $.50/$1.00, nearly every hand gets raked because 7 or so see the flop) and still make money on this deal.

What's the catch? Well, Pacific doesn't have NL or PL poker ring games. Limit only. You can only play one table at a time, so it will take 5-6 hours to play the 250 raked hands. And to cash out the bonus money, you have to wager 20x the amount, so to collect the $50, you have to wager $1000. But you can cash out your deposit amount anytime you want and just play with the bonus until you have wagered enough or it is gone.

PSO has also started a rakeback program through Ultimate Bet. You get 20% of your rake back in PSO points. Not cash, but better than nothing. Gift Certificates make great Christmas Presents, and it's not even re-gifting.

If you are playing poker on a daily basis, as I am, and you are not getting "something extra" when you play, you are a SUCKER. There are comps to be had people! Get 'em!

If you sign up with Poker Source Online be sure to say you were referred by "dugglebogey" on the registration form, and I will paypal half the referral fee to you as soon as I get it.

Poker Comic Returns! #9

One of those nights...

I didn't think I was going to have much poker content this weekend as my folks were in town and I spent most of the weekend with them. As I was cooking dinner for my mother's birthday on Saturday I peeked in at a freeroll tournament that had just started at Intertops. It was beeping me and saying I only had 5 seconds left to act and I saw AA so I hit the raise button, raising the 15 blind to 30. The flop had a A so when the action checked to me I hit the bet 15 button again. About 4 callers and action checked to me on the turn so I clicked 15 again. That struck me as really odd because it should have been 30. I looked up at the window title and saw the unexpected NL in the title. This was a NO LIMIT tourney, and I thought it was limit. A player behind me went all in. I looked at the board again and saw Ace King and Jack, and knew I was in trouble. I should have tossed it in right there but I hoped he was overplaying two pair and called his raise on 4th street and his all in on the river to see his QT and I was down to T20. Funny stuff. At least I cashed in the Intertops $250 freeroll on Friday night, so I would have something to blog about.

But Intertops had it's $1500 500 Raked Hands Required tournament on Sunday night, and I somehow had enough hands to play in it. There were more than 360 entries, and I made sure to check this time, it was a LIMIT tournament. I won an insanely large number of hands early, catching straights and boats every time I saw a flop. The first 45 minutes of limit tournaments are pointless however. I worked my T1000 up to T3000 in those first 45 minutes, but after the first break the blinds and speculation hands quickly ground that down to T1700. Still, people were beginning to get knocked out and I checked the payout schedule. $9.75 for 4th place, not bad for a freeroll. I was determined to get some money out of this tourney that started at 8:00pm but felt later because of Dayling Savings changing back to Central Standard Time.

I ground and ground, holding on for the no-shows to get knocked out. There is usually around 50% no-shows at these intertops tournaments. I'd think a 500 raked hands required tourney would be different, but sure enough there were only 5 of us actually there at the first table. If you can hold on and get close to the second break, the no-shows should have been blinded out and you know how many you have to make it through to see the money. After the second break, there were about 50 left, so I figured I could walk into 40th place, an I was right. 40 came quickly, and the next level of payout was 30th, so I held on and made it with just under the big blind amount. I got UTG with less than 1200, so I went all in with J9 hoping to win at least the blinds. 3 came along with me and I made a straight to the queen and tripled up. The next hand gave me Q6 of spades on the big blind, which I got to see for free. Three spades on the flop and the small blind going all the way with me put me around 8000. A tiny big of breathing space. The next BB gave me 24 of spades. I said out loud to Ms. Bogey, "Nice big blind, the flop had better be Ace-Three-Five." Sure enough A35 hit the board and the button had A3 and we capped the whole way. This win gave me enough to squeeze my way into the final table. 10th place paid $15 and went up $15 for each person who got knocked out. I vowed to hang on as long as I could. I was 8th in chips, and figured $45 would be very respectable if I could maintain my position. I caught AQ of clubs on my button and called pre-flop. The flop had Ace-Jack-Rag and called a bet by and EP player. I checked the stacks and although she had me by a lot, I could call all the way down and still survive. The turn was a King and she bet again, I called. Turn was another Ace. Now the only hands that beat me were AJ, AK, and A-whatever that rag was, and QT. She wasn't the tightest player in the world, catching a lot of goofy straights to get to the final table. One player even complained that she was the "King of Straights," and she corrected him to "Queen of Straights." She bet the river. I raised it, and she called, which told me I was good. She flipped 10-7o and I moved into 2nd place in chips. She had bluffed the whole way, and called with nothing. She tilted out the next hand, even though she had over 20k in chips left. Maybe it was past her bedtime. She took 9th, and I was guaranteed my $45.

I handled the chips well. I was barely in 2nd and didn't hold onto it for more than a hand, but I did let the chip leader knock out most of the other players. I took one out when he overplayed his AT against my AA. Neither one of us improved, but I was marching up the payout schedule. Finally I got heads up, but my 50k in chips was up against his 320k mountain. I went into standard SUPER-AGGRESSIVE heads-up mode, and took a few pots with lucky catches. If I held two rags, he would check all the way and I would catch a match on the river. I clawed up to 90k and hit a big hand. I held J5 and the flop was J75. I checked, hoping for some action and he bet. I just called. Turn was an Ace, and I hoped to hell he had a naked ace. He did, and bet it. I rasied, he re-raised. Turn was another 5, and he bet out. I raised and he typed "You probably have me kicked, but I gotta see," and called. I typed "boat," and he said "nh."

It was the most civilized heads-up game I think I have ever played. We almost never capped, and rarely bluffed. I called once when I caught a 2 on the flop with my 42s and he bet on the river to try and steal with an unimproved 53. He said "nice call." I just took pots from him at a very steady rate, until finally I caught two pair and he got all in with a pair of 10s. I caught a lot of cards down the stretch, but he folded a bit too much even when I didn't.

$375 for around 4 hours of limit poker. With a buy-in of $0, that's an infinite profit. I'll sure take the boost to my meager bankroll.