Haunted, then dead

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

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

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

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

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

Poker Comic #3

I'm not a very good poker player.

I'm not a very good poker player.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So let it be done.

The Most Common Mistake

What's the most common mistake you see players make online?

I know there are a lot of possible answers to this question, but the mistake I see most commonly, and this is probably just because I see it so often, maybe 20-30 times per hour, is doubling the blind in a NL/PL game.

$25 NL game on Party Poker. I'm on the BB with 92o. UTG raises from $.50 to $1.00. Three other players call. It costs me $.50 to get into a $5 pot. Even 92o is good in a 10 to 1 action. Flop is T95 rainbow. It checks to me, and I check with my pair of nines, no kicker. Turn card is a deuce. UTG goes all in. I'm thinking "did UTG just catch trip deuces?" One caller in front of me and I call all-in since UTG has me covered. River is a rag and the caller flips Q9 and UTG has....AA of course.

I cannot come up with ONE situation where that raise is a good move. It doesn't accomplish anything. It builds the pot a little. But the only way it can build the pot is if you get a lot of callers. And why do you want to face a lot of callers with a pair? You are forcing your AA to catch a set if you want to win. That's like playing AA the same as 22. Insanity. How many 5 way pots do you see that are won by a pair? Not many. There's a world of straights and flushes waiting to knock your pair out. But heads up? Small pairs win all the time.

A few hands before this I get AA and raise to $4. I get one caller with A8o and I win a $48 pot. I raised to isolate, got my one "sucker" and took him down. So I even showed this moron how to play his AA and he didn't pay any attention. The beauty of Party Poker is that you will ALWAYS get a sucker to call your pre-flop raise, and the other beautiful thing about Party is the suckers will never learn, no matter how many times you show them the right way to play.

The Empire Strikes Back

So I was watching the disc I made the other day that has the Star Wars Trilogy all shrunk down and burned onto one disc. When I got to the Empire Strikes Back chapter, I had to laugh. That is EXACTLY what Empire did today.

Apparently word travelled quickly throughout the online poker community that Empire Poker had a $500 promotion going. If you deposited $500 and played 2500 raked hands, (trivial on the Party raked hands system,) you got $500 released into your account. Free money? Sounds too good to be true.

And of course it was. Empire revoked the bonus from everyone that took advantage, giving 10% free up to $100 (no raked hand requirement) as a consolation prize. The community is in absolute OUTRAGE.

I guess I'm accustomed to online stores making mistakes and not fulfilling them from being on Fatwallet.com for so long. It used to be every week when Dell or someone would publish an unbelievably low price online, thousands of people would order and then the orders were cancelled. The reaction was always the same. "I'll never buy anything from Dell again," or "We should all get together and sue!" All smoke, no fire. Nobody has ever sued, and believe it or not Dell didn't go out of business from the boycott.

The same will occur for Empire Poker. They made a mistake, nobody was hurt, and even those who got "ripped off" got something completely free out of it. Most online stores don't even do that, usually it's "tough luck, read the terms of the deal. Price mistakes don't count."

The "outrage" will die down in a couple of days, if not a couple of hours. The 2+2 posts were probably annoying after the third one, and that was the point where most people stopped paying attention. The big mouths who think the world owes them something will continue for a little bit, then the whole thing will go away.

Bonuses are great, and I admit to being a full-fledged bonus whore. But that's not why I play poker, and I would play poker without any bonuses at all. I did for a long time. People are starting to take bonuses for granted, and that's never good.

I spoil ya

Holy Crap!

How do you know if your poker blog has made it? It gets mentioned by everybody's favorite dwarven blogfather, IGGY! http://guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com/
I go one day without reading it, and I nearly missed it when he mentions my blog! Serves me right!

If you're not reading Iggy, lets face it, you're not reading this. But Iggy puts out the most entertaining and informative blog about the poker world, both online and otherwise. How he does it without cable TV is absolutely beyond me. I would pimp bonus code "IGGY" at Party Poker for him if I didn't think http://www.pokersourceonline.com would give you a better deal. Howabout this, if I get a Party Poker referral in the next month, I will send the referral money directly to Iggy via Paypal. Referral Code "DuggleBogey" at PokerSourceOnline will do it.

I'm working on another comic for tomorrow, hopefully it will appeal to a broader audience than the last one. One of my non-poker playing buddies said "I didn't even come close to getting that joke." Oh well, I know at least one poker player got a chuckle out of it.

Played two interesting hands Online yesterday. One at Royal Vegas where I got AQd on the button and called a pre-flop raise to try and keep as many people in the pot as I could. Once it was raised pre-flop I knew I would need a big hand to win based on the raiser (Tight aggressive), and wasn't interested in isolating. The flop was all rags, but two were diamonds. The original raiser bet $2, and I was forced to chase by pot odds when all 4 other players called. Turn was another rag - no diamond, but the original better only bet $2 more to go, and everyone called again. The river was my diamond, and with no pair on the board I was left with a quandry. 6 players in the pot that was $36 already. It checked to me, and I wanted more than one caller. $4 was the magic number I came up with, and only one fold netted me a sweet $56 pot that I only put $10 into. No hand histories at RV unfortunately, I'll never know what they called with.

The other was at a Party ring game. I had already doubled up once in the first few hands to find AKh in the small blind. An EP player raised, and button +1 re-raised. I called along with the button, but EP re-raised all-in way over the top of me. Both players in front of me called, because the original re-raiser (I found out later) was a maniac. I had to call, with a chance to quadruple up with AKh. EP raiser had AKc, button had QTo(!) and maniac re-raiser? The other two Aces. Not a single heart and I was busted. Exciting hand though.

First attempt

This is my first attempt at a poker comic...I'm no artist, but here goes...

Disgusted

I'm pretty disgusted with online poker right now. It's the people. They act disgusting, and I am disgusted.

I played in the PokerSourceOnline Free Poker Cruise Tournament Saturday night, and got my AA cracked by 88. The disgusting part was the only reason the guy called was because I doubled up on him a few hands before when he called my all-in 88 with his 22, and because one of the other players at the table goaded him into it.

Table coaching is specifically against the rules, but it happens constantly. People make predictions in the middle of a hand, people tell other people what play to make, because it is in their best interests. The moderators at PSO tried to get ahold of it, but even the guy who eventually won was doing some table coaching at the other table when there were two tables left. Maybe they don't know it's agains the rules? Even when you tell them they are breaking the rules, they keep doing it.

After I got bad beat to lose the tournament, the guy who talked him into it was talking shit to me, saying he was glad I was gone and he never liked me. I nominated him for "Shithead of the tournament" at the PSO forum, but my post got edited. If you can't handle reading the word "shit" on a forum, you aren't mature enough to be playing poker online.

That beat put me on tilt for the rest of the weekend, so I tried my best to stay away from poker tables for the weekend. Instead I decided to try and fit all three Star Wars movies from the newly released trilogy onto one disc. Why not? I worked on it for hours and finally got them to fit (edited out all audio tracks except one and cut off the beginning and end credits.) I haven't tried to watch the resulting DVD yet, but I bet the quality is horrendous. Still kinda handy to have all three movies on one disc though. And a fun project for a couple of hours.

Where I play...

Pope asked a question in comments about Royal Vegas and how the games were there, and it got me thinking about where I've played and why I play where I play.

There's a lot of options on the internet. For B&M casinos the reason you play someplace is generally more nebulous. I like the waitresses, the dealers are more professional, the room is non-smoking, etc. All casino poker rooms are essentially the same. The bad beat jackpot might be slightly different, and the management has some effect on the experience, but one is basically as good as the other.

Online, however, there is a world of difference. I would have to say the three priorities for me picking a site online are 1)Comps, 2)Interface, 3)Competition.

I'm pretty much a full-fledged bonus whore. I have received over $600 in bonus cash and merchandise from Poker Source Online (http://www.pokersourceonline.com) not including the bonuses I have recieved from poker rooms themselves. That probably adds another $300.

I have played at Party Poker, Intertops Poker, Aztec Riches, Royal Vegas and The Gaming Club. I also have some experience with Poker Stars and Paradise Poker.

Party and Intertops are essentially the same place for ring games and SnGs, with different multi-table tournaments. Intertops has 4 or 5 freerolls a week, while Party has practically none. I play in the Intertops freerolls and have made more than $500 from them altogether. Three wins and tons of money finishes. The sweet thing about the intertops freerolls is there is rarely more than 300 people in the completely free ones, and the ones with raked hand requirements generally have around 100 people in them. Compared to the 6000 player freerolls at PokerStars, I'll take it. The interface is exactly the same as Party Poker, and everyone knows Party. And the competition is the fishiest fish in fishdom. Everyone knows that too.

Royal Vegas, Aztec Riches and The Gaming Club are all Prima Poker rooms, and they share the ring games, SnGs and the Multi-tables. They even share some of the freerolls. Prima seems to put a priority on NL and PL games, and they never seem to spread too many limit tables. As most people I know prefer to play in the 2/4-5/10 limit games, they aren't going to like Prima that much. I'm a pot-limt/no-limit player so it spreads perfectly for me. The raked hand freeroll is ESPECIALLY juicy there. I have won more than $300 from them and I have played in aprox. 10 of them. The completely free freeroll always has 3000+ players and is a waste of time in my opinion. It can barely be called poker for the first two hours.

Prima rooms also have the best selection of multi-table tournaments, with a cheap (>$10) rebuy or freezeout tournament starting basically every half hour, along with a slightly higer (maybe $30-$100) tournaments starting every hour. There are around a tenth of the players at Prima that there are at Party, but that's still a lot, usually around 4,000. It's still pretty soft, but you will find the occasional power player there. You will also run into those people that are there to lose money as fast as they can. I seem to run into more at RV than at Party, as unlikely as that seems.

The Royal Vegas interface is the best of the three, Aztec is the worst. At RV the buttons appear in the middle of the table when it is your turn to play, and they are big. At TGC and AR they only appear in the bottom right of the screen and they are always smalle. I have hit the wrong button before at TGC and it is very frustrating. I have misread the chips on the table at RV before too, they don't put the dollar amount next to the chips like Party does. I called a $2 bet that I thought was a $1 bet once. Not a huge deal, as it is unlikely to happen with larger dollar amounts. I still prefer the way Party conveys the info about how much a person has bet and how much they have in their stack.

I play the majority of my hands at Royal Vegas because I am in a rake rebate program there with Poker Source Online. 20% of my share of the rake gets refunded to me in points I can use to get prizes from PSO.

I have only played multi-table freerolls in place of a friend at PokerStars and Paradise Poker. Paradise seems to spread the greatest variety of games, including Crazy Pineapple. PokerStars supposedly has the highest quality of competition, although Ultimate Bet might disagree with that supposition. I don't really care about whether a place has high quality players, just as long as they have enough low quality competition for me to beat and stay away from the sharks.

Confession

It's confession time. I actually LIKE Phil Helmouth. I know he's the "poker brat" and he has a huge ego and he swears a lot. He "misbehaves" when he gets beat.

But there's a lot to like about Phil. He's a damn good poker player. He makes great laydowns that nobody gives him credit for. He's the youngest player ever to win a WSOP main event, he is one of only two people to have 9 WSOP bracelets. (The other one is Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson, who won his when there was only a couple of dozen people involved. No disprespect to Dolly, but that's the fact.) He is a tournament specialist. In fact, he's one of the first tournament specialists. Most players make their living at the ring games and play in the tournaments just as a side thing. Players like Chip Reese and Ted Forrest didn't used to play tournaments at all, until they realized they might get their faces on TV.

But these aren't the reasons I like Phil. I like Phil because he says what he's thinking. I learned a lot about poker by watching Phil talk about what he was thinking, or what his opponents are thinking. I got his book, and he basically teaches how to be a tight aggressive player. Play tight until you get the right opportunity, then go hard and fast. He puts priority on premium hands and playing your opponents.

I prefer Phil over players like Erik Seidel, who hate for you to see how he plays. He tries to cover up hole card cameras so people can't tell how he plays. I prefer a player I can learn something from, not one that thinks he's got some kind of secret he has to protect.

The other thing I like about Phil is that he's genuine. He's a genuine flake, but he's genuine.

What's worse than losing?

The only thing worse in online poker than playing a hand wrong is complaining afterward that somehow you were "robbed."

I joined a NL ring game at Royal Vegas and had to post my big blind. Every single player limped in and the button limped right along with every other player. The flop had a pair of 8s and I was out of there when the small blind bet, although he bet pretty small. Most everyone folded, except for the button, who raised. The small blind called and everyone else got out. The next card was a rag and the small blind checked and called a big raise from the button. River was the same, rag-check-bet-call. They flipped them over and the button showed KK, beat by 78s.

This is a huge error that anyone who has played poker for more than 6 seconds can see. What does this Poker Prodigy, who held the second best possible hand pre-flop in the best possible position say? "Big pairs never hold up." DERP! Yeah, when you play them completely wrong, they never hold up. When you try to beat NINE players with nothing but a pair. When you wait until you are BEAT to try and bet someone out.

I think there is a book in this somewhere. I want to save hand histories of the WORST plays I see over and over again and publish a book called "How NOT to play poker, the 20 biggest mistakes online poker players make." Each chapter would be a mistake, why people make that mistake and how to avoid them. There would also be advice on how to spot bad players based on these mistakes and exploit them.

There's a market for a book like that, isn't there? Sure it would be beginner level, but DAMN if there aren't a lot of people online that need a book like that.

I should stick to online poker

Well, not really. I played in a home tourney against some coworkers and came up empty in two events. One was a $20 buy in with a save for 3rd and 70-30 split of what's left for first and second. We start at limit and then go no limit when the blinds reach a certain level. I did well in the limit portion, check raising a few times with flushes. The no-limit portion was a disaster when I couldn't get any action when I had a decent hand. I think my reputation hurts me in this home game and nobody wants to play me. I went all in at least 4 times and never got called. Finally I held A9o and called someone's all in with 77. I didn't improve and was out in 4th place, just out of the money.

The second game was $10 buy-in winner-take-all and I was forced all in with Ace high. RZ called with king high and caught a king on the river to take me out in 4th place again.

RZ caught cards like nobody's business. In game one he bluffed all in with 73 against a big pair, kings I think. He gets runner runner 3s to win the hand. RUNNER RUNNER 3s? That's something like an 800-1 shot. He got the save in the first game, and won the second on an equally unlikely hand. He held 57 heads up and the board showed 2356. His opponent went all in and RZ says "I call, because you don't have the four. Sure enough, he made the wrong call and his opponent shows K4. He says "I'm drawing dead, no wait, we will split if I catch a 4." What do you know? A 4 comes on the river and they start splitting up the chips when I nudge him on the elbow and say, "You've got a 7." A two-outer gut shot to win the whole thing. Unreal.

The next day made up for it when I was playing Pot Limit at Royal Vegas. There was a guy whose name was some variation of "hornytoad" that would call any pre-flop raise, not matter how big or how many players. What's even better is he had $150. I bought in for $10 and quickly blew it with KK when 99 caught a set on the flop. I re-bought and instantl won a $28 pot with AA. I doubled again with KK and was sitting around $68. Again I caught a huge hand and knocked a couple of guys out moving over $100. Then I got AA again, on the button in seat #1. Horny was in perfect position at the table, to my right in seat #10. Every person at the table called the big blind and action got to the #10 seat and the timer scrolled....I yelled "No!!!!" as he timed out and his hand was automatically folded. This is like a bad beat to me. You have the perfect hand to push a guy all in, and technical problems keep him from playing. One other player called my max raise and I won around $25. I have no room to complain, being up over $100 in one sesson, but man, I thought that was going to be a big payoff. I hope I see Horny again so I can get the exact spelling of his name to add him to my RV fish finder. They need buddy lists like Party has, my manual fish finder is much more difficult to use.

Three freeroll tourneys last night. I cashed in one, finishing 12th in a Limit $500 freeroll at Intertops. I struggle with multiple tourneys at one time. I definitely need work there.

A Brilliant Poker Player Once Said...

"If you bluff more than once a week, you're not as good as you think you are."

This is my favorite poker quote. It doesn't even have to be true to be correct. Almost all of us are not as good as we think we are. And all of us bluff more than once a week. "More than once a week" is an exaggeration of course, and even though I've told you a million times never to exaggerate, I'll allow it this time.

Bluffing is what poker is all about, right? Especially no-limit poker. Bluffing is all about applying pressure, and going all in for 10x 20x or 100x the pot is a little more pressure than a check raise.

The eternal truism about this is that there are online players who bluff at EVERY DAMN POT. If more than once a week is too much, how can once per hand be good? It can't. These guys kill me.

On party last night, I get T8s (spades) in the small blind. I complete and get to see a flop, which comes out T65, with the 6 and 5 being spades. I bet small with top pair and a flush draw. Player one raises me to $5 and player two goes all in for $32.

I'm staring at T65 and thinking "What on there is worth $32? Maybe someone flopped a set and is afraid of the flush?" I call, because I'm already almost getting 3 to 1 on my money, even if Player one doesn't call. Which he does. Turn and River show no spades, but I'm shocked when the money comes my way... A pair of 10's with a crappy kicker takes the pot? I had to look this one up in the hand history. You gotta love Party for the chance to look at mucked cards after a call. I was facing a mighty 69 and A6 respectively, no spades, obviously.

What in the hell are you going all-in with second pair and an ace kicker for? This one's easy, he saw rags on the board and thought he could buy the pot, which was a whopping $7-8 due to Player One's $5 raise with second pair and a 9 kicker. The truly puzzling move is the call with that rubbish, after 2 players are all in in front of you.

One player who thinks it makes sense to risk $32 to win $8, and another who calls with second pair and no draw.

Habitual bluffers get marked by me, and added to my fish list. I love a guy you can count on to try and steal a pot. Hell, I like a player you can count on to do anything predictable. But you have to mark an awful lot of these guys, because for some odd reason, they tend to disappear and never show up again.

How can you call with that? Pathology, that's how.

I got knocked out of a No Limit Multi last night by a player that made three straight awful calls. Actually two of them were awful, one of them was just bad. That was the only one that I won.

I have 4500 in chips, he has 3000. He raises pre-flop to 500, I go all in with AKs. He calls, with J9s. He catches a 9 on the river.

How can you make that call?

Next hand I go all in with my 1500 left an AQ0. He calls with 44 and I win when I spike a Q on the flop.

I guess he thought I was tilting, and he did have me beat, so this wasn't the worst call in the world.

Two hands later I am all in with J10 and a J on the flop. He calls with 84 and a 4 on the board. He rivers an 8 and I am gone.

Again, he might have thought I was on tilt, but I can't give this moron that much credit.

But why do people make these calls? How can someone be THAT fishy?

I think Party Poker fish have a very specific problem. They have a pathological fear of being bluffed. They would rather lose than be bluffed. A re-raise is an absolute INSULT to their MANHOOD. Re-raising them is like making them put on a dress. They will call with NOTHING, just to prove you cannot push them off a pot.

The most important aspect of bluffing is knowing when you've been busted. If you are going to consistently continue the bluff, EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU ARE BEHIND AND THE OPPONENT CANNOT FOLD, you need to switch games. I understand being aggressive is good, and raising to 500 with J9s isn't the worst play in the world. But when someone comes over the top, voluntarily telling you that he has a good hand, maybe even a monster, and you call, you're a fucking dumbass and you need to find another hobby.

If you are afraid of being bluffed, terrified of laying down the best hand, or play because of "pride" and think that someone is insulting you by playing back at you, you can NEVER be a good player until you get over these hangups.

Limit vs No Limit

Limit vs. No Limit. It's an eternal question in poker, isn't it? It gets even more complicated when you are talking about tourneys.

I'll be honest, I used to hate limit poker tourneys. I of course learned how to play poker playing limit, but moved to pot limit and no limit soon, as it is easier to make plays.

But think about what it means to "hate" a game when you are talking about poker. There's a few reasons you can hate something, but I'd have to say the usual reason is that you aren't very good at it. Instead of hating it and avoiding it, shouldn't you take it upon yourself to improve at it?

No Limit is slightly more of a 5 card game and limit uses all 7 cards a bit more. It's overly simplistic, but that's the real difference to me. In no limit you make a bet based on your hole cards, and post flop play consists mostly of who feels like they caught enough of the flop to make a play, or feels like nobody else caught enough of the flop that they can make a play. On a passive table you get some turn/river play, but you don't find a lot of passive tables at No Limit. If people want to play passive, they eventually learn that they are far better off at limit tables.

So my limit poker was weak, therefore I hated it. But was it? A large portion of the freerolls at Intertopspoker.com (Did you see Marcel Luske pimping for Intertops in the WSOP coverage last night?) are limit, and I noticed that I was much more successful at those games than the no limit freerolls. The first one I ever won was limit.

The only other reason to hate limit is that it is not as exciting as no limit, especially early. In one limit tourney I won at Intertops I sat out the first 45 minutes to I could watch WSOP coverage on ESPN.

The beauty of limit tournaments is it nullifies a lot of the dumbass factor. The guys going all in on every naked ace for the first half hour. They can't do it, so they tend to stay away. Of course there are those that raise every single bet trying to bust out quickly. How do they find this even the slightest bit entertaining?

Last night's limit tourney ($10+1, $1000 added) was a very good example of the positive differences between limit and no limit. I struggled terribly for the first hour, never playing a hand to the turn. Some decent hole cards, but missing flops completely. But at the end of the first hour I managed to take a couple of pots, and just after the break I won a couple more and was in 2nd chip position out fo 60 players. Take out the dumbass factor and there's no "lottery winner" who has 20 times the starting stack from maniac all-ins. Solid play can and usually will keep you in range of the leaders. I played conservatively, stealing many pots when I felt like I was in the perfect circumstances, until I made the final table. Only 8 got paid, and I busted out one hand after number nine got blinded out. My 77 got beat by 44 in the BB when A235 came by the turn.

After that I joined a limit ring game at Royal Vegas. I am becoming a limit LOVER! I bought in for $40 at a $2/4 limit table, and in a mere 15 minutes was up to $154. This was more card rush than fine play, but man, you find a lot more callers at limit poker, and it sure is easier to chase down those flushes. My rush was pretty overwhelming and it broke up the table.

Go Be Rude is growing

I want to thank Derek for adding me to his aggregator at Damning the River - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dtr/ . If you like to read a lot of poker blogs, the aggregator is great. It grabs a lot of really good blogs and lets you read the latest posts from them in the order they were posted. Some of these guys are really prolific.

I also want to add that anyone who wants to make $100-$200 easy plus $100 in Amazon gift certificates should run to http://www.pokersourceonline.com and play the Starluck and PlanetLuck casino offers right away.

Here's how you do it. Deposit $100 into PlanetLuck, receive $200 in credit play 800 hands of blackjack at $2 per hand. It will take a little over 2 hours. Variance should get you at least $50 profit. Do the exact same thing at Starluck. After a week or so PokerSourceOnline will send you two $50 Gift Certificates for Amazon.com. Pre-order the Star Wars Trilogy. You can cash your money back out of the casinos in 24 hours.

If you do it, make sure you put the name DuggleBogey in the referral field. And you should do it, because with a 1% house edge, you'd have to be EXTRAORDINARILY unlucky to lose money on this deal. I personally made $180 plus the gift certificates.

Blackjack Mentality

Another trip to Kansas City in the books. This time I took a day off work so I could sleep a bit more before driving back. It's a good thing too because I left for Kansas City at noon, we started the home game around 6:00pm, got to the Casino at 1:00am and got back home around 7:00pm. That's a lot of driving and poker before sleeping for me. I started watching the Chiefs game at 7:30 but was dead asleep on KingLucky's couch by 8:30.

Playing in a Casino is definitely different than online, or even the home games. There's always some people at a table in a Casino that have what I call a "Blackjack Mentality" towards poker. In blackjack you get two cards, just like Texas Hold Em. You bet money every time in blackjack, don't you? Then you should in poker too, right? Take your two cards, pay your money, and see what you get. Maybe you hit two pair or a full house. That's like getting blackjack. Maybe you just hit one pair. That's like getting a 18. Or you hit nothing. That's a bust. Either way you play your hand, see what you get, and get ready to play another. You wouldn't fold a hand in blackjack would you? (I'm pretending there is no surrender, since I've never actually seen someone surrender in blackjack in a casino.) Hell, 74o is a GREAT hand in blackjack.

I don't mean to insult those people and say they are stupid and shouldn't be allowed in a poker room. They have every right to play poker as anyone anywhere (which is too few places, if you ask me.) And everyone has to start somewhere. Some people walk into a Casino and say to themselves "I am going to lose money today." And they are bound and determined to do it. They want to lose it at poker? If that's what they consider the most entertaining way to lose their money, more power to them.

The point to all this is that you have to adjust your game to these people. Don't assume that just because you raised, you got 38o out. Especially at low limit poker. I'm sure my $3 pre-flop raise has gotten a player who might have played the hand otherwise to fold, but I sure as hell can't remember it happening. I did raise with JJ on a kill pot once, and won the hand even though a King came out. In my fantasies I believe that a naked king folded so I could win that pot, but there was probably never a king to start with.

I have never EVER had someone fold to a check raise in the Casino. It has NEVER happened. And I always have it on a check raise. ALWAYS. You'd think that after playing with me for 4 hours, seeing me check raise and ALWAYS have the nuts or at least a monster, someone would say to themselves "This guy ONLY check raises when he has the nuts," and lay a hand down. But they always stay. Maybe it's pot odds. Maybe it's fear of being bluffed. But you can ABSOLUTELY count on these people to bet the river in hopes of the rest of the table folding to them, so check raises are EASY. I do them constantly, and still, never a fold. Even with rags. I just don't get it.

Not much poker. Bad idea.

Not much in the way of poker this week, which is a really bad idea. I played some while burning DVDs yesterday. I routinely do this to make the burning process go faster. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but if you just let the discs burn without tending to them, you tend to forget they are going and neglect them. If you are doing something else on the same computer at the same time, you are contantly reminded by the slowness of the computer and all the alerts to add new discs and whatnot. Anyway, poker becomes more of a time waster than a money maker. Usually that equals money waster too, but thankfully my game has gotten past that point.

It's a really bad idea for me to neglect poker this week, because I am taking my monthly trip to Kansas City to visit KingLucky and play in his home game. I took Monday off work so I could spend some more time there and go to the Casino. This time we may go to Harrah's instead because they spread a $300 No-Limit game that isn't availabe at the Ameristar. KingLucky knows I am a stronger no-limit player than limit. He has better comps at Ameristar, so it's kind of a toss up. I did well at the limit games at Ameristar last time, so I don't really care either way. I've never played no-limit in a Casino before, I might enjoy it. Sometimes change is good. I will probably work on it tonight, at higher levels than usual, just to get a feel for it.

After a bad experience a couple of days ago at Pot Limit, I may scrap it in favor of NL. I got JJ in first position, after a run of ice cold cards. I bluffed a couple of times to keep my stack in shape, but I was really looking for a big score at this loose/aggressive table. I decided JJ was it. I raised the MAX, but it was pot limit and I was first to act, so all I could raise was $1.75. At this loose table, $1.75 might as well have been nothing. I got 5 callers, and no raisers. JJ against 5 callers might as well be 22. 23 if you don't catch a Jack. A king flopped and I was done. Well, I thought I was done, the table actually checked around. So I bet on the turn, which was a queen. Some bonehead called with his queen/crap, and I checked the river and got to see his overpair. I suppose I should have thrown a bet out there on the flop representing AK and I would have taken the pot, but with 5 callers I had to assume a King, and these guys do NOT drop a pair of Kings because of a $10 bet. Even if it's K2o.

Maybe it's an isolated incedent and I'm overreacting. PL was where I learned poker, and where the bulk of my non-tournament poker is played. I've made a lot of money at Pot Limit. But it's a limit. Sometimes you just don't want to be limited.

I'd like to thank Heafy at PokeronFilm (http://pokeronfilm.blogspot.com/) for mentioning my blog and for the nice comments. I am learning a lot about Australia just from reading his blog. It must be difficult being that far away and being into American culture like he is. And the movie quotes are fricking awesome.

Aggression Progression

I was reading some blogs today, few were updated over the weekend. Holidays do that. But one piqued my interest in that he seemed to think he was repeating the word "tight" very often. His game was getting "tighter" every time he played.

I'm not sure if he meant "tight" as in good, or as in more rock-like. I hope he meant he was becoming more and more of a rock. Not that I think rocks are particularly good players. They're very predictable, easy to bluff and never get a very big stack unless they catch a good rush of cards. Even then they have no idea how to act with that big stack.

But being a rock is good, because I believe it is necessary to become a rock in order to make the next step. Once you have learned what good starting hands are and you limit yourself to playing them, it becomes necessary to start playing those hands very aggresively. You have to maximize your winning percentage with those hands, because that is all you are playing. If you slow play and get beat with your KK, you quickly grow frustrated. "If I lose with these hands, how can I win?" you ask yourself. So you learn to be aggressive. You raise pre-flop. If anyone challenges, you put the pressure back on them. You always force THEM to make the hard decision. It's easy to do with KK or AA. You raise pre-flop, they raise you back. You go all in. It's an easy play.

Soon you will realize that people aren't taking you to the river with these hands. They have bought your reputation as a rock and they are folding when they don't hit the flop or make the nuts by the turn. You never get to show your KK. Then you start thinking, I never needed to have that KK, did I? If I act like I have KK, in the right circumstances, against the right player, I can take that EXACT same hand with 24o instead of KK.

Now someone could easily misunderstand and think that you can skip the rock stage and go straight to the aggressive stage. But you can't skip the rock stage. Becoming a rock takes a lot of work, but it is worthwhile because the experience of becoming a rock is the experience to know when the situation is right to play that 24o like KK. If you skip that step, you'll never know, and your 24o will get called. You won't know when to lay down your 24o bluff, and you will get busted too often with really weak hands. Not just the situation and the cards on the table, but the makeup of the players at the table and your position among them.

I am watching RZ progress from rock to fox. It's very interesting to watch, because every game is like a revalation to him. Of course he is taking some beatings along the way, but the education is worth the cost, and it has started paying off for him big time.

Aggression is usually rewarded at Hold 'Em. You hear it over and over again if you watch the WPT broadcasts on the Travel Channel. It may be an over simplification, but if you get there the right way, with no shortcuts, that quote is right on the money.

SNG.....again

It's been a long time since I've played sit-n-go tourneys at Party Poker. I just got out of the habit, and when I went back and tried to play a couple, felt uncomfortable. The blind structure goes up so fast compared to MTTs, and the pressure to play is much higher than ring games. Hands I wouldn't dream of playing in a ring game or even an MTT are must plays in a SNG.

I played one last night, and got bounced out in 9th place when I overplayed a questionable hand. So I played one more, thinking "If I lose this one I am going to stay away from SNGs for while longer." Ring games are easy money, so why commit 40 minutes to an hour playing a game that you don't particularly enjoy?

In game 2 the story was different. I managed to pick up quite a few pots, but dropped back down to 800 (the starting point at Party, which sucks balls compared to everywhere else) when someone caught a King on the river to beat my Ace high. What the hell was he calling with king high for? I guess some people think a blind can NEVER have a good hand.

Anyway, I was struggling with 5 left and hefty blinds when this hand happened.

***** Hand History for Game 900434688 *****300/600 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (PL) (Tournament 5569677) - Tue Aug 31 21:00:15 EDT 2004
Table Table 11114 (Real Money) --
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 1: DuggleBogey (970)
Seat 3: joejamesjr (365)
Seat 5: Bond_JmsBond (1430)
Seat 8: NBiggershaft (4380)
Seat 10: beancounterj (855)
beancounterj posts small blind (150)
DuggleBogey posts big blind (300)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ 9s, 3d ]
joejamesjr raises (365) to 365joejamesjr is all-In.
Bond_JmsBond folds.
NBiggershaft folds.
beancounterj calls (215)
DuggleBogey calls (65)
Creating Main Pot with $1095 with joejamesjr
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Jd, 8h, Td ]
beancounterj bets (490)
beancounterj is all-In.DuggleBogey calls (490)
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Tc ]
** Dealing River ** : [ Qh ]
Creating Side Pot 1 with $980 with beancounterj
** Summary **
Main Pot: 1095 Side Pot 1: 980 Board: [ Jd 8h Td Tc Qh ]
DuggleBogey balance 2190, bet 855, collected 2075, net +1220 [ 9s 3d ] [ a straight, eight to queen -- Qh,Jd,Td,9s,8h ]
joejamesjr balance 0, lost 365 [ Js Ah ] [ two pairs, jacks and tens -- Ah,Js,Jd,Td,Tc ]
Bond_JmsBond balance 1430, didn't bet (folded)
NBiggershaft balance 4380, didn't bet (folded)
beancounterj balance 0, lost 855 [ Ac As ] [ two pairs, aces and tens -- Ac,As,Qh,Td,Tc ]

I was almost FORCED to win this hand. I was the big blind of 300 when someone went all in for 365. Even though I had 930 you still have to call that. Then beancounter went all in with his AA. If he had raised all in pre-flop with AA, I would have folded. But I can't blame him for slow playing it, because he was basically already heads up with me. But by the time he raised all in for another 490, I just had to call 490 to get into a 2075 pot. With an open ended straight draw that's an easy call. More than 4 to 1 pot odds with 8 outs. Roughly that's 33% to hit my straight. Especially if you consider that winning the hand put me in the money.

From there it was easy. TOO easy. NBiggershaft foled to EVERY raise down the stretch. He put himself in such a huge hole that he won two all-ins and still had no prayer. I took the chip lead on the very next hand and never gave it back. NBiggershaft got his money by luckily hitting trips three hands in a row, taking a player out with each one. Once he had the huge stack he had NO IDEA what to do with it. Admittedly I'm not the best big stack player, but this guy was horrible.

The only hand he won was when I put him all in for his 1230 with my A2o against his K3o. His flopped 3 beat my flopped 2 and he doubled up. But on the very next hand:

***** Hand History for Game 900449870 *****
DuggleBogey: vn
400/800 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (PL) (Tournament 5569677) - Tue Aug 31 21:04:31 EDT 2004Table Table 11114 (Real Money) --
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 2
Seat 1: DuggleBogey (5540)
Seat 8: NBiggershaft (2460)
NBiggershaft posts small blind (200)
DuggleBogey posts big blind (400)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Ts, Th ]
NBiggershaft raises (600) to 800
DuggleBogey raises (2000) to 2400
NBiggershaft raises (1660) to 2460
NBiggershaft is all-In.
DuggleBogey calls (60)
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Qd, 7s, 3h ]
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 5d ]
** Dealing River ** : [ 9h ]
Creating Main Pot with $4920 with NBiggershaft
** Summary **
Main Pot: 4920 Board: [ Qd 7s 3h 5d 9h ]
DuggleBogey balance 8000, bet 2460, collected 4920, net +2460 [ Ts Th ] [ a pair of tens -- Qd,Ts,Th,9h,7s ]
NBiggershaft balance 0, lost 2460 [ Ac 8d ] [ high card ace -- Ac,Qd,9h,8d,7s ]

I think he finally caught on to the fact that I was being aggressive, when he folded 6 hands in a row after paying to see a flop. By then it was too late. He had too few chips and my cards were too good.

No Cruise for You!

The PSO Poker Criuse Freeroll went off last night, I wish I could say without a hitch.

It started when I got home and logged in one hour before the tourney. I also joined the chat room from PSO and people were freaking out. It seems when Party Poker created the tournament, they made it a freeroll instead of a restricted freeroll. OOPS! As soon as registration opened, non PSO people started registering for the tourney. The poor freeroll starved Party Poker people were JUMPING at the opportunity to play for a free Cruise. OUR FREE CRUISE. After about 15 minutes and 300 people registering, the Party Poker staff canceled the whole thing, and re-created it correctly before the kickoff.

The only other technical glitch was when it went to hand-to-hand with 50 players left, instead of 40. The payouts started at 30, so when 50-40 went out, it took forever as all tables had to wait for play to complete at all tables. But when it was 40 left, it resumed normally. So someone could "theoretically" stall their way into the money. Nobody did though, as most of these folks know each other from the PSO forum.

I really wanted to beat a user called "bouncer" who logs on to Party Poker as IGotASet. I did manage to finish higher than him, but He finished 30th, just barely in the money and I finished 21st, the highest spot to make EXACTLY the same amount as 30th. Oh well. At least I got done at a decent hour so I could get 5 hours of sleep before going to work.

It was the tightest freeroll I have ever been in. I barely saw a showdown the entire night. I never caught much in the way of cards all night. I got KK once on the Big Blind, but the table folded around to me before I could even attempt a raise. The small blind folded to me at least a half dozen times, even when I had 92o. I stole the blinds from the button with King high a few times, and went all in with a naked ace quite a few times too. Every time, it was folded to me.

Finally someone called me when I tried to steal the blinds with king high. I had KQo and got called with ATs. Neither of us improved and I went out 21st. I probably could have folded the button and lasted at the very least until 20th place, almost definitely higher, for more money. But I thought I could steal and it was a good percentage play that backfired. C'est la vie.

KingLucky busted out fairly early, in the 160's I think. He took a big lead on me from the beginning when he held 88 and the board flopped KT8. He re-raised MSOCougar all in and got called because Cougar held KT. MSOCougar finished just in front of me, 20th place despite this bad beat.

KingLucky took a tough blow when he held KK against AA. It knocked him down to around T1400, about the same as what I had. But he went a little bit on tilt and went all in with QJ and got out drawn. I think he knows better than to put his tournament life on the line with top pair and a decent kicker, but there were still a couple of crazy players left, and sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. Minor tilt, and I think KingLucky was still in the freeroll mentality.

I was definitely NOT in a freeroll mentality on this game. I played it like I payed $1000 entry fee. It's really important to me that I put in a decent showing to these people. I spew poker advice contantly on PSO's forums, and I want to back that up with some decent poker play when they can actually see me. I think I have done at least that, cashing in both PSO freerolls so far, in addition to TGCs rookie freeroll that a lot of those folks played in. I also bubbled out on both Forum Challenges in which I represented PSO, but I did beat thousands of players to get to the bubble.

My multi play continues to improve. I'm playing more and more "foxy" and less "bricky". I still look for the opportunity to play VERY weak opponents, but fortunately for me there's plenty of them around. I adjusted to this very tight environment well, capitalizing on fold-ready opponents to keep myself alive for a long time. A few better decisions and a couple of better hands would have put me at the final table.

"Here Comes The Pain"

The Poker Cruise tournament from PokerSourceOnline.com is tonight. I'm very excited about it. I have played against these players 3 times before with considerable success. I like the field, I like the format. I like my chances. Not necessarily to win the cruise, but to place in the money. There's $1500 to split amongst the top 30 or 40 who don't win the cruise.

KingLucky is registered for the tourney too, so I figured that doubles my chances. I don't know who else he'd take on a cruise besides me, so I hope he wins. I told him if he wins he has to take me, and if I win I'm going to take my wife. He said "Screw you, if I win, I'm taking your wife."

I have been playing in a lot of freerolls in preparation for this tourney. Most of the players are not very good, and it is a freeroll after all. Hopefully most players will be taking it more seriously than your everyday $250 freeroll, but you have to know some won't. There will be crazy all-ins on the first hand, no question. My usual strategy is to play super tight the first hour, then ruin the clutch by speed shifting into super aggressive after the first hour. If you can stay at the same table for a long time, this is a very effective way to play. The psychos will be long gone, and the tighties left will believe your image as a GRANITE STONE. Many blinds to be stolen, at a time when they become worth stealing. In limit tourneys I always try to make a steal when the blinds reach 25/50 or 50/100 because the sudden increase of having to call that extra 50/100 usually shocks a tight player into folding. It's a good way for me to find out what kind of competition I am against. I did this effectively in the limit tourney I played last night. I bubbled out of the final table, but managed to cash in 11th place. First 30 places paid.

For the first time EVER I misread an online hand. I thought I had A4s when I in fact had A5s. When 4 flopped and another came on the turn, I thought I was golden. I raised on the river and got called by TJ. When he won with a pair of Jacks I said "What the...." and then looked at my cards again and saw the A5 of hearts. It was inches away from where I was focused, and I didn't see it. It's happened to me in the casino, and in a home game too, but this is the first time I've misread online. Made me very uncomfortable. I will have to be rested for the tourney tonight.

Poker Theory? Here?

Friday is a bad morning to go out and read blogs. I guess nobody posts in their blogs on Thursday, or maybe Thursday night is a bad night for poker in general. I know I got bounced out of my freeroll (I did make the money, but just barely) on a bad play.

Instead of rehashing that, I thought I'd post a comment from the forum at PokerSourceOnline.com. The original poster didn't really ask a question, but I thought I'd give him an answer anyway:

so i was playing partypoker tonight and i flop top pair or T's with my AT. Two spades out there so i bet 2 bucks, one dude raises me to 5 and i call. Next is an under card of spades, i bet 5 bucks, he goes all in with 2 more. Of course i call... he ended up having the flush. So i kind of bitched about the horrible play... reraising with a flush draw... i mean comeon he's a 3 to 1 dog at least.

Amazingly enough i get called an idiot for thinking so. Everyone was saying reraising is a good move.. does anyone else actually agree? My theory is if you're gonna call you want to put the least amount of money in the pot as possible before you make your hand. They were saying this way you have two possible ways to win, me folding and picking up the flush. I think they're just fish getting on my nerves.

Funny how everyone that makes a play you don't agree with is a "fish" isn't it? It doesn't occur to most people that they were actually making a legitimate play, and they're such a fish they don't see it.

Here's my response:

First of all, he raised you, he didn't re-raise. Re-raise is what you should have done.

Raising a flush draw is not as dumb a move as you might think. It's called "betting the come" and it's a legitimate play. It accomplishes a couple of things. It's a semi-bluff. If he has put you on a mediocre hand, he might take the pot down right there. Secondly, he is throwing you off the fact that he is on a flush draw. By disguising his play, he is increasing his expected pot odds if he hits his flush. Also, sometimes when you raise after the flop on a draw, you can get the river for free when the player checks the turn to you because you raised.

When you say "You should always just call on a flush draw" you should know your mistake right there. You can't "always" do something, or everyone will "always" know what you are doing.

The real question is, when he raised, if you felt like you had the best hand and he made a horrible play, why didn't you re-raise him back? Because you didn't have a great hand. He got this information from you by raising you.

To quote Scott Fischman in the most obvious "DUH" statement on the WSOP: "Maybe I still have something to learn about this game." You think?

Party Poker Insanity

I played PL$25 Hold 'Em last night, and I had forgotten how INSANE the Party Poker tables are. It seemed like every table I was at had some morons raising the max at every street with a draw. If there were two suited cards on the flop, you could count on at least one idiot raising $30-$40-$50 with no hand, just a 35% draw.

I bought in for $10 and cleared $180 in about 2 hours. You just keep doubling up on these idiots. If the third suited card comes, just shut it down. You know what they have. A lot of the time it was two idiots, BOTH with flush draws. I saw Ace high win a HUGE pot (+$100) because two morons raised until they were all in on the same flush draw. One had AK of spades, the other had J8.

The ultimate moron was a player named Ms_Melissa. She won a $115 hand when I sat down at my first table of the evening, and proceeded to lose $290 in the next hour. She l0st the $115 in the next three hands, holding quality cards like 72o in middle position. She hit two pair on the flop but was behind the whole way when someone had trip 4s and caught the fourth 4 on the river. I bet I saw her play 150 hands that night, and folded 2 of them pre-flop. She tried to bluff at every orphan pot. She won A LOT of them, but they were usually $2-$3. Then she would bluff at the pot and when someone re-raised, she would pay them off, usually to the tune of $50 or so. You gotta steal a lot of $2 pots to make up for $50 payoffs, and she did it by rebuying, rebuying, rebuying.

Here's one example. I held QQ on the button and raised $2 pre-flop. Three of the limpers called me, including the above mentioned genius. Flop was Q23 rainbow. It was checked to me and I was glad there was no flush draw. I knew Ms_Melissa would buff eventually so I checked. The turn was the case Queen and I cursed the fact that there was no flush draw. It checked around to me again and I again checked, not fearing any kind of out-draw. The river was a 6, and FINALLY Ms_Moron bet the pot. A steal? I raised for my entire stack. She quickly called...with JACK SIX. She thought I was bluffing? She had Queens and sixes with a Jack kicker, and she calls an all-in bet. What beats her? A 6 and anything higher than a Jack. A pair of 7s or higher. Any queen. Oh yeah, and my TWO QUEENS.

You have to love idiots like this. I still don't think I'm a very good poker player. I can't beat very good players. Thank goodness for party poker. You don't have to be very good. You can just be barely average and look for the right situations. USE THAT FISH FINDER PEOPLE. If you play at Party, read this and don't add Ms_Melissa, you're crazy.

I guess this is an OKAY call...

From the intertops tourney I was in last night:

***** Hand History for Game 860868881 *****
50/100 TourneyTexasHTGameTable (NL) (Tournament 5336823) - Thu Aug 19 21:53:34 EDT 2004
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: SNOWTWINS (2690)
Seat 2: c47aviator (1828)
Seat 3: AA889d (1330)
Seat 4: DARIU327 (750)
Seat 5: JOHN5658 (735)
Seat 6: J1065670 (2110)
Seat 7: DuggleBogey (1875)
Seat 8: MFNGOODSON (1065)
Seat 9: M2912153 (715)
Seat 10: ChaostiKA (720)
SNOWTWINS posts small blind (25)
c47aviator posts big blind (50)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to DuggleBogey [ Jd, As ]
AA889d folds.
DARIU327 folds.
JOHN5658 folds.
J1065670 calls (50)
DuggleBogey calls (50)
MFNGOODSON folds.
M2912153 folds.
ChaostiKA folds.
SNOWTWINS folds.
c47aviator checks.
** Dealing Flop ** : [ Td, Ks, 9s ]
c47aviator checks.
J1065670 checks.
DuggleBogey checks.
** Dealing Turn ** : [ Qd ]
c47aviator checks.
J1065670 bets (50)
DuggleBogey raises (200) to 200
c47aviator folds.
J1065670 raises (300) to 350
DuggleBogey raises (1625) to 1825
DuggleBogey is all-In.
J1065670 calls (1475)
** Dealing River ** : [ 6s ]
Creating Main Pot with $3825 with DuggleBogey
** Summary ** Main Pot: 3825 Board: [ Td Ks 9s Qd 6s ]
SNOWTWINS balance 2665, lost 25 (folded)
c47aviator balance 1778, lost 50 (folded)
AA889d balance 1330, didn't bet (folded)
DARIU327 balance 750, didn't bet (folded)
JOHN5658 balance 735, didn't bet (folded)
J1065670 balance 4060, bet 1875, collected 3825, net +1950 [ Js Ts ] [ a flush, king high -- Ks,Js,Ts,9s,6s ]
DuggleBogey balance 0, lost 1875 [ Jd As ] [ a straight, ten to ace -- As,Ks,Qd,Jd,Td ]
MFNGOODSON balance 1065, didn't bet (folded)
M2912153 balance 715, didn't bet (folded)
ChaostiKA balance 720, didn't bet (folded)

He did have a straight, although not the highest possible, and he had a flush draw, also not the nut. He might have thought I had two pair and he had me beat, or maybe he did know I had a higher straight and might catch a spade.

Honestly, I wasn't even looking at a possible flush. I knew I had the nut at the time and was delighted to have someone call my all in.

Very disappointing, considering I had the Ace of spades so he only had ~15% chance of catching that spade.

Added a Counter

I added a counter to the page this morning. It was easier than I thought it would be. First one was free...

I only played for about 10 minutes last night. I logged onto IntertopsPoker and saw I was just 9 raked hands short of a big tourney at the end of the month, so I thought I would play. But I really had the wrong mood going to play. I went all in on the first hand and out kicked a guy with my AQ over his Q9. But blew it all later when I overplayed TT against AA.

At least I realized I was in the wrong mood to be playing right away and limited my losses to $10. My stomach was upset so I laid down for a while instead of playing. The crazy sleep schedule for the weekend probably had something to do with it.

33 hours of poker and driving.

This weekend I put down the mouse and travelled to Kansas City for some real LIVE poker. I do this around once a month. Luckily I have a friend in KC that hosts a home game once a month and invites me to stay at his house. He plays online using the name KingLucky. He's a degenerate gambler just like me, so after his home game we go to the Casino for some live poker and other games.

I usually leave home around noon and drive for five hours to KingLucky's house. He cooks some food and everyone brings side dishes and desserts. They joke that it's really just Men's bunco night, which I guess it really is. Dealer's choice poker follows, with 6 or 7 players. $.25 max raise usually, but we play Iron Cross for $2 max match and Limit Hold Em or Omaha with $.25/.50 limits. The pots can be decently sized, and a player can Win or Lose $25 - $30 in a night if he plays every hand like a nut. I dropped quite a bit which is unusual for me in this game, but I sold a lot of change to a player that only brought bills, so I think I actually fared okay. Maybe lost less than $10. Last month I cleaned up at the home game, maybe making $20 but got killed for $200 at the Casino. If I had to choose I'd rather lose at KingLucky's and win at the Ameristar. The most notable hand of the night was when I got two pair in my hand in Iron Cross and matched one of the cross cards for a full house, before the hidden cards were even exposed. And the boat didn't hold up. Both other players that stayed in said "I have a bigger boat." One was KingLucky, who was lying, the other wasn't and took the $6 pot.

The home game usually breaks up around Midnight, but this time I had to ask if we could end it because I wanted to head to the casino. Out of the seven original players, one had busted out very early, his last dime going on AA in Texas Hold 'Em. Two more called it a night just after midnight, but the last three wanted to keep playing. KingLucky had a qualifier tournament online at noon, less than 12 hours away and might want to sleep for a couple of hours before then, so we set a time limit of 7am at the Casino. Since we wouldn't get there until 1am even if we quit then, I had to break up the game. I don't like playing 4 handed anyway, you just pass the same $1.50 around the table usually.

For the first time in my life, I walked into the poker room at the Ameristar and got a seat without putting my name on the list. Not only that, but KingLucky and I got to sit at the same table. The reason is the recent poker boom. You'd think that would make it tougher to get a seat, but since Harrahs and The Isle of Capri both opened poker rooms, a lot of the Ameristar regulars are trying out the new digs. But KingLucky has a preferred player status at Ameristar which gets us preferred parking, and gets us into the Players Club that has free food and free drinks after noon. So we stick with the lady that brought us, the only place I have ever played poker in a casino, the Ameristar in Kansas City.

KingLucky and I sit right next to each other, which is more fun. The table seemed immediately fishy, with one whale at the end of the table. I'm not talking about a big money player, I'm talking about a guy that weighed as much as a whale. I feared for the safety of his chair. There was an open seat next to him when I went to sit down, but no way was I getting close to that guy.

I played tight and tried not to raise pre-flop, as it accomplishes nothing in this game except notify the table that you've got a big hand. On the second hand I held K3o on the big blind which hit a King for top pair on the flop, I stupidly held it even though an ace came on the turn and I knew an ace would stay past the flop unassisted. My rationale was that I didn't want to fold to his bet (I checked when the Ace came on the turn) and let them think they could run over me all night. I hit a few good hands soon after that including a Q9s that flushed on the turn. It folded to me on the river so there was no showdown. I had hoped my weak play early would earn me some calls, but apparently I was getting some respect I didn't want.

My best hand of the night was JJ on a kill. I raised pre-flop, because raising $6 pre-flop usually works much better to thin the field at a $3/6 game. Two players stayed with me. The flop was all unders. The turn paired a 3 on the board, and the river brought the third 3, completing my boat. I amazingly got called to the river by both players, so I tripled by $36 investment.

Worst played hand was against KingLucky. We usually don't butt heads much when we play, because if one of us bets against the other it's easy for us to fold. I should have known he had me, but I walked into a bear trap. I held KQs on the big blind and he raised in first position. I called and hit a King on the flop. When I bet and he raised, I thought he was bluffing a JJ or QQ on me, so I called, and we were heads up. I called his turn and river bets and he turned KK . I was kind of happy to pay him because I was way up and it brought him back to even, maybe even up a few dollars.

Strangest hand of the night was my Q10s in early position. I limped in but got raised by a big black guy at the end of the table. He had only been there for a little while, but it seemed like he played a lot of pots he had no business being in. The flop was 6610 and I checked. Blackfish bet $3 and got called by a nice older man across the table from me. I called, but thought to myself "The guy across the table has Ace-Ten, why are you in this pot?" but I already had $6 in the pot and it was only $3 more to see another card. My reward was another 10, and his kicker lost all significance. I checked and Blackfish bet $6. Older man gave me an odd look and raised to $12. I called and Blackfish called too. The final card was a 4 and I bet $6, sending a clear signal to Older Man that I had a boat. Blackfish raised to $12 and Older guy looked at me. I said "There's only four 10's in the deck, right?" and he raised to $18. I thought "no way that guy has sixes" and capped at $24. Blackfish and Older Man called and I turned my 10's full of 6's. Older Man turned his 10's full of 6's and joked "But I have the ace." Nice read by me! We both half-stand to see Blackfish's cards, and he flips over presto. 55? He called a $24 river bet with two pair 10's and 6's with a 5 kicker? The dealer says "10's and 6's with an ace kicker" and starts sliding the chips to Older Man. Even the Older Man said "Woah, I was just kidding about the Ace." It only took the dealer a second to realize it was a split pot and started counting the chips, which were in a pretty big pile after three players nearly capped twice.

I played for almost four hours, ending up +$171 for the session, or 27BB. KingLucky and I played some of his favorite Let It Ride quarter machines and then shot craps until 6am. We ate breakfast at the restaurant and headed for KingLucky's. I slept on his couch for about 3 hours and then watched him play a WPT qualifier with about 2600 players. He played well and finished 52nd, but the tournament was winner take all.

I headed back to Oklahoma just before 4:00pm, and got home before 9:00pm, even without speeding. Door to door in 33 hours, with a lot of poker in between.

TGC makes a comeback

Apparently the stink I made about The Gaming Club in the PokerSourceOnline.com forum had some effect, because they came back with a bit more than "We looked into it, and are going to do nothing." They did agree that I did not disconnect at any time, but also said there was no evidence of a software problem. That leaves only two possibilities, that I folded by accident or on purpose. Neither of these happened. Folding on purpose with QQ would be SHEER STUPIDITY. I am willing to play QQ at a loose table for less than my full stack EVERY HAND. Even if I had folded accidentally, it would have had to make it around the table to me in order to fold, and the option never even appeared on my screen. All that came up was "You are on break." I had to look up the history to find out what happened.

On top of this they say there is no evidence in chat that anything strange happened. WHAT? Except for all the people at my table saying "What happened?" and "That was strange," and "It happened at the other table too."

So either they never looked, or they missed something completely obvious. Their choice, either they are liars or they are stupid.

But I did go back on my promise to cash out and never play there again. I'm not going to cash out until I receive delivery confirmation on my table top, which is long overdue. According to them I have 605 raked hands, but they are three days behind in their report to PSO. They are claiming to have database problems. This doesn't fill me with confidence as a player there that they can't handle the hand traking system. Can they handle the money tracking system? Am I going to log in there tomorrow and see all my money gone, just like a lot of people logged in and saw their promotion points gone?

I did play there again. A $2+.25 freezeout tourney. I like the freezeouts because the rebuy-addin tourneys are so crazy. I had a lot of jobs to run on the computer that required attention every half hour, so I wanted something that would consume a lot of time.

And boy did it! It took 3 hours and 20 minutes but I managed to come in 3rd. I bouced around a lot late, and even had the chip lead when my 77 was cracked by 66 which spiked SATAN on the flop. 666 took me down to 50k in chips against two 200k stacks.

Still $60 payoff for a $2.25 buy-in is a great ROI, especially since I got half the work done I needed to. TGC account up to $330 from the initial buy in of $100, plus a theoretical poker table top.

One Hand Per Player

It's actually a rule, you can't give a player advice in chat. Nobody plays by the rules in online poker.

In a freeroll at IntertopsPoker.com, I am in the small blind with Q10o. 11 left in the tourney, I am small stack with 10k in chips, 5 players at the table. The other table has 6 players, all with less than 10k in chips. I would be pushing that table around, but instead I am being pushed around by all the players with more than 20k at my table. Damned luck.

It's folded to me with my Q10o, and I raise, just doubling from T600 to T1200. BB calls, he's pretty comfy with 25k in chips. And, I should mention, a total moron. He had just won his all in when he called with A5 on a KQ3 flop. Turn 4 and River 2 makes his miracle A-5 straight good against Kings and Queens. I can smell the tuna over my ethernet connection.

Flop is 10s8d3c. I got TPTK, so I bet 600. Call. Turn is a rag, 1200 bet, he calls. River another rag, I bet another 1200, he raises to 4000. Warning bells go off, but I go all in with my last 1,500 or so. He is thinking REALLY REALLY hard. Timer is up.

Everyone at the table is saying "Call! Call! You're pot committed! It's only another 1,500!"

This is explicitly against the rules. Of course he should call, even with Ace high, but this guy is just dumb enough to fold. But he takes the advice and calls with his 83, knocking me out in 11th place after 3 hours.

I remind the table of the "one hand, one player" rule, and they start going off like I was a moron or something. Freerolls. Feh. Willing to cheat to win, when they aren't even risking anything. Why does it feel like everyone on the internet is 12 years old?

TGC comes up EMPTY

As expected, The Gaming Club was a no-show when it came to explaining what happened to me in their rookie tournament. Despite the evidence that I sent them that I, nor anyone else disconnected when the hand just suddenly ended and a break was started, and despite the same complaints coming from both tables at the same time, they chose to blame it on MY INDIVIDUAL internet connection and say "So sorry, take your $100 and shut the fuck up."

So I am through with them. I will take my $270, my free poker table, my $40 in bonus earnings, and carry my business elsewhere.

Why is it so difficult for these people to understand that money lost, even in a freeroll tournament, is still money? Why can't the understand that problems that occur in freeroll tournaments are indicative of the overall quality of the site? Why don't they understand that the poker community is an intelligent and chatty group of people who will communicate problems like this amongst themselves, and they will get a reputation as an unreliable site?

Now for the good news. PokerSourceOnline.com has taken it upon themselves to make things right, even though they will be doing so out of their own pockets. They gave me 5,000 FFP points which amounts to a $50 gift certificate from Amazon or Best Buy. These guys are really incredible. I'm having a difficult time understanding how they stay in business with all the giveaways and refunds they dole out. But I am happy they are, and I hope they are successful as hell. I will do anything I can to help them be successful, because I believe they treat people with the respect they deserve. They even treat people well who don't deserve respect at all. People who are rude and destructive. People that accuse them of dishonesty. They're really incredible. Anyone reading this should join up with them. NOW.

Use DuggleBogey in the referral field and I will split the bonus with you.

Worst play ever

I think I saw the worst play ever on a table at TGC this weekend. I was barely in the hand, I can't even remember what I held, probably low suited connectors or something.

The flop was AKJ of hearts. The betting is pretty stiff, I folded quickly. The turn was the 3 of hearts. More betting, three players left. Last position is a player named 11maniak, but he was playing pretty calmly. The river was the 10h. Player one checks, player two bets $1 into a $20 pot and 11maniak, who just called on the turn, calls. Player one folds.

11maniak turns over the q of hearts to take the pot with A ROYAL FLUSH. I can almost understand the call on the turn, since he had the nut flush and wanted to keep as many players in as possible. But not raising in position with a RF? The only explanation I can come up with is that he didn't realize he held the RF. When I asked him in chat why he didn't bet that hand, he never responded. Either he had chat off, was ignoring me or doesn't know how to work a keyboard.

Anyway, that's the level of competition you can expect at The Gaming Club.

Another example. QQ (death hand) in early position. I raise the max (PLHE) and get three callers (!) flop is a jack high rainbow. I bet the max again, and all three call. Now I am worried about someone flopping trip Jacks. The turn alleviates those worries when the Queen of Spades falls. It's the second spade though, so I bet the pot to try and get any of the ZILLION TGC flush chasers out. One caller. River spade and I check to the one player left, who puts me all in. I call to see his 84 of spades. $35 chasing runner runner spades, 8 high. Two hands later someone catches a card on him, and he complains "You're lucky." What?!?!

I did have a wonderful freeroll on Sunday. Wonderful fun, even though I didn't finish in the money. I held 88 and made a moderate raise, called by a player named AApocketAA. Now, you might not have noticed, but anyone that has a "pokery" type of nickname in a poker room is generally a bad player. The flop was K of spades 57 of hearts. I call a small bet and the turn is a 6 of hearts. One of my eights is a heart, so I have an open ended SF draw. AApocketAA makes a big bet, and I call. An offsuit 9 comes and I bet big. AApocketAA calls, shows his KQo and says "nice catch."

Nice catch? "Good play you mean." He says "No, you got lucky." I said "Count my outs."

He didn't even know what I meant by "count my outs." An open ended SF draw is more likely to make a straight, a flush or a straight flush than it is to miss. Calling with an open ended SF draw is an AUTOMATIC move. But AApocketAA wouldn't hear of it.

I folded a lot of hands in a row after that. I even got the hammer twice. I commented that I kept getting the hammer, and one player asked me what the hammer was. I said "Doyle," I refused to call him AApocketAA because that's such a gay name and he was obviously an expert at Texas Dolly's level, "explain to WarEagle what the hammer is." His expert reply? "A hammer is what you use to drive nails into doors."

After much humiliation like this, I finally play a hand. 89s on my big blind. Doyle raises, just because it is my BB and he sees me playing tight. He wants to steal. I like playing 89s so calling the raise is easy, especially because he only riased to 600 and my stack is around 3,400. Doyle is sitting with 3,200. The flop has two spades, which is fortunate, because my 89 are spades. One of them is a King, which is also fortunate, because Doyle has a king. I check, and Doyle bets another 600. Easy chase, considering the implied odds. The implied odds are increased by the fact that Doyle DESPERATELY wants to beat me. The turn is my flush card, and I check again. Doyle goes all in. I call and knock him out. "BTW WarEagle, the hammer is a 72."

The Universe Conspires Against Me

I was really cranked about Poker yesterday. I was sitting pretty in my PSO promotion, and ready to take full advantage of the Rookie Freeroll Tournament at The Gaming Club.

I started pretty soon after arriving home. I told the wife I was excited about the Tourney, there was only about 250 people entered and I really liked my chances. Plus I would get the chance to compete with some of the PSO players and hopefully impress them with my vast poker skills. She was excited for me and (so I thought) happy that I was enjoying my hobby.

I made some small change at the ring games while warming up for the main event, and really got into a groove early in the tournament. By the first break I was second in chips, flirting with the lead constantly. If I held high cards, I would hit every flop. AJo produced a Jack, AKs would flop two pair. I wasn't dominating every hand, but when I chose to play things seemed to work out well.

After the first break, my wife kind of wanders into my computer room and asks "Do I have a place in your life anymore?"

WHAT THE FUCK!?!

I'm in the middle of something I have told her, repeatedly, is very important to me, and I am obviously concentrating hard on it, and she has to come right into the middle and start talking about our "relationship?"

Anyway, I deal with her, pretty rudely, and go back to my tournament. Its still in the back of my head, however. "Why the fuck would she choose now to jump my shit about poker? Of all the million times she could have come in, I could have just left the ring game I was in and I could have done all that reassuring BULLSHIT that husbands have to do once in a while."

Things still progress pretty well in the tournament. I make it to the final two tables. 20th place is a pretty critical spot, because 20th pays $50 and 19th-10th pays $100. I'm dealt QQ just before the break. "Good" I think. I can pick up some chips here and be in good shape for the stretch run. I am around T15000 and bet T8000. I still want to be able to dump out in case of a disaster flop and hold on for the extra $50. A player in front of me raised to 14K, which I could barely cover, and I was preparing to call him. I would still have 1K and would fold to any Ace or King flop.

Suddenly the hand ends and we are on break. It folded me automatically and took my 8k. There was no internet lag, no timeout warnings or anything. Just bang, you lose. The player who raised said "What happened? I didn't want to raise."

So now I am crippled, 7k in chips. To make matters worse I doubled through when the big blind reached me. Had I won the hand with QQ, which is likely, I might have doubled up near the chip leaders, or even higher. That's not certain of course, but now I will never know.

Things like this happen to me WAY too often in online tournaments. It's as if someone came up to your table in a B&M tourney and grabbed 8k in chips and gave them to your opponent. Nobody would stand for it, there would be pandemonium. But online, people go "It happens, get over it."

It shouldn't happen. This is a Rookie Freeroll. It's for all the new players. If this is how things work in tournaments on their site, if their software is THAT SHITTY, how can they expect that to make these "rookies" want to stay and play more? When playing in a tournament, things are made THAT much harder for them to win. They have to deal with all the other players, stupid calls and suck outs from hell, you also have this little glitch that can ruin your otherwise perfect play?

No. I simply will not tolerate it. I know there are people out there that think I'm a jerk because this was a FREE tournament and I did end up with $100. But my pride was at stake, and I was beaten by a fellow PSO player who was BEHIND me at the time of the glitch. It made me look bad, and I will do everything I can to make TGC look bad unless they go to extraordiary lengths to make this right.

I have sworn to never deposit money in another Poker Site because of their intolerable software problems, and I will probably end up doing it again with TGC. I don't anticipate them doing anything special for me. I'm sure their attitude will be "It was free, you made money, go fuck yourself."

We will see, they have 48 hours. I will try to finish the promotion this weekend in turbo mode, and it may be the end of TGC.

Poker Blogs

One of the hardest things about poker blogging is that there are so many poker blogs out there to read, you can find yourself reading them INSTEAD of posting in your own. I have been reading them for about 45 minutes, and I almost got some poker stories. I DO know whether some childish poker blogger would marry Pamela Anderson if he had the chance (what kind of fantasy world are some of these morons living in?) Sometimes they are boring, sometimes interesting, and occasionally they inspire me to post in my own. I finally got to the one that inspired me, but all it really said was "A lot of poker blogs are dying." Oh well.

Things are going swimmingly at TGC. Another 50 or so raked hands last night and more than $50 in profit give me confidence that this "free" poker table might actually be "free." The "rookie" tournament is tonight at 5:00pm, so that could determine if I actually come out on the plus side of this arrangement. So far I lost a little money on the Aztec Riches Chipset deal, which I gave away, Made a little money on the Party Poker Chipset, which I kept, and won $100 in the freeroll tournament I got into by participating. So overall I am way ahead. The rookie tourney starts paying at 50 places ($20) and there were 147 people entered last time I checked. Unless the cards slap me around early, I figure $20 is almost a sure thing.

One disturbing hand from last night, in the early going. I had J9s in late position and managed to limp in. The board flopped T,8,2 rainbow and the player in front of me tossed in $1. $1 for an outside straight draw is automatic, so I call. The turn brings my queen, and I'm holding a nut straight. He bets $2 and I go all in, raising him to $8. He calls with his predictable two pair, Queens and 8s. As I'm saying "no queens, no tens, no twos," an eight hits the board and his boat flips over and the "Do you want to visit the Cashier" window pops up on my screen.

Shit. "At least it counts as a raked hand," I tell myself. Always a silver fucking lining.

The suckouts eased up however, and I won quite a few hands with questionable cards. Bottom pair holds up, nut flushes caught runner runner were the norm for me. I like the low pressure tables that will let you draw to your nut hand cheap or even free, although it makes it harder to bring in the raked hands.

I played from 4:00-6:30 and 8:00-10:30. 50 raked hands in 5 hours is like blitzkrieg pace for me, especially showing a profit too. When I crossed 300 TGC sent me a nice email notifying me of $20 added to my account, bringing me over $200. The rookie tourney will slow me down tonight, but at this rate I could have the job done by the end of next week.

Every good poker player loves ACDC

Yes, I'm Back in Black. Well, back in the black, anyway.

My raked hand efforts at TGC started out very poorly, even though I got five raked hands in my first five hands. Hand number 5 was a doozie though, when I started out on the button with QQ. QQ is kind of a death hand for me lately. KingLucky calls them "bitches" and they treat him accordingly. I think that attitude has rubbed off on me too. I generally play them like a medium pair, but I didn't want to play the TON of limpers at this PLHE table. I raised the max and to my suprise, the BB re-raised the max. I had only played 4 hands at this table and had no feel for his play, so I called, which put me all in. I was happy when the cards turned over and he held 55 vs my QQ, especially when the turn was a Q. But it was a Q of spades. Meaning I didn't hold the Q of spades in my hand. The three other spades on the board made his 5 of spades the winner, and I was busted.

I felt the need to comment. In chat I typed "Re-raise with 55?" and he said "Any PP"

Now, I normally like it when people tell me how they play in the chat window, because it usually identifies them as a pretty good player, and I can mark them as such. But I LOVE it when someone tells me how they play BADLY in the chat window. It's like opening a can of tuna fish, and everyone smells it immediately.

I sat out the next hand so I could buy back in, and was rewarded for my patience with AQs. Fishy55 raises the max (for the 3rd straight hand) and I smooth call. The flop is Q, Rag, Rag and I go all in. Not only does Fishy55 call me, but three other players do too. Nobody believes anyone anymore. Turn is an offsuit Ace and I am golden. Fishy goes bust on the next hand, obviously tilting, but he seemed to be on permanent tilt anyway.

This put me back over my buy-in, plus another positive session later that night got my total over $140, plus almost halfway to the raked hand requirement.

TGC

TGC stands for The Gaming Club, and it's my new home. Not permanently, by any means, but until I am done with the latest PSO promotion, it is my home. I bought in for $100 last Wednesday night (or was it Thursday?) with the intention of winning a free Poker Table Top from Poker Source Online.
A pretty simple offer, but I had to go and complicate things. All you have to do is play 600 raked hands and the poker table top is yours. It's a nice piece of poker equipment, wood with felt covering, plastic drink holders and 8 spots for players. It breaks down in half and comes with a carrying case. I have been eyeing them for around $75-85 on eBay and elsewhere. When they announced this promotion, I thought about it and then just bought in on kind of an impulse. I was growing more and more bored with the Intertops Poker freerolls.
I started by playing 7-card stud. Not my best game, not even a game I was good at. My restlessness with Hold 'Em has been alleviated by Omaha Hi/Lo at Intertops and Party Poker, but TGC is a Prima Poker room (Same as Aztec Riches and Royal Vegas but with different colors) and there is no Omaha Hi/Lo, just regular Omaha. The great thing about Omaha Hi/Lo is that a lot of people stay in to see the flop, so the hands are almost always raked. And most of the pots are split, so you can really play a long time with just a little money. Long Play + all raked hands = free poker table, get it?
Well I thought 7 card stud was another good game for raked hands. I was extremely wrong. I went through a lot of cash before I realized every hand made it in just under the raked hand limit. I would have to bet the pots up myself if it were going to make the limit. "No Problem," I thought. "I can bluff a few hands, make some money too." WRONG. Stud players never fold. NEVER. There's always that guy who makes his straight or his invisible flush on the river card. So I was down a lot early on, with very few raked hands.
Raked hands work a lot differently at Prima Poker rooms than they do at Party Poker. At Party, if you are sitting at a table when a hand is dealt, and there is a rake from that hand, it counts as a raked hands. Basically if you can play 100 hands in an hour, 95 of them will be raked hands. Once I was short 120 raked hands to play in an end-of-the-month big money freeroll at Intertops poker. You needed 1500, and I had played 1380 with an hour until the deadline. I opened up 4 tables of no-limit hold em, and had 120 players and won $130 in 30 minutes.
At Prima rooms, you only get credit for a raked hand if you contribute to the rake. Since I am a fairly tight player, I fold most hands pre-flop. So raked hands are very tough to come by. If I can get 10-15 per hour, I am playing very loose. And that is part of the problem. When I am trying to get raked hands, I am more willing to play hands I might normally toss. I play all suited connectors. Probably not a bad adjustment. I'm playing all connectors. If it's not raised, I play almost any cards that reach. I'm pretty much throwing away my pre-flop bets. Then I have to hope and hope that it makes the $5 limit to be raked. Roughly half the hands I limp into and then toss when the flop isn't the miracle 3-card spread I need never make the $5 limit.
It could be worse, there are places that don't count a hand as raked if you don't see the flop. At least when I fold the big or small blind or an early call because of a raise, that usually counts as a raked hand, so long as the raiser gets a call.
So after losing my ass at 7 Card Stud, I tried some 5 Card Stud. Same result, losing my ass. And 5 Stud hands also seem to NEVER get raked.
When I was down below $30 of my initial buy in with less than 50 raked hands out of 600 required, I began to think this promotion was pointless. If I am going to lose $600 trying to win a $75 table, I'd have to be nuts. Yet I know there are people out there doing it. I vowed to not buy in again. This meant only one thing. I was going to have to play Hold Em and Hold Em only, and I was going to have to play well. I know I am capable, it just takes concentration and not letting the raked hands thing affect my game. I had to play for the money and let the hands come naturally.
I went to the $.50/1.00 Pot Limit table. I prefer to play $.25/.50, but the promotion says that you must play $.50/1.00 minimum tables. I was always confused by this, because at limit, the $.50/1.00 refers to the pre-flop and post-turn bets, where in NL/PL it refers to the blinds. Blind wise, a $.25/.50 table would be the same as a $.50/1.00 Limit table. I thought this was unfair, but I knew about it going in and figured I could deal with it.
The problem came when there are a lot fewer $.50/1.00 players at TGC. Tough to get a table. But I found one with enough players to get the raked hands in, and started working. Very tough work, but I worked my way back up to $46 in one evening, and earned another 30 or 40 raked hands.
Then I remembered: When I played at Royal Vegas they had these high dollar freerolls that had ridiculous raked hand requirements. I now am making ridiculous raked hands, I should play in them! I joined the next $3000 freeroll, starting at Midnight Saturday night. It only had 479 people in it, and 300 were gone in the first hour. I played my normal tournament tight tighter tightest, until I was in the money. It started paying 80th place, $3. Once I made the money I eyed the payout list, trying to last until the next highest level. 40th payed $4. That's a lot of players to beat for $1, but I was thinking of my raked hands. $1 means one more raked hand. I tightened down even more, making it to 40 in AMAZING speed. Maybe there are players who just play for the $3, because in 10 minutes we were down to 40. Then 30. Then 20! I was starting to get close to real money.
I was in the top 10 in cash with 11 players left when disaster struck. A player with a smaller stack than me went all in, and I had 88. I foolishly put this ultra-tight player on Ace high and called, along with another player who was all in under the ultra-tighty, who had KK. OOPS! This knocked me down into last place chip wise. I checked the payout schedule and saw that I was in for a $5 payday for 10th place. Oh well, it was free after all. I got Ace crap on the next hand and went all in with my smallest stack. Tighty called me, and I caught an ace to beat him. "Ha," I thought. "I got some of my chips back." Next hand was JQs, and I just called...with 4 other players. "Hmmm...interesting." Flop had 9, 10. I check, someone bets the smallest amount and I called. Flop 8. Jackpot. Three players all in, including mr. tighty. All had 2 pair or worse, and my wheel put me in first place with more than 127,000 chips. Even better, it knocked out two players and guaranteed me $20.
It was 3:30 in the morning by that point, and I went brain dead with a pair of 8s and got crippled, going out 5th, winning $60. I could have just posted and probably taken 2nd for $120, but the $60 put me back over my initial buy in of $100, so I was back in business.
The next day I made an astounding discovery. The $.25/.50 PL tables count toward raked hands! This was big news for me, as I am comfortable with this game.
Now I am at $89 with around 260 raked hands. I feel confident that I can make 600 in the next week or two with leisurely play, and I won't have to re-buy. If I play well, play my game and limit my mistakes, I could even come out ahead.