Thinking Good, Running Bad

It's hard to continually post about how good my decisions are and yet try and justify how I could possibly be running so badly. Well, here's one. I dont play loose enough or enough hands to have a brutal beat just fade into the mix. So when I determine I am way ahead on the flop and a user is willing to play for his stack, I have zero reason to try and control the pot size.

Onto other thoughts. Is there a better way?
A beginner is a player who plays his cards well.

It was said that one graduates to intermediate when "he plays his opponents cards". That is bullsh*t. Its when he (she) becomes "situationaly aware". Understanding the correct move in a diverse number of situations. Harrington's book taught an army of beginners how to be intermediate players with M and Q alone. But the better intermediate players have added a playbook of situations that they draw from. (blind vs. blind, pot control vs. pressure bets, stealing, re-stealing, punishing limpers, when to be a shove monkey, etc).

Then there is the final passage. ADDING individual player tenancies (i.e. READS) to the above two. (If you can read a player, but done understand situational awareness, stick to cash games). It's here were the pro's really shine. Understanding when their opponent absolutely has to have middle pair. Knowing that they are bullying vs. running good, and knowing the optimal defense for that player when one gets into hands with them.

I for one find this last part much harder online. Player tenancies are more erratic and time to think and analyze (and down time) is minimal. But you can make up for some of this with shear volume. And that is some of my obsession with the daily $32k.

Today's missed cash:

Full Tilt Poker Game #13258843800: $34,000 Guarantee (98098435), Table 14 - 250/500 Ante 50 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:27:16 ET - 2009/07/07

Seat 1: DrewGodofPoker (14,050) <= likes to FLAT any raise as he is on my direct left.
Seat 2: Call-kluka (18,082)
Seat 3: SirThomasNichum (24,136)
Seat 4: marcsnick (8,068)
Seat 5: BurmD (9,986)
Seat 6: sonicreducer420 (5,575)
Seat 7: supertonic1989 (7,845)
Seat 8: DonksRock (14,702)
Seat 9: columbo (11,246)
antes 50
Call-kluka posts the small blind of 250
SirThomasNichum posts the big blind of 500
The button is in seat #1

marcsnick folds
BurmD folds
sonicreducer420 folds
supertonic1989 folds
DonksRock folds

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [Js Qs]
columbo has 15 seconds left to act
columbo raises to 1,250

I decide with it folded around to me in the cutoff, I would raise/steal here.
I had won (without showdowns) 3 of the last 4 hands I played, and I had folded a fair amount of hands without a bet, such that my stack of 10k was that size for a while, while the avg. jumped to nearly 14k.

DrewGodofPoker calls 1,250

again, flatting me from the button this time. No surprise. (pot is 3250)

Call-kluka folds
SirThomasNichum folds

*** FLOP *** [8h Jh 4c]
columbo has 15 seconds left to act
columbo bets 2,500 (into 3250 or 3/4 pot)

One could make an argument for a number of silly plays here, but to me with this hand and this flop, the best strategy was a simple, standard c-bet.

DrewGodofPoker has 15 seconds left to act
DrewGodofPoker raises to 5,465

Considering his starting stack size of 14k AND the fact that this is the 3rd time he has flatted me, I can put significant weight on this being and attempt to take the pot away from me. AK is a reasonable holding for me, I have few enough chips that I would be loath to continue if I missed the board. In my favor is that the flat was unlikely coming from AA or KK, so unless he has QQ or AJ, I am looking pretty good here. But most of all, is my intense feeling that he was going to do this with any hit on the board. I can put him here on A8s or A4s here, but I am crushed if he has 88 or 44 here. Still, a read is a read... And what did I learn from Hoyazo? RAISE!

columbo raises to 9,946, and is all in
DrewGodofPoker calls 4,481 <= note that he INSTA-CALLS!
columbo shows [Js Qs]
DrewGodofPoker shows [As 8s]

He puts me on the AK and I am going to...
*** TURN *** [8h Jh 4c] [8c]
*** RIVER *** [8h Jh 4c 8c] [Kc]

go home now...

But seriously, how do I NOT get my money in on this flop with my read?

So f'n close

Full Tilt $32k today and with 100 left, my table has Karina Jett, Mike McDonald, and TwoBlackAces. I am short-ish, but still have some non-shove play.

The BB in this hand has been set up by a prior play. I came in light on a button raise and he shoved on me. I made a fold. This time, its folded to me on the button again and I am ready to go...

Full Tilt Poker Game #13124409555: $34,000 Guarantee (97195837), Table 69 - 1000/2000 Ante 250 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:46:37 ET - 2009/06/30
Seat 1: Jon2322 (92,859)
Seat 2: Karina Jett (85,000), is sitting out
Seat 3: pampil (46,622)
Seat 4: aggi3guy (56,146)
Seat 5: Mike McDonald (30,277)
Seat 6: columbo (27,170)
Seat 7: lol_me_is_good (51,618)
Seat 8: regrind (27,613)
Seat 9: twoblackaces (86,165)
antes 250
lol_me_is_good posts the small blind of 1,000
regrind posts the big blind of 2,000
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [9d 9h]
twoblackaces folds
Jon2322 folds
Karina Jett folds
pampil folds
aggi3guy folds
Mike McDonald folds
columbo raises to 5,000
lol_me_is_good folds
regrind calls 3,000
*** FLOP *** [7c 2d Kc]
regrind bets 22,363, and is all in
columbo has 15 seconds left to act
columbo has requested TIME

I spend 30 seconds of my time bank here, coming to the conclusion he simply changed it up and ran a Stop N Go on me here.

I call, expecting to see either TP or AIR.

columbo calls 21,920, and is all in
regrind shows [9c Ad]
columbo shows [9d 9h]

YES! only have to sweat the Ace!

Uncalled bet of 443 returned to regrind
*** TURN *** [7c 2d Kc] [Ts]
*** RIVER *** [7c 2d Kc Ts] [Ac]
regrind shows a pair of Aces
columbo shows a pair of Nines
regrind wins the pot (57,090) with a pair of Aces
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 57,090 | Rake 0
Board: [7c 2d Kc Ts Ac]
Seat 1: Jon2322 folded before the Flop
Seat 2: Karina Jett folded before the Flop
Seat 3: pampil folded before the Flop
Seat 4: aggi3guy folded before the Flop
Seat 5: Mike McDonald folded before the Flop
Seat 6: columbo (button) showed [9d 9h] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 7: lol_me_is_good (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 8: regrind (big blind) showed [9c Ad] and won (57,090) with a pair of Aces
Seat 9: twoblackaces folded before the Flop

This is an automated message sent from Full Tilt Poker.

Full Tilt Poker Tournament #97195837 $34,000 Guarantee NL Hold'em
Buy-In: $24.00 + $2.00
1515 players
Total Prize Pool: $36360.00
Start Date: June 30 2:00 PM ET

Dear columbo,
You finished the tournament in 88th place.
There has been $54.54 added to your account.


F#@K!!! Nothing left but a beat story and $50 lousy bucks.
(Mike McDonald went out before I could finish this post at 74.)

KK revisited

Its interesting to ask the question this way:

You are approaching the final stretches of a MTT and its 6 to the money. You have KK and there are 2 all-ins in front of you. If you move all-in, you either finish 1st or 12th (pays 6). If you fold, you finish 6th just in the money.

What's more important? Cashing or playing to win?
Last night I played to CASH. Why? Not sure. But when I play SnG's, I play much tighter than any other situation. In cash game or large field MTT, I shove here.

So why do I fold in a SnG? I was thinking at the time that the goal in an SnG is the cash. Is that correct or wrong?

My first ever fold of KK

A 5 table SnG, with 13 players left. I am 3rd in chips, pays 6 places.

Full Tilt Poker Game #13109472706: $24 + $2 Sit & Go (97244116), Table 5 - 150/300 - No Limit Hold'em - 21:53:40 ET - 2009/06/29
Seat 1: Mlindsay (3,920)
Seat 2: Jim Leach (1,515)
Seat 3: columbo (7,510)
Seat 6: Tam Raven (4,665)
Seat 7: Chef Patty (5,790)
Seat 8: breauxdle (2,610)
Seat 9: Vestvik7 (1,630)
Jim Leach posts the small blind of 150
columbo posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [Ks Kh]
Tam Raven raises to 4,665, and is all in
Chef Patty has 15 seconds left to act
Chef Patty has requested TIME
Chef Patty raises to 5,790, and is all in
breauxdle folds
Vestvik7 folds
Mlindsay folds
Jim Leach folds
columbo has 15 seconds left to act
columbo has requested TIME
columbo folds [KsKh]
Chef Patty shows [Jd Jh]
Tam Raven shows [9c 9h]
Uncalled bet of 1,125 returned to Chef Patty
*** FLOP *** [4s 8d 7d]
*** TURN *** [4s 8d 7d] [Js]
*** RIVER *** [4s 8d 7d Js] [3h]
Chef Patty shows three of a kind, Jacks
Tam Raven shows a pair of Nines
Chef Patty wins the pot (9,780) with three of a kind, Jacks

I figured one of the 2 may have Aces, I am not folding Aces here. Its debatable that I should fold KK, but based on stack sizes, I did not read either player as this desperate!!

SnG madness?

A recent bracelet winner (congrats again) tipped me off that the 5 table $24+$2 SnGs on Full Tilt have gotten turned very soft again.

I decided to see for myself on Sunday...

Despite my KK losing to an AK shove (see any WSOP post), I managed to cash.

Charmin-ny soft.

PokerTek tables

An addendum to my trip report is a mention of the dealer-less tables at Excalibur. After seeing dealer-less blackjack tables (2) at Caesar's, it reminded me to go try the PokerTek tables. My experience definitely tilted to one side.

First, I had to apply for a card, which meant having my ID scanned and imaged. Well, not thrilled, but my player cards have a ton of stored info, so how can I complain? Still, I suspect my license was imaged and stored, and I am not for that.

Next I had to load chips onto my card. This was akin to a credit card transaction, complete will dated/silly receipt signing ceremony. Finally, its off to the table.

The blinds have been set at $.50/$1, I supposed because of the either the niche they can fill or the backlash that would occur by collecting more rake based on more hands. I suspect it was because the room is unpopular. (click for proof)

Now to the actual play. Ummm. What? Oh, sorry I dozed off. My table had 7 players. 3 were having a side conversation about poker rooms and you could tell none of them were any better than occasional recreation players. They overwhelming loved PokerTek because they "got in so many more hands per hour". Which brought a smile to my face as their "playing" constituted picking up the card, touching the corner of their cards, touching the FOLD button, and then touching the CONFIRM button. There was even a young grinder at the table, up $80 dollars which I can only assume took him 80 hours to accumulate.

The entire experience consisted of watching players stare DOWN at the screen, clicking screens with the corner of their cards, and watching animated cards. It took the poker experience and reduced it to a mechanic task much like gardening, mockingly celebrating the extra 15 hands per hour. I could not even sit out the hour, preferring instead to shop with the wife. Are you hearing this? Shopping for gifts for the in-laws was BETTER than PokerTek. Talk about an indictment.

It even seemed to reduce the other players to surreal automatons, faceless bald-spots, clicking robots with bad AI.

On an even more personal note, I like thinking of the deck as a static determination of fate that I dont get online. Why would I want to sacrifice that live? Why would I just not stay home and play online at a BETTER interface?

There is some hope, however, in that the heads-up tables fill a niche and deal a game that could not otherwise be played live. Oh, but there are no heads-up tables, so too bad so sad for you.

Thankfully the entire "experiment" is coming to a close. Bring back the Aces-cracked Wheel!

WSOP 2009 Trip Report (event 39)

As is my tradition, I twittered all my tournament updates live (ltcolumbo) and save the write-ups for the blog. It was an eventful trip, full of lessons and anecdotes.

I arrived Wednesday, a day earlier than usual for a Saturday event. I wanted to play with my recent mentor, Lee Childs (acumenpoker) and he had to leave for a wedding on Thursday, so I headed out a day early with Mrs. Columbo in tow. My buddy Glenn had come in a day earlier, taking a 3 day detour traveling home from a sales trip in Seattle. We had a late lunch and met Lee over at the Rio.

He suggested we play some SnGs and we all 3 bought into a $100 Satellite. Lee went out early. This was great in that he got to sweat me for a few hands. You start with only 1000 in chips in this one. First big man for me was where it was raised from EP and then a 550 all-in from MP. I had TT in the blind and folded. Lee says he would have snap-called there because of the structure, but I thought the table play was poor enough so far that waiting had benefits. The EP showed a weak ace from early position vs. what I think was KQ. The Ace high held, and indeed TT would have won the day. Exactly 1 rotation later, the exact same thing happened. The same guy makes an EP raise and I have TT in the blind again. This time I calculate the max value. I had a ton of information to go on and decide that I folded that last TT for just this reason. I expect that he will make a c-bet if I call, maybe fold if I move in, but probably call. I decide to call and then re-raise his c-bet all-in. I call the $200 and the flop is Q55. He makes the c-bet of $300 and I move in for $800. He had AQ. Oops. Nice plan, if it would have worked.
Score: Lee 1, Columbo naught.

So Lee and I head off to grab another SnG, this time a $300. (We left my buddy still in the $100 SnG, and he would end up chopping first.) This table had much better play and you started with $1500 instead of $1k, similar to the online structures. Although there were plenty of good hands, I recall very few remarkable ones. Lee went out early again, and after watching us get down to five and me almost breaking the 1 seat (but he had me covered so he has a few chips left), he had to get packing. The “seat 1” was a guy who sort of looked the part. A bit over-weight, longer hair than corporate, an earring and the sort of liaise-affair demeanor to the whole thing. From the point of 5 left and down, the seat 1 doubled up four times leaving us heads up with the same chips stacks. We chopped the $3k. Score 1 for Columbo. I then realized, they paid it out in T-chips, which I would have to sell at some later date, since I pre-paid for event 39.
Meh.

Glenn and I then had a nice time at the Cuban cigar bar in the forum shops with a mojito, a drink regaining its well deserved popularity.

Thursday I went down to play the Caesar’s $330 deep stack at noon. Great structure, 200 players. I felt this was a much more manageable size than the 500 players at Venetian and a whole lot cheaper too, as Venetian was running a $1k today. I played very well.

Had to get away from a couple of hands, and even made a credible bluff and my opponent laid down a better hand. But with over half the field out and running well, things took a turn for the worst. I am a BIG believer that players, especially cash players, put too much credence in hand decisions ‘in the moment’ and not enough about ‘context’. Hellmuth sometimes accidently discloses this same strategy during tirades on bad beats. (Although he takes credit for setting up players). The idea is that everything that happens at the table, good or bad, changes your image at the table. And if I play a hand poorly or weakly, I don’t have to berate myself. I simple need to USE that to my future advantage. It’s the tournament meta-game that few players utilize. In this case, a new kid at the table, sits down and watches me raise pre-flop, then check fold after the flop. A weak play to say the least, but the flop could not have been worse and I saw no reason to contest at that point. So it comes around to me again and I raise pre-flop and the same kid calls from the BB. I can see it on his face; he wants to take advantage of me and is calling light. He has any-two-cards. The flop comes down and I hit two pair. I make the c-bet and he check-calls. I know what comes next. Give him the chance to try and take the hand away. The turn comes and I weak-lead. Heh, I am sure he is coming over the top, his body language and bad acting betraying him. The board looks relatively safe, with only a gut-shot really there. He pushes into me and I snap-called. He suddenly looks very embarrassed and turns over his QT. I show him my two pair and he starts counting out the pay-off. He didn’t even know he had outs. He had a double-buster draw, but played it as a stone bluff. When the J hit the river and he won, he only knew it because everyone at the table let out an “ohhhh”. Instead of being positioned to finish my run, I was out just at dinner and none too happy. But what could I do? I read the kid perfectly and I read the situation perfectly. He had zero idea of where he was at. And if I could see his hand, I would do it again, so I can hardly count that as a mistake.

My buddy went out 15 minutes later, so we went to the Mandalay Bay Rum Jungle for Brazilian dinner at the dinner break.

Friday, I played some 1-3 cash just to practice situations and reads. I did not win a whole lot, but I did pocket a buy-in of profit. Had another cigar and drinks at the Rhumbar at mirage, then off to my favorite Friday night location, the Hoffbrau House. We stayed late, as it’s hard to drag me out of there. Ein Prosit.

Saturday, it was breakfast at the RIO (corned beef hash) and off to event 39. The structure is very kind in the first four levels and maybe this worked against me a little when I hit a big had in Level 1. Very first rotation and I raise with 55 and get an OOP caller (one of the blinds). I flop a set. The board is AK5. He checks, I bet like 200 into the pot of 300, he calls. The turn is some blank and he checks. Now I bet 600 into the pot of like 700 and he calls. The river is a blank and he checks. He can’t like his hand very much and with out a re-raise pre-flop or on the turn, he does not have AK. He must have like AQ/AJ and is worried I have AK? There is now a good 1900 in the pot, but if I bet, I can’t see him calling. Yet, I have to bet here with the best hand. I know a more reckless player would bet like 1200 here and pray the guy made a donk call. But I just could not place him as being that stupid in level 1. So I make a value bet of 600 and he calls to see the bad news. I did not get to see his cards. He avoided me the rest of his time at the table. Maybe AT?

Despite being up 1500 early, some bad flops and some speculating dragged me back down to the starting 4500 by the end of level 1. Towards the end of level 2, this most amazing hand comes. “What wicked webs we weave”… Limp from total donk in MP. Raise from LP from uber-tight, conservative older man who looks the part of a watch-maker in the movies. I call from the button with 88. Flop is the beautiful K78 with two clubs. Donk checks, LP watchmaker bets out. I think he has AK here, c-betting, but certainly has a good hand. I could raise here, but against two opponents in the 50/100 level, I wish to play more conservatively and keep the pot small against the massive draws so I call. The donk calls and I figure him now for the clubs. The turn is a K!

A short digression here. I focused very hard mentally on Friday at the cash tables on not getting excited over hands. By the end of the night, you could deal me AA and I couldn’t care less. I played every-hand with a blank face, and this carried over to Saturday. Even when the K hit, my heart stayed steady and my expression blank. No one at the table had a clue.

Donk checks, as he is waiting for his 3rd club. Our watchmaker bets out like 800. I look like I am thinking about my hand, but I am calculating how to break two people on the river. If I raise here, the flush draw (who is drawing dead) will reluctantly fold and I will get called by trip Kings and sweat the case king and the board pairing the seven. (And perhaps an ace or two.) I figure he has 8 outs at the most. If I instead call here, club draw calls drawing-dead and if the river is a club, they BOTH go broke. I have no doubt that the trip Kings can not fold either way and that the money goes in. I make the smooth call and sure enough, club donk calls. The river is an iceburg 7 (non-club). Donk checks intending to fold and Kings make a huge bet. He just back-doored the higher boat and I forced to fold the Titanic. I was so frustrated, I had to just fold the next 3 hands knowing I would not be able to play them properly. The spider eaten by the trapped bug.

I managed to chip up and grind through level 2 and so many players are luckier than me. Three times someone floated my c-bet (out of position!) with a naked ace. All three times the Ace came on the turn. Unbelievable. Seriously, all three times.

At the level 2 break, I overheard not one but two bad beat stories of QUADS over QUADS. Yikes. Maybe I am not so much unlucky as I am just plain luck absent.

Its level 3 and I casually re-raise with KK and all the money goes in. KK vs. KK. Chop. Really?

I actually play an A2 hand when it’s folded to my button and the BB calls. Flop is T83 and he checks, I c-bet, he calls. Turn is a 2 and when he checks, I move in to shut down his hand. He must have 2 overs or a weak draw. He mucks T9 face up and I act incredulous that he made that great lay-down. “I was sure you had an over-pair”, he said. Score one for the tight image. I made sure to tell him again how impressive that lay-down was. He ate it up. (He was so sure I had JJ, he never even asked at the break.)

At the end of level 4, I raised with AQ from MP. The card rack at the other end of the table, and older guy who has only been playing only a year and won the Venetian deep stack earlier in the week, calls. He is a strong TAG player, and his c-bets are frequently the size of the pot. The flop comes AQx and I let him bet every street, getting all my money in on the river. He tables A5. From that point on, he folded every hand where I raised first to act. This helped me more than once, as he assured the guy next to him (a very weird half-Scandinavian kid) that he had made a good laydown against me since I don’t bluff.

At the break I am at 7800, which is average. Mrs. Columbo bought me a new vegas hat and delivered it at the break, so I took off the Lions hat and switched to the “vegas hat”.

Level 5 sucks. It starts when I play TsTc from EP and the flop comes down 973 all hearts. I check, new-donk bets out, button moves all-in. new-Donk looks ready to call when I fold my now marginal over-pair. Button has AK BLACK for a total bluff, new-donk caller has 77 with the 7 of hearts. WTF? Two non hearts come and again TT would have won had I been a shove monkey with any over-pair. I still say that calling there with TT would have been horrible.

Here is something else. When a player sits at the table and he wants to talk to the dealer or to players, he usually sucks. He’s an ABC player at best and the money means little to him, so he chats it up. It’s just a matter of ticks before they go broke with Top Pair. So many players I watched. Sit, Chat, Rail. And the cash game players who have zero patience for anyone else’s decision and then go into the tank for 20 minutes on a big call where they have no clue as to where they are at. They are like time bombs, waiting to explode and spew chips in multiple directions. Watching these guys stack off to other players at the table and all I can do is watch and hope to get into a similar situation.

Meanwhile, for the next level and a half, I will see no pairs, no playable starting hands, and no suited connectors. It starts when I fold KQ in the BB to a raise and a re-raise. No defending there Over 90 minutes of hands with a 4 in them. At the very end of level 8, I finally get to play a hand with KK. Everyone folds, but since it was a re-raise, I picked up some chips. I used my image and Gus Hansen’s rule that everyone hates playing at the end of a level to make 3 steals. I am 8200 at the break, the board has 9600 as average. We go to dinner.

When I return, the board has some bad news. The average is actually more like 14k and there are 873 left. The levels are 200/400/50, so with 8200, my M is poor (8). At this point I have had 4 hammers, KK twice, and pretty much just the TT hands. The guy who sat down two to my right is another BSD (big swinging dick) from Florida. Likes to push people out of pots, play big hands, but not a big post-flop player. He loses a big hand and tilts. He starts moving all in on my BB hands (we both have about 10-11k now) and I say very matter-of-factly, “I like this. Makes my decisions simple”. He mutters sometime about “making it clear-cut” and I politely smile. Again, meta-game context. He did this about 3 times (1 time I even tossed KTo). The fourth time I had QQ. Surprisingly, he had AJ. Even more surprising, he was very optimistic that his Ace would hit. When it did not, I left him with only 1k in chips. I needed that, and I had spent almost 1600 setting it up over 4 rotations.

At the break, I am 20k, with the average at 22k. Not terrible. 550 left. We go to 9 handed at the tables and I note that despite now having counted SIX hammers today, I have not had AA a single time. KK twice, QQ twice, AK twice, TT twice, KQ 3 times.

In level 7, some douche who plays online as “creative”-something-or-other is anything but. He simple moves all-in with Ax. The first time, a decent player (guy who was the level 1 payoff of my set) raises from EP and he (creative) calls. The button now raises with his AJ. The 44 calls all-in resigned to his fate. They both put him on a small pair. How do I know? Douche moves all in and puts AJ on a challenge here. AJ says he knows first guy has a small pair but doesn’t understand how this guy can move in here without AK. He finally folds and sees he was ahead when AT sooted is tabled. Ace hits the flop and AT doubles up. Less than a rotation later, the AJ guy moves all in with QQ and again, douche snap calls with AK and out draws him and sends him home.

Now in level 8, we get to new players, both on my right. The first guy in the 10 seat looks the part with his sunglasses and Italian looking hat and 5 o’clock shadow. The guy directly to my right sits down with a huge stack. Must be 70k. He looks the west coast Asian gambler part, but I have no evidence yet, just wild guesses. But let’s be frank here, poker players dress the part. A guy who is tight, does not cultivate these images.

I get my first evidence we I raised from EP and the “seat 10” guy had no experience with my image, nor did he care. As soon as the flop came, he fired out and I knew this was going to be a big pot if I called. I decided not to float with my Ace.

I spend some time thinking about day 2. I’ll need over 30k in chips to be competitive and I’ll have to start playing back at these new players. I’ll have to maybe even put in some post-flop re-steal efforts. I decide that with less than half a level until tomorrow, I’ll put off that strategy for now. I have about 18k and can’t worry about anything but getting my money in good if I get the chance.

Not a couple of hands later, “Seat 10” raises to 2200 UTG. Blinds are 500/1000/100. The big stack in the seat 1 flat calls and I suddenly understand what just happened to my table. I now have two big stacks who have little to no regard for position or pot size. They are going to play every pot and shut out the rest of the table. My only saving grace is that I can move in on a big hand and if they fold, I pick up 5k. If not, I’ll have a hand to double up with. Two folds to me and just like I hoped for, I look down at JJ. Since I did a Phil Ivey on this one and calculated everything before looking at my cards, I had no further thoughts to process. My read was first guy came in light and second guy was just going to flat every pot he could with his monster stack. I move in for something around 16-18k. As I get ready to celebrate, douche moves all-in. At first I figure I am crushed, but then I figure there is a good chance I am up against AK here for a race. So now I hope my read on the first two was correct. They both put on a big show, but I see right through it. I had it pegged. There cards hit the muck and I am thrilled to have 4500 in dead money in the pot, especially when “creative” tables another AKo. I show my Jacks and all I can do is watch my new stack of 36k go to zero when the flop is AKx.

Some players just run well. I saw 1, then after level 7 two at my table that hit every flop hard. Yet, I finished about 400th, just short of the money. I got away from marginal situations and bad beats, had decent reads, and played a solid meta-game. I had set myself up to make a day 2 run and was only a race away, my only race of the entire day, which I couldn’t win. You can’t win a WSOP event without winning a race. That’s just the way it is with 2800 players.

I was very dejected. I remember saying hello to F-train and CK and Al Can’t Hang and LJ during various levels, but the writers area was empty at the end of the day, so I left, feeling like Lane Meyers. -“A man beaten. The once great champ, now a study in moppishness.”

Sunday I played some cash just to remind myself I don’t totally suck. I did not lose a single hand or make a single mistake. When I was up a buy-in, I left and we had dinner at the sidewalk café at the Paris. That sucked. But it was going to no matter what, right?

Now for my $$$ Total disclosure.
SnG profit: $1100, Cash Profit: $400, MTT profit: -$1800.

Lessons learned? Dashiell Hammett describes it in one of his “Continental Operative” stories. “Few men get killed. Most of them who meet sudden ends get themselves killed. I have experience at dodging that. I try to take the survivors for a ride.” That’s how I play. I am not looking to hit giant draws after the money goes in, or to just shove and hope. I am waiting for my opportunity to win without getting killed. I count on getting through the one or two marginal clashes in one piece. This was just not the day.

It took some big round-house punches to knock me out. I could have gone broke multiple times in multiple places, but I didn’t. And I was “lucky” in that I never had to get away from a losing set-over-set, the hardest thing in hold ém. Although happy with my performance, I would not be totally honest if I didn’t say that I am brutally disappointed. Maybe now I won’t scoff when players yell “One Time!”

-Yeah, I still will.

Congrats to Ray Foley, a local player here in Detroit that took down the event!
http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/archives/007359.php

And just to prove I still have my sense of humor...

Highly debated hand - results

Man, did I take a BEATING on this one!!! You guys really, really think I played this not bad but pathetically. Maybe so. Here was my (albeit highly debatable) thoughts on the streets.

It was $50 to call and I look at 86o. I felt the guy came in weak, but I am not going to get hasty. I should just fold. I call.

Flop is Q86 as we said. He bets and I min-raise to "test" for the Queen. Although this worked, the min-raise gets little love and most players hate it. Lee Childs nudged me after the hand and called it out. Although he is more a proponent of standard bet sizes.

So love it or hate it, I didnt think at the time that more pressure gets the queen to fold and it did tell me what I wanted to know spending the minimum to do it. I think everyone out there but Daniel Negreanu hated it. In working back through it, I have to agree that blowing him off the hand was best. I was forgetting this was a SnG and that he might not be a gambling donkey like so many others I ran into this weekend. There is no doubt that at least the bet should have been POT and then...

The turn card is a terrible card and now he checks. Here is where I hated my play. When he checks, I really already let the draws get there OR I didn't. I can either trust my read that he has a Queen and blow him off the hand, or CHECK behind him instead of making a dark bet of 300. When he calls the turn bet, I gain nothing. It was wasted money.

So to complete the thought above... There is no doubt that I bet pot on the flop and if he calls that big of a bet, I shut down and check behind on that crappy turn card.

The river is now an easy check. The only smart thing I did. And I let someone get there because I played very cautiously (weak) in the early going.

Funny part is, I went on to chop first. Needless to say, I played the other hands MUCH better.

Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate them. Especially the caustic ones. I had it coming here.

Highly debated hand

$300 SnG with 8left in level 2. $1500 in chips to start. I have 1550.

Limper only so I junk button call with 8s6c.

Flop is Q86 with 2 diamonds.

He bets $150 (pot). I test for Queen with min-raise. He calls.
(I believe he has a queen now.)

Turn is Td putting third diamond out. Pot is 900. He checks and I bet $300 not too afraid of 3rd diamond,but cautious.
He calls.

River is 9d. We both check. Neither has diamond but he wins hand with 1card straight.
QJ.

Again, this is a SnG.

Did this get played good or bad?

Last post before Vegas

As tradition, I move to twitter when it comes to updating vegas tournaments and results. Last night I played 3 MTT for some last minute practice and cashed in one. The hand I went out in was interesting though.

95 players left and we are in the money. At this point, the payout is a measly 2x buy-in. Now I raise on a semi-steal with JTs and a blind re-raises all-in and I am SURE its AK. I have a Q of .5 and only the top 9 receive good payouts. (i.e. I have 11k and he has 10k, avg is 20k.) I think the level was 500/1000/125, so my M is about 5.

Knowing all this information, are you willing to call the AK shove?

I was so against going another round and blinding off 2500 of my chips, that I decided that I could not fold despite being 30% here. Have not decided if it was lame or not.

The WSOP approaches

I leave in a week and I have a schedule all worked out now.

Wednesday night, play cards with Lee Childs (of acumen poker) and pick up any last minute tips and get into the right mindset.

Thursday noon - Caesar's deep-stack tourney (with a friend from Chicago playing also).

Saturday - Event 39

Monday - Return

I have for the 50th billionth time, I have adjusted my strategy going into a tournament. Everyone has probably heard the most basic strategy ever (still professed by Phil Gordon).

1. What is my opponent likely holding?
2. Do I think I am ahead (bet) or behind (dont bet).

Here is my strategy going into the next 2 weeks.

1. What range am I narrowing in on for my opponent? (can I get action from a hand that is behind?)
2. Based on pot size, what is the current "pressure point" bet?
3. What "betting lines" are we in the midst of?
4(implied). What is my best course of action?

At times I feel like Spicolli explaining how he can fix a car because his Dad has this "ultimate set of tools". Playing this game as long as I have now, I really have the tools I need. And that short above list is deceptively simple, yet VERY powerful. (Want to prove it? Write it down and hold it while watching an episode of High Stakes Poker.)

Adding this checklist to the other tools in the bag (too long to list), I feel I have what I need. It's a matter of execution.

TOC wrap-up

Congrats to the winners. 44 runners, paid 4 places. I finished in the middle of the pack. Even worse, I died a slow death. I never did get "a bit lucky". I watched some unknown shlub run his TPTK into ck's AA when they had 5k behind. ARKM? My BIGGEST pot of the first two hours was 1000 chips when a couple of players overplayed pairs on a straight board and I put in a big raise with second nuts. That was IT. Nada. Even when I attempted moves, I got pwned 3 out of 3 times). Adding insult to injury, I avoided races and bad situations all day, even folding 88 to a ck re-raise (she rarely comes in light) and finally had to win my first race against 55 and came up empty (0 for 1). This is not a set of winning stats.

I am disappointed that I could not capitalize on this great opportunity 2 years in a row. (Last year I was 21st and went out early in TOC, this year I was 16th and went out mid-way in the TOC.)

And finally, a BIG shout-out to Full Tilt and AlCantHang which not only sponsored this series, but continues to understand better than most how to cultivate brand loyalty. Running a BBT series is a thankless job at times, and Al took one for the team this year. Remember to buy him a shot of SO-CO in December.

My lower RIO in poker

Middle stages and M is between 9 and 20. AK or AQ in EP or MP.

Miss flop? Expect that either c-bet will get raised or check will get punished.
Hit the flop? Expect folds when you bet.

Odds of hitting flop are 3-1, pay off on hit = 2 to 1.

Your milage may vary, but the scenario is far too common to me as of late.
Position. Don't leave home without it.

Still not getting the results I want

5 table MTTs, still bubbling or worse... Want to WIN TOC, 10th wont due much.

In non-poker news, I upgraded my Lions tickets today. From 5 yard line row 21 to 15 yard line row 16. Let's hope they win a game now.

Advanced Betting Lines

I am seeing more clearly some of the betting lines we face on a daily basis. Naming them seems to help me with my pattern recognition, so I am including monikers with the lines.

The "Chan" Line (moniker from Daniel N.) - OOP opponent check-calls flop and leads on turn. This is a sign of strength, but gives little else away. I usually want a read on the opponent or some sort of hand to continue.

The "Ali" Line - An Opponent on your immediate left that calls your Pre-flop raise and then raises your c-bet no matter what. (named after the rope-a-dope). I am seeing ALOT more of this one.

The "Shark" line - I have seen another interesting one where the big stack limps from EP. The idea is that when someone reraises, when it folds to him he can decide to call if it results in heads-up play. He then either leads out or check-raises the flop.

I also notice that when some players are "raising for information", that they often do this with middle pair or TPWK. But they are creating a bigger pot which is harder to get to showdown. I am not sure I agree with this. All you can do is shutdown on the turn. Or are you going to fire a big barrel next?

And on that topic, I am re-evaluating the best c-bet size. MANY pros tell you to never vary your bet-sizes, so you sort of have to pick a size each level. I have RAISED mine to 75% in the early levels, where players like to chase draws, but have lowered it to 50% in middle rounds where players like to prey on c-bets. Any comments here?

Not much value in mentioning the "floater". Its so common now, that its hardly advanced. but what's with idiots floating and then not raising the turn when checked to? When I see that, I mark it down as PFW (post flop weak). If you have position, shouldn't you use it?

Final Thoughts on TOC

I think Hoyazo nailed it when he said that I can play too tight in the early to middle stages. Its funny, but in the early stages is debatable. I usually drop 10-15% of my stack in level 1 and spend the rest of the early levels chipping back to start stack size (or SSS). Its those dang-tarnish middle rounds that kill me.

And what has killed me the most in BBT4 vs. say the 32k?
TWO BIG THINGS:

1. Bloggers attack c-bets much harder than your typical field. This makes it more difficult to play ABC poker in a blogger event. (this includes the re-steal on the c-bet, not just the floats and turn take-aways)

2. (excuse me as I attempt to quantify this) I have struggled with "chipping up" without risking losing large pots. As I reviewed my stats from this year, I was going out too early in too many tournaments. Yet, when I adjusted to stop that, I started literally running out of chips in the middle rounds. NOTE TO EVERYONE OUT THERE: If I figure this part of MTTs out, there will be no stopping me. So if you know why I am struggling here and you help me, there is serious karma in it for you.

I could ramble on and on about this topic, and its plagued me for nearly a year now. As a matter of fact, its the reason I originally sought out a mentor. That has resulted in some increased strategy and decision making for me, but has not really squashed the original issue.

I do know one thing though, and I think my nose has been rubbed in it enough for it to take. Simply using Q to determine if I should be crazy loose or not is just plain stupid. I have had better results dropping the Q concept completely from my MTT play.

Now its a matter of playing long rounds 9 handed as well as I play them 6 or 7 handed. Why its so different for me, I am not sure. But man I have to figure out how to win hands with marginal holdings in the middle rounds.

-
As promised yesterday, here was the big game hand that really hurt me... Note that I TIMED OUT DESPITE CALLING TIME. I think I make this call if I had the time.
At the time, I put ScottMc on either a river'd set of 7s, or AIR.

Full Tilt Poker Game #12550357817: Blogger Big Game (81289279), Table 6 - 120/240 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:18:10 ET - 2009/05/31
Seat 3: BuddyDank (10,385)
Seat 4: bdidde (11,960)
Seat 5: ScottMc (2,650)
Seat 6: columbo (5,785)
Seat 7: iaatg6296 (3,290)
Seat 8: rozzz5 (5,155)
Seat 9: cemfredmd (2,370)
BuddyDank antes 25
bdidde antes 25
ScottMc antes 25
columbo antes 25
iaatg6296 antes 25
rozzz5 antes 25
cemfredmd antes 25
ScottMc posts the small blind of 120
columbo posts the big blind of 240
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [8d 7s]
iaatg6296 folds
rozzz5 folds
cemfredmd folds
BuddyDank folds
bdidde folds
ScottMc calls 120
columbo checks
*** FLOP *** [8c 6d 9c]
ScottMc checks
columbo bets 240
ScottMc calls 240
*** TURN *** [8c 6d 9c] [4d]
ScottMc checks
columbo bets 720
ScottMc calls 720
*** RIVER *** [8c 6d 9c 4d] [7h]
ScottMc has 15 seconds left to act
ScottMc bets 1,425, and is all in
columbo has 15 seconds left to act
columbo has requested TIME
columbo: wow (I am working it out in the old insane-in-the-membrane)
columbo has timed out (ARGH)

ScottMc shows [xx xx] (guess)

There is no way the 7 completes his hand unless he either river'd a set or made a worse 2 pair with 67. I think the odds (based on betting story, not math) might be as follows:

He made a river'd set : 3 to 1
He made two pair : 12 to 1
He has a broken draw with a pair of 7s : 3 to 1
He has a broken flush draw with Ac7c : 2 to 1

Now, as you know over the last 2 weeks, I have collided with more than my fair share of SETS. Oh my yes. A set has sent me packing more than any other hand. So, you can see why I stopped to think LONGER than I usually do. And THAT, more than anything else, cost me this hand.

and now our feature attraction

The BBT4 is finally over. I managed 11th in the brit tourney in the afternoon (1 lousy point?), followed by a middle of the pack finish in the big finale.

I have so many thoughts on my status, where to start?

Ok, the small-ball obsession is concluding. I have added it to my bag-o-tricks, but I find it difficult to play this way online where stacks are 20BB. I can use it early, and when deeper, but can not think of it as a way of life. I like it to control my FLOP play though and then on the Turn deciding what my best options are (showdown/no-showdown).

Second, I cant stand the FT timeouts. My bank is 15 seconds and yet I get 1 minute on a disconnect? GEZ. I had a hand last night that if I had the time to think through, might have been different. (I'll add that to the end of this post).

BDR was fun last night, with Chad becoming funnier as the beer kicked in. I appreciate the fact that the gang put me (your humble narrator) in the non-donk TOC category. Chad made a comment that I am disguising my hands well. That was good to know. Apparently he also made the FT 100k final table at the same time last night. Astounding.

Finally, a brutal recap of my weaknesses as we approach the TOC / WSOP.

1. When I go card dead in the middle rounds, I bleed too many chips. Even when I try to make plays, I only seem to make it worse. I need to catch some hands during the middle rounds. Even after working on this for a year, I still have only a smattering of answers.

2. My playing style seems to work best with 6/7 players at a table. This may happen multiple times at the 5 table TOC, but rarely at the WSOP.

3. I don't give players credit for hitting sets enough. If you read this blog over the last 3 months, you can still hear my screams. Yet, last night I let a user bluff a river'd set and I folded a winning hand.

4. I often start a tournament by losing 10% of my chips. WTF? Is it really that easy to small ball off your chips that fast seeing a few flops? No, its the FLOAT that eats the chips. Got to watch this early.

5. I don't re-steal very often. Okay, never. I am not a big fan of this play and yet, I know you need it at times. That leaves me in a quandary on this one. (See #1)

I think I will take a couple of days off so I can relax with some XBOX-360 (Burnout & "Saint's Row Bitches!") and then get back to it.

I also want to play a big$ Razz tournament, but that may have to wait.

So this is it

That last night of the BBT4. And in effect, the last night of training.

I have always been transparent in this blog, writing thought and strategies even if they turn out to be wild or unfounded. But the blog is one that chronicles a journey, and a long one at that. After 5 years, I strive to be more than I am.

The last year has been a wild one. Major job change, winning a 24k, breaking my back, seeking the mentoring of a pro, and realizing once again that the journey never truly ends.

Despite my results over the last year, I feel that I am better than I am last year when I satellited my way in via my home-town league. I am constantly experimenting now with advanced concepts instead of intermediate ones.

There is one day left in my "training schedule" to the WSOP, today's BBT4 events. I am 16th overall and despite that solid running, I hope this is no aspersion to any of the players in saying how disapointed I am that I am not in the top 10. There is no one to blame but myself, and I cant place much of the results on beats. With a event sampling size as large as this 3 month series, its silly to dwell on the one or two where you went out 11th.

Although this does remind of the 32ks over the last 6 months where I went down with 100 left to a brutal beat, sabotaging my repeat success.

I have thoughts about how I will approach the NLHE event 39, but that can wait. For today, I am prepared mentally for the challenge. I will be no easy mark today. My biggest mistake over the last week was playing to conservative close between 20-15 places left. I can not let myself fall into that trap again.

Good luck everyone.

so far no determinations...

Top Set could not stave off an attack from an OESD. He hit both ends on the turn/river.

The Psychology of Self Improvement

I have been thinking about this for quite some time... I remember even in grad school, the words of one professor. "You are very good at making decisions. But sometimes you make them too quickly." Still true to this day? Yes, albeit to a lesser extent, but yes. So what is a repeat offender to do?

I am going to try something drastic. I physical manifestation of a mnemonic device. (Sounds all doctory, doesn't it?)

This is a small object (not a chip) that I can hold in my hand and rub/stroke (heh) to remind me to think longer and more completely before a hand.

This is not the first mnemonic I ever used, as in my early days I had a sticker of the professor from Powerpuff girls on my monitor asking me "flush?" to remind me of the number of times (way too many) that I was paying off flushes. And it worked. Very effective.

I am off right now to locate said object and to try out my desperate grasp at control in the 32k today.

66 does me in

Its funny that on Monday I did not want to play 66 from EP and instead went out on AJ vs. 33. So color me red when I played 66 and was re-raised from the ginormous stack on the button. I called and saw a flop of T83 and he CHECKS.

Now either he has JJ-AA OR he has big overs. But when he checked, I pushed. At the time, I figured I scare a big range of his holdings and I represent a hand like JJ also. But today, I realize that his CHECK instead of a c-bet to a short stack is an invitation to go broke. So I dressed up to the nines and he welcomed me at the door with Top Set.

I think I was in trouble here no matter what, but to not recognize that simple betting line has me in a panic.

My name is (who?)

Coming from the land of eminem, I understand economic adversity. But despite all that, I am playing Event #39. Why? Numerous reasons.

1. Have to play a big tournament once in a while. The Shaolin monks would say that if you practice fighting and do not fight, then your skills are less than those who fight. I dont fight the big fights very often, but I can make an exception once a year to test my mettle. (I want to play more Razz after the WSOP is over and test my mettle there too.)

2. I have been practicing way too much over the last 3 months not to take the "test". Despite my results, my decisions are becoming honed and my game rising to a level I did not even feel I could get to a year ago.

3. With the economic downturn and the reigning in of travel and such, I need to do something that is "bigger than life". Considering I broke (nasty) my back months ago, this is as big as it gets this year.

So there you have it. Justification in the worst way. I did not qualify for a $1500 event this year in a satellite or club, so I am breaking my own rule to not play an event without expressing my way in. But I will take 3 or 4 shots are WSOP main event seats. I expect next year to be the year I get in, but you never know.

In other news, I am starting to combine chip utility and small ball together without a train wreck ensuing. This is interesting. Sometimes I feel that the best thing I could do for myself is to never know what my chip stack is... But obviously no one can afford that lack of information. I do need to make sound decisions, however, without allowing myself to be taken in by justifications. As of late, I am too prove to make a good call, even though the stand alone logic is FOLD. Interestingly I am right alot of the time. But not all the time. I am really starting to understand the meta-game behind small ball.

But in results, it can be brutal if you let your stack get too short. I bubble the PPI on Monday, and I was disapointed by a big stretch of dreck that I could not play my way out of. As it was, a suckout blind vs blind kept me out of 13th.

Skillz was Stud and if it wasn't the last BBT4 skillz night, I would have passed. Instead I made 4 second best hands to go out way too soon. Just 2 events left...

As it is, I feel slightly guilty going into the WSOP series as results have been average lately AND I punched my BBT4 ticket in RAZZ, not NLHE. Funny, eh? I'll put all that behind me tonight as I make a final, focused charge at the Mookie.

"I will fold to sets. I will fold to sets. I will fold to sets."

ok, I am ready.

If I see one more set....

I have moved from chip-utility drills to small-ball practice, but I am having a HELL of a time getting away from an over-pair when I run into a SET.

I am banging my head on the table. Look, if you play me at all in the next week and you raise me on the turn and I dont fold, just type SET into the chat box to remind me what a DONK I am.

I would also like to PIMP a poker podcast, Poker Soup TV. Other than occasionally leaving the podcast running for an extra hour while they play poker on skype, I really like to return to old-school poker podcasts where people talk about hands. No, take that back. Where you dont just TALK about hands for a few seconds, but you analyze hands. I miss that so much. (Get them on itunes).

Self-flagellation

OMG, just I just play a hand like a donkey.

Limper, I make it 4xBB, BB calls, original limper calls. Flop is 989. chcek, check to me. I make a c-bet of 2/3rds the port with an overpair of JJ.

Like that bet? Well, I c-bet into 2 players. But not necessarily incorrect. I am able to assume that one player hit a card higher than 8 (a 9 in this case), but since there are two of them, its just as valid to think they both missed. so far, still ok.

BB now RAISES to 3x my bet. original limper folds.
AS HARD AS IT IS here to put the BB on A9, QQ, KK or even AA, I feel stupid because once again I make a QUICK decision and get it all in. Now to be fair, if I CALL here, the money is going in over the next 2 streets because he has KK.

Its a hard read here, but I was 11th in chips and did not need to play a big pot with a pair. At the same time, how do I put the BB on KK? (TripJax played this tricky and got a great flop for it I think, considering there were 3 to the flop.)

situations and thoughts

ok, mostly thoughts.

mini-Ftops is worthless. I want to see if I can hold my own in a RAZZ tournament, so I sign up for mini-ftops Razz. 1200 players? In a limit game? what for 24 hours? gez. I bowed out. FTOP razz was more reasonable at 400, but its was a $300 buy-in. so I guess I can continue to fool myself a while longer.

Working on my game going into the final training stretch before Vegas. My results in the last 6 months are all over the place, and yet I am playing incredibly well as of late.

How many of you have lost to QUADS 3 times in 2 weeks?

"thought I'd something more to say..."

Recovering from a brutal beat

When you play in a tournament, a big tournament, you are focused on making good decisions. But in the end, there is a fundamental difference from the smaller tournaments you will play. In the big tournaments, results DO matter. Its a tad ironic that you got hear by remembering the mantra, "decisions not results".

So you train, practice and study making good decisions. You analyze every mistake. Then you walk into the big tournament and you know what? Fish start jumping out of the water and into your boat. It's what you trained for. You feel great. And then an early setback.

Have a sample:

Seat 1: WidowJack (3,625)
Seat 2: boyana05 (8,553)
Seat 3: donkurchips2me (2,947)
Seat 4: rhe041 (2,615)
Seat 5: MrHeuvel (2,965)
Seat 6: Gabyleviking (2,080)
Seat 7: columbo (4,995)
Seat 8: koikoi1 (2,095)
Seat 9: HevvyDevvy (10,160)
rhe041 posts the small blind of 25
MrHeuvel posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [9h 9c]
Gabyleviking calls 50
columbo raises to 150
koikoi1 folds
HevvyDevvy folds
WidowJack folds
boyana05 calls 150
donkurchips2me folds
rhe041 folds
MrHeuvel calls 100
Gabyleviking calls 100
*** FLOP *** [6d Js 9s]
MrHeuvel checks
Gabyleviking bets 500 (top pair, probably AJ)
columbo raises to 1,000
boyana05 folds
MrHeuvel folds
Gabyleviking has 15 seconds left to act
Gabyleviking raises to 1,930, and is all in
columbo calls 930
Gabyleviking shows [Jd Ks]
columbo shows [9h 9c]
*** TURN *** [6d Js 9s] [Kd]
*** RIVER *** [6d Js 9s Kd] [Jc]
Gabyleviking shows a full house, Jacks full of Kings

Not just a full house mind you, a runner-runner bad beat.

My above average stack is now reduced to a starting stack and I am forced to stare into space, a gaping hole in my face where my jaw was.

We have ALL been there. But what is important is that I am "down but not out". Chip-and-a-chair cliche' moved aside by a Monty Python, "I'm not dead yet".

Chris Ferguson once said that one of the biggest differences between an amateur and a pro is how quickly the amateur will shift to all-in hope-and-a-prayer poker after his stack suffers a big loss. Again, we've all been there.

So how do we soldier on? Here is what I do.

First off, If I get knocked out, I think of it this way. "It took runner-runner to take me out". (or on Sunday, "it took a 3 outer to take me out".) It's not a bad beat story. Its a testament to how lucky someone has to get to outplay you. The "how" is irrelevant. 'It took QUADS to knock me out.' Not that is a statement.

If I did NOT get knocked out, then its usually a call to arms. I am not going to sit idly by and watch my stack dwindle. oh no! You have unleashed pain upon the table my friend. You thought I raised a lot before? The pots just got bigger because I'll take a bit more volatility now! And I will bet into you after the flop like a kamikaze pilot. The reality is that I will start to do that, but slowly shift back down after the image is established or I get some chips back. Then I am going to try and stack someone even if it means getting my money in on Middle Pair with a solid redraw. Once I reach average again, its back to my regular game plan.

One last thing. I never, ever get into a discussion at the table in an attempt to justify my play. The best you are going to get from me is a shrug. I can not be rattled. I'll even say that to myself. "these guys are not good enough to tilt me. They might be bad enough to tilt me..."

Its true in many ways that its harder to get through minefield of fish than a sea of pros. But is there anything more satisfying that watching that idiot who luck-boxed away with your chips go broke while you are still sitting there and get to watch him walk to the rail? If you are going to wage a comeback and you have some volatility, you may have to win a race. Or worse, win from behind. So be it.

All the more satisfying when some player who read a chapter on small ball lets you get there on the turn and river to 2-pair his TP weak kicker. He'll tell me how bad that play was. And I'll shrug. Because after all, he's half right!


Its funny that I feel stupid writing this post. I mean, I have the urge to just delete it. Sometimes when I read it, I feel like I am explaining cooking my favorite dish to a chef. But I want to be able to go back and read this post later. Because one day, I might need to learn this again. There is only so much beating a person can take before they require some solace.

"I run bad" Hall of fame first ballot

Think it can't happen TWICE IN ONE WEEK?!?!?? THINK AGAIN!

Full Tilt Poker Game #12066319284: $34,000 Guarantee (90177637), Table 102 - 500/1000 Ante 125 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:14:47 ET - 2009/05/06
Seat 1: bego82 (3,068)
Seat 2: stockpig (45,260)
Seat 3: pokerpro109 (52,675)
Seat 4: Guitarhero10 (25,418)
Seat 5: Lefty_wAAs (18,919)
Seat 6: nemo_fr (31,048)
Seat 7: columbo (18,347)
Seat 8: Gregtzky85 (11,408)
Seat 9: miski (19,624)
bego82 antes 125
stockpig antes 125
pokerpro109 antes 125
Guitarhero10 antes 125
Lefty_wAAs antes 125
nemo_fr antes 125
columbo antes 125
Gregtzky85 antes 125
miski antes 125
stockpig posts the small blind of 500
pokerpro109 posts the big blind of 1,000
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [Js Jh]
Guitarhero10 folds
Lefty_wAAs raises to 2,000
nemo_fr folds
columbo calls 2,000

This guy was hard to figure out on bet sizes, but often came in light and tried to buy it post flop.

Gregtzky85 folds
miski folds
bego82 folds
stockpig folds
pokerpro109 calls 1,000 (big stack, almost exact same note)

*** FLOP *** [9d 3h 6d] (not bad at all!)
pokerpro109 checks

(10-1 lefty bets here)

Lefty_wAAs has 15 seconds left to act
Lefty_wAAs bets 7,625
columbo raises to 16,222, and is all in SWEET
pokerpro109 folds SWEETER
Lefty_wAAs calls 8,597
columbo shows [Js Jh]
Lefty_wAAs shows [8h 8c]

SWEETEST!!!!! So many chips!

*** TURN *** [9d 3h 6d] [8s]
*** RIVER *** [9d 3h 6d 8s] [8d]
columbo shows two pair, Jacks and Eights
Lefty_wAAs shows four of a kind, Eights
Lefty_wAAs wins the pot (40,069) with four of a kind, Eights
columbo stands up

*** SUMMARY ***
YOU RUN BAD. HAVEN'T YOU LEARNED THAT YET? GO HOME NOW.

playing well or opportunistic

Other than my run in the previous post, I finished 3rd in my league on Saturday and sixth in the donkament on Sunday.

The Saturday tournament was interesting in that with 3 left, a solid player started tilting for no discernible reason and raised all-in 5 hands in a row. This hand I have 88 and I RAISE first to act to send a message. I am not going to play scared and back down. I have 70k and its $3k/$6k so shoving all-in every hand is not how I want to play. He shoves again, and I call with 88. He has a hand with AK and the King hits the river. Discussions digressed into a comment that was akin to "the best I could hope for was a race". I don't think that enters into it. 3 handed, I will not be pushed around by folding a pocket pair to a 6th all-in in a row. I have no need to be the table police, but with 3 left I need to establish some sort of sane foothold.

Sunday, on the bubble play was tight and you just know it was inevitable that it would be a pair of big hands. I had TPTK, he had flopped a set. Too bad for me.
Final table, WPBT points, but no monies.

"I run bad" Hall of fame entry - Best in class!

Full Tilt Poker Game #12027105331: $34,000 Guarantee (89920510), Table 16 - 120/240 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 15:48:24 ET - 2009/05/04
Seat 1: Capuccio (8,728)
Seat 2: FCN-Forever (6,368)
Seat 3: Alfie Lemon (5,699), is sitting out
Seat 4: CodeNameDonkey (8,370)
Seat 5: davits59 (4,279)
Seat 6: columbo (5,105) [short due to a bluff that got picked off for almost $3k, but still ok health wise for this level]
Seat 7: ZgunnZ (2,097)
Seat 8: justfloppin (3,030)
Seat 9: josue29200 (16,183)
antes 25

davits59 folds
Dealt to columbo [Ac Ah]
columbo raises to 720 [sweet]

ZgunnZ folds
justfloppin folds
josue29200 raises to 1,440 [sweeter]

Capuccio raises to 8,703, and is all in [sweetest]
FCN-Forever folds
Alfie Lemon folds
CodeNameDonkey folds
columbo calls 4,360, and is all in [now with squeeze bonus money!]
josue29200 folds [free $1400 in monies!]

Capuccio shows [Kh Kc]
columbo shows [Ac Ah]

*** FLOP *** [Kd 8c Tc]
*** TURN *** [Kd 8c Tc] [Ks]
*** RIVER *** [Kd 8c Tc Ks] [Qh]
Capuccio shows FUCKING QUADS! YOU RUN BAD. GO HOME NOW.

Embarassed myself in the PPI

So bad. Put a player on a hand and refused to change it. Even worse, but not spend the TIME required to make a good decision. Result? O-U-T out. Spanked like the step-mother on Harper's Island...

A tale of 2 tournaments

I blew off the Lions VIP draft party and instead played a deep stack live MTT. $20k in starting chips, 35 minute levels. I played LOTS of small ball, but after the lunch break, I had not won any "large" pot. Made some great plays, but its not the same as building chips. I recall one time I think I gave a player too much credit for a brain and made a value check-raise on the river with the nuts. He called it with TPTK (I had a well disguised back-door flush), but maybe I should have went for his stack. [I am STILL thinking about this]

On Sunday, I signed up for the BRIT MTT but because BWW advertised wireless even though it did not work, I had to move. By the time I logged in, I missed 30 minutes and my starting stack was now 980 chips. You start with a lean 1500 and its an exercise in chip utility. "Come high or stay home." So I played UBER aggro poker and danced my way to the final table, being the short stack the ENTIRE WAY. Them, I LOST my connection for 10 minutes again, and when I got back there were only 7 left. I eventually went out 6th, losing a race with AQ vs. a middle pair. Not bad, eh?

Last night I watched High Stakes Poker (You got Durr'd). That kid is amazing. But the real story is Patrick Antonius. You watch him play, and you watch a guy who is building a story of your betting as you play. Just amazing.

Punched my BBT Ticket !!!

After getting sucked out on at the bubble of my Tuesday night league, I rallied on in the BBT SKILLZ game last night.

RAZZ was the game, and its one of my better games (NLHE, TripleDraw, then RAZZ. I have to work harder on Omaha). I was up to a good start early, then on a lean stack, and then on a tear to secure my first BBT 09 win and my TOC seat for a chance for a visit to the big show.

I consider it funny when I listen to a good razz player like Jennifer Harmon talk about remembering all the board cards. I KNOW you need to do that in stud, but really, who does that in RAZZ? I use my patent pending razz strategy that I call "84B".

The 8 stands for 8 or better starting hand. I rarely play a non 3 to an eight hand even for a non-complete bet. and likewise, I rarely fold an 8 regardless of the action before 4th. Now I will note how many "little cards" are out there and more importantly, how many "little cards" that do not match one of mine. If you count "littles", like many books advise, you need to disregard the ones that would pair you. Those are "rocks" to you. I never try to calculate the card my opponent needs to make a better 7 than me. Even if I was willing to put in that effort, how many times would I be correct? Close to zero.

The 4 stands for 4th street. If I brick and my opponent does not, I am folding 90% of the time. Really. Maybe more. The exception is when he bricks harder so that his board is still behind mine.

The B stands for the board. I play "transparent" in that I assume that my opponent has 2 decent in the hole and that he will assume that I do also (which I do). Because of this, its VERY hard to bluff me off a hand early. If your board is better than mine though, I NEVER CHASE IN RAZZ. LISTEN. "NEVER". EVER.

The footnote is pot control. I never try to build a big pot before 5th street. And I am very happy check-calling even after 5th. There were at least 2 hands yesterday where people sorta laughed because they could not figure out why I was not pushing more or betting in certain circumstances. Razz plays like a one-legged driver. Its either gas or brake and never both. I stick with brake and switch to gas only when I feel I have the lead in the hand.

All this sounds simple, but the patience to actually follow it can be brutal. BUT, thanks to my recent commitment to escaping bad situations, I could not have had a better result.

At the final table, I accumulated chips like a mad-man and by the time we were heads up, I had a 3-1 chip lead. Sweet.

Am I the best razz player? Not by a LONG SHOT. But my style works darn well.

The Return of Houdini?

Its been a long time since I abandoned blind chip utility in favor of escaping bad situations. In the 21k today, I made FOUR major laydowns. That is four more than I normally would make this year. Only 1 was even post-fold questionable, but in 1 case I avoided the dreaded "running into Aces" scenario. (AK CALLED AND WON, I HAD TT.)

Don't get me wrong, it was HARD folding TPTK to a river all-in and its very hard to allow a EP Raiser to shove you off of JJ. But there is a difference between a hard fold and calling. A big difference. One I have been blowing off lately.

And because of this, I had to play ShortStack poker more than I like to. But I was in there and not out on the rail. And like many luckboxes out there, surviving gave me an AA just when I needed chips. So I saw 2 major rivers and folded 4 major re-raise hands and somehow I have just enough for an average stack.

I dont know how this is going to turn out, but its nice having some of my old Houdini skills back.


UPDATE: Went out on the BUBBLE (17 until) AGAIN! when I made what I thought was a great read/call with 99. He turns over 88 and elation turns to dinner-time when he flops the set.

How many licks?

...does it take to get to the money in the 34k?

Lets find out...

1. The nice lesson learned from stupid mistakes we make is that when other make them, we have an easier time recognizing them. Thus it was when early on I called a 4xBB bet after limping with Jh9h for small-ball only. The flop is JJ6 and the original raiser bets out pot. What does this tell you? Easy, he has QQ, KK or AA. (I dont see 66 raising to 4xBB early on.) This was such a bad lead by him, I figure I will raise now rather then later despite the no-draw board. He cant wait to go broke.

2. I have 6k, and a 2k stack shoves pre-flop from the SB AFTER I raised to 300. Despite only having 300 invested, the shove makes little sense to me. I call with QQ and he shows A7o. Really early for that kind of steal from the SB. Not smart.

3. With blinds up to 200/400/50, I am in the BB with AQo. Player with similar size stack raises to 1000. This is a good place for a re-steal because of stack sizes, and I push over the top all-in for 6500. SHOCKINGLY he called with KTs. Wow. But for some reason my hand holds up.

4. Same level and this time I am the first raiser to the pot with 9dTd. I expect to get credit for a bigger hand as I have played tight. I get a CALL from the SB. He checks the flop and I c-bet for 1900 into 2500 and after some time, he folds. (Flop was KQ6 with 2 hearts)

5. The time for small-ball is over... I raise from the cutoff with AcTd. The button calls. The Flop is T96 (with 2 diamonds) and I am not in a mind that I want to "extract value" here out of position. I decide I want to shut 're down right here and prevent a scare card from ruining my hand. I bet pot. He folds.

6. Stack is dwindling in the 250/500/50 level as I have GARBAGE over and over. I am in the BB with Ac9C when a short stack moves all in for 8k. I have 17k in my stack and without even really considering it, I FOLD.

7. There are less then 10 players to go out before the money. I have a LEAN stack, but by no means critical. with the blinds at 500/1000/125 and my stack at 12k, I could easily fold to the money. But I am actually looking to accumulate chips. 1 to my left is the tournament leader with 90k, and I have seen him pay off an all-in with a mere AJ earlier. I have JJ in EP and make it 3k. BIG STACK who has been calling lean but not trying to freeze the table, bets 11k in effect daring me to play for my stack on the bubble. As I shove my chips in, I notice we are FOUR from the money. He shows AK and after the flop I am way behind and bubble out of the 34k.

So either way, I guess the answer is 7. (or 6 if you dont count the #6 fold)

Dances with Wolves...

If I had a Cherokee poker name for the month of April, it would be "Runs into Aces". My regular Houdini skills are lost to me right now, I am I making big calls or big shoves into AA. And what's worse than running into AA in the BB? (something more obscene, obviously).

suckout sunday?

played incredibly good-decision poker today.

Lost a race, lost AQ to AJ, and best of all caught a played who could not fold a flush draw and put him all in on the TURN... He called off his stack and won.

How much of this game is simple chip accumulation and winning when your ahead? not enough apparently. But enough grousing...

I need to go play XBOX or something ('saints row bitches')... anything else.

In non-poker news, have you seen Kevin Pollak's new online talk show? Good stuff.
http://kevinpollakschatshow.com/

Anatomy of a downfall

Hoping to do well at league night, I sit down and play tight. Starting with 10k in chips, I fluctuate between 11k and 9k for a while. Then...

Raise with 66 from MP and I get called from the player on the left. The rest fold. Flop is 843. Good flop for a pair of sixes. I decide to check raise. I check, player bets 1k (pot size bet). Hmmm, I follow though and make it 3500. She smooth calls. Well, now I know I am behind. But how far. The turn brings a 2 and the 3rd club. I contemplate moving in, but decide based on the strength of the smooth call and the pot size, she would have to call. Not deep enough to bluff here. I check and she checks behind. The river pairs the 8 and I check again and she puts in a low value bet. OMG, she has a monster. I fold and am out half my stack. (She flopped a set, checked the flush board and rivered a boat.)

So now with a half stack something weird happens, the blinds are up around 300/600 now and I have 5k in my M=6 stack. The UTG limps! now what I noticed at this table is that after two limpers, no one but me even "punished", so everyone would just limp along. and me with 9Ts. ok, I limp and 3 others do. 5 see a flop of TTx. Utg bets, I shove. rest fold. UTG limped with... KT!? NEVER saw that play coming and I lose with trips over a kicker. IGHN.

I found that spot hard to deal with, I had the blinds in two hands, and thus I could say that I could raise there with 9Ts for a steal, stop and go. But with only 5k, and my raise to what, 2k? I am committed anyway. But 5k was ridiculous as a raise... or was it? (I think so). I think I played it decently, so I guess I chalk it up to a difficult hand coming to a short stack. UGH no matter how you slice it.

so, today I'll play online and smoke some ribs in my new smoker... and try to let it go...

I made my WSOP decision(s)

I am going to play a $1500 event, and decided on #39. (Saturday June 20th). If you are in town, give me a holler!

I have budgeted $400-$800 for satellite events to the main event, and will only play this year if I win my main event seat.

If I do win a main event seat, then I'll end up flying back out for it. Silly, really, but that's the way it worked out.

I'm gonna win the Mookie...

That is what I was saying to myself last night as I played. I was in the groove and making good decisions. I had an above average stack and then my KK fell to AJ. Back to 1/2 of average. But instead of resigning myself to a bad finish and going to bed, I remembered what Ferguson said. "Many players give up after a tough beat. Good players dont". and I didn't.

Again I built my stack to way above average and again a major setback. AA cracked by 77.

Again I built my stack up and this time with about 18 left, a MP raised, and a short stack shoved. I have KK. I need to come over the top here. If the MP folds (which is likely) I have isolated a player who might have shoved with AK and I have squeezed extra equity out of the original raiser. If the original raiser has any hand but AA and he calls, now I have both the main pot and side pot I can win. But alas, the MP DID have AA and again I am the short stack.

Despite all this, I eeked into the final table to cash in 9th. Kudos to Blinders who somehow played just 3 hands (can you say shove and pray?) and took a stack shorter than mine and lasted past my departure.

Also of note: I stay disciplined and folded many baby pairs from early position (utg).

My biggest WSOP fear

FIRST HAND. 2 limpers. Raise with KK to 1/3 your stack. BUTTON CALLS.

FLOP is ten high, no draws. Perfect place to check and induce a bluff or shove from JJ/QQ.

Shove and easy call. Another overplay of AK. Perfect...

oops, IGHN.

Luckily for this, this was just another blogger event... But even if the stacks are $6k and I had 500 in there... Does even that make folding correct? com'on. You need chips and this is as good as it gets. Dodge 3 outs twice. What more can I ask for? (other than luck?)

WSOP in JUNE?!

ok, so now I hear that the kids last week in school is the second week in June and if I wait until AFTER that weekend, I can send the kids camping. This is harder than I thought...

The “possible” list:

1st week in JUNE: OUT. Not gonna happen. (Went this week last year ironically and played the 6-max.)

2nd week in JUNE: Fly out Wed night and Playi in $1500 NLHE event on Thursday (event # 24) (there is also a SNG shoot-out event on Wed, and additional NL 3-day on SAT and $1500 HORSE on sun) I am supposed to participate in an event this weekend AND it’s the kids last day of school, so Jen is really down on this week.

-kids go camping-

3rd week in June would offer two options, the Thursday $2k event 36 ($500 more) and the NLHE $1500 event 39 on Saturday. But, this would require at least a Sunday stay, with an extended day if you made day 3.

4th week in June has event #51 on sat (same Sunday issue as with week 3)

(And of course July 3rd is the start of the big one.)

"I run bad" Hall of fame entry

Move over Fuel, this one is a BEAUT!!!

Full Tilt Poker Game #11329770244: $34,000 Guarantee (84997658), Table 59 - 400/800 Ante 100 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:57:50 ET - 2009/03/25
Seat 1: columbo (10,053) (took one in the cakes earlier 77 vs 88 vs 22, stole my way back from 4k)
Seat 2: Ruthless2010 (47,662)
Seat 3: dlrbills (29,525)
Seat 4: socal_bettie (26,226)
Seat 5: SHIPdaCHIPS (10,848)
Seat 6: Alenkij (29,971)
Seat 7: urbanwarr1or (10,950)
Seat 8: sidknee (9,340)
Seat 9: p4tricio (3,494)
antes 100
dlrbills posts the small blind of 400
socal_bettie posts the big blind of 800
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [Ac Ks]
SHIPdaCHIPS folds
Alenkij folds
urbanwarr1or folds
sidknee folds
p4tricio raises to 3,394, and is all in
columbo raises to 9,953, and is all in
dlrbills has 15 seconds left to act
dlrbills raises to 29,425, and is all in
socal_bettie has 15 seconds left to act
socal_bettie folds
dlrbills shows [Qh Ah]
p4tricio: gg guys lol
p4tricio shows [Td 9h]
columbo shows [Ac Ks]
Uncalled bet of 19,472 returned to dlrbills

So, even if my AK loses to the 9T by some act of fate, I still have a 13k sidepot to win AK vs AQ!. Either way, profit!

*** FLOP *** [Ad Qd 6d]

OMFG. are you freaking kidding me? Really?

*** TURN *** [Ad Qd 6d] [3c]
*** RIVER *** [Ad Qd 6d 3c] [8h]
dlrbills shows two pair, Aces and Queens
columbo shows a pair of Aces
dlrbills wins the side pot (13,118) with two pair, Aces and Queens
p4tricio shows Ace Queen high
dlrbills wins the main pot (11,782) with two pair, Aces and Queens
p4tricio stands up
columbo stands up
DTaylor1979 sits down
DTaylor1979 adds 27,287

*** SUMMARY ***
Yeah, I got your summary, RIGHT HERE!
Don't even get me started on the AQ CALLING not 1 but 2 all-ins. Does anyone in their right mind put me on AJ or JJ here?!

WSOP in JUNE?!

Anyone know who is going? I am looking again at the second week of June. Here's why:

2nd week in JUNE: Fly out Wed night and Play in $1500 NLHE event on Thursday (event # 24) at noon. (there is also a SNG shoot-out event on Wed, and additional NL 3-day on SAT and $1500 HORSE on sun)

This will be a busy week for Vegas poker and I know another Detroiter going week also.

I expect the flight discounts to hit next week, so does anyone know of other bloggers going the second weekend in June?

Ups and Downs

Played a blogger tournament yesterday and it was completely anti-climactic. I don't even remember going out! For whatever reason, I signed up for the Double Deuce, which was $20 and like 9000 players.

I only had to race once with QQ vs. his AK and finally won a race. With 2300 left (pays like 1350) I have 22k and the avg is 18k. I figure its about $30k to cash...

I raise from MP with TT and the BB, who has like 17k or so, shoves. It was one of those moments where you have been playing for hours and you feel "in the groove". Its almost like I could see his decision process. It was a re-steal, plain and simple. Its probably Ax and maybe even A-rag. I was so sure...

I called and he had A4. hahahah, well IGHN. lost to two pair. Overall I was happy with the decision, but wow... Cant play for 1300 place though.

Spin That Broken Record!

My plans last night were canceled, so I dropped in on the Mookie. Since I have been running bad, I decided to concentrate 100% on nothing but decisions. The outcome was interesting.

I built up my chips slowly and eventually at the half way point, ran into someone's monster.

UtG raises 3x. Based on his range, there are alot of hands I can put him on. But I decide to call from the blind with KQs. The flop is J98. This is a very interesting flop in that is favors the bold I think. If I bet out here, any hand that did not improve or has few options can (and often will) get away. If I bet 3/4 of the pot, I can fold knowing I am beat if the player raises. If they call, I can bet again if a blank falls, assuming a draw. If I check here, I have resigned myself to folding already. Fortune favors the bold, so I make the bet and he shoves. Damn, I am beat.

I easily fold my nothing and he shows the SET of Jacks. What started as a 50/50, quickly turned into an "escape of die" adventure. Escaped instead of going broke, and now my Q is like .6 and I am not going to fold my way to anything. The very next hand I am in the BB with 44 and the same player raises from EP. Folds around to me and I expect it would be another race. But wait, I have enough chips for a steal or a stop-n-go! I opt for the pre-flop fold equity and shove. After tanking, he calls with AQ and it is indeed a race. By the time the river falls, he had Aces and Queens coming out of his ass.

Its hard wining tournaments without races, and its so rare to win more than your fair share of them. But in this case, I dont think I made any truly "bad" decisions. I took some risks, and paid a price. But I'll take that over folding my way to JJ-AA only.

Going Down in Flames

I dont know what it is about spring, but just like with last year I am a Deus ex machina of implosions. Whether its a lost race, a marginal decision, or just plain and simple having winning hands getting no action, I am zero for results as of late.

I am taking the day off from Poker. Maybe see Watchmen.

shot across the bow? (WPBT)

HOYOZA (aka Hammer Player) put the first stake in the ground that I know of...

The weekend of June 27, heading out on Thursday, June 25 sometime in the evening.
and playing in event #51. (Sat, Jun 27th 12:00 PM)

3-Day Event No-Limit Hold’em (Event 51) ($1500) [No Rebuy/Add-ons]

Anyone else want to chime in for dates?!

Skipped Out for RockBand night at Harrah's

From our drummer:

My band played in Windsor tonight. We came in 2nd. Here's my report,
also with a bit of strategy guidance for what to do if you're not a
top-ranked band. Hopefully this will satisfy everyone who was looking
for more info on the contest.

First off, I'd say that they did a great job with the stage setup and
running the competition. Every band got a bag of swag, and there was a
big crowd watching and applauding. But the cal was way way off, and
they wouldn't let us change it. This was a problem for us. More on
that later.

They had 14 bands signed up on-line, but said that some bands hadn't
ever responded. Watching the registration table, it looked like 6 or 7
bands checked in. Of those, only 4 or 5 played. It was a bit hard to
tell exactly how many bands played because the 4th band was clearly a
top-tier band, they all played on expert and scored slightly over 2M on
Give It Away. At that point, any bands that hadn't played bailed out.
The staff at Caesar's were thrown for a loop by that, but smartly
decided to just covert the contest into an open-mike night, so that
there would be some entertainment going on, rather than just an empty
stage. We took the opportunity to play PDA on expert (except bass on
hard) as an encore and scored ~1.1M, but they weren't recording score at
that point.

For those of you jonesing for score info, here it is:

1st: 2M, Give it Away, everyone on expert (note that this is a talky, so
anyone can score 99% on expert vox with zero effort)
2nd: 900K, Down with the Sickness, expert vox, everyone else hard
3rd: 600K, I'm spacing on the song, maybe American Woman?
4th: ~250K, Livin' on a Prayer

And now some stragegy. In order to win a casino weekly competition, you
need to be smart and lucky. We were fairly smart but somewhat unlucky.
In order to win a casino final or a regional, you probably need to be a
top-ranked band.

First, the smart part. Remember that the contest is judged only on
points. So you need to pick a song with good scoring potential, and
then score as many points as you can. We picked DwtS after seriously
trying out Give It Away, PDA, and Tangled up in Blue. By "seriously
trying" I mean we played each one of those songs probably 20 times at
varying difficulty levels. We eventually chose DwtS because it played
to our strengths. Our vocalist is top-200ish (in RB1 he was top-50) on
the XBL leaderboard. The rest of us are OK, playing hard-to-expert.
I'm maybe ranked about 15,000 on the drum leaderboard. DwtS has a lot
of points on vox, so that's what we went with.

We played it 7-10 times a day for the week prior to the contest, and
could consistently score 98-99% on each of our instruments (on hard)
with our vox generally at 99-100% (expert). Our max score during this
period was 1.94M, and our average was about 1.8M. We deliberately did
not bump to expert because we could only score 94-96% on expert. With
the Rock Band scoring engine, that gave us a lower score than getting
98% on hard. In fact, our bassist was on medium until a couple days
before the contest and we could score about 1.7M that way.

I have a homebrew drum kit (acoustic kit/Alesis D4/MSA-P), so I borrowed
a RB1 kit to use. It would have been smarter to borrow an Ion, because
that's what they had. I had difficulty adjusting to the different
layout of the Ion. In addition I was nervous and stressed about playing
on stage in front of people. Also, the calibration was a big problem. The audio
cal was fine (if you played in time with the music everything was OK)
but the video calibration was way early, so you had to play after the note
passed the note window. This was catastrophic for me. I right away
started missing pads (hitting where they were on the RB1 kit, not on the
Ion). Since the drum is the only instrument playing during the intro,
once I got a handle on where the pads were I couldn't play by sound
(since all the sound I had was rim-shots), and I couldn't play by sight
(since the cal was off). So I was deep in the red by the time the
guitar and bass started. I'm sure my abysmal performance didn't help
them get a good start. We ended up scoring about 1/2 of our typical
score. Our top-tier vocalist had no difficulty adjusting to the cal,
but the rest of us struggled. I had 89%, our guitar and bass were in
the mid-90's, our vox was 99 as usual. For our (un-scored) encore of PDA, we
basically ignored the screen for note windows and just played by sound.
That worked much much better, we were all in the high 90's (99 vox
again) and we hadn't practiced that song seriously for the week before
the show.

Still, our horrible performance was the top score so far. Here is where
luck ran against us. The next band totally nailed Give It Away on
expert. They were unfazed by the cal problems. They totally deserved
to win, but had they waited until next week to show up...
"Note: they literally stuck anyone on vocals, since its a rap type song. The girl just stuttered into the microphone"] -ed.

It looked like there were still bands waiting to play, but none chose to
challenge the juggernaut.

So, to wrap it up (finally, you're thinking, assuming you even made it
this far), with careful preparation you can do well even if you're only
halfway decent. Most of the bands that played were clearly doing it on
a lark. Nobody but us and the scorehero kids that clobbered us bothered
to sync overdrives or could maintain any kind of streak.

To succeed, pick your song carefully and practice it a lot. You need to
be able to maintain a decent streak (hundreds of notes for everyone but
vox) and hit 98%+. Figure out a good overdrive path. Have your drummer
use the Ion kit, so he's used to its layout. Deliberately screw up your
cal (better yet, have somebody else deliberately randomly screw up your
cal many times in different ways) so you can deal with problems.
Playing any song with a single-instrument intro carries the risk that if
that player has a brain fart or a slow start, it's hard to recover.

But most importantly, pick a week where the scorehero zombies stay home.

Post-finally (man won't he just shut up already), I think that Give It
Away (and Testify) should probably not be on the list. They are both
talkies, so you really only need 3 expert players and someone who can
make noise into the mike. I agree with the removal of Teen Age Riot
because its scoring potential is 10% greater than any other song (so
everyone will play it), but the advantage of only needing to make a
3-person band and recruit any random slob off the street (or just put
the mike in front of the speaker...) seems like it will result in the
same effect.

Good luck. You're not doomed (in the weeklies at least), so get a band
together and go.

Thank you Drummer. In poker knewz, I finished frustrated again, making a decision to push limpers off with my 20 BB and getting a call from JQ soooted who hit everything between here and Albuquerque, beating my pocket pair 3 ways to Sunday.
FEH.

Still no Cigars

A third in my league game and a 10th in Omaha (paid 9) was the best I could muster. The struggle with PLO is this: If you play only playable hands, you are always short on chips. If you play more than that, you go broke. I have yet to understand how to "keep up with the blinds" in PLO.

Longballed into a final table

Last night was Riverchasers and after a recklessly chaotic performance on Sunday (image DOUBLING up on hand 1 with DQB and still going out in the first hour), I decided to play disciplined long ball last night. My reward was with about 18 players left, being #1 in chips. Despite that, I played a hand too weak and allowed Blinders to river me when his AQ hit on the river, chopping my legs out for about 25% of my chips. Then, like all set backs, its followed up by card death. I managed to steal my way to the final table, but then Speaker re-raised me and we both had tight images at the time, so I folded that one.

By the time I made the final table, I was last in chips. Despite some pretty decent decisions, I could not finish better than 9th.

At one point, prior to the final table, our table looked like the whos-who of blogger long-ball. Tough crowd.

despite my recent setbacks, I will continue to play strong and finish this series out with reckless abandon.

Cold Deck Tournament

Here is the scenario:

Its a 3 table MTT and you are not allowed to get a hand better than AQ or TT. How far do you think you can go?

Interestingly, I learned a valuable lesson this night. Premium starting hands a not as important when the table is shorthanded, but a must when 10 handed.

Any counter-opinion?

How do you escape a set?

Its the bubble of a big tournament and you are above avg in chips. Content to fold you garbage for another 10 minutes, you have played AK so far this level. You are dealt KK and make a 3x BB raise. you get a LP caller (who has you covered) and the BB then calls. The flop is 69T rainbow.

Here is my question of the day. The pot is already large at this point. So, if you bet say 1/2 the pot and the LP raises, how often do you put him on a set vs. AT or JJ?

(Because you can't "call" at this point, the money is going in if you continue on the next street)

Am I missing something here?

This is an EASY call, right?

Table 1 - 300/600 Ante 75 - No Limit Hold'em
Seat 1: alwon (8,840)
Seat 2: SAdams84 (3,440)
Seat 3: jason jiang (15,979)
Seat 5: agent ungar (31,355)
Seat 6: vod120 (16,730)
Seat 7: Katpee (42,381)
Seat 8: columbo (16,365)
Seat 9: gbohmann (5,570)

The button is in seat #9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to columbo [Ts Th]
jason jiang folds
agent ungar folds
vod120 has 15 seconds left to act
vod120 folds
Katpee folds
columbo raises to 1,800
gbohmann folds
alwon raises to 8,765, and is all in
SAdams84 folds

[decision time] but it seemed EASY. Even if I SAW his hand, it seemed even more of a good call.

columbo calls 6,965
alwon shows [As 7s]
columbo shows [Ts Th]
*** FLOP *** [Jh 5s 2s]
*** TURN *** [Jh 5s 2s] [3h]
*** RIVER *** [Jh 5s 2s 3h] [Ac]
alwon shows a pair of Aces
columbo shows a pair of Tens
alwon wins the pot (18,730) with a pair of Aces

The reason I am asking is that these type of hands are KILLING ME.

God's will

Well, this week made me realize why religion is so popular. Its so painful sometimes to be a part of statistical mathematical variance and consider it "just the way things went". Its much easier to resign yourself to a high power's will. God wanted me to get sucked out on all week. Sounds plausible even. Yeah, I like it. How else can I explain the idea that "getting my money in ahead" is just not enough.

Well, we all know it isn't. At the same time, small ball is like Thunderdome and your Max looking for the dog whistle. If you find it, and if you are able to pick it up, and if you are able to blow it, well then you win a big pot. Otherwise you continue to bruise and bleed.



Watch out, I am so going to suckout on you. I have it coming...

Stud 8 is like a hall or mirrors

You know how it all works, but its easy to get lost.

Last night, I put up my best Stud-8 finish ever, coming in 11th of 70+ players. How? Just utilizing a razz like strategy. Never coming into a pot with cheated outs, being ready to muck on 4th if my hand totally gets a rock, and deciding pre-flop to ride trips to the showdown.

And even though its was stud-8, knowing enough to fold 238 rainbow.

Tonight is the premier of Columbo's HA on Tilt. Join me?

Houston, We have a problem...

The BBT launched yesterday. Umm, yeah. ok. Rather that talk about the deck that hit KOD so hard it left a mark in the first 3 rotations, and a brutal suck-out after the money went in on the flop that left my laptop askew after being tossed across the bedroom, I have little to say that would not be colored by disappointment.

So instead, I repeat my mantra. "Eye on the Prize. Eye on the Prize. Eye on the Prize."











for those of you who can not resist. Raise from MP, called by only a blind. Pot is $1k and the flop is Ten high. He takes the lead and bets pot. I think its EASY to put him on a pair of tens here. Second choice is 99-55. But I expect AT. I shove with JJ and he calls with 55. The 5 on the turn launches the laptop across the room. EVEN if he HAD AT here, Mrs. Columbo said the laptop had an Ace on the river when it re-entered the atmosphere. Sometimes its just not your time.

But sometimes it is, and I will be waiting...

Tonight's Premier (and so it begins)

91 days, 51 events, 1 survivor. Its the BBT4 premier and the stakes are large. For what ultimately is a double shootout with 50 chances to get the the second and final round, this is the penultimate blogger/reader series. With little more than hope, their basic skillz and instinct, and assorted box-like luck devices, the harrowing journey to climb to the top of the ladder begins.

If previous incarnations are any prediction of this series, there will be some scwabbling (sic), complaining, highs & lows, not to mention getting past the interloping push-monkeys (cough Fischman cough). But in the end, like in a political election, when its all over we'll rally behind our champion, eager to watch his or her progress in the biggest poker spectacle of the year.

Good Luck everyone. Bring the A game. Fortune favors the Bold. Never eat spinach with a stranger.