Sweet Hand!!!...oh wait this hand sucks

Had to try and win this pot purely to show the SB who is a PLO8 regular....

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo - 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

SB: $22.15
Hero (BB): $25.85
UTG: $35.20
CO: $30.00
BTN: $38.35

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with K K K K
3 folds, SB calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.50, SB calls $1

Flop: ($3.00) 9 3 J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2, SB calls $2

Turn: ($7.00) 8 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($7.00) 2 (2 players)
SB bets $6.70, Hero folds

For you non-Omaha players out there this hand can not improve. In other words, I have all of the K and can only use 2 of them. Must use 3 from the board so only way I am confident about this hand is the flop is AAA. Quads=No Good!

Competitive Golf Season Mercifully ends

This quote pretty much says it all. Our club championship was this weekend and I flamed out with a rather pitiful whimper. I had actually started to play a bit better in the week or so leading up to the tournament and had played super solid in qualifying round #2 in the wind and rain. Then Friday I played so-so in winning my first round match on the 18th hole. My second round match was against a good friend of mine (he actually was my sponsor to get into the club) who had won the 4 club championships immediately preceeding our joining the club. I got off to a hideous start bogeying the first 3 holes and was 3 down right out of the gate.


(we are playing the black tees obv)

Then hit it close of 4 and 5 and didn't even hit the hole with my birdie putts. His birdie on 6 and my subsequent bogeys on 9 and 11 made this thing a joke. Oh well...bad year for the golf game but with a lot of stuff going on with family, travel, work, poker, etc. I am not that worried about it. Like I said previously after 20 years of competitive golf perhaps a year off isn't the end of the world.

On the poker front things are going a lot better than golf. I have my on-line bankroll up over $1k in that little challenge I previously wrote about. I am back to playing exclusively PLO8 (hi-lo) at stakes up to and including .50/1.00. I may actually play 2 of the WCOOP events on Stars this week; the Tuesday PLHE/PLO and the Wednesday PLO8. They are both $320 buy-ins but I can use some of my frequent player points to buy in. I should finally make Supernova status on Stars this week. That will be worth some extra bonus cash as well as some other incentives that Stars provides.

I did not go to Borgata for the ME or other events. My kids weren't super excited for me to go away for a few nights again and, frankly, plunking down $3,500 for 1 event is not really a great bankroll move for me at this time. Playing some of the smaller events in the $300-$1k range is fine but the higher price events can be a bit of a strain particularly with 2 kids now in private school....ughhhh.

My WSOP league continues to go well as I finished 3rd this past Friday in the 3rd installment of the year long qualifying process. Currently I sit in 4th place though the top 4 are all basically within a few points of each other. Long way to go obviously but still nice to get off to a solid start.

I won a huge pot in my Thursday night cash game in Omaha Hi-Low with the monster hand that is 44T7 rainbow...lol. What a bad hand but I was in late position and got to see a cheap flop and the flop was 4xx. I made a bit of a hero call on the turn against a player who loves to play his draws super fast and when the river filled me up I snap called his shove as it made very little sense and I was right when I saw his cards flying into the muck before I had even released my chips. Normally I am folding bottom set pretty quickly in an Omaha game particularly when I have no low potential for back up. For example, I am probably not folding A244 on a 46x flop but would be quick to fold KJ44 on the same flop. The first hand is very strong holding while the second is really bad.

The Ravens stunk it up pretty bad yesterday but hopefully a dose of The Cleveland Browns should be the cure for that stinkbomb.

LOL @ Rex

Nice offense sir...

So far, No good

So far the BPO has been pretty crappy. I went up on Wednesday and played several events. This will be a quick recap of the goings on without my normal commentary on players:

• $400 NLHE Deep Stack-Started with 25k in chips and did virtually nothing in the first couple of hours. One interesting note; out of approximately 1,000 players two from my Tuesday night game at Steve Dannenmann's house ended up at my initial table. Was me, Steve and another friend of his all at the same table. OF course, he was doing his usual by raising without looking at his cards and then betting all the way to the river with no clue what he was holding. Certainly helped to loosen up the table! In any event, I hung around the initial starting stack and then got moved with about 22k stack when I flopped my one and only set of the 3 day trip. Holding 77 I called an EP raise and saw an A7x flop. Anyway that got me up over 30k when I got moved again, this time next to a good friend of mine from NYC. Ran the stack up to 45k then went on a terrible run of cards and was all the way down to about 22k and got moved to yet another table...directly to the left of Steve D! Very weird. At this table, I went on a nice rush up to over 60k...though one was a suckout. Guy on button raised to 7k at 1500/3000/300. I jammed 35k with AJdd and he snap called with AK...no problem as I flopped a flush...I hung around 60k for quite sometime when a real beauty came up. Blinds were 3k/6k/500. Folds to SB who completes the bet and I check with K4off. Flop comes K49. SB checks and I bet 8k into 16k pot. He check raises to 30k and I shove. He calls and shows AK and I hold to get up near 130k. Finally blinds were up to 4000/8000/1000 and I opened JJ to 21,000 UTG+1 (my first pair over TT in the whole tournament). Guy 2 to my left reraises to 70k and folds back to me. Shitty spot. He is supposed to have AA, KK or AK here every time with the occasional QQ thrown in as well. But I only have 16BB and raise folding a hand as big as JJ is really bad when you are that shortstacked. So I put them in to see KK and am out 40 or so before the bubble. Have to think about that hand a little bit and whether I can possibly fold there.
  
• Thursday I played the $230 NLHE Turbo with re-entry. Basically if you busted you could rebuy 2 times back into the tournament any time during the first 2 hours or so. Since it was a turbo the blinds increased every 15 mins rather than the normal 30 or 45 minute levels. I lasted 3.5 hours without much interesting happening. Blinds were 3k/6k/500 and I had run my stack up to about 60k. Guy opened for 20k and I jammed AK. He called with TT and held obv. I again did not make a set in this tournament and just got chips by bulldozing a few pots and trying to take the path of least resistance. But with a little over 10BB in a turbo holding AK the chips are sailing in the middle like every time.

• Friday was the $400 PLO and this was fun. Unfortunately only 91 posted so it was a bit smaller of a tournament. I really thought I was going deep here. In any event I saw a flop on the button with 3 others holding KhTc9h7d, the SB had raised which made me pretty sure he held AAxx or KKxx. Flop comes QJ5 with 2 hearts. SB pots for like 12k and folds to me. I have about 25k total. So I really am making a decision for all my chips. I either need to go with it or fold now. Basically I win with any A or 9 and I make the second nuts with any heart, Q or J. I think about it and if I am going to call a raise with my hand and smash it like this I think I need to go with it. Only thing I don't want to see is AA with Ax of hearts. So I bomb, he snap calls and shows exactly what I feared AATx with 2 hearts. Turn is a 7 which is good and river is 9 giving me the win with a str8. Got me over 45k. Got stack up over 60k when I flopped broadway and got 2 streets of value off of what I suspect was a 2 pr type hand. i also flopped Quad 7s and got some good value out of a guy chasing a str8. Finally we are down to 18 or so when a real biggie comes up. EP guy raises to 4k and gets 2 callers. I call on the button with a monster 89TJ double suited in clubs and diamonds. This is questionable on my part. My stack was 32kish and I could have gotten abt 24k in with a pot bet there. I had been pretty quiet and I suspect I would have gotten a lot of respect for that reason. On the other hand I have a huge hand that plays very easily post flop. Also I am consciously playing small ball since I really feel like I have an edge against these players. In any event I call and the BB then pots..all others fold and I stick my chips in. He shows AQJ2 rainbow. I am like 55/45 favorite here. Flop does not disappoint coming 9Tx with 2 diamonds giving me top 2 and J high flush draw. He is drawing to 8 or K that is not a diamond. Turn was a blank and river was the K of spades. Puke. So that was a 65-70k pot with 18ish left. AS it is I am out and barrelling down 95 15 mins later.

My plan is to probably go back for the end of the series and attempt to satellite into the Main Event or just play some of the smaller buy-in events in the tournament.

Borgata Poker Open Here I Come!

The BPO starts next week and I am heading up on Wednesday morning. I will be playing the following events:

Wednesday 9/8 $400 Deep Stack NLHE
Thursday 9/9 $200 NLHE Deep Stack Turbo with Re-entry
Friday 9/10 $400 Pot Limit Omaha
Monday 9/13 $400 Omaha H/L Limit
Tuesday 9/14 $340 NLHE (maybe)

I come home for the weekend to play the BCC Club Championship Qualifier on Saturday and Sunday..then return to the B on Monday 9/13. I may just play the H/L on the 13th and then come home.

The Main Event is again a $3500 NLHE event that has 2 start dates Sat and Sunday Sept 18/19. Depending on how the above tournaments go I may go back for this. Most likely I will play Day 1B if this happens (Sunday 19) since Sundays will be a day when most of the young, aggressive internet players will be playing on-line and the field will likely be a little softer.

On-line is LOL...after my last post where I wrote about grinding $100 into a little over $900 my doomswitch was officially flipped by PokerStars and I proceeded to lose 12 buy-ins at $50NL (i.e. $600) in about 25,000 hands. In this stretch about half of the losses were situations where I ran under expected value (EV). All in EV (AIEV) is a variance figure that calculates what you should have won vs. what you actually won once you and an opponent are all in. For example, if I have AA and my opponent gets me all in holding KK, I should win ~80% of the time. If there is $100 in the pot then my AIEV is $80 meaning if this situation ran over and over I should expect to win $80 on average from this pot. If, in fact I win the full $100 then I am running $20 +EV. Conversely if he spikes a K and wins then I am running $80 -EV and I want to Punch a Clown. So back to the last week or so and I am running ~$300 -EV...good times indeed. I have recovered ~$100 in the last few nights, however, so whatever...just keep grinding.

You may note the blogs listed to the right...These are some of the better ones that I read. Here is the general background on each:

• DoubleFly-Mid to High stakes winning cash game player with a goal of winning $400k this year that he keeps pretty well updated. Really good blog. He used to be a wall street trader who is now living the dream as a player.
• JK-Very good mid to high stakes cash player who contributes to quite a few poker media outlets. He is on the west coast and has a goal of winning $1M in 2010.
• Pair the Board-Blog of a low/mid stakes cash player from Canada named Ronfar on Stars. He is a bit of a legend at the .50/1.00-2/4 levels and has been a consistent winner for several years. Also a Supernova Elite on Stars so he makes ~$125k-140k just through their bonus rewards program.
• Frosty-Low/mid stakes regular on Stars that is going for Supernova Elite in 2010.
• Playing Top 100 Golf Courses- Really the best golf blog I have found. Reviews all of the premium courses he plays as he tries to play all of the Top 100. I think he is up to like 95 or so. Includes photos of the courses and history as well. Does a nice review of Baltimore CC (my club) and raves about the East course which I certainly appreciate.

Anyway, check these out as they are worth a look.