The world is full of crazies

This is 2010 right?



And we are supposed to "understand" them...ummm..ok.

I love that there are rules surrounding this drivel too.

Tough Borgata Trip

Monday was Day 1B of the Borgata $1k Double Play and was to be my starting date. It was a deep stack structure with 50 min blinds and 30k starting stack. This was right in my wheel house.

Had a fun weekend with the wife and kids at the beach (except watching the Ravens give up the lead in 4thQ to Brady) and got home late Sunday night. Wife went to bed pretty early so knowing I was going up to the B and had no work the next day I decided to play some tournaments. I haven't played any tournaments on-line in October and low and behold I made 2 final tables and had a $1k profit night...well this is a good start. Then I went to bed and apparently any good fortune went to bed with me.

Monday morning I dropped the kids off at school and went to the bank to get some cash. I only had about $600 in my pocket so I needed money for the tournaments and the cash games. Can't find my money card. SHit..must have left it at home. Reverse course home and can't find it anywhere. So now I need to go the branch to get the dough. They don't open until 9 a.m. and the tournament starts at 11. Takes 2 1/2 hours to get from Baltimore to AC. You can do the math. But can buy-in til about 1 p.m. so whatever. Get there about 11:30, buy-in and find my seat. I won't be here long unfortunately.

I decided to play a bit differently this time. I have had great success playing very tight solid in these deep stack events but the play is so hideously bad early that I really feel like there are free chips on the table that just need to be vacuumed up. Give that, I decided to play a bit more aggressively right from the get-go. Calling and 3 betting in position, floating flops where I think I can steal on later streets and making thinner value bets on rivers to try and get max value out of hands. All was going well and I had chipped up to about 35k against a super soft table in 1 level. I had even texted a buddy of mine and said that I had found the softest table ever. Then it all went hideously wrong. An older English dude opened to 300 at 50/100 and I flat call the button with KQhh. 2 other callers I think so there is 1200ish in the pot. Flop comes QTx with 2 hearts which is pretty good. He bets 800 and only I call...pot is 2800. Turn is pretty good-K. So I have top 2 and K high flush draw. He bets 2100 and I raise to 6100. He calls. Pot about 15k. River is a brutal T. He checks. Now I am supposed to check here I think as I just got counterfeited and AA now beats me. But his range includes AK, AQ, KQ (probably not as likely given he called my raise on the turn) and I guess AJ for a turn str8 (again not as likely given his bet/call on turn). Will he ever fold AA here...maybe. Will he call with worse than top 2...probably not. Will he fold KQ here...maybe. All in all I decide to try and bet here as mostly a bluff. He is older and older men hate "big" bets. I decide that there is too much in there to just check it back and be a wimp. I finally decide on a bet of 11.5k which puts him in the tank. At this point I am guessing he has AK or AA. Obv the former I want a call the latter I want a fold. He finally calls and shows AA. Ugghhhhh...not sure how much I like that river bet by me.

20 mins later the nail is put in me. Guy moved 2 to my right and was betting and raising a ton. Seemed pretty spewy. He has 28k and I have ~16k. Blinds still 50/100. EP player raises to 300 and two call in from of me. I call 89ss. Guy on my left calls and spewtard 3 bets to 1300. Gets 3 callers and comes back to me. I am pretty sure button is light here. I consider shoving and picking up 5kish like 95% of the time. Instead I decide to flat call and try and flop a big one....pot ~6600. Flop does not disappoint 673 with 2 spades. Checks to me and I consider shoving but with a flush draw, opened ended str8 draw and 2 overs my hand is huge and I am fine getting this in against basically any hand. I check and like clockwork button bets 3800. Folds to me and I jam like 14.5 total. Guy to my left then tanks..finally saying "I'll just take my draw and leave" or something like that...I am pissed. If he puts me on a draw he is now more likely to think my draw won't hit since this guy said that. Fucking idiot. Finally he tanks and calls with...22...are you serious sir? When I turn over my cards he says "I knew you were on a draw"...live players are a riot. Yes I am on a draw as a 3-1 favorite sir. Good soul read. Turn and river run out KQ non-spades and I am out in about 90 mins...wow. But I want to get it all in as a 3-1 favorite like every single time. His call is just mind boggling but whatever...it's poker.

Cash games weren't much better. I played an hour or so of 5/10 NLHE with no real action so I got up almost dead even. Then yesterday I put in a marathon 16 hour session at 2/5. What a mess this was. I was stuck over $1600 in about 3.5 hours. When this happens I tend to go into a mode where I don't get up until I get back to even. I mean this is 2/5 and other than 2 or 3 spots at the table the players are giving away their money. First trouble hand I played was when we got $800 in each with me holding AQss on a Qxx with 2 spade board. He had KK and held to scoop a $1600+ pot. That was basically a coin-flip when the money went in. Then I lost a dirty one. UTG blind raised to 25 as a straddle. There were 3 callers to me on the button and I squeeze AKdd. I make it 225 basically just trying to grab the 100+ already in the pot. Well my chips aren't even out of my hand and SB stuffs his 400ish stack in the middle....Sigh...this is pretty much KK or AA every single time. Oh well. I call and he has AA. Anyway I was stuck $1600 to a bunch of pretty poor poker players and this blows. Finally I went on a massive rush around dinner time last night and suddenly had over $2k on the table in front of me. Drifted down a bit until I finally packed it up about 1:30 a.m. with about a $250 losing session. Haven't had a losing cash session in a while so I suppose it was inevitable.

Get in the car and am barelling down NJ Turnpike at 3:00 a.m. when I get pulled over. Some fucking day huh? Cop is not really very pleasant and is clearly looking in the car to make sure I am not drinking or whatever. Wants to know where I am going and tell him I am going home from Borgata. "Oh were you up there partying?" he asks. "Nah I was playing poker". Suddenly his demeanor changes and he spends the next 10 mins peppering me with questions about it. "Are you a pro? Have you won a bracelet? Have you ever been on TV? What games do you play? What advice to you have for someone like me trying to move beyond small games with my buddies?", etc. I, of course, worked it hard and played it up a little bit since it seems like I may have my angle here. Finally he says "Let me go run your license but this shouldn't be a problem". Comes back and says since I haven't had a ticket in 10 years he will give me a warning. I thank him profusely and he says he wants to see me next year on the WSOP coverage. I say "From your lips to God's ears" and I am off again.

So poker comes to the rescue in the end after all.

Congressional Charity Poker Tournament

Every year the Congressional Charity Poker Tournament invites my buddy Steve Dannenmann to come and play and bring 4 guests. In exchange, he gives a little speech about poker and then fields a little Q&A/tutorial for those in attendance. This year he invited me to come along. For those that aren't poker players Steve finished second in the WSOP Main Event in 2005 as a bit of a cinderella story and was pretty well received due to his easy going personality and happy go lucky attitude. In addition, for those more in the poker know he got a lot of kudos that same year when he basically chastised Phil Hellmuth for being a douchebag and subsequently presented Phil with a gift:



In any event, we met at Steve's house yesterday afternoon to catch the limo that had been arranged to take us to DC. Well last minute a guy Steve does work with decided he could come after at first saying he couldn't. So now there were 6 of us and when the limo door was opened I realized this wasn't going to be a great trip. 6 middle aged guys piled into the smallest fucking limo this cat has ever seen driving 40 minutes or so through rush hour traffic into DC. And to boot the limo driver had no clue where the Hyatt was. But we got there and were taken to the area where the tournament would go down. The tournament was partially sponsored by Full Tilt Poker.




Obviously they are doing this to keep in contact with the Congressmen and keep on top of the issues currently being discussed in Congress as it relates to the possible regulation of on-line poker/gaming. Well unfortunately, Congress is out of session so none of the Members were present. Rather a bunch of Chief's of Staff for the Members and various lobbyists were there. This meant that one Phil Ivey who had flown in for this last years was not coming. In addition, the WSOP ME seat that FTP had donated to the winner was not up for grabs. Damn that sucks.

In any event, the tournament had started and obviously the structure was LOL. There were $100 rebuys for the first hour. 2k in chips and 25/50 blinds which doubled every 15 mins. Yes doubled 25/50-50/100-100/200-200/400-400/800...wow. Here we go. First hand I doubled up when I flopped a full house holding 85 spades. Flop 885 and bet 3 streets and got called by A high. To say this group of players were novices would be an understatement. Part of the reason that Steve is allowed to bring guests is to put knowledgeable players at each table to help run the action and talk poker. Someone said I heard you won a tournament at the Borgata which I said yes (the thought of describing a chop seemed like a losing battle with these dudes). He replied by saying he had won the American Cancer Society charity tournament a few weeks ago...Uh-Huh. But they were all nice guys and had plenty of questions. After 90 mins or so the blinds were like 1500-3k or something and I was a "big" stack with 20k in chips and I was just shoving almost every hand if the pot is unopened. Guys would limp then fold to my shoves. Pretty funny. Then a really nice guy min-raised to 6k and I told the guy next to me that he was super strong. I said minimum of Pocket Queens here. There were a few tells in this bunch...lol. Sure enough he and another guy get to the river and he tables KK. Guy next to me says "How did you know that?" and proceeds to tell the whole table that I had basically called out the guys hands. They were flabbergasted that I could see it. Was really quite funny.

Anyway with 13 left, the blinds were I think 3k-6k and we had to be out of the ballroom by 10. One problem: it was 9:30. So the guy running it said "Next hand blinds are 10k and 20k with a 2k ante". Wow that was a pretty big jump. Next hand I saw an A and bombed it for like 38k total without looking at card #2 and got called by a pair which held. Turned out I had A6.

I did sit next to John Pappas who is the head of the Poker Player Alliance http://theppa.org which is the lobbying group attempting to repeal UIEGA and make certain poker is defined as a game of skill in various unfriendly states (Washington, South Carolina, Texas, etc.). He was pretty optimistic on some legislation getting through at some point but admitted that Congress is obviously super fickle and these coming elections, particularly in the Senate, would be crucial. He mentioned how important it was to the cause for Harry Reid to be re-elected. The thought of supporting that particular Dem is pretty vomit-inducing. I am a pretty strident conservative but I really think the far rights position on "Poker Prohibition" is so silly and childish. To say grown adults can't play poker on their computers in their homes is so anti-American it is hard to believe it is really their position. We shall see how it all gets resolved.

On the way home the big fella decided to sit in the front passenger seat for two reasons:

• The thought of jamming in with these dudes in the back seat was not particularly appealing
• One of Steve's friends likes to describe in great detail various hands he played. The thought of hearing a bunch of hands from a charity poker tournament was far less appealing than reason 1

I will be going up to the Borgata on the 18th for the $1k double play then back up to give the Taj one more shot for the USPC in November. Hopefully they will be able to get their act together and make it worth a shit.

Why can't these hands hit when I am playing higher stakes?

When I am playing PLO8 cash I generally play 12-15 tables at a time. Unfortunately, since it is such a niche game there are generally only 3 or 4 tables at .50/1.00 6-max, 5 or 6 .25/.50 6-max and 8-10 at .10/.25 6-max, even less during off hours. I don't play No-Limit Omaha 8 much nor do I play much full ring PLO8 (9 handed). Compare this to No-Limit Holdem and you will find 25-30 tables at a minimum running at any given time on Poker Stars at each level. Even PLO (High only) has many tables to pick from at each level.

Therefore, in order to get all my tables going I play across all of these stakes (with an occasional $1/$2 table thrown in if the table is "good"). Obviously the higher the limits you play the more solid winning players you will bump in to. In addition, since PLO8 is such a specialized game there are more regulars infiltrating the games at .25/.50 and above. Not all are good but are regulars nonetheless. I don't really want to play .10/.25 stakes but they round out my tables and actually the play is so abysmal that a decent win rate at these tables is possible without a lot of effort. I know of one Poker Stars player who makes ~2k a month only playing .10/.25 and .25/.50 PLO8.

So the other evening I was playing my normal number of tables when a big hand popped up for me on the turn:

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo - 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BB: $19.04
UTG: $8.75
CO: $10.55
Hero (BTN): $12.53
SB: $14.22

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with A 4 J Q
UTG calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.25, SB calls $0.15, BB checks

Flop: ($1.00) 2 T 6 (4 players)
SB bets $0.50, BB calls $0.50, UTG raises to $1.50, Hero calls $1.50, SB calls $1, BB calls $1

Turn: ($7.00) K (4 players)
SB bets $6.66, BB calls $6.66, UTG raises to $7 all in, Hero raises to $10.78 all in, SB calls $4.12, BB calls $4.12

River: ($46.34) J (4 players - 2 are all in)
SB bets $1.69 all in, BB folds

Final Pot: $46.34
UTG shows 6 2 J Q (HI: two pair, Jacks and Sixes)
Hero shows A 4 J Q (HI: a flush, Ace high)
SB shows T K 8 A (HI: a flush, King high)
Hero wins $11.07
Hero wins $33.27
(Rake: $2.00)

On the turn I have about 42% equity in a 4 way all in pot. For those non-statisticians out there this is a VERY favorable situation. In layman's terms, if I told you you and 3 others could each put .25c into a hat for a total of $1.00 and that depending on the results of some random event you would receive you would receive .42c of that $1.00 on average if this random event occurred over a significant number of times. Everyone would take that deal every time. Well that is the object of playing poker cash games. Get your money in with favorable odds and see what happens. In this case, I hit a gin card and scooped a nearly 200bb pot. (In case you aren't a poker player, I am assured the high with any diamond, I get the low with any non A or 4 card of 8 or lower, I make the nut str8 with any 9, J, Q or A. So in the PLO8 lingo I have 9 diamonds which are probable scoop cards, 9 cards to scoop with the straight and 12 cards make the best low for me as well for half of the pot. Basically any card in the deck other than a paired board or a 4 and I am dragging at least part of the pot.)

But the question is: why couldn't this have happened at a .50/1.00 table for a ~$200ish pot??? Oh well, beggars can't be choosers I suppose.

September-What a wild ride

Well what a crazy month it was indeed. Now I don't play poker for a living. A few of my poker buddies say that I am a "semi-professional" poker player at this point. I guess that is right since I do have positive expectations in terms of winnings and those winnings help to pay for little things, keep extra $$ in my pocket and give my wife some extra cash for whatever. Unfortunately, I don't put the volume of hands a true professional needed to smooth out some of the variance associated with poker, particularly on-line poker where the skill level of the players is much higher than live games. My goal each month is to earn between $2,500 and $4,000 between live play and on-line. With that in mind here are the results.

The first part of the month was really good both on-line and live. I shot out the first two weeks and was up ~$2k live and about $1k on-line by September 15. Add to this, I was very close to unlocking a $1k Supernova bonus and a $1.5k VIP bonus and I was looking at a really strong month. Then it happened:



I fell of a cliff somewhere in the middle of the month. After this point I was completely incapable of winning a pot, particularly on-line. NLHE and PLO8 were equally dreadful. Whereas I had run a decent amount ahead of EV in the first two weeks I was so far from EV the last 2 weeks it was clear that Stars had flipped my doomswitch. When it was all said and done I ended up losing all my profits for the month on-line and then some...thank goodness for the VIP rewards. Here are the final tallys:

Live Cash Games +$825
Live Tournaments +$1,000
On-Line Cash <$765>
On-Line Tournaments +$100 (approx.)
Poker Stars Supernova Reward +$1,000

Total +$2,060

So while it was an up month it was a real bummer the last 2 weeks. Those numbers are actually a little better than they appear since I had investors in the 3 Borgata Poker Open events I played. So technically they had 1/2 my action or $515 and my profits should be $515 higher.

I am going to do a few sessions with a poker coach to help improve my NLHE 6max game. The game is so much different than full ring games and even at the lower levels that I play there are competent aggressive regulars. So I need to respond to those and just want to talk to a player who has won at these levels and moved up limits.

On the positive side, I did make the Supernova status on Stars about a week ago and am now going to attempt to get to Supernova 200+. Given my work load in the 4thQ this should be pretty realistic. The real value in this program comes from obtaining the status and then maintaining it going forward. I also stand comfortably in a 4 way log jam for the 3 WSOP ME seats in my league at the quarter pole.

Finally, Full Tilt Poker announced their long awaited revamped VIP players program and it was met by most of the 2+2 poker community with a resounding thud. The so-called "Black Card" program has some positives but just doesn't even come close to the rewards program offered by Stars.

Of course, Stars responded by upping the ante (pardon the pun) in their program. They now are not going to require a player to clear a VIP bonus. Rather it will be an immediate cash reward. For example, if I wanted to buy the $1,500 VIP reward for 100k FPP I used to have to earn an additional 10kish in base VPP before that reward would be "unlocked". No longer. Now as soon as I push the "Order This Item" button the cash shows up in my account. This is the reason I did not get the $1,500 bonus as there is more value waiting until the $4k VIP reward now that I don't have to clear it. Once again Stars laughs at the competition and simply provides better service, options and rewards to their players.