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Forum: General Stuff
Topic: Poker
started by: Paul

Posted by Paul on Apr. 07 2006,13:45

I'll be playing in a $25 Hold'em tournament tonight.
I've been in a tournament once before. You guys told me to not play any hands until I had a feel for the table.
The aggressive guy (what I could tell after 5 hands) merely called, and I went all-in with A-K. He was holding 8-8, and beat me.
I was dealer, so I never to post a blind. Ha ha ha!

Anyway, I'll play slower tonight. I read a couple poker books since then, and have a better idea of what I should do.

I just hope I finish better than half the people there, though, I'd rather get home sooner than later.

Posted by TheCatt on Apr. 07 2006,14:11

(Paul @ Apr. 07 2006,16:45)
Q U O T E	I just hope I finish better than half the people there, though, I'd rather get home sooner than later.

You're... old.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 08 2006,06:31

I never had a chip lead, and almost always had fewer than average chips at the table. But I was consistant. I only lost one hand that went all the way to the river, and that was my last hand. So I did pretty well, raking in enough to keep me in the game as the blinds got higher and higher. We started with $2,000 in chips with $25/$50 blinds, but before I knew it we were up to $200/$400 blinds.

I blinked, and somehow I was sitting a the final table with something like $1k blinds, still playing consistant, but about a chip less than the guy with the second least amount of chips.

I loostened up a bit as the table whittled down to 6 players. The top 5 players got paid.

Then someone (not me!) went out, putting the remaining 5 of us in the money. My $25 entry fee would lead to at least a $50 payout.

Then another player went down. Then another.

I sat in third place.

Player #1 had $30k, player #2 had $21k, and I had $9k.

I had the big blind ($4k) and was dealt a pair of 10's, so I went all-in.

Player #1 folded, and player #2 called.

He had an Ace-something.

Nothing on the flop.
Nothing on the turn.
Ace on the river.

Paul gets third place and $125.

I stayed to watch the final two players. I think they ended up spliting the payout, because they both went all-in ($30k apiece) on the very next hand.

Anyway, I had a blast. I pretty much played Phil Hellmuth's beginner strategy all the way through, so I guess that book my wife got me paid off (I don't like Hellmuth, but read the book anyway).

Posted by TheCatt on Apr. 08 2006,09:09

Go paul!

Posted by Paul on Apr. 10 2006,09:20

I'm just glad I was eliminated while making the right move. I didn't want to get eliminated doing something stupid.

Early on, I folded when I had the big blind and the other players had just called. That was stupid.
My hand was crap, and the flop had a bunch of high cards, so it didn't matter. Still, it was really stupid. That incident did get my head back in the game and made me look like a fish, so I guess it ended up helping me in the long run.

There's a charity tournament on the 29th. They're hoping for 200 players. I don't know if I'll go or not. If my friend goes, I'll go. Otherwise I think I'll skip it.

Posted by Paul on Nov. 13 2006,09:29

I've played in five home games (for $) since then. Each game had 7-5 players.
In the first game I got second place due to someone drawing an inside straight on the river to beat my top pair with ace kicker. I outright won the next 4 games.

I've been playing Poker SuperStars II and I was afraid that the added aggression I'd picked up in that game would hurt me, but the next practice game (IE, no money involved. "Real" games involve money) I absolutely crushed everyone at the table.
I started getting bored in Poker SuperStars II so I played super-aggressive (IE, all-in on just about every hand). I was afraid that I'd picked up bad habits that would hurt me when in real games. Since I had a "real" game Sunday I played a practice game Saturday with some friends.
Since there was no money and only three players I was super-aggressive. I lost the first three games in a row. Not only that, but I didn't win a single hand and I played every hand to the river! It was miserable. (Dumb play mixed with bad luck). I grabbed a beer (a grounding agent) and vowed to play the next game well, which I did, winning it. But I lost focus again and lost the next two games.

I was a bit scared going into last night's game. I had a feeling that I wasn't going to do well. I know I'm the best player, and my friend Chris is the second best, but we've only gone head-to-head in a cash game once. I just knew that he was going to win and I'd get 3rd or 4th because I'd play too aggressive.

The game:
We drew cards for position. Chris was dealer and I ended up sitting to his left, like I usually draw. Ha ha ha! (Poor Chris) I bullied him all night long thanks to that position.

Hand #1 - I'm dealt Jack/Jack. I'm small blind. I think everyone folds except the dealer (Chris) who raises. I re-raise, the big blind folds, and the dealer calls.
The flop is Ace Jack 8 rainbow.
I raise, and the dealer gives a big re-raise, which I call.
The turn is a King and I make a moderate raise. The dealer does a big re-raise and I call.
3/4 of our stacks are in the pot.
The river is a Jack, giving me quad-Jacks. I make the same raise I'd been making and the dealer goes all-in.
I throw my cards face up ASAP and they sort of slide under one of the Jacks on the table, sorta hiding them. As I reach to spread them out the dealer smiles and shows two pair, Aces and Kings. He wasn't even looking at my cards as I spread out the 4 Jacks. The table was agasp.

I doubled up on the first hand!

We let Chris rebuy (more $ in the pool) and it came down to he and I at the end. Chris had taken a lot of chips from other players. I can play Chris (as opposed to just the cards), and he can't really play me, so I had a pretty good advantage even though he started heads-up with about 150% of my chipstack. I whittled his chipstack to make us even (I actually had a big blind sized chip lead) before we were all-in. I had a Jack/10 and the flop was Ace/10/7 rainbow. From how he bet pre-flop I was pretty sure he didn't have the Ace, but he could have been slow playing it. I tried to take the pot right there with a big raise, but he reraised. I called. There were more big bets when small cards came on the turn and river before he went all-in. By now I knew he didn't have the ace, trips, or a large pocket pair. I called, and my 10's beat his King high.
I don't know what he was thinking playing that against me.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 27 2006,09:52

Looks like I haven't update my poker report in awhile.

On the 9th I played in my monthly game. It got down to me and my friend (the aforementioned Chris). He's the second best player as far as card-smarts goes, but he has bursts where he mistakes dumb for tricky so he rarely got heads up with me.

Chris's stability has really improved, so he ended up going heads up with me that game as well. I'm better than him head's up so even though I was down at that point I worked myself up to a pretty good lead (about 2 to 1).
He was first to act and went all-in with Queen-9. I called with Ace-King.
We turned up our cards and dealt flop, which hit nobody.
The turn hit nobody.
The river was a Queen. Ugh! Now he had twice my chips.

The next three hands I played Iwas winning pre-flop but he'd catch something and beat me.
Soon I was pretty much forced to make a stand with Queen high, and he had a King high. Neither of us paired up so he won the game.

Chris claims that I was on tilt after losing on the river while holding big slick. I don't think it effected my game much. I can't do much better than play when I had the best of it.

------------

At the beach last week I only played in one poker game against my family. I knew I was the best going in, but I thought my cousin was bluffing and went all-in, catching a lucky ace on the river to give me the win.
I sort of felt guilty about winning that hand.
Meanwhile my cousin's wife was getting miracle cards. I think she had 5 or 6 full houses that game.

Eventually it came down to me and Mrs. Lucky.
I worked her down so that I had $5,800 and she had $200. Or maybe I had $6,800 and she had $200. I don't remember how many people started out in the game.

Well, with a $100 big blind she went ahead and put her second $100 chip into the pot before even looking at her cards. I called.
I had Ace high and she had 8 high.
She ended up winning.
She went all-in before looking at her cards, as did I.
Again, I was winning pre-flop and she ended up winning.
Repeat previous scenario.
And again.
And again.
Until she had a huge chip lead and I went all-in. This time her hole cards were better than mine (though no pairs). Of course I failed to connect and lost.

Ugh! It was miserable.

Normally I would have hunkered down and played her, but with eight or so family members around telling me that I'd better not puss-out, it was either go all-in every hand or take grief from my brother and cousins for the rest of the week.

I did get a little grief after she beat me, but that night they taught her to play dominoes and she annihilated them (more than doubling their scores).
Then the old folks taught her "Spite and Malice" (a card game) and she crushed them as well. That game wasn't even close.

Her luck was stupid that week. I seriously still feel a little on tilt from playing her. In fact, she sort of soured me on poker. We should be playing New Year's Eve, so I need to get my head back by then.

Posted by Paul on Feb. 19 2007,08:11

I've been playing the free games on Full Tilt for a couple weeks now. Anybody know of the quickest way to accumulate a lot of chips?

I made 29k yesterday playing the 1,000 buy-in games. It just seems like it'll take forever to get a chip stack large enough for the 1,000,000 games I see.

I enjoy the competition in the 10k tournaments, but hate having to work up an entry fee after failing to make it into the money.

Edit: Popped into a 1k buy-in at lunch and won the first hand. Won two more hands and quit before I had to post another big blind, with 9,600+ chips.
Luck + dumb players = payoff

Posted by Paul on Mar. 02 2007,10:32

I quit playing tournaments and just play the tables. despite my friend's warning that it was hard to get money in those games I have found them to be really profitable. It took me four days (maybe 10 hours?) to turn my $1k into $100k.

I play with two accounts. Once I hit 103k with my "Spenguin" account I started building up my "SavagePenguin" account. I was having some incredibly bad luck.
I hit a lucky streak just before quitting my last game where I went all-in pre-flop 4 hands in a row and came out with 28k. It really pissed some people off. The first hand I had junk (4/8 that made two pair, but the second hand I had a pocket pair, and hands 3 & 4 had aces with paint kickers. The next hand I was dealt crap so I quit.

*************

On Saturday I played poker at a friend's house (the guy who ran the $25 tournament April 7... see post #2). There were 13 players total. I'd only played with two of them before, so most players were a mystery.
Thirteen is a weird number of players, so we broke the game into two tables, and combined them when there were 9 or so left.

Game 1: I was the 3rd or 4th person knocked out of the first game. I had pocket aces against a ten high flop, and was up against someone I considered to be lousy. I got him to put a lot of chips in pre-flop, on the flop and on the turn (that put two clubs on the board) so we were both pot committed with the third club hit on the river... giving him the flush he had been chasing. No pair, no straight draw, just a flush.

Game 2: In the second game on *monster* pot had several people all-in. The woman to my right won it. If I could pick one person to win it (since I wasn't in it) it'd be her. I figured I'd be taking my share of those chips.
She ended up knocking several more people out due to lucky cards. Every time someone had an pocket A/A or K/K they lost. EVERY TIME THAT NIGHT.
Eventually it came down to her, myself and another girl. I had two big blinds, and the girl to my left had 1.5 big blinds. At this point I wanted to get second (because we only paid 1st and 2nd) so I pretty much sat on my hands. We both ended up winning an all-in hand against the chip leader, but she went out first, locking me into a payoff position. That win paid for my expenses that night.
I had a Queen/rag on the next hand, and with only a big blind left I went all-in. The chip leader called with a Jack/rag, and hit a second Jack to beat me.

Game 3: Game three I was dealt K/K early on. There was a lousy flop 8/6/4 rainbow. I was hoping for a Q/J/2 or something like that. The only guy to play against me was the guy who took me out when I had A/A that first game. He was sitting on my right, so I was pleased to have position on him. He ended up going runner-runner for a straight, crushing my kings. I only let him take half of my chips though.
When I showed my hand the table my cowboys they told me I was stupid for playing K/K because top pairs were cursed.
Someone got knocked out and I moved to their chair (same position though) to make dealing easier. This put me across from my nemesis.
Now, the entire night he kept hurting me. He'd suck out and win, or he'd bet too much and I'd fold. He though he had me dominated, and I kept encouraging his perception by praising his superior play and letting him know how afraid of him I was. Basically, I was setting him up for a big fall.
Now that I was sitting across from him I could observe his mannerisms a bit more and I picked up a tell. He had a classic "I missed that hand" tell. The next time we went up against each other he exhibited this tell. I had second pair so I pushed back. He pushed back again, and I went all-in. He called and I doubled up.
A few hands later that scenario repeated itself.
A few hands later it happened again, and I took all of his chips.
When it came down to the final two players I had about a 3/1 chip lead. It was after 1:00am and the host had fallen asleep on the sofa so I offered to split the pot with my opponent (my best friend, who's not quite as good as me, and who was my driver that night). He agreed.
It was about an hour's drive back home so I didn't get in until after 2:00am.

I had a blast. The last big game I'd played in was that $25 game in April. I'd played a bunch of small, 6 person games since then (winning about half of them... at one point I won 6 in a row). Anyway, there will be another game with about 10 players on St. Patrick's Day that I plan on hitting. I can't wait.

I guess the annual big April tournament is around the corner as well.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 02 2007,11:04

(Paul @ Mar. 02 2007,10:32)

QUOTE

I quit playing tournaments and just play the tables. despite my friend's warning that it was hard to get money in those games I have found them to be really profitable.

I've found that to be true, too. You have to place pretty high in a tourney to get a good payout, but to win off the tables you just need to find a few people who don't know what they are doing and teach them a little about statistics.

I'm headed to Vegas mid-March, any tips specifically for someone who's going from a couple of years of sporadic online play to a real table?

Posted by GORDON on Mar. 02 2007,12:48

The 40 Year Old Virgin played a lot of online poker, too.

But I've never played any poker in a real casino, just blackjack.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 02 2007,13:45

>...any tips specifically for someone who's going from
>a couple of years of sporadic online play to a real table?

1. Online poker is much MUCH wilder than a game you're going to enter in Vegas. Don't expect to do nearly as well, because people aren't nearly as loose with their chips. According to a couple books I've read, professional poker players hope to make an average of *one* big blind per hour. In the ultra high stakes game they hope to make half a big blind per hour.
Traditional wisdom is that the low stakes games were unbeatable, because the rake negated your winnings. Now that there is more interest in poker there are more donkeys at the $1/$2 tables, so a good player can come out ahead.
In the last book I read (more on that later) Harrington tells you what to do with table play, and what to do in the same situation in online play. Basically, with online play people are much more likely to call so you bet more. At a table you need to bet less because people are tighter.

2) Table image is crucial. At tables you don't get the turnaround like you do online. Not only do you spend more time with people, but you see them as people, with their own mannerisms and such. So it's a lot more about playing the person than playing player X.
Online you can keep doing the same thing over and over again and the nomadic fish will never catch on. That has it's own advantages and disadvantages. But at a table, they'll pay lot more attention to what sort of player you are, and make their play accordingly. Again, that has advantages and disadvantages.

3) You're going to be nervous at first, so I recommend playing like a rock the first hour. Maybe the first two or even three hours (casinos are scarier than home games). You're going to be afraid of making mistakes, and you're pretty much only going to be able to concentrate on playing your cards at first (as opposed to playing people), so plan on only playing your cards like a tight-ass that first hour until you're relaxed *and* have a feel for the players.
During that first hour or so, let people scare you off pots if you're at all unsure (even expose your cards if you had something big, but iffy), only play top ten hands (pairs above 7, AQ, & AK), etc.
Every time you fold, use that time to watch your opponents.
After you feel comfortable, and feel that you can play against the people rather than just the cards, you can loosen up your play.
A big bonus at this point is that by now they've categorized you as someone who only plays big hands, so they're going to give your action a lot of respect. That means you can scare them off.
Remember back when I told you to let yourself get bluffed off hands? Well your opponents are going to remember you as someone who can be chased off a pot long after you allow yourself to get chased off a pot., so now you can challenge them on their steal attempts and take their chips.

4) < Caro's Book of Tells > is an excellent book. It's easy to read. Tells are *not* the silver bullet in poker. Even if you pick up a tell you are rarely in a position to use it because of the other players involved. But really, if just *one* situation arises where a tell allows you to win a pot, avoid making a big bet, the book will pay for itself.
The book is pretty easy to read. I think there are only 21 tells in the book, and some aren't applicable to Hold'em.
The book was also really good at making me aware of my own tells, so I can fix them. Several times I thought "hey, I do that!" One time I actually laughed out loud because he described something my friend did, that I didn't connect with a tell until that moment.
So anyway, I recommend that book. I read it twice.
My only complaints are that I couldn't figure out what was going on in some of the pictures in the quiz at the end. For example, I couldn't tell that "she looked at her chip stack quickly before making a bet" so I got the question wrong. In other parts of the book the action is described, so you can tell what the photos mean.
(Note: If you buy the book from that link I get a cut)

5) I really enjoyed Harrington on Poker Volume I. It a lot more complex than the Caro book. He expects you to know a lot more. It's something you'll want to concentrate on to digest fully. I guess you could say the theme of the book is making plays that you have the correct odds to make, and allowing your opponents to make plays that they don't have the correct odds to make. He'll tell you how much to bet (as either a multiple of the big blind or as a percentage of the pot) in certain situations. Each chapter is followed by a series of quizzes to test what you've learned.
I learned a lot about the odds, about isolation, about the gap concept, forcing people out, etc. from this book. It's the best poker book I've read so far.
It's meaty, but you should be able to get through it by the time you hit Vegas. I'm reading it for the second time right now. When I'm done I'll get Volume II.
While Harrington's book is about tournament play, it covers the first part of tournament play, which is very similar to to table play. Now, the later stages of tournaments are a *lot* different than table play. The end of tournaments require aggression because you need chips before the monstrous blinds eat you alive. You grind out your winnings at tables games, seldom (if ever) going all-in, because you don't have to worry about rising blinds making you short stacked.

6) I remember reading some stuff in Phil Gordon's book about table games in Vegas. Dress nice. When you go to a poker room the tables will be full. You put your name on a waiting list and they'll call you when there's an opening. You do not get to pick your seat, but if a seat opens at your table you can move there.
When you sit at a new seat you can't play until you post the equivalent of a big blind.
You can tip the maître d' (or whatever the job title it is of the person who puts you at a table) when you sign up. It doesn't guarantee you a good seat, but it can't hurt.
Many professionals have good relationships with the maître d's, thereby getting seats at good tables, and having suckers delivered to their tables. I don't think you need to worry about being delivered to the wolves in low-limit game rooms though.
In a lot of poker games it's a game of sticking it to the fish. That is, the good guys sit around and try not to tangle with each other too much. They concentrate on getting chips from the noobs who are taking a break from their conference and want to try the game they saw on TV. To these noobs, poker is a game about big risk and big bluffs. Remember what I said earlier about table games being different from the late stages of a tournament? The guy on TV does that because he *must* accumulate a lot of chips quickly. Playing like that at table game will win you a lot of small pots (thereby boosting your confidence and encouraging more wild play) before crushing you when someone gets a big hand. (Then these people go back and tell their friends their bad beat story about how the were winning pot after pot until they flopped top pair and lost all their chips.).

* * * *

Any specific you want to know? If you want to talk about specific tells, ask in a private forum, as I don't I won't post them in for the world to see.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 02 2007,17:01

That was good, and answered most of my questions, actually. I'm already a pretty tight player - even online (my average is to pony up to see the flop about once every round past the big blind, and half the time I do it's because no one raised on my big blind anyway) - so my key will be learning how to get away with bluffing every now and then and loosen up a bit. And of course to read players in the flesh, as all my experience is about watching betting patterns.

Although, I don't have much of a stake, so maybe I should stick to craps.

Posted by unkbill on Mar. 03 2007,13:05

Tells could be used to someones advantage. I was told that I crossed my arms when I bluffed. I screwed my nephew a few times with my fake tell.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 03 2007,15:55

I used to play a couple of times a year at company retreats a few years back (back before Hold'em became so popular). I was never serious about it, but there were a couple of serious players there and they told me at the time that I was a mess of tells. I tend to fidget so much that every hand I was giving off tells regardless of what I had, and thus was unreadable.

Don't know if that's still true, though. I guess I'll find out.

Posted by TheCatt on Mar. 03 2007,17:29

I've always given fake tells of varying degrees of subtlety.

I have no idea if they work or not, cuz the people I play with are so bad it generally doesnt matter.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 04 2007,15:55

There are two types of tells, intentional and "tells from actors" (as Caro calls them).

Unintentional tells are things like trembling hands, or when your foot's been tapping all night then suddenly stops when you're interested in a hand.

Tells from actors are things like acting stong when you're weak, or acting weak when you are strong. You want your opponant to see you and make a wrong decision based on that information.

If someone is acting strong:
Are they doing it because they're strong and don't know any better? (Because they're not even thinking about tells)
Are they doing it because they are weak and want to scare you? (For example, they want you to fold your superior hand)
Are they doing it because they're strong and figure you'll apply the "stong means weak" tell? (For example, going all-in to appear to be overbetting when they really have the nuts)

Caro's book gives advice on figuring out if it's a false tell or not.

Against amateurs, acting strong when you're weak and weak when you're strong works. But when I'm against my friend (who has read Caro's book), I know he's looking for tells so I give him a lot of conflicting tells. If I catch myself giving a tell, I'll give another, then another, all leading to different conclusions.

For example, I had (and still slip and do it) a habit of taking a drink to hide my smile when I had a good hand (he had the same tell, and I picked that up before reading the book). Now that he knows about that tell, I'll do that "drink to hide my face" move a lot when I'm against him. So if I slip and do it he can't tell if it's real or not. I'll also do a lot of "acting weak" and "actiong strong" tells during the same hand. So really, hopefully he's getting too many signals to pick out a correct one.

Posted by unkbill on Mar. 04 2007,17:57

(TheCatt @ Mar. 03 2007,17:29)

QUOTE

I've always given fake tells of varying degrees of subtlety.

I have no idea if they work or not, cuz the people I play with are so bad it generally doesnt matter.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance. Baffle them with Bullshit!
Sounds like it would work to me.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 06 2007,12:13

I had been spewing chips all week long. I lost a ton of chips because I'd play stupid. I didn't have any incentive, and losing a 2k buy-in just wasn't painful.

After work I decided to just hit the 100/200 game. The max buy-in is $20k. Last week I had over 70k, and I couldn't afford to the full 20k buy-in when I started a second concurrent game.

I played such high stakes to force myself to pay attention, so I could do well. I played about 15 minutes and lost thousands more in chips. But I could tell that there was a lot of easy money to be made in that game if I could persevere.

When I got home I logged in and started two games up. I lost a few thousand the first fifteen minutes, knocking me down to 32k. But then I got hot and brought myself up to over 87K in about 15 more minutes.

I quit for awhile, then came back and after about twenty minutes of folding crappy hands I hit the jackpot, played one hand, won, and quit with 106k.

Sweeeeet!

So if you're looking to make chips on Full Tilt, those 100/200 game seem to be the best. Just play conservative and let the noobs pay you off when you have a hand.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 08 2007,06:45

First off, I've got a game tonight. I know that when the game started in 2004 it was getting 60-80 people. I don't know how many people are showing up now. I'm guessing fewer.
I'll post a report of how I did later on. I don't have high expectations.

I'm doing *terrible* online right now. I blew 70k last night. My head just wasn't in the games.

I've got a question about showing hands on Full Tilt. If Player A and Player B bet back and forth, then Player A makes a bet that causes Player B to fold, we don't *usually* see Player A's hand. But sometimes Player A shows his hand. How does he show it???
I asked last night and someone said it was a main option. I don't see "show hand" in the check-box options in the lower left, and I don't see it when I click options in the upper-right. How can I show a hand when someone folds to me and I want to expose my cards?

EDIT: Nevermind. Found it. "To Show hands after the hand is over you need to have the auto muck option turned off. In the main lobby click Options than uncheck the Auto Muck Cards option."

Posted by Paul on Mar. 08 2007,21:57

$25 game, 70 players, top 5 paid.

Not only were my buddy and I seated at the same table, he was placed to my right.

He had warned me before the game that these people play every week and wouldn't be pushovers. They might play better than the Full Tilt freerollers, but they're in no way advanced players.

I don't think my buddy and I ever tangled.

I made a conscious effort to look for tells. And let me tell you, there were tells galore! When I saw weakness I stole pots. When I saw strength I mucked my cards. One player was pretty good, so I marked him as bluffable, and made a lot of money of him. I could have played a lot of hands without ever looking at my cards.

I made a few noobie mistakes due to nerves, like mucking a hand when I was the big blind and people only called me, having trouble figuring out raises, etc. But despite that, I was dominating. In fact, except for one time when I raised when I didn't notice that anybody else had raised, none of my goofs hurt me. In fact, I think they might have helped paint me as a fish.

Most of the time I was the chip leader at whatever table I was at.

When I got to the final table I was in terrible position, even though I was #2 in chips The good player who I had rock solid tells on was on my right, so I couldn't see him. The chip leader (who had twice my chips) was seated directly to my left. Oh, and I started out as the big blind.

In the first hand at the final table I had A/10 spades and when two people called I made a big raise. A caller went all-in and I called. She had 10/10, and I failed to connect with an Ace, so I lost a bunch of chips.

In the very next hand I had A/8 clubs, the deadman's hand. Three people called, including the good guy on my right. I called as well.
The flop was Kd/8s/2s. I could tell that the two to my left failed to connect, but I couldn't see the good guy on my right. I made a big bet. The two people who I knew didn't connect folded. The guy on my right went all-in. I had been pushing him around all night so I called, figuring he was pushing back with a just a flush draw.
He had K/9 of spades. Top pair with a great flush draw.
The turn and river were no help to either of us, so his Kings won, crippling me.

I had less than a big blind at that point, so I waited for a chance to go all-in. During that time two people got knocked out. Just before I was big blind I had K/6 so I went all-in, and lost to someone who flopped a pair of sixes, putting me out in 7th place.

Game over. Since they only paid to 5th place I didn't win anything.

I played correct poker at the end. I would do the same thing over again. I know if I just folded every hand at the final table I would have finished in the money, but I was aiming for first place.

Edit: I think I can turn a profit if I that game if I play it consistently. I heard that 70 people is a small crowd for that weekly game. Had there been 75 people the payout would have changed and I would have finished in the money.
The players were incredibly easy to read. Seriously. I can't emphasize this enough. Plus I did a little acting (like acting weak when I was weak... because people act strong when they're weak) and pretty much everything went my way.
I didn't bad-beat anybody, and nobody had a bad beat against me. I lost a few 60/40's when small stacks went all in pre-flop and I called, but those aren't bad beats. All in all it was a really satisfying game.
If I can cut down my stupid mistakes I think I can get in the money fairly consistently.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 22 2007,13:52

I'm going back to that game tonight.
With the NCAA shtuff happening tonight I'm not sure what the crowd will be like. I hope it breaks 75, so more positions pay out.

My friend told me he wanted to go because he though he was on a hot streak. To me, that's a lousy reason to go, but I probably won't go next month (because of another game) so I agreed to go tonight.

I've been giving him advice and if he sticks with it I think he has a good chance of making it to the final table. I give an 85% chance that he's going to bust out and come up to me with an, "I was doing great, then got cocky and..." sort of story.

I'm really hesitant about going tonight. I feel like I have to improve on what I did last time, and being 2nd in chips going into the final table is a tough mark to beat.
It's so easy to get a bad beat mid-way through and get knocked out.

I'm pretty sure that barring a bad beat, I can make it to the final table again. I don't expect that I'll blow up or make stupid moves.

I give myself a 30% chance of making the final table, assuming 70 players. I have a 60% chance of running into a bad beat that leads to my downfall, and a 10% chance of doing something unjustifiably stupid.

I'm a little afraid that I'm placing too much confidence in reading tells. All day I've been training myself to for discipline. I do everything the way I'm supposed to, from driving the speed limit to washing my hands in hot water for 30 seconds.
I bought a Sobe energy drink that I'm going to hit in a few minutes and I'll have a PayDay in my pocket in case I need a pick-me-up. I doubt I'll even think about it though.

After work I'll go home to change. I always wear a nice, long sleeve shirt to serious poker games. It's part of my ritual. Long sleeves hide my arms, and in a way offer a bit of psychological protection.
Plus, dressing nice sets up the image that I'm trying to convey. Image is a great tool.

Wish me luck, though I hope I play in a way that I don't need it.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 22 2007,18:28

60% it is.

Bad cards all night. I folded a K/10 pre-flop that would have given me the nut full house. The pot ended up being a monster too... and totally loading up the guy directly on my right.

I folded my way down to 420 in chips (from a thousand), then got A/A. Lots of money in the pot so I went all-in. One guy called with K/J off suit.
When we revealed cards the guy on my right said he folded K/10.

The flop was K/10/5.
The turn was a Jack.
The river was an Ace, giving him the Ace high flush.

Crap!

Edit: I did have a suck out earlier in the night. I played A/10 (a hand I normally don't play early on) and the flop was A/A/5. I raised and the aggressive woman to my right (who was playing all sorts of crap) called.
The turn was a Queen and I went all-in.
She called, showing an A/J.
Doh! My A/10 was dominated.
Luckily the river was a King, counterfeiting her Jack high, so we split the pot.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 25 2007,00:56

Back from Vegas! On Monday I won $140 at the Excalibur. On Tuesday I lost $220 at the Luxor, then went back to the Excalibur and won $180 of it back.

I used to think that complaints about never being able to catch decent cards was a bit of a copout. Not anymore. Wednesday and Thursday I spent 10 hours bleeding money to blinds and pre-flop bids. During that entire time, only twice did I fold a winning hand (both were small cards, one that would have caught a straight and one that would have caught a flush). I played solid on the few good hands I did get and drew in the maximum possible amount of money into the pot. But it wasn't enough, and I ended up bleeding off enough money to put me $500 down for the trip.

I still had a good time. But next time won't be my first poker trip, and I'll be more willing to walk away and catch a show when things are going wrong for too long.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 25 2007,07:17

If you don't catch cards, there's not much you can do. That sucks.

At least you had two profitable days.

Where did you play Wednesday & Thursday? Different people at the table each day?

There's a $1/$2 cash game at the tournament I go to. I watched it before the tournament, to see if it was beatable. I don't want to play in a game where I'm outclassed.
They were better than the tournament players, but I was able to pick up some tells in the 15 minutes that I watched the game.
I even pointed out a guy to my friend and whispered, "he just got trips on the flop." He went all in, was called, and showed his winning hand, trip 6's. He had a *classic* tell.

I gave my friend a bunch of advice. He's a so-so player, who I convinced to tighten up, raise to drive limpers out, and look for certain tells. I groomed him all week. He even printed out some emails I sent him to read over.

He ended up winning! I left early, but the next day he showed me the $100 bills they gave him.
I told him, "I told you that tournament was beatable."
I'm so proud of the guy... and quite a bit jealous.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 25 2007,10:11

Wed & Thu I was back at the Excalibur, a little $1/$3 No Limit but mostly at the $2/$4 Limit. I did see a couple of players around every day, but mostly it was new people. And I could tell who had thought they had the best had on the flop 9 out of 10 times. It was just almost never me.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 25 2007,19:55

(TPRJones @ Mar. 25 2007,10:11)

QUOTE

I'm not as good at Limit.
The price of stupidity isn't as steep and a lot more people see the flop, so prospectors get rewarded more.

It's great being able to know when people think they have the best hand after the flop. Was I any help on that?

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 25 2007,21:00

Absolutely! And not once did I ever see anyone doing it back at me, either, which was a little surprising.

Focused like laserbeams, evrey one of them.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 26 2007,11:56

Sweet!
It's an awesome little tool to add to one's arsenal.

Someone did it back to me last Thursday and it disturbed me a bit. It was uncomfortable.
But he didn't do it consistently. I think it was mainly because he caught me doing it and thought I was being a bully instead of trying to get a read, so he was being aggressive back.

It ends up he was trying to make fight back and challenge him, because he flopped trip 10's.
I got out cheap considering though.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 19 2007,06:14

Last week I played a tournament on Full Tilt with 1,200+ people. I was tired, the game started late, and it only cost 250 chips to play, so I though about quitting after 40 minutes.
Then I became the chip leader, and decided that I couldn't quit.

Hours later I finally got knocked out, in 22'nd place. I had trip 4's, and the guy who beat me had a full house. Oh well.

It was a miserable experience. I wanted to quit and go to sleep, but I was dominating the field so badly that I couldn't just walk away.

---------

Two nights ago I played in another of those big tournaments. I think I folded every hand but one during the first 45 minutes.
But I eventually started building chips.

After the third break we were down to three tables. The tournament leader was at my table, and I was second in chips. I had 130k and he had 475k. But I kept stealing money from him. I brought myself up to 250k in ten minutes by taking his bets, never having to show down a hand. He had to be steaming.

Then he bet, nobody before me called, so I called to challenge him with my 8/J suited (hearts).
The flop was A/J/A rainbow, giving me top two pair.
He made a medium bet and I re-raised. He called (just like he always did).
The turn was a 4d. I hoped he hit that. But he checked. (With two diamonds, I thought maybe he had a 2 diamonds in his hand was was seeing if he could get to the river). I raised and he called.
The river was an Ace. He went all-in.

I had the highest possible full-house on the board.
At this point, three things could beat me:
1. The one remaining Ace.
2. Pocket Kings.
3. Pocket Queens.

I thought for a minute, then called his all-in.

He had K/K, giving him a bigger full house. Doh!

The stars aligned to take me out of that game:
1) If someone else had called his raise before me I'd have folded my 8/J.
2) If that Jack didn't come on the flop I would have folded.
3) If I hadn't been taking a ton of his chips in the last few hands without showing (so he thought I was steaming) I would have folded early, putting him on an Ace.
4) If it was against any other player in the tournament I'd still have a at least 100k in chips (average chip stack was only 65k I think).
5) If it was against any other player at my table I'd have most of my chips remaining.
6) If he had anything but the one remaining Ace, or KK, or QQ, I couldn't lose.

Oh well.

------------

Last night I tried to play some Sit & Go's online and got tromped, early on too. I kept getting really good hands that ran into great hands. In the last game, I got A/A on the first hand, went all-in (because some people go all-in with anything on the first hand, so people respond by claling with less-than premium hands themselves) and was beat by a guy with 8/4 suited when he hit two pair.

----------------

Tonight I'll be going to the big $25 live tournament. I'm hoping for 80 or so players. It'll be my friend Chris' first time there. If he plays really tight I think he'll do well.

I'm trying to get myself psyched up but it's difficult.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 20 2007,06:49

I had a good time at the tournament.

I played super-tight. I was active in two hands up until the first break. In the first hand I was the big blind, it was checked to me, and I hit top pair on the flop (9's) so I bet and everyone folded.
Then, I raised with 6/6 just as they announced the break. (This is my favorite hand by the way.) I raised 300, and I think the blinds were 100.
A lot of people called me.
The flop had my third 6. The other two cards were a rainbow, I think maybe a Jack or Queen high, with a rag.
Anyway, I bet again and everyone called.
The flop was the fourth suite/rag.
I bet again and only the newbie at the table called. (An old lady who had never played a tournament before).

Now, this lady had made a comment a few minutes earlier, something along the lines of, "It seems like all you have to do in this game is bet at the end and everybody folds to you." So, I checked the river. I was pretty certain he just had something like Ace high, and was pretty sure she'd follow her own advice.

She did.
She put me all in, and I raked in the chips. I went from 720 or so chips to 2,400 that hand.

The guy across from me said (in front of everybody). "I've been watching you. That's the first hand you've played all night, huh?"

I smiled and told him it was the second. I smiled because, that comment of his was going to beat "don't mess with this guy" into even the thickest of heads.

Even luckier for me. my two friends were on break and were behind me, watching me rake in the huge pot.

When we got back from break I went on a bluffing streak that tripled me up. On the second hand after the break I was able to isolate the newbie old lady, firing away each time. I was bluffing all the way. When the fourth diamond hit I could tell she missed it (as did I) so I bet and raked in another big pot.
She asked, "Did you have it?" and I just shrugged. I worked hard to get to the point where I could steal, so I wasn't going to admit to any bluff.

The crucial hand of the game was maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I got knocked out. I was dealt King/King and only called. (The blinds had just doubled, so I thought I was raising... doofus!)

The I-watch-too-much-TV-poker guy on my left thought my call was weakness, and moved all in for an additional 2,200. Everyone else folded.

I always lose with "Ace Magnets." Whenever I have A/A or K/K I always lose to a straight. Not trips, not a flush, a straight.
Thinking about logically I knew I had to call. He wouldn't have bet like that if he wanted to be called, so I was guessing A/J or A/J.

I called.

When he showed his King/Ten I was relieved. I was 90% to win!

The flop was a 2/9/Q.
On the turn he shouted, "Jack!" but it was another 9.
On the river he shouted, "Jack!" and it was the %$#! Jack, giving him the straight and the $6,200 (or whatever) pot.

If I would have won that hand I'd have gotten to the final table (barring any other bad beats).

Shortly after that the blinds went up to 400/800 and I couldn't catch any cards. I was down to 1,500 when I was the big blind. Normally I'd go all-in but I had 8/3 off suite. Bleh!
When I was small blind I had 10/4 off suite, so I went all-in. A few people called, but I didn't hit anything and was out in 18th (or so) place.

We were down to two tables at that point and people were dropping like flies. Pretty much if you were in, you were all-in.

Again, if I had that additional 6,200 in chips I could have stolen, easily, another 2,000 chips.

I'll get'em next time.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 25 2007,19:44

I just won one of those 315 player sit-n-go tournies on Full Tilt for entry into another tourney of 5000 players in which the top 9 players win entry into another 5000 player tourney in which the top two winners gain entry into a 3600 player tourney in which the top 15 winners get seats at the WSOP.

Okay, when you write it all out like that it doesn't sound all that impressive. But it's the first step, eh?

EDIT: On a more technical note, I've finally learned to stay tight and not blow up near the end of the tourney. And I had quite a few very beautiful slow plays that were just awesome. I can't recall one time I didn't just check or call after the flop - even when I was sitting on four fours - and they all just kept falling for it.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 26 2007,06:00

Good job on the win. 314 down, 13,574 more to go.

I keep trying to enter those, but I'm too slow. I got in one once, but lost to a larger full house early on.

How often do those things start? They come up randomly, right?

A free $10k entry into the WSoP would be awesome. But it's still cost thousands to fly out there and stay in a hotel for a week.
Every February there's < a $150 tournament > by my father-in-law's house, where the 1st place prize is a seat at the WSoP Main Event, plus $9k in spending money. If I do well this year at my monthly 80-player tournament, I'll probably hit it next year.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 26 2007,07:01

Oh, sorry, I meant to say WSOP Entry Package - it includes airfair and hotel. I think.

They seem to start pretty regularly, usually popping up every five to ten minutes or so. I've not tried to time it, but I don't think it's a time thing ... maybe when one ends they start another one of that type then? Not really sure.

But yeah, you do have to be quick. I usually get in by clicking on the tourney before it's had the chance to get off of "0" registrations, then it's click, tab, tab, space, enter and you're in.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 26 2007,08:35

I did your tab-tab-space-enter trick to get into that one I mentioned earlier.

I'll keep an eye out for those. Right now I'm playing on PokerStars for a bit. My friend played on PokerStars for a few days, then left for FullTilt. Then PokerStars emailed him and put a $5 credit into his account to get him back.
It worked... for the 4 or so days it took him to blow $5 in the penny games. Now he's back on Full Tilt.

Since I play free games for fun anyway, I'd love for them to try to lure me back with $5. Playing for rel money would just be icing on the cake.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 26 2007,10:04

Oh! I forgot to mention that I tossed $50 at Full Tilt and am now plaing penny cash games. No real news yet though, good or bad, just win a few bucks lose a few bucks, right back to where I started. So far.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 26 2007,11:53

You get a deposit bonus on that?

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 26 2007,12:04

Yeah, 100% match slowly earned as I play money pots. I think I've earned $5 of it so far.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 26 2007,12:58

This site has the "houry rate" you earn on your signup bonus.
< http://www.bonuswhores.com/full-tilt-poker.php >

Looks like you have 120 days to put your hours in.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 26 2007,13:12

(TPRJones @ Apr. 26 2007,07:01)

QUOTE

Oh, sorry, I meant to say WSOP Entry Package - it includes airfair and hotel. I think.

I'm pretty sure that Full Tilt rents an entire floor of a hotel during the WSoP. Full Tilt will be free rolling a lot of people in the main event, both amateurs and professionals, and I think that's standard practice now for online sites.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 26 2007,20:00

Played a cheap cash tourney to see how it would go tonight. 90 player sit-n-go, and I ended up 4th for seven times my buy-in cost. Not bad.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 27 2007,21:44

I got into a Poker After Dark game!

With around 25 players left I had a chance to triple up, with roughly three-to-one odds of hitting my hand. I decided it was time to gamble, so I made the call... and lost. I went from over 75,000 chips to 700. Ugh!
It was barely a big blind's worth of chips.
Then I got a lucky streak. I went all-in about four hands in a row and won them all, tripling up the first two or three times. It was sweet.
I brought that up to around 55k, about average my table (we were down to two tables at that point).

For my final hand there were 5 people left at my table, and three of us were active in the hand. It was me (the big blind), the small blind, and the guy under the gun. I had A/3 clubs and bet pre-flop, one raised, the other called, and I called.
The flop had two clubs, with a Jack for the high card I think. One more club and I'd have the nut flush!
I bet (hoping to steal) and the guy to my left called, and the guy to my right raised a bunch.
He put me all in, but at this point I had roughly three-to-one odds on my money (plus the implied odds), so I called. I was overjoyed when the other guy called. I'd either be the tournament leader, or I'd bust.
The turn failed to produce a club.
The river failed to produce a club.
I was out.
I think the two players both paired their Jack. They ended up splitting the pot.

I was eliminated in 10th place, out of 640 players (there are 640, right?).

Oh well. I'll do better in my next game. I was pretty much playing on borrowed tome after getting knocked down to 700 chips anyway.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 27 2007,23:19

630, but close enough.

And that's pretty respectable, really, only one slot out from the final table!

I usually play on four tables at once so I don't get bored, because that's when I blow up. Tonight it nearly killed me.

I was on a regular ring game and three cash tourneys, and the tourneys started getting to final tables in rapid succession. At the worst of it I was heads-up on two of the tourneys, kicking ass on the ring game, and in the last four on the other tourney. The cards just would not stop coming, as soon as I clicked one bet on one table another table was waiting for me to make another snap decision. Plus two tables were Hold 'em, one was Razz, and the other was HORSE, so the rules kept changing with every decision. That went on for about 30 minutes, and I thought it was going to kill me. I was also watching some poker show on ESPN2 at the same time, just to make it that much more interesting.

I placed first in two of the tourneys, and second in the other one, all for cash. Very cool, but the real winner was the ring game where I turned $5 into $48.50.

My brain is broken. And I've got that WSOP qualifier tomorrow. Oy vey.

EDIT: My hand stats from the ring game:

Statistics for 143 Hands

Street Saw Saw/Total
Flop 44 31%
Turn 23 16%
River 19 13%
Showdown 16 11%

Street Won Won/Saw Won/Total
Pre-flop 3 2% 2%
Flop 3 7% 2%
Turn 0 0% 0%
River 0 0% 0%
Showdown 10 63% 7%

I usually don't stay in for that many flops, but I was getting some reasonably good cards. I like that 63% there, that's a pretty good number. But the 0s on the turn and river are telling; I slow play a lot, and almost never push someone out on the way as I draw them into my showdown trap. Mwahahaha!!

Posted by Paul on Apr. 28 2007,09:53

In those 250+25 tournaments, the ones that get 1,200 or so players, I usually finish in the low 20's.

I'm starting to think that maybe I play too aggressive towards the end. I'm usually way up in chips towards the end (anywhere from first to fifth), then end up calling huge bets in situations where I'm 60% to win. Then I lose the pot, lose 2/3 of my stack, which causes me to lose much of my power.
Then I'll get in a few similar situations, either getting a lot of chips or getting crushed.

Posted by GORDON on Apr. 28 2007,10:24

You know, not to be critical or anything, but all of Paul's poker stories seem to be the same:

"I won big, I got to the last table, then I lost big."

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 28 2007,10:59

Well, there's one of two possible reasons for that. Either the tourneys Paul plays in are mostly full of people that he can easily beat but there are four or five guys that he can't easily beat, so until he comes up against those guys he does well then they get him in the end. Or he blows up at the final table like I tend to do. I think I'm starting to get past it myself, but it's tough. With so few players it becomes much easier to splash around the chips more freely, even though that's the point where you need to be on the top of your game. I'm still trying to figure out just what it is, but the type of play needed for the final table is very different from the bulk of the tourney. Or maybe it's not and that's the problem, trying to change up the style at the end when we should keep using what got us there. I just don't know. Yet.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 28 2007,12:18

I think a lot of it is luck.

All the decisions I make are mathematically correct, but with the blinds going up, betting a good percentage of your chips even when you're a 2-1 favorite catches up to you pretty quickly.

In the last real tournament I was in I lost because my K/K lost to a K/10 (I think). I was a 9-1 favorite, but it just didn't pan out.
In the real tournament before that my A/A lost to a K/J.

I avoid big pot situations early on, but can't seem to avoid them at the end. Maybe it's just impossible to do that?

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 28 2007,15:08

I think I may have to stop reporting on my progress. It's starting to sound like I'm just bragging.

So far today I sat in on a ring game with a $5 buy in and left with $30, then followed that up with dropping $10 to play the next level and leaving with $40 and then a $20 buy in to win $70. At the same time I just finished up a tourney of 1700+ players with a $3 buy in where places 3-5 got decent cash and the first two spots were awarded free entry into a $100 buy-in tourney on May 19th that currently has a top prize of $67,500. I came in first, of course.

That second round WSOP qualifier is still going. I'm 149 out of 722 at the moment, and it's going to take ages at this rate. Everyone in it is there because they came in 1st or 2nd in a tourney already, so there aren't many bad players here.

All in all, it's been a good week.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 28 2007,19:50

Just got off a Poker Aftere Dark game.
I shouldn't have even started, because I'm tiiiiiired. (Had half a dozen beers beforehand too)

I finished in 13th. I pretty much comitted suicide at the end, chasing an open ended straight. I just wanted the game to be over so I was willing to gamble.

I like your progress reports. It's good to see that you're doing well.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 28 2007,21:06

I sorted of imploded this afternoon and have been bleeding since that last post. I should quit but it's too much fun, even when I'm loosing.

I top $200 for about five minutes. I'm back down to $120.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 30 2007,09:59

Sounds like fun. At this point you're pretty much free rolling anyway, unless you go below $50.

I'd probably have popped some real money into online play if it wasn't for the game I hit every month. I think the quality of play is probably about the same (minus the idiots in the first half of online tournaments), but there's a lot more information available, and it's a lot easier to keep track of people and their habits when you can see their faces and mannerisms.

Poker is primarily about the odds, and this is usually enough to be a consistent winner. IE do my chances of winning mean that I should fold, raise, or call?
For example, if I'm holding J/8 off-suit and the flop is K/10/9 rainbow. I'll pretty much assume that someone has paired the king. I know that about 1/3 of the time I'll hit a 4 or 9 on the turn or river, so if I only need to call a $10 bet for a chance at the $50 pot I know I'm getting beautiful odds to call.

Secondly, poker is about psychology. If I simply call then other people behind me are much more likely to call with lesser hands. That is, they might call with second or third pair (9 or 10). But if I raise, people without a King are likely to fold and I might take the pot right there if nobody had a King. So even if I wasn't getting the 1/3 odds, a raise might be a better move than folding.

Thirdly, poker is about reading people. Lets say the turn is anther 9, for K/10/9/9 on the board. At this point I have about a 17% chance of hitting my straight. Lets say the pot is at $80 at this point, and the chip leader plucks two $10 chips and slides them into the pot.
Assuming nobody behind me raises, it'll cost $20 to have a chanced at winning the $120 that'll be in the pot. While I'm sure at this point that the guy who bet has a better hand than me, I know that if I hit my straight I can get him to put in a lot more chips. Maybe I can even double-up through him. So I definitely have the right odds to call.
However... replaying the situation in my head, I have to ask myself. Why did he bet so little there? Why did he slide his chips in nonchalantly instead of tossing them in like he usually did? Why is he looking away?" The answer is that he's doing that because he wants to appear as weak as possible and wants as many people to call as possible.
The conclusion therefore is that this guy has a hand that has me crushed even if I hit my straight. He bet so little because he's hoping that someone will hit trips or a straight, so that he can take all of their chips with his full house or quad-9's.

Now online some idiots bet the minimum no matter what. I can't see their mannerisms to see if they're just an idiot or if they're baiting me. I hear that TPR is a master baiter online.

Posted by TPRJones on Apr. 30 2007,11:17

I've gotten pretty good at reading people online just from betting patterns, time it takes to place a bet, a history based on cards shown, and whether they chatter or not. There's not nearly as much to read online as in real life, of course, but it's definately not playing against a void.

Plus online I can pretend to be a complete noob with tons of luck and get away with it for awhile. With so many players around "beginners luck" stays a pretty good excuse for quite some time before people start to get wary of you. And you don't even have to say anything, it's just usually assumed by those people most likely to give you money that the reason is because you're a lucky noob; heaven forbid someone might actually be using statistics and psychology to actually beat them.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 30 2007,11:38

Yeah, I use that noob trick too. Overbetting makes you look like an idiot, and gets lots of calls early in an online tournament. Later in the tournament that trick isn't as likely to work because the idiots who make that play have already been eliminated.

Online I start by playing pretty tight. I don't play unless I have a big advantage.

When I discover flaws in people's game, like their inability to fold top pair or calling to the river with crap (Occasionally someone will be too timid, but for the most part errors are due to over-aggression) I'll mark them as a target and look for opportunities to exploit their weaknesses. So at a typical game I'll have about three targets that I'm waiting for opportunities to exploit, while sitting back and letting people give me their chips when I have a big hand.

Posted by Paul on May 11 2007,07:50

I hit the tournament last night.

81 or 91 players. I only know this because there was an extra, so table #1 started with 11 people.

Unfortunately I was at table #1, and my friend was seated at my table.

Fortunately I know my friend plays tight, and he was two seats to my right, so I knew to stay out of hands that he played in.

Gordon will be pleased that this isn't another "I was doing well, then I got sucked out on" story.
My cards sucked all night.

The first hand I played was A/Q suited when the blinds were 20/40, I was in good position (right of dealer) and there were a lot of limpers in the pot.
People were playing all kinds of crap, so I raised to 250 (we start with only 1,000 in chips).
One guy called, then another guy went all-in.
Shit.
The guy obviously had a big pair. Since I had A/Q that meant that he most likely had King/King. A/A or Q/Q would have been crushing, as well. Even if he was overplaying a lower pair it would be a coin flip. So I made the right play and I folded.
The guy on my left, who was a luck-ass calling-machine made the call and sure enough the guy had pocket Kings and won a monster pot, probably making him the tournament leader.
(A Queen hit the turn and an Ace hit the river, so I would have had a suck-out win had I played.)

The next hand I played was limping in, in position, with 7/7. The flop was A/Q/J. I folded when someone raised post-flop.

The third hand I played, I goofed. I decided to try a steal with 2/3, and didn't notice that someone had called before me. The flop was Ace/4/6. The caller went all-in so I had to bail out of that one. That hand cost me another 200.

My fourth and final play I was down to 350 in chips. Blinds were still 40/80 and 2/3 of the table folded to me. I saw that I had A/Q so I pushed all-in, hoping to take the blinds right then and there. Or hoping that someone would call me with crap.
One guy called (the calling machine to my left). He had Jack/6 suited.

There was a Jack on the river.
Game over.

I got crappy cards all night and I didn't win a single hand.

I did make some good reads though.
At one point my friend made a big bet, out of position, with a shakey hand. I knew he had Aces, or maybe Kings. A lot of people called and the flop was crap. He raised again, and the guy to my left (the calling machine) paused to think for a minute.
I knew my friend had him, so I contemplated saying "Psht! Obvious value bet" to try to entice him to call.
I didn't think that'd be fair though, and if the guy had called and had some sort of suck-out I'd feel bad for enticing the call, so I kept quiet and watched the hand.
Mr. Calling Machine ended up folding, but someone else called and winded up going broke to my friend's pocket Aces.
The very next hand my friend had A/K and won a lot more chips.

My friend had some good cards, played tight, and made it to mid-way past the first break. Unfortunately he did something stupid and re-raised an aggressive player with second pair and a weak kicker. He had Q/6 and there was an Ace on the flop. He was playing a "play any ace" kind of guy who made a lot of bets and ended up going broke when he mistook the guy's over bet as a bluff. (The other guy had A/4)
I was texting, "Stephen is doing well so it looks like I'll be here a long time..." when I looked up and saw my buddy Stephen standing in front of me.
I can't believe he blew his chips like that. At least I didn't have to sit around for another couple hours waiting for him.

Posted by TPRJones on May 13 2007,20:52

Well, it was an interesting night. Midway through a 90 player tourney I was 3rd stack, and I had Q Q before the flop with some semi-heavy pre-flop betting. Flop is Q Q A, and after a little back-and forth it's head's-up all-in against someone just under me in stack size. He shows A K. Turn is A. River is A.

Now that's a bad beat.

I ended up short-stacked with 250. Then I slowly came back and won first place. So it ended up okay.

Posted by Leisher on May 14 2007,05:20

Where are you guys playing for real money online?

Posted by TPRJones on May 14 2007,07:18

Oh, we're not doing that, that would be illegal. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

But if we were, the place we'd be doing it would be Full Tilt Poker. They still accept cash US players (not sure if that will last, they claim that as a game of skill poker is not gambling, but I doubt a court will agree if they get busted).

Posted by Paul on May 14 2007,10:57

(TPRJones @ May 13 2007,20:52)

QUOTE

He shows A K. Turn is A. River is A.
Now that's a bad beat.

Wow... You got ass-raped by the turn & river.
Pre-flop you're 57% to win.
After the flop you're 99.85% to win.
Even after the turn you were 97.7% to win.

I don't remember ever getting sucked out on that badly. In fact, I don't think it's possible to suck out any worse.
Well, I guess he could have been worse off pre-flop, but post flop that's as bad as it gets.

Posted by TPRJones on May 14 2007,13:42

It's certainly my new personal record. I once had As full of 10s beat by four 10s, but this is a new high (low?). It was quite interesting.

Would have made for some beautiful television if it happened at a real televised tourney.

Posted by Paul on May 14 2007,19:13

The closes I can come to a beat like that was last December, when I played a poker game with my family. It was down to my cousin's wife and me, and she was down to one or two chips. We decided to play every hand all-in every hand at that point and she won six of seven hands in a row to win our sit & go.

That's a totally different situation though. It's not as brutal as you're situation.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 04 2007,13:50

< http://texas-holdem-lingo.com/flashcards.php >

A neat little poker tool. I'm almost always within 2% of estimating the odds, but it seems that the odds always fall within a percentage point of the choices. That it, I'll estimate the answer is 30% but the choices will be A 10%-19.9%, B 20%-29.9%, C 30%-39.9%, or D 40%-49.9%
Then I'll pick B and the get it wrong because actual answer is 30.5%. Doh!

I played in a tournament last Thursday. 99 entrants.
I just wasn't in the mood to play, and even blogged about my wishy-washyness about playing before the game.

One guy was extremely lucky. He knocked a player out on the third hand of the game, then another on the fifth hand, then another on about the 12th hand.
He had a classic "that flop didn't help me" tell that I picked up on.
Midway through the tournament I was big blind and called when an short stack (two big blinds) went all-in and the maniac called. I only had 10/4, but I figured he was calling just to get her money, so I figured had okay odds, and great implied odds against the maniac.
The flop was K/Q/4, pairing my 4. I could tell that that flop didn't help him any.
He made a bet of half the pot and I raised. Then he put me all-in.
Doh!
I figured I was beat at that point (guessing pocket queens), but I honestly wasn't having fun in the game and would have been happy to have been knocked out then. So I gambled and called.
He had pocket Aces, and I failed to hit any of my 5 outs, so he knocked me out of the game as well.

It feels good to lose to lose when I'm a dog. It's welcome change from being crushed on the river by a four-outer.

5 of us went. One made it to 8th place, and the other to 6th place.
We'll all go again in the 28th I think, and I hope to have my head in the game this time.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 15 2007,10:04

I've been listening to Adam Carolla's show on < Free FM > in the morning. The < Hustler Casino > in L.A. plays commercials, highlighting their new < Fast Deal Poker. >

Basically, it's electronic poker that you play face to face against your opponents. Each player at the table has their own screen where he/she can see the hand that the computer dealt them. I guess they can call/bet/fold via the touchscreen.

Amateurs will like it as it makes it harder for them to embarrass themselves. Good players will like it as there are a lot more games per hour.

I think it's a good idea.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 21 2007,06:22

(Paul @ Jun. 04 2007,13:50)

QUOTE

This was the toughest question yet. I only got it because I got lucky. I think I estimated "about 20%" and just got lucky picking the low side.

I'm usually about 80% in getting these questions right, as I try not to dwell on them too much and when you have to answer a specific question about the odds against two other hands, it can be tricky.

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 21 2007,09:49

The problem with it is that it's great for learning to impress your buddies while watching poker on ESPN, but in real games you only get to see your cards and the ones on the board. Knowing the odds based on what the other hands are doesn't help, because those other hands are a mystery.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 21 2007,11:33

I wouldn't call it a problem exactly. Practicing knowing your odds is good practice. If you put a player on top pair, it's good to know if you have the pot odds to call or min-raise to keep the betting under control.
So really, it's only a piece in the puzzle, but a pretty significant piece.

But yeah, the only time you'll see your opponents cards to make an accurate calculation are when it's too late to make any other moves.

When my father was over for my daughter's birthday last month we watched poker, and I'd give him the odds before the TV had a chance to put it up.
Yeah, I did it to impress him.

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 25 2007,13:45

Anyone interested in a DTMan poker game? Maybe some small buy-in, or just for bragging rights. Whatever.

Posted by GORDON on Jun. 25 2007,13:49

(TheCatt @ Jun. 25 2007,16:45)

QUOTE

Anyone interested in a DTMan poker game? Maybe some small buy-in, or just for bragging rights. Whatever.

Cake has to blow the winner.

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 25 2007,14:25

I'm going all in on a 2-8

Posted by Malcolm on Jun. 25 2007,15:56

(TheCatt @ Jun. 25 2007,15:45)

QUOTE

Anyone interested in a DTMan poker game? Maybe some small buy-in, or just for bragging rights. Whatever.

We talking some electronic means, yes?

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 25 2007,16:23

Yes.

I tried to come up with some snarkier response, but I'm too tired. On the bright side, law class is now over.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 26 2007,06:18

Where would we play?

What poker site allows you to make private games?

I won't play until Friday. I have a tournament this Thursday and don't want to play any poker until I play that game.
I plan on crushing it BTW. I'll have to get bad beat out of that tournament, as I'm in a really good place poker-wise right now.

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 26 2007,07:45

I was hoping you or TPR would have a suggestion as to the where. I dont play online, so I have no clue.

Posted by Leisher on Jun. 26 2007,08:17

QUOTE

I've been listening to Adam Carolla's show on Free FM in the morning. The Hustler Casino in L.A. plays commercials, highlighting their new Fast Deal Poker.

Basically, it's electronic poker that you play face to face against your opponents. Each player at the table has their own screen where he/she can see the hand that the computer dealt them. I guess they can call/bet/fold via the touchscreen.

Amateurs will like it as it makes it harder for them to embarrass themselves. Good players will like it as there are a lot more games per hour.

I think it's a good idea.

I'm not sure that I like this idea at all. It'd be nice if they could just keep the chip count on the electronic portion, but let the cards be real. Every poker game I've ever played has felt fake. Hell, I had never seen a Royal Flush in my life, but saw two on Party Poker.

That's a very common complaint about the electronic games, you see the big hands way too much. You can have 4 guys in a pot and two will have full houses, one a flush, and one a straight.

I do not trust electronic dealing.

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 26 2007,08:36

The dealing is fine, the problem is one of player perception. Many players are marginally more likely to stay in an electronic hand where they would fold if they were holding real cards. It's a small difference, but it's enough to have more hits of the less likely hands turn up in the long run on hole cards what wouldn't have made it to the flop if they were physical.

Posted by Malcolm on Jun. 26 2007,08:47

Why is one more likely to fold if one has physical cards?

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 26 2007,09:42

For players who started with real cards, it's more real. It's the same reason that casinos have moved to those paper tickets for their slot machines. With real coins and cash players are more likely to cash out when they are up than if they have a little slip of paper to stick into another machine.

It's not true of everyone, and it's not always true of anyone, but it's just enough of a difference to increase profits for the casino slightly. And in poker it's enough of a difference to make it necessary to use different playstyles with real cards versus electronic ones.

Posted by Malcolm on Jun. 26 2007,10:08

(TPRJones @ Jun. 26 2007,11:42)

QUOTE

So, out of sight, out of mind? If you don't see the cash you're losing in real time, it makes it easier to give more away? Heh. Genius.

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 26 2007,10:14

Exactly. And like I say it's a small effect, but overall it adds up. I think that's the main difference between playing online poker versus real-life poker, too. And it'll be a factor even in the real-life with fake cards poker, mark my words.

As to a DTMan game, I'm in. We need to find a place that'll let us do private tables. And if we want to wager it doesn't even have to be a cash gambling site, we could do a DTMan tourney where everyone Paypal's their entry charge to the winner after we're done. Plus doing it that way would let everyone pick whether they want to wager or not (announced in advance) and the highest placing wager player wins the pot.

But for cash or for fun, either way I'm in.

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 26 2007,10:25

So... does anywhere allow private tables? I remember a while ago a few of us played on Sierra's website, but I dont recall if we could make it private or not.

Posted by Leisher on Jun. 26 2007,11:12

I thought Party Poker had private tables, but I could be wrong. Maybe ESPN's does?

I thought the Sierra site sucked.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 26 2007,18:09

I've read a lot of poker books and every poker book I've read chimes in with a "but if your online..." clause because people online call a lot more hands than people in live games, and they bluff a lot more.
In addition to that you play a lot more hands per hour online.

When you have a lot of idiots chasing long-shot hands, sure there are going to be a lot of strange beats. And those are the hands that people remember.

I had a streak of getting my pocket Aces cracked eleven times before I won more than the blinds with them. That's not because the game was rigged, it's because while I might be an 80% favorite against one player, several would jump in despite my large opening bet. Sure, I'd be the favorite, but with a lot of callers it's more likely than not that I'll lose the hand.

In a live game I had 7800 and the one remaining player had 200. (This was last December against my cousin's wife) We agreed to go all-in every hand... and she ended up winnning every single hand to beat me! And I was the favorite every hand before the flop except for the last hand.

People who complain about online games being rigged don't understand statistics or variance.

Posted by Leisher on Jun. 27 2007,07:12

QUOTE

People who complain about online games being rigged don't understand statistics or variance.

That's not true at all.

I mean, let's be totally honest here, you can't prove that online games aren't rigged or broken and that's fact.

You can't prove each online casinos' code is tight, that they have perfect anti-cheating methods in place, that everyone playing isn't cheating, that there isn't any scams going on, etc.

Your statement is made on pure assumption and that alone makes it wrong. In fact, it's based on perception, which is what you're slamming others for basing their opinions on.

Sorry, not picking on you, but I'm feeling argumentative and since I pointed out I've only ever seen a royal flush online, your statement could be aimed at me. But I'm not starting a flame war, just trying to make a point, so let me break this down:

I've read articles on online gaming and how some of the best minds in the casino, online gaming, and programming worlds all have worries about the < randomness of their numbers. > In fact, I'm quite sure one of the best ones I read was in a Sports Illustrated where they actually talked about how their system wasn't truly random, but was pretty close.

"Pretty close" isn't random.

We'll start off with the common slot machine. Slot machines ARE rigged, it's just that simple. Everyone knows that they're rigged, but they play them hoping that they play that machine just in time for when it's been rigged to pay off.

Now considering the house "tweaks" EVERY game so that they have the best odds of winning, so you honestly think that video poker/blackjack/etc. are setup to be perfectly random? The odds are that they aren't. A casino CANNOT take the chance that a video poker machine will hit a run of say 10 royal flushes in a row. If that were a possibility, the casino would not stock video card games.

Look at blackjack. Notice that casinos are going to single decks instead of multi-desk shoes? It's because it gives the house better odds.

Head to Vegas sometime and see how cheap the casino owners are these days. Hell, they make their employees pay $5 for their name tags. They're not taking unnecessary chances with their money. (The days of the mob run casinos are over and honestly, that's not a great thing. But I'll hit that in another thread or maybe a front page post sometime.)

Now in online poker games, there's no need for say, Party Poker, to "rig" the games as they're getting their money off the top and not from people's bets. However, it would be a very simple process to rig the games so that a certain person would win hands. Do you know for a fact that no reps from Party Poker are sitting in hands and raking pots? Of course you don't. Hell, Party Poker might not know. Look at the guy who was doing the U.S. military's payroll and was taking the figures after the .00. He made a mint. He got caught yes, but it took years.

The point is there are a lot more opportunities to steal or cheat the system online than there are in a home game.

And that brings me to my final point, cheaters. They're there whether you want to believe it or not. Video game companies deal with cheaters all the time and despite their best efforts, people are still able to cheat. So have online gaming companies found some magic code that's immune to cheaters? No, of course they haven't. Have they caught them all? Also, a big NO.

So they're out there and they're cheating. It could be as simple as two friends playing in one room together and informing each other of what they have, but it's still cheating and it's lower your odds of winning.

All that being said, I enjoy online play and trust it enough to throw some money in, but I don't believe for a second that the system is perfect. I've played

Posted by Malcolm on Jun. 27 2007,07:33

QUOTE

"Pretty close" isn't random.

Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you.

QUOTE

So have online gaming companies found some magic code that's immune to cheaters? No, of course they haven't.

You're comparing a MMOG to an electronic poker game? Come on, that's not even remotely fair.

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 27 2007,07:38

QUOTE

I mean, let's be totally honest here, you can't prove that online games aren't rigged or broken and that's fact.

In the same vein, you can't prove that casino dealt poker isn't rigged, either. Trick deals, rigged decks, and the like are all possible as only the casino itself is policing itself on a daily basis. And those automatic shufflers could be rigged with tiny cameras and programmed to set the deck any way they wanted. And I'm sure there's also cheaters, too.

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 27 2007,08:23

(Malcolm @ Jun. 27 2007,10:33)

QUOTE

"Pretty close" isn't random.

Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you.

Well, computers can use hardware random number generators that are truly random.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 27 2007,09:39

From what I've read, online randomization is based on the time that the game starts, to the millisecond, along with other factors. So even if you knew knew wrote the software, you'd never figure out what cards were coming by the time the game ended.

I have seen studies taken from people's logs in games (millions of hands), and none show that cards tend to be better than what a random dealing shows. I think BMM Test Labs does most poker sites, because they pay BMM to, because they want to assure their customers that the fluke hands are just flukes. BMM Test Labs also does several state lotteries.
Since online gaming sites depend on people trusting them, it would be devastating to their business if they were found to stack the deck to promote more action. Poker is very lucrative for them.
They get plenty of $ from the 5% rake. In fact, unless you're using a rakeback system (usually recovering 30% of your rake) a winning player could easily be losing more than half of his winnings to the rake, because to win $100 you often win and lose $10 dozens and dozens of times along the way, and you pay 5% each time you win.

Here's an example of how lucerative the rakes are.

QUOTE

I played 59,375 hands of $5/$10 at the same site. My winrate was 0.24 bb/100 (and the games weren't all that much harder… isn't variance great?) I earned $1,450.14 in this stretch, and I paid $11,699.00 in rake. Yes, that's right. I paid rake at a rate of about 1.94bb/100; therefore my winrate before rake was 2.18bb/100. In this case, as a marginal winner, I was actually paying back 89% of my winnings to the rake!!!

Now, with a rakeback deal in place (Absolute Poker will pay back 30% of your rake if you sign up ahead of time, and Full Tilt will pay you back 27% if you sign up ahead of time) he'd have gotten $3,500 back, but that's still a big profit for the poker site.

As far as anonymity of cards go, I think you know less about the cards online than at a home game. I've seen the bottom cards countless times when the dealer has shuffled the cards. Also, there's close to zero chance of the dealer accidentally exposing your cards, or accidentally mucking them, or the dealer being a crook and stacking the deck.

The biggest flaw I see in online poker is collusion. A table could have two or three people at it, all teaming up, sharing information. It'd be really easy to do.
I think for the most part brick & mortar casinos try to prevent this, but it's not always the case. I know in Phil Gordon's book he mentioned a story about going to a casino and one of the managers (a friend of Phil's) tapped him on the shoulder to talk to him. He told Phil something like, "You don't want to play in this game. They're all working together." I guess that card room didn't care as long as they were getting their rake.
Negreanu also tells a story in his blog about two people who played the casino where he "worked." (He played in that casino the same 8 hours every day, 5 days a week along with Evelyn Ng). He said it was widely known that the two players were in collusion, and used it to his advantage by bailing out of pots when one of them would limp in to sweeten the pot for the other.

Posted by Malcolm on Jun. 27 2007,10:02

(TheCatt @ Jun. 27 2007,10:23)

QUOTE

(Malcolm @ Jun. 27 2007,10:33)

QUOTE

"Pretty close" isn't random.

Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you.

Well, computers can use hardware random number generators that are truly random.

I suppose, but I'd bet most folk just get the best software pseudorandom generator they can.

Posted by TheCatt on Jun. 27 2007,10:08

(Paul @ Jun. 27 2007,12:39)

QUOTE

They get plenty of $ from the 5% rake. In fact, unless you're using a rakeback system (usually recovering 30% of your rake) a winning player could easily be losing more than half of his winnings to the rake, because to win $100 you often win and lose $10 dozens and dozens of times along the way, and you pay 5% each time you win.

So what I hear is that there is room in the market for a <3.5% rake game?

Posted by Paul on Jun. 27 2007,10:33

Rake is actually less than 5%.
There's usually a minimum pot size before they take a rake, so no rake is paid in an uncalled pot.
From how I understand it they extract $.05 from each full dollar in the pot. So in a nickle game they take $.05 from pots of $1.00-$1.95. It's be $.10 for pots $2.00-$2.95, etc.

Plus, there's the 30% rakeback, which knocks their cut down to around 3.5%.

Still since you generally win and lose the same money over and over again, and they're taking a cut each time, that small percentage does a lot of damage. If you play all day with $100 you could be paying that 3.5% on more than $2,500 in wins despite most of that being lost bits at a time.

Some sites (like PokerStars) do not have a rakeback system other than sign up and reload bonuses. They also have a lot of players. I bet they're rolling in the dough.

Still starting a site is hard to start. There are hundreds of competing sites, and getting enough players to keep your customers happy is difficult. A lot of smaller sites pay prop players. That is, they'll give people up to 100% of their rake back to sit in short handed games, but they have to leave when the table fills up and move to other short-handed tables.
Some sites pay their prop players on a per-hand basis, but that usually equals the rake anyway.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 27 2007,12:11

I've been reading the < archives of Law school droupouts poker blog >. If it's real (and I think it is... not enough advertising or interesting stories to be fake) it's about a guy who quits law school to pursue poker. He mentions not liking No Limit, so he plays < Ed Miller's short stack strategy > so I looked it up. (I love how Allen misinterprets the strategy in that link)

He's made thousands playing Ed Miller's strategy. I wonder how profitable it would actually be now, years later?

Basically you enter a cash game with a small amount of chips, wait for a premium hand, and then go all-in. People at the table generally think that a new guy who overbets the pot is an idiot who's bluffing, or desperate and since the pot is small and can't be re-raised they make the call.
Once you win (or lose) you move to another table to find people who don't know what you're doing and repeat the process.

I'm sure this would generate a lot of chips in the free games, but I'm not sure if the strategy would work in actual money games? It seems like if it worked it'd be done to death and then it wouldn't be effective any more.

-----------------------

I'll should be at the 90+ player tournament tomorrow night. I think I'll post my results now:
I kicked much ass, dominated the table, made some great reads, built a respectable chip stack, and then lost all my chips when I was a 4/1 favorite.

Posted by Leisher on Jun. 27 2007,12:17

QUOTE

Machines are only capable of doing deterministic things. If you want to take that line of thought, then no random (secretly pseudorandom) number generator will ever satisfy you.

And perhaps things have changed since the article I read was written, but if "pretty close" is the best we can get, then no, I won't trust them. Not when real money is on the line.

QUOTE

You're comparing a MMOG to an electronic poker game? Come on, that's not even remotely fair.

Why? Every MMO ever made has had bugs and exploits galore. They're a business, that's designed specifically for online use, involves real money, and has customers who want a cheat free environment despite other customers who will cheat if given opportunity. Any cheating scandal could destroy the rep of either. Why are they different?

Oh, and FYI, almost every MMO has had scandals involving employees who altered the code/system/etc. to allow their friends favors in game.

QUOTE

Duh?

I don't discount any of that, but you're taking my point out of context. I'm not debating about where cheating occurs or anything like that.

Remember, all I'm trying to do is show that a person cannot make a definitive statement like "online gaming is not rigged."

Your statement actually bolsters my argument.

Ok, you math/programming wizards, help me understand here. Paul says:

QUOTE

Add that to this from the wiki I linked:

QUOTE

Such library functions often have poor statistical properties and some will repeat patterns after only tens of thousands of trials. They are often initialized using a computer's real time clock as the seed. These functions may provide enough randomness for certain tasks (for example simple video games) but are unsuitable where high-quality randomness is required, such as in cryptographic applications, statistics or numerical analysis.

So, am I reading this correctly? BMM is using a shitty randomization technique?

Posted by Leisher on Jun. 27 2007,12:20

I don't think the Ed Miller thing would work. What's happening to his stack when he pays antes and blinds? Who calls a guy who goes all in on his first bet? Especially if he's been at the table for a lot of hands?

He is making an assumption that he'll get the nuts on the one hand he decides to go all in on and won't get beat by the turn or river (I assume he's not calling bets).

And he assumes that someone will call him.

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 27 2007,12:58

(Leisher @ Jun. 27 2007,12:17)

QUOTE

So, am I reading this correctly? BMM is using a shitty randomization technique?

Not really. What it means is that after a few tens of thousands of cards have been dealt from the single shuffling of the deck, if you could remember them all clearly and seek a pattern you'd start to see some repeating and predictability. But since the randomizer is reset with each hand, you'll never see that problem. There aren't tens of thousands of cards dealt in one hand of poker. In fact 52 would be the absolute max, because you'd run out of cards. That's a few orders of magnitudes less than is needed before patterns start to appear.

While there are some problems with getting purely random numbers generated in a computer, the problem doesn't effect poker. There are a limited number of ways the cards in a deck of poker cards can be arranged (52!, to be precise), and randomizers are plenty good enough to select randomly from that limited set. Randomization in computers only becomes an issue on really large-scale problems like trying to add a random element to fine-grain weather predictions, where there'd be many more permutations of possibilities than in a simple shuffling of a deck of cards.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 27 2007,14:01

Yeah, it can be deciphered, but not during the limited span of a poker game.

I read a bit more on it online randomization. < it seems some sites were crackable in 1999. >

They've all switched to hardware randomization now. I don't know how that works.

Posted by TPRJones on Jun. 27 2007,19:36

(Paul @ Jun. 27 2007,14:01)

QUOTE

< it seems some sites were crackable in 1999. >

Well, nevermind what I wrote above. If the code is this simplistic, then there is a problem. I was assuming someone reasonably competant was writing the code, but it looks like that might not be the case. Ick.

Posted by Malcolm on Jun. 27 2007,21:25

(TPRJones @ Jun. 27 2007,21:36)

QUOTE

I was assuming someone reasonably competant was writing the code...

Never, EVER assume the code was authored by anything other than a monkey.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 29 2007,07:06

After being obnoxious about my positive thinking, I was the first in my group to be knocked out. I didn't even make it to the break.
At the break both of my friends were short stacked.
On friend asked me, "You've been going on and on about how you'd beat us all tonight. How are you going to win now that you've been eliminated?"
I chimed back that I was still going to be the big winner for the night, and that I've been considering writing a "How to Come Back From Elimination to Win the Tournament" book.
I refused to admit defeat. I was taking the positive thinking BS to the extreme.

A few minutes later they had a drawing. I'd forgotten about that. Sure enough, they drew my ticket! My $1 investment in that ticket netted me $46!

Then the tournament started again, and one friend was eliminated a few minutes later. The second friend tripled up, enabling him to last just long enough to finish my last beer (great timing!).

So in the end not only was I the big winner money-wise, but I was the most efficient player (winning $0 in the tournament before them).

I hope this positive thinking stuff isn't legit.

Posted by Leisher on Jun. 29 2007,12:43

You should go pro.

Apparently going pro isn't that difficult. Just have the cash to enter tournaments and by sheer dumb luck you'll do ok.

Some friends of mine have a friend who is a pro player and he's a real cementhead. One of the stupidest people you'll ever meet. Yet, he makes a living playing poker. The funny thing is that when he comes back here to visit and plays with friends and family, they destroy him.

When I was out in Vegas recently, he had entered the first tournament of the World Series and was out before the first break. Two weeks prior he won $100,000+ by finishing in the top 10 or so. He got knocked out by the Aussie.

I'll get his name for you, so you can keep an eye out when you're watching on TV.

Posted by Paul on Jun. 29 2007,13:16

Basically you're a pro if you declare yourself a pro.

People at amateur tournaments and amateur cash games pretty much give their money away. So anybody who know what they're doing can make money at it (over the long haul. Though, cash games are a lot more profitable).
Now, making enough to support yourself, that's a different issue.

The 10k events start slow. Pros often skip the first few hours because losing the small blinds at the beginning isn't important. Then they hit the table fresher than the other players, while exuding an "I'm so good I don't have to worry about losing chips" image.
So basically, players have a lot of time to feel each other out. Minor weaknesses can be exploited over the long haul for repeated, small profit.

The tournament I play in we're given 1,000 chips. After an hour of play the blinds are 50/100. Fifteen minutes of play later they're 100/200. Seeing as how the standard opening bet is three times the big blind, you *must* amass chips in a hurry. So luck it a big factor. If you are dealt crap all the time, or the flop is bad to you, you can become crippled quickly.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 13 2007,14:28

< They can flop the nuts anytime. >

Posted by GORDON on Jul. 13 2007,17:00

I've not read every post, so forgive me if this has been addressed.

I see on the TV poker tournaments that with every flop they have the percentage chance each guy has to win.

Is that possible to calculate to any degree of accuracy just depending on your own hand?

If so, then I'd play online tournaments with a laptop beside me to tell me my odds of winning after the flop. I'd just play every time I had a 60% chance of winning, and fold every other time. Statistics and variances aside... with a reliable percentage-generation-program, over time I should have a 60% win rate... which is enough to make a living.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 13 2007,17:04

No.

The only thing you could do is approximate percentages based on normal distributions. Which is worthless. The whole point of the game is that it's about the decisions made, not just the cards dealth.

Posted by TPRJones on Jul. 13 2007,21:52

You can figure percentages of making a certain hand, like if you're one card away from a flush you can calculate those odds (approximately at least, with the understanding that getting it specifically right depends on what cards everyone else had). But with no information on the other players hands you can't guess your odds to beat them.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 16 2007,09:25

(GORDON @ Jul. 13 2007,17:00)

QUOTE

Is that possible to calculate to any degree of accuracy just depending on your own hand?

The percentages you see on TV are based on knowing everyone's hole cards. So if someone plays 7/7 and someone else plays A/J, it's close to 50/50 as to who will win. But if we know that two people folded J/x and one person folded A/x, the 7/7 is a *massive* favorite, and the TV percentages will reflect that.

After the flop you can pretty much *never* know the exact chances of winning.

If you're holding A/A and the flop is A/A/7 you know that you have a 100% chance of winning the hand, because there is *no* possibility of a straight flush beating you and even if someone else gets 4-of-a-kind you'll win.
Also, if the flop gives you a royal flush you're certain of winning.

That being said, poker is a game of estimates. If there are 9 people at the table and the first person to act makes a big bet, you can assume he has some big cards. First off, he has no money invested yet and can muck his cards for free. Second , he has 8 other people to act behind him, any of which might have a good hand and play back at him. Third, he'll have the disadvantage of acting first on each additional round of betting. So based on his position you can estimate that he has a couple big cards.
So at this point you can guess that he has a medium to high pair, or two high cards (like A/J or better). Some sort of top-10 hand.

Lets say that you called his raise with your pocket 9/9 and the flop was 6/7/8 (all different suits).

This is a very good flop for you. Any 5 or 10 will give you a straight, and any 9 will give you trips. Likewise, it is really unlikely that your opponent was helped by those cards. If he had A/K or A/Q or A/J or KQ-suited or anything like that, you're a huge favorite to win.

But again, he could still have J/J or Q/Q or K/K or A/A which makes him a favorite to win.

Let's say that you've seen this guy make the minimum bet several times before, and every time he did he ended up having a good hand was was trying to get more money in the pot. But if he had nothing he'd either check or raise a decent amount to steal the pot.
Well, now your action is based on his action.

He makes the minimum bet.

Ok, he has one of two types of hands. Either an over pair (any pair higher than 8's) or he made trips on the flop. Whatever it is, he probably has you beat. However, you can be pretty sure that if a 5, 9, or 10 shows up you'll have him beat.

Now it's time to estimate your odds.
After the flop the simple way is to count how many cards will help you, multiply that number by 4.
That is, there are four 5's, four 10's, and two 9's that can help you, giving you ten outs. 10 x 4 = 40, so you have about a 40% chance (the actual odds are 38%, assuming he has KK).
Now look at how many chips are in the pot. If there are 100 chips and it only costs you 20 to call you're getting some pretty good odds to call. Sure you know you'll lose 61% of the time, but paying 20 to win 100 only 40% of the time is a quite a deal.

To further complicate things you'll probably have to call another 20 or 40 chip bet to see the last card. That makes the deal not as sweet.

Lets say you make the call, and the next card (the turn) is a 2.

Opponent: ?/?
You: 9/9
Cards: 8/7/6/2
Pot: 140

Your opponent best 40 this time, trying to extract more money from you. Now it'll cost you 40 to see the last card. 40 to win 180. 4.5-to-1 odds. Very tempting, but do you have the correct odds to call?

Now to calculate your odds of getting a 5, 9, or 10 on the river. Take those 10 cards (four 5's, four 10's, and two 9's) and multiply them by two. 20... so you have about a 20% chance of getting your cards (actually 22%). So you have a 1/5 chance of getting your hand and 4.5/1 odds on your money. Those don't quite balance on their own, but...

Now come the implied odds. Implied odds take into consideration the extra money you can get your opponent to add to the pot later. One of two things will happen.

Option #1 happens around 77% of the time = You call the 35, and the last card misses you. You fold when he bets and lose the additional 35 you'd put in. Hand over.

Option #2 happens around 22% of the time = You call the 35 and the last card hits you. He makes another bet of around 50, making the pot 210. That is, he's forcing you to risk another 50 to win 210.

Just how sure are you at this point that your trip 9's or your straight are the best hand? If you're at least 25% sure you have the best hand you need to make a call. If you're confident that you have the best hand you want to raise to get him to give you more chips.

Again, you know he remember that he likes to make small bets to keep people in the pot when he has a big hand. He's been acting like he has something big the entire time.
If you have trips or a 9-high straight, what hands can beat you at this point?
There's no chance at a full house.
With unsuited cards on the flop it's unlikely he has a flush (and it's impossible unless the turn and river were suited).
He could beat you with a 9/10, but it's usually a dumb move to raise with that hand in first position at a full table.
If the flop have him trips, you're trips are better.

No. Most likely this guy has a big pair. Maybe he's been slow playing A/A or K/K and it bit him in the butt. Maybe he had 10/10 and was hoping for a 9.

Regardless at this point we've determined that we probably have him beat and want him to put more money in the pot so we can take it.

If we hit the straight he'll know that any 9 will have him beat. If we hit trip-9's he'll know that any 10 or 5 will have him beat (with a straight). So we can't bet too much or it'll scare him off. The bet needs to be small enough that he'll call it, even when he knows there's a good possibility that he's beat.

You re-raise him 50, he re-raises to 100, you call, and he shows you 9/10 for the 10-high straight! Doh!

He made a dumb opening bet, hit the nuts, and milked you all the way to the river. All your calculations were wrong because they were based on what he was *likely* to have, not what he actually had.

Posted by Leisher on Jul. 16 2007,09:45

QUOTE

If you're holding A/A and the flop is A/A/7 you know that you have a 100% chance of winning the hand, because there is *no* possibility of a straight flush beating you and even if someone else gets 4-of-a-kind you'll win.
Also, if the flop gives you a royal flush you're certain of winning.

Now how can anyone trust your poker advice when you dispense crap like that?

Posted by Paul on Jul. 16 2007,10:28

I should have added the "unless you're playing me. Then I have you beat, so fold" clause to those examples.

The problem with Gordon's 60% theory is that at a full table of 9 people, *no* pocket hand is 60% to win over the field of 8 other players. Even at a table of 5 players:

You'll get A/A, the best pre-flop hand possible, every 221 hands, and when you do you'll be an 80-something percent favorite to win against *one* player.
K/K is not as good, but still awesome.
Q/Q is great, but anybody with A/K has you beat half the time.
J/J is really vulnerable. If an Ace, King, or Queen hits on the flop, what do you do?

If you only bet with A/A, K/K, and Q/Q you'll be playing every 74 hands. At a table of 9 you'll have posted at least 8 big blinds and 8 small blinds, for an average of let's say 13 big blinds.
You have to average a 13 big blind win each of those hands to break even.
Nobody is stupid enough to call a raise of an additional 12 big blinds when raiser sits out 98.6% of the hands unless they have A/A, K/K, Q/Q, or J/J themselves. (The J/J should be thrown away, but a lot of people can't do that.) So basically you'll need to make something along the lines of the standard raise of 3 big blinds.
Again, more likely than not people will fold and you'll win the 1.5 big blinds in the pot... maybe 4 or 5 big blinds with limpers and/or a raiser.

It just doesn't work out.

Posted by Leisher on Jul. 16 2007,10:56

QUOTE

I should have added the "unless you're playing me. Then I have you beat, so fold" clause to those examples.

So you do realize that in the example you gave (and I quoted), you were wrong?

QUOTE

The problem with Gordon's 60% theory is that at a full table of 9 people, *no* pocket hand is 60% to win over the field of 8 other players.

True, but you should only be expecting 2-4 people per hand.

Look at your example in the photo, the guy with the pocket rockets should push the suited connectors and the 6-7off out of the hand with his pre-flop bet/raise. Assuming the KJ sticks around, American Airlines has a 81% chance of winning pre-flop. Even if one of the suited connectors stuck around, bullets would still be at 64%.

If the others do stick around, then pre-flop percentages mean nothing because you're playing with morons.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 16 2007,12:19

(Leisher @ Jul. 16 2007,12:45)

QUOTE

Now how can anyone trust your poker advice when you dispense crap like that?

Yeah, Leisher's right.

Posted by TPRJones on Jul. 16 2007,12:35

(Leisher @ Jul. 16 2007,10:56)

QUOTE

So you do realize that in the example you gave (and I quoted), you were wrong?

Looks fine to me, am I missing something?

EDIT: Okay, nm, I see it. I'd still bet heavy on the four aces, though.

Posted by Leisher on Jul. 16 2007,13:06

Sure, it may be .1% chance (it is, I looked it up), but it's a chance. Plus, it skyrockets to 2.27% if you hit the turn.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 16 2007,13:36

(Leisher @ Jul. 16 2007,13:06)

QUOTE

Sure, it may be .1% chance (it is, I looked it up)

I can't round 99.9% to 100%? Crap. Don't look at my other numbers. I'm even less accurate with them.

I was wrong dead wrong by saying there is *no* chance though. It can happen if the universe hates you and wants you to kill yourself.

Posted by Malcolm on Jul. 16 2007,20:05

(Paul @ Jul. 16 2007,15:36)

QUOTE

It can happen if the universe hates you and wants you to kill yourself.

The powers that be been trying to run me outta town for years.

Posted by Leisher on Jul. 16 2007,20:45

You know, I've often sat at a table and wondered about the worst beat a person could take, and that might be it.

On a related note, I hate people who read results of the WSOP out loud. I didn't want any spoilers, but I pretty much know who's at the final table and...something happens to someone that sucks.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 17 2007,10:29

(Leisher @ Jul. 16 2007,20:45)

QUOTE

You know, I've often sat at a table and wondered about the worst beat a person could take, and that might be it.

You can really only limit it to needing two exact cards, which will be .10%. That gives the fewest possible outs on the turn and river.

Maybe pre-flop, with 10 people all going all-in, there could be worse odds? Eh... I'd guess not.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 19 2007,13:56

I tried to come up with the worst case scenario pre-flop, IE, needing four exact cards to win. The guy with K/6 spades is the loser.
Looks like the odds aren't nearly as the post-flop scenario we were talking about before.

Did I do this right?
He can't get a pair, two pair, or trips.
7/8/9/10 can get him a straight, but nor the win as 3 other people have 6's.
Someone else would get the nut flush.
No chance at quads.
His only chance at winning is the 3/4/5/7 hitting.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 19 2007,14:55

Dunno... but I guess at some point is the chance that the 5 cards on the table will win. So it's coming down to the best chance that that won't happen + chance their hand is worst anyway.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 19 2007,15:00

Hmmmm.. I think the problem with your hand is that the table has a too good of chance of winning, maybe?

Posted by Paul on Jul. 19 2007,17:50

(TheCatt @ Jul. 19 2007,15:00)

QUOTE

Hmmmm.. I think the problem with your hand is that the table has a too good of chance of winning, maybe?

I don't think they're supposed to show the odds of tying and thereby splitting the money. Just the odds of winning.
I don't have time to check that now.

7/8/9/10/J of all diamonds or all clubs would allow everyone to split.

Posted by TPRJones on Jul. 19 2007,20:46

The total here is 99.8%, which is probably not a full 100% due to rounding, because that's not a big enough difference to cover the ties is it? I bet the odds shown include ties.

Could be wrong, though, I'm too lazy to run the numbers.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 20 2007,04:20

So I came up with one last night where the person needed 3,4,5,6 of a given suit to win, and anything else would mean they didnt win. Their odds showed as 0.0%, but they could win with the straight flush only. All other possibilities were removed from their hand (straights, full houses, four of a kind, etc)

Posted by Paul on Jul. 20 2007,05:52

(TheCatt @ Jul. 20 2007,04:20)

QUOTE

So I came up with one last night where the person needed 3,4,5,6 of a given suit to win, and anything else would mean they didn't win. Their odds showed as 0.0%, but they could win with the straight flush only. All other possibilities were removed from their hand (straights, full houses, four of a kind, etc)

Are you sure you had that correctly?
I was able to knock the odds down to 1.4%, but I know I still have something screwed up because the other 7/2 I have has the same odds.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 20 2007,07:09

I'm pretty sure. I'll post it later. I think I have to re-create it first. I think the problem in yours is that if a 3,4,5,6 came up, all the 2-7's would be equal, no? You would need to force the 3,4,5,6 to be a single suit by having 7-8's of each suit out there (aside from clubs), or something.

Also, do you not need a block on the 7 going up?

Posted by Paul on Jul. 20 2007,07:37

A/3/4/5 of hearts would give one person a straight flush.
3/4/5/6 of hearts would give the other a straight flush.
Both were given a 0% chance of winning.

I wonder what the actual odds are? This one isn't as accurate as the < Cardplayer.com one >, though it allows for more players.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 20 2007,08:21

I bet Malcolm could tell us, he's all about the combinations/permutations. The question is what is the possible set of other (5th) cards that would still allow that person to win.

Posted by Malcolm on Jul. 20 2007,08:36

(TheCatt @ Jul. 20 2007,10:21)

QUOTE

I bet Malcolm could tell us, he's all about the combinations/permutations. The question is what is the possible set of other (5th) cards that would still allow that person to win.

Uh, I must've missed something in all the poker discussion as that sentence only sort of makes sense to me.

You trying to figure out if you can get the some odds calculator to display 0% for someone when in reality there is some combination of cards on the flop, turn, &/or river that would allow them to beat everyone else?

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 20 2007,08:53

Yeah, the problem is that they need 4 specific cards from a deck of 42, and then there is one more card, that can be, for simplicity, any of the remaining cards.

Posted by TheCatt on Jul. 20 2007,08:54

If there were only four cards to come up, it'd be easy, 1/42 * 1/41 * 1/40 * 1/39... that 5th card is what makes me not know.

Posted by Malcolm on Jul. 20 2007,09:47

Alright, before I can start making mathematical assumptions, I wanna make sure I've got the formal definition of the problem correct. Chances are I won't be able to get around to crunching numbers till tonight. Annoying-ass project at work will probably take me all day to get done.

Anyhoo ...

Looks like five players playing Hold 'Em. I suppose I take the role of the TV viewer, knowing everyone's hands. Since the point is to turn low probability hands into winners, I assume someone has a godawful hand. Is it everyone that gets a shit hand or is it just one person or two or what?

Next, some odds calculator says someone has a 0% chance of winning when there is an actual series of three cards (flop, turn, river), correct? Any info on the claimed accuracy of this calculator? Cos w\o knowing where it draws the line & says, "This is just too fucking low to ever calculate, I'm putting zero," it's difficult to figure out where to start from, then.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 20 2007,09:49

(TheCatt @ Jul. 20 2007,08:54)

QUOTE

If there were only four cards to come up, it'd be easy, 1/42 * 1/41 * 1/40 * 1/39... that 5th card is what makes me not know.

That's if there are 5 players. It's not necessarily five players.

What we need to figure out first is:
#1 What is the minimum number of players that need to be in a hand where (at least) one person will need to hit 4 specific cards out of the 5 community cards to make the only winning hand. (The more cards remaining in the deck, the greater the odds).

#2 Is there a way to make the "free" 5th card (the extra chance) a death card, so that if it's drawn it'd spoil the other 4 cards? That'd decrease the odds a little. But I'm not sure if it'd decrease the odds enough that an including an extra player will justify it.

#3 And finally, what are the odds of said player getting the four specific cards he needs and winning in that situation (assuming that situation is the second-least favorable... least favorable being 0%)

Posted by Paul on Jul. 20 2007,11:44

If that "5th card" is a 7h, he can't win. I assume that decreases the odds from my previous attempt.

Posted by Malcolm on Jul. 20 2007,12:00

(Paul @ Jul. 20 2007,11:49)

QUOTE

(TheCatt @ Jul. 20 2007,08:54)

QUOTE

If there were only four cards to come up, it'd be easy, 1/42 * 1/41 * 1/40 * 1/39... that 5th card is what makes me not know.

Relatively interesting queries. I shall endeavour to crack them.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 20 2007,12:13

I'm not even sure I'm approaching it correctly, but I'm at least in the same ballpark.

Here's what my math major friend told me:

QUOTE

If you have 10 players playing and you have to hit 4 specific cards to make a hand, the odds would be:

4/32*3/31*2/30*1/29 = 24/863040 or 1/35960. That's 0.00278%

But from what I can tell he didn't factor in the 5th card, so the odds would be better than that.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 22 2007,08:07

(TheCatt @ Jun. 25 2007,13:45)

QUOTE

Anyone interested in a DTMan poker game? Maybe some small buy-in, or just for bragging rights. Whatever.

I'm all for playing.

Pokerstars has the smallest buy-in of any major poker site, $10. There's no credit card deposit fees either, so they eat the $.75 or whatever it is the credit card company charges them.

So I suggest that site.

The sit & go's are as low as $1 + $.20. I'm pretty sure I can get someone to set up the game for us, since I lack the FPP to do it.

If you sign up and say that you were brought there by SvgePenguin I think I get some sort of bounty for ~~luring noob~~ getting new people to the site.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 26 2007,10:24

I've been playing Freerolls on Pokerstars, and watching the pros play there. Daniel Negreanu started with $200 and worked that up to $6k!
Then he blew just about all of it in two Omaha games.

He was at $160 last night.

It's cool watching Moneymaker, Raymer, Greenstein, and Negreanu on the site

I think the person to watch is < annette_15 >. I head some people talk about her.

She's 18, has *never* made a deposit, and has worked her freeroll winnings into quite a bankroll. She's won $300,000 in the last couple months alone!

I bet when she turns 21 there will a bidding war over sponsorship (Though if she lost some weight she'd make five times as much.)
Video of her playing. (Gets really interesting at the 19 minute mark. Watch until the 20 minute mark.)
< http://www.veoh.com/videos/v249626bsknSbGA >

Also, I think I'll be playing the PokerTime freeroll each night. It's at 8:30. I played last night and there were 7,273 entrants (the max it out at 12k, but didn't get near that). They have $1,000 in payouts, paying 260 places.
That's sooooo much better than any other site I've found.
1 = $134
2 = $110
3 = $73
4 = 45
5 = $36
6 = $33
7 = $30
8 = $25
9 = $14
10 = $10
11-20 = $4.50
21-30 = $3
31-40 = $2.50
41-160 = $2
161-260 = $1.50

Posted by Paul on Jul. 26 2007,13:51

(Paul @ Jul. 26 2007,10:24)

QUOTE

Video of her playing. (Gets really interesting at the 19 minute mark. Watch until the 20 minute mark.)
< http://www.veoh.com/videos/v249626bsknSbGA >

15:15 is interesting too.
Slainte goes all in pre-flop with 6/6.
Anette_15 calls with 9/9, a big favorite.
The flop is 6/7/8, giving Slainte the trips, making him the big favorite.
The turn is a 10, giving Anette_15 a straight and making her the big favorite.
The river is a 7, giving Slainte a full house and the win.

Posted by Leisher on Jul. 26 2007,14:45

Pokerstars.net right?

I've DLed the software, but haven't signed up yet. I'll give you the referral, but I want half the bounty.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 27 2007,06:16

Yeah, PokerStars.net.
I'll share. I'll PM you.

What I remember was a "$75 for you, $50 for your friend" or something like that bonus. I don't know the details though.

The affiliate program (slightly different) says that someone needs 100 FPP's to get the $75 bonus. I assume/hope/wish the refer-a-friend program close to that.

This seems like a much better deal than what I signed up for with the 100% cash back bonus, as I need 10 FPP's per dollar of return. Since I played the penny tables, rarely did a pot get 1 FPP. They give 1 FPP for every $.40 in rake at the tables, and 1 FPP for every $.20 in entry fee for tournaments.

So a minimum $10 deposit would require paying $20 in tournament fees to make the 100 FPP's.

The $75 bonus seems a *lot* more substantial. And if the friend also got $50, wowsers!

Posted by Paul on Jul. 31 2007,17:20

For those of you who play poker online.
Every weeknight at 8:30 Pokertime has a $1,000 freeroll. There are usually only 7,600 or so players.

So if you want a free shot at some money ($134 for first, $1.50 for 260th) it's worth checking out.

The software sucks, but the odds of winning are better than any freeroll I've seen.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 01 2007,18:54

I finished in 654th place with something like 7,300 players.
I got all in with the best of it, but putting all my chips on the line was a bit too aggressive. Eh.
People were making some pretty dumb all-in moves and I guess I wanted a piece of it.

Oh, I saw my first real royal flush just before I went out. I wasn't involved in the hand, as I had 2/9 off suit.

> Game # 1,532,055,396 starting.
> Dealing Hole Cards(2h 9c )
> pelle61 folded
> crocblanc11 folded
> chapmystic folded
> 33350 folded
> kateto1618 folded
> scouser4lyf folded
> SvgePenguin folded
> stevie18 raised for 600
> SmokyCash folded
> tostupid raised for 600
> stevie18 called for 300
> Dealing the Flop(Ad 7c Qd )
> tostupid went all-in for 6,363.02
> stevie18 called for 6,363.02
> Dealing the turn(6d )
> Dealing the river(10d )
> stevie18 wins 14,676.04 with a Royal Flush, Diamonds
> tostupid has left the tournament in 806th place

Posted by Paul on Aug. 08 2007,08:36

I bitch about stuff nobody wants to hear again...

CRAP! I had a great run in a freeroll last night.
With $1,500 in chips I amassed $30k when the average chip stack for the tournament was only 2k.

Then someone hit a three-outer on the river to beat me for 10k. He was an idiot to make that play.

Ten minutes later I had 6/4 in the big blind and he had K/10. He min-raised on the button and I called, so it was just him and me in the pot.

The flop was 6/4/J flop. I raised half the pot, and he re-raised, so I went all in with my two pair.
He called and showed J/K. I figured that donkey had top pair or even a middle pair like 8/8.

That guy had had 2 J's and 3 K's as outs. 5 outs x 4 = about a 20% chance for him to beat me. Plus there's an additional 6% chance that whatever random card hit the turn would hit the river (3 outs x 2 = 6). So he was only about 26% to win when he called my all-in.

The turn was a 10, knocking him down to 20% or so. Then the river was another freaking 10. Doh! My 4's were counterfeited and he won with a bigger two pair.

Thanks to my earlier 10k contribution, and some other luck he had, that put me down to 1,400. I was sick a that point, and just pushed it all-in the when I saw an ace.

Now, I admit I was *lucky* to get about 30k to begin with. I'd make a big bet, someone would call, another would call, someone would go all,-in, I'd call with A/K suited and then everyone else would call. I was always the favorite once I went all-in, except for once when my A/Q beat someone's A/K.
I remember going all-in with A/A and having 5 callers! I don't remember what they had, but my chances of winning had to have been in the 40% range. I was yelling "Don't call! Don't call!" but they did anyway. I do remember seeing a lot of paint on the board, and paint in people's hands, but somehow they all missed getting two pair.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 15 2007,08:49

< Duplicate Poker? >
Legal in most of the United States, and they accept Visa & Mastercard because they have upped the skill factor considerably. No sir, I don't like it.

Basically it's a tournament where every table is dealt the same cards. You're given points relative to how you do against the players with your cards at the other tables. whoever has the most points wins.

My friend tells me that competitive bridge works in a similar fashion.

Posted by TheCatt on Aug. 15 2007,09:38

Like duplicate bridge?

Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 15 2007,09:38

That's very interesting! I'll have to check that out.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 15 2007,11:12

(TPRJones @ Aug. 15 2007,09:38)

QUOTE

That's very interesting! I'll have to check that out.

Yes, like < duplicate bridge > I guess.

I'm not interested in it. I like facing my competition.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 15 2007,11:26

Duplicate poker looks stupid.

What if you fold 5/6 off and some jackass with the same hand calls and manages to hit a full house?

What if you have A/K suited, the flop hits 3,4,5 (various) and some assweed at your table goes all in forcing you to call and risk your whole stack (or a sizeable portion) or fold and do the smart thing and it turns our he was bluffing, but some dickweed playing your cards didn't have an asshole at their table?

What if you hit quads on the flop, but the players at your table fold, while the other guy with your cards has all 7 people calling him all the way?

How the hell are they getting it classified as a skill game? Duplicate poker will make the kinds of players you sit with or play against even more critical. It actually brings even more luck into the equation than poker.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 15 2007,13:53

I thought the same thing.

I'd say that overall it decreases the luck a bit, because the "donks at the table factor" is already a part of every tournament. What they're doing is eliminating the results of getting a lucky run of cards.

What I don't like is that if you have a long run of terrible cards, rather than sit back and wait you might feel pressed to play because *someone* getting that same run of cards is going to play despite it being an obvious muck pre-flip situation, and he's going to win.

I saw the video on the site, and if I remember correctly, when it's down to 8 players they make it 4 tables of two, and everyone keeps switching tables until they've all played with each other.
I don't like that at all! It make collusion much much more powerful.

Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 15 2007,15:25

I didn't say it sounded good, just that it sounded interesting.

I look forward to trying it out to see just how goofy it is.

Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 15 2007,17:02

So far I'm not impressed. The software has crashed twice and there's no one besides me on there trying to get a free play game started. I see a couple of dozen cash players out there, but I'm not ready to put any money into this thing.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 15 2007,20:10

I just cashed in my first freeroll. Pokertime.com

12,000 people max tournament (LOL donkament!). Usually 7k play. I think there were less than average this time.

With about 50 people left I'm in 12th place. 40th place pays an extra quarter.

I go all-in and the only guy with more chips than me at the table hits a 15 outer on the river to bust me.

I end up leaving in 42'nd place. If I'd have asked for more time (I had 112 seconds saved up I think) I'd have made it past that bubble. *Now* I think of that. Ugh.

So anyway, they credited my account $1.
Woo-hoo! Maybe I should go pro?

Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 15 2007,20:22

Nice!

I finally got a free game going on that weird double poker thingy. It's got amusing potential, but this program is so shitty it ruins it.

The multi-tiered quality of the game drops out the crazy betters early on so later rounds make more sense and average out into a pretty good skill game. You could still mess it up with collusion, but you'd have to 1) lay low until the last rounds, and 2) be lucky enough to end up on the table with your collusion partner (very low odds on this).

If only the program didn't suck so hard.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 16 2007,05:53

The Pokertime software is pretty sucky. Not buggy, just sucky.

And I figured out that the guy beat me on a 14 outer, not 15. I'd counted the Jd twice. (He had a flush draw, and any pair would have beaten me)

I had actually gone into suicide mode in that game, wanting to quit so I could play seriously on Pokerstars. But I kept making chips. I won every coin flip.
When I sucked out I'd say "I am so good it's scary," or "I am an unstoppable force of awesomeness." It really pissed people off and made them call my all-ins because they knew I had less than optimal hands.
The most vocal of my haters called my all-in when he had J/J. Of course, I had A/A. As he left he exclaimed something about me being an idiot but at least he was confident that he and I would get the same payout, $0.

Basically I'd just go all-in with any two painted cards, or any Ace-suited, and sometimes just Ace high.
When I got close to 20k I started picking my spots more, as I was a top-5 player. But I was still pretty much an all-in or nothing player. I'd limp in every once in awhile, and those pots I usually won by stealing.

I was amazed by what I was getting called by though. I'd go all-in with A/J and get called by Q/9 and stuff. WTF? I thought my all-in with A/J was a donk move! How can you think that you have the best of it going in with Q/9

?

When I realized that I had a chance of actually cashing I started taking screen captures of the lobby to document my progress. Here's a summary:
6,270 players

0:25 in I was in 3rd, with 18k chips. Leader had 25k. 2nd had 19k. 2912 remain.
1:10 in I was in 9th, with 34k. Leader had 55k. 846 remain.
1:31 in I was in 6th, with 43k. Leader had 46k. 415 remain.
1:40 in I was in 10th, with 60k. Leader had 113k. 338 remain.
1:54 in I was in 26th, with 54k. Leader had 123k. 261 remain.
2:00 in I was in 4th, with 112k. Leader had 159k. 223 remain.
2:12 in I was in 10th, with 110k. Leader had 156k. 150 remain.
2:19 in I was in 8th, with 148k. Leader had 239k. 93 remain.
2:28 in I was in 14, with 169k. Leader had 497k. 50 remain.
2:33 in I was eliminated in 43rd place. Leader had 702k.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 16 2007,05:59

QUOTE

With about 50 people left I'm in 12th place. 40th place pays an extra quarter.

I go all-in and the only guy with more chips than me at the table hits a 15 outer on the river to bust me.

This is becoming a very common story with you and not in a good way.

When you're getting close to the money, relax and play quality hands only. Be less aggressive. Around the money, everyone's play style changes a bit.

Most become tight waiting for the small stacks to go out, which is what you should try.

Others get too aggressive, they figure they can bully people out of pots because nobody wants to miss the money.

So what you typically have in any given hand at this point are people bullying or people with strong hands.

Next time you get close to the money and you're doing that well in chips, slow down and play top ten, but play them conservatively.

After you hit the money, the people will start playing normal again and the pace of eliminations will pick back up. IE: Play will get back to normal.

By the way, the worst feeling in the world is to be the last guy before money. You get eliminated and everyone cheers.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 16 2007,06:38

Oh, I didn't care about going out then. The winning another $.25 was not a big deal to me.
But if I won that hand (when I thought I had the best of it) it would have practically guaranteed me a multi-dollar payout and I would have had most of the chips at my table.

If this had been a game where I had something other than 2.5 hours of play invested, I'd have been quite a bit more conservative.

1st place was $67
8th was $12.50
I think 10-20 was $2, and up to 40th was $1.25. So really, I was probably risking another dollar in probably winnings to get $12 or so in probably winnings.

But you're right. I have to quit challenging people who can hurt me just because I'm sure I have an advantage. I need to stick it to the smaller stacks later in the game.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 23 2007,18:40

Logged into Pokerstars at 3:00 from work to sign up for the 6:00 freeroll.

Tonight was the first time I played in that game.

8,000 players, and I finished in 203'rd, for a $.26 payoff. I think I was in 40th or so place when I went out.

I had J/J, someone made a big raise, and IM'd my friend (who was knocked out two hours earlier) that I was probably going broke on this hand so he should pop in and watch. I figured the other guy had A/A or K/K.
The flop was 7/2/10 and the guy (with 8k less chips than me) went all in... a massive over bet.
I still figured I was doomed but I made the call.

He had Queens.

I tripled up the very next hand, my KJ getting a flush against a guy holding A/A. I hate sucking out like that.

Then I went all-in again (because I was mentally done... the next ten levels of blinds only going up $.02 each before it got interesting (18th place paid $.50).

I just wasn't willing to fight for pennies anymore. I'd even PM'd my friend a little earlier, telling him that I just wanted to hit the $.26 mark, to say I made a quarter.

BTW, it took 2.5 hours to make that $.26.

Posted by TheCatt on Aug. 24 2007,05:47

I hear sweat shops in China are hiring.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 25 2007,17:23

So as a pokerstars.net newbie, give me a rundown.

Where should I go? How do I see how much play money I have? Which freerolls are best? etc.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 27 2007,06:45

Freerolls = LOL donkaments
Over half of the people are just wasting their time (and know it and don't care). Play tight, and when you have an excellent hand go all-in. People will call. Sure, you'll have a time or two when you only win the blinds, but you'll get called enough that all-ins are +EV (positive expected value) plays.
My feeling is that getting knocked out early for no $ is better than playing an hour for no $. So I try to amass chips early. Later in the game when I have chips and a good percentage of the idiots have left, I'm a lot less eager to go all-in and can start to use bluffs and other tricks.

The *best* freeroll I know of isn't Pokerstars. I downloaded PokerTime (pokertime.com) specifically for their 8:30pm freeroll. I think it's Tuesday through Friday.
They pay $500 and get about 6,500 contestants. They pay to 248th place or something like that. If you can win $1, they have $.90 + $.10 sit & go's that you can spend it in.

Pokerstars has an 8:30 ("Hubble") freeroll as well. 8,000 players, and the top 27 get a free entry to another freeroll with $1,000 in prize money. This is a ripoff, unless you have a lot of free time. I figure it'll take about 3.5-4 hours to get to 27th place. Then you only get an entry to another tournament and that tournament is full of proven winners (so I assume it's not a donkament).

The *best* Pokerstars freerolls are the $200, 8,000 player games. Registration begins 3 hours before the game.
Because it starts at 6:00 out here, I'd have to sign up by 3:10 to assure a spot. I can do it from work, but I'm usually out at that time. My friend VPN's to his home PC and signs himself up.
If you sign up you can leave PokerStars and login later. Your blinds will be folded to you. Being 30 minutes late is no big deal as you don't lose much early on.
Unfortunately you have to finish in the top 8 to win at least $1 (it's something like top 100 on PokerTime, and 8th or Pokertime pays $12.50). $1 is the minimum buy-in at the $.01/$.02 tables, which is the only thing you can play with $1 on Pokerstars. If you win $.26 like I did you can't play with it unless you somehow get another $.74 into your account.

My plan for most days is to sign up at 3:00 for the 6:00 Pokerstars $200 freeroll. When I get home I'd play that. An hour before the Pokerstars Hubble game I'd sign up for it (because it does fill up).
The PokerTime game never fills up, so I sign up for that at around 8:20 and play it, assuming I'm out of the Pokerstars $200 freeroll.
PokerTime and the Pokerstars Hubble games start at 8:30, but PokerTime has priority because it has fewer people, worse players, and 2.5x the payout.

To see how much play money you have go to the cashier.
You get $1,000 to start out. If you go broke you can reload three times an hour.

Yesterday I blew my entire 26k of free chips in 10 minutes. I basically lost it all in two hands.
I tried to win it back but blew all three of my reloads for the hour. (The first two I go through quickly. After the last reload I'm a bit more conservative.)
However, late last night I found a table of chumps and was able to turn my 1k into 24k, thanks to my good hands holding up.

When you play the free chip games, look for tables where a lot of people have a lot of chips. I used to fear players who had 15k chips at a 2k max-buy-in table, but really, it's easy come easy go for them. Most of the time they got those chips because they are willing to go all-in.
Play money games are not a good arena to bluff. If you notice people folding, yeah, bluff them. But some people get curious when you go all-in and I think they call just to see what you have.
Of course, once you have a bankroll play a bit more conservative.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 27 2007,11:31

I'm not seeing a cashier option...

Posted by Paul on Aug. 27 2007,13:26

If you signed up with Pokerstars.net uninstall the software, get the software from .com and install that software.

.Net is what they advertise because it's free poker software with no $ ability. But .Com allows $ and they allow you to upload an avatar.

< Here's what my screen looks like. > Cashier is a menu at the top (and a green link on the bottom-left). I click "Cashier" then "Summary."

The top tournament is the daily $200 freeroll that you have to sign up for at 3:00. The highlighted one is the freeroll where the top 27 people get an entry into a $1,000 freeroll. (The second freeroll is composed of thousands of other freeroll winners that week, and takes place on Saturday I think).

Posted by Paul on Aug. 27 2007,13:41

If you're looking to play suckers, I hear a good time is around noon, when people are on their lunch breaks.

Personally, I found early mornings before work to be lucrative.

EDIT: Oh yeah. There's a 9:00 $200 freeroll on Pokerstars as well. Of course, you'll be playing until 11:30 to cash.

EDIT AGAIN: Finished in 430-something'th place on PokerTime out of 6k+ players. No $. After an hour and a half I was a BB away from losing my 8:30 Pokerstars freeroll. I tripled up, then lost it all on the next hand.
Then I played the 9:00 $200 freeroll with half my stack left. Shoved it all in with King high and lost it.
I just wanted to get it all over with.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 30 2007,13:10

Played the 6:00 Pokerstars freeroll yesterday.

When it started, I won the first two hands with min raises because everybody else was sitting out.
Then someone popped in and folded to me.
Then I chased him off two pots.
So I won the first five hands in a row.
When he saw I was a bully he put me all-in with his top pair on a Q/6/6 flop. Of course, I had the 6.

Anyway, I was up to 5k with an average (tournament) chipstack of maybe 1.7K when this hand happened:

He lead out with a min bet pre-flop and I called.
We both check post-flop to trap the other.
We both checked the the turn to trap the other.
He checked the river.
I raised.
He re-raised.
I put him all-in.
He called.
Doh!

At least it happened early in the game, and at least it was in a situation where I was destined to lose all my chips.

I made a suicidal move on the next hand to quit and play tables, but I ended up tripling up.
I wrote "I'm all in next hand" and threw my $1,500 in and wouldn't you know it, practically the entire table called! I think there were 6 callers at that point. I did not win that hand.
Anyway, moving to the table game was a good move. I checked my stats and in the last 100 hands I saw the flop 32 times, winning 10/11 showdowns and taking the pot 8 times without a showdown.

Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 30 2007,18:54

I've started trying a new tactic in tournies that's working well for me. Traditionally I play pretty tight and fold crap almost all the time. But my new tactic is to always limp in when the other players will let me, no matter what I've got. I've caught a fairly high percentage of decent flops on crap hole cards, at least more than I expected to.

I played 10 tournies tonight, and made it to six final tables (at final table, I go back to folding crap, btw). I only won 1st in one of them, though. Prize is free entry to another tourney (5000 peeps), in which top five go on to another tourney (3600 peeps) that sends the top nine off to Australia's main poker tourney all expense paid.

Posted by Paul on Aug. 30 2007,19:37

The Aussie Millions? I think that's the big one.

The limp in strategy seems like a good idea. I think I'll try it.

I was looking to exit the one freeroll I joined and called two all-in's early in with pocket 8's. The other two had 10/10 and J/J.
The table cards ended up being 9/6/4/5/7.
I laughed out loud maniacally when the 7 I was chanting for turned up, breaking them both. If I was on PokerTime I would have talked smack about what a genius I was.

In the table games I had a long slide in the red, until I made a big situational/character-based play that paid off big time and put me in the black.

Posted by Malcolm on Aug. 31 2007,08:18

(TPRJones @ Aug. 30 2007,20:54)

QUOTE

But my new tactic is to always limp in when the other players will let me, no matter what I've got. I've caught a fairly high percentage of decent flops on crap hole cards, at least more than I expected to.

I've always said that betting is sometimes just how much you're willing to pay to see the cards. I've never folded crap until it started costing me chips.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 31 2007,12:25

I played the 9:00 p.m. freeroll last night. My first tournament and I finished #191 out of 5000.

I got beat by some guy who kept going all in. I had to call his pre-flop all-in as I had AAs. Someone else called with JJs. He beat us both with his Q-8 off.

Posted by TheCatt on Aug. 31 2007,15:25

(Leisher @ Aug. 31 2007,15:25)

QUOTE

I got beat by some guy who kept going all in. I had to call his pre-flop all-in as I had AAs. Someone else called with JJs. He beat us both off.

Ewww.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 04 2007,12:30

(Leisher @ Aug. 31 2007,12:25)

QUOTE

I got beat by some guy who kept going all in. I had to call his pre-flop all-in as I had AAs. Someone else called with JJs. He beat us both off.

Well at least you got something out of it.

I hit a table game last night, was being a bully, and a new guy went all-in after I made a 5x big blind raise.

I had Q/Q, called, then screamed at myself "Why did you just do that you idiot! He has Aces or Kings!"
In table games (as opposed to tournaments) people go all-in pre flop with A/A, K/K, or Q/Q. Occasionally people with J/J will, but not often.
It was a stupid call on my part.
On Pokerstars you don't see their cards until the end, so when a Queen came on the flop I pumped my arm in victory because I knew I had just sucked out.

Sure enough he had A/A. So I stole a substantial pot off him. I can't believe I made that call though. It was stupid.

I also hit a 9 player sit & go. By the time there were three of us (the paying positions) I had more than half the chips at the table.

When I got heads up I continued to take chips from the remaining guy. At one point I had about 10,500 and he had around 3,000.
Several times I'd flop two pair and lose to him getting a weird straight. He was up to 9k at one point but I managed to take the lead back.

We switched places a lot. Eventually he had the chip lead, I flopped two pair, and he caught a straight on the turn, which eliminated me.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 04 2007,13:16

If a person got beat off when they lost at poker, internet poker would be in every home and office in America.

I was in the 6 p.m. freeroll and the 9 p.m.

In the 6 I went out around 500th place. I had an above average stack and was playing smart. I got pocket rockets and was betting them huge. Some cock smoker with a smaller stack called every bet including my huge pre-flop raise while playing a J-4 of spades. He hit his flush on the river which crippled me.

In the 9 game I finished at 290 when my pocket Ks were beat by a AQoff. I'm $.20 richer!!!

Posted by Paul on Sep. 04 2007,14:09

(Leisher @ Sep. 04 2007,13:16)

QUOTE

Coolness.
From what I can tell the 6:00 one is easier than the 9:00.
At the beginning of one 6:00 game, I was the only active player for the first couple hands.

I'm signed up for the 6:00 tonight, but I shouldn't be playing as it's my 8th wedding anniversary so we're going out for Chinese and a movie (Superbad).

Send me your I.D. so I can railbird ya some time.

Posted by TheCatt on Sep. 04 2007,15:59

(Paul @ Sep. 04 2007,17:09)

QUOTE

Send me your I.D. so I can railbird ya some time.

Why do you want his driver's license?

Posted by Paul on Sep. 05 2007,06:21

(TheCatt @ Sep. 04 2007,15:59)

QUOTE

(Paul @ Sep. 04 2007,17:09)

QUOTE

Send me your I.D. so I can railbird ya some time.

Why do you want his driver's license?

Do you want to examine his sack?

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 05 2007,08:11

QUOTE

Why do you want his driver's license?

Sarcasm and smarmy doesn't travel well via written word, thus are you making jokes or being petty?

Posted by TheCatt on Sep. 05 2007,08:14

(Leisher @ Sep. 05 2007,11:11)

QUOTE

Why do you want his driver's license?

Sarcasm and smarmy doesn't travel well via written word, thus are you making jokes or being petty?

Jokes.

Seriously, I wouldn't be petty over something so, uh, petty.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 05 2007,08:58

I figured. I just wanted to be sure.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 07 2007,20:11

Hit two freerolls tonight. I actually had time to concentrate, so I played two at a time. (The wife is out of town)

Finished in 99th place (out of 6k) on Pokertime when I went all-in pre-flop with Q/Q and was called by A/A. Had I won that, I'd probably have been in the top 25. People were dropping like crazy and the pot was a monster.
Anyway, I earned $1 for that 2:15 of work.

I got to around 630th place (out of 8k entrants) in the freeroll on Pokerstars. I goofed and thought it was the $200 freeroll. It forgot that I missed signing up for that, so I'd signed up for the "top 27 get free entry..." tournament instead. Bleh! Once I realized my mistake I was out of the game less than 10 minutes later. ;)

Posted by Paul on Sep. 09 2007,18:25

On Pokertime now.
I have a good chance of cashing in the freeroll again.
999 players left. I'm in 15th place. (5,647 entrants)

Average stack 6,300
My stack 25,500

Edit: Just made the $1 level. On the 2 hour break now. 39th place of 152 remaining.
I have 54k, with 37k being the average stack.

Don't expect to last too much further. Blinds were 2000/4000 before the break, and I'd rather rick my neck and go for the big money at the end.

Final: 13th place. Blinds were 40,000/80,000. Not much maneuvering room.
$2.25 richer for 3 hours work.

Here's the turning point of the tournament. I *planned* on going to bed early tonight. So much for plans.

QUOTE

> kankie_79 posted small blind (25)
> SvgePenguin posted big blind (50)
> Game # 1,603,858,399 starting.
> Dealing Hole Cards(Jd 10d )
> DeLaSerna went all-in for 1,797.50
> ZER94140 went all-in for 6,396.25
SvgePenguin> You got me beat, but I'm ready to go home.
> SvgePenguin called for 6,346.25
> Dealing the Flop(9c 7d 7c )
> Dealing the turn(6h )
> Dealing the river(8s )
> SvgePenguin wins 14,615 with a Straight, Jack high
> DeLaSerna has left the tournament in 2829th place
> ZER94140 has left the tournament in 2828th place

Posted by Paul on Sep. 11 2007,10:40

Hit a table game last night. I wasn't excited about playing, but didn't mind losing a little to pass the time.

It took ten minutes to find a table I liked, and after playing there 20 minutes I realized that it was a barely profitable game, except for one guy.

This guy chased me off several hands when he had top pair with a *lousy* kicker. He'd do all-ins and such with lousy cards. I knew that if I could hit two pair or trips that I could get him all in.
Because of him I added more chips.

I kept encouraging his play, congratulation him, etc.

Then I took 25% of his stack by just calling all the way when he kept betting with his top pair (Jacks) with a 4 kicker. I had J/Q.
I realized that I could have all-inned him and he would have caller. But during the hand, I kept only calling because I figured maybe he actually had something.

I mean, how often is making a big move with only top pair at a table game going to be a plus EV play? But against this guy...

I ended up winning the very next hand because of a bigger kicker.

I won the hand after that after three of us checked to the river with a scary flop and my 5/5 held up.

After each win I commented on how I was just barely squeaking by.

The next hand (after 3 wins in a row) I was the small blind with 8/2 suited and just called.
The flop was 8/2/9, giving me two pair.
I raised, he re-raised, and I called.
The turn was a 4. I raised, he re-raised, and I called.
The river was a 3. I raised, he he made a big re-raise (half his remaining chips). I responded by going all-in.

I was really nervous going all-in to such aggression with bottom two pair, but I just couldn't see him having a hand. He wasn't dumb enough to chase a straight. He'd have raised pre-flop with any small pocket pair, so he didn't have a set. The only hand that I couldn't beat that he might have had was 8/9. But even then I think he would have raised more.
I guessed that he either got tricky and was trying to trap pre-flop with A/A or K/K, or he had A/9.

Well, he didn't think for a second and insta-called me.

Doh! He must have sucked out. My trap must have backfired.

Ends up he had J/9. Just top pair with a Jack kicker! He was true to form. Whew!

Posted by TPRJones on Sep. 11 2007,12:05

He was probably thinking "Jack kicker! Finally! Surely I can beat his kicker with my Jack!"

Posted by Paul on Sep. 11 2007,12:10

(TPRJones @ Sep. 11 2007,12:05)

QUOTE

He was probably thinking "Jack kicker! Finally! Surely I can beat his kicker with my Jack!"

That's *exactly* what he was thinking.

I keep a list of players who I'd like to play again. I'll be looking for him.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 11 2007,18:05

Has anybody tried the < PPA membership tournament >on Pokerstars?

From what I can tell, it's free to enter, and they only drawback is that they sign you up for a free (temporary) PPA membership.

The good news... well... The tournament going right now (60512082) has $5,000 in prize money and only 2910 entries. Pokerstars usually gives out $200, to a field of 8,000 players, so that's very generous.

First place is $919.50. The top 7 places are over $100.
The top 90 places are $10 or more.
Anything 414th or better gets $2.

That is not bad. Not bad at all.
__

Watching Negreanu play at a $100/$200 table.
He bought in for $20k.
He was up a seven grand... then:

PokerStars Game #12007336105: Hold'em No Limit ($100/$200) - 2007/09/11 - 21:52:49 (ET)
Table 'Frisia' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 2: idoubleL ($4495 in chips)
Seat 3: kerpowski ($4350 in chips)
Seat 5: KidPoker ($27369 in chips)
Seat 6: ktrieu ($27876 in chips)
Seat 7: MezmerizePLZ ($24285 in chips)
Seat 9: nestegg1 ($23230 in chips)
MezmerizePLZ: posts small blind $100
nestegg1: posts big blind $200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
idoubleL: folds
kerpowski: folds
KidPoker: raises $400 to $600
ktrieu: folds
MezmerizePLZ: raises $1624 to $2224
nestegg1: folds
idoubleL said, "nestegg i admire your prudence"
KidPoker: calls $1624
*** FLOP *** [7s Qs 2s]
idoubleL said, "takes discipline to know when youre outclassed and to save face and stop talking"
MezmerizePLZ: bets $3200
KidPoker: raises $6000 to $9200
idoubleL said, "you good at practicing avoidance"
MezmerizePLZ: raises $12861 to $22061 and is all-in
KidPoker: calls $12861
*** TURN *** [7s Qs 2s] [4h]
*** RIVER *** [7s Qs 2s 4h] [9d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MezmerizePLZ: shows [As Qd] (a pair of Queens)
KidPoker: shows [Ts Js] (a flush, Queen high)
KidPoker collected $48765 from pot
KidPoker said, "cooler"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $48770 | Rake $5
Board [7s Qs 2s 4h 9d]
Seat 2: idoubleL folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: kerpowski folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: KidPoker showed [Ts Js] and won ($48765) with a flush, Queen high
Seat 6: ktrieu (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: MezmerizePLZ (small blind) showed [As Qd] and lost with a pair of Queens
Seat 9: nestegg1 (big blind) folded before Flop

Edit (again) : He just one a 12k pot as well.

..and again: He left with just over 66k. Not bad for buying in with 20k.
He's in Europe now, and just finished day one of the European WSoP. He said he did really well on day 1 (today).

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 13 2007,14:51

I like Negreanu. He's not an ass, has fun, and is scary good at guessing what you're holding.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 13 2007,17:41

I've been talking more in my table games. (Not so much in the tournaments, unless I'm trying to be an ass.)

One thing I do is guess cards.
I'm not bad at it.

If someone makes a huge pre-flop raise (like an all-in) they have a big pair, Queens, Kings, or Aces.
I almost always tell them that I think they have Kings.

The reason I say Kings is because if I'm wrong, I'm usually wrong by just one place. That sorta gives me partial credit for the guess.

I will modify that guess if I have cards. That is if I had K/Q I'd guess Aces, or if I had A/K I'd guess Queens. Or if I had just an ace I might say, "I don't smell Aces. Pocket Kings or Queens, huh?"
Note: I can only say this before folding if I'm the last to fold, as you can't talk about your hand or your opponent's hand unless you're active in the hand. So if people are left to act behind me, I'll type something long out and post it the instant the action is over.

Another trick I have is not being specific about *who* has the hand. That is, a couple nights ago I was in a three way pot when the other two others got into a pissing contest. I bailed out after my raise was met with a raise and a re-raise. I wrote, "I smell two pair. I had Ace/King. My good hands NEVER pay off." (A/K was top pair, top kicker)
I typed it out ahead of time. The second that the action was over (because the small stack went all-in and he was called) I posted it.

I had no idea who had two pair, but I figured it was likely. And I ended up being right.

In that example the winner, who had two pair, complimented my good read and lay down. The loser's hand wasn't even as good as A/K.

Oh... and I did not have A/K. I was bluffing with nothing. ;)

Yet another prediction trick is to type out a long post so they know that you started it before you saw the cards, and posting it the second you're prediction is shown to be correct. If you're wrong, just delete it.

Anyway, I feel that doing that sort of stuff lets me get away with more stuff.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 13 2007,17:51

(Leisher @ Sep. 13 2007,14:51)

QUOTE

I like Negreanu. He's not an ass, has fun, and is scary good at guessing what you're holding.

I like Negreanu too.
I've read all of his blog. I think he's a genuinely nice guy. If he has any fault, it's trying to please too many people.

He's a vegetarian, but isn't an ass about it. He keeps meat and stuff at his house for other people.

Yeah, he's pretty liberal, but again, he's not an ass about it.

.................................

I'm no Pokertime now:

QUOTE

> Game # 1,611,528,994 starting.
> Dealing Hole Cards(Js 10h )
> Cblainea folded
> MwRStepback raised for 100
> kisama called for 100
> MNrugger folded
> birdiegirl44 folded
> dannoh folded
> jls20105 folded
> SvgePenguin raised for 200
> vlucky1 folded
> C-M-B folded
> MwRStepback called for 100
> kisama called for 100
> Dealing the Flop(Qh Kd 9d )
> MwRStepback went all-in for 640
> kisama called for 640
SvgePenguin> nuts
> SvgePenguin went all-in for 835
> kisama called for 195
> Dealing the turn(Jh )
> Dealing the river(9s )
> SvgePenguin wins 2,985 with a Straight, King high
> MwRStepback has left the tournament in 2365th place
>SvgePenguin> Told you

Posted by Paul on Sep. 13 2007,18:35

(Leisher @ Sep. 13 2007,14:51)

QUOTE

I like Negreanu. He's not an ass, has fun, and is scary good at guessing what you're holding.

Since you just got knocked out (your 10/10 against his pocket aces), check out Negreanu. He's playing now and he's up about $17k (assuming he did his normal $20k buy-in).

Edit: WTF? Check this out...

$tinger 88 raised, Negreanu re-raised, and Empire2000 re-raised.
$tinger 88 responds by going all-in.
<pause>
Okay folds, what have I said about people who go all-in pre-flop at table games? People don't do it unless they have Aces, Kings or Queens. And with two people who have already bet into the pot, you know they have some sort of hand, so the all-in is especially strong.
</pause>

Negreanu goes into the tank. I think he had pocket 10's or some other medium pocket pair. He waited awhile to show that he had a hand, then mucked. No surprise.
Then Empire2000 went into the tank. I expected a fold, but he called for over $13k... with Jack/Jack!

I wonder what Negreanu had? If he had A/K I bet he was kicking himself.

QUOTE

PokerStars Game #12043837537: Hold'em No Limit ($100/$200) - 2007/09/13 - 21:47:11 (ET)
Table 'Subra' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: $tinger 88 ($20000 in chips)
Seat 3: KidPoker ($35182 in chips)
Seat 5: Empire2000 ($22564 in chips)
Seat 7: p3achy_keen ($32970 in chips)
Seat 9: ADZ124 ($22100 in chips)
Empire2000: posts small blind $100
p3achy_keen: posts big blind $200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
ADZ124: folds
$tinger 88: raises $400 to $600
KidPoker: raises $1400 to $2000
Empire2000: raises $4400 to $6400
p3achy_keen: folds
$tinger 88: raises $13600 to $20000 and is all-in
KidPoker said, "

???"
KidPoker: folds
Empire2000: calls $13600
*** FLOP *** [Ah 2s 4d]
*** TURN *** [Ah 2s 4d] [As]
*** RIVER *** [Ah 2s 4d As] [2c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Empire2000: shows [Jc Jh] (two pair, Aces and Jacks)
$tinger 88: shows [Qh Qc] (two pair, Aces and Queens)
$tinger 88 collected $42195 from pot

Here's another goody if you're a Negreanu fan:

QUOTE

PokerStars Game #12044144979: Hold'em No Limit ($100/$200) - 2007/09/13 - 22:04:08 (ET)
Table 'Subra' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: $tinger 88 ($41395 in chips)
Seat 3: KidPoker ($27978 in chips)
Seat 5: Empire2000 ($22844 in chips)
Seat 7: p3achy_keen ($36656 in chips)
$tinger 88: posts small blind $100
KidPoker: posts big blind $200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Empire2000: folds
p3achy_keen: folds
$tinger 88: raises $600 to $800
KidPoker: calls $600
*** FLOP *** [8s 5h As]
$tinger 88: bets $1200
KidPoker: calls $1200
*** TURN *** [8s 5h As] [Ks]
$tinger 88: bets $3600
KidPoker: calls $3600
*** RIVER *** [8s 5h As Ks] [6s]
$tinger 88: bets $10200
KidPoker said, "lol no way"
KidPoker said, "I just dont buy it"
KidPoker said, "you ALWAYS have a Q hi flush?"
KidPoker: calls $10200
*** SHOW DOWN ***
$tinger 88: shows [9c Td] (high card Ace)
KidPoker: shows [Ad 6c] (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
KidPoker collected $31595 from pot
KidPoker said, "guess not"
KidPoker said, ":-)"
p3achy_keen said, "vnc"
Empire2000 said, "ya"

Empire2000 is a slow learner:

QUOTE

PokerStars Game #12044291481: Hold'em No Limit ($100/$200) - 2007/09/13 - 22:12:18 (ET)
Table 'Subra' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: $tinger 88 ($26190 in chips)
Seat 3: KidPoker ($42669 in chips)
Seat 5: Empire2000 ($23639 in chips)
Seat 7: p3achy_keen ($36356 in chips)
Empire2000: posts small blind $100
p3achy_keen: posts big blind $200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
$tinger 88: raises $400 to $600
KidPoker: raises $1400 to $2000
Empire2000: raises $4400 to $6400
p3achy_keen: folds
$tinger 88: folds
KidPoker: raises $36269 to $42669 and is all-in
Empire2000: calls $17239 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [6d Td 8h]
*** TURN *** [6d Td 8h] [5c]
*** RIVER *** [6d Td 8h 5c] [Js]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Empire2000: shows [Kd Ah] (high card Ace)
KidPoker: shows [Qc Qs] (a pair of Queens)
KidPoker collected $48073 from pot
KidPoker said, "phew"

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 13 2007,18:48

I got bored. I honestly can't pay attention to online poker. Every time I'm playing I'm in two tournaments, watching TV, and playing X-Box. Really. I don't pay attention to the other people at all. I just play the cards.

I like sitting at a table and interacting with other people. Looking at people's stupid icons isn't the same. Plus, internet players generally suck donkey dick and I still stand by my belief that "random chance" doesn't exist online. I've been playing for a few weeks now and I've had pocket Kings several times and not one of them has ever held up. They always lose to an ace on the flop. Bullshit. The odds of that are ridiculous.

Still, I'll play every chance I get in those tournaments because: 1. It's poker 2. It's gambling 3. It's at least somewhat of a warm up for my poker league which starts in October.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 13 2007,19:10

I think you were playing too conservative for a free game. Personally, I like to get a big stack early or get knocked out.

If I think I have the best cards, I'm all-in. A lucky streak means I have a monster stack, which means that I can start playing smart and don't have to make as many risky moves later (when you have time invested). Plus people call you with crap earlier in the tournaments.
And if I lose... well... no biggie. I just move to another tournament.

Also, it's harder to get bored when you have a ton of chips. When you know you have a good chance at cashing it's extra incentive.
I'm not a fan of fighting hard with little chance of winning.

Again, you need to check out the Pokertime freeroll. You can do that and Pokerstars at the same time.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 14 2007,04:56

QUOTE

I think you were playing too conservative for a free game.

Well, as I said, I'm warming up for poker league. But I'll give your style a shot over the next week. So, what do you do? All in on the first hand no matter what? How many times do you go all in early? Are you doing it pre-flop or waiting for something big?

Posted by Paul on Sep. 14 2007,06:15

(Leisher @ Sep. 14 2007,04:56)

QUOTE

I think you were playing too conservative for a free game.

No. I don't go all-in with *anything*, especially not in the Pokertime game.

Early on I'll go all in with:
Any pair
Ace/10+
K/Q

If someone makes a big bet ahead of me, especially an all-in, I'm less likely to make the call. Ideally I want to be the first person to act. (This is short-stack strategy)

If I think I can steal, I'll shove all-in and show that I'm thief. For example, if I'm the BB and only have one limper, or if I'm the SB or button and everyone else has folded, I'll shove all-in with 7/2.
I'm hoping they fold, so I can show my bluff to the table, thereby encouraging action later. Sometimes people call though, and if my 7/2 beats their Q/Q or whatever I act obnoxious to draw attention to what a lousy player I am.

Yes, people call all-in's early in the tournament. But surprisingly they also call them all through the tournament.

Once you get a nice stack of chips you can sit back and turn into an all-or-nothing machine. People will call. No, not every hand, but enough to keep you in good position.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 14 2007,21:25

Hey, Daniel highlighted one of the hands I posted < in his blog today >.

(Paul @ Sep. 13 2007,18:35)

QUOTE

Posted by Paul on Sep. 15 2007,21:15

Sunday, September 16, 2007, four minutes after midnight.
I just popped my cherry.

I will never get a better hand.

Twenty minutes earlier I'd had my best hand of the week when my 9/9 hit a 2/9/9 flop. Someone called my all-in on the river with a pair of threes, doubling me up to 20k.

I had been getting some sick beats earlier in the games that matter. I'm hoping that this grossly lucky streak carries on.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 16 2007,19:29

I only hit freerolls today... until this evening when I hit a real tables. Would my lucky steak continue?

I was doing my thing, but they kept catching hands. I think I got out of quite a few bad places.

I was down about about 15% of my original stack, but managed to work that back up to close to even.

Then I got K/K. A brand new person to the table raised to 5 bb's (big blinds). He was directly on my right.
(FYI: New people are often too aggressive. I don't give them as much credit.)
I raised to 9 bb's.
The woman directly on my left raised 13 bb's.
The new guy went all-in for 50 bb's.
I went all-in for 140-something bb's.
The lady on my left called, contributing 62 bb's.

Since I had the most chips, I instantly got all but 62 bb's back.

Now the new guy could have had anything. They're aggressive schmucks. I wouldn't be surprised if he had 7/7.

The woman on my left... well... after she made the call I figured she had A/A, Q/Q, or J/J. I mean, if she thought the new guy was full of crap, and that I was trying to isolate myself with him by shoving all-in (I had been stealing pots) a J/J call wouldn't be too stupid.

The flop was: Q/8/6

Crap. If she had A/A, I was dead meat anyway. But if she had Q/Q she just sucked out on me. Doh!

The turn was: K

Beautiful!

The river was a meaningless 9.

Their cards: The lady had A/A. The noob had A/J.

I cleaned up, quitting the game before I had to post the next big blind. My lucky streak continues!

Posted by Paul on Sep. 17 2007,06:07

I *thought* I mentioned Annette_15 here, but can't find the reference.

Anyway, she is a 19 year old European player who played freerolls and used he winnings to play $ tournaments. She became the best online tournament player, making over $300,000 in one month.

Well, since the World Series of Poker just started an annual European leg, she entered that. In Europe you only need to be 18 to play.

< She got to the final table of the Main Event and finished a respectable... >

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 17 2007,10:23

Played on Pokertime last night and won $1. Finished 100 or so out of 6000 players in the freeroll.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 17 2007,10:48

(Leisher @ Sep. 17 2007,10:23)

QUOTE

Played on Pokertime last night and won $1. Finished 100 or so out of 6000 players in the freeroll.

Awesome.

I told you it was a beatable game.

They have $.90 + $.10 sit & go's if you want to blow it somewhere. Or you can build a bankroll.

I have left $3.25 I think. I blew my first $1 on the sit & go.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 17 2007,11:21

I'm going to play freerolls while I can and build it up for a bit. Then I'll probably dive into the Sit and Gos.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 17 2007,13:23

I won't be on in time for the freerolls tonight. Well... maybe. It'll be close. I'll most likely miss Pokerstars, but I can probably hit Pokertime.

You should have seen the suckout I made last night on Pokertime. I thought everyone would fold to me so I went all-in with 8/3 off. I was called by A/A and 9/9, and ended up hitting a straight on the river. The guy with nines flopped three of a kind, so I'm sure he was happy for a few seconds. Ha ha ha!

Then I hit a bad luck streak where I lost three all-in's in a row, when I was the favorite, to knock me out of the tournament. Oh well.

Now that I know you're in the freerolls, maybe that'll motivate me to do better.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 18 2007,06:07

Balls!
I had pocket 10's and made trips.
He had pocket Jacks and made trips.
I blew my bankroll allowance for the day. That hasn't happened in a long time. >:p

On the plus side, I hit the play money tables with 30k and turned that into 130k. Last time I turned 10k into 60k.

Now that I'm close to 200k in free chips, I might start playing more play chip games, as it's an ego boost. Besides, I'm curious about selling my chips to one of these places:
< http://pschipsource.com/ > $1 per 100,000 chips
< http://www.onlinepokergoods.net/ > $2.50 per 250,000 chips
< http://www.tradeyourchips.com/ > $10 per 1,000,000 chips
< http://www.pokerhex.com/sellps.html > $.70 per 100,000 chips
< http://www.pschips4you.com/sellchips.html > $1 per 100,000 chips

It'd be cool to make 1,000,000 chips. I don't know if I have the dedication to get there though. I always seem to get a big stack of play chips, then I blow them with dumb place.
Of course, now that I know I can sell them, maybe the chips won't seem as meaningless and I'll hold onto them a bit longer?

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 18 2007,07:27

I'll probably be on the Pokertime freeroll and the Pokerstars 9:00 freeroll tonight. I'm going to play fast though. Lots of early all ins.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 18 2007,10:04

I *always* forget to sing up for the 9:00 $200 Pokerstars freeroll.

My "plan" for the night (and most nights) is to hit the 6:00 freeroll if I can manage to sign up at 3:00. (33% chance of that though)
Also, to hit the 8:30 freerolls on PS & PT.

The early stages of the tournament are all about doubling up multiple times. I either build a big stack or I get to do something else. My goal is to avoid working too hard.

I think I'll hit the play money tables after I get knocked out of the freerolls. I'd like to build my stack to something decent.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 18 2007,20:46

Watching you now, Leisher. Congrats on cashing in the Pokerstars freeroll.
Go broke so I can go to sleep.

Edit: Dang it! I'm going to bed anyway.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 18 2007,20:54

I was 1st after the first break. I've had three good hands this hour. Two were destroyed on the flop. I bluffed two other pots. I'm hoping my luck changes after the next break.

There was a nice little run. 25th place going into the third break. 259 or so players left out of 8000.

After the fourth break now. 67 people left. I'm in 24th place. 2 all-ins in a row. In both I was way behind after the flop, but wound up chopping both pots. I really want to go to bed.

Another all-in, another choppd pot. We're down to 43 players on 5 tables.

Just knocked out two players with a straight on the river. Down to 39.

Called a guy's bluff to knock another out. 38 left. In 13th place.

36 players. 4 tables.

27 players. 3 tables. 12th place.

24 left. Soooo tired.

Just had my first AAs of the night and they were broken by a flush on the river. I'm tired and have a cold. Going nuts on the next opportunity.

I'm out. 21st place out of 8000. Not bad.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 19 2007,06:22

Congrats. That makes you $.44 richer.

I was knocked out early in both of my freerolls. I hit the play money tables and finished 90k up. Then I watched you for quite awhile, while watching TV.

You play a nice, conservative game. Good. Have you read Harrington on Hold'em Volume I? I think it'll fine tune your game a bit, and compliment your style of play (which is pretty much how I play when I decide to put my nose to the grind stone).

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 19 2007,11:08

I'm taking tonight off. I might try to make a run again Thursday or Friday.

I haven't read Harrington's book. I've read a few books, but this was years ago. I read Phil's and a book called "Poker Nation" which is actually my favorite. I also have a book on "tells". Truthfully though, the books didn't help much with the exception of teaching me that sometimes you win by folding.

I enjoy the conservative style of play. Aggressive works in bursts, but will always kill you over the long run. Several people learned that last night. My favorite play is to let the aggressive guys attack me while I'm holding the monster.

There were a few hands last night where I hit the flop and would let the aggressive player bet at me. After I called their bet, they'd always check on the turn figuring I had a hand and showing me they were bluffing at the pot. Thus, I'd check as well. Chalk it up to aggressive tendencies or just sheer stupidity, but several times last night, after such a scenario, several morons bet huge on the river thinking me weak only to find themselves crushed.

I like to condition a table that I bet with hands, so when I make a bet later they'll be thinking I have it rather than I'm bluffing. That worked out pretty well for me last night as I took more pots without a showdown than I did with showdowns.

My weakness is that I don't push my chips around enough. I need to get people off hands when I'm holding second pair or a flush/straight draw. Easy to say, but tough to do on the web. Internet players play really loose.

That's something that's always made me chuckle about people when they criticize Helmuth. Yes, he's a jackass, but when he says "these kids don't understand the game", he's actually more accurate than people want to believe. Texas Hold 'Em isn't about "All-In", which seems to be the primary strategy for today's player. You know how they say that "You should play the player and not the cards"? That doesn't apply in our "All-In" world. "All-In" eliminates all strategy and makes it all about the luck of the draw.

That's one thing that was nice about last night. As I progressed further into the tournament, it became obvious that the idiots were gone. There were only serious poker players still around and they didn't use the "all-in" every other hand.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 19 2007,18:44

In the PS freeroll I wont he first 6 pots straight.
I had top pair with an ace kicker on the flop of the seventh hand, and he big bet the flop (a King) so I knew he hit. I made the call just to see if I could extend the streak.

I wasn't in the mood to play so I quit and hit the play money tables.

I build up a large stack and then got my top full-house cracked for all but 10k of my chips.

I bought in for another 30k, built that up, and got all-in in a *monster* pot (lots of callers had 5k in and bailed) when I had K/K. Ends up he had A/A. Dagnabbit!

Left a 70k loser. Could have been worse.

I decided that tonight is just not my night.

Posted by TheCatt on Sep. 20 2007,04:07

(Leisher @ Sep. 19 2007,14:08)

QUOTE

My weakness is that I don't push my chips around enough. I need to get people off hands when I'm holding second pair or a flush/straight draw. Easy to say, but tough to do on the web. Internet players play really loose.

That's something that's always made me chuckle about people when they criticize Helmuth. Yes, he's a jackass, but when he says "these kids don't understand the game", he's actually more accurate than people want to believe. Texas Hold 'Em isn't about "All-In", which seems to be the primary strategy for today's player. You know how they say that "You should play the player and not the cards"? That doesn't apply in our "All-In" world. "All-In" eliminates all strategy and makes it all about the luck of the draw.

That's one thing that was nice about last night. As I progressed further into the tournament, it became obvious that the idiots were gone. There were only serious poker players still around and they didn't use the "all-in" every other hand.

It sounds to me like they understand the Internet poker game fairly well. Sure they play loose and go all-in a lot, but it's a way of saying "I'm either getting lucky tonight, or playing in one of these other free tourneys tonight or tomorrow."

Sure, it's not a winning strategy for a single tournament, but with enough attempts, it's not necessarily a bad strategy for an oft-repeated game.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 20 2007,06:21

(TheCatt @ Sep. 20 2007,04:07)

QUOTE

Sure they play loose and go all-in a lot, but it's a way of saying "I'm either getting lucky tonight, or playing in one of these other free tourneys tonight or tomorrow."

That's pretty much what I do.
It costs nothing but time to play those things. I'm minimizing my time investment.
If I get lucky and double/triple up a few times, I have a huge advantage over other players. Then I can play better and put some effort into it. It'd suck to be fighting tooth and nail for small pots for two hours before getting knocked out on the bubble. Should I lose later in the game after getting there via a lucky streak, well, I was lucky to be there anyway so it's still no big loss.
Should I get knocked out early, which I often do, there are plenty of other games to spend my time on, like 6 player tables.

I'm a big fan of 6-player tables. I've found that most people misplay them (more than they misplay full tables). They either play their full table strategy (too tight), or they go overboard and are too aggressive.
Mostly it's aggressive/weak play. That is, they love limping in, but realize they have to call my 4x BB opening bets because I'm making them with marginal hands. This takes them out of their comfort zone. So when they don't hit the flop and I raise, they fold.
Then they're unwilling to play their second pair when I raise each street.
I'm sure they're thinking, "I'm going to hit a hand and hurt that guy." But really, as soon as they show some spine I'm out of the hand with a small loss.
And sometimes I'll actually have something great. So when they fight back, and I go back over the top of them, they gleefully throw all their chips at me to finally stick it to my bluffing ass.
"Sure your K/J made two pair on the flop, but my 5/5 made a set."

Posted by Paul on Sep. 21 2007,06:38

I was playing, got a guy on tilt, and I knew he'd call any all-in I made.
I had this guy in the palm of my hand if I hit something big.

The very next hand I have K/K. I go to make a big raise and I get disconnected!

It takes a minute to reconnect and by then I only get the end of the hand. No Aces on the board. I'd have cleaned up. Instead, I lost my small blind. Dang it!

Then this morning I find someone who makes huge raises for dumb reasons. I had A/J with an Ace/rag/rag flop and she makes a huge raise in the turn. The pot is pretty big, but I fold anyway. She *had* to have A/Q or something, right?

Nope. Someone beat her with a pair of sixes. Ugh!

Frustrating.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 22 2007,12:38

QUOTE

Yeah, there's definitely that side of the argument, but it doesn't really hold water. I mean, don't get me wrong, I get that line of thinking, but it's not just the I either win now and don't waste hours or I don't crowd. "All-in" has become a strategy to them both online and off. It's taking everything "strategy" about the game and removing it in favor of blind dumb luck. One might as well be playing slots.

If it was something that just occurred early, it wouldn't be complained about so much.

Thing is, if it were a great strategy, the WSOP would lose almost half the field on the first hand every year.

To each their own though. I've done it, so I get it, but I don't make it my lifestyle.

I feel bad for their lovers though...

On a different note, I played in the freeroll on Pokerstars at 9 again last night and finished in 90th place when my pocket queens were beat by an ace on the flop.

I also entered a tournament on PokerTime that reinforces my suspicions about the "randomness" of online poker. It was a 5 card draw tournament. First hand. 5 people at the table. That's 25 cards out of a 52 card deck.

I was dealt 4,5,6,7 of hearts and an 8 of spades. I went all in. Another guy called.

We each took no cards. He beat me with a full house, jacks full of tens.

The probability of being initially dealt a straight is .39400%.
The probability of being initially dealt a full house is .014405%.

Both occurred in the same hand of the very first 5 card game I ever sat down to play online.

I understand that it's possible. I've just always said that monster hands and bad beats like that occur too often.

For those curious, the probability of being initially dealt a straight flush is .00153%. I really wish I could go back in time and see what would've happened if I had dumped my straight to try for the straight flush.

Paul, I'll probably miss all the freerolls this upcoming week, but I might hit a few of the later ones. I'll have to see how things go.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 23 2007,09:13

(Leisher @ Sep. 22 2007,12:38)

QUOTE

Thing is, if it were a great strategy, the WSOP would lose almost half the field on the first hand every year.

I also entered a tournament on PokerTime that reinforces my suspicions about the "randomness" of online poker. It was a 5 card draw tournament.

Very few people who invest $10k of their own money into a WSoP event are going to play crazy like that. Freerolls are a completely different beast from tournaments where you pay an entry fee. In fact, I'd say that you could learn a lot of bad habits in freerolls. The more expensive free money sit & go's are better practice for money tournaments.

What people are doing is using rebuy strategy. For example, Negreanu likes to play a lot of small pots normally, but if he's in a rebuy tournament he goes wild and rebuys seven or eight times.

Some people excel at the all-in strategy. There's a guy named Hoyt Corkins who's an expert all-in player. Of course, he doesn't use it as much as idiots online do.

As for the randomness of online poker. It was a tournament. They have no reason to make that non-random. An online site makes all their tournament profit when you buy in. It doesn't matter to them if the pots get big as they're not taking a rake from big pots.
Plus it's a freeroll, so they had no chance at making money. The only reason I can think of to rig fantastic hands like that is to encourage idiots to play $ games. But at the same time that discourages smarter players from playing. *And* idiots are going to lose later to smarter people anyway, so they'll get discouraged.
In short, fantastic match ups like that are bad for business except in $ table games where they collect a rake.

Posted by TPRJones on Sep. 24 2007,08:56

Eh, don't complain, then they might learn to stop giving you their money.

I encourage bad strategy in my enemy.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 24 2007,18:40

Dang it! I decided to play smart and loose. Other than one suck out (My K/J beating someone's A/K) I was always in with the best of it.
At one point, approximately 40 minutes in, everyone kept folding to my raises. I min-raised and won 8/10 hands uncontested.

Maybe 10 or 15 minutes after that screencap I was dealt A/A. There were raises and two re-raised before it got to me. I went all-in and was called by K/K... who flopped his third K. Doh!

That crippled me and I never got back in it. But man... if I had won that hand I would have been an unstoppable force of awesomeness.

Oh well.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 30 2007,07:54

For those of you who play on Pokerstars, or want to try it, there's a pretty nice freeroll going on today.

Tournament #62542160 < Play in the Bahamas w/daniel Negreanu Freeroll > - Rd 1

7,500 entries, and they pay at least $1 to the top 900 players. Plus the top 200 players get an invite to round 2 which pays more money. If you make it to round 3, the top prize is $1,00 cash for travel, an $8,000 buy-in to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and 7 nights accommodations at the Atlantis Resort and Casino in the Bahamas.

Plus you get to have dinner with Daniel Negreanu, who's probably the most personable pro player.

I could handle that.

Registration starts at 4:30. I have an alarm set so I can login and sign up.

And no, I am not going to do my typical freeroll play. This one is worth working for.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 30 2007,15:10

See you in the DN Freeroll.

I hit a Royal Flush last night. Early in a tournament and only one other player in the hand. The idiot kept raising my low bets until he was all-in with a pair of jacks. The sad part is the board had straight and flush possibilities and there was a king out there.

Not sure what he was thinking.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 30 2007,16:51

(Leisher @ Sep. 30 2007,15:10)

QUOTE

See you in the DN Freeroll.

I finished between 2,500 and 2,5100. I don't remember exactly. I left just as they announced the break.

I gambled on the last hand and it burned me. I had just signed up for the second Negreanu tournament when I gambled with top pair and an open ended straight draw.
Then I lost to a flush.
Then instead of confirming my entry it told me that I could only play in one of those per week. Dang it!

I wouldn't have gambled if I knew that.

Congrats on the royal flush BTW. What suit?

Posted by Leisher on Oct. 01 2007,05:16

I was out before you were. I just couldn't get a hand and couldn't focus either. I think coming home from Disneyworld a few hours prior and watching the Steelers play like shit just didn't put me in a good place for poker.

I never really got going and folded some hands I shouldn't have folded.

Oh well. I'll try next week.

On the plus side, my poker league starts tonight. That'll be fun.

Posted by Leisher on Oct. 02 2007,05:51

My poker league started its new season last night. I was able to join again after taking last year off for school. As it turns out, I stepped right in and won the first night's tournament.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 03 2007,17:00

On Sept. 30 I posted the Negreanu tournament.

Wanna skip the the equivalent of the Roung Three finale? Get a blog.

< http://www.pokerstars.com/blog_tournament/ >

It looks like anybody with a blog who posts their advertising code can enter.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 08 2007,10:01

Played a live game Saturday.
One guy knew I knew he was a tight player. I've helped him with his game and helped him hide his tells. He knows what when me makes a move, I get out of the way.

Well, early in out sit & go I made a King-high flush. There were two Aces on the board, and from the way the guy next to me as acting I knew he had folded an Ace.

With the Ah on the board, my Kh gave me the nut flush.

He had invested a lot, and shoved all-in. I figured he was chasing me off because he knew I gave him a lot of credit for a hand.

Ends up he made a full house, so I lost most of my chips.
I only had 200 left, and lost that pretty quickly, going all-in pre-flop with A/K suited and losing to an A/6o call when his 6 filled a straight.

And to add insult to injury, my wife decided to play, and ended up winning the thing when she hit a two outer heads up.

Plus my wife had a killer headache so I could only play the one game.

On the plus side, the next day online I was on the opposite ends of a nut flush VS full house situation. And I also made a big call on the river which more than doubled me up.

I watched the < PlusEV > $5 +$.50 clear though and remembered much of the stuff I had put aside when moving to the tables. I think I'll do OK in sit & go's now. The problem is that I don't have a lot of time. Tables I can quit at any time, but in tournaments I'm committed to sitting there for awhile.

I think I'll practice on Pokertime with my freeroll winnings. I don't know when I'll start through.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 08 2007,17:03

Pokertime changed the starting requirements for their freeroll. Now you need to have played in one raked hand before they'll let you enter.

The good news is that it looks like only 500 or so players will be playing in a $500 tournament that pays to 260th place.
The bad news is that even if I used my freeroll winnings to play a raked hand, they give extra chips to people who have played more raked hands. People who have played in 100 raked hands get 3k chips, as opposed to 1k. That is *quite* an advantage for them.

Edit: I went online and saw that Pokertime charges $.01 of rake for ever $.20 in the pot. This is worse than Pokerstars, who only charges the $.05 when the pot reaches the dollar mark. However, it makes playing a raked hand *really* easy.

I decided to pop into the cheapest table game ($.05/$.10 I think) with a few people (4 I think) and play a raked hand with the minimum $1 buy-in.

I won when I won with a raise that nobody called (I had top pair, 9's).

So I played the next hand. I got A/A and won.

So I played a third hand. I got A/Q and won (A/A/7 flop so I didn't make too much).

On the fourth hand I had A/9 "sooted" but I bailed and left the table with my $2.66.

I ended up being seconds too late to register for the freeroll. Oh well. I'll take $1.66 profit for three minutes work.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 08 2007,20:08

< Your IP address as a poker hand >.
Mine is terrible. Not bad for a hi/lo game though.
Three of Diamonds
Four of Hearts
Two of Clubs
Six of Clubs
Ace of Clubs

It does other stuff with your IP as well, like a graphic representation. My IP, as GPS coordinates, is in on the west coast of southern Africa.

Posted by TheCatt on Oct. 08 2007,20:12

my ip address is < here >

2C 5D 7H 8S 9H

Posted by TPRJones on Oct. 09 2007,07:45

AC SD 9C AC 3S "You cheat! You have 2 identical cards!"

This IP address as a phrase: some do you in.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 11 2007,10:11

< I like this shirt. >

I'd rather it be 5 cards though.

A better one would be "I like <picture of an unsuited 2 and Jack". So, a poker player would read it as "I like two Jack off."

Posted by Paul on Oct. 12 2007,19:48

I just won $.30 in a 7-Stud freeroll. I've never cashed in a stud freeroll before.
I'm terrible, but I just played really tight until I made the money.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 14 2007,07:08

I'm signed up for the Pokerstars blogger tournament, and was accpeted.
Unfortunately I have to go to my sister-in-law's birthday shortly before it starts.

Sucko!

Posted by Paul on Oct. 15 2007,08:50

Big news about online poker.

The winner of the World Championship of Online Poker Main event, the biggest online event of the year, had been disqualified.

Pokerstars investigated the winner and determined that the winner used multiple accounts. He set up a second account in his sister's name and used that.

Now, everybody else who played gets moved up one place. People who finished on the bubbles get more $.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 15 2007,21:21

Terrible day, with an OK ending.

Played Pokertime, got all-in pre-flop with the best of it, and the guy hit four hearts to make the river flush to beat me.

Went to sign up for the first freeroll and it didn't take my points.

I logged back in later and this time it allowed me to bring up the registration screen, but I only had two minutes and registration took over two minutes to process! ARGH!

Then I forgot to register for the 8:30 game I wanted to play in.

So I played the 10:00 stud freeroll and made it to the money. Now, this is my third time playing, and it wasn't until I hit the money that I realized that it wasn't limit! The freaking Pokertime software just didn't click in my head.

Once I had that eureka moment, I started kicking much ass. I dominated.

Of course, true to form, I got too wild and tangled with a chip leader.
Yadda yadda yadda... all-in with the best of it... yadda yadda kicked in the nuts.

Anyway, 20th place paid $.90, which isn't too bad. 21'st would have been $.60, and everything to 11th got $.90 as well.

Had I won that hand I'd have been an unstoppable force of awesomeness.

Posted by GORDON on Oct. 17 2007,16:10

You guys playing on the Absolute Poker website?

They cheat.

< http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007....de-open >

Posted by Paul on Oct. 17 2007,16:40

That's been a big deal for awhile now.
No, I don't play there. I think I played there once, for free, just to see what it was like.

In short, a developer had an account that couldn't play, but could view the hole cards of everyone at the table.

He used that account to observe the tables while playing with one of several abandoned accounts that he took over.

Since he couldn't cash out with those accounts (the money would go to the account owners) he would then have acquaintances play against him, where he'd purposefully lose all his winnings.

I don't see how Absolute Poker can survive this. Everyone and their mother is abandoning the site, and taking their $$$ with them.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 18 2007,18:50

I hit the Railbirds.com freeroll (if anybody signs up, my username is: SavagePenguin)

It was announced 2 hours ahead of time.
Registration was 1 hour ahead of time.
1,363 people signed up.
I finished in 898'th place.
1st $46
2nd $27
3rd $17
4th $11
5th $6.50
6th $4.30
7th+ $2.50

You need 24th to get at least $1, and the final pay position (138th) gets $.30

The game was pot limit 5 card draw. I don't think I've ever played that before. Limit games give me trouble, and I have pretty poor reading abilities with draw.
I mean, if they get one card, is it because they're drawing to a straight? A flush? Do they already have two pair?

Twice I was dealt a full boat, so I took no cards. It's pretty obvious that I'm not to be trifled with when I make a bet, then take no cards.

I also had no idea what a good hand was. A good hand is trips. Most of the time the winner has two pair. 6-handed tables BTW.

Also, if you browse the blogs on Railbirds.com you'll find people who put bounties on themselves. If you post a reply with your account name, and you're the one to bust them, they'll transfer $ to your account.

I signed up for bounties on three people. Two offered $1 on themselves, one offered $2. I never saw any of them.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 21 2007,16:59

This afternoon I hit my first No Limit Texas Hold'em Railbirds tournament. I vowed to do well this tournament, putting my full effort into it.

Thirty minutes in I disconnected. When I finally reconnected I had a countdown asking if I should fold/call/raise... with A/A. Sweet. I more than doubled up.
A bit later I made a decent bet as BB with A/Q suited. Then it disconnected. When I got back on, I'd lost my $. Dang it. I guess I was called, then it auto-folded me after the flop.

Tournament details:
1,558 entries. $200 in prize money. Pays to 150-something place I think. Winner gets $43.
48 minutes in I was 1/695 with 19k. Average stack was 3.4k.
1st break I was in 4/550 with 19k, average was 4k, and largest 25k.
2nd break I was 6/171 with 42k, average was 14k, and largest was 72k.
2:42 in I was 2/118 with 63k, average was 20k, and largest was 83k.
3rd break I was 45/61 with 21k, average was 38k, and largest was 122k.
3:31 in I was 11/47 with 63k, average was 49k, and largest was 219k.
Then I disconnected for over 12 minutes with 77.5k (11th place with 31 remaining)
When I got back on I had 44.6k remaining, (17th place with 18 remaining).
4:10 in I was knocked out in 17th place.

Payoff was $.82.
Two more places and I'd have made $1.19.

Of course, the cheapest sit & go on FT is $1 + $.25 (yuck), and the cheapest table games are $.05/$.10 with a minimum $2 buy-in. So I need to win at least another $.43 to play with that money.

Posted by Leisher on Oct. 22 2007,05:16

How does the railbirds freeroll work? They run their tournaments on Pokertime and pokerstars?

Whatever happened to partypoker?

Posted by Paul on Oct. 22 2007,10:30

I have never played on PartyPoker.
If you're referring to the Absolute Poker fiasco, their story is that a programmer pointed out the flaw and was ignored. Then the programmer exploited the flaw, using an owner's account to embarrass him.
Absolute Poker is in the process of tracking all of the tainted games and will be returning all money people lost to the cheater. Any money they won to the cheater they keep.
I'm not sure what they'll do about tournaments. I assume people who finished worse than him will get moved up in rankings/prize money, but what do you do about people who he busted out? Return their entry fee?

Railbirds.com is a poker website. They have forums and blogs and a daily quiz and something like 30,000 members. None of that is special.
What *is* special is that they offer freerolls on Poker Stars and on Full Tilt. There's usually around 1,500 players at each freeroll, who compete for $200 in prize money.

They have several daily freerolls, though only one a day seems to fit in my playable window.

They also have "ranked" freerolls as well, and ranked money tournaments. Basically, a ranked game gives you rank points, which can qualify you for some cool prizes. The guy at the end of the year with the highest ranking gets a WSoP Main Event buy-in, along with $2k for travel expenses.

This month's #1 ranked guy plays a $1,000 heads up match against < William Thorsson >. Even if you lose, you still get $250 and a 2GB MP3 player.

If you join, please put SavagePenguin as your referrer, as if I refer someone I get an invite to a bonus freeroll.

As far as the freerolls go, they send your Railbirds account a message which you have to go to their website to check. The message will arrive two hours before the freeroll, and will have the password for the game.
You can only register for the game one hour ahead of time.
Games are on both FT and PS, and aren't always No Limit Hold'em.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 22 2007,20:14

Played my second Railbirds NLHE freeroll
Finished 183 out of 1,712.
I could have folded my way to the money, but oh well. I don't play for the minimum payout.

Chip leader limped in pre-flop.
I had 10/10 and raised nice chunk.
He called.
Flop was 5/4/7 with two spades.
I shoved all-in. He called with K/6.
He hit the K on the turn, busting me.
Dang.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 23 2007,16:34

I'll probably be in the Railbirds freeroll tonight at 9:00.

I got this in my email today, regarding the Duplicate Poker I'd mentioned here before.

Evidently they have freerolls. I *assume* a $500 freeroll on that site won't attract too many people, so it may have better EV than the other freerolls.

I don't plan on checking it out though. My plate is full.

The $10 free has me curious though. I know some sites *give* play money players $5 on occasion to lure them into money games. My friend got $5 from Poker Stars, and I just heard from a guy who got $5 from Ultimate Bet.

QUOTE

Hey,

Just a quick note to let you know about our $500 exclusive freeroll at Duplicate Poker ( < http://www.cardschat.com/sites/43.php > ). Duplicate Poker is a skilled based poker game with a new twist on Texas Hold'em. They accept deposits via ALL Credit/Debit Cards worldwide (including US players, which is a huge benefit). Duplicate Poker also offer $10 free (no deposit required) and a 100% bonus on your first deposit.

The Cardschat $500 Freeroll will take place on November 3rd at 1pm EST. To qualify for this freeroll you must sign-up and make a first deposit.

To sign-up to Duplicate Poker use the following link: < http://www.cardschat.com/sites/43.php >

Good luck at the tables!

Regards,
Nick Kisberg
Cardschat.com

Also, if anybody has friends friends in Germany or Austria, I know a way for them to get a < free $5 on PokerStars. > You sign up for a free < IntelliPoker > account, then got to PokerStars and click the IntelliPoker link under the Help menu, and answer the questions.

Posted by TPRJones on Oct. 23 2007,18:19

I tried Duplicate Poker. The software was total crap. And I saw a few free players, but not a single person in any cash game. They're just really desperate to get cash games rolling, enough so to give away money apparently.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 24 2007,06:21

Yeah, but $10 is tempting. Especially if it's a bunch of noobs who are playing with ten no-consequences-if-I-lose-it dollars.

You might be able to turn the $10 into a decent bankroll.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 24 2007,21:35

Hit the 9:00 Railbirds freeroll.
Again, I put my full effort into it.

My only regret was calling a guy's hand and making the call anyway. I even asked him if he had A/Q before calling with my A/J after he shoved all-in after a A/2/6 flop. I had better than 3/1 on my money to call, but still.

Other than that, I don't have any regrets.

1,671 players
1st break I was 150/556 with $6k and an average stack of $4.5k.
2nd break I was 2/140 with $66k and an average stack of $18k.
3rd break I was 16/23 with $60k and an average stack of $109k.

Blinds at that point were 4k/8k with $400 antes, which gave me an M of less than 4.
I ended up shoving all-in with Q/9 into an unraised pot and losing to someone who had 10/10, knocking me out in 23'rd place for $.90.
It was the right move for the situation.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 26 2007,12:58

Hit the Railbirds 9:00 freeroll last night.
It was HORSE, on Full Tilt.
I hate limit games. I flopped the nut straight in hold'em and only managed to add 500 to my stack of 1500 by betting the max all the way.
Then in Razz I had the nuts (A/2/3) (a 4) and still lost when every other card was big. Sick sick sick.
I think I quit after 20 minutes, with only 800 in chips left.

I went to to PokerStars and played a play chip table with a friend. I had a good run, making about 130K.
When I quit I went back on FullTilt only find that I was *still* in the tournament! It was nearly an hour and a half in the tournament!
I took over the account just before the BB that would have knocked me out, shoved all-in with a better-than average hand, and lost. Oh well.

Oh... I looked up the PokerStars Blogger Championship (that I qualified for but never played in). < They only had 1,337 players! > (Ha ha! 1337!) Had I known the field was going to be so small I would have made an effort to play. I mean, the prizes were pretty generous.

Posted by Paul on Nov. 05 2007,07:58

Been hitting the ring games, as they're substantially more profitable than the freerolls. I had a goal to double my bankroll (which I finally hit Sunday), so I'd been putting my nose to the grindstone.

However we had a poker game 90 minutes away at someone's apartment in Louisville and three of us would be carpooling in the same tiny car. My friend and I decided to hit a freeroll to see who got shotgun. The first person eliminated would have to sit in the back. (Note: Piles of crap had to be shoved aside to make room for anybody in the back seat of this car)

1,581 player No Limit Hold'em on PokerStars.
I got up to 10K (twice the average stack) and then J/J bit me in the ass, knocking be down to 2,400. I managed to work my way back, and finished 84th. Unfortunately my friend made it to 34th. We both went out due to suck outs.
I lost when a guy hit a six-outer (about 13%) on the river.
My friend was even more brutal. He was a top 10 player and got a all-in with K/K against the table leader's J/J when there was a lousy (9 high) flop. The other guy turned a J. Had my friend won that, he'd have been tournament leader.

So I sat in the back on the drive up. 90 minutes. It sucked.
We agreed that the first of us eliminated from the home game would have to sit in the back on the way back.

The home game had three tables. My table was *awesome.* People didn't know what they were doing, and would do no-no's like picking up their cards and making unintentional string bets (a string bet is when you say "I call, and raise..."). And much of the table limped in on every hand.
Much of the shuffling sucked too and I saw a lot of cards on the bottom of the deck.
I never corrected these errors though, as I didn't want to embarrass anybody into playing more conservative.
I did make several corrections like "No she actually wins. See, she has a full house" though, as I thought I had an ethical duty to do that.

That was the first game I ever played where I never showed a hand.

The driver and I were about even at the break, by the friend I had the seating arrangement bet with wasn't doing well. He had a guy on his right who called every one of his bets and raises, and would win with bad cards.

After break, after bailing out of a hand where my A/K didn't connect and my bluff was re-raised (by pocket Queens I was told) I looked up and saw my friend sitting off to the side drinking his punishment beer. Beautiful!

For the record, when we play poker we don't drink. But after the game, while waiting for our friends to finish, we drink beer we brought. Said beer is the cheap and nasty kind, as the beer shouldn't be enjoyed too much. We call this "punishment beer."

I never really caught many cards. I had A/J twice, which both failed to connect with the clop but I won anyway. I had 10/10 which was my big winner after bluffing a guy off a monster pot. I also had an A/K which cost me a lot of chips when I made a continuation bet on rag-filled flop and was re-raised. One other time I was the big blind with something like 9/6 and flopped two pair.

I was in the middle of the pack when we were down to two tables. The blinds kept doubling, so it started to become a crap shoot. I had an average stack, which means that I had enough chips for three rounds.
I had an Ace and I thought about shoving all-in but I decided against it. Everyone folded to the big blind. Doh!
I had another Ace the next hand and though about shoving again, but decided not to. Everyone folded to the big blind again. Doh!
The next hand I had K/Q, so I shoved all-in, and was called by two players. Doh! One ended up making a straight, one made a flush, and I made nothing. Since they both had me covered and were playing against each other to the river I never had to turn my hand up. When I saw I lost I just mucked the cards.

The guy who invited us, the friend who drove, ended up winning the whole thing. Good for him.

Posted by Paul on Nov. 08 2007,18:41

I did it again! This time it's red.

I was in a freeroll. I rivered two pair, and someone was slow playing a bigger two pair, so Iw as knocked down to 300-something chips early.

Rather than fight it out I threw all-in when I was dealt 7/2 off-suit. I figured that if nobody called I could show for a laugh.

I had a couple callers and ended up rivereing a set of 2's to triple up.

The very next hand I threw all-in with A/4 "sooted" and was called by K/K. I flopped an Ace, he turned a King, and I rivered the nut flush.

People are pretty pissed at me at this point, and I don't blame them.

A few hands later I get a royal flush.

A few hands later I'm dealt K/K and get all-in against a guy who has A/A, and I was knocked out of the tournament.

Finally some justice.

Posted by Paul on Nov. 18 2007,07:04

< http://www.cardschat.com/f48/ >

Sign up for this forum to have access to the password for their weekly Sunday $350 freeroll on FT.

I won't be able to play, as I have to take my daughter to a birthday party.

Here's the details for this week's game. The prize money to player ratio is pretty sweet.

Full Tilt
Tournament #30641984
15:00
$350 in prize money
900 max players

Posted by Paul on Nov. 30 2007,10:03

I've been getting violated in poker. The holiday weekend was my most profitable period ever (including another $1 freeroll win on Full Tilt). But then Black Monday (my birthday) hit:

I had him all-in on the turn, where I was a 95% favorite to win.

In the two months I've been keeping track, I had never been down for more than a day... until Monday. I've been steadily bleeding chips since then. Last night I had my biggest losing session ever. I found a sucker who called my big opening raise (I had J/J) with 6/8 and hit a straight, to take half my chips ($5). After awhile I realized that he calls just about any all-in pre-flop. He called with crap like A/7 off-suit (usually winning!).
So I shoved with J/J and he ended up with Q/Q, felting me. I rebought and shoved again with J/J, and he had K/K to felt me again.
Then my top two pair lost to someone else (thank goodness) to felt me again.
I managed to make a small comeback (when I shoved with Q/Q and they didn't get cracked, plus a lot of small wins), but man, I lost a bunch.

I played some this morning and had two decent sessions. If I can stick with playing a solid/tight game I'll do OK, but I'm having trouble concentrating. My bankroll has reached a point where I think of it as "extra" so I'm not as careful with it. Plus it's been a crappy week at work.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 02 2007,06:20

I'm back on track. Had a good day yesterday, bringing my bankroll to record heights.

For those of you who play, I came upon this website: http://www.poker-edge.com/

They sell something like PokerTracker. But it looks like they offer stats on players who you haven't played yet. That is, you get to see the info they have on other players.

The website also lets you look up the information they have on you. So if you have a $ account, put in your username and see what they have on you. Then you can have them email you the full report for free.

Pretty neat.

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 02 2007,09:08

Interesting site, that. I think I'll have to download and try out that software.

Here's the report it has on me. Basically I'm a slightly better than average player, but a bit too passave pre-flop: once the flop is past I let other players drive the betting more often than not and merely react to them. Especially when I'm on the blind - I fold on the blind even faster than when I'm not on the blind. Which seems odd ... I'll have to pay more attention to that.

TPRJones [fulltilt]

Big Bets Won / 100 hands: N/A
Positive indicates a winning player; negative is a losing player.
VP$IP: 23.7
Shows how tight or loose a player is. Less than 20% is considered tight. Greater than 40% is very loose.
PreFlop Raise%: 6.6
Raising preflop more than 10% is somewhat wild. 5% is average. Less than 3% is passive.
PostFlop Aggression: 1.1
This is the ratio of (bets+raises) to calls. Greater than 2 is aggressive, less than 1 is passive.
Cold Call%: 9.3
Calling 2+ bets "cold" preflop. Numbers greater than 10% show looseness.
Blind Steal Attempt%: 11.1
How often a players raises in late position to "steal" blinds. If number is greater than PreFlopRaise%, he is a stealer!
Fold Small Blind to Steal%: 66.7
How often a player folds his small blind to a steal. If this number is high, you can steal his blind easily.
Fold Big Blind to Steal%: 50
How often a player folds his big blind to a steal. If this number is high, you can steal his blind easily.
Went to Showdown if Flop Seen%: 28
How often a player goes to showdown if he sees a flop. Numbers greater than 35% show a calling station.
Showdown Win%: 50
How often a player wins at showdown. Numbers lower than 50% show weak hands at showdown.

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 02 2007,12:45

The software is a buggy piece of crap. It crashes regularly and when it's not crashing it's barely working.

That having been said, it's great. I've been playing using it a couple of hours now and I've quadrupled my cash. Using it you know exactly who you can bluff and who you can't, and you know which players to avoid at all costs if they raise. My memory is crap so until now I've only been playing the cards. Now I can play the table. Me likey.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 03 2007,07:31

Here's mine. I can tell that it's not based on many hands. (I don't fold the BB or SM 100% of the time). I did like that the sample hand it showed on the website was one where I won an $18 pot, which is a lot bigger than average for the $.05/$.10 limits I play.

QUOTE

Big Bets Won / 100 hands: N/A
Positive indicates a winning player; negative is a losing player.
VP$IP: 36.8
Shows how tight or loose a player is. Less than 20% is considered tight. Greater than 40% is very loose.
PreFlop Raise%: 15.8
Raising preflop more than 10% is somewhat wild. 5% is average. Less than 3% is passive.
PostFlop Aggression: 2
This is the ratio of (bets+raises) to calls. Greater than 2 is aggressive, less than 1 is passive.
Cold Call%: 0
Calling 2+ bets "cold" preflop. Numbers greater than 10% show looseness.
Blind Steal Attempt%: 33.3
How often a players raises in late position to "steal" blinds. If number is greater than PreFlopRaise%, he is a stealer!
Fold Small Blind to Steal%: 100
How often a player folds his small blind to a steal. If this number is high, you can steal his blind easily.
Fold Big Blind to Steal%: 100
How often a player folds his big blind to a steal. If this number is high, you can steal his blind easily.
Went to Showdown if Flop Seen%: 37.5
How often a player goes to showdown if he sees a flop. Numbers greater than 35% show a calling station.
Showdown Win%: 66.7
How often a player wins at showdown. Numbers lower than 50% show weak hands at showdown.

First off, PokerTracker can give me all these stats and the stats of everyone I've played against based on the hands I've played with them. If you don't have PokerTracker you are missing out (so you should PM me).

I have an add-on to PokerTracker called GameTime+ that will do much the same thing that the Poker-Edge software does. That is, it displays the stats of people you are playing against. If you've never played them before, it pretty much just shows their stats for that session. But if you have played someone before, it uses the old data as well.
It does *not* draw information from pooled database. You only see data on hands that you were a part of.

I'm curious about trying Poker-Edge, as it appears to bring more to the table than GameTime+ (which is too basic to be buggy).

It looks like they charge a monthly fee though. $9.95 per month for my level. I rarely use GameTime as I can get a pretty good feel for the players, so I don't know if it's worth that price.
I know it's "free" if you use their referral to sign up for Bodog, *but* I can get a 30% rakeback if I signed up though other places. I know right *now* that's a deal, but if I move up in stakes, missing out on that would be costly.

Let me check PokerTracker and figure that out...

According to my (8 day old) PokerTracker stats I pay about $33 per month in rake (making thrice that in profit) which means I'd be making $9.90 in rakeback *if* I can keep the same win rate and continue playing the same stakes for the same number of hands per month. So if I took that deal and started playing Bodog instead ofPokerStars, it would be about even money. But if I moved up in stakes, it would be a ripoff. Rake would be substantially more if I moved from $.05/$.10 blinds to $.10/$.25 or $.25/$.50.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 03 2007,09:27

WARNING: Most poker sites have banned the use of Poker Edge. Poker Edge is on < PokerStars banned list > and < Full Tilt's banned list >. While Full Tilt has been ignoring the use of Poker Edge, supposedly some "Full Tilt doesn't care" talk on Poker Edge's website in conjunction with the industry's reaction to the AbsolutePoker fiasco and prompted Full Tilt < to start taking measures against it >.

So use it while you can. If they find it on your machine I hear they issue a warning. If they find it on your PC a second time they issue another warning. I'm pretty sure it's a "three strikes and you're out" policy.

Posted by Malcolm on Dec. 03 2007,11:37

Is there anything preventing one from simulating such a thing if they've the know-how to build one?

Posted by Paul on Dec. 03 2007,13:52

(Malcolm @ Dec. 03 2007,11:37)

QUOTE

Is there anything preventing one from simulating such a thing if they've the know-how to build one?

What do you mean by, "simulating such a thing?"

You are allowed to use software that gives you the odds (IE, odds of hitting a flush, the average payoff of your hold cards pre-flop, etc.).
You are also allowed to use software that logs and displays the data from hands that you've played in. But it can't log or display data from hands that you only observed.

That is, if you sit at a 9 player table and wait 5 hands before posting the blind, then you fold ten hands in a row before quitting, your data would be based on the 10 hands that you were a part of. None of the information that you observed during those five hands that you sat out would be recorded. If it did recored that information it would be considered "data mining" which is not allowed on most sites.
Ditto with opening a full table and just observing the action. Yeah, you can do it, but you're not allowed to have software that records what you see.

So basically Poker Edge collects data from hands that people have played in and puts them into a huge online database. Then you get to see stats on the people that other Poker Edge users have played against. So when you hit a game against strangers, you know that player X always raises post-flop and that player Y only plays good hands. It's a big advantage, especially early in the session.

Hmmm... I wonder if Poker Edge also betrays you by uploading your own info as well?

I think the poker sites can only track programs that they know about. So if someone were to build something similar, it'd probably go undetected.

I know that there are programs that will play poker for you. Since most players online aren't that good, computers tend to be decent winners. I know people would access a second computer via VPN so the poker sites couldn't find the software on the PC.

Regardless any of that behavior could get you banned and your bankroll confiscated.

Posted by Malcolm on Dec. 03 2007,14:38

So online casinos work like real casinos in that, not only can I not get caught cheating, I can't even get caught playing intelligently?

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 03 2007,16:48

(Paul @ Dec. 03 2007,13:52)

QUOTE

Hmmm... I wonder if Poker Edge also betrays you by uploading your own info as well?

Yes if you are using it as a free trial, although once you sign up your data is hidden from everyone.

Last night I played in two cash tourneys, and ended up in the money in both. I can directly attribute my improved play to Poker Edge. In both cases it identified loose and tight players with 100% accuracy, and I ended up stealing far more hands than I actually won with the nuts. At one point it got so that one guy I was up against (a "tight rock" in Poker Edge terms) I completely stopped even looking at my cards and won every pot against him based completely on betting patterns and nothing else. (I mean that literaly, I recall winning more than one hand with 7/2 off not matching the table at all, and at least one hand where I folded big slick pre-flop just because he raised to 3x big blind - something a tight rock only does on KK or AA).

As to that other program, I couldn't ever get it to work right. It crashed my computer every time I tried to use the GameTime+ thingy. And I don't want all those stats, I don't know what they mean. I just want to know if someone is P/P, P/A, A/P, A/A, and whether they've been playing tight or loose. Keep it simple, I'm dumb.

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 03 2007,18:03

Poker Edge had an update today, and I've not had any buggy problems at all. Although I've also stopped using IE on that computer while using PE, too (it uses IE in the background to do God knows what) so it could be that, too.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 04 2007,08:48

< I need to move up in limits. >

A 50 minute video tutorial on playing poker at a $.10/$.25. 6-max table. I plan on moving up to that level 2008, assuming things go as planned. I have played the $.25 level before, and did well, but I want to make sure I have a proper bankroll before taking a serious stab at it.

Here's one for a < $.50/$1 6-max > table.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 05 2007,19:44

Here's a screen cap of GameTime+ working with Poker Tracker.

If you have enough hands logged against a player, their rating avatar will appear by their stats. I put a copy of the possible ratings in the middle of the table, not that anybody I was playing with has been ranked yet.

If you click on the stats (like I did with Wakeboarrder) you can get more info.

I have a decent seat, with a guy who's only played one out of 30 hands on my right (so I avoid him) and a guy directly to my left who is voluntarily puts money into 53% of the pots.

The guy two to my left has folded 100% of the blind steal attempts... but he's only been put to the test once, so I guess that doesn't mean much. But if I had more hands it might mean something.

EDIT: It looks like I need to tell Poker Tracker to rate the people in its database. It doesn't do it automatically. But I can specify the minimum number of hands before they're rated, and what percentages result in what rating. You can also tell it to base the ratings on the last "x" hands or a time period. That way old stats don't don't mess you up if they've changed their game.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 07 2007,08:54

I looked up my transaction history for the past 60 days, and found a "$10 credit purchase" that took place on the final day of my losing streak.

I did *not* made a deposit.

I emailed PokerStars about it this morning and just got a response:

QUOTE

Hello Paul,

Tahnk you for your email.

Transaction # 0112542506 is a 'Full Contact Poker Mission 2 reward credit'.

Then it clicked. The Full Contact Poker forums had a generous freeroll that was advertised on PokerStars. If you were a forum member, and signed up on the FCP site, you could play. I was already a forum member so I followed the link and registered.

I don't think I ever played it. But then they had a "Mission 2" which gave $10 to any registered FCP member who could collect 50 FPP's over the holiday weekend. I did *not* sign up for that, and registration closed a couple days before I noticed it. I was disappointed too, as I estimated that I had close to 50 for that time period. In the back of my mind I wondered if my original registration qualified me for all of those promotions. I guess I did!

That is so awesome.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 10 2007,14:00

My winning streak ended last night with a $11 loss.
I won a few other games, which more than offset that, but it was still a disappointment.

I was down $16. I made back $13 of that.
Then I was dealt J/J (I soooo hate that hand).
The flop was J/6/6. I could tell form his bet that he was afraid that I had a 6.
The turn was an 8. Again, another cautious bet. I baited him along.
The river was a Queen. and he shoved his last $4 in. I called.
He had Q/Q and I doubled him up. Aaaaaagh!

I was really trying hard to get back even that game, and that blow really hurt and I never got that close again.

J/J hurts me so bad, so often.

Posted by Paul on Feb. 18 2008,08:08

< New poker comedy. >
Lots of stars.

Posted by Leisher on Feb. 18 2008,10:35

That looks great.

I guess Daniel N. has a good sense of humor since the "genius who lives at home with his mom" is him.

I didn't see Anne Duke though and the poker pro mom/stay at home dad was obviously her.

Posted by Paul on Feb. 18 2008,10:55

Anybody here play on PokerStars?

Posted by Leisher on Feb. 18 2008,10:56

Me obviously.

Posted by Paul on Feb. 19 2008,12:36

I thought you took a break?

I'm up to 900,000 play money chips, but I don't play those games that often.

I did stupidly well over the weekend, with just over a 50bb/100 win rate, which is even high for a heater.

I was stupid last night and lost a lot. I was too tired to play, but didn't quit.
I remember chasing a gut-shot and flush draw. The river was a blank, but I made an over bet to steal because I though the other guy was weak. He called. Doh!
I ended up winning, because I hit that flush I was chasing. That "blank" was actually the club I was looking for. Duh! I didn't even notice. I so deserved to lose that.

On another hand there was a 6/Q/Q flop and I had to over cards (I don't have to name them do I?). The aggressive guy on my right checked, which made me suspicious. I thought he might be slow playing so I went to make a 1.50 probe bet... but I goofed and put in 15.
He responded by shoving all-in for another 10. Doh!
So I had to abandon the pot.

That last one put me on tilt. I was up about 13 when I made the blunder, and 10 minutes later I was in the hole close to 20.
I managed to dig myself a bit out of that hole, but I still crashed and burned at several other tables.

Not fun. And I deserved it all.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 10 2008,07:30

< I buttsecks'd Negreanu. >

Four times.

Posted by Leisher on Mar. 10 2008,08:07

Final table for my poker league tonight. There are 8 of us playing for somewhere between $3400 and $4800 depending on side bets.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 10 2008,09:27

Meanwhile, I've been in limbo.
I can't seem to break $600 profit. Well, I do, getting up to $630, but then I $60. I keep hoovering just below that mark. It's my own fault. I just haven't been playing as serious.

I may start just playing Heads Up S&G's. Because I'm active in every hand I pay more attention and have a nice win rate. I've played 10 tables so far, winning 9 of them. The one loss was after I flopped a set of 4's, got the other guy all-in when he had an over pair (J/J), and he rivered the J to give him a bigger set.

Oh yeah... played a couple ring games with friends at a local bar. Lost $7 or $8 the first night, an $20 the last night. Keep getting sucked out on. IE, guy made runner-runner (two sixes) to beat me, and on the final hand last time my A/2 had a 345 flop and someone chased his 7, getting a 6 on the river.

Stupid river sixes!

Played a live tournament too. Three of us drove up. One of us won it all the first time. The other guy won it all the last time. I got down to two tables, but have yet to cash. At least, of the three of us, I've averaged the best finish.

Posted by Leisher on Mar. 10 2008,21:19

20 weeks to make it to the final table and I finished second. I was chip leader for a minute when we were down to three, but the blinds at that point were ridiculously high (500-1000 with our starting stacks ranging from 1500-2200 depending on points from the season).

I got killed by a few blinds, watched one of the others get knocked out and faced a massive disadvantage in chip count heads up. I didn't wait around and went all in with J-10 suited to his 5-7 off. He hit trip 5s.

Oh well. The bracelet eludes me, but I'm only 1 of 2 people who have made the final table every year.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 11 2008,06:32

Sounds like fun. I'll skip the live game this week.

I finally met someone better than me playing a HU tournament last night. I made a couple mistakes which hurt me.

That game put me on tilt so I blew another one as well. I was up against some chick and shoved with 6/6. She called with K/Q and flopped a K. Oh well.

Here's an example of what I was up against when I hit the ring game around midnight. (I only played A/To because the SB & MP were in 60% of the pots, calling with junk, so if an Ace hit I was more likely than no to have the best hand).

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (5 handed) < Poker-Stars > Converter Tool from < FlopTurnRiver.com > (Format: FlopTurnRiver)

SB ($16.70)
BB ($37.65)
Hero ($26.15)
MP ($21.65)
Button ($28.75)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with T

, A

.
Hero raises to $1, MP raises to $1.75, 1 fold, SB calls $1.65, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.75.

Flop: ($5.50) K

, 4

, A

(3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.5, MP raises to $5.25, SB raises to $14.95, Hero folds, MP calls $9.70.

Turn: ($37.90) A

(2 players)

River: ($37.90) 7

(2 players)

Final Pot: $37.90

Results in white below: SB has Qh 9h (flush, ace high).
MP doesn't show.
Outcome: SB wins $37.90.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 11 2008,06:33

Things got better though.

Here's a hand that happened a bit later:
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) < Poker-Stars > Converter Tool from < FlopTurnRiver.com > (Format: FlopTurnRiver Cards)

MP ($38.20)
CO ($24.30)
Button ($30.15)
Hero ($18.75)
BB ($29.95)
UTG ($30.55)

Preflop: Hero is SB with

.
1 fold, MP calls $0.25, 2 folds, Hero raises to $1.25, 1 fold, MP calls $1.

Flop: ($2.75)

(2 players)
Hero bets $1.5, MP calls $1.50.

Turn: ($5.75)

(2 players)
Hero bets $3, MP raises to $8.25, Hero calls $5.25.

River: ($22.25)

(2 players)
Hero bets $7.75 (All-In), MP calls $7.75.

Final Pot: $37.75

Results in white below: Hero has Td Ts (three of a kind, tens).
MP doesn't show. A/J
Outcome: Hero wins $37.75.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 11 2008,06:34

The final significant hand of the night (two hands after the previous):
PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) < Poker-Stars > Converter Tool from < FlopTurnRiver.com > (Format: FlopTurnRiver Cards)

BB ($15.70)
UTG ($24.30)
MP ($29.90)
Hero ($35.95)
Button ($29.45)
SB ($34.45)

Preflop: Hero is CO with

.
1 fold, MP calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.25, 2 folds, BB calls $1, MP calls $1.

Flop: ($3.85)

(3 players)
BB checks, MP checks, Hero bets $2, BB calls $2, MP folds.

Turn: ($7.85)

(2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $4, BB raises to $12.45, Hero calls $8.45.

River: ($32.75)

(2 players)

Final Pot: $32.75

Results in white below: BB has 8c Jd (one pair, jacks).
Hero has Kh Js (one pair, jacks).
Outcome: Hero wins $32.75.

Posted by Paul on Mar. 27 2008,21:53

Skipped a live game tonight (lost $10 there last time) and hit a tournament sponsored by a poker forum I frequent.
Things turned out well.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 28 2008,06:55

Very nice!

Posted by Paul on Mar. 28 2008,08:05

When I started playing poker online I figured I'd be a tournament player, but the suck outs/variance killed me. I mean, you make several all-in calls when you're a 2/1 favorite and you're going to get burned a lot. When all your good decisions eventually hold up you get a big win, but there are a lot of losses in-between, even when you play well.

Since my profit slipped to a crawl in rings, I experimented with HU tournaments (which I am apparently very good at... or more accurately, where other people are very bad).

That success gave me confidence to hit a tournament again. I played a $1+$.20 45 player tournament and won it, which pretty much put tournaments back on the menu.
I still hate losing to bad beats, but I'm winning more than I'm losing.

You can see my Sit & Go stats on SharkScope.com (only Sit & Go's are listed, and not all of them make it). If you look at the graph you can see my decline. I quit tournaments at the bottom, and the upswing started when I tried out HU S&G's.

Posted by TPRJones on Mar. 28 2008,08:12

I enjoy tournaments, but I can't win them consistently enough to make it profitable. For me the money comes from ring games. Specifically ring games with suckers.

Posted by Leisher on Apr. 03 2008,11:42

I was in a $2000 (play money) tournament two nights ago and finished 2nd out of 45. When we were heads up, the other guy hit runner-runner to beat me or I'd have crippled his stack. Oh well.

Hey Paul, do me a favor and send me those links again to those forums and such. I've been a lot more often lately, literally every night for the past week. I've boosted my play money stack from 9k to 38k.

In the big tournaments on Pokerstars, I've been finishing anywhere from 300th-84th out of 12,000 or 5,000 people depending on the tournament. Not too bad.

I'd like to get into some real money freerolls again and Pokerstars dropped all of their nightly ones.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 03 2008,20:18

I played that same tournament, and < did worse this week. >

I also played two S&G's this week. I lost one early, and got 2nd in the other.

Leisher, and anybody else who wants to play with some free money:

1) Go < here > to get the Poker Royale software.
2) When you sign up, put in the bonus code: free10
3) Login to the gaming software.
4) Click on the cashier.
5) Click on "Bonus Account"
6) You have to log out and log back in to see the money, but $10 will be deposited in your account.

The catch is that you must earn 120 poker points before they let you cash out. I played some yesterday, making $4 and 20-something poker points. I don't like the software and expect that if I do finally cash out that there may be headaches, but we'll see.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 03 2008,20:55

(Leisher @ Apr. 03 2008,11:42)

QUOTE

Hey Paul, do me a favor and send me those links again to those forums and such.

If you're interested in playing freerolls, CardsChat and RailBirds are good. If you sign up, please use SavagePenguin as the referrer.

Railbirds has the most freerolls, but the quality of content on CardsChat is superior.

The biggest/best forums are < 2+2 > and < PocketFives >. I don't spend much time there though, as I prefer the CardsChat community.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 22 2009,20:10

Anybody here play poker?

PokerStars has dropped the private tournament buy-ins down to $1.10 ($1 to prize pool, $.10 to rake).

Posted by TheCatt on Dec. 23 2009,05:16

So that means if we want to play a DTMan tourney we could for cheap? I'm down. I dont play a lot, but I've always wanted to play a DTMAn tourney.

Posted by Leisher on Dec. 23 2009,05:36

Ditto.

Posted by Troy on Dec. 23 2009,07:06

Poker? I barely know her!!

I bet this joke was done 10 pages ago.

Anyway, I'm game.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,07:13

Rectum? Pert near killed 'em!

Posted by Cakedaddy on Dec. 23 2009,09:53

I'd be in as long as you all promise to let me play at least 5 hands before you take all my money.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,10:24

He can't take any of your money if you fold early.

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 23 2009,10:37

Sure, depending on when it is I'm in. Let's be sure to plan far enough ahead so that everyone can get money into Pokerstars to play with. I don't really play anymore, but I'll get some money in there for a DTMan game.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,10:39

How much is it going to cost me to get into the game?

Posted by TheCatt on Dec. 23 2009,10:49

$20?

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,10:50

And congress is trying to decide whether or not to go after peeps who use online gambling sites?

Posted by TheCatt on Dec. 23 2009,10:54

(TPRJones @ Dec. 23 2009,13:37)

QUOTE

Good point about pokerstars.

Is there anywhere to play for free? Then we can just paypal the $ in or something?

(Or, maybe paypal it to someone to be the "banker" who then splits it according to winnings?)

I dont really want pokerstars to have any of my $.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,11:55

I like the 'play for free' option, then we just make a gentleman's bet, and paypal $5 to the winner.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,11:56

Hell, I can multi texas hold'em on my blackberry.

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 23 2009,12:30

Sure, if somewhere will let us do a private free play game that has a good interface, we could just do that. Then we can either do winner-take-all, or just have the winner send the 2nd their share.

Whatever we do, lets fire up some voice chat system so we can properly talk shit during the game.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,12:31

(TPRJones @ Dec. 23 2009,15:30)

QUOTE

Steam has a good voice system we have used. The main benefit being most of us already have Steam.

Posted by TheCatt on Dec. 23 2009,12:50

We should do Skype so we can see TPR's cat ears.

Posted by GORDON on Dec. 23 2009,12:55

I would prefer to not.

Posted by TPRJones on Dec. 23 2009,13:30

I lost those long ago, sadly. But if you have some sort of fetish, Catt, I could get another pair.

Posted by Cakedaddy on Dec. 23 2009,16:15

Yahoo has free games. don't know if we can make it private though. Doing the free play could be more fun in the sense that we could do a 10 to 1 kind of thing so our pots can be bigger. In other words, everyone starts with $1000 in fake money and we all put up $10.

And honestly, I'd rather keep it in the $10 range. Ya, I know you'd rather take my $20, but, I don't want to give you that much. If I'm going to spend $20 to play a game, it won't be one in which I just hand you guys $20.

We could also do a free play thing where we all start with the same amount of money, then play whenever, against whoever. After two weeks, who ever has the most money claims the paypal prize. We use to do something like that with the stock market. We'd all invest and after 2 weeks, whoever had the most money won. This way, as I learn, I may have a chance to catch up and be competative. Otherwise, I'm out in 10-20 minutes and I didn't learn anything and I don't want to play any more cause losing sucks.

Posted by Paul on Jan. 03 2010,20:20

I'd play.

(TheCatt @ Dec. 23 2009,05:16)

QUOTE

So that means if we want to play a DTMan tourney we could for cheap? I'm down. I dont play a lot, but I've always wanted to play a DTMAn tourney.

Two players...

(Leisher @ Dec. 23 2009,05:36)

QUOTE

Ditto.

Three players...

(Troy @ Dec. 23 2009,07:06)

QUOTE

Poker? I barely know her!!

I bet this joke was done 10 pages ago.

Anyway, I'm game.

Four players...

(Cakedaddy @ Dec. 23 2009,09:53)

QUOTE

I'd be in as long as you all promise to let me play at least 5 hands before you take all my money.

Five players...

(TPRJones @ Dec. 23 2009,10:37)

QUOTE

Six players...

(GORDON @ Dec. 23 2009,10:50)

QUOTE

And congress is trying to decide whether or not to go after peeps who use online gambling sites?

No. The regulation was snuck into a Homeland Security bill and prevents the use of credit cards to pay online gambling. It's a regulation against banks, not people. Plus there is no enforcement of the law, and last month they voted to extend their lack of enforcement for another year.
People deposit with eCheck or gift cards (which are not credit cards), and groups are lobbying that poker is not gambling, but a game of skill. (It's defined as a game of skill in CA, so there are poker rooms there)

Seventh player?

In comparison, the final table coverage you see on TV (World Poker Tour) has 6 players. The more the merrier in my opinion though.

I don't see play money sites like Yahoo or Facebook or even the play money games on PokerStars and Full Tilt to be viable options though. You simply cannot hold private games.

I see two options.

1) I give you each $1.10 on PokerStars. You can either pay me back on PayPal or whatever, or keep it as a gift. Then we play a game.

2) Cakedaddy wanted to keep it in the $10 range, and wanted to learn over a longer period than one game, so we could play a series of 4 or 5 $1+$.10 games with a Paypal side pot (keeping the total to $10).

#1 & #2 ranked players would get a piece of the side pot.

I'd transfer each of you $4.40 (if 4 games) or $5.50 (5 games) on PokerStars (I'd want to be reimbursed if we did this). Then we have a PayPal side pot ($5.60 or $4.50) in which the best overall gets the lions share.

4-Games: 7 x $5.60 = $39.20. 1st place would get $25.00 and 2nd best would get $14.20.
5-Games: 7 x $4.50 = $31.50. 1st place gets $20 and 2nd gets $11.50.

Private $1.10 tables with 7 players pay:
1st $3.50
2nd $2.10
3rd $1.40
(This is an incredibly flat pay scale, paying 43% of the field)

Then we'd just need a fair way to calculate who is best overall. Standard would give 1st place finishes significantly more points than 2nd or 3rd place finishes. To make it easy we could just consider whoever wins the most $ to be the winner?

Let me know.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 17 2011,07:49

(GORDON @ Dec. 23 2009,10:50)

QUOTE

And congress is trying to decide whether or not to go after peeps who use online gambling sites?

The Feds made a big movement to close online poker.
Check out Pokerstars.com or FullTiltPoker.com or UltimateBet.com or AbsolutePoker.com

Basically, the domains for the major poker sites have been seized. The poker sites are still allowing non-American players to play, but if you get on as an American you can't do anything involving real money.

Poker players are torn at what to do. These companies are not U.S. based, so the Fed's can't get their money. But if you cash out they have to go through a processor and those funds can be seized.

There are dozens of smaller poker sites that were not seized, and still allow American players.

I'm just sitting back and waiting to see what happens. I figure the several thousand I have on the sites are gone for good. Oh well. I only played for fun anyway.

Posted by Malcolm on Apr. 17 2011,10:39

QUOTE

The Feds made a big movement to close online poker.

Any reason why? Casinos bitching too much?

Posted by TheCatt on Apr. 17 2011,13:20

(Paul @ Apr. 17 2011,10:49)

QUOTE

I'm just sitting back and waiting to see what happens. I figure the several thousand I have on the sites are gone for good. Oh well. I only played for fun anyway.

Hmmmm. Shit.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 17 2011,21:39

(Malcolm @ Apr. 17 2011,10:39)

QUOTE

The Feds made a big movement to close online poker.

Any reason why? Casinos bitching too much?

People were making money, and the Feds weren't getting a piece of the action.

Posted by Malcolm on Apr. 18 2011,00:19

I suppose it is harder to tax those online things, what with all the politicians in D.C. bitching about whose party is holding shit up more. Christ forbid they do their job and, you know, legislate ... something that isn't self-serving.

Posted by GORDON on Apr. 18 2011,04:45

I'm just glad I am being protected from the temptation of online gambling. I am my own worst enemy, you know, and I need to be protected from, like, freedom.

Posted by TheCatt on Apr. 20 2011,13:43

< Two companies refunding players. >

Posted by Paul on Apr. 20 2011,14:01

Sweet. My friend called me when he heard about his on NPR. He'd cashed out a week before this stuff hit the fan.
I should get a little under 3k back. I had over 150 in loans out, which I don't even expect to see now.
If Absolute Poker (part of UltimateBet) pays back, that'll be sweet. I took $750 off there a couple months ago to get me under 1k, as I don't like or trust that site. I still don't trust them.

QUOTE

Originally Posted by Pokerstars.com
Statement from PokerStars – as at 20 April 2011 - 16:00 BST

PokerStars is pleased to confirm that the US Department of Justice has agreed to release the < www.pokerstars.com > domain name for use by PokerStars outside the US.

The company categorically denies the allegations brought by the US Department of Justice on 15th April 2011 and is taking all steps necessary to robustly defend itself, and the two named individuals. Meanwhile, the company has stopped offering real money poker services in the United States.

PokerStars' services outside the US are not affected. The Company has received assurance from the Isle of Man regulator that its licence status is unchanged. The company remains compliant with all of its other international licences.

Following discussions with the US Department of Justice, PokerStars has now entered into an Agreement which has been publicly filed. The US Department of Justice Agreement expressly states that the domain name can be used by PokerStars outside the US to facilitate the provision of real money poker services, and that PokerStars can pay out player balances to its former customers in the US.

Returning US players' funds is a top priority for PokerStars and the company can now start the process of returning money to its former US customers.

All PokerStars player deposits are completely safe. The Isle of Man's strict licensing laws (similar to other jurisdictions where PokerStars holds licences) require all funds to be held in accounts that are segregated from company assets. PokerStars has always complied with this requirement and continues to do so. This money is readily available to meet withdrawal demands, indeed the company continues to comply with withdrawal requests from players based outside the US as normal.

Outside the US PokerStars continues to operate business as usual.

Posted by Paul on Apr. 26 2011,16:21

PokerStars started allowing cash-outs today.
I had the most money on their site, so that's good news.

Posted by GORDON on Apr. 26 2011,16:48

(Paul @ Apr. 26 2011,19:21)

QUOTE

PokerStars started allowing cash-outs today.
I had the most money on their site, so that's good news.

Maybe it's an IRS sting.

Posted by Paul on Jul. 01 2011,14:33

The #1 site has already paid everybody off (who requested a withdrawal), and they even paid off $ for points people accumulated (which netted me an additional $50... would have been $75 if I had just put a little more time in)

The #2 site, Full Tilt, has failed to pay people their money, so many of the pros they sponsor were cutting ties with them.
Phil Ivey, the #1 poker player in the world is *not* playing the Worlds Series of Poker this season because he's a Full Tilt player and this is his way of protesting. He's also suing the site.

On Wednesday Full TIlt was < shut down by their licensing company >.

This disheartened a lot of people. We're all pretty sure that it means that Full Tilt didn't keep player bankroll money in a separate account, like PokerStars did, so they can't pay players.

Yesterday therr was some hope. < Full Tilt sold, > which may allow them to pay off the American players who are in limbo.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 14 2011,21:56

So the government shuts down the gambling sites because they're immoral and U.S. citizens shouldn't be free to spend their money however they want. (Right Obamacare supporters?)

Anyway, guess who wants to < start online gaming sites to create revenue? >

Posted by TheCatt on Sep. 20 2011,12:37

< Full Tilt Poker was stealing money. >

QUOTE

The prosecutor said that, as of March 31, Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 20 2011,14:26

All pokers sites are certified, but they go to different certification companies.
Some companies require that 100% of player money be held in a separate account. That way the site can write checks to everybody.
PokerStars did this. They paid everybody back fairly quickly.

Full Tilt's certification company allowed gaming sites to dip into player funds, and they can leverage up to the value of their company. So if Full Tilt was worth $500 million, then could take the $390 million and use it to run the site, sponsor events & TV shows, pay it out in promotions, sponsor players, etc. (A player named Chloe Gowin sued them for 1% of the company I think a few years ago, and back then I think she claimed it was was a billion dollar company).
Full Tilt had been trying to sell themselves. They had a deal for $300-something million dollars with a Danish company which would pay off all the players it owed and essentially give the company for free to the buyer, but that deal fell through.

Full Tilt has the best software in the business. They also had the most name recognition. But now, the name has been tainted.

If people got their money back I think they could pretty much pick up where they left it. I mean, everybody familiar with the company would know that it was under new management, and I'm sure they'd go through a company that required that 100% of player funds be saved.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 20 2011,19:58

Well, I Googled Full Tilt and found that < the L.A. Times posted something similar >.

AND they quoted my poker buddy Debi.
She was told it wasn't going to be published until tomorrow, so she was surprised.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 21 2011,11:07

Hey Paul, where were all the pros at this year's main event?

I didn't see Howard Leterer, Chris Ferguson, Annie Duke, Phil Ivey, etc? Or did they just all get knocked out early?

I just find it interesting that all of this is going on with Full Tilt and the other sites, and many of these big names seem to have disappeared from the public eye.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 21 2011,14:29

Daniel Negreanu played... with pride! His site (PokerStars) paid all of the American clients back and it still operates for non-Americans. Negreanu recently bought a place in Canada and flies there on occasion to play online.

Phil Ivey, the best player in the world, had a contract to support Full Tilt. He declined to play in any WSOP event this year as a form of protest against Full Tilt.

Phil Hellmuth played. He is the only player with 11 WSOP bracelets. He actually got 2nd place twice this year, getting bad beat in both to deny him another bracelet. I think he dropped Ultimate Bet as a sponsor though (they are a site that doesn't pay) and wears an Aria (the hotel) hat now.

Annie Duke is "good for a girl" but isn't that good of a player. I've actually played at the same table as her on Ultimate Bet during a tournament. She's an Ultimate Bet sponsor, and nobody expects to get their money back from that site. (I got lucky and pulled out $750 shortly before the site went down, so I only lost a few hundred I had left on there to tinker around with. I only deposited $50 on the site.)

I am pretty sure that Howard Lederer & Chris Ferguson (Full Tilt owners) both played in the Main Event. < People don't like them much though >.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 21 2011,20:04

Yeah, I know who everyone is, I just didn't know where they were unless they've been on ESPN's coverage.

That video implies Howard ran off to China with the money?

Posted by Paul on Sep. 21 2011,21:25

I don't know about China. The video is several months old. I think he was just investing the money in China.

Posted by TheCatt on Oct. 27 2011,08:08

Played poker last night for the first time in years in a neighborhood game.

$10 buy-in, escalating blinds, winner-take-all, 2nd gets his $ back.

It was the first escalating blind game I'd ever played. 4500 units of chips, stated at 5/10, and by the end it was 300/600.

Turns out most of the people played poker. Had either played in Vegas, or some local bigger games($50 - 100 buyins), or "for years" online, etc, so I was the noob at the table.

I had a lot of early luck, and doubled my stack in the first 15 minutes. Unfortunately, I went dry for a long, long time. Those escalating blinds really kill you. Finally, I was down to half of my original stack, and went all in with pocket rockets. 2 other players went all-in, but had smaller stacks than me, and one other player matched me. One of the short stacks won, but I won against the other player, and went back to original stack.

At that point, players finally started dropping out, and we went from 9 to 3 pretty quickly. At that point, i was short, but blinds were 200/400, and I was able to push some people around to buy blinds. Shortly afterward, went all-in against the other short stack. i think i had Q-10, and he had Q-6... I paired up the 10s and won.

At that point it was me versus the guy who clearly had the most experience... I was getting crap cards, went all in a few times, and he too, and neither of us bit. Finally, I went with J-5 suited, paired the 5s, then he paired up on the last card.

At any rate, if anyone's ever up for a DTMan game, I would be too. Weekdays 7/8pm+ are probably best for me.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 27 2011,20:42

Carbon Poker used to have a freeroll every night at around 8:00 (9:00 Central time... as they list it at central) most weeknights (Mon-Thurs I think).
I haven't played it in a long time.

For a more intimate game, PokerStars.net will let you create leagues, so only people in the league can play.

Posted by TPRJones on Oct. 30 2011,17:26

If we could do an online game (real or fake money, either way is cool with me) with group voice coms that could be fun. No individual voice coms of course, just group. Not as good as face-to-face, but more interesting than the usual online poker.

Posted by TheCatt on Dec. 01 2011,07:17

Poker night again last night.

The rest of the players played really tight in the opening rounds, so I often stayed in for flops, and pushed people around, doubling up my stack again early. 10 players, and people started to drop out once blinds hit the 2.5%/5% range. Got down to 4 people, 3 went all-in, and I won with triples 3s (pair of 3s underneath, one flopped, beat 2 people with 2 pairs). Had about 80% of the chips against the remaining person. Had AJ unsuited, went all-in. He had Q-5... paired both the Q and the 5. Next hand, down to 60% of chips, went all-in with A-10... he had K-7, paired the 7s, so I was down to 20%. Went all in on something mediocre (J-7, I think?) he had Q-8, and I lost.

That game ended early so we played again, down to 7 people. For the first hour of the next game, I literally played 1 hand. I won enough to pay my blinds for the hour, but man it was boring (good thing UNC game was on TV). I then went in again with pocket 3s, and won with trip 3s. A couple of people stayed with me that shouldn't have, but figured I had just gotten bored sitting there so long and had crap.

At that point I was big stack, and was able to play it down again to the final 2, where I had about 65-70% of the chips. The game had gone fast, so blinds were still pretty small. After going back and forth for several hands, I was down to around 60-65% of the chips.

At that point, it was getting close to midnight, and I sure as hell didn't want to come in 2nd for the 3rd time in a row. So someone made a joke about closing up, or splitting, and I said "Yes, let's do that." The guy was like "You're winning, i was kinda kidding." and I said "True, but I'm tried of coming in 2nd, at least this way I can say I tied for 1st, no matter what." The pot was $70, so since I had bigger stack he gave me $40 ($30 winnings on $10 buy-in), and he took $30.

Posted by Paul on Dec. 01 2011,08:20

I played poker with family once, and we got down to two players.
I ended up with something like ten times her chip stack.

It was getting late so we agreed to go all in every hand.

I had a superior hand pre-flop in all but the last hand, yet she beat me every single hand.

Posted by TheCatt on Dec. 01 2011,17:57

Until that point, I had not lost a single hand I had stayed to the end for.

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 03 2012,08:12

< Final fallout from the online poker scandal. >

Here's the really interesting bit:

QUOTE

The settlement sets the stage for PokerStars to re-enter the online card games market in the United States. The Justice Department in Washington decided last year that the Wire Act, one of the key laws used in prosecuting gambling operations, should not apply to state-approved games -- opening the door to the legalization of online poker.

Posted by TPRJones on Aug. 03 2012,08:18

So in the long run, the only result of the justice department's actions were to hurt US citizens with FTP and PS accounts.

Way to go, justice department! Protect and serve!

Posted by GORDON on Aug. 03 2012,08:36

(TPRJones @ Aug. 03 2012,11:18)

QUOTE

So in the long run, the only result of the justice department's actions were to hurt US citizens with FTP and PS accounts.

Way to go, justice department! Protect and serve!

What I took from it was, "And now we can tax it."

Posted by Leisher on Aug. 03 2012,10:10

Exactly.

Posted by Paul on Sep. 18 2013,15:44

In April 2011 the Feds shut down the major poker sites in the United States.
UltimateBet money was gone for good.
PokerStars (the biggest site) was able to operate in other countries and pay off all of the American accounts.
Full Tilt (2nd biggest site) pretty much shut down. They were bought by PokerStars who paid off the Feds, but the Feds have been slow at offering restitution to the American poker players. (PokerStars paid off the people in other countries in a few months.)

On Monday I got an email that I could file a claim, and today is the first day they put the option to register a claim on their website.
I filed, so hopefully I'll get all (or most of) my money.

Money will be paid out in percentages, so if they have $100 million set aside for Americans and Americans request $200 million in payouts we'll all only get 50% of our balances.
If the money set aside is more than the claims we'll get 100% of our balance.

Posted by GORDON on Sep. 18 2013,15:52

Looks like I better file a claim.

Posted by TheCatt on Sep. 18 2013,16:39

I filed mine for 2 million.

Posted by GORDON on Sep. 18 2013,16:52

You weren't as greedy as I.

Posted by Leisher on Sep. 28 2014,18:52

WTF is ESPN doing with WSOP coverage?

Last year they started on Day 3, this year they're starting on Day 4.

They're missing all the celebs and pro players. All the personalities. There's no feel of how anyone has been doing aside from seeing their current chip total.

Terrible.

Posted by Paul on Oct. 01 2014,07:03

With very little online poker in the USA they don't have the sponsorship they once had.
In the good ol' days PokerStas, Full Tilt, and others threw millions dollars of sponsorship at them'

Oh, and I used to play online with the guy in the umbrella hat at Phily Ivy's table.
His online handle is Zachvac. I bought a piece of him when he played in Chile while back.

Posted by Malcolm on Apr. 25 2015,10:00

< AI should destroy the competition >.