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Archive for June, 2009

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Wine and Cheese

Friday, June 26th, 2009

I do try to not whine here, I know bad beats happen.

For the past little while my AK has been getting destroyed all in preflop by the likes of AT, AJ, A6, A4, Q5, you name it but here I am in the the $3+$.30 tourney and doing really well, 38 left out of 588 and am 8th in chips and looking to make a serious run at the win when this happens.

I need to go for a walk.

Full Tilt Poker Game #13034624067: $3 + $0.30 Tournament (96612002), Table 48 - 500/1000 Ante 125 - No Limit Hold’em - 0:18:46 ET - 2009/06/26

Seat 1: Ottawa_Cowboy (18,498)

Seat 2: Momo Manuva (48,282)

Seat 3: Mogadown (38,007)

Seat 4: ChippWhore (29,218)

Seat 5: DeddMonae33 (94,308)

Seat 6: ufcgooch (49,282)

Ottawa_Cowboy antes 125

Momo Manuva antes 125

Mogadown antes 125

ChippWhore antes 125

DeddMonae33 antes 125

ufcgooch antes 125

DeddMonae33 posts the small blind of 500

ufcgooch posts the big blind of 1,000

The button is in seat #4

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to ufcgooch [4s 5h]

ChippWhore: tks

Ottawa_Cowboy folds

Momo Manuva folds

ChippWhore: 10 10

Mogadown folds

ChippWhore calls 1,000

DeddMonae33 calls 500

ufcgooch checks

*** FLOP *** [Qh 5c 5d]

DeddMonae33 checks

ufcgooch checks

ChippWhore bets 1,000

DeddMonae33 raises to 4,000

ufcgooch calls 4,000

ChippWhore folds

*** TURN *** [Qh 5c 5d] [8c]

DeddMonae33 bets 3,000

ufcgooch raises to 44,157, and is all in

DeddMonae33 calls 41,157

ufcgooch shows [4s 5h]

DeddMonae33 shows [Tc Qc]

*** RIVER *** [Qh 5c 5d 8c] [Qd]

ufcgooch shows a full house, Fives full of Queens

DeddMonae33 shows a full house, Queens full of Fives

DeddMonae33 wins the pot (101,064) with a full house, Queens full of Fives

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot 101,064 | Rake 0

Board: [Qh 5c 5d 8c Qd]

Seat 1: Ottawa_Cowboy folded before the Flop

Seat 2: Momo Manuva folded before the Flop

Seat 3: Mogadown folded before the Flop

Seat 4: ChippWhore (button) folded on the Flop

Seat 5: DeddMonae33 (small blind) showed [Tc Qc] and won (101,064) with a full house, Queens full of Fives

Seat 6: ufcgooch (big blind) showed [4s 5h] and lost with a full house, Fives full of Queens

Nice freakin 2 outer, me 95% to win with one card to come.

I can’t imagine playing the hand any better and getting a worse result. 

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

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Home Game: The Fugitive

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

 sam-gerard

You’ll never take him alive sir

Alright, listen up, people. Our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse and pizza place in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive’s name is Poker Dave. Go get him.

Okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but I spotted Poker Dave the other day while working a vollie shift for the races. He was driving a shuttle for the World Cup Biathlon down the way and was doing a pickup across the way.

He has obviously tried to change his appearance and has grown a full beard and dyed his hair blondish in order to avoid detection.

I was pretty busy talking to some of the spectators down by the hotel so I only spotted him with my peripheral vision. By the time I consciously noticed it was him it was too late, he saw me lock in on him and took off in the bus and I ran in pursuit down the middle of the road while screaming over the walkie talkie to close down the access before he made it to the highway, but it was too late by then.

I think if you guys just stake out Avalanche for the next few day you should be able to spot him there at some time.

For those that don’t know, the reason we are trying to track him down is he dropped some paper at the home game a while back, one that I wasn’t there for so I just have second hand knowledge. It seems Poker Dave showed up for the game with everything he needed, foot powder, phone cards, a couple roast beef sandwiches, but no money so he had to throw some paper in to get some chips. Now almost everyone at the home game has at sometime needed a little paper to get them through the night, and it would be unfair and down right unsporting of the rest of the players to deny a down player a chance to get back in the game because they forgot to bring enough cash for some reason, or you left the wallet in the other jacket, its happened to us all.

Anyways, Poker Dave played a little loose that night and ended up down a few buyins 4 or 5 to be exact, and Ontario and the Mouth each took a part of his action until PD could get it back to them. That was 6 months ago now, and the Vig has been on since the standard 4 weeks went by. With the juice that makes it over $15,000 PD owes between the two guys.

You may be wondering why I would care?

Well in short it’s a two part answer.

The first is that its just a poker code of ethics that when you have some paper out there you repay it as soon as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make it to the safe deposit box the next day, but it should be in a timely fashion.

The second is since Ontario and the Mouth have been unable to collect on the funds themselves, they have opened up the contract for collection. That means 40% to me if I can nail him. Not bad work if you can get it. Problem is that PD has fled the city and is harder to track down there than when he was up in the hood.

But he can’t hide forever

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Pokertionary: Poker hand nicknames

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Well I guess I shouldn’t assume that everyone knows all the terms that are used here so I will try and update this as much as I can in the FAQs section and keep it somewhat easy to read.

I’ll use Hold’em starting hands as the go to on this, if you don’t know, you get dealt two cards to start with in Texas Hold’em also known as your “hole cards” and a lot of these hands have nicknames.

AA-Aces, Bullets, American Airlines, Pocket Rockets

KK-Cowboys, King Kong

QQ- Ladies, Siegfried & Roy, Hilton Sisters

JJ-Fish Hooks, Hooks, Jays

TT-Bo Derek

99-Gretzky, The Great One

88- Snowmen, Eric Lindros

77-Sunset Strip, Hockey Sticks, Walking sticks

66-Mario Lemieux, Route 66, Lesser Evil, Almost Evil

55-Presto, Speed Limit, Sammy Haggar

44-Magnum

33-Crabs

22-Ducks, The Double Deuce, The Dalton

AK-Big Slick, Anna Kourikova

AQ-Big Chick

AJ-Ajax

Q3-Gay Waiter (Queen with a trey)

J6-The Foran

J5- Jackson Five

69- Big Lick

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Home Game: Chips move to the left

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

There is a theory in poker that barring some unusual hands, chips move to the left, which is why you want to take a seat to the left of the big stack at the casino.

Theory meets reality on Thursday night.

The game is kind of impromptu, the boys all played on Wednesday night anyways but we got another game together on Thursday and we sat around in the cold November rain with nothing else to do. Its a small game, Woody, J6, Rapper and the Mouth all make it and it starts off fast. J6 sits in position 1, the Rapper in 2, Woody in 3 and the Mouth in 4.

No raise and it is just the two blinds in the hand, the flop is a rag tag of nothingness, T86, small bet from J6 and a call from the Rapper. Turn is a 2 and goes check, check. River is a 3, cue fireworks. J6 leads at the pot with a smallish bet and gets popped by the Rapper, J6 re pops the bet and the Rapper moves it in the middle after about a minute or so. J6 goes in the tank.

“do you have 7-9?”

“did you play 7-9?”

“i can’t believe you played 7-9?

“i think i might be good here”

“do you have 7-9?”

“i hope you don’t have 7-9?

“i call”

The Rapper turns over 45 for the rivered straight and J6 turns over pocket threes for a set on the river. Any other card than the 3 on the river and it probably goes check, check and J6 takes down the pot. Tough break and the Rapper doubles up.

Hands go back and forth for a while with some traction. J6 starts to get a little aggressive and leads at pots with big bets, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. J6 starts to get a little lower in chips and pushes, Rapper lays the hand down not sure if he is playing AK or a pair, dominated by AK he lays down his AQ. J6 runs into it again later and gets all his chips in the middle, the Rapper calls him this time and J6 turns over pocket Tens, an Ace comes out on the flop and J6 can’t catch up. Another buy in for J6 and the Rapper is now playing with a nice stack.

A nice raise from J6 on the button gets called from the Rapper in small blind and Woody in big, the Rapper checks in the dark and the flop is AA4. Woody leads at the pot and J6 raises 4x, the Rapper pushes and J6 goes into the tank again.

“do you have an ace?”

“i don’t think you have an ace?”

“why did you push?”

“call”

The Rapper turns over AT and takes down the pot, J6 never shows his hand but we are assuming he had a medium pair.

A quick walk around the house for a while and J6 reloads.

Woody quietly builds his stack taking down pots with Quads, straight flushes, and pocket Aces twice. Later he gets hooked up with the Rapper on a huge hand. Raise from the Rapper on the button gets calls and a family pot. Flop comes down AQ9 all Hearts. Checked around to the Rapper who fires at then gets 6X check raised by Woody. The Rapper thinks for a while and pushes over the top, Woody thinks for a bit and calls with 48 of Hearts for the flopped Flush, the Rapper turns over A9 for two pair and needs help, which he doesn’t get, a huge pot moves to the left to Woody on a bad push by the Rapper who could have gotten away from that pretty unscathed, two pair is not a good hand.

The rest of the night is back and forth until Woody tries to bluff a big pot on the Mouth with a large river raise. The Mouth makes the call with a middle two pair and picks off Woody’s bluff. Chips move to the left where they stay for the rest of the night and the Mouth goes home before the chips can make the full rotation back to J6.

Mouth is up, Woody is flush and the Rapper wins the showdown to make a couple on the end, J6 continues his slide, opening day at the restaurant can’t come fast enough for J6.

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Math is hard: Poker odds to memorize

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

A couple of quick poker odds for you donks for the next time you go fishing for hands

Odds of making your hand seeing both the turn and river.

Gutshot straight draw                                         16.5% or approx 1-7

Open ended straight draw                                  31.5% or approx 1-3

Flush Draw (4 to a flush)                                    35% or approx 1-3

Open ended straight and a flush draw           54% or approx 1-2

Odds of flopping a flush                                      .84% or approx 1-120

Odds of flopping a flush draw                           11% or approx 1-8

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Bankroll Update

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Well I certainly haven’t been doing too many of these lately. Mostly because I haven’t been playing very much.

I had it up to just a bit over 100 times the original freeroll win but it has fallen off a little bit since then. I have played some pretty solid poker but have been on a bit of a cold streak again with having good hands hold up when they need to, most specifically AK

AK has come up short for me AIPF (all in pre-flop) against 45, 89, Q9, A6, A4, 99, KJ and a host of others.

I’ve done well again in one of the 90 player knock out tourneys coming in 5th. Made back my entry alone in KO’s which was good, too bad all the money is really in the top 3 places though.

Tried a bunch of the 36 player double shootouts too, came in 4th (bubble) in one and got knocked out in 2nd of the first round on 5 more, lots of those AK battles were in there.

Had a pretty reasonable run in the daily dollar rebuy tourney 2900 entries and I finished in 380 th place, was doing fairly well as high as 200 out of 800 but then went really card dead for a while and had to make a couple laydowns where I think I might have been good and got chipped down and eventually had to push with KJ with an M of about 4 and got beaten by A8. The top 279 got paid in this one, pretty sure I will give this one another go in the future. I needed to play more agressive when I got in that card dead spot I think, and chasing draws is something not to do when you get chipped down.

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Poker Player Nicknames

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I guess it is a sign that Poker is really reaching the level of other sports like professional boxing and mma that the better players seem to need to have a nickname now. Maybe it is marketing, or it just makes them easier to remember.

Besides great players like J6, there are a number of lesser known pros that also have a snappy moniker, just to name a few they are:

Doyle Brunson               Texas Dolly

Chad Brown                    Downtown

Chris Ferguson               Jesus

Gus Hansen                    The Great Dane

Phil Laak                        The Unabomber

Phil Hellmuth                  The Poker Brat

Randy Jenson                 The Dream Crusher<—I like this one

Dan Harrington              Action Dan

Johnny Chan                  The Orient Express, or Johnny Fucking Chan 

Antonio Esfandiari          The Magician

Howard Lederer              The Professor

Paul Magriel                    X-22

Eric Lindgren                   E-Dog

Mike Matusow                 The Mouth<—–not the home game player, yet.

Michael Mizrachi              The Grinder

Daniel Negreanu              Kid Poker

David Ulliot                     Devilfish

Stu Unger                        The Kid

Carlos Mortensen            El Matador

Isabelle Mercier               No Mercy

Hmmmm…seems the chicks don’t have as many nicknames as the men. Maybe this is the same as life in general, I have a habit of giving most of my friends nicknames, not really the same for the girls.

To get your own poker nickname, simply click on the link below and follow the instructions, I’m “gun toting hitman” which is only slightly off base.

http://nickname-generator.juaxoo.com/nicknames-poker-player.php

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Table Position

Monday, June 15th, 2009

 position-table

 

The Dealer or Button is the Yellow square is this picture and action moves clockwise from him.

The Red Squares indicate early position players, the Blue Middle positions (MP, MP2, MP3) and the Green Late positions (LP, LP2, LP3)

In a game, the Dealer will deal out the cards starting with the small blind and working clockwise.

After the deal, the first person to act is the UTG (under the gun) position, and then play moves around clockwise till the Big Blind.

After the flop, turn and river, the action starts with the Small Blind and works clockwise ending with the Dealer.

It is generally accepted that the earlier positions require stronger starting hands to both play and raise as you have more people to act behind you

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Don’t go broke in an unraised pot

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Never go broke in an unraised pot-Doyle Brunson

Don’t go broke preflop with a Queen in your hand.

The wisdom is abound on this.

 With the exception to High Stakes Poker aka. “the best damn poker show period”, most of the poker games you see on TV is tournament poker, and most of that is only late in the tournament if not just the final table.

Since many of the rookies playing poker learned it by watching TV, it is no surprise that they tend to take that game play and strategy with them from the TV to the poker table. 

I’ve already talked about people overplaying AK, but the other thing that needs to be discussed is the “cash game overbet push” or CGOBP.

There are all kinds of odds to calculate when you are playing poker, pot odds, implied odds, odds of hitting your draw, odds that your opponent has a better hand than you, but many tournament players forget to check the odds they are betting when they push in a cash game, especially in deep stack poker.

When you are in a tournament the blinds increase, so the longer you play, the more expensive the game gets. And since you can’t buy chips and you have to pay at least a blind and a half every 9 or so hands assuming a full table, you need to win some of those back just to stay even. Tournament poker is “sink or swim”, you can only tread water for so long.

BUT

In cash game poker you can rebuy. If you get blinded away with 62 all night long, you can either gamble with it, try and steal the odd pot, or just rebuy and wait out the cards. Patience is a part of poker. A big part.

I’ll give an example of the cash game overbet push

$1/$2 cash game with reasonably deep stacks, lets say $600 each

Player 1 raises UTG with QQ to $10, a fairly standard raise for this game, but from first position, most players give respect to this being a first or second level hand. It’s folded around to the Cutoff who makes it $24 to go, the Button, Small and Big blind both fold. Player one moves all his chips into the middle, AKs is a great hand right?

Sure it is, but lets examine the odds here.

The raise was to $24, there was $13 in the pot before the raise, total in the pot was $37 before the all in push.

So Player 1 just bet $590 to win $37, true if he gets a call and wins he is betting $590 to win $603, but that is a secondary point.

The point is that he has bet $590 to win $37

$590/$37= almost 16:1

Are there any poker hands where you have a 16:1 advantage preflop?

The answer is no

Even AA vs AK which is about as good as it gets in a preflop match up is only 9:1

The best hand preflop AA vs. the worst had preflop 72 with the suits covered is still only 9:1

AA vs KK which is a huge match up is only 4:1, same as QQ, JJ, TT you get the picture.

What does this mean?

It means if you bet like this, even if you do it with AA only, and you can’t win every time you are supposed to, and you can’t get the other player to lay down and extra 8+ times, you are going to go broke in the long run.

Happy betting.

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Book Review: Super System

Monday, June 15th, 2009

 super-system

 

Written by Doyle Brunson and published in 1979, it was at the time one of the only books out there that thoroughly examined poker strategy. With contributions by some of the top players and minds in the game it touched on all the bases, and as Doyle said, while it does not cover everything about poker, it does cover the “White Meat” and acts as a very solid base upon which to build.

I will admit to reading a lot of poker books before this one so I found much of what Doyle wrote about the game has been covered, recycled and arguably improved on. However, the first few pages of the book are what always stay with me and the reason I read it over and over again. It is as much a book on poker as the “Art of War” is a book on business. Take some life lessons from Doyle and apply them to the rest of your life, no matter what your job is. Play hard, really hard, but play with honor.

If someone was looking for a book to read and was new to Poker, I think that Super System is a great foundation, that and Sklansky’s “Theory of Poker” are really all you need to start your poker career and take you from novice to a pretty accomplished player as long as you put in the reps. Many of today’s pros when asked would say that Doyle’s book was their start in poker, and provided them with the foundation they used to make a go of the game. With very little modification and the right work ethic, you can take it to the highest level following his game plan.

A couple of funny observations about the book, it was written when Doyle was 44 I believe; one is that he mentions he doesn’t think any of his kids will follow him into the poker world, as you know, his son Todd is one of the top players in the world today. The second is that because I have seen Doyle on TV playing the game so much, when I read the book it is his voice that I read it in, comforting, like the narration by Morgan Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption

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