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June 10, 2008
WSOP 2008
I'm out in Vegas. The family was headed out here this weekend, and I had a good offer at Caesars and the WSOP is going on so I thought I'd sneak out for a few days. I head back Wednesday.
I haven't played much live action yet. A little satellite action at the Rio has been about it. Just enough to make me remember why I don't really care so much for live poker really. I may play the $2k limit event tomorrow, I haven't really decided yet. Limit events are huge EV for me, since they're largely full of guys who are good at NL and don't really understand the difference.
In fact, I was talking with a few other guys and everyone agreed that you're more concerned about random people at a limit event than the better NL tournament players. A random Joe who buys into a $2k limit event might just be a winning $30/$60 player, but if Phil Hellmuth sits down, you know you've got an easy spot. And please don't tell me about how many limit hold'em bracelets he has. He got them mostly when the tournaments were full of 70 people as clueless as him.
I've spent a decent amount of time out here playing online in my room. I've become quite the no-limit soldier lately, playing a little low stakes here and there. I don't have much time to devote to it, so in a good week I might get in 1,000 hands total (5-6 hours of play) but I feel like I'm learning. I never really spent much time playing NL ring games, and I still don't feel I'm great at them by any means. I'm clearly good enough to beat the low stakes (a well-trained chimpanzee would be) but beyond that, probably not so much. I'll get there though, one 60 minute session at a time.
It's fun being at the donkey tables again. It's been a long time for me. Those tables where nobody has a clue, and having just read one book makes you probably the best player you'll encounter, they're a blast to play. I hear you start running into some decent players at $3/$6, but before that it's all pretty much gravy.
I did read this book which I think is, for the most part, pretty good. There isn't much in there I didn't already know, and there are a few things I don't agree with, but for the most part the logic is pretty solid. And it's thought-provoking enough in parts to be worth the read. I'll call it the best no-limit hold'em book I've read, but its only real competition is Harrington on Hold'em, which was more tournament focused and was pretty much a steaming pile even at that.
I have to say, I'm loving Poker Tracker 3. They integrated it with Poker Ace and Postgres (no more installing that separately) and now it just works entirely out of the box .Even comes with a 60 day free trial. And it doesn't say "Not Responding" every time it does anything. It seems to be a lot faster and more responsive, so I can't find any reason to not recommend upgrading.
I also got to spend a little time with Richard and a player named Kyle Ray (KPR16 online). It was interesting talking about limit hold'em again. I've been out of the loop for so long. It reminded me of the arguments I used to have with a lot of the 2+2 crowd about preflop play. It sounds as if consensus there has shifted greatly toward my viewpoint. It also sounds like limit games have therefore become a lot tougher. Bad beat.
I've realized that I miss poker. I don't so much miss playing it for a living, and still have no desire to jump back into that. But I miss competing at something. Startups are fun, but they aren't really competitive. They sort of are, in their own way, but the competition isn't truly ever resolved because the variance is so high and the sample size so low. Also they aren't zero sum, which makes it different, and largely (though not entirely) less interesting.
So it's nice to just be playing again. It's like the early days, when I was just playing $3/$6 with my friends, learning the ropes, getting better, and making a little money in the process. Most of all, having fun.
Which reminds me, I need to wrap up part 3 of a previous series…
Posted by themaroon at June 10, 2008 1:57 AM