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April 28, 2004
Imrovements
I have done a good amount of work on this site today. I've added a few more books to the poker resources page, since I often get emails from people asking how to become better poker players. As someone who has read dozens of books I can tell you that the ones I list here are the best. As I continue to read new books I will add the ones I like to the list.
I have also added a list of non-advice books to the left as well, called Great Reads. These are books are very entertaining and of course have a gambling theme. If you have not read the Amarillo Slim book or Bringing Down The House I recommend you click on the picture and buy them immediately. They are two of the best nonfiction books you will ever buy.
I have also added a list of blogs about poker in order to keep the community growing. Some of them are from pro players that you may know and some are from newer players who play online. I will add any poker blogs to the list, so if you have one just email me the URL.
It seems that the more I fool around with this TypePad the more I like it. They are constantly adding new features and I am constantly discovering ones I had not seen before. I can still think of a few features (like custom ordering of Typelists) that I would like to see, and I won’t be surprised if they are added soon. If you are thinking of writing your own blog please give TypePad a try. You will not be disappointed.
Posted by themaroon at 12:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 26, 2004
Last day
Well the bad run of cards abated for one day, switching to a mediocre run of cards. Luckily when you play against idiots mediocre runs are profitable so I actually managed to win a little over $4k. I made about 50th in the Sunday $215 on Party and won 3 out of 5 one table satellites out here at the WSOP. Today I went 0/3 because I lost to 2 flush draws and my AQ lost to A 10 on the A 10 flop. People out here just love to get their stacks in the pot, which is fine by me. Anyone who wants to raise it to $600 (with a starting stack of $1k) under the gun with AQ against 2 $25 blinds is a friend of mine. They make it so easy to play, because you fold just about anything that doesn’t have them dominated, and call with the hands that they are huge underdogs too, so they either win $50 or go broke more or less.
I got about $1k for that 5xth place in the $215. I was one coin flip away from having a huge stack and walking into the top table, but true to my month long streak of losing every single coin flip some guy with AK beat my 88. I had about 18k at the time, with the big blind being 2k. The AK raised the minimum under the gun, putting 7k in the pot. At that point stealing would increase my stack by about 40%, and minimum raises (the trademark of weak players) usually mean a weak hand, so I figured I would probably either be a slight favorite or steal the blinds, unless one of the few players behind me woke up with AA or KK or something.
Really my whole last month has consisted of me getting fairly deep into tournaments and then going in with somewhere from a 50-70% favorite and losing. This is a good sign though, as it means I am giving myself a lot of chances to win. I did win that one tournament at the beginning of the month, and with my successes yesterday I probably will end the month up about $10k or so, which is much less after great travel expenses. Who knows what could happen in the next few days though.
When I get home tomorrow I am going to take a couple days off of poker, since I have not taken a day off in a very long time. I will try to update this blog with a few new things, maybe some links and some more poker resources and get a lot of work done around the house. I also plan to launch head on into this new fantasy sports business as well, so a break will get me energized for some serious software planning.
Posted by themaroon at 7:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2004
WSOP day 2
Today I played a couple one table satellites. In the first one we got down to 3 handed and decided to make a deal. The prize pool was 3 $500 tournament chips and $120 cash, and since we all had roughly even stacks we decided to aplit the chips and just play for the cash. The deal may have been a little stupid on my part since one guy was completely clueless, but with the blinds being so high I took it and of course ended up winning.
The second one I played I should have won. We were down to 6 people and I had a stack somewhere around $2500. There are exactly $10,000 in play, so that was a big stack. Long story short: the idiot with a chip lead called my large bet on the turn with a flush draw (for a whopping 8 outs) and hit, busting me in 6th. I am over a 4:1 favorite to win there, and overall victory is a near certainty at that point. What can you do?
I am going to play the Saturday $215 on Party now from my hotel room, then maybe go over and run some more one tables. I am still debating whether or not to play in tomorrow's $1500 Limit WSOP event, so I suppose I will let my results tonight decide.
Posted by themaroon at 9:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 23, 2004
Hindsight
Well after a day of reflection I have come to a few conclusions. First I have decided that my play of betting the flop on the key hand (where I lost with 99, see previous entry) was probably brilliant. I got all my chips in as a 7-3 favorite, and to win a tournament you are going to have to get lucky sometimes, why not do it when you are almost a 2.5:1 favorite. When you play against the level of competition I was up against you aren’t going to get much better opportunities than that.
Also I learned that I should try to stay away from playing aggressively for now. I am not sure if it was bad luck, bad play, or a combination of both that got me to a low stack early, but had I been playing much tighter I would not have had that. I think I will work on just getting experience and learning to play against tougher players while playing tighter, which is more natural for me, and then start mixing it up a bit. It is much easier to play aggressively on Party where everyone is weak and easy to read, but I imagine in time I will get just as much feel for these bigger tournaments, and will then open up a bit.
All in all I am glad I came. I am really hoping that this bad streak I am in will break soon, but it can't go much longer. And I suppose even if it does I will manage.
Posted by themaroon at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
$2k NL
Well, the tournament didn’t go so well for me. I am mostly happy with how I played though, so I think I can go home knowing that I played well. Here is a rundown of what happened.
My table started out with one empty seat (who later turned out to be Jennifer Harman) for the first hour, Bob Ciaffone, and various people I didn’t know. One young Asian player was playing very aggressive and very tough and I kept getting in small confrontations with him preflop. I am pretty sure that if I had hit a hand once or twice in there I could have taken a very nice amount of chips off of him, but I kept failing to connect. I managed to just steal a few of those pots though so he wasn’t killing me, but he certainly wasn’t helping.
Another guy at my table was playing aggressive, but not nearly as tough as the Asian kid. However his play did get him quite a bit of action when he picked up a couple hands. I had raised a good amount early and was hoping to do the same thing, but never did. The tournament had one hour rounds with 15 minute breaks, and I won a decent sized pot right before it with pocket aces so I left for the first break with 1400.
When I came back the blinds were now 50/100. I called a small raise off my big blind and posted a couple times, but never really picked up a pot. Finally I went all in for 900 with 77 against Mike Laing’s AQ and doubled up, plus stole the blinds. A round later I raised it to 300 with pocket 9s and Mike called. Mike is a very aggressive, very talkative tournament pro who had moved to our table with a few other people just before the break. He was liable to have a lot of hands here. The flop came 7 8 4, with 2 diamonds, and this is where things get tricky. I had about 1700 left, Mike had 1525. As far as I can tell I have 2 options here, to bet all in or make a roughly pot sized bet. I chose to bet 600 for a few reasons. First if I bet all in it is very easy for Mike to fold anything that I can beat here, and very easy to call anything that beats me. He maybe would call something like a 9 10 of diamonds here, but if he has that we are undoubtedly going all in anyway. Mike himself says that I should have just gone all in and taken the 750 in the pot, since I am not folding regardless. I though however that my betting 600 might induce him to shove with something worse than what I had, which turned out to be the case. He shoved with 10 J, giving him 8 outs twice, but any of his outs give me at least some redraws. According to the calculator I am a 7-3 favorite here. Of course I lost to a jack on the river, but I think I made the correct play by betting 600. I plan to ask a few of the pros who I think will be likely to give me sound advice, like Daniel Negreanu and Kathy Liebert, and I will post what they say.
After that I was left with 175, which I managed to run into 2k when I got all in with KK against K 10, and 10 10 against 6 6. Then I lost a little bit more after the blinds hit 200, and found myself on the bb with a 900 stack, and I went all in with A 7 against a raiser who had been raising a lot of hands. He called my small reraise with 99 and that was it for me.
Now I am going to play in some of the smaller tournaments for the next few days, and let my success in them decide whether or not I play in the 1500 Limit event on Sunday. I may just try to play all of the Party tournaments this weekend from my laptop here in the hotel, plus the $225 second chance tournaments at the Horseshoe every night.
Posted by themaroon at 7:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Downtown
Well I arrived downtown and went straight to registration. The line wasn’t too bad, but when I went by a half hour later it was getting deep. Many people think it will fill to the full 900 player capacity, and I sure wouldn’t mind that at all. I also found out that this tournament is going to be on ESPN, so if I get lucky enough to make the top table (or maybe even top two or so) you might get to watch me play. I am sure the competition will be fierce, but I feel like I will make a good showing. As long as I play well I will go home happy no matter what the result.
There are also nightly second chance tournaments for $225, so should I scrub out early tomorrow I may play the one in the evening. I will definitely play them all of the days I am here, unless I am in a main event. Other than that I will likely stick to satellites, perhaps the $225 one tables, etc. I doubt I will bother playing any limit ring games, but if some of the lower buy in NL ones look juicy I make take a shot there too.
I really do hate downtown Las Vegas, and really hope they move this event to somewhere better. I have heard rumors it will be at the Rio after this, but who knows how accurate that one is. Anywhere would be better than this rundown shithole. I am staying at the Plaza, where the rooms aren’t too bad, but I would much rather be at the Bellagio. I like the glitz and glamour of the strip. Downtown is so depressing to me, as they are all these decades old casinos that are inhabited mainly by old ladies with slot addictions. The whole area reeks of despair, and to top it off it is covered by a giant dome full of light bulbs where they have these corny shows which I have to hear in my room all night long. Next time I will just stay at Bellagio and rent a car.
Posted by themaroon at 1:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
On My Way
I am currently onboard my flight to Vegas and thought I would write down a few thoughts, since I will probably register for tomorrow’s WSOP event and jump in some side action as soon as I get downtown. First I feel as good as I have ever felt before. For the last week or two I was feeling a little off my game, mainly due to some relationship troubles which have since been resolved. Since that happened I have been able to devote my attention back to patching up a few holes in my game, and I think I have since been playing better than ever before. I haven’t really won much since then, but I haven’t played much either and I did win a bit. I will be looking to end my recent tournament drought with a bracelet out here in Vegas, and I feel like my chances are exceptional. Of course in a 900 man tournament a 1% chance I exceptional, but even my friends from Atlantic City are predicting me to money.
I also have spent the last few days talking about starting a business with my friend John (from my earlier article about splitting) and another friend of his. It will be a lot of work but I think it has tremendous potential, and as soon as we get rolling I will be sure to keep you all updated. It will be an online fantasy sports service which we feel will be much different (and much better) than anything else online, but beyond that I really can't go into much detail as of yet. We are hoping to launch in under a year, which I feel is a bit ambitious given that there are 3 of us (mainly two programmers) doing most of the coding, and the design is extremely complicated.
Also John finally quit his job, which I think is for the best. He is a very good player, hated going to work, and could probably make a lot more playing anyway. I think he has seems to be ridding himself of his tendency to let his losing streaks bring him down, which seems to be why most people who attempt to go pro fail. His quitting will be convenient for me as well, as it gives me someone to travel with sometimes. I expect we will probably play online tournaments together quite a bit more, and use the proceeds from that to fuel our major event ambitions. I am truly hoping that we win enough money in the upcoming year to allow us to throw some serious marketing into our business. I feel this business has the potential to earn tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue (and a high profit margin) in just a few short years if we build it well, run it well, and market it well. Given the enormous profit potential we would rather fund it entirely by ourselves rather than sell pieces to outside investors (or at least I would) but if we play hard for a year I think one of us should be able to take down a big event, or at least get close once or twice.
So be sure to look on pokerpages for me in the $2,000 NL Hold ’em event.
Posted by themaroon at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2004
Off to Vegas
Tonight’s episode of the World Poker Tour was nothing short of hilarious. Going into it I was excited to watch the great Chip Reese play, but due to bad luck and/or bad editing you really didn’t get to see much out of him. I sure hope he makes it there again, as he is the kind of guy you could learn a lot from. Fortunately for us both luck and editing gave us some great glimpses into the play of a true poker master, Barry Greenstein. From what I can gather from conversations with various ultra high limit players Barry is one of those guys who seems to be well loved by everyone who doesn’t know him, and not so well loved by some who do because of his inflated ego. However I think just about everyone acknowledges that he is one of the top few players in the poker world, and I think he made some extraordinary plays (though my friends disagree with me) that showed why.
To be honest the guy who got second never really had a chance. Though he apparently thinks he is one of the world’s top players, second place finisher Randy Jensen is little more than a vanilla maniac, the same kind I beat up on Party Poker on a daily basis. He is one of those guys I dream of playing $15/$30 heads up with. Very rarely did I see him make a play that was actually good, he was merely aggressive without control and a guy like Greenstein isn’t going to ever really fall for that. Other than hitting a few long shots he had very little hope of winning. From what I understand he has won a lot before and lost it all, and I expect he will probably do it again numerous times before he figures out that he is 1/10th of the player that he thinks he is.
An interesting story from my Tunica trip, I rode in a taxi from the airport to the casino with the Elvis wannabe who finished 6th. The driver had to stop at Graceland (which is not far from the Memphis airport) to pick up him and his wife. I figured he was just some random redneck with too much money when he told me that he was going to play the main event, but it turns out he is a poker pro. He wasn’t really around long enough to see how good he is though.
I was also impressed with the amateur they were calling “Car Wash” because he had owned one. I thought he played very well for an amateur. He made a number of sketchy plays but nothing near as bad as that Randy Jensen guy made. Also that Can Kim Hua must be a very good player because he makes a lot of final tables in main events, but you didn’t really get to see that much of him.
On a side note the WPT championship currently running at the Bellagio is the largest prize pool in poker history, with a first place of $2.7 million, a record it will hold for about 1 month until the WSOP main event shatters it. There are many big name pros left, and just enough amateurs to make it exciting. In a tournament with a $25,000 starting stack, 2 hour rounds, and an excellent blind structure it is no surprise whenever a disproportionately high number of pros make it deep into the tournament, and I will guess right now that 5 pros and one random internet qualifier will make the WPT.
Tomorrow I leave for Vegas to play in the $2,000 No Limit Hold’em WSOP event on Friday. I am going to play that, and if I money I will probably play a few more small events after. If I money big I may stay there for the rest of the time, as first place promises to be rather large. To me all tournament buy-ins are tax deductible, so really a $2k event is only like $1,400. To be honest I probably shouldn’t fly around playing $2,000 events as my bankroll is not really all that high, but you have to take your shots sometimes I guess. Wish me luck!
Posted by themaroon at 5:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2004
Vegas Nights
Yesterday night during a fit of boredom I decided to take a stroll down memory lane and go play $10/$20 at the Vegas Night for a little bit. It was very odd to see all the faces again. Some people it was good to see after so long, and the rest I mainly just didn’t talk to. It was sort of like a triumphant return. Last time I played there was over 6 months ago, during which time I have won a few tournaments and a ton of money in cash games as well, played in WPT events, traveled to Vegas, Atlantic City, and Tunica, met all sorts of interesting people, and just plain had the best 6 months of my life.
Returning from a long break I realized something I never really did before. Having spent so much time there in the past I was blinded to just how sad every single person there is. Nobody ever seems to be having any fun. Many people are undoubtedly losing more money than they can really afford. Everybody was half asleep, partly due to the late hours and partly because they had spent 30 plus hours there after a full week of work. Many people were having legal trouble due to the large crackdown on house games and Vegas Nights in the area. The room was filled with a visible cloud of smoke and an invisible cloud of desperation and loneliness. It was sort of nice to hear who was alive, who was dead, who was broke, who was in jail, who had a baby, who quit their job. If nothing else it made me realize that I was wrong all along in thinking that gambling addiction was the problem in these people’s lives, when it really isn’t. Gambling is a symptom, not the disease, and the disease is just a lack of any ambition to do something worthwhile with their lives.
All in all I am glad I have left that phase of my life behind. Erasing all of the negative effects that those years of playing in loose passive games has had on my own game now that I am against much tougher competition has been very hard. Sometimes I still catch myself overvaluing some hands, and thinking of Hold’em solely in terms of preflop play. While I still believe that solid preflop play is essential to winning, I have learned to think of it more as a part of my whole game, and focus less on when I should play certain hands and more about how I should play them and how doing so fits into my overall strategy. Playing there again made me feel like Donovan McNabb in a JV game. I think it is safe to say that the Vegas Nights are a chapter in my life which I can definitely close the book on.
Posted by themaroon at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2004
Splitting
When I first started playing poker I was fortunate enough to have a few people I had met during my CCG years (yes I was a Magic: The Gathering nerd) who also took up an interest in poker at the same time. To be honest I am fairly sure that I would not be half the player I am today without such an influence. Two friends in particular were the most influential in my development as a poker player, John and Jason.
John and Jason are brothers and are about as close as any two siblings I have ever met. They live together, have the same interests, same friends, and share just about everything. It is very amusing how their personalities are so diametrically opposed in some ways yet so similar in others, yet all in all they seem to have an extremely good relationship. One way in which they are very similar is their aptitude for games. Both of them are very intelligent and both are very quick learners.
Jason is perhaps the most even-tempered human I have ever met, which shows greatly in his style of play. I have only seen him go on tilt once or twice in the 4 or 5 years I have played with him, and even then it was not severe. He is more patient than just about anyone I have ever met, but at the same time he can be aggressive when it is called for, so he isn’t just a rock. He is without a doubt a very steady winner, and perhaps was the best of the three of us back in our low limit days.
John on the other hand is a little more emotional (though not overly so) and his play is therefore a little more creative and aggressive. He is one of the few people I would have no problems staking in higher limit games. He probably goes on tilt a little more than Jason does (he has told me of a few times) but not often enough to prevent him from being a huge winner. He has a very good mind for poker theory as well, and many of the changes in all of our games have come from his ideas.
For the first few years or so John, Jason, and I used to play the local $3/$6 games almost exclusively. We would go out to eat before and/or after most sessions, and we played almost every weekend. Local Vegas Nights (the only legal poker games in town) ran from Thursday to Sunday and it wasn’t uncommon to find all three of us there each of those nights beating the hell out of the games. Then we would usually find the nearest restaurant that was open and go chop up the money and talk about the weekend. I remember one year I kept track, and noted that I was making $17 per hour (a huge sum at a $3/$6 game, those these were possibly the best games on the planet) before splitting and a little over $18 per hour afterwards. So all in all I think we all had similar results at the games, which is not surprising given the amount of time we spent playing and talking together.
Eventually there came a time when our assumed weekend splits were just not working out anymore. I mostly felt bad because I was only playing one or two nights a week while they were playing four. I also was starting the ill-fated house game that John and I ran for a few months before it was busted. Between the time I spent in school, my job, and the fact that I was perpetually broke due to bad spending habits I just couldn’t give poker the same attention that they did, and didn’t want to simply leach their profits off of them. So in the end I pulled the plug on the deal, which created a little hard feelings at first but nothing lasting.
Since then splitting has no longer been assumed, though we do still do it on a regular basis. Now we mostly do it in tournaments, just to try to reduce the very high volatility involved in playing a large number of $200+ buy-in tournaments. I have great faith in both of my friends and they probably have the same in me, especially since I have won so much lately in tournaments. I like our current arrangement and hope it will continue for many years. I personally expect the three of us will one day be found in most of the larger events out there, and wouldn’t be surprised if we were chopping up millions one day down the line. We still are learning much about the game from each other and hopefully will for years to come.
Posted by themaroon at 2:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How It All Began
Since not much exceptional seems to be going on in the world of poker lately (though that may change next week) I am going to take the next few days and write about my evolution as a poker player. I am going to try to take my readers (which are growing rapidly in number) on the 4 year journey that led me to becoming a professional poker player. The question I get asked most often from friends and people I meet on the internet is “How do I get good enough at poker to live off of it?” and I am going to show my own path and perhaps give a few shortcuts from my own experience.
I started playing poker at age 18. I used to play a collectible card game called Battletech (based on the popular miniatures game) in high school, where I quickly became one of the top rated players in the world. Unfortunately the game only lasted long enough to have two world championships, but in the second one (I had just started playing when the first one occurred and got 11th) I had a bad run of cards and ended up in 10th place. However one of the top 8 decks was a direct clone of mine and 2 of the other ones were built with my help. I also won the first 2 bets I had ever made, the first being that I could make top 4 in a VERY large tournament with a deck built from cards my opponent felt were inferior (we had a 4 way draw for first in which I was involved) and the second being that more people from Akron (my hometown) would make the top 8 than from Seattle. Seattle was where the company that made the game was from, and due to some trash talking I did on the most popular internet forum for the game there arose a bitter rivalry between the 2 cities, which my friends and I won that year.
Anyway after the second World Championships the game was put in the hands of some people who made a few very bad decisions about the direction of the game and caused it to lose popularity. The decisions were eventually reversed, but it was too late to save it as the company which owned the rights to the Battletech universe did not renew the contract and the game went defunct. After its demise I switched to the much more popular CCG Magic: The Gathering but I just never liked it as much and found the competition there much tougher. Those games can be very expensive to get good at, though once you are good at them they are profitable. With Battletech I was able to become a top player quickly due to the newness of the game, but Magic had players with many years experience and I never had the time/money/will to become a top player in it. However it was through Magic that I was introduced to poker. Because of the movie Rounders many Magic players saw in poker what was lacking in Magic, huge profit potential. You could win up to $25,000 in a Magic tournament if you won one of the big ones, in poker you could win up to $1 million. You can also win a good amount of money in cash games, so I think it is natural that a bunch of people who were really involved in a game which was a mix of strategy and luck (which Magic most definitely is) gravitated towards poker.
My first poker session was a No Limit game with $0.10 and $0.25 blinds at a Magic tournament in Columbus, where I won somewhere around $40. My friend John (who I will talk about in the next post) had given me some pointers, and I had read a book about the game so I felt like I was good enough to give it a shot. I also won a small poker tournament which would get me into a larger one (which I overslept) that weekend. Then I sat at a $2/$4 game and lost $160. Ouch.
Though I was discouraged by the loss I was still determined to become a good poker player. I read a couple more books and started playing in a $0.25/$0.50 game with friends every week. Then I heard about the Las Vegas nights that go on every weekend in Akron, and decided to take a shot at the $3/$6 games there. I somehow came up with $100 (a very large sum for a kid working at Sam’s Club) and went there with a friend from the house game and bought in. After about a 6 hour session I found myself up $420. I was hooked on poker for good.
I won a decent amount the next weekend too and of course thought it was because I was good. I spent a decent amount of what I had won and then the unthinkable occurred. I lost it all. Over the course of a few sessions I lost everything I had left of my winnings, plus some from my pocket. I was broke and beginning to realize that maybe I wasn’t so great at the game after all.
After that I took some time off to recoup financially, and did a lot of thinking about the game. I read another book that dealt specifically with the types of games I play in and revised my strategy. After a few months off I decided it was time for another shot, and this time I was ready. I won $1000 or so on my first weekend back, but more importantly I figured out the game. How simple it was. Over the next few weeks I continued to murder the games and shared with my friends what I had figured out. From then one there was no stopping us. We later became known as “the hat gang” because we all wore baseball caps, and we beat the Akron games for the next few years with more regularity than anyone else around. One dealer nicknamed me “The King Of $3/$6”, a title had rightfully earned.
Posted by themaroon at 2:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2004
Trash Talking
Today in an effort to recoup some of the enormous amount I lost playing asinine $10/$20 full games I sat down for a while at the good old standby, $10/$20 6 max. Playing full games has given me a much greater appreciation for 6 max, where skill is more important than just playing tight and a good player can achieve a much larger edge over an inferior opponent. So I sat there for an hour or so not really winning or losing, maybe down a little bit, and talking trash as usual when an exceptionally bad player finally got offended by my calling him a chump.
Most poker theorists (of which there are far too many these days) always say that you should be nothing but kind to your opponents, even when they play badly and beat you. While this is probably the best strategy in real life games online poker is a much different animal. The inability to simply get up and punch you makes your opponent much more frustrated by it online than they would be in real life. Also in real life you are in danger of scaring away the fish, online this happens very rarely and when they do the odds of another fish sitting in their place is somewhere between 99.8% and 99.99%. Many poker theorists also say that if you insult someone’s play they may then be shamed into playing better, but I think that most people play on the best level they are really capable of anyway and attempts to play better usually end in the player playing worse than they did before. So online all trash talking really does is make your opponents want to beat you. And in the best of scenarios, such as what occurred today, it makes them challenge you to play heads up.
In this particular case the player, pazzodite, took offense to my calling him a chump and challenged me to play him 15/30 heads up, where I relieved him of about $1200 in about 45 minutes. To be honest it was a shame that his computer died, because he had a few more thousand in his account and no shot in hell of leaving with any of it. Very rarely there comes along in heads up a player who quite literally has zero chance of beating you. This guy never did anything tricky, never check raised, overplayed every single hand, played just about every single hand. Never have I seen someone so easy to read and manipulate heads up as this guy. At first I thought he was trying to lull me into a false sense of security, but as he bought in over and over I realized he was just that bad. He was literally the perfect opponent for heads up.
I went back later and found him playing $10/$20 6 max, and he pretended to be unable to speak English. He was speaking Italian with another guy, both of whom had Not Available listed as their city (they must have wrote that in because Party does not allow players to block their city anymore). I think I finally found one of those teams everyone is always worried about, and a very stupid one at that. I just wish there were an open seat so I could bust both of them.
Posted by themaroon at 6:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Friday the 16th
Today I ventured into the realm of $15/$30 6 max on Party Poker, just to see what the competition there was like. I played for about an hour, very well I thought, and won a very small bit. I truly hope that this table was not indicative of the normal quality of competition at those games (and I have a feeling it was not) because most of the players who went through there actually seemed very solid to me. There was one maniac, one idiot, a few marginal players, and a few good players in that time. That doesn’t sound so bad until you go back and play $10/$20 6 max, where quite literally every single person is either a maniac or just plain bad. It seems all the good players just move straight up to $15/$30, but given as it isn’t that much higher stakes I would much prefer to play $10/$20 against awful players than $15/$30 against better ones.
I also noticed that a few of the better players were playing 3 games at a time. I think this gives me a great advantage over them, as no human can really play their A game on 3 tables at a time. I suppose you can reduce short handed to a simple formula that will cover most instances and then just pay attention whenever necessary, which may allow a winning player to beat 3 games at a time, but they are still not going to play as well as I do playing just one game. So perhaps I will give the game a shot every now and then and see if it is as profitable as $10/$20 6 max.
Tomorrow is the $1 million guaranteed tournament on Party. They capped the entries at 2000, which makes 1st $240k. This would be the best time for me to get a little luck and win a freaking tournament, which probably means I will be out sometime in the first round. I will be starting with 1400 chips, which I figure should be about average, though even if it is under par I don’t mind so much, since of the 2000 people somewhere between 1950 and 1995 of the players will be the complete idiots/newbies who make up the vast majority of Party Poker players. Come to think of it given the quality of competition on Party I would be willing to start with 1400 chips and spot every single opponent a few hundred in every tournament, because the 400 extra chips will help me way more than 1000 extra ones will help them. An idiot with $2k doesn’t really have much more chance of winning than an idiot with $1k, but a good player with $1500 has more shot of winning than a good player with $1000.
Also their capping it at 2000 players (which filled before midnight Friday) without really announcing it in advance will undoubtedly prevent a lot of the competent players from buying in. I know this to be the case because a couple very good players I know from Atlantic City got locked out this way. I'm pretty sure they would have gotten as many as 3000 players had they not capped it, but oh well. I have gotten 4th in a 2000 man tournament before, and 4th tommorow will pay somewhere around $75k. I plan on getting first though.
Posted by themaroon at 5:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2004
State of the Union Address
Today I played in the $325 NL WSOP satellite on Party (I shall never miss a WSOP satellite) and didn’t have any luck. I tripled up early when I flopped a set, and A, A came running, making a flush for one idiot and 3 aces with a jack for another. Then I promptly put a guy all in with QQ against his AQ and lost, built my stack up again and put some idiot all in with AK against his AQs on the K high flop, but the AQ had flopped a flush draw which then got there. Somehow despite that I managed to get rather deep in the tournament with a decent stack but then lost when I raised 99, someone called with QQ, and the flop came all rags. I shoved which amounted to a pot sized bet and he called. So back to $10/$20 it is.
I have been playing 4 $10/$20 full games lately in an attempt to get my raked hands played up. Party gives you extra chips in the $640 buy in tournament this weekend (which will have a first place prize probably upwards of $300k) so I would like to get as many of them as I can. I wish I had known about that sooner, so I could have made sure to get the full amount, but what can you do. As it is I will probably start with 1500 in chips which I expect to be above average.
I really do not think that Party should have done this for this tournament, but they did and I am going to play it come hell or high water so I might as well give them the action they are going for. This is as close to a major event as it gets online, and you would NEVER see the WSOP give players in the main event more chips for having entered the side action. It is just unprofessional. I really don’t have a problem with them doing it for the PPM semifinals but I think this one is a little absurd.
Also I want raked hands for those semi finals as well. I noticed that Party now has 4 semis at a time, which is grrrrrreat. I truly hope they rent a bigger boat next year, as I am confident that they have the potential to turn this into the biggest live poker event of all. I personally plan to play every semi until I win one, and then after that I will play as many as I can get the full amount of chips for (probably very few) since I intened to go back to playing mainly tournaments once I get in the PPM. Until then I will play enough raked hands every 2 months to get the 2000 extra chips in each one (8000 hands every 2 months, which at my current rate is under 30 hrs) and play tournaments for the rest of the time. This is good anyway because ring games are a much more stable income than tournaments and given the massive amount I am spending on travel and electronic gadgets these days I need a little positive cash flow.
Posted by themaroon at 1:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 15, 2004
Gooooo Party
Well, Party Poker has now announced that disconnect protections will be entirely removed from tournaments. All I can say is that was fast. They read my article and one day later changed it. Yeah, that’s how it happened.
I realize Party is in a tough situation because all of the players want to see different things, but fairness must always be the first priority when implementing changes in the software. This is really the only fair way to run a tournament. Everybody now knows the risk of disconnecting, so those with computers that crash often or bad ISPs can opt not to play until they upgrade their archaic systems. Or they can just accept the risk of missing a few hands. In the end everyone who has a stable computer/connection will disconnect the same amount so it will not give any of those people an unfair advantage. And considering a decent computer and DSL costs a small fraction of what playing one $200 buy in tournament every month would cost I see no reason why anyone wagering a significant amount of money on tournaments have a higher than average chance of disconnecting.
On a related note now that I am running mainly tournaments I have taken the opportunity to do something I have been considering for almost a year, buy a UPS system. I never did before because most UPS systems I have seen for under $1000 or so can only power a computer for 30 minutes to an hour. When I played ring games (where disconnect-protection still applies) a power outage would be annoying at most, in tournaments it could be quite costly. Now that I have my laptop I have computer power for up to 3 hours in the event of a power outage, so what I did was buy the UPS and hook up only my DSL modem and my wireless router to it. They are much lower wattage appliances than a PC, so I should be able to get a few hours of power even in the event of an outage, allowing me to either finish the tournament or wait until a break and then head for somewhere that does have power.
I also set my cell phone up so that I can use it as a modem. So now even if the power and the phone lines went down (a rarity) I could get over 2 hours of internet access. I also could play in the car and have someone drive me (or drive myself) while I went to an internet café somewhere. So I am finally able to say that I am nature proof, excepting perhaps when some tool drives into the Sprint cell phone tower nearest my house which then falls and takes out power and phone lines, leaving me longing for those disconnect-protections once again.
Posted by themaroon at 3:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2004
If I Owned Party Poker
Having played a very large number of tournaments on Party Poker lately (as well as a few other sites) I can say with all honesty that it is without a doubt the best site for tournaments. The structure is incredible since they give you 20 minute rounds in all tournaments with buy-ins of $150 and above. They also have a very gradual blind structure and no antes in NL tournaments though I think they are probably going to add antes soon, which as long as they keep their excellent blind structure and just mix antes in. They also have by far the largest prize pools, though the Sunday $215 on Poker Stars is very close to Party’s. All of the rest of Party’s tournaments blow the competition away however.
I also like that Party has big buy in tournaments every night, with the $100 NL at midnight every evening, 3 $215s per week which get great action, and $150’s on a few nights too. They have a few big satellites to WPT events and the WSOP main event each week as well. Also they do the most important thing that Stars (the other major site for tournaments) does not, which is run few tournaments. Stars has about 700 tournaments per day, which divides up the fields too much. People like to see big fields, and fewer tournaments would mean more people in each one, which would attract more people to playing them. In the end they would probably achieve more entries by running significantly less tournaments. Also Party doesn’t waste time running a bunch of tournaments in games like Omaha or Stud 8 that nobody cares about. I am not really against those games, I just find it foolish to run too many tournaments in games people don’t want to play. A few would be fine, but you don’t need many and you definitely do not need big buy-ins for them.
There are a few things Party could do to cement themselves as the best site of all for tournaments forever, and here they are:
1. Add rebuy tournaments. This is something I almost expect they will do soon, as they are generally not ones to sit back and watch their competition do something better than they do. People really seem to love rebuy events, and for good reason. Party should definitely mix a few in.
2. Add a time bank. I know they hear this so much they are sick of it, but that is a good indication that it is a good suggestion. It is the most effective way to combat stalling, shorten the time to act given to people and add a time bank for those few times you need to make a real decision. I think the time bank should have 1 minute, and be refreshed every hour.
3. Find a way to remove some of the negative effects of hand for hand. Hand for hand in larger tournaments can start when there are as many as 13 tables left, which means that each hand will take as long as it would if there were no hand for hand and people were stalling, so it really is not effective at all. Combine that with the fact that many people on Party are either new at poker or just not very bright and do not realize that stalling is useless because of hand for hand and continue to stall anyway, and you end up in a situation where the amount of hands per round dealt to everyone is cut down. As a solution to this problem I have 2 ideas, the first of which is to add to the message that says you are waiting for other tables to finish a hand something that says “this is to prevent stalling” or “this makes stalling useless”. That way people won’t stall during hand for hand, not realizing that it does nothing. The second idea is to pause the clock at a certain time, so a more proper amount of hands per blind level will be dealt. I think a good way to do this would be to pause the clock after more than 50% of the tables are done and waiting. This in my opinion is one way that internet tournaments have an advantage over ones in real life, as this would not be feasible in a large event in a casino. So if there are 10 tables left, wait until 6 tables have completed their action and stop the clock until the next hand is dealt.
4. Deal more effectively with people who intentionally all in. I seem to have this happen to me in about ¼ tournaments or so, and though I report it every time I have yet to receive a single email saying anything has been done about it. They are all fairly obvious cases, and there is no reason why the people should not have had all in protection removed. It would also be nice to have a live floorperson monitoring it during bigger tournaments (they could have a message pop up whenever someone does a disconnect all in and go look at it immediately since it does not occur that often) and immediately transfer all of the offender’s chips to the victims of his all in while it is still relevant. I don’t think Party will like this suggestion since it ties up a floorperson for a while each day, but in the $640 tournaments someone using the old disconnect on you is awful.
These are the main changes I would hope to see implemented in Party as far as tournaments, though the last one would apply well to ring games also. I would very much love to see this site continue to improve, as it has since I have joined it. I will say that they win the award this year for most improved site, since they have finally become stable (I don’t even see crashes anymore) and have added a lobby that is by far the best in the business. Their new lobby is like Michael Jordan, and everyone else’s lobby is like a WNBA benchwarmer. So I hope they keep up the good work and take a look at my suggestions.
Posted by themaroon at 1:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2004
April Update
Here is the update with what is going on with me. First I am planning my triumphant return to Vegas in just 12 days. I plan on being there April 21-28, and playing in the $2,000 NL Hold’em event at the WSOP. The fields for some of these events were huge last year and will probably only get bigger this year, so I would hate to miss them. There is also a $1,500 Limit event and a $1,500 Pot Limit event which I may play in while I am out there, pending my results in the first event and side action. I will likely run one table satellites continuously while out there if the structure in them is anywhere near as good as it was in Tunica.
Online nothing much has happened lately. I have played in a few tournaments since returning home with no success. I am going to start trying to play more ring games, so I can increase the number of raked hands played, mainly so I can get extra chips in the $1 million guaranteed tournament and the Party Semi-Finals, which are coming up soon. So I will try to play at least a few hundred hands per day (a few hours) in either 10/20 6 max or Pot Limit Omaha. I also may start playing the $3/6 Heads Up Limit Hold’em on Paradise as well, since I have always had amazing results at that. I would like to get good enough at that to challenge the people who play the $10/20 on their regularly. To make a fortune you have to hustle the hustlers, and I just don’t know if I am up to challenging the big dogs on there yet, but I am confident I can learn. Time will tell.
Posted by themaroon at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 5, 2004
In The Air
Well I am once again on a plane headed for Vegas. This time is going to be an actual vacation however, of which I am in need. Since I have come back from the cruise I have played just about every day, so it will be nice to take a few off. I am considering playing in the $2500 limit tournament tomorrow at the Bellagio depending on the structure, number of entrants, and how much money I can get from my Neteller debit card. I was at my friend’s house late last night playing in a tournament on Party so I was in a bit of a rush to take a shower and get out the door when I got home. Of course any traveler knows rushing out the door means you will forget something and I forgot sunglasses and cash. The sunglasses I will somehow live without (I don’t wear them when I play anyway, but the sun is rather bright out there) but unless I am able to withdraw at least $1500 through my Neteller debit card I do not think I will even be able to play in the tournament, because I don’t think I have enough money in my checking account. If I can’t play in the tournament then I am sure I will be able to withdraw enough money to play in the $540 tournament on Wednesday if they are still running them. I am not sure if it will be worth the bother though. From what I have read online the structure in Bellagio events seems very good so I am really hoping to be able to withdraw the buy in.
Also I am about to kill the old fuck next to me on this plane if he elbows me one more time. He is very old so I don’t think I would get in much trouble for it, he probably only had a few years left anyway. I mean how are they going to give me 50 years for killing a guy wh was likely going to die on his own in the next year or two anyway? Maybe I won't kill him though, because to be honest I don’t know if I blame the guy. When I'm his age I’ll probably have the same “fuck everyone else, I lived 82 years and I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want” attitude as well. I just hope I don’t run into some mad old-people-killing crazy kung-fu poker players like myself who might just elbow me in the temple and wreck my skull. But at least if I do I guess I won’t have to walk around smelling like urine any longer.
Posted by themaroon at 12:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 2, 2004
Finally The Bride
Tonight I finally stopped being the bridesmaid in the online tournaments. I have been making top table after top table this year, usually finishing somewhere around 4th place. And while I have made a decent amount doing this I have been eagerly awaiting my time to take home the trophy, and that time was today.
The tournament was a $109 NL on Party at midnight with 330 some people. First paid me about $8500 and boosted my per hour per table rate to over $2000 for the month of March. That rate does not take into account my Party Poker cruise win or the $24k I won a month ago, since I just recently started keeping track of such things. I used to only keep track of shorthanded poker since it accounted for about 99% of my play, but now that I have branched out into other things I think are more profitable and more enjoyable I am keeping track of them as well.
So far in 29 tournaments (in real life and online) I have invested 66 hours. In those tournaments I have gotten 2 1st place, one 4th place, and 2 payouts short of top table. Also 4 or 5 of those were satellites, one of which I made it into the target tournament, and one I finished top table but 3 spots away from the seat.
Also I would say that I average playing 2 tournaments at a time online, so this is probably somewhere around a 35 hr real world investment, making my actual hourly rate somewhere around $350. The ability to play numerous tournaments everyday online is so great for someone who wants to be a serious tournament professional. Whereas a real life tournament pro can play maybe 5 a week on average I can play up to 20 if I really want to. This makes my monthly expenses a non-factor when trying to figure my bankroll, as the long streaks without a tournament win that you experience in real life are 1/5th as long online. Also the return on investment online is incredibly high, given that even the $215 tourneys on the week always have 1000’s of people, which I do not think any tournament in real life has ever had. This year’s WSOP main event will probably top 1000 people, many are saying maybe even 1500. Sunday tournaments on Party are rarely below 1500 entries. Plus on Party Poker 1500 entries means 1490 completely clueless players.
So I am thinking that I should be able to average a profit of somewhere around 3-5 times my buy in each tournament. So far this year I am well above that, so we will see how long I can maintain it. I hope I can too, because I figured that I could easily spend $1,500 to $2,000 a week in buy ins, which would have me making quite a bit by the time the year is over. Also I like playing tournaments better than live action, it is more exciting, offers you more chance to outplay your opponents, and rewards you more heavily for doing so. It also means less hours for more pay, which I am heavily in favor of.
There are a few disadvantages to it as well. To play in tournaments for a living I have to play in certain tournaments, which is almost like having a *GASP* schedule. I almost have to play the Sunday ones, and the ones in evenings at 9 p.m. I can certainly skip some here or there if I feel like it, but I should try to play as many of the larger buy in tournaments as possible. It is nice that all of the sites seem to have good tournaments around 9 or 10 every evening during weekdays, since it lets me get a few good ones in at the same time. I will continue to play the $20 rebuy on Paradise every evening, along with the $10 rebuy on Stars, even though I seem to have no luck at all on that site. Those combined with all of the $150 buy in (and up) tournaments online should allow me to spend $300 or more in buy-ins per evening. Then there are all of the satellites to WPT events, which should add at least $300 or so more per week on average, maybe more.
And then there is the practice I am getting from all of this. Being able to play so many tournaments will allow me to quickly see the long term effects of adjustments to my strategy. This will be great training for those 3 or 4 major events I satellite into every year. So hopefully it will not be long before you see me on television winning my million.
Posted by themaroon at 6:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How To Play Tournaments Online
I have played a large number of online tournaments in the last few months and have finally come to understand the psyche of my many opponents. I have assembled a list of rules which 90% of players online play by, so if you don’t know what you are doing and want to play tournaments simply print these rules out and follow them and I promise you won’t be worse than average.
1. AQ is well worth your whole stack. No one ever gets dealt a better hand than that preflop so whenever you get it you should not hesitate to go all in, no matter how big your stack is.
2. All pocket pairs appear with the same frequency; therefore all have the same value. You must never ever fold one before the turn because you may miss a valuable chance to win the pot.
3. Betting $100 into an $8,000 pot is not only good play, it is absolutely mandatory when you have a weak hand. There is a good chance that people with medium strength hands will fold them and you will win.
4. Going all in on flush draws is not fun, but you have to. You are going to have to get lucky at some point in order to win in a tournament, what better time than with a flush draw?
5. A J can sometimes be laid down preflop, but only in rare instances. There must be at least 2 raises for this to be correct, and the total amount must be more than half of your stack. Should you ever manage to lay it down you must immediately tell everyone what you had as soon as no more players are left with live hands, that way everyone knows that you are a world class tournament player.
6. Remember, if a play resulted in you winning a hand it must have been the correct play. Also if you ever make top table in a tournament you are a good player and should tell everyone so they know and are afraid of you.
7. If you flop top pair you should never fold it, even if it ceases to be top pair or a flush comes on the board. Doing so could cause you to fold the best hand, and there is nothing in the world more disastrous than folding a winning hand.
8. Before the flop you should raise large amounts with your very strong hands and small amounts with medium strength hands. Limping is ok as well, even for amounts as large as 1/3 of your stack, but only with small suited connectors and low pairs.
9. Hands like JJ or AK that are tricky to play after flops should just be shoved all-in preflop, no matter what your stack size is. This way your opponents just fold. Betting any smaller amount may allow your opponent to make a mistake, which could cost you the tournament and there is nothing worse than that.
10. Remember there is no shame in going out on bad hands just before the money. It is perfectly ok to pony up $215, play for 7 hours, then go out on J 6 suited 2 spots before the top table if you happen to.
Posted by themaroon at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 1, 2004
Mid-Week Results
Well things have been going sour for me the last few days but not horribly so. I have played about 10 tournaments without one single cash. I did top table once but it was in a satellite where top 2 got WSOP seats, and I managed to take a bad beat and end up 6th place. So I am down a few hundred or so this week in tournaments, nothing truly significant.
I think it is harder to judge my own play in tournaments than it is in live games. Obviously there are a lot of times where you go all in with a monster and some idiot sucks out on you, and those times you know how you played. But then there are some times where you go in with mediocre holdings in marginal situations and it is hard to tell what your most profitable play would have been. And then there are a few just plain bad decisions.
All in all I am not very pleased with my tournament performance this week. I think I made a few mistakes I should not have. I would say maybe 2 or 3 tournaments out of the 10 or so I've played I just played badly, so I am going to work on my consistency. It is impossible for anyone in any game worth playing to be on their A game all of the time, but I think I can do a little better, and need to take my bad beats better.
Most of my mistakes come in tournaments where I had a huge stack and then took a couple atrocious bad beats to lose most of my chips, at which point I gave up. I really need to have more heart, since in any long event you are going to take a few bad ones, even on your best runs. I think I have gotten better at it today, at least in the few I played. I took hideous beats that should never happen, lost my big stack and persevered.
Also a couple of the mistakes were made while I had a severe cold. I should never have been playing to begin with while in such misery and under the influence of DayQuil. Luckily playing badly in a tournament is not so expensive. Playing badly in 10/20 6 max could wreck you. Yet another advantage to playing only tournaments.
Posted by themaroon at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack