tp's table talk

Well, it turns out that the Party bonus situation does require that I play 1700 before next Thursday. Fortunately, I was able to get enough work done last night to spend several hours four-tabling and knocked off nearly 500 hands, so I’m more than a quarter of the way there. Unfortunately, two bad calls and one bad beat meant I finished -$3 on the night. My cards were pretty cold for the majority of the night and much of my profit came from pulling small pots that no one else wanted. In fact, barring one particularly bad play near the end of the session, I was quite happy with the way I was reading situations. Sure, I occasionally got called when making a move at a small pot, but I more than made up for it with all the times I snatched it up.

In other poker news, my old friend Choice Poker has risen from the dead. Months ago they refused to honor any more withdrawal requests, and I was unable to get out the $293 I had left in my account (I had my first good MTT finish there, with a 3rd in their $1000 new player freeroll). I was quite pissed off, particularly since that was a significant chunk of my bankroll at the time. So now they’re back, and offering me my money. While the conditions they have for me accessing my money (I must play 293 hands at the $1/$2 tables or higher before I can withdraw) are a bit ridiculous, considering that it is MY money, I can’t get quite as indignant about it as CJ, though I wish I could. I just want to get my long lost money back in my pocket and wash my hands of the whole thing. Besides, it’s only 293 hands, although I want to get that done as quickly as possible, considering Choice’s checkered past. And that will be a bit awkward given the push I need to make to get my bonuses at Party. But I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

Well, the saga of the Empire bonus continues this morning. I received an unprompted email from Empire support saying they realized that they prevented my full use of the September reload bonus when they used it to remedy the $500 match bonus situation. In place of that bonus, they offered me another 10% to $100 reload bonus, to be used prior to October 3rd. So, in my mind, Empire has made the best of a bad situation and has been more than reasonable in offering restitution for those who tried to take advantage of a bonus that was not offered to them. Hopefully this will calm the raging anti-Empire mob that has been quite vociferous on various poker forums.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to shift enough funds around to get enough money into Neteller to take full advantage. With the second bonus from Party that I took, my funds are pretty low. I was able to withdraw enough from Pokerstars and Absolute, but I’m not sure if they will be processed prior to the deadline. Also, I have heard a rumor that the new Party reload must be cleared in the next 7 days. With the previous 1000 hand bonus pending there, I’m going to have to play 1700 hands in the next 7 days. Doable, but a bit of a pain in the ass with the plans I currently have.

Still, instead of the $826 I thought I had a few days ago, I have $440 (plus the $46.6 I received yesterday from Empire) which is nothing to sneeze at, considering the fact that I should also be able to turn a healthy profit at the tables.

But I suppose I am not entirely without gid. You remember that nice match bonus I mentioned from Empire yesterday? Well, apparently they have rescinded it. So, even though I managed to get through 25% of the required hands last night, I don’t get any money for it, well aside from the $135 I earned at the 25PL tables. Actually, upon further invesigation, it turns out they did credit my account with a 10% bonus completely free of requirements, so I earned a free $46.6 and really can’t complain. Actually, upon yet further investigation, it turns out that all is not perfect, as this free money actually prevents me from taking advantage of the 10% up to $100 offer I got yesterday so, since meeting the hand requirements is not a hardship for me, I lost the opportunity for an additional $53.4. Not ideal, but I guess I can’t be too demanding when it comes to free money.

So I apologize to any who might have gotten burned if they saw the bonus code here yesterday, but hopefully they ended up satisfied. I still have bonuses at Party, Absolute and Stars to work on, so there’s plenty to keep me busy.

Well, I may be having trouble finding my groove writing about poker here at my site, but there are folks out there who have no such problem (just check any of the links on the right). In particular, I’d recommend Wil Wheaton‘s new series of posts on a Las Vegas visit (1 2 3 4 5). Of course, Wil’s a professional writer, so it’s not terribly surprising he can spin a good poker yarn.

Well, it seems that Felicia is on quite a tear recently. She just finished second in the Stud event at the first WPPA tournament at the Orleans in a small but talented field. Congratulations Felicia.

It’s a bit sad, but I am actually a bit giddy at the thought of all the bonus money I currently have to unlock. There’s the $140 left at Absolute that I’ve been working on for a few weeks, but yesterday I added $120 at PokerStars (600 FPPs) and $100 at Party (1000 raked hands). Then today I saw news of a 100% match bonus up to $500 via Sean and then Grubby (of course, being read in alphabetical order) and now have a $466 (2330 raked hands) bonus to work off there. Wish I’d had the extra $34 in my Neteller acount to top it off, but I’ll live. I just signed up now, so if you need a good bonus code to use, try MATCHBONUSEP while it is still working.

So, that’s $826 free dollars just waiting for me to take them. And the majority of that is at Party and Empire, where I can kill the PL tables while I unlock. My poker playing has been on the wane somewhat recently, but I think this may be the kick in the pants I needed.

Well, I’ve been a bit behind on finishing up my post about the cottage, but that’s mostly because as soon as my work deadline passed, there was poker to play. In fact, I didn’t get back until nearly 3:30am last night, and I’m heading out again in a few hours to another home game.

Last night was my bi-weekly PLHE tournament. Sixteen people showed up, so we had a nice 2-table tourney. In the last three tournaments I’ve finished 1st, 1st and 2nd so I was half expecting an early exit from the proceedings. And things weren’t looking good for me when I blew nearly half my stack pushing a pair of threes when I sensed weakness in my opponent. Unfortunately he couldn’t lay down his second pair. That’s actually one of the trickier aspects of this game. I can make pretty good reads on the holdings on my opponents, but knowing when they will release their hand and when they’ll just be stubborn can be very tough. But playing a pair of threes to a showdown does have some benefits, as two hands later I got no respect with pocket kings and managed to more than double up.

I continued to swing back and forth, top pair good kicker ran into a set of nines. I was betting the hand aggressively but when he raised me all-in on the turn, I smelled a rat and decided to live to fight another day. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t go all in, as I had mentioned he’d gotten lucky with a few substandard hands earlier. I pointed out that he never raised with any of those marginal hands, so it was a pretty easy decision, though it hurt to give up half my chips again. Of course, there were the intangibles of his body language as well that suggested he was looking for a call, but it’s hard to articulate those and really, I don’t want to be giving him too many pointers.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find another playable hand and was relatively short stacked when we merged at the final eight. Blinds were at 100/200 (T1000 starting chips) and I had maybe T1200. In the first few hands, I looked down to find AA and smiled inwardly … well, at least mostly inwardly and not outwardly enough that anyone noticed. With the chip leader limping in and a few other blinds to pick off, I happily pushed all-in, figuring I would get called in at least one place. Everyone else folded but the chip leader didn’t let me down and called with 88. A reasonable call, all things considered, but I was glad to double up and get back to decent chip shape. I still had less than T2000, so I wasn’t in great shape relative to the blinds, but most of the rest of the table wasn’t in much better.

I managed to hang in as the next three were eliminated, but when the blinds jumped to 200/400 and I found myself in the big blind with AQ, I was thinking it was time to make a stand. It was raised ahead of me, but I flat called, figuring the raise could have been made with a lot of hands inferior to mine. The flop came 235 and I had a decision ahead of me. I only had T1100 left and there was T1800 in the pot. I managed to convince myself that my opponent had a weaker ace or something like KQ so I pushed. As soon as I did, the critical thinking portion of my brain spoke up and said “boy that was dumb, he’s probably got a pocket pair and you’re in bad shape”. Well, the critical thinking portion of my brain is no slouch, even if it is a bit slow sometimes, and my opponent quickly called and flipped TT. No help on the turn or river and I was out in fifth, which is the bubble for our tournaments when we have more than ten.

I really should have known better. Calling the raise was fine, but after the flop I should have slowed down and considered living to fight another day. I had the small blind to pay the next hand, but I could have hung on to my last T900 for the orbit to see if I could find anything better. And it was entirely possible that some of the bigger stacks might have tangled and eliminated someone. I wanted to first much more than I wanted fourth, but given the situation I should have realized that the odds in that hand were no longer in my favour.

But the guy who beat me continued to play very well. When we started these tournaments he was supremely impatient and stubborn in hands. So, he ended up playing more hands than he should have and had trouble not chasing draws or releasing second best hands. He was improving in dribs or drabs, but never really threatened to be a consistent top finisher. But then at the beginning of the summer I noticed that his raises were coming in at 3x the big blind. And I noticed him folding a lot more. It smelled like someone had been doing some reading. It turns out that he watched the Howard Lederer’s Secrets of No Limit Hold’em DVD and it completely changed his game. He’s moneyed once since and this time he spent much of the night in the top two chip positions. I didn’t watch many of the remaining hands at the final table as I’d joined a side game, but what I did see impressed me and he kept his cool, continued to play quality poker and took down the victory. Now, when I started these tournaments, no one expected him to win one without some serious luck. And although he did have some lucky hands along the way (as every victor inevitably does) he definitely earned the win. So, congratulations Colin!.

Of course, the tournament was followed by some ring play. When I busted out I joined a table of seven already playing Omaha Hi. Didn’t find many hands and misplayed the ones I did and after many hours of fun but undistiguished poker, I was down 8 bucks of my initial 20 (we only play .5/1). Of course, as is often the case at the end of the night, we’re in a bit of a gambling mood and we played a little high card. And as also is often the case, I managed to donate the rest of my chips to the big winner for the night. Oh well, I’ll have a chance to earn it back in the PLO8 tournament tonight, though my Omaha Hi/Lo game is not nearly as good as my Hold’em. Might be enough though.

I finally managed to sneak out of the office a bit early (4pm) to try my luck at the nearby CNE Charity Casino. As I suspected, the list was much shorter than my last attempt, so I was seated at one of the 11-seated 5/10 tables within 15 minutes with my $300 buy-in.

A few hands in I had identified about half the table as players I should look out for and a few others who I knew I wanted to be in hands with. Unfortunately, my luck was not too good as my AK ran into KK on a K-high board and my own pocket kings went down in flames when someone hit their flush on the river. Combined with the fact that none of my draws hit (and with 7-9 people regularly seeing the flop, there were always odds to draw) and some pretty unspectacular cards, this was enough to ensure an unprofitable evening.

Five and half hours at the table for -18BB. Not a great showing, but I felt pretty confident that it was a game I could beat. Now if only I’d been smart enough to stick around a bit longer as many new players were coming into the game at 10pm, when I assume many of the players that had been there since noon were calling it a day. This new influx of players were probably mostly the home game heroes looking for some action after work, so there was likely money to be made. Then again, there was no way to win a pot without the goods with all the calling going on, so the situation wasn’t going to be much different than it had been. The only time I should have known better was when I was in there against the KK. I just hadn’t seen a good hand all night, so I didn’t expect my TPTK to be up against a flopped set, even though every indication was there.

Well, my performance in the Monty Memorial was not terribly memorable. The blind structure was horrendous. Even though we started with T1500 stacks, 30 minutes in nearly everyone is forced into short stack play. My raised hands missed the flops badly most of the night, so I was left with few chips and ended up all-in with AQo with my last T320 with the blinds at 75/150. I was called by kodies‘ big stack in the big blind and his Q6 hits trip sixes on the flop and that’s all she wrote, out in 61st place. At least this means I can get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Thanks again to Iggy for going through the ordeal to get this set up. Here’s hoping that next time there might be a chance to sit at the tables a bit longer and enjoy the competition.

Due to some inclement weather, my conflicting plans for Sunday night have fallen through, so I will be attending the great Monty Memorial blogger’s tournament tonight at Pacific.

I’m even getting some good pre-tourney practice as I’m currently battling in the final six (of 350) in the Sunday 1K freeroll at Multipoker. Sittng at 3rd chip position at the moment with T50K, but the blinds are up at T4000/8000, so there isn’t a heck of a lot of room to manuever.

UPDATE: Just took over the chip lead when my minimum pre-flop raise with KK was re-raised all-in by the chip leader with QQ. It held up and I’m sitting much better than I was, even if I still have only 20 blinds in my stack. As I’m typing this I call a short stack’s minimum raise with A5. An ace on the flop and I put him all-in and he has little choice but to call with pocket fives. Five left and I have nearly as many chips as the rest of the table. Time to fall from grace. Ugh…doubled up a short stack.

UPDATE 2: Blech! Went out in fourth for $75. I made a few mistakes near the end and the cards just weren’t cooperating. At least now I’ll be able to take a bit of a break to rest up for the Blogger Tourney.

Ended up not hitting the Charity Casino last night. Just didn’t have the energy or patience to wait for an hour or two in the smoky haze.

And now I’m not even sure if I’m going to be able to play in the rescheduled Blogger tournament on Sunday. Real life plans look to collide and they will have to take priority. So, I guess I’m likely to miss out on the enhanced prize Pacific was kind enough to offer us. Ah well, I hear this real world type stuff can be fun sometimes.

It’s coming a bit late, but I finally have a few minutes to piece together my notes from Friday’s home PLHE tourney. The big difference this week was the $5 bounty added to the regular $20 buy-in. Another nice change was the fact that we had 15 players instead of the 10 we’ve been getting out for most of the summer.

I played mainly solid tight aggressive poker in the early rounds. Most people didn’t know how to deal with large raises so I won most of my pots uncontested on the flop or turn. In fact, I didn’t go to showdown until after the tables merged.

I got a bad draw when we merged at 9 and ended up in the big blind. I got to see a free flop with with rags. The flop came down 852 rainbow and I thought I had an open-ended straight draw. I checked and the minimum bet was folded around to me, but I had pot odds for the call. A 2 came on the river, which wasn’t much help to me, so I checked again. The other player in the pot is very cautious and after going into the tank, checked. The river was a beautiful ace and I was excited to have hit the straight. I checked again and got the bet which I quickly re-raised all-in. Suddenly I realized that my hole cards were not connectors and I couldn’t have the straight. I peeked at them and was relieved to find 42s for trips, but it didn’t matter as my opponent folded.

Next hand was 85 of clubs in the small blind. Multi-way pot gives me the excuse to complete and see the flop. It comes down with two clubs and I again have odds to chase the flush for a minimum bet. Another club on the turn and I bet out, getting called there and on the river for my first showdown of the night.

Forty minutes later we are three-handed and I’ve got a little more than half the stack of the chip leader. I come in for a pot-sized raise with A9. The chip leader thinks for a bit and then calls from the big blind. The flop comes AJx and I push all-in, not putting the chip leader on an ace, of if he is, it’s an even weaker ace than mine. He eventually calls and turns over Jx for second pair. I could have hoped for better, but I’m still a big favourite. But not when the jack hits on the turn. I’m cursing myself for a fool for busting out before the short stack in third when the river comes down beautiful with my two-outer ace. I can’t even feel too bad about the reverse suckout.

Unfortunately, that’s the last bit of fairness I’d see on the night.

I made a mistake heads-up ending up all-in with A4s against J8s. I thought the ace would be a bigger favourite than it was pre-flop against a marginal hand (I could read my opponent fairly well and was pretty confident I had the better hand). Still, not many people would have risked all their chips (which was still a playable stack) with J8s, so the play wasn’t completely awful. But when the flop didn’t hit him I was a 2-1 favourite and was disappointed when the jack hit on the turn. No help on the river and suddenly I’m no longer the chip leader.

A few hands later I push with 66 in the small blind, thinking I’ll take a coinflip situation at this point, and his blind is nothing to sneeze at. He calls down with A5, which again makes me a 2-1 favourite. He hits his ace on the river however and I’m out in second. I should probably have waited for a better moment as I had a great read on my opponent, but the blinds were 300/600 and I had only 4K in chips, so I couldn’t afford to be too patient in case I didn’t hit any hands.

Still, 2nd place and two bounties is a decent night, but it was disappointing to lose the game after I was so much in control and was consistently making the correct read on my opponent. But, it’s difficult to knock out a calling station when he’s hitting cards.

I went to the Charity Casino at the Ex last night, but after an hour of waiting, I decided to head home to take care of some laundry. Only a quarter of the names in front of me had been called and I didn’t expect much movement between 7:30 and 10:00. The room is not great, and is ridiculously smoky, as I have read elsewhere online. But it is a live game and only a ten minute walk from my office. I’m going to try to get out there a few hours earlier today when the list should be a little shorter as most people won’t have time to get there from work.

Well, you have to give Pacific Poker some credit. They have said that they will be making up for the missed Monty Memorial tournament by crediting all the entrants with $25 (the buy-in was $20) and offering to add $500 to the prize pool should we reschedule. So, essentially they are giving us a nearly $2000 freeroll to try to make up for missing the originally scheduled time. That goes a long way in my books and though I’m still frustrated that the tournament didn’t come off yesterday, this is suitable restitution and I will not be taking any special measures to boycott Pacific.

Now if only they’d been able to give us an adequate response last night when everyone was still trying to figure out what was going on then perhaps we could have given them full marks. As it is, many people made a special effort to attend the event and while it’s nice that they are trying to make it up to everyone, it’s still a mark against them.

I hit another milestone this evening, though it took longer to happen then I had hoped. My bankroll now sits at $3084 (US). The last grand took just over two months to achieve, mostly at the Party family 25PL tables. I had hoped to pull that jump in about half the time but with the combination of vacation and internet outages adding up to nearly 3-4 weeks, I suppose the pace is reasonable. Either way, I think this puts me in a reasonable shape to take a shot at the 5/10 tables at the CNE casino starting in a week. My bankroll works out to approximately 4K Canadian, so that gives me a solid 400BB to support myself in this reputedly high variance games.

I’m still holding on to my outside chance dream of hitting 10K Canadian by year end (7500 US). That’s going to take a bit of doing however, so instead I’m just going to focus on playing my best poker (and I feel that I’ve been shoring up my limit game recently) and hope the profit follows. Then again, I’m going to have to start thinking about when to make the next jump. Maybe playing the 50PL tables more regularly as well as dipping my toes into some of the 3/6 games out there.

When I got home from volleyball last night (1-1, for 6-2 on the season) I decided to sit down at the poker tables for a little bit after I washed all the sand off. Just a short session while I watched another episode of this year’s WSOP coverage (ep 8, the ?K seven card stud event). Managed to pull off a very nice little hit & run session when my pocket aces held up at a 2/4 Pacific table for a 26BB pot ($104 for those who don’t want to do the math). Biggest limit pot (by far) I’ve pulled and a happy $70 profit quick. Also managed to finish up 6BB at two 1/2 Pokerstars tables when I managed to bust AA with T6 from the big blind when I hit runner-runner straight. I just wouldn’t believe that he beat my flopped top pair after limped from the small blind. Oops.