tp's table talk

With my new purchase, various sports, and a bout with the cold taking up a lot of time, I haven’t spent many hours at the poker tables for the majority of the week.

Thursday I dipped my toes in at the 50PL tables at Intertops. I’ve been running very well at the 25PL tables, so I thought it was time to take a shot. Well, it went extremely poorly as I managed to run through a buy-in and a half due to some bad play and a couple bad beats. But, it did make way for my best session at the 25PL tables when I went back later to make up for some of the loss. I finished the night at $152 at one table, $101 at a second and $36 at the third (which I started late). So, that was just shy of 4x my buy-in of $75 at all three tables. Not so bad, and more than enough to make up for my $80 loss earlier. Unfortunately, I hit sub-zero cards at the 2/4 table at Pacific and managed to pay most of those profits back in blinds. Unlike my usual cold cards, there were no beats, there was just three hours with maybe 4 legitimate starting hands that missed so badly I had to give them up before the river. Usually I get a few bad beats thrown in there when my cards are cold, but there wasn’t even anything to compete with.

My games yesterday were not much more profitable as I finished my hands at Paradise to unlock the last 5 dollars of my bonus. Of course, I managed to lose twice as much as I unlocked in bonus. The site was full of maniacs and few of my hands held up. But, I did get a 1-year subscription to Canadian Card Player out of the deal, so I’ll consider it breaking even.

I also had a completely crazy hand at Poker Stars. I find AA in the small blind and it’s raised ahead of me. I re-raise to try to thin the field further and the big blind caps it. We’re down to three for the flop (the original raiser called the re-raises while the rest of the field decided that the extra two bets weren’t worth calling). The flop comes rainbow rags and I bet out, raised from the big blind, I re-raise, he caps. At this point I start to wonder what he might have. Possibly a set, but I’m thinking overpair is more likely. Suits me fine and when the turn comes out a brick and I bet. Called again by both players. An offsuit ten on the turn and there are no flush opportunities and a couple unlikely straights. So, I bet and am called down again. He had 75s and hit two pair on the flop. I couldn’t even conceive of not only calling 2 extra bets from the big blind but capping with this hand. Oh well, I suppose he’ll be donating to my bankroll in the long run, but I had been anticipating picking up a fair sized pot on this hand. I guess my hand reading skills need work.

I also just finished reading Cloutier & McEvoy’s Championship No-limit and Pot-limit Hold’em. It was alright. Not many new insights although I found Cloutier’s suggestions on playing risk prevention poker in tournaments interesting. Of course, it’s difficult to apply to the crazy world of internet poker due to the sheer amount of poor play, but I have been finding recently that sometimes it is just better not to get involved with some situations because anything short of the perfect flop will leave a lot of questions about where you stand.

When I got in this morning I found a nice hefty box sitting on my desk. I pulled out a handy exacto-knife and extracted my prize. A nice shiny new 300 11.5g Poker Chipset in aluminum case from Poker Source Online that I received for signing up at Aztec Poker (which I won’t link, because there isn’t much to recommend them). Of course, I had no real pressing need for more chips or a fancy case, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. And I ended up with an extra $30 at Aztec to play with. Unfortunately, raked hands at Aztec means hands that were raked that YOU contributed money too, so the 150 hands required took a long time to play. At least they dropped it from 250, as the original terms stated.

But while I can’t recommend the poker site, the Poker Source Online folks were great. There was a quick response to every question I had and they helped resolve any issue I had. I just wish I wasn’t already signed up at Pacific so I could take advantage of their deal for the WPT Season 1 DVDs, since despite the site’s other drawbacks, it at least has incredibly soft games to recommend it. There are probably better deals if you have a lot of money to deposit to take advantage of the various 15-50% bonuses at many sites, but there is something about receiving free loot in the mail (and I’m still expecting a book from my sign-up with Poker Stars, which also took advantage of the 25% back-to-back champs offer). If you do end up signing up via Poker Source Online, you can use my referral code (TravisP).

Ack…my first real shill. Leaves a dirty taste in my mouth. But, I’d already written the post, and if anyone decides to try it, someone might as well get the referral bonus.

Well, it looks like I took notes for the wrong tournament. I went out early in the 15+1.50 $10000 guaranteed tourney at Pacific by managed to make it deep in $250 NLHE freeroll at Intertops. It’s getting to the point where even if I finish first in the $250 freeroll, there’s a good chance I would have made more money playing ring games. But, it is practice, and I can use some of that if I want to keep playing in the multi-table tournaments. After some so-so play in the first two hours, I managed to turn it around, catch some lucky cards, and arrive at the final table with nearly a third of all the chips. I put some pressure on the smaller stacks trying to sneak into the better money (it wasn’t until 4th place that payouts were greater than $20). My luck holds and I end up heads-up with fairly even chips.

The first hand I steal, the second he folds to my big blind. This could take a while and I’m already falling asleep at my keyboard. Then I get 88. I call, he raises, I re-raise him all-in. I want this over with. Unfortunately, he mucks. Next hand I have 77 and I re-raise all-in. I figure he’s not going to believe me doing this twice in a row. He calls with AJ and we have a race. It’s looking good until he spikes a J on the river. Now I’m less than 10% of his stack. So you know what that means. I push all-in with Q9 and he folds. I push all-in with A7 and he calls with JT. Unfortunately, my luck again breaks when he hits a T on the river. I’m out in second place, but I’m grateful that the heads-up confrontation didn’t take any longer, which it certainly could have with blinds at T500/T1000 and our stacks at T80000.

So, I earned $38.75 finishing 2nd of 162. This is the second time I’ve cashed in about 4-5 freerolls at Intertops. And two of those probably don’t count because they were limit tourneys and I don’t seem to have the discipline anymore for a limit tournament. So, not too bad. And combined with some time on the 25PL tables at Intertops and Pacific 2/4, I had roughly a 100 dollar night. Which is a good thing, because I plunked down a good chunk of change on a new toy last night. But more about that later.

Played at Paradise and Stars .5/1 on Sunday to work towards my bonuses. Played 2/4 Pacific for pure profit. The crazy loose players at Paradise continued to smack me around, but I managed to turn a small profit after the bonus there. My afternoon at Stars was about average, but I was hit with the deck in my evening session and managed a nice $67 profit. Pacific 2/4 continued to be an ATM and I managed to pull out 60 bucks between server disconnects.

But the big game was the 10K guaranteed no-limit hold’em tournament at Pacific. 15+1.50 buyin. Actually ended up with 620 entrants, so the overlay was pretty small. When I registered earlier in the day there were only 93, which obviously had me pretty excited. Still, it’s a big tournament and I was interested to see how I can do. 1st-2nd-3rd pays 2300-1400-700. Pretty flat, but it pays $40 out to 60th, so there’s a decent chance at money. The structure is pretty fast, with 800 in starting chips and blinds rising every ten minutes.

10/20
JJ, raise to T50 from EP. One caller, undercard flop with 2 diamonds. I bet the pot and take it down.
Manage to give most of those chips back when I lose the next hand.

15/30
44, try to limp from EP. Big blind raises to T300. I fold. Would have flopped the set and filled the boat on the turn. But, the blind did have 77, so I was a big dog pre-flop.
15 minutes in and we’ve lost our first 100.

25/50
Down to T670 thanks to the blinds and a few disconnects. Pacific has to be one of the flakiest sites out there. Had a bad table move from button to UTG.
25 minutes, down to 417

50/100
Only have T585 left. Still haven’t seen any kind of hand since the 44. Gonna need to make a move soon.
AJs in the big blind, 3 limpers. I push all-in for the rest of my chips. Two fold immediately and the small blind eventually decides to let it go. I’ll take it.
AA and the short stack pushes all-in in front of me. I just call and as expected everyone folds. T403 comes my way when the rockets hold up. Could probably have made a bit more off it if he hadn’t pushed, but I can’t really complain.
37 minutes – 303 players remaining.
Took a few hits, need some more chips.

75/150
Fast structure, hope I get some hands before I don’t have chips to back ’em up.
Lucked out and someone went out passing the BB over me. Don’t know why most sites don’t play with a dead small blind, but I’m not going to complain.
Argh…another disconnect, going to miss my button.
QJ in EP, try to raise to T400, but only double the blind. BB calls. Flop comes 2A9, 2 diamonds. Well, I don’t figure him for an ace, so I push all-in with my remaining T575 as if I’m guarding against the flush draw. He mucks.
Now up to T1173 after being hit with the small blind. Still not much breathing room.
49 minutes, 212 left

100/200
It would be nice to get a hand here. Unfortunately, Pacific is not cooperating and I see nothing this level.
First break, only T873 left. And 191 players. I have a whole orbit before the blinds to try to find the cards to make a stand.

150/300
Two hands before the blind hits me and I fold K2. Flop comes 242. I needed to take that opportunity. Particularly as the buffer I had before the blinds went all-in and busted.
BB with J8o, have to push. Called by KT and my night is over.

Well, that a quick 7 levels of tournament poker. But, I like the buy-in and the stakes. And if I’d held just a couple more hands, I would have had a decent shot at the money. And if I’d had a few chips to play with, it would have allowed me to make a few more moves. Checking the tournament schedule, it seems that Pacific holds these 10K guaranteed all the time, so I’m definitely going to try to take a few more shots at it.

It’s Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight with the Calgary Flames visitng the Tampa Bay Lightning. I’m cheering for Calgary, but at this point, I think both teams are very deserving and it could go either way. What I do know for a fact is that it’s going to be one hell of a game and I’ll be enjoying it with friends at a local pub.

GO FLAMES!

Went out to watch the Flames game at a bar last night. Was a very exciting match but St. Louis’ goal 33 seconds into the second period of overtime means we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see the Cup hoisted. Of course, a hockey game in a bar means beer, lots of beer. And two periods of overtime means it keeps flowing into the wee hours. Suffice to say, when I came home, I still had quite the buzz going on.

So, I decided to sober up at the poker tables. Maybe not the best idea, but I needed to kill time until I was ready for sleep. I actually ended up at a table with Ash from Casino Gosain last night, or should I say this morning. He identified me under one of my name variants, but he had to drop me a comment here before I figured out who he was. It’s always a great night when you get to chat with a fellow poker blogger at the table. Fortunately he wasn’t around to witness my horrible beats at the other table. I did manage to recover to post a small $1.50 lost on the night as the sun was coming up. Ugh. I’ll have to remember “less beer” on Monday.

Same table, 33 again. I actually call a pre-flop raise. Flop comes 399 rainbow. I call someone else’s bet. Turn is a rainbow blank. I call again. River is another blank and I reraise for a decent pot. Not enough to make up for some of the nonsense I’ve seen tonight, but at least I’m not down nearly 20BB anymore. Ouch…while I’ve liked the larger 2/4 BB when I’m winning, it also hurts a bit more when I’m losing.

33, call from UTG. Flop comes J3J. Check for the possible check raise. Turn comes J. Well, no more dicking around, I bet here. I am called. The river is a 4. I bet and am beat by the 42o that has called all the bets so far. 42o! Someone for the love of god, please explain. *sigh* It’s late. I’m still a bit drunk. And the Flames lost. (all somewhat related) How does that happen? Even more frustrating than starting a table with KK and running into AA (which I’ve also done tonight).

Well, after the shellacking I took Monday night, I was anxious to settle back into the familiar rhythms of winning poker. My Monday night game was full of holes, mostly related to overconfidence. I am a better poker player, so my hands WILL hold up. My bets WILL be respected. Of course, the theme of the night was WILL NOT, but I was too full of myself to realize that. When I finally did settle down and try to play some good poker, I took a horrendous runner-runner beat and was steaming badly enough that I knew I had to get away from the table.

Tuesday I decided that I would hit up the 2/4 tables at Intertops… I hate to mention this because I want them all to myself, but freerolls abound at Intertops. They have completely free freerolls on Tuesdays ($250), Fridays ($500) and and Saturdays ($250). And not at stupid times when you need to be at work, but 9pm et on weekdays and 3pm on Saturday. On top of that, they have $500 freerolls Wednesday and Sunday, the only qualifier is you need to play 50 raked hands in the previous three days. Not a problem because you are working to get the 500 raked hands required to register for the $1500 freeroll at the end of the month, or the 1500 hands for the $3000 freeroll. And I don’t even have anything to gain from all this shilling (though perhaps I should).

Anyhow, Tuesday I decided to hit the 2/4 tables at Intertops to qualify for tonight’s $500 freeroll. I still need to get used to the swings you can have at a 2/4 table. I was bouncing back and force between +/-7BB, which has been fairly typical for me at the limit tables recently, but when that range spans $60 instead of $15 the numbers feel a bit different. For a long time I hovered at +25BB, but managed to drop $10 on the last hand in my last orbit. Still, another $90 at the 2/4 level helps convince me that I should be playing there.

I also played some .5/1 tables at some other sites where I was working on bonuses. Managed to drop $20 at one and made $20 at the other. Would have been more if not for some bad beats in the last orbit. Stupid runner-runner straight vs. pocket aces, who caps betting with QQ with a K on-board.

Well, May is over (at least there’ll be no more poker in the next hour) and it has been a good month. My first four months of poker officially ended in the second week of May. Since then, I have tripled my poker bankroll, from about 500USD to about 1500USD. I have moved from the .5/1 limit tables to 2/4 limit and 25PL and I’m considering testing the waters at 50PL (The dollar amounts are slightly misleading because they do not account for the 150 buy-in and 143 profit from Choice Poker that I was forced to write off from my first four months). But still, my move up in limits was met by an increase in my gains and improvements in my game. Of course, I was humbled this evening when I was slapped around at the tables, but I consider it another lesson learned in my poker education.

I’m looking forward to June and some more poker. I don’t expect to keep up the same pace of improvement as I’ll be spending more time out and about enjoying the nice weather, but I’m hoping that I can continue to build my bankroll and move up in limits as appropriate. I wish all you (if you play poker) continued good luck at the tables as well.

Now, I’ve done a fair amount of bonus hopping in my time as an online poker player, but I’ve never received money that was quite this “free”. This morning when I logged into my email before heading out to work, I discovered a message from Party Poker. “Lucy has chosen your account today (31-May-04) and added $50 into your account.” Wow, that’s great. What do I have to do? “To claim the money, simply login in to the party poker software before 23:59 hrs EST today and play 1 raked hand or 1 real money tourney .” I’ll do that right now. And as easy as that, I have another $50 in my account. And an extra $4.75 from a hand that I couldn’t resist betting before my half orbit was up. :)

Apparently they have a promotion going on right now where they randomly choose 1000 accounts every day between May 27th and June 10th to award some money to. It’s not as if I’m going to complain.

I also want to send a shout out to John-Paul. He played in the $6000 Freeroll Barcelona Heads-Up at MultiPoker and finished 2nd out of 340! While he barely missed out on a trip to Spain when his pocket twos failed to hold up against a the flush draw. But, he did manage to pocket $300 for his efforts. Congratulations John-Paul! Here’s a bit from his another part of his post:

In the Intertops freeroll I had the pleasure of meeting and playing with Travis from TP’s Table Talk, a fellow Canadian Poker Blogger. Funny enough, we were both playing the freeroll and watching the Stanley Cup Finals, Calgary vs. Tampa Bay Game, at the same time. We threw in a what a goal and awesome shot into the comments when Calgary scored. The other players probably thought we were colluding… or retarded.

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. I’ve been quite enjoying his posts recently and he will be added to the blogroll with a few others when I finally get around to updating it. How can I not, he’s another Canadian poker blogger. He also mentions that he wasn’t too upset with me calling him weak in my post on Saturday. That’s good because there was certainly no offense intended. I just wanted to point out the one flaw I saw in his game when we were playing at the same table. Of course, it should have occurred to me that perhaps e-mail or IM might have been a better forum for that message. Sorry John-Paul.

Same old, same old at the tables this afternoon, but that’s not a bad thing.

Played a little 4-table 25PL at Party this afternoon. Started off badly slow-playing a set of queens and throughing all my money after it when the flush hit. Another 30 minutes and I managed to dig the hole all the way to $50. But, a several hundred hands of solid play brought me up to +$75 before dropping down to $50. My food was ready, so I decided to call it a session. And that should be the hands I needed for Party to send me a free cap and jacket.

Didn’t intend to play any more today, but a few hours later I was tempted by the soft 2/4 tables at Pacific. With my short sessions I’m not sure if I’ve just been lucky or if these tables were as beatable as they seemed, so I was curious to find out. Well, my first session was pretty short, but I managed to win 9BB in a few orbits. I owe this more to the bad play of others at the table than I do to any particular quality play of my own. I’m not playing badly, but there hasn’t been any call to play well either.

After a short break I was back at it and this time I was around for a while. The table was weak-passive and I told advantage to the tune of 12BB in the hour I was there. And it would have been a lot more were it not for K that forced me to split my flopped broadway straight. I can’t imagine what the guy was thinking staying in until the river with JT. He can’t have thought he was good with my pre-flop raise, so I guess he was playing the gut-shot draw. Frustrating in this instance, but this is definitely the kind of player I want at my table. I did hit some lucky cards in this session however, so I still can’t firmly say that I’m good at this level.

Actually, who am I kidding? I may not be a great player, but the competition at 2/4 at Pacific is horrible. Play some solid tight-aggressive poker, don’t get too fancy, and there’s a fair chunk of change to be made. Now if only you could play more than one table.

Well, this post will be much shorter than yesterday’s. The tournament had 218 entries, but I think just about half of them were no-shows and were slowly blinded off for the first five levels. I busted out in 117th. I could have folded two orbits to finish closer to 60-70, just by virtue of all the dead seats finally being blinded off, but I called an all-in bet with KhQh. I figured him for low pocket pair, and with the chip leader at 10 times my stack, I’d decided to try to get lucky and double through. No dice and I was out. Now that I think about it a bit more carefully, it was still a bit early to make that move, but it probably saved me another hour of tight poker just to make $10. I needed to start amassing chips to finish in the top three.

The only real point of interest was that I had John-Paul Constales at my starting table. He’s a fellow Canadian poker blogger and I’ve been reading his journal for a month or two now. I just wish his site had an RSS feed so I could keep up with it better and comments so that I can harass him more. :) He was playing a little bit weak (sorry John-Paul), folding many of his bets in the face of a re-raise. It was noticeable enough for the few live players at the table to take advantage of that habit (including me). But overall he played well and went in with AQ vs. 79 and lost when a 7 hit on the flop. Getting in with the best of it is all you can do.

In other news, I dipped my toes in at the Pacific 2/4 tables agian. In 45 minutes I saw three good hands, the first I don’t remember. The second was AQ, which I raised and bet the whole way, even though it didn’t hit for a 6BB pot when the last one in folded on the river. The other was QQ that I raised and bet the whole way even with a K on the flop for a 10BB pot. So, I ended the night up 15BB on the night, which I must admit is a much more satisfying number when playing 2/4.

And I just have to add “Go Flames Go!”. They played a great game tonight in front of a boisterous crowd. And it looks like they finally solved their powerplay problems.

My lord I can be long-winded, can’t I. I apologize to anyone who read my monster tournament report from last night.

But the one important thing I did forget to mention is congratulations to Greg “Fossilman” Raymer for winning the biggest of the bigs last night, collecting a $5,000,000 payday at the WSOP No-Limit World Championship. I saw him hit some pretty good cards, but no one gets to the end without playing well. Congratulations Greg!

Well, tonight was the night for the $3000 freeroll at Intertops I qualified for by playing 1500+ raked hands in the past month. Not that difficult when 1050 of those hands were required for bonus retrieval purposes.

The tournament started off – with everyone at T1000 chips – pretty slowly. My table was very tight and it was often folded all the way around to the big blind. A small raise was usually enough to steal the blinds. Unfortunately, I was getting some decent starting hands so I was having trouble getting paid off.

Aggressive play without a lot of action has me at double the average stack at T2800 at the first break. There are 65 players left in the tournament out of the original 93. I have a pretty good read on most of the people at my table, so I’m feeling pretty good going into the fourth level (25/50). I’m liking the reasonable blind structure for a change.

I get 87h in the big blind. Middle position raise to 175 and I decide to call and see a flop. With the super-tight table, people are raising with any marginal hand, so he might not like a confrontation. The flop comes 34T, two spades. No good for me, but I can’t imagine it hit him either, and I’ve got a 3-1 chip advantage on him. I come out betting half the pot and he obliges by mucking his cards. My first “play” of the day that actually feels like a play. Everything else was aggression with good hands hit or miss the flop.

In the next five hands, it folds to the button three times. I may need to lower my starting hand requirements here.

I raise with a decent hand and the get called, but by the big stack. He raises my bet on the 3-flush flop and I decide discretion is the better part of valor. Was stupid to tangle with the big stack when there were much more accomodating targets at the table. I managed to blow enough chips that I have to start looking for some good opportunities to make more chips than just off a steal. At this point I checkthe recent summary and notice that the last 18 hands were won by one of only four people. The other five are too scared of any aggression.

Blinds are up to 50/100 and I see 88 under the gun. This is something, I raise, knowing that might buy me the blinds right there and not wanting to limp and call someone else’s raise. I get two callers. I check and the big blind kindly puts out a small bet which I eventually call along with 1s. The turn is a K and a second diamond. I try to decide what to do here. I don’t want to give the free flush draw, but I want the big stack to donate some more chips. I decide on 500 and hope that the big stack, who’s been a bully for a while, might reraise me. The 1s folds as I expect, but the big stack flat calls. Oh well, better than a fold I figure. The river is a blank and I push all-in. I probably should have bet for value here, but I thought the big stack might make the bad call. No such luck, but I still drag a decent pot to move well up in the standings.

Lost money again to a big stack who check-raised me on the 3-flush flop. This time I have a bit of an excuse as he had just moved from another table and I hadn’t realized he was there. We’re down to 40 now and people are playing a bit more desperate now that they’ve woken up to the fact they’ll need to win some hands to make the money.

I decide to mix it up from the small blind, re-raising the 400 bet from LP to 1000. I get the call and the flop comes 74Q. Pretty raggedy, nothing he can feel too good about, so I bet another 1000 and LP folds. I can understand how Daniel Negreanu gets into so many pots with garbage starting hands. With the right flop, you can really hurt someone. I get the urge to start dancing around in some pots but manage to quell the impulse.

50/100 – someone goes all-in pre-flop for 800. I peek at JJ and think, sounds good. Unfortunately he spikes a 3 on the river for his set. At least it didn’t cost me as much as it could have.

75/150 – the guy to my immediate left pushes all-in after I raise with AQ. He’s been throwing his stack around the last few hands so I decide to call for half my stack. He flips AQ to chop the blinds.

75/150 – find AK in EP and double the blind. Get called by one of the big stacks. Flop comes AT8, two diamonds. I bet the pot to discourage the flush draw. I get the call and the turn is the 5s. I push all-in, almost equally the pot. Stacks folds and I’m up to T4800 and feeling more comfortable.

75/150 – find AK again in EP and double the blind. Called by the other big stack. Flop comes 456 rainbow and I bet out T400. Stacks raises me to T800, but I figure him for a bully and re-raise to T2000. He types “oh…you were serious this time” and mucks his cards. I’m going to have to remember that. Unfortunately, a couple hands later I’m moved to another table. So much for my good reads.

Twenty-five players to go now in the second break and I have the chip lead with T7852. My notes say “This is where it’ll start to fall apart.”

Button goes all-in with AK and is called by someone else with KK and suddenly I’m no longer chip leader. At least the T12,500 stack is to my right. I need to be careful now, we’ve fallen to 18 and I can probably just fold into the money. I hate to do it, but it’s a freeroll and the tenth place $90 is not insignificant for my bankroll.

Who am I kidding, I can’t not play hands, even marginal ones. I get KJ off-suit in mid-late position and go in for a small raise. I get a few callers. The flop comes KQJ, all diamonds. I’m pretty sure I like the flop and since I have everyone covered, I bet the pot. I get an all-in call from AK and I’m thinking happy thoughts, until the A hits on the river. A big chunk of my bankroll has gone missing.

A few hands later I get to see a free flop from the big blind. I flop the open-ended straight draw and a bet and a call give me odds to chase. The straight hits on the turn and I check to let the first bettor do my work for me. Unfortunately he checks it and we see a third diamond on the turn. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give up my straight and my T2000 bet went to the gentleman on the button with the 56 of diamonds. Suddenly I’m down to T3000 and I’m no longer sure if folding into the money is even an option.

At this point I get an IM from Felicia, who points out that I didn’t mention she was the one who told me that my fellow countryman, Dave Scharf, busted out of the WSOP on Wednesday in my last post. I had completely intended to, but spent so long collected links and reading his diary that I rushed out the rest of the post so I could get back to work. I know that she doesn’t really care about the snub, but I still need to thank her for turning me on to his writing.

I take advantage of a sympathetic ear to vent about my bad beat followed by my stupid play. Of course, talking about just makes me realize how stupid it was. Oh well, I needed to refocus and adjust to playing with a small stack. Only 15 left and I still had a good chance at the money.

At this point Intertops died on me and I missed a whole orbit trying to get back in. But in that time two more had fallen and we had only 13 to go. Checking the leaderboard, I saw that five had a small stack than I did, so folding into the money seeemed a good idea. Unfortunately a few people managed to double up and there were only three shorter stacks left. I made a few all-in moves (including a stupid MP all-in with AKo) and survived to the final table. Now I was guaranteed $90 and it was time to mix it up.

Or it was time to mix it up after the T555 was blinded off in the first three hands. Now I’ve won at least $120 and I’m just waiting for an opportunity to push. It comes with ATo in the big blind. I’m down to T2300 after paying the blind and with one limper, button+1 raises to 2400. This was probably the best hand I’d see for a while, and now I had a chance to double up with it, so I pushed in the rest of my chips. Even if I was dominated, I was going to need to get lucky a few times to get back into competition. And there was a very good chance that he was just bullying the short stack in the blind. The limper folds (what he later said was also AT) and button+1 calls the remaining T300 chips. He flips 99 and we have a coin flip. I hit an A on the flop and I’ve more than doubled up.

Then this guy starts going off on me. I’ll cut a bit of the transcript just to illustrate:

JAY17434: terrible call
Farmer_Ted: okay then
JAY17434: just horrible
proffelt: I’ve got no chips.
Farmer_Ted: yep
JAY17434: you had 4000
proffelt: You could just be bullying me out of the blind.
JAY17434: you didnt suspect i was ahead?
proffelt: I had 2700
JAY17434: dude, it was a horrible call
JAY17434: period

There was a bit more as I tried to explain to him all the possible reasons to make that call. Now, maybe I’m just a clueless fish here, but I can’t see how this is a terrible call. I mean, at worst it’s not a great call, but a T2400 raise, particularly with the texture of the game, was just screaming “don’t call me”. And even assuming he had a hand, any low pair is a coin-flip which I’ll take with my short stack. If he had me with a bigger ace, then I was in trouble, but that’s a chance I think I have to take. And in the end, he had 99. Had I known what he had, I would have made the call, so I can’t see any problem with it. He continued to bitch out any player making a marginal call, even though he was bluffing on half the occasions.

Two hands later I’m at it again when I find TT. The intervening hand eliminated another player, so I was at least $150. With two limpers at 200/400, I push all-in. Everyone folds and I suddenly have chips again, with T8200. No longer the short stack, but still only half of what the leaders had. And I didn’t want to slip into the next money spot. I was playing for the win.

A short time later I’m in the big blind with AQo. There’s a MP raise then re-raise (for the minimum amounts). I probably should have hesitated a bit longer here, but I decided to take a chance that I wasn’t up against AA and force them into a decision. The first raiser folds, but after a bit of a think, the re-raiser called. Unfortunately, his KK wasn’t much better for me than aces. The flop came KJx, giving him the set and me few outs. No ten on the turn or river and I’m out in eighth. I probably should have smelt something fishy with the minimum re-raise and backed away, knowing I did finally have some time, but I was still half in small stack mode. Still $150 is not a bad free payday.

I apologize for the long-winded post, but it’s been a while since I’ve played in a MTT and with the WSOP final table happening at the same time, it was a lot of fun. But now I really must hit the sack.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been sitting at the Pokerstars “simulcast” table for the past 45 minutes waiting to see the results of the first hand from the 2004 WSOP No-Limit Hold’em World Championship event. By rights I probably shouldn’t be this exciting about seeing a simulated hand of cards representing a game being played a few thousand kilometers away. But, there is 16 million dollars to divvy up among the final 9, and they just announced that there are 11,000+ people watching at Pokerstars right now, a pretty large number of viewers for a “simulated” table. I guess I’m far from alone.

And the first hand, it’s folded to Hughes who raises to 200K. Arieh calls from the big blind (antes are 50K). The flop comes Jd5h4h and they both check. The turn is 7d and Arieh’s 375K bet wins him the pot. Just wanted to be able to post the first hand.

UPDATE: Wow, two out in the first hour. Crazy stuff. I hope everyone doesn’t busy out before I get home after running a few errands tonight.

I discovered pokerforum.ca last night through an ad in Canadian Poker Player and was happy to find a nice Canada-focused poker forum. Still not firm info on some of the local tourneys I was hearing rumours about, but more than I’ve been able to find elsewhere.

I also discovered Dave Scharf’s (editor of Canadian Poker Player) WSOP journal posts. A great read for anyone interested in a first hand account of the big game. He got a few of the facts wrong (he said Chris Ferguson busted out on Day 1) but with all the trouble the media is having getting a clear picture, it has to be even more overwhelming for someone in the middle of it. After I posted this the first time, I realized I should include a little teaser to whet a reader’s appetite. Here’s a sample from his day 3 report on a hand he played with Annie Duke:

Two hands later it is my big-blind. Annie raises on the button. I call in the big blind with Q-8s. The flop is A-J-8 and the A-J are spades. I have bottom pair and a flush draw. I have A LOT of outs. I check. Annie bets $4K. I check-raise to $16,000. She thinks for a while and re-raises me ANOTHER $37K. I believe she is capable of making that bet with a lot of hands… She could, I think, be bluffing. She could have an ace. I re-re-re-raise all-in. The combination of “annie might be bluffing” plus “I have at least 9 outs and probably 14 outs” was enough for me to put the pressure back on her. Annie thinks for a long while. She has about $25K in front of her. So, she is facing a call of $25K into a pot of about $110K. I think she had an ace. She counted down her stack and was, I think, trying to figure out if she had enough chips left to carry on or if she needed to call and hope I was bluffing. Eventually, she folded.

I tossed my hand face up in the middle of the table and said, “Make sure you tell Gus about that hand too.”

I feel bad about it today. It is not my style to talk trash but I just sort of snapped. Maybe I am feeling more of the pressure than I realize.

Of course the Gus he mentions here is Gus Hansen, whom Annie had been bragging to earlier. A good read if you still can’t get enough WSOP, and with the final table starting in not too long, I imagine everyone is pretty excited. I know I am, and I’m nowhere near Las Vegas.

– May 20 (arrival)
– May 21
– Day 1 (early)
– Day 1 (recap)
– Day 2 (Dave’s first day)
– Day 3
– Day 4

Pokerstars is apparently hosting a simulcast of the WSOP final table today. Sounds like they are plugging in the hands to a special tournament table so that members can review the action. Only problem is, I don’t have an account at Pokerstars yet. And I feel bad signing up to a site without any kind of bonus. It seems…unnatural. So, this is my call out to any bloggers who read my site who know of any kind of sign up bonus (aside from the pokersourceonline.com free book deal). Please let me know if there is anything else. Thanks!

Well, I knew it was bound to happen. If you don’t count the 20+2 buy-in to the WBT3, I had been on a winning streak going back over a month. Not one losing session in …let me go count…13 sessions. Well, I guess that explains it, unlucky 13 and my run at the PL25 tables finally hits a roadblock. And what a roadblock. I manage to get pocket kings all-in before the flop heads-up…and he rivers a 4 to make his set. In the big blind with 52 that sees a rainbow flop of T52, seems like a time to get my money in. Oh, but he likes his J5, so why not stay in to hit his 3-outer on the turn. I lost most of my money ($80 on the night) in the first hour or so of play and I was never able to dig my way back out of that hole. Now, I’m not too upset because I know these same fools are the ones who double me up on other nights, but combined with a very cold deck it made for a long evening.

And I hate to admit it, but I started playing scared. Aggression has served me extremely well at the pot-limit tables, but I began to fear betting and getting hit with a big raise, or heaven forbid another check raise. Even worse than that, I could see the people at the tables start to sense it. I was suddenly getting hit with large raises on marginal hands I was forced to lay down. At least I had the sense to leave the tables where I saw that happening. I guess it’s just another chapter in my ongoing poker education.

I also wanted to give pokerprof over at LasVegasVegas Texas Hold’em and Poker Blog a shout-out for the great work he is doing reporting on the WSOP. Conditions haven’t been great for the media trying to cover the event, but he has persevered. I particularly like the searchable player database he has put together, updated through Day 5. Want to find out how your favourite player is doing without scanning hundreds of names? Head on over to find out.