tp's table talk

As anyone reading my blog has probably figured out, I haven’t been playing nearly as much poker as I used to. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the major ones is that I’ve played a lot of poker in the last eight months and some of my enthusiasm is fading. I’ve played tens of thousands of hands online and made a decent amount of money, but other things have been taking up my time recently, not least of which is the fast approaching deadline of a project at work. And I haven’t wanted to force things because, really, if you’re not at your best you shouldn’t be sitting down at a poker table. I don’t know what the future is going to hold for me in terms of poker and this blog, but I do know that I did play some poker this past weekend and I wanted to write about it.

First off, I was finally able to wrangle enough people for my semi-regular PLHE tournament. Unfortunately, my results were hardly better than they were last time, when I busted out after five hands. This marks 5 tournaments without a money finish after taking 1st place 3 tournaments in a row. Obviously I need to take a closer look at my live game. And the first thing I need to do is stop making some assumptions. Too many times have I made the mistake of limiting my opponents’ hands based on their calling a pre-flop raise. Sometimes whatever pressure I apply is not going to get that K4 to fold, and I need to be able to recognize this a bit more often and not push my marginal hands so hard when I sense weakness. Sometimes the weakness is going to stick in there. I have a huge edge on many of these players and I should really wait for better opportunities. Unfortunately, there probably won’t be another game until next year due to the holidays, so I will have to be patient in trying out my new-found patience. Maybe next time I’ll last long enough to have a good tale to tell.

But all was not a loss. Bowing out early meant I got to boot up Party Poker on my laptop and start working off my bonus while the tournament winds down. I don’t know who decided to start making these reload bonuses require 700 hands in 7 days, but I’d like to kick them in the head. Still, free money is hard to turn down, particularly when I tend to make more money while trying to earn it. A few hundred hands later I’m up 60 bucks and packing up the poker table once again. I managed to get in the remainder of the hands by Sunday night (my bonus would have expired Monday night) though I decided that I wouldn’t even attempt the 800 hands I would have had to put in at Poker Now to get the $100 there. I did sign up at Checknraise poker to take advantage of the 50% pre-reg bonus, as they finally went live on Saturday, but I haven’t had the opportunity to play any hands there. This weekend’s play (at my usual 25PLHE tables) was completely on automatic and while I did make a profit on top of the bonus amount, I’m sure that I let many bets slip through my fingers just because I couldn’t be bothered to watch the tables more carefully. Maybe I need a jump in limits to start getting me to get a bit more involved in my game.

Well, I haven’t played a great deal of poker recently and was really looking forward to participating in the Grublog Poker Classic Sunday night. Unfortunately, fate and the internet interfered. I booted up my laptop to play with I watched the end of the Grey Cup. But for some reason it wasn’t connecting to the Internet, even though it could was connecting to the wireless network. So, I got on to my desktop machine and started poking around with the config to try to get things resolved. I couldn’t find anything wrong so I went looking for some information online. No dice, couldn’t access the web. Couldn’t log in to Paradise. Couldn’t do anything. After another five minutes I threw up my hands and went back to watch the rest of the football game. One last attempt minutes before the start of the tournament was unsuccessful and I denied my chance to collect any bounties this time around. At least the Argos won.

Had my usual home PLHE tournament tonight. Win the first hand on a bluff. Fourth hand I get the nut straight on the turn and don’t bet quite enough to get the flush draw out. It hits on the river and I’m smart enough not to put any more money in the pot, though I’ve still dropped nearly half my chips. Next hand I pick up pocket aces. Play it the same way, flop comes 349 and I raise. Turn is another 3 and I end up going all-in against the same player I lost to in the previous hand. Unfortunately, he does have pocket fours and the river ten is no help. So, less than 15 minutes in and I’m out of the tournament. And not terribly happy about it, particularly since I have to stick around until the end to run the damn thing. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in a little online action in the meantime.

Well, I wasn’t really hunting, but I did collect a few bounties in the last Poker Blogger Tournament. The first of which arrived today. The much famed Coach, from Pauly‘s tales of the Blue Parrot game, sent me a signed copy of his book. Unfortunately, the package was open at one end, but the contents were unharmed and I have the first blogger bounty to add to my collection. Thanks Coach!

It got me thinking though. I have a serious collecting compulsion and I began wondering what it would take to complete a collection of the books published by all the poker bloggers.

Then I came up with a better goal. How many poker blogger home games can I attend? How cool would it be to show up at the Blue Parrot game some night. Or any of the other many home games I’ve read about. A pipe dream for now, but maybe something I need to consider for the new year. Besides, New York isn’t all that far from Toronto. And work is always sending folks down there on business.

Of course, as soon as I say this, I hear about a blogger tourney organized in Sin City. It’s December 11th, and I’d need to fly out Friday night and back Sunday, since I have no more vacation to take this year, but it is sorely tempting. First flight check came up with $625 round trip, which seems a bit much to spend on only a weekend before room, booze and gambling is factored in. But maybe I’ll be able to find a better deal…

On Friday I received two packages in the mail. One came from Poker Now and one came from Party Poker. The Poker Now package (from Lakeside, ON) contained a t-shirt (too small, unfortunately) and the book I asked for, Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones. The Party package (from Las Vegas, NV) contained a ball cap (different from the last one I received), a t-shirt and a denim shirt. Sounds pretty good for playing 500 raked hands at each site? Well, I’d agree except for the fact that I played those hands at Poker Now less than two weeks ago and the Party merchandise is from a promotion run in August. And the Poker Now promotion came without any intervention on my part while the Party promotion required a series of email to support. I guess when you are the hulking behemoth of the online poker market, you don’t have to worry about how you treat your players.

Of course, when I went to send an email to Poker Now support to commend them on their great customer service, the only email address I could find was info@partypoker.com. So much for that.

Argh! I just lost a rather lengthy post about the Poker Blogger Tournament tonight. I’m using Firefox and was trying to do the mouse gesture to open a new tab with the same page. Instead I reloaded the posting page, losing all my writing in the process. Bad geek! I will try to restore what I can, though I fear sleep may get the best of me.

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After my dismal performance in the last blogger tournament, I had really been looking forward to the event tonight. And the 133 entrants and a prize pool of $2660 ($798 of which went to first place) made it all the more promising. I have a feeling the large turnout was at least in part due to the presence of a certain celebrity blogger. But it was also thanks to the work done by the poker blogfather, Iggy in getting this thing put together and hosted at Poker Stars, where we could have a reasonable blinds structure.

I started the night at a table with hdouble, who does great work over at The Cards Speak. Months ago in an earlier tournament, I was fortunate enough to bust hdouble out and ever since then, I’ve taken it as a good sign when we are seated at the same table. I quickly changed my mind when he starting playing hyper-aggressive and running over the table. I was not terribly upset that the table was broken just as he was declaring himself king of the castle in chat.

I found myself to the left of Coach, of Blue Parrot fame over at Tao of Poker. He was good fun at the table and I felt badly when I caught him with QQ vs. my KK and bounced him from the tournament. Of course, I didn’t feel nearly as badly as I was about to.

Shortly before the first break it came to light that one of the players at our table (Thehammer72) was none other than Wil Wheaton, patron saint of poker bloggers, geeks and a third thing. (things are always better in threes, even if there are only two of them). The rail slowly filled up with folks out to watch Wil have his way at our table. He was playing a strong aggressive game and I was looking to avoid getting in pots with him because he could put me to a tough decision. Of course, I did end up getting involved when I made my standard 4xBB raise (T75/150 blinds) from one off the button with TT. Wil re-raised nearly all-in and I too quickly make him throw in his last T20 to showdown again his…JJ. Ah crap. I still had T600 left, but I was in bad shape. The flop was 9h7h5, all hearts. Neither of us had hearts, so while the flop wasn’t terribly helpful for me, at least he wasn’t drawing to a flush. The turn was an offsuit 8 and I began to have a little hope. I had an open-ended straight and even through Wil had two of the jacks I needed, I still had more outs that I could have expected. The river came with a miracle 6 and the table and rail both exploded in cries of anguish. Even my own initial elation quickly faded as I realized just how badly I’d sucked out on him. But Wil was gracious in defeat and generously offered to send me a signed copy of his book as a bounty. Of course, just as cool as the book is the story that I’m sure I’ll be telling for years about how I sucked out on Wil Wheaton and bounced him out of a poker tournament. It’s not as cool online as live, but I’ve never made any claims to being cool.

While I wasn’t too happy with having made the call in the first place, and got very lucky to take Wil‘s chips, I didn’t want to let them go to waste. And I actually made a pretty decent run. A QdQh vs. AdQc showdown plus a handful of steals and re-steals (I was particularly proud of one re-steal from the small blind with Ts6d) and I was actually chip leader. Unfortunately, this is the kiss of death for me. Improbably enough, I’ve climbed to the top of a rather impressive field of poker bloggers in the middle stages of a tournament two times in the past. Each time my fortunes quickly changed, or rather, my game started to deteriorate and I began to make some bad decisions. This time my first mistake was with AdKc. I raised before the flop and got one caller. The flop came all rags. I bet T1000 into the T2000 pot. I was raised to T2000. I quickly re-raised my opponent all-in for his last T2500. After a bit of a think, he calls and his pocket tens stand up to strip me of half of my nearly T10000 stack.

I hate to offer excuses, but during this time I became involved on my other machine helping some friends. I was distracted from the tournament and missed too many good opportunities to earn a few more chips or get a better read on some of my opponents. I feel that I really blew a good opportunity here and I regret dividing my attention. Still, I did manage a small recovery before my next error.

And actually, when reviewing the hand, I’m not sure it was an obvious error, but it did cost me some chips. Blinds were T200/400 with a T25 ante, and my big blind was min-raised from button+1. The button pushed all-in with T1900 and after the small blind folded I had to decide what to do with my pocket tens. I decided that the chances were better than even that neither of them had a higher pocket pair and since button+1 had already committed half his stack, he would likely call and I would be getting about 2.5-1 on my call. Seemed like a reasonable decision, but unfortunately button+1 had QQ and it held up for the majority of the pot. He would make good use of my chips later on.

In fact, he used those chips five hands later to call my 3xBB middle position raise from the big blind. I had only QdTd, but as we were down to 29 players with 20 spots paying, it was time to make some moves. The table was folding a lot of hands and I desperately needed more chips if I wanted to make the final table. Still, when the flop came 8sQc9s I immediately thought I had the best hand. My opponent bet out T1200, which was most of the rest of my stack. I figured it for a bully move and pushed in the rest of my chips. He quickly calls and flips over KhQh for a better kicker. No jack comes and I am out in 29th of 133 players. A respectable finish, but disappointing considering my mid-game chip position. I made a serious miscalculation in not considering this hand a little more carefully. I knew that the table wasn’t calling many raises, so I should have put him on two high cards. And I should seriously have considered the chance that he had a stronger queen.

Still, I outlasted 104 players, including all the people linked at right who were participating. I busted a handful of players, including Wil Wheaton. And I earned a great bounty

But the tournament was not over just because I was eliminated. It culminated in an epic heads up battle between ToddCommish and MtDewVirus (who, incidentally, busted me out of the tournament). The railbirds did get a bit out of hand, however, as the majority of spectators were pulling for Todd and were perhaps getting a little too involved with discussing the play of hands and voicing opinions. Dew couldn’t have been feeling too great with the overwhelming show of support for his opponent. Still, the chip lead switched a few times and both players played extremely well. But in the end, Dew pulled it out and took home the big prize. I feel slightly better for being eliminated by the eventual champion, but, still, bad play. Congratulations Dew! It is good to know that the championship rests in the hands of a blogger.

—

Well, I guess sleep didn’t get the best of me after all, though it’s trying to kick my ass right now. Thanks again to Iggy for putting this all together. I can’t wait until the Grublog Poker Classic next month. I hope to see everyone back at the tables then.

I just remember what I forgot to include in my Poker Grab Bag post. The next Poker Blogger (and readers) Tournament, organized by Iggy, is happening this Thursday, October 21st at 9pm ET over at Poker Stars. It’s a $20 buy-in no-limit hold’em and all poker bloggers and readers (yes, that means you) are welcome to participate. Just look for the Guinness and Poker Blog Tournament in the Private Tourney tab and use password IGGY2004 to register. Last I checked, there were about 40 people signed up, so it should be a lot of fun and first place money will be nothing to sneeze at. And participants will have the opportunity to knock out many of the top names in poker blogging, including our own adopted celebrity, if rumours are to be believed.

First things first. There’s a new Party Poker skin in town. It’s called Poker Now, and they are offering a great sign-up bonus right now. Use the code “Shark” (not affiliated with me in any way) and you can get 20% of a $500 dollar deposit, twice. Play 500 raked hands to earn your first $100. Play another 500 raked hands and they will manually credit another $100 to your account (happened a few days after I played by second 500 hands). The website also mentions a free poker book and t-shirt with 500 raked hands played, but I’m not sure if that will come through. I have heard that this bonus will end Oct. 22, so take advantage now. Rumours also hold that they will be offering a reload bonus in the next few weeks. Sounds too good to be true, but I do have an extra $200 in my account there on top of the $100 I earned at the tables, and I have read many reports of successful cashouts (they are using Pro-Pay) so it all seems on the up and up so far.

Secondly, there are two poker anniversaries that were celebrated recently. Both HDouble and Chris Halverson have great posts up talking about their first year as poker players and bloggers. In other blogger news, Iggy has announced that he has quit his job to play poker professionally. I wish him the best of luck in his new career. He certainly has the skills to make it as a long term poker professional, but the short term luck will get him off to a good start.

On a less positive note, Felicia is writing a series of posts talking about just went wrong with the WPPA’s tournament series at the Orleans. After hearing many vague negative reports, I am looking forward to getting the whole story, in all it’s gory details, from Felicia. Also, readers should note that Felicia’s blog has moved to a new address (http://felicialee.blogspot.com).

Also, I successfully cashed my money out of Choice Poker. Unfortunately I had a particularly bad session on my last afternoon and dropped $100. The good news was that this reduced my balance to the number of hands I had already played, so I immediately cashed out the remaining $184. A few days later it showed up in my Neteller account. This was essentially free money, as I had written it off months ago. Still, I should have been more disciplined so that I could have withdrawn the full $293. So, for those holding back because they still don’t trust the site, they will indeed honor your withdrawal request if you abide by their ridiculous requirement to play through X hands to release your X dollars of outstanding balance. I do not agree with them holding that money hostage like they are, but I did appreciate finally being able to recoup it.

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As for me, I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather; physically, mentally and emotionally. And it didn’t help that my poker play hit a rough patch at around the same time to grind me down just a little bit further. I had thought that I had gotten past the emotional swings of the game, playing at the relatively minor limits that I do (minor to my bankroll, at least). Unfortunately, it can still give me a bit of a boost, or a bit of a kick if I hit an extreme run. Though honestly, the worst it’s ever gotten has been a few hundred dollars lost over a couple days.

Thankfully all the bonus offers that have been available recently have helped to mitigate the losses. And the $200 in PokerNow bonuses I unlocked this weekend corresponded to a solid $100 at the 25PL. Not a great rate by any stretch of the imagination, but since I was 4-tabling and never hit a particularly good streak of cards, it felt like a step in the right direction. I’ve also managed to reverse my losing ways at Absolute, where I continue to work off that bonus, $10 at a time.

I do need to hit the books again however. All my recent experimentation has made me lose sight of the fundamentals.
I also wanted to give a belated shout out to JP and CJ at Up For Poker (I’m pretty sure it was CJ, not Otis, with Up4Poker), who I shared tables with over the past few weeks at Party’s 25PL. I was probably too preoccupied to say hello at the time, but I did notice them there. It’s always nice to spot another blogger at the table, though my bankroll might disagree.

Well, my second night was not nearly as profitable as my first, but I did play the remaining 500 hands last night to unlock the second $100 bonus at Party Poker. I dropped $18 in the process, but that still leaves me $82 to the good, so I can’t complain.

After working much of Sunday night and all day Monday, I finally got a bunch of documentation out the door for work. So, I finally had the opportunity to put in some serious time at the tables. Which was a good thing, as the deadline for the 1700 hands to unlock both Party Poker bonuses was fast approaching, and I had only played 500 hands to date. With volleyball Wednesday night, things were starting to look a bit tight.

So, I played from 7-12:30, three and four tabling at 25PL, depending on whether I was watching live TV or something I downloaded. I played just shy of 900 hands (750 or so that counted towards bonuses). I finished +$173 for the night, unlocked my first Party Poker bonus, and earned 250 towards the second. This actually pushed my bankroll over the $4000US mark (another arbitrary milestone) for the first time. My progress has not been as quick as I might have hoped for recently, but I also haven’t been able to put many hours in at the tables. I’m also in good shape for making the second bonus, as well as having outstanding bonuses remaining at Empire, Absolute and Pokerstars, so the next thousand may not take quite as long.

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.