Guess I have to post something... It's been a week after all... But since I haven't played much (actually starting to wonder what the hell I have been up to in that past week...lol), there's not much to say...

Well, yesterday, I got back in the grind of things, with a roller-coaster 700+ hand session, but it was my first decent session in days, so not much to say there either (yeah, I would be feeling I'm wasting paper right now, weren't this thing a blog ;-))... Hope to at least finish the year with a bang, but my last decent month volume-wise seems so long ago, I'm not entertaining too much illusions... Then again, our stupid, cold as a frozen hell Canadian winter is looming, so I might stay a little more home and thus play a little more... Was the case last year anyway... We'll have to wait and see...

Quick note: seems the 60 Minutes special on the Absolute Poker and UB scandal is going to air this Sunday. Pretty curious (and a tad worried, tbh) to see what this will do to the business...

Oh, and finally, to you Americans out there: Happy Thanksgiving!!! Taste that turkey :D!!!

... Not nearly playing enough poker these days... Damn that new addiction to comics!!! Damn that old love for cinema, tv, books and hockey!!! And damn that eternal struggle between chips and chicks!!!! lol

Need.To.Play.More.

Oh man, I have to say sometimes I am very very glad to be a boorish Canuck instead of a boorish American. But other times, I just hate it!!!! Utterly, profoundly hate it... despise it even. Like yesterday, when I finally decided to deposit $600 on The Asia Poker in order to start earning rakeback again (rakefreeze) AND clear their 200% First Deposit Bonus up to $600$(yeah I know, I could have only deposited $300, I am not that dumb ;-)... But I feel way more comfy with $600 to 8-table NL50 while clearing this bonus... and I do have more money in my MB roll, anyway :)), and BAM, I got hammered with roughly a 25% conversion rate... which ended up "costing" me about $150. Grrrrr... and ouch! Of course, this is not as bad as some could first believe... Worse case is I'll withdraw my money with a little loss, if say, the CAD suddenly surges to $0.85USD when I'm good and ready to move on to another bonus... Obviously, a CAD on par would be a disaster, but I'm pretty confident this will not happen for at least (at the very least) for another year. But the thing that does piss me off tremendously is, for the first time in my life, I have to pay attention to these things... lol, I guess...

On the other hand, having gotten used to my Titan roll being in CAD (ie having gotten used to basically never knowing exactly where my roll stands before leaving tables), I must say it is waaaayy better to have your site-roll in the same currency the site is using on the tables ;-).

Ok, from my introductory post, hypothetical readers should have concluded, quite correctly, that I loooooved Rounders. As a matter of fact, I have (somewhat) tempered with the movie business before, and used to review flicks for a local magazine... One of those proverbial first loves, you know ;-). I can't remember not being in love with the silver screen honestly...

I actually remember pretty clearly going to the theater to catch it with my buddy/roommate, and even trying to start our very own homegame afterwards, which featured almost exclusively crazy wild games LOL... But, we were o so broke art students, all of us, so it just didn't take off. And it took me about 7 years to actually get back into poker, mostly because of a random comment at the water cooler on a dull work day. And ever since that day, and the following weekend, I have been fiddling around the metaphysical and philosophical side of the game, mostly trying to work on a series of posts/articles/whathaveyous which I tentatively refer to as Poker & Self-Enlightenment. And one thing I have been wondering for the longest of time is how influencial was Rounders on that famous poker boom... Well, a very interesting thread has popped up today on 2+2 (comment #9 is a copy-paste, btw... Still pretty darn interesting tho ;-)). Felt I kinda needed to post a little something-something about it ;-).

Well, I'm just not that savvy in law lingo and all that twisted logic, so it's still pretty fuzzy, to me anyway :P, but it seems the boorish americans are at it again. Speaking of the famous infamous Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which seems to have gone through at long last... Someone said Bush gang's getting restless about moving out of the White House?!?!?! lol

Anyway, for now, it's not that big a deal for me, considering I am a boorish Canadian... But it is nonetheless very worrying, since our stupid Prime Minister is a definite Bush-wannabe... And did some sneaky stuff like Bush's gang did with stappling this UIGEA to another, undisputed bill (SAFE Port Act); Stephen Harper did indeed learned from the Bush administration (cf. C-10 Bill).

But still, this morning, I feel the pond is waaaaayy smaller :S...

2+2 Apocalyptic Thread here.
Somewhat positive piece here.

The End of An Era, really... Well sorta. My incredibly juicy 40% rakeback deal from PokerStrategy.com is no more. Sniff sniff. We had a very good run, and I got roughly $175 in rakeback, which I can't complain about, now can I? Now, long live bonus whoring starting... now :P. Just need to move my roll... I hate that management stuff, really, but I will not pass by all those sweet, sweet bonuses. I have actually lost enough time not clearing them already, imo :). If you have never been there, don't know it even exists, or haven't paid attention to any of my widgets, click here and start doing the right thing, pimp your roll ;-).

Oh, and for those doing donkaments out there; the new WSOP Main Event Champion was crowned yesterday. Turns out he's one hell of a young kid: 22 years old and change... Take that Nio-Nio ;-). TSN's telecast is aired tonite, at 10pm EST.

Man, did I draw the table! Was basically the only one who had decent understanding of the game and could actually explain it to a bunch of criminologist ladies. Of the lot at my table, 2 guys kinda knew about Holdem, like, the rules... somewhat. One of them arguing with me that the board was dealt one card at a time, including the flop... That's right, you read right... What the fsck do you say to a guy who looks you dead in the eye and claims rather firmly that you do not deal a 3-card flop??? WHAAAAT!! I was about to call the floor when it dawned on him, and he dropped the expected "Oh, no, you're right... my bad!". LOL. And what a let down when I discovered the dude was NOT an action junkie ;-)...

Anyway... I didn't want to be doing the de facto dealing, but couldn't really help myself with such a table, and my temperament... No dealers in a fundraiserament is a big no-no, in my opinion; no-limit donkaments inevitably bring the numerous split pots, and those will dramatically increase in numbers with newbies AND rebuys, and can one seriously hope a newbie to cope and deal those situations effectively?!?!? I think not, ldo. So, I ended up doing all the work, surprisingly enjoying it :P... And I'll confess I sheepishly tried to let the n00bs have a good time rather than sharkishly attack there inexperience and lack of basic odds understanding. I am not that big of a shark either, I guess, but I do believe this was not the place for that kind of behavior, although the 1500$ payout for first place was indeed kinda juicy ;-).

Ok, so the donkament itself... Wow. Not.That.Great.Actually.
No Felt: Sucks
No Dealer: Sucks
15-Minutes Level: Sucks
No-Dealer + 15-Minutes Level + Newbies = Not.Quite.Poker.

Cards and chips were, to my utter astonishment, quite decent; clean Copag decks with cut card (although I'm guessing some tables might not even have used them :P), and very nice chips that I didn't take the time to properly identify (sorry Nic :P), even though there were cheap, lousy plastic thingies in the mix. First hour 20$ rebuys for 1500 chips, and 3 types of add-ons at the first break (20$ for 2k, 40$ for 5k and 60$ for 10k... but I didn't bring enough dough... nerf me).

All in all, a somewhat typical fundraiserament, with all those incredibly juicy pot odds!! LOL. As for my play, I grinded my way to table chip leader early on, but couldn't grind any decent-sized stack considering my newbie opponents tended to fold every time I raised :S. I got picked up, twice back to back (lol), after the break, and ended up shoving dark from the button against queens and hit 2 pairs, which brought me back to a whooping M of 2.5 :P. Looking down a the KJ of spades the very next hand, I shoved again, ready to go on with the near 2 hour drive back home... Was called by Cowboys (ouch) and Ax of spades (double ouch), and hit the rails, with an opponent going "he can't leave"... Funneh.

In the end, I must admit not being quite satisfied with my take on it all, because I sincerely feel I could have gotten way deeper in this... But, my table draw didn't help I think, with a bunch of passive newbies (not a single action type in there... I was the action junkie, actually, and that's saying a lot :P). And, a circumstance outside of my control also dictated things a little bit, as I could very well might have been left stranded in Lachenaie, with no means of getting back home, other than a rather costly cab ride... Anyway, I can comfort myself with the karma points I got for being there, giving money to a bunch of kids who just want to play hockey, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, someone from my table found a new hobby :).

Quick update after about 1000 hands at NL50: so far so good, but I have to admit my 2.5BIs upswing is mainly due to getting action when holding the nuts rather than my outplaying opponents... I mean, 4betting all-in preflop with rockets is a no-brainer and very, very easy, but when the 3bettor calls, it's sweeeeet. Especially when the rockets hold, ldo. So, basically so far so good, but not much to say. A tad more 3betting preflop I think... And loads of fscking shorties.... "We hatesss 'em, my presssiouss, we hatesss 'em." lol

Off to a fundraiser donkament tonite, for my nephew's hockey team. I have a feeling this is gonna be one hell of a poopshoot ;-)...

Woohoo!! That's it, an incredibly lucky big blind double-up got me there! And while I do feel that dirty, cheap feeling you get when sucking out on someone (I don't know for you, but I do anyway), it really is overturned by the achievement of a yearly goal... Well, the closest I got to it so far anyway, cause I still have to settle there, make it my new home and such, you know. And this might very well be a longer bout since I plan on grinding 40 buy-ins before moving up this time... I just know I play waaay better when comfy, and being appropriately rolled is synonymous with comfort for yours truly :). Plus, even though my current bankroll management is very solid, I do think 40 BIs becomes a bare minimum very soon when moving up in stakes. I guess I'm not that much of gambler after all :P! True to word (sorta :P), glancing at my spreadsheet and seeing my whooping 1G sitting there in the total box, I can't help but get that old feeling, the very same one I got when I was an always-broke-eternal-student guy just after making what counted as a 'score', and can even hear the voice of that guy, scared shitless of his own empty pockets, whispering malignently "Take the money and run, Forrest, run!" ROFL!! The times they are a changin', I s'ppose, cause I won't run... not yet anyway ;-).

Oh, and K9o slowplayed from the BB FTFW!!!! Man, thank God I don't do that too often!!

And we are off to my very real NL50 session... Nittyness in all its splendor here I come :D!

It is that time of the year over here, and the feel of Old Man Winter in the air is kinda depressing to say the least... Combined with my newly found... confusion (see switcheroo), October was, all in all, a very ordinary month in terms of poker satisfaction. Still managed to keep it a very decent winner, bringing me closer to my ultimate goal of 2008, ie grinding my way to a steady NL50 roll. But I failed again half way through my volume objective, with a definitely lousy and most pathetic 6,022 hands played.


Here are the usual graphs:

Which brings us to a very serious new objective of mine: bring that money won without showdown (red line) as close as possible to par. I think this is pretty important for any aspiring poker player, and a huge, unforgivable leak in my game, and shall thusly consider it quite more in the future ;-).

Edit: After the daily Coffee Machine Poker Talk with my buddy ncaron, I feel the need to be a tad clearer about this new objective: I should say that I'll keep an eye on that line and try to bring it to par without losing the main focus of it all, which is keeping a ptbb/100 hands above 3.0... :D