Towers of Checks

The WSOP Are Just Around The Corner Again!!!

2009-05-26T11:55:00.003-04:00

I know, I know, I've been pretty much out of it for the last 3 months... Basically, since the end of January, poker has slowly slept away from my consciousness and my preoccupations... The reason? Really really simple... Have been single for over 2 years and in early Februruary, I met a woman, and well, that has taken a lot of my "time-dedicated-to-hobbies-and-such"... Have even been neglecting my best buddies... But, hey, they've been quite understanding and supportive to say the least :D...

Still, poker's kinda itching its way back into my mind these days, especially with our annual WSOP Prop Bet, featuring new blood this year :D! Indeed, Nic's buddy Djoph decided to get in on our action :P... So here's a breakdown of our picks, 3 each this year, for a whooping tenner :).

Djoph:
Tom Durrr Dwan
Chris Jesus Ferguson
Scotty Nguyen

Nic:
Barry Bear Greenstein
Phil Ivey
Eric E-Dog Lindgren

Alex:
Phil 'STFU' Hellmuth
Daniel KidPoker Negreanu
Erik Seidel

I must say Nic's team seem pretty solid... We'll see... Gonna be fun!!!

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February: Month Off

2009-03-02T09:04:00.008-05:00

Took the month off. Wrote a script :|. A complete script, no less (well, alright, it does need a re-write, but is HAS an ending :P). While fiddling around with, like, half a dozen other ideas... There once was a time not so long ago where I was deeply convinced I'd never ever do that ever again... So when I got some rhythm and all, I would be coming home after work, or waking up in the morning, and feeling kinda... obsessed... no, not that, 'obsessed' is not the right word... Occupied by my story... and the fact that every night or morning I spent screwing around with it made it all closer to being complete (not finished mind you, complete; ie, having all parts of the typical, overused 3 acts), I never really felt like playing cards... Except in pubs, with a couple pints down :P...

Anyway, I finally got back in the saddle, depositing on CD Poker to clear the bonus listed on Bonus Whores. Haven't yet played a thousand hands and I already cleared about 10$ of that 200$ bonus, alternating between NL20 and NL50... This bonus is just too easy to clear... And I have 3 months?!?!? Hell, I could probably take another month off and still pull this one ;-). CD's client is H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E though. I mean, who can really say they like this carpet, seriously?!?!?

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Deadpool For the Win!

2009-02-12T15:51:00.004-05:00

Been playing less and reading more, so that one I have to post :P...

Deadpool, The Merc With A Mouth, my new favorite super-dude, is the suicide king!!!! lol

And, well if you've ever read any of his comics, you know he's indeed the suicide king ;-). Well close to it anyways :P...

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Yearly Objectives...Late

2009-01-31T16:23:00.000-05:00

Ok. I've postponed that one long enough now. And, any way I put it, I've painted myself in a corner here; it's January 31st, and I haven't wrote down any 2009 objectives, so it's now or never basically cause, well, call me stupid, but I can't really set myself to writing yearly objectives in February... The year would be just too advanced for my tastes... Lol.

I'll try to be brief, mostly because it should help keeping my objectives brief, thus, projecting the illusion that I've, at least, learned a little from last year ;-).

Considering we're at the end of January, it is quite obvious I had time to ponder and brood over what could be realistic, simple yet challenging objectives for 2009. So here we go:

Play at least 150k hands of online cash game poker
Define what the fsck poker is, and can be in my life

That's it?!?!?
That's it.

150k
Self-explanatory. Might be harder than I think though. Or easier. We'll see, lol.

Defining Poker in My Life
Well, that one might get a little trickier, and deserves a quick explanation, imo.

I have been playing poker as a "hobby-and-maybe-more" for about 2 years, very irregularly and very emotionally, while entertaining some rather ambitious goals, hopes and dreams. All in all, giving me a bunch of highs, coupled with a bunch of lows, and that tends to factor in a lot in my general mood outside of poker, which I cannot say I care very much for. Every high brings its load of confidence boost and renewed beliefs, while ever next low brings its obvious load of self-doubt and deception and anger. Which, in short, questions the worth of the whole thing, really. So, I guess I'd like to answer that question as definitely as possible, hopefully, sooner rather than later, mainly because this one seems pretty fundamental to me. Hehe :-).

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Make-Up Session

2009-01-26T20:32:00.010-05:00

Ok. After much much kicking and screaming, and then some more, I think I managed to take some kind of relative distance, while keeping dabbing at the game. And, god how silly it sounds now I'm writing it, but I think the most important lesson in my latest bad streak (I could venture saying it might be the case for all cold streaks, but I feel rather humble by the game, and life these days ;-)) is: poker is not a fscking lottery. While it is silly, I believe it deserves some quick explanation. The thing is, and I'm sure I've come to this exact same realization before (god, I am dumb...), I tend to tarp myself whenever I'm closing in on a proper bankroll for a next stake. And then (I'm grossly hypothesizing here), two major kinda unconscious behviors and patterns take just enough control of my game to screw it all to pieces... These 2 patterns/behaviors would be, in no particular order, *drumrolls*: 1) I feel I've beaten a level, and thus, chest pumped, I figure I can outplay anyone. 2) I fall into the impatient-yet-complacent tarp and spew with no regards to opponents, board textures, stacks, stats, action, forgetting along the way some basic facts of Holdem, like, oh I dunno, from the top of my head, hands can improve AND weaken. You know, stuff like your Rockets are just one overpair on a KhJhQhTcTs board, and if super-nit villain suddenly wakes up on the river, you will not correct your commitment mistake by shove-calling. And overplaying monster starting hands late in a hand is, for me anyway, falling into the lottery tarp; I feel I just won the lottery when waking up with rockets, so they cannot be beaten right? I mean, I've just won the lottery, didn't I? Poker is not a fscking lottery, dumb fsck, really :P.

The good news is, besides that very retarded "duh! I get it", with my dabbings/grindings, plus the slowish motherfscking bonus whoring ever, plus a fat-fat VIP rakeback check, I am almost back where I was before the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan. And, best of all (although part of me goes "I'm shaking in my boots"... Ironically, and that might be a sign of my ego, the voice is Ghostface's from Scream. Not too sure how I feel about that one, actually. LOL!), I can now take another shot at NL50. Thank you bonus whoring!!!! But then this begs the question I think I might be shying away from: am I a winning player?

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"We Do What We Must Do" Or, the 2008 Recap

2009-01-14T09:08:00.021-05:00

I.so.wish.I.could.escape.writing.this.post.
But alas, I cannot; 'we do what we must do'. So here goes nothing.

2008 is no more... And, I curse through my teeth my only too common human nature and that stupid 2-hockey-period-timespan-memory of ours, which, at the end of the... year, puts me right in that famous spot: "I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking of how I lost it" (Mike McDermott, Rounders, 1998, John Dahl). Hehe. I also hear Knish's voice sometimes, going "It happens to everyone. Time to time, everyone goes bust" (ibidem). But that's the thing now, is it; I get myself all worked up like that and I haven't even gotten busto. What does that tell me about me, I wonder... Time to take a fscking hard look at meself in a mirror, I think... And what better than a quick wrap-up of 2008.

Maybe I'm focusing too much on the last few weeks, but I must say I feel I failed in 2008. Thing is, I always sucked big time at setting and reaching personal objectives... The irony is, of course, that I am nevertheless quite introspective... And thus, last January, I found myself caught up by the notion that I might had overgrown this flaw of mine, and overblew it a little with this humongous list of goals for 2008:

Play at least 50,000 hands of online poker
Play way more live, and find a personal comfort zone
Settle at NL10, then NL25 and NL50 by the end of the year
Develop a proficiency for another game (Razz, Stud or Omaha)
Start dabbing at split games
Win a tournament
Pull a major stone-cold bluff
Hustle some poor schlob in a pub or hustle myself a date :P
Visit every Montreal poker room
Take a week-end trip to Atlantic City
Run a tight blog :P
Keep the mailing list/discussion group alive
Stay aggressive, uncompromising and unapologetic at the tables, while remaining affable, lighthearted and zen
Create myself a slick avatar
Create a Poker course
Keep taking bad beats with the reverence and awe of a devout
Write my Poker & Self-Enlightenment piece

I only managed to crush and achieve one, namely playing at least 50k hands. Actually played in little over 100k online cash game hands in 2008, which is pretty satisfying to me. Among the other numerous objectives, I think I can still say some of them are half-successes;

I believe I kept a somewhat tight, entertaining blog;
I probably pulled a very decent bluff, and probably much more, as a matter of fact, but must say I now consider this one the fruit of my Hollywood-based upbringing and that romantic notion that bluffs must be for all the marbles, in a life and death situation, or something... lol bluffaments :D!
I did not play more than 40ish tournaments, mostly Sit'nGos, in which I kept a positive RoI%.
The mailing list and poker course thingy might have taken a new bloggish form (to be continued)...
And lastly, though I had to step back from NL50 at the stroke of midnight, almost, I did get to NL20 and then took a roughly half-decent shot at it, so I can't really rule that one as a total failure.

Still, lots and lots learned... hopefully ;-). And while I do remember I suck at setting up objectives and fighting to accomplish them, I will try and refine and mature from this last year, and manage to set better targets for 2009. I'm thinking: broader... And a lot less of them ;-).

"Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."

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December: Downward Spiral To Downright Depression

2009-01-04T09:28:00.007-05:00

Ouch. Been mostly too depressed (and yes, busy trying to stop the bleeding... can't really say that I have either... nerf that start of '09 :-P) to post my monthly report for December. While I don't feel like going into details, not yet anyway, I think I fell, very big this time, for my oldest archenemy again, ie, me; overplaying pocket and top pairs, forgetting to think AND act accordingly, not even using stats, even though they're there, staring me in the face, and when using them, doing it just badly, plain and simple. Oh, and yes, combined to all that bad play, and I did play like a dumb fsck, I did run into the coldest mstherfscking streak of my life... (Resigned I am, and blaming it all on luck, I am not...;-))

Anyway, though I do feel embarrassed by it, and not because of volume woes this time (funny how those are easier to cope with at the end of the day... Nerf the result-oriented paradigm I guess :-P), I do have to post the usual graph :-S...

On the positive side of things, since I haven't (yet) decided to call it quits, volume was excellent in December, while keeping my social life pretty active as well. Great. Cinema took the blow though, but hey, it's a juggling act really :-P! And to grant myself kind of perspective, this is actually the first negative month in quite some time... I just have to manage to ignore the voice in my head that goes "Yeah, but what a loss!!!"... lol

Stay tuned for a painstaking wrap-up of 2008, as soon as I muster to courage, cause I'm guessing it's going to be a long one ;-).

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Best.Gift.Ever. btw, i was being sarcastic

2008-12-27T11:32:00.005-05:00

Well, it's been a while coming, but I finally hit a rough patch, nay, a fscking wall... Started a little before that fscking Rockets vs Rockets Flush Fiasco, and 7 buy-ins down the hole later, I say merry fscking xmas to me! Thanks, Poker Gods...

What's worse is I don't even know whether NL50 broke me, or if it was all variance... Or, more realistically, a wicked combo of both, combined with me going donkey (that combo sounds O too familiar)... And I know 7 BIs might not be that much, but it got the best of me, and is forcing me to step down to NL20 4 fscking days before the end of the year!!! Irony, God, Faith, Poker, what have you, have a very lousy fscking sense of humor in my book... Maybe it's Karma punishing me for giving my 10 year old nephew a poker chip sets for Christmas?!?!? lol

Anyway, don't really know what to do next... Day off? Prolly the best idea right now... Stepping down to NL20 is definitely the best, safest and wisest play here, I think, although it will mean forfeiting a lot of the Asia bonus... Next best thing would be to shortstack my way back to a decent NL50 roll while continuing to grind said bonus, but, I don't know, shortstacking, really?!?!? Don't we hate those nitty, check-raising mofos?!?!? Dunno... Guess I have to let this one stirr for a bit :S... Hence this post ;). I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: that kinda spot really does feel like a heartbreak, seriously... It takes all the place in my head, even though there's still a voice in there yelling how ridiculous it is to let myself feel that crushed by such a trivial matter compared to how fortunate I actually am of being young (relatively), healthy (relatively), independant (relatively), int... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I still just wanna pounce drinks until I don't feel anything anymore... Hehe, there goes my fondness for pathos again... Alas, it is only barely noon here, so that's out of the question... for now... lol.

On the other hand, Season's Greetings to all!!!! Don't let donkeys and suckouts ruin your holidays - working pretty hard on that myself ;)!

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Cooler, Rite of Passage...

2008-12-21T20:39:00.016-05:00

Variance is just another word for "God either doesn't exist or doesn't give a $h1t"...

iPoker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (9 handed) - iPoker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($79.96)
Hero (SB) ($77.43)
BB ($62.10)
UTG ($9.25)
UTG+1 ($49.25)
MP1 ($9.50)
MP2 ($101.95)
MP3 ($10)
CO ($47.23)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A♠ A♣
5 folds, CO raises to $1, 1 fold, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold, CO raises to $10, Hero raises to $77.43 (All-In), CO calls $37.23 (All-In)

Flop: ($94.96) 9♦ Q♦ 6♠ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($94.96) 4♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($94.96) 5♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $94.96 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero mucked A♠ A♣ (one pair, Aces).
CO had A♥ A♦ (flush, Ace high).
Outcome: CO won $91.96

This has to be the worse bad beat with the money going in pre-flop one can take... Mine anyway... Why o why couldn't I be on the right side of that freaky freak statistical event, damn you, Poker Gods?!?!?!?

equity	win	tie
50%	2.17%	47.83%
50%	2.17%	47.83%

Considering another fscking bad-beat type twist of faith that happened while my pal Yves (real name, I kid you not ;)) and I were watching the Habs game and playing a NLHE Freezout Heads-up on Saturday night. I got dealt pocket rockets, but didn't even have time to look at'em before Yves folded his small blind, to which I shrugged and went "awwwight", peeling my cards out of habit/curiosity only to see those 2 beautiful aces staring me right back in the eye. Then came what I regret the most in like ages... He showed some crap like 92off, so I went "Let's run it, you'll hit 2 pairs, you lousy luckbox!" (he is one luckbox fella :P). And we did. What did I flop? That's right, quads Aces... Quad-fscking-Aces.In.A.Heads-up-Fscking-Match... I knew right there that I'd been in the middle of a variance shit storm since a week, and it was not gonna be over this weekend anyway...

I had to take a pic of that... to attest of it... I swear on my mother's soul it is NOT A RIGGED PIC!!!! Yves can testify if need be... rofl!

So here's a joke about it all, just to make sure I can smile again... lol.

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Relatively Quick Update

2008-12-17T20:36:00.004-05:00

Picking up some pace in clearing this AsiaPoker bonus thingy, I feel the need to post a quick update.

Logged almost 13k hands at NL50 now. And while I cannot say I really feel settled in (feels more like a roller-coaster ride, to be perfectly honest), I do start to feel comfortable with the whole game. So far so good, then.

Bonus-wise, I have now cleared a whooping 7 out 60 ten-dollar payouts, but must admit I kinda still entertain the notion that I might, in the end, pull it out. Remember, the deadline is February 15th!! Still, the gambler in me kinda knows that it will probably come down to what Life has in store for me the next few months... Nerf variance, I guess... lol. Anyway, I'll give it all I got, and we'll see :).

On a somewhat sadder note (yeah, I have a tendency towards pathos, sue me! lol), AsiaPoker's latest update modified the way the selected table is displayed, which basically screws up my whole EyePoker table selection/datamining tool (forum post here)... Of course, I've found a workaround, but it does limit what can only be referred to as table-hopping, which I'll confess doing when tables break down (who doesn't? lol), but hey, I'll take it... Nevertheless, what's actually bugging me the most is the very simple realization that I have become accustomed, addicted perhaps, to my poker tools... I mean, for those using PokerTracker or any other tracking software, could you imagine playing without them??? Sure you can, be only because you love the game so much, right? Hence, we grow dependant of these tools, somehow, and miss them dearly... Definitely something to bare in mind, I would say... maybe by, I don't know, play without them once in a while...

A final sidenote: Nic found a poker webcomic strip which I am still slowly reading, peeling a couple of strips a day, mastering the urge to just go right through them all so I can have something to put a smile on my face in case I run into a couple bad beats/donkey moves... lol. Here's the link, if you don't know about it already; some of them are pretty funny :). Can't help myself: I am now pot-committed to that strip!!!! ROFL!

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100,000 Hands

2008-12-08T07:01:00.004-05:00

Had a very satisfying, hard worked, hard fought grinding weekend, and reached a 100,000 hands since I track my results in the process. Woohoo :P! Although it pales in comparison to the daunting task that lays ahead of me; clearing that Asia Poker bonus might not be that easy after all, lol. Played a little over 7k hands and got 3,844 Dragon Points, needing 60k, which means at this rate, I will definitely have to play about 110k hands before February 15th!!! Oh well, I'll do my best, and try not to lose every last shreds of my already iffy social life, lol.

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November... Ouch!

2008-12-03T07:13:00.005-05:00

Ok, there's no 2 ways about it: November was a definite, rock-solid, epic FAIL. I'll say it again: EPIC.FAIL.

3, 381 hands played is by no means relevant. And I don't really know what happened, except what I said in my latest post.

Although, on the bright side, November marked my first shot at NL50, which I'm currently still riding. Hopefully, I'll stick around, especially since I laboriously started grinding at The Asia Poker First Deposit Bonus...

To make things right, the graphs, even though a pretty irrelevant sample :(.

November 2008 - BB Won

November 2008 - Showdown

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Nothing Much to Say, Really

2008-11-27T14:09:00.004-05:00

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!!!

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Volume volume volume...

2008-11-20T09:28:00.002-05:00

... 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.

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Nerf Weak Economy, Nerf Weak Canadian Dollar, Nerf Fscking Exchange Rate!!!!

2008-11-18T16:25:00.002-05:00

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 ;-).

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Influence of Rounders

2008-11-14T14:06:00.004-05:00

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 ;-).

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Ah Crap Part 2

2008-11-13T09:38:00.003-05:00

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.

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"The Dream is Over"

2008-11-11T09:52:00.005-05:00

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.

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"Trip Report" - Nephew's Fundraiserament

2008-11-08T10:47:00.004-05:00

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 :).

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Quick NL50 Update

2008-11-07T14:14:00.005-05:00

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 ;-)...

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NL50 Rollz, ai Haz Eet... For Nao...

2008-11-04T18:17:00.008-05:00

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!

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So-So October

2008-11-03T19:57:00.010-05:00

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:

October 2008 - By Money Won

October 2008 - By BigBlind Won

October 2008 - Showdown

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

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Switcheroo

2008-10-21T13:05:00.010-04:00

I am such a ding-a-ling. Been wondering for a couple days now why I can't seem to play at least an half-decent numbers of hands every day of every week... Well, I think I got it; it all comes down to priorities, hehe. Thing is, there are a couple things I love doing in my free time, the least of which is procrastination :P. Amongst the other stuff, in no particular order, there's tv and cinema, friends, books, fiction (we'll get back to this), and there's the oldest hobbie of them all, sports watching, mainly hockey, but October also means MLB playoffs, and with my beloved Red Sox just shy of another run at the World Series and now out of it, I did spend some evenings watching the best ball games of the year. Love it, but it is time consuming. A case could be made that it's easy to multi-task while watching baseball, which I totally agree with, but I decided some time ago that I would not spread my attention when playing cards. Thus, music is all that's allowed while grinding :).

So basically, what happened after my month off in August is the famous infamous switcheroo in my priorities. All in all, I'm now focusing a lot of energy on fiction again... Yeah, fiction, as in watching, reading, writing and thinking fiction. Which of course tends to clog my stupid brains with storyline permutations, characters development, themes, ideas, twists, turns, dialogs... the works. And while I really love getting back into it, I must also admit it kinda pisses me off not being able to do everything I'd like to do the way I'd like to do it any given week. Damn those measly 168 hours!!! Seems like it's definitely time for some serious reassessment and a good, hard look at myself in the proverbial mirror...

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What'Ya Doing With Those?

2008-10-16T11:46:00.011-04:00

Being asked "what the fsck you doing with those????" by a buddy, colleague or co-drinker when thumb-flipping some poker chips in a bar always makes me ponder the reasons for me to play poker... Being myself a pretty introspective fellow, I tend to constantly question my life, and having read Schoonmaker kinda helps routinely reassessing my poker shit. But not enough, it seems... So, when answering this WTF?!? from the latest co-drinker with an unexpected "Cause I'm an overly anxious guy who used to chew his fingernails, and flipping poker chips is ZE thing I found to stop this bad habit", I can't help but ask myself if I'm not just bullshitting my friend, being a full-of-shit wannabe hustler yapping stupid answers to what I consider relatively irrelevant questions... And correlate to this is, why do I (still) play cards?

When I was reading Schoonmaker, I think I broke it down into something like that:

1) Measuring myself: 35%
2) Money: 25%
3) Accomplishment: 15%
4) Excitement: 15%
5) Socialize: 5%
6) Pass time: 5%

And now, after this elongated happy hour where I found myself in the bathroom, writing a reminder on my hand to try and answer that epitome of a question of "why do you play poker", reminder which was later seen by a very good friend of mine, whom got curious to know what this was all about, and obviously went "So, why do you play???" with a wink in the eye, I spontaneously answered the archetypal machismo answer "to make money"... Which I used to try and avoid, because of the whole machismo thing, as a matter of fact. But as of now, I think there might be something here... Reassessment really is a necessity in one's life, and poker really is a micro-life of sort for sure! Maybe it's time to change the ratios above ;-)...

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Renewed Zeal...

2008-10-06T10:55:00.002-04:00

...

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Comeback September...

2008-10-02T19:48:00.005-04:00

Just skimmed through my old "monthly analysis" posts and saw the Epic Fail one for last June. Funny how things are all relative. Like position, lol. Just saying cause, this time around, I'm choosing leniency towards myself, since I "only played" 5,233 hands in the month. Thing is I just came back from a month of almost no play that clearly questioned my commitment to the game, so let's be realistic here :). And I'm pretty happy to go pheww! and reiterate: I.Love.This.Game. :D

And glad to be back. With a very decent month of September money-wise but quite flimsy on the volume side. Which is now my new old objective: 12k hands a month for the rest of the year. With the fall and the cold and the rain/snow just around the corner (I hate you!), I feel pretty confident about achieve this. Not sure it'll be enough to win me a volume bet with Nic, but hey, let's hope it snowballs! Especially since I kinda found myself another hobby, grinding at my grinding time like a sour blister. I am speaking of comics, of course. Combined with work, cards, cinema, sports (hockey's about to be back - damn I hope this is the year :P! Oh... but Go Sox Go... Red Sox, that is - lousy Black Sox snuck in, lol), books, although comics have pretty much took their spot, except for poker books (I'm a bit behind, currently finishing PNL1... For reviews, skim through 2+2 :)), and a somewhat existing social life, I feel I need more than 168 hours a week... Ok. This whiny bid was brought to you by AlLaf Inc., AlLaf Inc., the dream is here!! ROFL

In any case, I'm off to a good start in October... We shall see, won't we... Here are the graphs for September.

September 2008 - Money Won
September 2008 - Big Blinds Won
September 2008 - Showdown

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Blah blah blah

2008-09-13T10:36:00.012-04:00

I was going to post about the harshness of coming back and karmic retribution for my SSing bout, getting walks with Rockets on the first hand of my 2nd session after my return, sets of Cowboys getting rivered, etc., etc., but then I remembered I've been there, done that, bought the whiny T's and threatened to quit the game :P!!! Thus, moving on... lol

I've been wanting to post about the fact that I finally enabled my MoneyBookers account for a while now, but it kinda slipped into the cracks of my summer vacations... Well, here's my chance, lol!

So, it's done. Been done for a while, actually; somewhere around July, if I recall correctly. Pretty useful, and very righteous, if you see what I mean; if you're anywhere serious with your online poker, you definitely owe it to yourself to find some way of managing your online bankroll. Sure, playing penny or nickels&dimes games doesn't require that much management, but if your goal is to climb the stakes, sooner or later, you'll be playing for amounts of more and more relevance, shall we say... And, if utlimately, you want to make money out of poker, you'll have to cash some of your winnings out...LDO, I know, but somehow, I think this is kinda overlooked and/or forgotten... And, otherwise, you're just a tourist with chips destined to go in someone else's BR. MoneyBookers is just one of the solutions available out there, and while I do not really feel like arguing their case, I will advise any half-serious player to lurk around 2+2's threads regarding Bankroll management and find out how other people in a situation similar to his or hers do handle their online money. Contrary to live Poker rooms, where the money is explicitly going both ways (it seems to be more of a question of how much goes from the players towards the house, really), there is a sense of one-way transactions with online poker rooms. I had such a feeling, anyway :). Until you go through the process of cashing out some money yourself, of course, and this is when you understand the necessity of having somekind of e-wallet set up, be it only to minimize the hassle and delays. Perhaps this thought popped in here cause I'm a winning player, though, come to think of it... lol. In any case, it is, in my humble opinion, a must.

Quick update on my play: that MB setup allowed me to shift things around a little. As of the end of July 2008, PartyPoker is out. Sorry guys, I got my books bonus, and the client just sucks asses big time, lol! I was about to move to The Asia Poker for some bonus whoring/rakeback deal, but I learned from TitanPoker staff that the famous Summer 40% Rakeback bonus I got through PokerStrategy was still on until further notice. So it's fair to say I'm settled at Titan for a while ;-). 40% rakeback ftw!!!! As far as limits are concerned, I'm pretty comfy at NL20, back to some decently played real poker (ie, deepstack poker; death to shorties!!!! Wait, can I say that anymore?!?!?! lol)... And I'll never go back to shortstacking... unless it's mandatory bonus whoring, of course ;-).

All in all, poker is back in my life, and I feel pretty good about it all... I will confess my August hiatus kinda scared me a little; since I so didn't think about the game I thought I might have gotten bored with it... Phew!! lol. Still. I. Love. That. Game. (mostly hold'em, tbh, tho ;-)... for now)

♠♥♦♣

I.Love.This.Game.

2008-09-05T09:31:00.003-04:00

</eom>

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August... Nuff Said!

2008-09-01T10:51:00.007-04:00

Well, August's gone. My favorite month of the year, no doubt about it. And I did enjoy it this year; one of the best August in years to be quite frank :). But that somehow, and somewhat surprisingly, meant being off poker. As in out of the game almost entirely... Kinda weird... Enough to trigger some doubtful questioning, anyway... Turns out I went on vacation, and ended playing something like 200 hands tops during those two weeks... Plus 2 very nice, drunk, friendly sessions with old buddies... And that's all the poker I saw. Thing is, I work with computers, and the last year has tended to be all about me sitting in front a computer, be it at work, or at home, grinding my online poker bankroll with more and more enthusiasm... And when I finally hit my summer vacations, I just didn't feel like sitting at my PC... Not. At. All. Even when roaming inside cause of some stupid rain or last minute change of plans, I always opted for my couch, the Olympics, a comic or book, or some movie. I did catch up on stuff I wanted to read or watch or re-watch :). That Dune extended version is one piece of crap of editing, even though it shows some pretty interesting added scenes :P. Anywho, not much poker, to say the least. Thus, I can now say it's all my vacations' fault :P!

Still, returning from vacation tends to slow one's pace down quite a bit, at work for sure, but also everywhere else, just a little bid. The whole sit back groove, basically... And coming home from the office the first couple of days, one feels a tad more tired then used to. Thus, I decided to sacrifice August 2008, so to speak. I played a whooping 1,416 hands :|!!!! And while not being the slowest month ever, it is the lowest amount of poker played since I took it a tad more seriously, about a year ago... Check this out:

Crazy. But, then again, as much as I love the game, it felt like I needed this vacation. Time will tell...

In the meantime, for the sake of continuity, here's one of the 3 usual graphs (I figure it's not that relevant a month anyhow :P).

BB Won - August 2008

For the record, I have started September with a very nice 400 hand session, combined with a 1st place finish in a Donkago, so I now think it's fair to assume I'm back and can once more wear my poker gear without shame ;-).

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Satisfying July

2008-08-02T09:50:00.002-04:00

Roughly set myself to collecting a decent sample of Short-Stack play in July, in order to better define what can be expected from this strategy. Got to a little over 11k hands, which is something of a baseline. For the record, I ran at 9.91/7.96/5.56, for a 1.13 ptbb/100hands, which is basically what is to be expected when Short-Stacking. My lifetime short-stacking BB/100 is a little bigger than the one for July, but it does also make a hell of a lot more sense than it did after 5k hands (whooping, unsustainable 5+BB/100 :D!).

Now that I have a half-decent sample of SSS, I can get back to deep-stacking, at least for August, since the whole idea behind me getting into it was to clear to PokerStrategy First Deposit bonus, which I'll do come September. Thus, 40% rakeback being 40% rakeback at any stakes, I'm moving back to real poker in August that's for sure. Not sure if I'll manage to keep the pace and get the minimally satisfying 10k hands in the month since I am on vacations and will most probably get out of town for a couple days at least; if I'm lucky, I'll get to find some live play where I'll end up :).

In any case, a word to the wise; short-stacking is definitely boring as hell, and therefore should NOT be considered poker in any way. But, it can be very, very effective for bonus whoring :).

Anyway, don't wanna babble too long this time around; it's vacation time (I feel like a margarita right now lol). Still, as usual, the graphs. Note those include a single deep-stack session of about 215 hands, mid-month (of course, last hand of said session, I got rockets UTG, raised, got called by a blind with a lousy suited trash hand and we ended up all-in on the flop for the guy to make is mofoin' runner-runner flush. Decided it was karmic retribution for having hacked into poker with this whole Short-Stacking bout ;-)).

July 2008 - By Hands

July 2008 - By Big Blinds

July 2008 - Showdown/Non-Showdown

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Friendly Plug :P

2008-07-24T13:19:00.006-04:00

Ok, I haven't dabbed into strategic posts and such so far, mostly because, to paraphrase Doyle, brighter minds than me are already discussing those, and one can find super smart, savvy (and yes, a tad cocky) people to pick one's play and brains to pieces on forums such as 2+2 Forums (undoubtedly the best place online to discuss poker nowadays), not to mention the numerous sticky posts available throughout the internet, the poker blogs held by some of the most outspoken pros out there as well as by a bunch of unknowns with sharp tongues and enlightening perspectives, without forgetting the multiple and constantly emerging poker sites such as pokernews.com, cardplayer.com and PokerStrategy. Oh, and almost forgot the books, lol. All in all, a lot of strategic and tactical literature out there, and I figured, when first starting this blog, that it would probably be better to leave this to the best of us :).

But, it turns out there might actually be a small, tiny chance I might have gotten to the point where I have multiple readers... Yeah, I know, I'm probably turning schizo, but having linked my blog to some sites recently, it is a definite possibility! lol. Therefore, I figured I could start plugging some theoretical stuff, when the mood strikes, mostly. And what could fit more than kicking things off with a post from my good buddy ncaron, about posting when first sitting at a full ring table. Here it is. I thought my potential readers could benefit from the info as well as the poker player mindset shown there to solve a simple yet relevant question about a very precise situation, in that constant quest for an edge, some edge, any edge over one's opponent(s).

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Must... Not... Attempt... To... Steal... Blinds...

2008-07-21T18:53:00.004-04:00

I find myself considering the famous infamous Short Stack Strategy has given me all it can offer. At least for the time being. Man, it's such a boring endeavor! But, for a couple of reasons, I must keep being the Enemy; the only almost noble reason I have to pursue this short-stacking adventure is collecting a passable hands sample in my PokerTracker database. That one is going good, with a little over 9K hands as of now for July. The thing is, I also get greedy with statistical samples, and now feel the perfect size to be somewhere around 100K... I haven't even played 100K of cash game lifetime!!! LOL!

Another, lesser reason (well, depends on the perspective, really :P) is those 2 bonuses I have to clear, which means I'm probably short-stacking until the end of the summer. Ouch! Kinda just stroke me, to be perfectly honest... I think I'll have to manage some Deep Stack venting somehow... Come to think of it, it may be why I browsed the net today to find a decent live game/tourney somewhere in Montreal on a rainy, summer Monday night... Opted for the greed of the grind... Played 300 hands of suckouts after suckouts and manage to rake a decent profit so far, but didn't feel that good doing so... Odd... Thus, taking a blog break :P... Think I'd be done with SSSing for a while it weren't for those Titan/PokerStrategy deals... I am a greedy little man...

I definitely need to put in some venting mechanism, or else, I think I might go nuts (bad pun intended ;-)). Prolly grind a decent bankroll as I do, yes, but completely lose my interest in the game in the process... Not something I want to do, ldo. For now, my purging moments have been through donkagos, but that's not real poker either, now is it :D ?!?!?! Seriously kidding here; Sit'n Go and Tournament Poker > ShortStacking by a long shot, in yours truly's humble opinion. And that's even though you often have to resort to short stack play in a tournament or sit'n go. Seriously, short stack poker barely qualifies as poker... But, for this micro-grinder, it IS a very decent way to clear bonuses by playing a tad above his bankroll (for deep play, obviously), which in turn is a very decent way to build a bankroll. And since Titan is currently giving me 40% rakeback, I find myself really addicted to those "You have received a Special Bonus" emails :D! So, back to short-stacking :S... Must... not... attempt... to... steal... blinds...

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John Fscking Lennon...

2008-07-15T19:15:00.004-04:00

Nothing to do with poker (move along, nothing to see :P), but damn that quote felt good!!! What can I say, I'm a sucker for anything remotely related to my very first non-athlete idol ;-)... From In Bruges, with Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleeson (now that's an actor!); Ferrell is arguing with an American in a Belgian restaurant, and things heat up enough so he finally drops the guy and goes:

"That's for John Lennon, you Yankee fuckin' cunt!"

Priceless. Just price-fscking-less!

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Ship it!ups...:P

2008-07-13T23:02:00.003-04:00

It's official, unless my count is waaaay off, I won my 39th WSOP bet with Nic. Woohoo! The Main Event gave us a good scare, though, to be completely honest... Fscking Poker Brat, lol!

Nic's Team: $505,070
Cunningham: $147,711
Hellmuth: $357,359

Alex's Team: $717,610
Negreanu: $520,304
Seidel: $197,306

Ship it, baby doll, ship it :P!

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Even Shrinks Can Get Lucky Sometimes...

2008-07-12T19:27:00.002-04:00

... and be right about something!

I have now played on 4 (5 even, come to think of it) different clients, two of which accepting U.S. citizens, and, well, the more it changes, the more it stays the same :P! On every client, at every limit (granted, I have only played micro, and I do hope it is relevant somehow...), you'll find a bunch of people complaining about the current platform they're playing being rigged, bogus and basically evil... Why the fsck do you keep playing there then?!?!?!! One phrase for all of you:

"Your worse enemy is denial."
- Dr. Alan Schoonmaker

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Fscking Donkaments!

2008-07-11T16:49:00.007-04:00

You want to know why I play almost exclusively cash games? You sure you want to know? Because, as much a cruel and unfair bitch as cash game poker can be, it could never measure to tournament poker's sadistic twists and turns. Be it only because of the mere fact that you have only one life, so to speak, and the deeper you go in a tourney, the more you put it on the line, literally. And when things go awry, it's all over. Period. Cash game poker is, on the contrary, a little like one's life, ironical ly enough; it never ends, until it does. Death is what ends one's life, of course, but only one's will to quit the Cash Game, to simply stop playing, can ever end it for that particular individual. Especially as long as there are penny games and micro stakes out there, the bankroll is not really an issue anymore!

Anyhow, having theoretically deposited on TitanPoker in the last 4 weeks, and having collected enough titan points, I got invited to the New Depositors Monthly Freeroll. So I figured I'd give it a go, mostly because of the rather small field: 333 entrants, 40 places paid. And a lot of sitters!! Things were going very well, starting by doubling up on the very first hand with Rockets. Then, something a little unexpected happened. A sitter, blinding his or her stack away, ended up all-in on the big blind, but survived. I didn't make much of it at the time, but when it kept happening, I got a little puzzled, and tried remembering other tourneys I had played... I am still not sure, but if I recall correctly my time with the Railbirds (thus, tournaments on either PokerStars or FullTilt Poker), if a sitter is short to pay the big blind and a player raises, the sitter's hand is folded and he or she is then eliminated. I'm actually really not sure about that, since I don't do donkaments that much, and when I do, I play mostly donkagos... I'd be curious to know whether this is indeed how sitters are handled on those poker clients, as well as in live tourneys, but I must confess not being very keen on the (read: my) general winrate at donkaments, and therefore do not really feel like doing the research :). In any case, on TitanPoker, sitters have a shot at every single pots or side pots created, and, thanks to variance, I must have witnessed at least a dozen hands where a blinded-out sitter survived.

Which brings us to nearing the bubble, when I remembered a little more clearly the tourneys I have played, strategically as well as rules wise. Then, it hit me: where the hell were the antes!!!! Blinds were 200/400 by then, just as another sitter (andreaXX, actually...) survived; antes are there for a couple reasons, one of which is fairness, in my humble opinion. Folding one's way in the money is something, something one can only do after some winning poker, at least, but with online poker and the zillion tourneys starting every single minute, some people tend to abandon their short-stack after bad beats and/or bad plays, which is fine by me. But it is still my honest opinion that a tournament structure should actually take care of these situations; those players should, in fact, simply go like Broomcorn's uncle, to use Doyle's old saying (Super System, of course for the curious).

Anyway, it also seems Poker Gods are meaner sons of bitches during donkaments; andreaXX and at least 3 other sitters made the money, while I put out a decent tourney performance and evidently did not.

And of course, all that to bust out on this humongous runner-runner suckout, 3 places shy of the money!!!! Fscking donkaments!!!!

Titan No-Limit Hold'em, Tournament (Titan HH Converter by Kreatief)

BB ($14,785.00)
UTG+2 ($6,840.00)
Villain ($13,800.00)
MP2 ($27,040.00)
Hero ($2,552.00) (Hero)
CO ($36,800.00)
BTN ($13,726.00)
SB ($12,690.00)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with K♦K♣
1 folds, Villain raises to 2600.0$, 1 folds, Hero raises All-In $2,552, 4 folds,

Flop: 7♠ 2♣ 2♣ ( $6,352 )

Turn: Q♠ ( $6,352 )

River: T♠ ($6,352 )

Final Pot: $6,352.00

Results:
Villain has K♠, J♠
Hero has K♦, K♣
Outcome: MP1 wins $6,352.00

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Rakeback! Well, Sorta...

2008-07-06T10:05:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, seeing my PT rake column nearing the Borden status (ftr: in Canada, Borden's the guy on the hundred dollar bills), I made sure Titan Poker doesn't support any type of rakeback. Pretty disappointing since I am in a rake race, but I kinda knew it beforehand, now didn't I?!?!

But this morning, I got this email:

Dear Me,

Today we issued you with a CAD15.30 bonus. The bonus is waiting for you in your account number TTR***********.

See you at the tables and good luck!

Sincerely,

The Titan Poker Team
Become a Legend at Titan Poker

This allegedly equals to 40% rakeback, and is actually a PokerStrategy summer bonus for July and August. Sweeeet! Thing is though it doesn't quite fit :P... Turns out Titan does not compute rake the same way PT does (Total July rake from PT = $53.65, which means 53.65 * 0.4 = 21.46)... I've read things about clearing a first $25 rake, but that does not fit either :S... Also read some PokerStrategists received 2 special bonuses deposits... Anywho, I've asked Titan my current rake and will try and understand it all from there ;-).

It is still a very nice perk, and I'm getting more and more happy I registered to PokerStrategy :D!

Edit:
Ah crap!!! Looks like it puts the $100 first deposit bonus on hold... Oh well, will keep a tally; perhaps I can get more than the promised hundred bucks, and THEN clear that bonus ;-)! Actually, quick maths says I should make more than the first deposit bonus: to clear that one, I need to rake $350, which I have already cleared about $60 before the summer bonus kicked in. $290 left, times 40% equals $116 (based on PT tho), and that's assuming I'd reach $350 in rake exactly as the summer bonus would end up... I think I can get about $200 before it comes to an end... Though my vacations are in August... Nerf... lol. And in any case, I just read the first bonus will not be canceled, so this just means more fwee moneee!!

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Cleared!At least, now I can cashout :P!

2008-07-05T22:13:00.002-04:00

Slow Saturday night (too lazy to do anything, tbh :S), playing some online cards. I just cleared PokerStrategy's $50 credit, reaching over 2,500 Titan Points, and therefore, am entitled to cash it out if I so desire. Won't until I've cleared the bonus for sure though, which I'm currently 20% through right now. Glad unlocking that credit thing didn't take too long, and I can't help but feel for those who are playing >=NL20; must feel like crossing the desert ;-).

On the other hand, my latest 500-hand SSSing session didn't go that well. First losing short-stack session ever; drop 1,75 buy-ins, and know exactly why I did; didn't stick to the fscking rules!!! Like, played Queens AND Jacks from EP... They're just sooooo tempting to play, ya know... So, now, I'm taking a quick break, then sitting in a donkago and popping a couple more cash game tables... deep stacking maybe ;-)...

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Goofing with the Poker Gods

2008-07-04T21:12:00.009-04:00

I am telling you fine folks, the Poker Gods are cynical, jaded bastards, and I will try not to complain, but I do feel my mouth and belly half-full since it's all happening while I'm SSSing :S... And this lets me believe the Bastards have a teeth or three against deep stackers... But, why would the Gods would foster such hatred for the real poker players, one might ask... Pretty decent question. Because deep stackers want to fsck around with Variance, Probabilities, Luck, Metagames, etc., which amounts, in the eyes of the Poker Gods, to screwing, around, with Faith (who says gods need to be light bright?!??!)... My only, totally uneducated, goofy guess...

Anyway, here are a couple of the hands that sprung this retarded thought :P. For the record, I don't tend to dwell on bad beats, mainly because I'm somewhat of a pessimistic (which is, in fact, part of the reasons for my struggling atheism - lol, 'struggling atheism, i like it :P), and thus needs to distance myself from the bad stuff I don't control. Therefore, you will very rarely read a bad beat hand history here, and when you will, I'll mostly come out the bad beater, hehe :D. The thing is, and I think I posted about that in the past, I tend to see bad beats and variance as beautiful occurrences, freak acts of life, a litlle bit like witnessing aurora borealis.

Anyway, a couple of suckouts, just for the fun of it :D!

Titan No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25/$0.50 (Titan HH Converter by Kreatief)

SB ($59.94)
BB ($44.10)
UTG+1 ($75.35)
UTG+2 ($50.00)
MP1 ($9.25) ____ (Hero)
MP2 ($7.25)
MP3 ($225.94)
CO ($14.15)
BTN ($7.25)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with A, K
UTG+1 raises to 2.0$, 1 folds, Hero raises to 9.25$, 5 folds, BB calls $8.75, 1 folds,

Flop: Q, 8, 3 ( $20.75 )

Turn: T ( $20.75 )

River: J ( $20.75 )

Final Pot: $19.75

Results:
Villain has Q Q
Hero has A, K
Outcome: Hero wins $19.75

#2 - Flushing
Titan No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25/$0.50 (Titan HH Converter by Kreatief)

SB ($9.50)
BB ($31.70)
UTG+1 ($114.40)
UTG+2 ($59.46)
MP1 ($10.50) ___ (Hero)
MP2 ($50.00)
MP3 ($106.15)
CO ($52.15)
BTN ($79.50)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with Q, A
UTG+2 calls $0.50, Hero raises to 2.0$, 1 folds, MP3 raises to 6.5$, 5 folds, Hero raises All-In $10.5, MP3 calls $4.00,

Flop: T, 9, J ( $22.25 )

Turn: 3 ( $22.25 )

River: T ( $22.25 )

Final Pot: $21.15

Results:
Villain has A K
Hero has Q, A
Outcome: Hero wins $21.15

And finally, this one, just because, well, I can't even brag about it since I was SSSing, and therefore missed maximum extraction... Damn that thing!!!! ;-)

Titan No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25/$0.50 (Titan HH Converter by Kreatief)

CO ($10.00)
BTN ($9.95)
SB ($50.60)
BB ($25.40) ____ (Hero)
UTG ($49.00)
UTG+1 ($10.30)
UTG+2 ($41.96)
MP1 ($49.50)
MP2 ($9.05)
MP3 ($27.75)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, Q
2 folds, UTG+2 calls $0.50, 5 folds, SB calls $0.25, Hero raises to 3.0$, UTG+2 raises to 5.5$, 1 folds, Hero calls $2.50,

Flop: 8, Q, Q ( $12.5 )
Hero checks, UTG+2 bets $16.50, Hero raises All-In $19.9, UTG+2 calls $3.40,

Turn: 8 ( $52.3 )

River: 9 ( $52.3 )

Final Pot: $48.75

Results:
Villain has T 3
Hero has Q, Q
Outcome: Hero wins $48.75

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The Main Event!

2008-07-03T09:45:00.005-04:00

The Main Event is here. Or should I say the 39th Annual World Series of Poker Main Event is here. The Big Dance we've heard so much about, from the tv coverages to those famous words uttered by Matt Damon in Rounders "This is why the World Series of Poker is decided over a No-Limit Hold'em table".

For the record, Day 1a starts today at Noon PDT. Who's gonna be the new superstar of poker? I'm guessing some atheist, as some counter-measure to Jerry Yang's rubbing faith... The Poker Gods are ironic that way :P...

On the plus side, if neither Cunningham or Hellmuth makes the money in the ME, I win my WSOP prop bet :D. I think I'm ahead ;-)...

Let's get ready for the world's richest, most famous Donkament!!!!! Dance, donkey, dance!

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June 2008... Only One Thing To Say: FAIL!

2008-07-02T20:07:00.003-04:00

Not much more to say than short-stacking's a bitch, but an efficient bitch...
But I do have to say: FAIL! 7,575 hands?!?!?!?! WTF!?!?!? Seriously. Not hitting 10K hands a month is un-fscking-acceptable!!! Definitely warrants an EPIC FAIL!!!!

I now see I follow something of a pattern: big month followed by FAIL-month followed by big month, and so on... Enough already!!! Taking a day off or two is fine, but a week is intolerable, and I will try not to let it happen again, unless I'm out of town. Sole objective for July, besides working on clearing my Titan bonus, of course, is to pace myself and try to find a course.

The graphs, and a happy July to all!!!

June 2008 - Money Won
June 2008 - Big Blinds Won
June 2008 - Showdown/Non-Showdown

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I Am... the Enemy!Or How I Fail And Am A Very Very Weak Man

2008-07-02T19:32:00.011-04:00

BRAG: 50 + 100 free money
BEAT: ShortStacking NL50
VARIANCE: 10 Pocket Rockets over the last ±500 hands.

William Miller: I am dark and mysterious, and I am PISSED OFF! I could be very dangerous to all of you! And you should know that about me... I am THE ENEMY!
- Almost Famous (2000), Cameron Crowe

O, I am such a weak, weak man, with such a big, big ego, fueled by a borderline unhealthy pride... The story goes something like that. Buckle up, it might be a while :P...

I babble and babble, in life as well as at work. Hell, just look at the logger of those posts! Being a tad outspoken has, as one of many consequences, well, that people know what you do for fun, basically. Thus my co-workers know Nic and I as the poker guys (yeah, I also work with my poker buddy; one of those nice, surprising friendships from the workplace, I guess :)). Every single time another employee plays poker, for any reason at all, any crazy fscking game out there, we're sure to hear about it. Thus, when a colleague of mine called David showed some interests in the game and started fiddling around with play money, I literally jumped at the occasion and started listening to him and answering him any time he'd open up on the subject. Obviously :). Later on, he confessed to me not being that comfortable depositing his own money on a gambling site with his own credit card. To each is own being one of my mottos, so I didn't question his take and opinion. A couple of weeks later, Nic, also dealing with a friend in a predicament similar to David's, discovered some ways to start a bankroll from scratch, basically getting staked by some websites entertaining partnerships with the most popular poker clients out there. Sites such as Poker Strategy. David ended up creating an account on this site, the first in the list Nic put together for his buddy, but was nice enough to forward him. Thus, he finally started playing real poker, on Titan Poker with a $50 credit from PokerStrategy. We quickly started discussing his results and the whole process for him to get the credit, which is basically a 20-question quiz you have to pass (20 out of 20 I think) in 5 tries. Since he had some specific queries, I told him I'd do the test and get back to him. So I did. And failed. ROFL! That definitely hurt my pride and ego, both as somewhat of a self-proclaimed intellectual as well as a wannabe poker player (and, well, to be quite honest, as a human being, plain and simple; I have always HATED failing exams :P), so I decided to give it another shot; I couldn't bare the idea that I had fail such a basic poker quiz :P. Well, I am very proud to say second time's the charm ;-)! Yup, "s-u-c-c-e-s-s. that's the way you spell 'success'", lol! Turns out, there actually were a couple of simple reading mistakes in my first attempt... nerf trying it during work hours :P...
Anyway, thereafter, I of course got credited $50 on one of their partner... I kinda thought about it only for a sec, not really considering the other bonuses I might be voiding by taking the credit from PokerStrategy, figuring it is, at the end of the day, a relatively easy free $150 injection to my then flimsy BR. So I setup my account and started playing NL20 on TitanPoker on a very short bankroll. And I accumulated Titan Points, Strategy Points, and rake, hoping to clear the $100 bonus asap. But then, I realized the bonus is clearable in $10 increments for each $35 of rake, when I was under the wishful thinking it was 35 titan points :|. LOL! (To give an order of magnitude, I have now played a little over 2000 hands on Titan, and raked about $41 while collecting a little over 1300 Titan Points :D!)

Anyhow, that is when I became the enemy. Sadly, "fallen to the dark side this one has". Figuring this bonus would take a little longer to clear that I first expected, I considered my options. Ok, said bonus does not have a time limit. That's right, no time limit. Freaky. But, I have been raised to believe that whichever seems too good to be true probably isn't, which, combined to a growing impatient greediness, led me to believe I should probably clear the bugger asap, if I wanted to make sure I'd get it. Back to options. Considering my bankroll allows me to barely play NL20/NL25 (ftr: TitanPoker doesn't spread NL25, only NL20, which I like best; feels more... standard :)), and the $1 rake cap on Titan for games under NL50, my actual options were running pretty thin. Based on what I had witnessed from shorties out there, I felt very (very) confident I would play a better SSS (ftr, SSS = ShortStack Strategy; I am after all a lazy guy abusing acronyms, abbreviations and smileys, lol). Just to make sure, I read Ed Miller's Playing a Short Stack chapter from his Getting Started in Hold'em (I do not consider myself a beginner anymore (wonder when that happened, as a matter of fact?!?!?), but I do believe that periodically reviewing the basics never hurt anyone and is something most people overlook, yet it's something the greats do on a very regular basis; my all-time favorite athlete, Wayne Gretzky (hey, I'm Canadian, hey?!?!!? lol), had the habit to frequently stick on the ice after practices, working on his game; Michael Jordan spent all his career working on his floor shots, yet he is arguably one of the all-time best in that particular aspect of the game. The examples are countless; I know squat about golf, but I'm pretty sure Tiger's constantly practicing his genius short-game :)). Anyway, back to my shit. So, I read Miller's thing, realized it was darn near genius in terms of game theory (again, no expert, far from it, but the thing feels rock solid... and amazingly boring :P), and I resolved to playing Short-Stack NL50 in order to pay as much rake as possible (very odd thing to say, I know; it's temporary, mind you...). And now I must confess, things are going very, very well. The fscking strategy is just so fscking easy, and gets quite enough action at µNL. It IS boring as hell and worse (I keep popping tables :P), but it feels efficient, again, especially at micro stakes. Lots of shorties, sure, and yes, I am aware of the saying "you can't short-stack a short-stacker", but, this implies both players are actually applying the strategy perfectly, which is o so far from reality. Seriously, the vast majority of shorties are awful shorties, just because they do not stick to the fscking guidelines and recipe. The thing is goddamn easy to follow (so easy in fact, I won't even bother detailing it here), yet it's barely poker, especially for a guy who likes other games besides hold'em. Nevertheless, it helped me figuring some of my leaks, I think; for instance, when playing real poker (lol, ie, deep-stacking), I might fall into the trap of outsmarting myself. Or, more concretely, I play AJ waaaaayyyy too often out of position still. All in all, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do for me at the moment , ie help me clear this bonus asap, but I must say its efficiency is so far scary. Scary addictive, actually, but I know I'm gonna miss punishing the limpers dearly (already do), and will get back to real poker as soon as I'm through with the clearing process (hoping to get it all by the end of July; a little far-fetched, but one needs to kick one's butt sometimes). Plus, lets not forget I have been running extremely hot; 10 pocket rockets over my first 500 hands IS out of the ordinary. That has to dampen it's addictiveness. Still, I am starting to think this SSS has something ontologically stabilizing, and could even be refreshing in a poker life. In fact, I find myself remembering my past and that whole Dogma 95 thing; you know that Danish filmmakers group/movement back in the 90's, who shot entirely with "natural elements": non-professional actors, for starter, natural lighting, natural sound, no costumes, almost no production team, very light equipment which were in fact the first of the digital era, barely no script, etc.. Very minimalist. The media-proclaimed leader of it all was Lars Von Trier, who had already made amazing, big-budget, stuck-in-the-grinder films, such as Europa and Breaking the Waves, and the thing produced movies such as Idioterne (The Idiots), Festen (The Celebration) and Mifune (Mifune). I remember an interview with Von Trier, whose almost a shut-in, by the way (always fond of trivial, useless facts like that :P), explaining his own take on the whole Dogma 95 enterprise. What stuck with me was his saying that it was, is, mostly a remedy, a cure to the baroque exaggerations of the moviemaking industry, that Great Grinder that might be the last vestige of the assembly-line production era (dramatization, lol). Thus, he claimed he was done with making Dogma movies, but would most probably get back to it, in ten years, perhaps; "One tablespoon of Dogma every ten years or so"... All this could very well apply to SSS; just a way to get back to formula, actually. A way to get grounded on solid foundations once again. I will definitely try that has an anti-tilt when I get back to deep stacking. Or when I feel I can't win a coin flip, or worse, a hand. Or even when I've just been doubting and second-guessing my game for a little too long, and it ends up hurting it... One tablespoon full of SSS whenever the bankroll feels dozy :P... I just hope I don't develop bad habits and end up screwing my late-streets play; revisiting Von Trier's post-Dogma filmography does nothing to help, either, even though he said he was through with that for a while... lol. Guess, we'll have to wait and see :)...

All in all, that's how I've finished my June. Been discovering a new client too, and for once, I'm thinking "review"... to be continued :D.

Been ranting for too long; if you got here, you have my sincerest condolences :P...

P.S.: SSSing (yes, I do feel like a Nazi, in some weird, twisted way :P) is going so well so far I feel the Poker Gods are mean, cynical, delusional, Murphy's Law worshipping motherfsckers; I keep hitting uber suckouts!!! ... Ok, just mentally re-played the hand that just prompted this comment, and it was basically a coin flip ;-). But still, I feel the Jackasses are rewarding dimwitted shorties... as yours truly... /shame. Guess I'm up for a crazy karmic ass-whupping when I get back to deep stacking, most probably at the hands of the evil SSers ;-).

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Goodbye Beautiful, Genius, Freaky, Hilarious Bard George Carlin 1937-2008

2008-06-23T22:42:00.011-04:00

George Carlin died yesterday, at age 71. To quote the NYTimes website, "the cause of death was heart failure".

This is bumming me out. More than expected. A little bit like Stanley Kubrick, about ten years ago. I have been thinking about Death lately... Perhaps it explains why I feel that tightness in my throat my people call moton dans la gorge... Or perhaps the fact that George is, was only one year older than my dad.

Having a sweet glass of porto to his memories, I can only remember those quotes I still constantly use :P...

"The planet is fine. The people are fucked."
"You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci."
"I don't have pet peeves, I have major psychotic fucking hatreds."
"Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?"
“When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat.”

And those I just found and/or didn't remember :P:

“Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.”
“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”
“If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him.”

And, from all the videos of him out there, one that is, I think, the most emblematic of the creative genius that man was. Cheers, George!

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Spewtardation, Stepping Down, More Spewtardation

2008-06-23T07:34:00.003-04:00

I don't know what's going on. Seriously. Don't really feel like doing anything these days. I get those episodes, for lack of a better word. Right in the middle of one these these days. It's been a long one, actually. Anyway, when I finally decide to play poker, it's more with the idea that I must log a couple of hands at least, keeping myself from rusting too much, you know. But, as you might imagine, I do not play my best poker... far from it. But I figured I could get by fine, even with sub-par play; this is µNL after all, for Jesus Ferguson's Sake!!! But it seems I need my focus on the game... Had a couple of rough breaks too, though, to be completely honest. A couple of lucky rivers for my opponent, flushing my sets, or hijacking my straights, or simply beating my slightly overplayed top/over pairs... All in all, stuff telling me I'm not playing that bad, and might actually be closer to my normal game than I think, but still being off of it somehow... Bored?!?!?! Not of poker per se, but rather with life. And not in any kind of suicidal fashion, not at all...Seriously. And not in a cynical, jaded, seen-it-all way either. Life's great, don't get me wrong :). It's just plain and simple boredom with my routine, I supposed... And I am such a routine guy :S... Just hoping for some changes, something extravagant to happen, I guess... Something in the vicinity of Grandness...

Writing these last two sentences, I was imagining all the positive stuff that could fit into that category; wining a big cash prize in some poker tourney, falling in love, getting a great new job, the Habs claiming the Cup next year, catching a jaw-dropping, fist-clenching, personal moral threatening movie, random good news from friends or family members... Not in any order, by the way, lol... But re-reading those lines, I envision all the tragic stuff that could, in its own right, fall under the Grandness label; sickness (mine, or any of my relatives), death (ditto), accidents, heartbreaks, unemployment... Guess that's at least a bit part of my being unfocused... out of focus, one might even say (wink@Woody Allen for his Deconstructing Harry :P)... Guess the status quo is good enough, after all ;-).

Anywho, back to the poker side of things, and enough with those babblings. Living on a very tight bankroll can be exhausting. At first, I managed to get about 2 buy-ins above my 10 BIs threshold at NL25, but then got into that unfocused period I'm still in, and dropped about 3 buy-ins before deciding to step down. Sniff sniff, but it felt comfy knowing I could shove when a slight favorite without breaking a sweat at the amount of money in the pot :P (exaggerating a tad here, but you get the drift). But, I also started overplaying borderline hands again, and now find myself still stuck for June and going down... I'm also way off pace for my handlogging target. All in all, still figuring why I don't really feel like playing... I know I had a 'live play' rush kinda thing when I played 3-handed poker on some Friday night and then got a very decent 8-handed homegame on the following Tuesday, but those usually translate into renewed enthusiasm around the virtual felt... To be continued, I guess...

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New Silly Male-Ego-Thing Objective

2008-06-11T18:40:00.005-04:00

Not playing a lot so far this June. Close to 3000 hands in 13 days, waaaaaay off pace for my 12K objective, but hey, I can have crazy sick weekends (in terms of logging hands at least :P), and, for my defense, it IS beautiful June over here, in my O so very northern and cold country... Truth be told though, it's a pattern of mine; strong hand-logging months are always followed by a week or two of very light play...

On the other hand, these slow periods often tend to make me dwell back on theory and analysis, which I definitely should do way more frequently. It should actually be part of some regimented, disciplined routine or warm-up or something... I have been considering this for while now, but I must still admit I feel time flying by in my life, and lean towards more of a bohemian lifestyle... Anywho, this rekindling brought me to fiddle around my PT and, lo and behold, I made a tremendous discovery. Ok, ok, it's very personal and it has nothing to do with the software's features and what not; it's just that I always thought I'd be stuck with a red line for my disastrous bout at NL5(2? Whatever!!!! LOL. That lowest of stakes on Stars, blinds a penny/two pennies and a fiver buy-in), but to my astonished eyes and low jaw, I am green at that limit also :D!!! Which brings me to this post's title; my PT has now only one of those dreaded red lines (which, for the record, means you are losing money at this limit), for 6-handed NL10... And this my friend(s), has awaken my pride, my male ego requiring, nay, demanding that every single one of those lines be green as the meadow of a summer park! lol. Seriously, LOL! But, as always, there is an ulterior motive here, a very simple one, which is forcing me to dab at shorthanded play, cause, well, lets face it, the higher the stakes, the smaller the fields. Plus, it's always good to... darn, looking for a translation for ajouter des cordes à son arc... Bah, screw it :P!

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Random thought: taking a shot at making a living of poker would certainly means drastic lifestyle changes. Ldo. But the real newsflash here (well, sorta... and for me... Epiphanies are always so... obvious... lol) is the complete shift in the "work" schedule (still can't bring myself to seeing poker-for-a-living as "real work", although every single 5h+ session I ever played drained me as much if not more than a day's work, and I do realize it would be real work...). I mean, I'm a pretty early bird, used to arise between 6 and 8 am, oversleeping until nine maybe and later than that only when I'm hungover :P. But, reading this WCG|Rider's reasons for his NL25 challenge failure:

2) I played during the day a bunch. Sort of retarded on my end, but the games can be ab[s]olutely so nitty during the day that it is very difficult to even beat them for very much. Playing at night is defin[i]tely the way to go when you do something like this.

I came to realize the money is way easier to get at night with poker, which would mean, you guessed it, having to change my very, very old habit (basically potty-trained by 5 years of newspaper routes when in my teens... lol)... I know I could do that, and probably easily enough, but, well, it kinda just struck me... To paraphrase Rider, sort of retarded of me :P, but still...

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Edit 2 days later:
---------------------
Did it! My NL10 6-handed line is now green :D! Woohoo! Can now move back to grinding Full-ring NL25 and try to log some half-decent numbers before June's done :). And I must confess I felt a little stupid and counter-productive and stubborn accomplishing this smallest of objectives!

On a last side note, Daniel Negreanu won his 4th WSOP bracelet, giving me a nice edge in my bet with Nic, but yesterday, Allen Cunningham finished 4th in the PLHE/PLO event, bringing Nic's team closer to back in the game. I have the feeling this bet ain't over, not even close ;-).

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The New Stakes

2008-06-09T18:38:00.003-04:00

I can't say I have settled at NL25 yet, but I can surely say I am not (not yet, anyway lol) overwhelmed by it either. I must confess that, while grinding patiently NL10, I spent long hours imagining a seriously freaky gap skillwise between the 2 stakes, and the resulting downfall that would obviously ensure (note the avoidance of the poker slang downswing... Downfall just sounds... grander to me :P). But, as I write these lines multi-tabling on Party, I feel I am actually right in the process of settling in... I still make doofus plays (cf. previous post ;-)), but I think and hope they're getting less and less costly; definitely something I'll have to check in my PT3.

Last thought: I think the mere fact that the pots and other amounts of money are so easy to count, and starting to represent something (at last, even if it's not much :P), helps me concentrate a lot. A little like the few times I played NL200 at the Casino; though I can relatively easily afford to loose a couple hundred bucks, donkeying that much in one night would drastically modify my budgeting on the short term, to put it one way ;-). Thus, I am under the impression that my play is more focused since moving up... The feeling that when I take the virtual felt, I take it with both intent and determination... Not just to pass time, having nothing better to do, like I did playing NL10. A little weird and unexpected... And I guess this might means a tad less hands played per month... Will see!

P.S.: WCG|Rider called off the Insane Prop Bet, so I removed the link from the Links section. Here for is abdicating post.

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You Got To Know When To Fold'em...

2008-06-04T10:39:00.015-04:00

Yes, yes, you whiny, jaded, cynical imaginary know-it-all reader, this is gonna be about the very cliché "what to do with my Rockets????" kinda post... LOL! But, just trust me, I won't complain too much, I promise ;-).

Tuesday's after work session was going smooth, I was playing well, doing the savvy teeth-grinding, fist-pounding-the-table laydown of my big slick in front of a shorty's shove from the Button when I got on my first Small Blind (shhhuuuushhh, we'll talk about that very very interesting strategic question in another post) - I just hate paying off Shorties :P... And then, this happens, making me feel like some kind of newbie playing his 53rd hand :P...

Hand Played Like A Silly Boorish N00b #1

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (8 handed) Party Poker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

MP1 ($30.28)
MP2 ($6.69)
CO ($14.28)
Hero ($44.98)
SB ($25.66)
BB ($13.74)
UTG ($7.20)
UTG+1 ($4.98)

Preflop: Hero is Button with As, Ac.
5 folds, Hero raises to $1, SB raises to $3, 1 fold, Hero calls $2.

Flop: ($6.25) 9s, Kh, Kd (2 players)
SB bets $4, Hero calls $4.

Turn: ($14.25) 2s (2 players)
SB bets $8, Hero calls $8.

River: ($30.25) Js (2 players)
SB bets $10.66 and is all-in, Hero calls $10.66.

Final Pot: $40.91

Results below:
Hero has As Ac (two pair, aces and kings).
SB has Ks Ad (three of a kind, kings).
Outcome: SB wins $40.91.

Which is basically overplaying, passively (/puke) an overpair by feeling married to it, enough to be completely oblivious to every sign screaming out loud about how this marriage is due for a hasty divorce! In a nutshell, I think the proper play here is somewhere along the line of either simply folding the flop (which is waaaaayyy too tight, that's for sure, imho), or a raising probe to validate Villain is indeed holding a King. A min-raise would be perfect and could even benefit from a little fold equity from something else than a big slick, since min-raising represents strength... A call (or re-raise, ldo) from villain, means insta-shutdown. This is definitely the play I like the most as I am writing this.

-------------

Another example of being absolutely unconscious at the table (especially since this Villain had been ranting about how NL25ers suck big time compared to NL100 players :P).

Hand Played Like A Silly Boorish N00b #2

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (7 handed) Party Poker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

CO ($25)
Button ($31.61)
SB ($25.56)
Hero ($26.07)
UTG ($35.90)
MP1 ($44.74)
MP2 ($4.40)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 3d, 7s.
1 fold, MP1 calls $0.25, 3 folds, SB completes, Hero checks.

Flop: ($3.87) 3s, 7h, Kc (3 players)
SB bets $0.50, Hero raises to $1, MP1 calls $1, SB calls $0.50.

Turn: ($3.87) 6s (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2, MP1 raises to $7, SB folds, Hero calls $5.

River: ($17.87) Qs (2 players)
Hero checks, MP1 bets $9, Hero calls $9.

Final Pot: $35.87

Results below:
Hero has 3d 7s (two pair, sevens and threes).
MP1 has 7d Kd (two pair, kings and sevens).
Outcome: MP1 wins $35.87.

I am having a little harder time figuring the play where I'm the most comfortable here, which is the main reason why I hate hitting with garbage hands out of position!!! But, my first reflex when reading the hand history is to fold to the turn raise from Villain. Just give him credit even though he open-limped preflop. Calling on the turn leaves only one option on the river when a Spades hit; bluffing with a big raise. Not sure this is the maximum EV play though... Still was a good floating spot, but as I said, I was inattentive, to say the least.

---------

All in all, it feels like I am (re)re-learning those basic tights and ropes. Oh well, I'm managing to break even most of the time, with +1 BI grind so far, so it's not that bad... Just a leak needing patching ;-)... And on a pseudo-positive side note (even if this may jinx it :P), I took a slight lead in my WSOP prop bet, thanks to KidPoker's cashing in the No-Limit Holdem 1K w/Rebuys Event :). And the WSOP makes me wanna play lousy donkaments LOL!

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May Recap

2008-06-01T08:55:00.006-04:00

Alright, May is over, which means June's here, which in turn means Sun, Summertime, girls, booze, WSOP and vacations :D!!!! Woohoo! ROFL!

More importantly, May 2008 might (and I cannot stress the word enough :P) have been the most significant month pokerwise so far, since I finally (/sigh) managed to rake enough to climb one measly level... which, as lame as the stakes may be, feels very good... Especially since mid-month, I hit one of my worst downswing ever, which quickly became my biggest poker down ever. I thought about simply quitting those stupid objectives-fantasies I entertain about poker (see May 12th post)... I did take a week off, came back, played a lot considering I am trying to live a fulfilled life (lmao), and managed to get my money back in much less time than I had first expected, and which got me so depressed in the first place, seeing all that mountainside I had to climb back yet again... Took me about 25 hundreds hands, basically covering the span of a weekend.

In any case, I am now rolled, barely (11 buy-ins now... w00t!), for NL25, and make it my single goal for June to settle there, and get grinding that level. Funny how moving up stakes, even at those micro-stakes I play, always makes the new game more exciting, the pots being bigger and starting to be more... relevant, the total amount of money involved getting closer to... puzzling... Mind you, NL25 is still a level I could afford to play and lose (not that this is the objective, ldo), but this odd feeling I still get when betting 7 bucks in a 10$ pot makes me wonder what's it gonna be if and when I get to play levels I could not afford where I a losing or casual or touristic player...

And now, for something completely different, the monthly graphs (out of PT3 this month, and from now on, until PokerEV supports PT3's db format or PT3 implements new graph features :P)!

May 2008 -$$ Won for Hands	May 2008 - $ Won Showdown & Non-Showdown

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Here We Go Again...

2008-05-30T07:21:00.004-04:00

It's the WSOP yet again!!! And I am not there again :P...

In any case, here comes about 2 months of feverish refreshing for live updates about... yes poker, baby! Everytime I think about it I lol; if anybody would have walked up to me in the pubs I used to hang when in college during my Film Studies major I would have laugh pedantically for like 73 hours str8... And now, I even spell "straight" str8... LOL, life IS a funny endeavour...

One of the many places to get constant updates: 2008 WSOP Live Updates.

Oh, and on the degenerate gambler side of things: first prop bet of this year's Series: Nic and I both have 2 players and whoever team cashes the most wins the bet.

Alex's team: Erik Seidel and Daniel Negreanu (woohoo I have the Cannuck :P)
Nic's team: Allen Cunningham and Phil Hellmuth Jr. (can I say ROFL?!?! Not because Phil's bad player, far from it (I mean, come on, can anyone seriously say that Hellmuth's a donk at tournament poker...), but mostly because we do love to hate the guy and now Nic can not really hate him for the next 2 months... I find it very, very satisfying :P).

Will post more prop bet as we make 'em, of course ;-).

Great Series everyone!!!!!

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LOL, Someone Said Dead Even?!?!?

2008-05-29T07:04:00.002-04:00

So I finally took my first shot at NL25 yesterday... Played a little more than 200 hands and... broke DEAD EVEN! And I really mean dead even... Funny.

After that, I still felt like playing but wanted to take it slow, since I was watching the game (finally a series... Talking Stanley Cup Finals here. Go Pens Go!!!! :P), so I decided to play a little Sit'n Go on Stars. Donkaments are getting my interest back these days, and I did registered into a SnG last week, busting out first :P!!! Been a while, crocodile, lol. Considering this result, and the fact that this last week Sit'n Go was the first tourney I played in months, I opted for the smallish, donkier, and all in all, easier 1$ SnG instead of the 5$ one for which I am now rolled. I think I demonstrated good skills, finishing 3rd while being mostly card dead as my right hand neighbor was red hot, getting rockets thrice that we know of :P. I had cowboys twice but didn't get much action :). The rest was mostly pure and simple power poker 101 :P...

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Ok... Finally a First Shot At Next Level!!!

2008-05-28T19:03:00.004-04:00

Woke up this morning with one ginormous migraine, so I called in sick, got back to bed, slept like a baby until like 3 pm and then, armed with a big, fresh pot of coffee, I managed to play a little over 200 hands on PartyPoker, the client being all messed up by the latest patch (basically, every opened seat is marked Reserved and cannot be sat in in any way, while the waiting list simply does not work... nice, huh?!? lol). I think the peeps over there might have been a little tilted by the software's problems, because I doubled-up twice very quickly. But then again, I do not usually play during daytime on weekdays :P. Anyway, when I opted for a shower break, my tables rapidly drying up, I was ahead about 2.25 buy-ins, knocking, yet again, at the NL25 door :D. After my break, I tried sitting back again somewhere on Party, but to no avail. I just read from a Party dude on 2+2 that they're finally working on it :)! Here for the whole thread.

Anyway, feeling so close again to moving up, after what, five, six times... I lost count :P... I remembered I thankfully never moved my whole BR to Party, and thus still have about a hundred on Stars! Woohoo! Went back to that old slipper that is Stars' client, and managed to grind my last half a buy-in to get a big enough bankroll to finally (/sigh) take my very first shot at NL25, after a very long, twisted, roller-coaster of a labor...

Now, let's hit those tables :)! Will, of course, post about it soon ;-).

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Ah Crap!

2008-05-26T13:05:00.003-04:00

Ok, following my good poker buddy's lead, and considering I now feel some sort of civic responsability (;-)), so to speak, here's a quick post about that new Superuser Scandal that's been shocking the online poker universe these past days and weeks. I just figure it must be posted, read and seen by as many people as possible, and thus would benefit from being posted here as well as everywhere else it's been posted.

For the real deal, including links to in-depth investigations led by 2+2ers, click here.

Basically, a summary for those who will not click the above link:

It all started with an Absolute Poker executive getting caught using a superuser account left by dev teams and what not for testing/debugging purposes during development. The guy got nailed mostly by 2+2ers and they're very very thorough investigation of accounts that smelled like Denmark (see link above). Turned out it was in fact that exec guy who was using this superuser account to see everyone's hole cards... Talk about a fscking donk play!

Anyhow, a couple of days ago, a new bomb hit, and this time, Mister Phil "11 WSOP bracelets" Hellmuth, jr. himself is getting splashed by that one. UltimateBet.com (which is ironically enough owned by the same peeps as Absolute... Something definitely smells like Denmark over there... serioulsy!) just got pinned by another thorough investigation led by 2+2ers, and well, if you've been anywhere near the poker universe in the last 12 months or so, you definitely know of Hellmuth's relationship with UB. The guys now looks more than ever like a NASCAR racer, man :D!

Anyway, while this may seem very bad for online poker at first glance - something akin to the corrupted mobsters runnig Vegas back in the day - what I think people should focus on is the fact that, in the span of a couple of months, some major crook(s), all under pretty much the same roof, have been stopped by the people in their very community. There can be no better sign of an healthy community than a self-regulated community, in my humble opinion (no, the irony of this 'self-regulation' concept does not elude me; I know the mafia and its omerta works on the very same principle... That's another piece entirely, though :). The mere fact poker players themselves are credited for the bust, were smart enough, savvy enough, observing enough, and basically, honest enough to go after those corrupted individuals gets me thinking online poker should not be hindered too much by those scandals, nor should people be scared of gambling online. Might I conclude by reminding everyone that the poor schmocks that got hustled on Absolute Poker were all repaid in full... Dunno yet about the UB users though...

And remember, "if you are still quoting rounders, than you ARE the sucker!" :D!

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Going (kinda) public...

2008-05-26T11:55:00.002-04:00

Holy crap!!! This blog might actually get some traffic now :P... Woke up Friday morning, logged in ot my puter, checked my emails, and lo and behold, an email from some dude named Clayton asking to link my blog (yes this very same blog with about 3/4th of a reader for the past 15 months and more...) to a new web project called VerveEarth, which offers an innovative web browsing method. From the email I received:

VerveEarth is an entirely new way to surf the net. It shows spatial and geographic connections that a blog search engine could never reveal.

So, why not, right?! Even, and especially since it means I will have to be a little more active and responsible about my postings, I guess... Oh well, I was wondering whether I'd get out of the basement at some point; there's no time like the present, as they say ;-).

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A Week & 2,500 Hands Later... hehe :P!

2008-05-19T17:35:00.006-04:00

Ok. So I didn't quit... Yet... Simply couldn't set myself to giving it up just yet :). Took the week off, so to speak. Only played cards at the homegame and kept occupied with Y The Last Man, an awesome graphic novel some friends of mine had been raving about. And with movies, of course. The homegame was a +EV nite, but a very interesting hand arose in which I might have made a huge mistake recovered by a very tricky laydown. Mega-poker godlike irony, it all came down when I open-limped, which I might have done 0.012% of the time, with the jack-nine of spades. True, a live straddle was on, but it is still open-terry-fscking-foxing!!!

Anyways, I have played about 2500 hands last weekend and managed to get about three quarters of what I lost the previous weekend.

And two days later, I am back with my head above water, with a whooping 6+ over for May... Holy cow, nine days away from the end of the month and I'm in the positive!?!?!?! I didn't think it would take me so little time to wipe this unpleasant memory, but it seem it did... Still, I kept, learned, and will remember that rough weekend... Don't brag, don't be overconfident and/or overimpatient, don't grow bored; if you can't concentrate, do something else. If you can't lay a beaten hand down, dont' play. And so on and so forth :).

On a side note: I received my 5 2+2 books from my PartyPoker bonus only to find out the package was erroneous; instead of Harrington on Holdem Volume 1, I got Volume 3, which, ironically enough, I already own...

On one last side note, which is making me a very unhappy camper right now: it seems someone or something managed to deposit 298$ on some gambling site not yet known with my credit card. Me not likey... And of course, MasterCard can't do squat for now, cause I spotted the deed a tad too early; the transaction is not yet confirmed so it might simply be some billing error or something... So the peeps at MasterCard told me... :S.

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Fsck that Shit

2008-05-12T10:08:00.004-04:00

Sixty bucks downswing ruining my weekend, fsck that fscking cruel mistress... I hate getting so rattled by those... I once thought I was such a cool and cold and aloof bastard in absolute control of his emotions, but that was completely delusional... and way back when... Back when. in the midst of my teens, I hadn't been faced yet with the ugliness of human emotions, mine especially...

Seriously thinking of quitting... For real... Man, I have been trying to beat NL-fscking-10 for a year now, for Christ's sake! Miserably failed 3 times now... And now, the worst downswing of my life (wow, the drama!!!! lol)... I'm getting sick of this; I think I could do much better, happier, more satisfying things with my o so short time here than spew in about a thousand hands the measly profits I make in tens of thousand of hands... Just don't really remember what though :S... Ironically enough, after spending most of my Sunday roaming the city and then my small apartment, I ended spewing and tilting again... I feel like a broken man... Which is pretty ludicrous, to be perfectly honest...

Here's the deal, Poker Gods (whatever): if May 2008 ends up a loosing month, it means I haven't gotten back to playing half-decent poker for sure... And, I quit. How about that?!?!?! This basically means I am finished though: currently down $45+ over a little more than 5k hands in May... Goddamn it!!! That's it, I feel heartbroken, heartsick... End of a love affair, I was the Dreamer, and all that crap... Fsck!

P.S.: By quitting, I don't mean never play ever again. Just mean, from now on, playing for fun, with friends, once in a while... And live.

!@#%

Edit:
This was written yesterday, after a donkey shove-call with KQ soooted against AKo on a rainbow K high flop (AK held by Shorty, who else... anywho, the operative words here are "donkey", and "shove-call"...). I have since then watched 2 flicks, one girly unmentionable one, the other being that Al Gore slideshow... And oddily enough, I awoke with a renewed willpower... Not faith in the future or my abilities or what have you... Not desire or will to win or to overcome obstacles and challenges... But rather, just old, plain and simple willpower... You know that thing defined as the trait of resolutely controlling one's behavior...

Hmmm... Guess I'll let all this decant for a while...

The Elusive Next Step

2008-05-09T11:02:00.002-04:00

Man alive! I have been (unsuccessfully) grinding NL2, NL5 and NL10 for about more than year now, in the hopes of pumping my bankroll to 10 times the NL25 buy-in, namely $250. While this bankroll management is pretty loose, considering I'm still playing what is called micro-stakes, AND still working full-time, I can definitely afford such guidelines. Anyway, lately (start of 2008 more or less), I have become a tad more successful, and got close to $200 without pumping any money into my BR, and then getting my first take of the elusiveness of the next stake. Almost there, I turned impatient and overly aggressive, which is definitely related to my impatience and eagerness to move up. Back to about $125, I did deposit on PartyPoker, mostly to get 5 free 2+2 Publishing books :P, plus a free $25 deposit bonus... Party being softer, I have spent most of the last 6 weeks flirting with the next step, always to fall short, be it because of impatience, donkeyism or bad beats (which I had my share of, but always balanced by my very own tremendous suckouts (twice or thrice), or more frequently, monster hits, such as those 2 quads Tens I flopped in the spane of maybe 5 days :|)... All in all, I just can't seem to win that very very elusive last buy-in... Stuck moving aroung $220 and $240+, without EVER getting to $250... Yesterday was the closest I got to finally moving up to NL25; short about half a buy-in, with Rockets in the hole, and a 5h2c3d flop, I got min-re-raised (I know I know) by the button and decided to shove, praying to the Poker Gods for the guy to be on Kings or Queens and not a freaking set... Stacked off against is Presto turned into top set :). Oh well, deja-fscking-vu all over again...

Started to wonder whether the Poker Gods like me or not... LOL!

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April '08

2008-05-03T08:41:00.010-04:00

Wow. What a strange month, come to think of it. Started with almost no play, as is usually the case when I play a little more during a couple of weeks. I think I temporarily stop playing just because I am a tad scared of what could happen to my life if I went on playing everyday. Something like social alienation creeps the hell out of me for some reason... Which I always considered sort of odd since I am such a loner most of the time... Anyway, that's for some other, more philosophical post I guess.

So April '08 started slow. For a couple of reasons actually. Yes, I do play less after going on a rampage. But April in Montreal also means (usually) 2 very important things. First of, Spring; that one is a given, but we tend to go a little crazier when Spring finally hits, and this year was even worse since it was a record breaking winter in terms of snowfall. And second, and that one is HUMONGOUS, the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs! Indeed, we Canucks cannot get enough of our hockey, man!!! And this year was something very special for us Habs fans; we finish top-seed in the Eastern Conference and could thus hope for great things to come. Unfortunately, as I write these words, our beloved Habs have sunk to a 3-1 deficit against the Philadelphia Flyers in a best-of-seven second round series :(. Since they'll be golfing before the end of the week-end, I got my full attention back on poker now...LOL.

Around mid-April, I started thinking I might not make it to 10,000 hands in the month, so I got into the "logging hands" mode. Everything was going so well, I felt very confident I would hit the milestone again when, one April 23rd's morning, I spilled my whole coffee mug on my 21 days old laptop :@! Catastrophe and misery, yelling, screaming, kicking myself, etc. etc.... Long story short, I kinda life-tilted there and didn't feel like playing for a couple of days. I felt... heart-broken, really... Which got me realizing I am very easily shaken and 'taken of my game' so to speak... In poker as well as in life, that is... To be continued.
With my brand new laptop drying, I then went through setting up my old piece of crap to play a little before the end of the month. Got a couple thousands while waiting to finally try booting my new coffee-smelling PC. When I did boot it, it worked!!! W00t!!!! Happy dance and many thanks to Karma, God, the Poker Gods and/or the Universe!!!! This helped a lot to finish the month with a semi-bang, playing another couple thousands hands and getting my BR to 1 Buy-in short of moving up to NL25 :).

Now, the graphs, as usual :P.

April 2008 By Hands
April 2008 By Date

On to a little analysis of my 7200 hands for the month (I know I know, I MUST show some more consistency :)... but... but... there was playoff hockey baby!!), something very interesting strikes me. Considering this PT overview:

NL$10 refers to play on PartyPoker while NL($0.10) is for PokerStars. Now, obviously, the first major difference is in the Net Amount Won; almost a mirror effect there, losing a little over 20 bucks on Stars while raking almost 30 from Party. Thus, one would start looking for other differences in the stats, relevant of my play on both sites. But, surprise surprise!! I am almost exactly the same player on both sites; 17.75/11.34/1.96 on Party, and 17.07/9.78/1.86 on Stars. Without delving into an analysis of my play based on these numbers, it's clear that I'm playing relatively similarly. Note I also win about 12% more showdowns on Party, but that's a testament to the poor quality of the field more than anything else, I think; bad players tend to have a harder time letting go of any hand that hit.

This relative resemblance is reinforced by a number of other minor similar stats, but quickly becomes fallacious under deep scrutiny, though, since one of the most important stats, Pre-Flop Raise %, is quite different (11.34 versus 9.78), which probably accounts for a little more success on Party. And then, there's also my Flop Aggression Factor, which is 3.73 on Party but 5.57 on Stars. Considering I do firmly believe players to be a little better, tougher and savvier, especially post-flop, on Stars, I think this also has to factor in my April results and the big gap between both sites.

A final difference which I also consider a factor is my Attempt To Steal Blinds % (39.32 on Party, 34.47 on Stars), since I might make most of my money with dead money :P. It does represent very small pots, but if they say Football/Hockey is a sport of inches, Poker might be a game of fractions... What am I saying?? Poker IS a game of probability, and what are probabilities if not fractions ;-)...

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Mid-Month Thoughts & A New Deposit

2008-04-21T12:53:00.006-04:00

I had promise myself, very naively now that I ponder back on this, to make one deposit, see how it goes and, if I were to lose it all, never reload. Well, I remember being quite troubled by that promise when my roll was a whooping 4,76$, torn between quitting poker altogheter (well, in this competitive manner I have tried for the last 15 months or so), or reloading and (hopefully) learn from it. But, as it's often the case in life, this questioning was irrelevant, since I went on a proverbial tear which brought my roll back to a half-decent size. But it stayed in the back of my mind... Wondering what I'd do if I'd ever go broke...

In any case, I finally elected to pump some money in my Online bankroll, for 2 very relevant reasons; first, I'll probably get to play NL25 a little quicker. Second, PartyPoker has without a doubt the easiest bonus to clear I have ever seen; 125 raked hands (might I remind you that Party rakes 5% of every 0.20$ in the pot; it really is a piece of cake) and you get 25$ for free, plus five 2+2 books (yeah, you read that correctly)!!!! And it took both Nic and I one single evening of play, not even overplaying or going out of our way to log the proper amount of hands. Just like that!

So, as of now, my roll is split almost evenly between Stars and Party. I thought I'd cash out from my Stars roll the 50$ I deposited at Party to pay myself back, but I'll ponder this before, pumping a little life into my roll is not out of the question, more than a year after that somewhat silly promise.

Still, I could just quit... Yeah right!

Mid-Month Recap
------------------

Well, I think I've logged somewhere around 4,500 hands in April so far. Not on pace for the famous 12K month, but I'm still confident that I'll make it somehow... At least to 10,000 hands... Especially since I think my hockey fever is about to get killed by the lousy bears of Boston (who ever heard of bears in Boston, really!?!?!? :P)... Now, if I can get back to playing decent, solid, ABC-poker, I think I could finally change the groove and start winning on a regular basis again... Fingers crossed...

Still, I could just quit... Yeah right!

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Schoonmaker, Psychology and My First Ratings

2008-04-07T13:48:00.007-04:00

Been reading the great The Psychology of Poker, by Dr. Alan Schoonmaker lately. Awesome book to get into the motives, desires and fears of poker players, more precisely yourself (Schoonmaker's kinda borderline obsessing over the Stu Ungar quote "At the table, you're your worse enemy"). Providing many insights and tools to better know oneself and one's opponents, I am currently doing one of these 'hands-on' given out by Schoonmaker throughout the book, this time about rating opponents (of course, all this wonderful work has triggered deep introspective reflexions, but these are currently steeping and macerating in my mind :P... 'Til I have them assimilated, I think I'll post about opponent's psychology rather than confuse my very own introspection... Once I have all these sorted out, I'll post my conclusions of course ;-)). The rating occurs on two different and yet intertwined dimensions (that most neophytes will often mistake for the very same one, by the way): tightness/looseness AND passiveness/aggressiveness. Roughly, we can define T/A as how many hands a player plays from a given position; e.g., Luc plays twice as many hands (regardless of the actual 'hand' in the hole) than Mark from the Cutoff, while P/A strictly refers to the bet-check and raise-call ratios. Well, here's an half-decent first draft, based on the only live game I play so far, our weekly micro-stakes homegame :P...

Loose	9
	8		LAP	Yves					LAG
	7		Max
	6							Fred
	5					AVG (5,5)
	4
	3								Mel
	2		TAP						TAG	Nic
Tight	1	Nick+
		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
		Passive							Aggressive

T/L Ratings			P/A Ratings
9	Ext Loose	Yanick	9	Ext Aggro	Nic
8	Very Loose	Yves	8	Very Aggro	Mel
7	Loose	Max	7	Aggro	Fred
6			6
5			5
4			4
3	Tight	Mel	3	Passive	Yves
2	Very Tight	Nic	2	Very Passive	Max
1	Ext Tight	Nick+	1	Ext Passive	Nick+

March Results & Item Analysis

2008-04-02T21:56:00.007-04:00

Ok. March was one hell of a roller-coaster ride!!!! It all started very badly, and I never got back in pace... The 2 first weeks, I admit I didnt make much of it, blaming variance, bad beats and a short bleed from weak play (basically not as aggro as I should be). At the end of week 2, I was starting to wonder whether I had simply been lucky so far and this was how my results should have been... That kinda took its toll on me, but I try to convince myself I only needed to log hands to back on track. Which I did. Ended up putting 13 000 hands this month!!!! And that is the most important thing from this March '08; I've put up my biggest month in terms of hands played, enough to get very close to upgrading my PokerStars status, which would be so cool :)! And my BB/100hands is still roughly around 3, so if I can keep logging between 10 and 12 thousand hands a month, I should rake a very decent profit by the end of 2008 :P...

In the meantime, here are my graphs, including a cumulative 2008 graph.

March 2008 - By Date

March 2008 - By Hand

2008

On a somewhat related side note, I bought myself a brand new laptop and am pretty satisfied for now!!! Only glitch up to now; my pahud is freezing my PokerStars tables :S... Nerf computers ;-)...

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Caliche or The Trials of a WSOP Wannabe

2008-03-18T07:36:00.003-04:00

Ok. Last year around May, we found the Team Canada freerolls, which created the Canadian PokerStars team to be sent to Vegas for the 37th WSOP. While I did try those freerolls, I didn't fare that well, mostly unaccustomed to the turbo blind structure.

Well, this year, Stars is again offering sweet sweet WSOP packages, and I figured I'd give it at least a decent shot. Having some relative problems with my cash game and my roll, I decided for trading my hard earned FPPs to give 3 tries to the WSOP Step 1 Sit'nGo (Donkago... actually, Turbo Donkago :P)... Quick wrapup of the first 2 tries: played uber aggressive, with the moto 'build a momentum and a stack'; shoved with A8s vs a shortstacker with a presto and lost the coin flip, which left me pretty much crippled. Ended up shoving with some bordeline painted hand that I don't remember... Aaaah yes, an offsuit big slick... Which didn't hit squat, busting me in 8th place :S. Second one, same strategy, same hand gets me busto, but it was my first shove so if it would have hit, I might have gotten through. That was in 5th place by the way, which is kinda the bubble (4th place pays a whooping 1,50$, 3rd gets a new buy-in to Step 1 and 1 and 2 move on to Step 2). That kinda pissed me off and got me on tilt AND on an open Vendetta against Donkaments all together :P... But, while talking about it with Nic, I reviewed my strategy and buckled myself in my 3rd try with the survivor mantra : "I got my fist, I got my plan, I got survivalism" [lol! NIN, Survivalism, Year Zero (2007)]. And then this happened:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (4 handed) Poker Stars Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

Hero (t1270)
Button (t6600)
SB (t1890)
BB (t3740)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 8h, 8d.
Hero raises to t1270, Button calls t1270, SB raises to t1890, 1 fold, Button calls t620.

Flop: (t5250) Tc, 6s, 9s (3 players)

Turn: (t5250) 3s (3 players)

River: (t5250) 4s (3 players)

Final Pot: t5250

Results below:
SB has Ad Kh (high card, ace).
Hero has 8h 8d (one pair, eights).
Button has Jh As (flush, ace high).
Outcome: Button wins t5250.

Busted in 4th, just out of the loop. Now, I don't really want to whine and bitch about the fact that I was the favorite, but since it might actually be my last 'WSOP-related' moment of 2008, I will simply paste the equity calculations I got from my Poker Stove :P.

Before the flop:

	equity	win	tie	pots won	pots tied
Hand 0:	46.016%	45.89%	00.12%	+600k	1669	8d8h
Hand 1:	20.157%	19.29%	00.87%	+260k	11898	AsJh
Hand 2:	33.827%	32.96%	00.87%	+45k	11898	AdKh

After the flop (that one hurts):

	equity	win	tie	pots won	pots tied
Hand 0:	65.227%	65.23%	00.00%	589	0.00	8d8h
Hand 1:	16.888%	16.39%	00.50%	148	4.50	AsJh
Hand 2:	17.885%	17.39%	00.50%	157	4.50	AdKh

And finally, just before the suckout :P:

	equity	win	tie	pots won	pots tied
Hand 0:	64.286%	64.29%	00.00%	27	0.00	8d8h
Hand 1:	26.190%	26.19%	00.00%	11	0.00	AsJh
Hand 2:	09.524%	09.52%	00.00%	4	0.00	AdKh

Yeah, there is some luck involved in poker... I must not kid myself...

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Nerf Bush-Wannabe Canadian Prime Minister

2008-03-14T14:48:00.001-04:00

Fscking Stephen Harper... Definitely a George W. Bush wannabe, whose now targeting MY world, my shit and my interests, so I can keep ignoring this wave of conservatism hitting my country and my people:

Harper Targets Online Gaming

I did vote and abso-fscking-lutely NOT for that guy and his 19th-century political views... Anyways, I sure hope this never sees the light of day, and must admit I don't really see it happening considering it's all related to the First Nations and it is a sensitive issue over here. Will keep a close eye on the matter.

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I Am Such An ID10T!

2008-03-11T15:32:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post to relate some anecdote not making me a hero or a genius, faaaaarrr from it :P.

Yesterday evening, I tried to stay away from poker, feeling I needed some sort of break from it all after tearing up the tables (tearing up might not be the best term here though; crashing, as in 'party crasher', would probably make more sense :P). So I went to a friend of mine's place, had a couple of beers and headed home with another buddy who wanted to look to buy a new laptop via my employer's deal. Which we did. Then, silly me, I offered to start a HORSE heads-up freezout, to which my buddy agreed hastily. 2 minutes later, we were sitting down and staring at our 2 hole cards, ready to battle. Everything is pretty even until that one hand. Just finished the Omaha level, I look at my 2 hole cards to find pocket Aces down there. A 4 of spades stares back at us from the first door card. My buddy-turned-enemy is also sitting on a 4, of diamonds no less :P. And then it happened... I go 'Low card opens up; that's you, since spades beat diamonds', and he opens up with the bring-in. I raise. He reraises. I re-reraise and he caps. Next door card for me is a King while he gets another diamond. Same drill; capped betting. Plus some light trash talking and gloating. Fifth street brings a deuce my way and the 5 of clubs to my buddy. I go "ooooh, you don't like that club", to which he answers dreamily "huh?". I say 'nevermind' and bet. He raises, asking "I don't get your club thingy?!?!?". I re-raise telling him to let it go. He flat calls. First betting round that didn't cap, by the way :P... Sixth street pairs my deuce while giving him a lousy, scattered, almost totally rainbow, definitely totally unconnected rag of a hand. Betting goes like 2 predators at each other's throat and his once more capped. i start talking while the seventh and final card is being delt. He looks at it and I say "before you bet, consider: 'do I beat a full house?', cause I've got another deuce in the pocket", to which he answers "What?!?!?! A full house?!?!? Off course I beat a full". I am stupefied, completely bewildered and go "Really? You really beat a boat??? I can't see how with your board...", and then, he delivers the proverbial nail in the coffin, the stake in the chest, saying, between an emerging laughing fit, "We're playing Razz, dude!!!". I melted. Literally.

God I'm dumb.

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Could It'd Been Old Lady Luck?!?!?!?

2008-03-05T10:01:00.001-05:00

Well, I think I've been running good, with Lady Luck holding my hand since last Christmas...

And, and that one's still rubbing me the wrong way, I seem to have ran good in the last few days, while donkeying five buy-ins with the feeling of receiving my fair share of bad beats (set over set, runner-runner straight, top 2 getting flushed...) in the midst of all those bad plays I definitely pulled as well...

Now trying to figure those graphs more thoroughly :P... Reading some interesting posts in PokerEV forums...

Still, both my Expected and All-in Winnings lines are pretty close, so it might not be as bad as I first thought. Especially since, from the first post above:

That is why you can't use the game analysis to measure luck properly. For most styles of play it will usually converge to somewhere around the same point, but it is definitely something you have to take lightly, and not as pure figures.

Which I am now chosing to believe and agree with :-).

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Shouldn't Have Bragged... or The Early March Downswing...

2008-03-03T11:57:00.002-05:00

Well, as good as February was, March starts very sorely... And it's always the same: I plunge, feel depressed and toy with simply quitting altogheter in a last, futile 'up-yours' to the poker gods (who can't give more than a rat's ass about a lousy micro-stakes grinder like yours truly).

Quick, painful graph from February 29th (curse this damn leap year :P):

I definitely have to keep that overconfident demon under leash. I remember my chess game being exactly the same; I'd work hard to patch some leaks and learn some new concepts, trying to reach a deeper understanding, saw my game improve, fell into a comfort zone, played very strong for a short while and then BAM! Overconfidence, cockness and basically self-enamored... Well, the same thing happens periodically in poker. And a couple of days ago, I kinda bragged a bit about my cash game play being pretty solid since that late-2007 downward spiral, while going 'yum-yum' about a certain type of players... Well, the poker gods DO NOT like it when players brag (I know I know, you're going to through Phil Hellmuth Jr. and his 11 bracelets at me as a counter-argument, to which I'll simply answer: "Hellmuth. /shrug". lol), especially wannabe players like yours truly... And then, the spiral starts, getting me to play scared after a couple of bad beats, and then very scared and with the least bit of confidence, doubting every single decisions. Which gets me to play very passively (never good) before I finally grasp what's happening and resort to playing my game... That would normally get me out of the funk, be it that I'd really resort to my game, and not yet another lousy loser variation on my game; mainly playing impatient, trying to steal more than my fair share of pots, hoping I can somehow impress other players by my play and/or bully them out of pots. I keep on avoiding passive/trapping play, get myself to be a very straightforward bull, and when I do get some kind of hand, I get married to it for all the marbles, totally oblivious to a golden rule of mine (in life, not only poker that is): never ever stop reassessing... And then, near the proverbial rock bottom, I wonder 'have I simply gotten lucky?!?!?' Lucky enough to crawl back from the felt?!? Might actually be... Oh well... to be continued...

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February Results and Item Analysis

2008-03-03T11:56:00.002-05:00

Best month eva!!!!!

Well, I made a net profit of a little more than 70$ playing in about 8.5K hands of online NL10 on PokerStars in February. Which is without a doubt my best month ever of online poker. And this has to be feeling very nice since I got down to a measle 5-dollar bankroll (I know I'm repeating myself but hey, I was down to the mat mate :P!).

Still a long way to go before moving up; I estimate I still need between 10,000 to 30,000 hands before reaching the proper bankroll for the next step. Oh well... ;-).

In any case, here are my PokerTracker graphs:

And from Poker EV (very very nice software, btw :P):

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Popping My Casino Cherry Part 2

2008-03-01T08:27:00.001-05:00

Aaaaaahhhhh, casinos!

I loved it! Simply loved it. As soon as you step from the table, to go to the bathroom for instance, all you can hear is poker talk, which you gotta love!!!! People are way more talkative than I first imagined, including yours truly :P. And the 1$/2$ game seems pretty beatable to me, providing you play premium hands and stay patient. I went twice since my last post, for about 4-hour session each time, and raked a net of 186$, avoiding conflicts and picking up my spots. I did go all-in once, but, for that first time I decided I'd need the nuts to shove, which I spiked when a fourth club came on the turn of a battle-of-the-blinds hand where I held the lousy Ac7s...

On a side note; I have been advocating to never limp in an unopened pot forever, and I will continue to advocate such a guideline for newcomers (and will myself keep playing like that until I'm finally out of the micro stakes), but I had some sort of poker epiphany (well, with the knowledgeable help of Misters Miller and Sklanksy (No Limit Holdem: Theory and Practice, which I recommend to any serious Holdem student) lol), and finally got that this guideline is mostly a golden nugget for tourney play... And might even quickly become a -EV play in deep stack cash game (say more than 100 big blinds for anyone at the table; what is called the effective stack), against somewhat savvy players. On the same note, these guys also advocate not to use predefined bet-size for preflop play, simply to avoid patterns and straightforward play... This I will mention again when I'll try implementing new strategies to my game :).

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Popping My Casino Cherry

2008-02-22T14:07:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post to tell I'm finally going to spew money at the casino tonite :-P... Woohooo!!!! No more feeling lame, lousy and vaguely impostor when strangers ask if I go to the Casino ;-)... LOL.

Starting to get the jitterbugs and butterflies now; this will be the highest stakes I'll have ever played... Still, repeating a couple of decent mantras right now:

- Cbet less, value bet more
- Remember you know what you're doing
- Be ready to makes BIG laydowns
- Play tight but aggressive
- Don't steam cause you're not getting as many hands as online :P
- and so on and so forth...

To be continued (around 11pm tonite :P)...

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January Results and Item Analysis

2008-02-01T14:05:00.002-05:00

Well, January is over and among other things not related to poker, I turned 30 on the 17th. As much as I hate those milestones, I can't really say it depressed me. I just choose to ignore it as much as possible :P.

On the poker side of things, well, let's start with a bunch of graphs :).

Januray 2008 by Date

January 2008 by Hand

By comparison with graphs for December:

December 2007 by Date

December 200 by Hand

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We can clearly see some changes. Basically, I quit overplaying Ax, as well as big gapers (KJ, QT, JT) so aggressively, picked up my spots a tad better (mostly working from position), and generally kept avoiding conflicts and borderline hands, thus keeping away from those tough decisions that made my bankroll look like some kind of yo-yo. And, well, I think I do deserve the following pat on the back; on December 26th, my bankroll was a whammy 12$. Which I split on 2 6-dollar tables. Ten minutes later, on of them had gotten me stacked, so I was back to playing on one single table... :S... But... I did double up on that sole table, and started the good old mitosis process; split that 10$ on 2 other tables, doubled-up on both, re-split that in 4, and so on... All in all, waking up 12 days later with a 100$ in my bankroll and a very very interesting start to my 2008 poker year :).

Mid-Februrary Note
================
Still grinding. I stuck around 50$ a long boring while and it seems to be happening again around 150$. But if 2007 taught me anything is I can get through :)...

To be continued... D'uh!

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Trust the Fscking Read

2008-01-12T08:44:00.001-05:00

Ok. I think I'm getting very near the place where I can do the big laydowns on a regular basis. Might not be quite there yet though, as I sometimes still second-guess my reads, as with this hand. Villain being a 16.1/6.45/1.00 on about 100 hands, his raising a limped pot kinda set some alarms in my head; well, way more bells went on than when that calling station on my left does its thing :P.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (8 handed) Poker Stars Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.comFlopTurnRiver.com (Format: Plain Text)

UTG ($9.85)
UTG+1 ($5.35)
MP1 ($6.85)
MP2 ($9.05)
CO ($4.65)
Hero ($8.80)
SB ($15.25)
BB ($7.15)

Preflop: Hero is Button with Qh, Ah.
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.10, 1 fold, MP2 raises to $0.5, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.50, 2 folds, UTG+1 folds.

Flop: ($1.25) 3h, 8c, Ac (2 players)
MP2 checks, Hero bets $1, MP2 calls $1.

// That flat call is what set me up I think; as now I'm tending towards some mid pair (JJ, TT) or big connectors which would not have hit (KQ, QJ). He might also have the ladies or cowboys; he does not have the bullets since he'd have re-raised in that spot, imho. Players with a VP$IP of >20% tend to try to make their big hands pay as much as possible, which usually means raising with the nuts and other monsters. In any case, his flat-calling of my 4/5th-of-the-pot-bet gets me thinking I'm in the lead but he simply can't fold his hand... I get completely oblivious to AK...

Turn: ($3.25) 7d (2 players)
MP2 checks, Hero bets $2, MP2 raises to $4, Hero raises to $7.3, MP2 calls $3.30.

//Now this my mistake, which he induced with that weak check-call on the flop. BUt now he's sandbagging me?!?!?! Wtf??? And suddenly, it hits me: as I said just a few lines ago: "Players with a VP$IP of >20% tend to try to make their big hands pay as much as possible, which usually means raising with the nuts and other monsters"... And I get that he's most probably on a big slick. Why do I re-raise all-in then? Good question! Because of the quality of the trap he set, which overrode my read; instead of seeing only the newly deployed show of strength, I kept my focus on the last betting round. No very good lol... I figured I paid to validate the read I didn't trust enough to lay down my top pair... Lesson learn; and I'm starting to agree with Doyle about the lousiness of the Little Slick. Here's the rest :P...

River: ($17.85) 4s (2 players)

Final Pot: $17.85

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Side Bet Wrapup

2008-01-11T14:12:00.002-05:00

Well, it's over. I lost. Actually, I surrendered as Nic offered me to buy out of the bet for 5 bucks, ie half price. The thing is I hadn't much time to close that ~2,000-hand gap before January 17th. Plus, every single day I could play and try to catch up, he'd also most probably be playing at the same time... With one more table, even... I think there's no shame in admitting I'm beat here :). Even though I still feel somewhat cheap and dishonorable for having taken the easy way out; in my book, you take a bet, you see it through... But I guess that's all the same in the grand picture :P...

Final Tally
-----------
ncaron = 13,583
AlLaf = 11,660

I must admit it forced me to play a lot in the past 8 weeks, which was the intented effect, really. But I also realized that I have a definite fondness for tourney play, and with that bet going on I couldn't play as many tourney as I would have liked... In any case, playing that amount of hands sure had some great positive effects, such as not being uber excited when waking up with rockets or cowboys... Or realizing my starting hand range was waaaaaaayyyy to wide... Even though I lost a fiver, the whole adventure had a lot of positive value in the end...

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Poker, the Last Refuge Of Obsolete Politically Incorrect Cliches

2008-01-02T19:12:00.001-05:00

Poker is a game of probability. Among other things, of course. This means a 50%+1 shot, be it +1 out of 2, or +1 out of Infinity, is a favorite and should be considered and played with due respect. Obviously, some players, most actually, will never bother to calculate these shots so precisely, but still, poker is a game of probability. Among others. And this 50%+1 shot is the mathematically correct play.

With this binary/manichean dichotomy of sort, poker is truly the stage of o so many of the oldest, nowadays politically incorrect cliches. And most are definitely legitimate, in the whole 50%+1 shot perspective. Example : Women are weaker: is there older, stupider cliche than this one??? Yet, many players, including your own (though, only sometimes... Hey, not gonna bash myself that muc; this is my blog after all! LOL), still perceive women as weaker players, not fearing their raises and re-raises as much of, say, the silent geek quietly ploting away his take on world domination while folding 95% of the time... And well, most of the time, it's true.

Having recently set my PokerStars client to display people's avatars, I must admit paying closer attention to both their icon and nickname, sometimes picking up some kind of useful information yes, based on those lamest stereotypes ever. Such as: family people (family ring to their nick or a family picture of some sort) will play tight-passive more times than none (notice the flamboyant return of the whole '50%+1' hypothesis ;-)), while, in a very twisted reverse-psychology not unlike the one a baseball pitcher must master, people with obvious shark, wolves, any predatory symbols, will most probably fold faster than the father of 3 whose basically just having a good time while being yes a tad chauvinistic... Furthermore, I tend to fear (yeah, I still fear some players around a table, and I am deeply convinced it's normal and quite healthy to actually acknowledge it; poker players are so dishonest with themselves :P...) the people with explicit 'I suck' symbolism, such as the typical donkey or fish pics. Especially when said donk-fishy plays less than 20% of the pot :P... And this brings us back full circle to: Poker is a game of probability. Among other things.

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Yearly Recap Part 1

2008-01-01T23:22:00.003-05:00

Well, since it's late on January 1st and I'm too lazy/tired to start a summary of my first year playing poker, here's at least my poker graph for the year :P.

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So It's New Year's Day...

2008-01-01T17:18:00.002-05:00

With this New Year's Day, cashing out from my most profitable session ever, after having been to the floor twice in December, I come to reflect on not only the last month, but also the whole last year as this latest Holiday Season reaches its end.

My first year flirting with this beautifully cruel mistress that is poker. My first year dabbing at the weird, geeky, often smelly, often whiny, always entertaining community around this poker game that one can hardly ever quit (part of the year's lessons are, I guess, the 2 times I almost went cold turkey, once because of/for a girl, once cause I sucked :P... I suppose some people do quit, but I'd be very very curious to know the real stats about that one ;-)). My first year, babbling the jargon and slang and finding out the proper terminology, so much like an infant opening up to its own consciousness... My first year figuring out odds, pot as well as implied and the famous infamous, and often underestimated tilt odds, falling victim to each many many times already... My first year understanding why maths have a statistical branch and praising karma for those lame-ass stats classes I was forced to take in college... My first year since a long while discovering a new interest, eventually overshadowing the Old Mistress Cinema, even... My first year finding some hobby in serious contention of being a... passion, actually... My first year (re)realizing there's always a place to challenge one's own self... My first year finding myself back again...

So, in order to keep with the light of the day, here's a quick list of poker resolutions (well, more objectives, but hey :P) for 2008:

Play at least 50,000 hands of online poker
Play way more live, and find a personal comfort zone
Settle at NL10, then NL25 and NL50 by the end of the year
Develop a proficiency for another game (Razz, Stud or Omaha)
Start dabbing at split games
Win a tournament
Pull a major stone-cold bluff
Hustle some poor schlob in a pub or hustle myself a date :P
Visit every Montreal poker room
Take a week-end trip to Atlantic City
Run a tight blog :P
Keep the mailing list/discussion group alive
Stay aggressive, uncompromising and unapologetic at the tables, while remaining affable, lighthearted and zen
Create myself a slick avatar
Create a Poker course
Keep taking bad beats with the reverence and awe of a devout
Write my Poker & Self-Enlightenment piece

And on that note, Happy New Year!!!!!!

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Job's Done :P

2007-12-31T22:34:00.002-05:00

Last November 8th, I set myself what I thought would be a very tough target to reach, to play ten thousand hands of online poker before my next birthday, 69 days later (unintentional coincidence, I swear :P). Well, I am proud to say that, on December 31st, 2007, at 11:30:56 EST, I played my 10,000th hand, a measly 10-5 offsuit :D!!! I must admit the silly prop bet with Nic gave a lot of incentive to the whole endeavour ;-). Anyway, here's a little something stupid I did to mark the occasion :P...

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Xmas Bad Beats Nightmare

2007-12-27T09:22:00.001-05:00

Congratulations! You're one step closer to hitting bottom.
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Well, I went to the floor on Xmas Eve. All started with my rockets getting cracked by... Yeesss, exactly, a fscking Anna Kournikova... Offsuit even!!!! In a nutshell: I wake up with rockets UTG (after playing my second BB - roughly, my 1oth hand of the day), raise my usual 3xBB, get called by UTG+1 and proceed to remind myself that I'm ready to call any bet pre-flop while holding the best Texas Hold'em starting hand, and if I weren't, I should just quit, when, lo and behold, UTG+2 re-raises all-in for about 5 bucks. I insta-call and UTG+1 insta-folds, of course. Board comes something like 7-3-J-Q and the fscking merciless river (she'll get even nastier, believe me) brings a fscking Ten and I just lost it, seeing this runner-runner suckout from such a domintated hand... Thus, I proceeded to spew a couple more bucks, tilting like a madman. Total losses after 150 hands on Xmas Eve: 9.50$.

***

Then, I quit, took a shower, had lunch, and, since my Xmas celebrations were on the 25th, I sat down again, pumped up and focused on making my big hands count and get those dollars back. Well, while my intentions might have been good, the poker gods saw things differently. After calling a pre-flop shove again, this time with Cowboys against a uber-tight aggressive player whom I correctly put on Aces (then why d'you called?? you might ask, to what the only answer is: I am a donk), I woke up with American Airlines once more, only to find myself shoving on a blank flop (5-7-J) and get called by my opponent, holding a Gretzky... Just guess what card the river brougth... That's right, a fscking nine! Right there and then, I had a tad over 8$ in my whole bankroll... Yikes :S... And I decided I was a wounded-cornered animal and I readied myself to die (ie go broke).

Currently still struggling around 10$. Managed to bring the total to about 25$, thanks to a tremendous suckout and a couple of monster hands holding on... Until a set over set hand that quickly turned into a Hansen-Negreanu wannabe; quads over boat... And I, of course, had the wors of it...

But today, things seem to brighten up as Nic tells me about moneybookers.com, a site allowing money transfers from one poker site to another... I might pump money into my stars bankroll after all... Cause there's no way I'm quitting, even though my "Well, I'm broke" post is already started :P...

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Item Analysis - First Hypothesis

2007-12-13T07:04:00.001-05:00

Ok. I have fomented somewhat of a first hypothesis as to what happened around hand #5,989... Panic! I then went through my widest bankroll swing ever, trying to play a lot more pots and a lot more aggressively, never backing down from any top pairs, regardless of the kicker, for instance. In a span of about 300 hands, I tested that kinda play and reached my biggest net profit, only to lose it all (twice even) in the greatest downside of my year... And this is when I panicked and thought I simply sucked at the game, not putting any of these losses in any kind of perspective... Even thought about quitting, plain and simple. Not remembering I had a good first half the year and forgetting about the old 'a poker cash game is one continuous never-ending game with swings and trends' can become quite costly it seems ;-).

Later
------
Another decent hypothesis would be that I do not feel comfortable at NL5, mostly because we have uber-Gus-Hansen types, players playing humongous numbers of hands (you'll rarely play peeps with >50% VP$IP at NL10+, but you might end up on a table with an average VP$IP of above 50% for the whole table at NL5, as well as uber-maniacs playing more than 3/4 quarters of the time... Just crazy; how can you put any of these players on any kinda hand?!?!?!?). I have to admit having, on average, better sessions and steadier wins at NL10 than NL5... I'll have to check the number of hands played at these two levels before being absolutely convinced... But I don't think I'll get back to playing NL5 ever again in any case, though :).

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Nerf Sick Days

2007-12-11T08:53:00.001-05:00

Quick update on the tally and that target of 10,000 hands by my birthday. Well, the latter is going pretty well, as far as number of hands played goes :P; last time I checked, I was on pace to hit 10,376 hands!! Sweet!! Now, if those could only end up being winners... lol

As for the bet, the tally kinda speaks for itself. "But why suddenly more than 600 hands behind, bubbleb0y??", no one asks. Well, the answer to that my friends is: sick days. God's greatest gifts to the poor schlob when said schlob is the one taking the day off :P... In our case, Nic's the one taking a sick day Monday, logging about 1,000 hands :P!!! So that's that, as they say. But, it seems his PC died on him, so I think I have plenty of time to close the gap :).

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Item Analysis

2007-12-10T07:29:00.002-05:00

Ok. I'm starting to think I suck at poker. Looking at these, one could also argue I kinda lost my mojo after hand #5,989 or so... Was there ever two graphs more dissimilar, seriously???? And off course, my old male ego thing is getting owned these days, as my buddy Nic is running great these last 3 months, reaching each and everyone of his goals in the expected amount of time... Just now, chatting with him while at work ;o), he's telling me how good he's running, finally playing NL10 and being up by a buy-in and a half... While being absolutely thrilled for him and his successes (which come with their lot of hard work, believe me, even at our small scale), I come to realize the last time I doubled-up in a cash game is... probably the last time I played Play Money games... Am I supposed to double-up in cash games is now a very decent and relevant question...

After futher investigation, it turns out Nic doubled-up 8 times since September, out of about 250 sessions, for a wooping 0.03 %... Doesn't tell me much; is this a must? Can one rake in great profit while never doubling-up?

The thing is I wanna be the best that I can, and I know I tend to be result-oriented, which is just wrong with poker...

Oh well, looks like this is going to be one hell of an introspective Holiday Season :P...

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AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

2007-12-05T09:28:00.001-05:00

Horrible, horrible fscking nite yesterday; donked over 7$ total ... came in pre-tilted cause of the buses, the stupid snow and my stupid friends and their fscking xmas parties, and definitely tilted when my uber 7-2 offsuit from the BB turned into a boat only to find out the dude on my left had been slow playing a pocket pair turned to set by the flop (or just passively playing every hand for that matter)... and then, I hit rock bottom :P... After being constantly re-raised pre-flop with my semi-bluff/semi-steal attempts (which were way too numerous in my vain attempts to get my money back), I wake up with Hockey Sticks and raise 3xBB and get fscking re-raised again but this time I call. Flop is absolutely dry so I bet half the pot, only to get raised again by the fscking button. I re-raised and he shoves while some donk between us does the calling station trick... I call, knowing full well that:

I'm beat by a bigger pocket
I am on super uber tilt, which argues and makes a solid case for me to gamble this 2-outer piece of shit of a hand...

Off course the board and poker Gods do not come to my rescue (i guess that humoungous suck out in the satellite had its cost :P) and the guy indeed has rockets. I go berserk, quit my 3 tables, folding a pair of jacks in the process, cause lets face it, I would have played those like aces surely but the board would have been A-K-Q for sure ;), and go watch that awful hockey game... Which ended 4-1 Wings... Even the Habs are going to hell... lol!

***

Trying to retrieve some positive from this nite, I think I might have nailed a couple of factors that could explain those "Downward Spiral" moments... And they could also explains the state of my poker graph (see last post)... I'll need to check my hand logs and ponder a little more on this though... To be continued...

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10,000 Hands... Finally!

2007-12-03T09:03:00.001-05:00

Finally reached the 10,000 hands plateau last week. Not much to say or brag about it. Interesting fact: I seem to have started to play differently around 5,000 hands. I think I either switched stakes or begun to think and tried some fancy poker... I will try and find what happened around this time because I feel something went awry and I can't quite put the finger on it.

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Reality Check For a Boorish American

2007-11-30T11:07:00.001-05:00

Big time reality check yesterday evening; went to play some NL25 cash game in a private card room and I must admit I never felt comfy with these stakes, pathetically being the highest I've ever played. I felt way out of my game, constantly doing the exact thing I was repeating myself NOT to do, such as not announcing to everyone "it's time to change gear" with my first live straddle... In short, I've been the boorish american :P... See, there's some 2+2 dude who wrote a partial European version of Rounders and instead of the proverbial sucker at the table, it's the boorish american:

"If you can't spot the boorish american in your first half-hour at the table, than your are the boorish amercian"

See here for the 'complete' partial rewrite. Lots of fun, let me tell ya!

***

In any case, this whole experience got me thinking about my game, and my relation to money. I am a scared little boy when it comes to dough, even though I paradoxically could not give more than a RAT'S ASS about my personal finances... Weird...

It also got me thinking about those pathetic stakes I'm playing and the humongous amount of fear involved in choosing those rather than investing to actually learn how to comfortably play at some more interesting levels...

- So now what?!?, asks the Cynical Voice in my head.
- I don't know actually... Shall I just quit?? Reassess my ambitions and just play for fun, perhaps even with play money??
- lmao
- Shut up, I'm serious...
- I know... You could also take this as a very good sign that you will never gamble your house or lose the bread'n butter money, that you have, in fact, a good basis of money management skills...
- Meh.
- Or take the bull by the horns and either pump some more money into your bankroll to extricate yourself from those pathetic micro-micro stakes...
- ... and accept the fact that to learn to win, I probably have to lose (read PAY) a decent amount of money...
- How many times you think Doyle went broke?

To be continued...

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Stupid Prop Bet

2007-11-13T11:14:00.001-05:00

Nic, my (only) poker buddy, and I just made an interesting prop bet: 10$ on who logs the most hands from Monday, Nov. 12, 2007 at 12:01am to Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008 at 12:01am. Why Jan. 17? Cause it's my birthday.. My 30th birthday at that... And I figured it could do as a deadline :D...

Day 1 tally:
Nic: 150ish
Alex: 216

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Hard Target

2007-11-08T13:01:00.002-05:00

I've just noticed that I only played about 16 000 online hands in a year, tourney and cash games combined. That's way not enough to reach any sort of satisfactory competency level, and I think I can fix that.

Having recently gone through the roughest patch of my very thin and still infant-like poker career, I got away from the game a little before going back on the felt in a freeroll. What better venue to get back on the horse than a no-buy-in event?! Turned out, I played great, making the best of the greatest (maybe 2nd greatest) suckout of my life - dealt QTo on the BB, 3 limpers, I check. Flop comes T-T-Q with 2 suited cards, and I'm first to act. Having not even played very very passively since the start of the tourney (we're at the 3rd or 4th level by then), I decide to continue doing just that and check, with sandbagging in mind of course :P. UTG bets about half the pot, UTG+1 calls, and I go for the ultimate trap by simply calling, hoping for a suited turn improving my opponents hand to a flush I'm beating. Alas, turn comes A offsuit and I decide to take the action in hand and bet about 3/4 of the pot. UTG insta-raises all-in and UTG+1 folds. Now, I must admit having NEVER put UTG on any hand, so sure of the strength of my hand. Now, I'm thinking is either sitting on K10s, K9 or J9... Or, and of course this hits me as I'm clicking "Call", he's got me beat with the infamous AT... Too late, I've called and he flips exactly that. I'm still kicking myself in the nuts for not having played my nuts more aggressively, whining about how life's a bitch and I should just quit poker and maybe everything else, when the river hits me like a sledgehammer with a 20 to 1 shot, peeling one of the 2 remaining queens. BOOM! I almost tripled up right there since i was getting short-stack, and got pot-commited early in the hand... This hand got me on track to finishing 13th out of 1614 players, for my best money finish in a large field tourney. All in all, my confidence started to build up again and I got back in the game, going back to penny cash games as well since my bankroll was already borderline before I was felted almost 3 times in that mere 50-hand interval...

And now, I seem to be back to the better me; even my homegame ROI is back to a somewhat decent percentage :P... But, I have been analyzing my game a little more, only to find out I haven't logged nearly enough hands to analyze properly. Thus, I have fixed myself a new objective: log in 10 000 hands before my 30th birthday (which, unfortunately is the next one :P). This means that I have to log 144 hands a day for the remaining 69 days before January 17th. I might not get it since I cannot dream to play every day (for instance, I know for a fact I will not be playing any hands on Nov. 17 and 18, which means I'm already stuck 288 hands :P), but if I do, I will have logged in some serious poker playing hours and should be closer to define what exactly is my favorite style of play and the best behavior for me at the tables.

Well, I feel I should write some clever conclusion here, but I must admit not reviewing this post so I'll just publish it and hope for the best.

A couple of days later...
For the record: I played for 13 days now and logged 1,301 hands, for an average of ~100 hands a day. Close but not good enough :P... On pace for a measle 6-7,000 hands. Still, I'll be seeing more hands as it goes by...

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To Hell And Back - A Downward Spiral Tale Part 2

2007-10-25T15:35:00.001-04:00

I am not dead. Not physically, nor mentally, nor even poker-wise... Got bloody close to retirement though :P...

Following my last post, including the 'getting back to par' bid, I felt pretty confident around cash game tables... For a while that is... In the span of a mere 250-some hands, I manage to lose half my bankroll with very very donkey calls and moves. I then had to find the humility to step back down to penny games, which was quite hard to do. It ended up taking me the best of a month to finally get back on the horse so to speak. I did on a lousy uneventful boring Friday night, finally logging about 100 hands or so of profit on a ring 0.01/0.02 table, and felt I could do good in a tourney, so I got my Railbirds freeroll password and registered to the 9pm tourney. After a humougous suckout for which I was standing on the 'good' side for once, I manage to go deeper than ever before, falling a little short of my first final table (that was disappointing), finishing 13th out of 1614. And well, since I do have a shaky self-esteem, that was a very good pat on the back and I felt I could still do well around the felt. Back on the horse as they say :D!!!

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Cash Game Going To Hell: A Downward Spiral Unfinished Tale

2007-09-20T08:44:00.002-04:00

I hate to break this to you nice folks, but Doyle was right. Again... Is there someone really surprised by that, beside me??

I think I read that bid in Poker Wisdom of a Champion but I also seem to remember reading it somewhere else in the broad Doyle Brunson literature. Anyway, the jist of it being "do not play poker if your mind is preoccupied". Basically, if you have family concerns, health issues, girl troubles, and the likes, JUST DO NOT PLAY FSCKING CARDS!!!!

Now I am what I hope is an educated mind, with a great tendancy towards introspection and self-examination. What this means is that usually, in life as well as poker (maybe more in poker :p), I try to be aware*. I try to be a conscientious lucid dim-witted dumbass, roughly staying awake about what's going on in my life (more the with the world, to be perfectly honest ;)). Which basically means that I'm constantly doubting myself and asking questions about ... well everything... Which also means I tend to know where I'm at when I'm there :p, or I have a very good insight. All in all to say this: all of what I am should warrant the proper poker wise behavior and management.

Moreover, waking up not with Aces but rather with rags (very very bad poker analogy with my love life here...:confused:), I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER!!!!

Well it seems I did not know better and ended up spewing almost 1/3 of my whole Bankroll in 3 consecutive lousy cash game sessions, donkeying my chips away with the second worse hand while misreading completely my opponents, putting them on even lousier hands when in fact they were holding the nuts, nut flush or nut straight, or worse case scenario, the second nut.

3 days later:
Ok. I';m back to par. You know what they say: unlucky in love, lucky at cards. Guess it's true, especially since it did hold true in yesterday's homegame :P.

* How can one resists the temptation to make fun of Van Damme right now: "Il faut être aware" - the french speaking Railbirds should get that one ;-)... Just know that the guy, from Belgium, speaks both french and english, but basically mixes them according to his audience. For instance, when on a french tv show, the guy doesn't remember much of his french and babbles in a very broken french-glish. And vice versa... Guess he thinks it's sexy or somethin'... And I didn't even mention his 4th grade philosophy ;-). Have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsMiW8K8g3Q.

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Late Weekly Recap - Money Finishes All Around!

2007-08-27T18:00:00.003-04:00

I started the week with a single money finish in a bout 10 freerolls so far. But Monday came in and found me in a very positive mindset, as I had had a decent weekend.

First, the second money finish of my railbird carreer: an 80th place out of 1299 in a Limit Hold'em Railbirds freeroll Wednesday night. And I must confess having been this close not to play the damn thing; I registered early and went to eat. After my meal, the exhaustion of a very rough week so far hit me like a jakhammer and I elected to watch tv before the tourney to relax. When I realized I was almost falling asleep, I kinda decided to unregister and call it an early nite. Looking at the time while moving sluggishly towards my desk, it's 8:57... No check that, 58... By the time I sit at my computer, the unregister button has vanished into oblivion. I decide for a quick maniacal exit; I'll effectively play 80% of the hands. Then, folding my first hand (lmao), I load; it's a Limit tourney. Oh well, who said Limit can't create quick exits???

The Third Money Finish
54/1065 in a PLO on FullTilt. Oh yes baby, I made the money in an Omaha Hi event!!! Quite satisfying to figure I can play that game almost as well as Hold'em :)!!!

The Fourth Money Finish
118/1641 NLHE on FT. For that one, I think I remember vaguely an interesting hand, where, roughly, I woke up with AK offsuit from Late Position, and ended up making the right move by calling a short stack shove which had gotten called by an even shorter stack; 3-handed against any random 2 hands, AK offsuit is still a very nice favorite (about 48% against 26/26) has it hit me when I was in the tank :P.

All in all, I think I might getting myself to become a somewhat promising all-around player... Trying to keep my head clear, straight and up lol.

Later (Monday, Aug. 27th, 12h12 am)
Well, it seems I was quite right about that feeling of me being more and more an all-around player; I just busted out in 58th (out of 1299) of the Railbirds H.O.R.S.E. freeroll, playing the whole rotation pretty well actually. Stud kinda made suddenly a lot of sense ;-)!

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Second Money Finish!!

2007-08-27T17:57:00.001-04:00

Woot!!! Quick post to mention my second money finish in a Railbirds Freeroll. On Stars again :( ; can't wait to get a bankroll on FullTilt and start playing some Razz lol!

Anyhow, I finished 80th out of 1299 in Limit Hold'em RB freeroll. 1st limit experience ever, not counting the HORSE event of a couple of weeks back :D !!! I found something rather interesting in Limit poker, something I'm afraid I cannot quite put the finger on right now but, all in all, it reminded me of one of my buddy ncaron's comments: he onced said he had the feeling I might have a knack for limit play, mostly because I'm grossly tighter than him. Will keep you posted, off course ;-).

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Three-way All-in

2007-08-27T17:56:00.001-04:00

Quick note on a rare occurence: me busting out with the goods :p!!! Still, busting out on a 3 way all-in so near the money (211 out 1464) is kinda painfull :).
Roughly, blinds are 300/600 with a 50 ante in a NLHE freeroll. All the money goes in pre-flop, after something like:I min-raise from seat 8, button min-raise, SB calls all-in and I push, trying to isolate the button, a maniac who has already hit with unmentionable hands (such as 5-2 not from the blinds lol); I figure he might call since he's covering me 2 to 1 but I'm sure my AK off is good enough. He calls. We flip:

villain1 - Button = KhQc
Villain2 - SB = AhKs
Me = AhKc

Guess who hits the flop?? That's right! The maniac hits one of his 3 outs: QhTs6h... fsck! lol Turn and river are rags and I hit the rails... With the feeling of having done the right thing nonetheless ;-).

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July 2008 - By Hands
July 2008 - By Big Blinds
July 2008 - Showdown/Non-Showdown