O-Poker

POKER ON TV

Poker on TV isn't dead, but they definitely need more cash games. I watched two weeks worth of episodes of Poker After Dark this month. That is probably as many as I have watched the rest of 2009 even though my DVR still records every episode. The reason that I watched every episode of PAD for two weeks this month - cash games. The show is just so much more interesting when they have cash games. There is always action when you get the right players at the table. The 6 max SNG format is very boring when you drag it out over five days. The early levels (first part of the week) are usually tight and the later levels (mid-end of week) become all-in or fold as the average stack dwindles relative to the BB. IMO, PAD should switch to 100% cash games.

WSOP ME - The jury is still out on the extended Main Event coverage, but I am starting to think it is going to be overkill. I feel like 2 more weeks of coverage before the final table would be more than enough, but there are still 6 more weeks of new ME episodes before the Final Table. Yes, we will get to see more interesting spots, but do we really need six more full weeks of coverage? How many more human interest (fluff) player profiles do they plan to squeeze in? Is the casual fan (occasional poker player or non-player) going to stick around for six more weeks? Surely there will be a pretty significant drop in ratings when people start realizing how long they have to wait until there is a conclusion.

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BACK TO NLHE

After an extended stint at the LHE cash games, I am starting to dip my toes back into the NLHE waters. I am going to keep very stringent bankroll guidelines and start at NL50 full ring. I have reviewed some old NLHE hand histories and discovered some big leaks and a couple of small ones. There are two in particular that are costing me a lot of money in the long run, but on the surface seemed very small. I will post more on those leaks and how I am doing with plugging them in a future post.

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RANDOM FOOTBALL THOUGHTS

College Football is so much more interesting than NFL imo.

How many NFL games would you really be interested in if you didn't have a Fantasy Football team? Would you even care to know the score of a Browns/Rams games if one the players wasn't starting on your FF team that week? I find it funny to watch friends rooting for teams that they would normally hate, because they have X, Y, or Z player.

Don't get wrong, I still enjoy watching NFL games, but the excitement and energy level of college football seems to be a few steps above the NFL. For the top 25 teams, each week is like a playoff game - a must win.

Maybe I'm just having a harder time getting excited about the NFL this year because my three favorite teams in order are Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa.

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Blogger Tourneys

Hoy had a post last week about "The Death of the Private Blogger Tournament." I don't agree with some of his points, but it is worth a read. People used to play the Blogger tourneys for fun, but somewhere along the way things changed for various reasons.

I always tried to avoid the drama surrounding the blogger tourneys. I found it funny when grown adults would get into pissing matches about how someone played AJo or how someone "should have known that their gutshot draw was way behind." Some people were joking or purposely fanning the flames and others were seriously hurt or upset. No reason to want to beat someone up because they made a donkey call and sucked out on you. It doesn't matter that they think that their call wasn't bad. You don't need to convince them. LOL, it is just a tourney that you are supposed to be playing for fun.

My reason for playing less of the blogger tourneys may be different than some. I got burnt out on them during the last BBT. It seemed like we were having to play almost every night and by the end, I just didn't feel like playing them for a while. There were too many different tourneys even when the BBT wasn't going on.

I really think/hope that the right connected person could get a more casual blogger tourney series running again. It would just need to be something simple - maybe once a week. I'm sure that FTP or Pokerstars would donate all of the rake during the tourneys into an overall leaderboard prize pool or final tourney.

I meant to get around to posting this last week.

Follow up of my last post. Thanks for all the great comments.

What do you do when he donk bets the flop?

Full Tilt Poker MiniFTOPS Event #12 $109 (antes from the start) No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t30/t60 Blinds + t7ante - 9 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: t5586
UTG+1: t6265
UTG+2: t7350
Hero (MP1): t5965
MP2: t3921
CO: t5477
BTN: t7879
SB: t3224
BB: t5149

Pre Flop: (t153) Hero is MP1 with J J

3 folds
Hero raises to t180
3 folds, SB calls t150
1 fold

Flop: (t483) 5 3 8 (2 players)

SB bets t540
cmitch ?????

What is your action?

a. Call. Why? Plan for rest of hand?
b. Fold. Why?
c. Raise. Why? How much? Plan for rest of hand?

I got a lot of good responses.

I really felt like the guy was on a draw or a pair and a draw. I was with the majority and decided to go ahead and raise around 3x his bet with the intention of calling a shove. He shoved and showed..........

QQ

I think Pokerfool must have been watching the hand since he put the guy on exactly QQ. :) - Maybe he should start playing a lot more mtts.

Heffmike had some pretty good arguments for flat calling, but in the end I think the result is the same. I like his thoughts on maximizing value.

"Devil's advocate here:

Maybe it's too weak/too smallball, but what's wrong with using position, flatting, and reevaluating on the turn?

I guess it's all about reads. Would he be smart enough to donk lead and bomb the pot with a big draw/hand here? If so, then he's jamming to your reraise and you're going to get it in for 50 BB flipping at best.

If he's a aggro muppet just trying to blow you off AK, because EVERYONE has AK when they raise preflop, why cut him off now by raising the flop? Let him hang himself on the turn when he whiffs and donks again with his club draw or 8x. Sure, you take the chance of letting him catch up, but maybe with this player that's not such a bad thing.

I just get the feeling that if you raise/shove this flop, he's never going to come correct with something you crush like TT/99, or spew with 98/77, but he'll have some donk two pair/trappy AA/KK/QQ/or Ac3c type of hand.

If we prefer to play JJ fast here, be prepared for a ton of variance."

I thought that this was an interesting hand because of my reads on the player. He seemed loose and frustrated, so I was willing to get all the money in the flop. I'm guessing that I might have played it a little different with no history on the player or if the player seemed really tight. I think that it could have gotten really interesting if he was twice as deep - would make it a tough decision between a flop call, raise/fold.

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments.

The SB had been playing a ton of hands. He hadn't won any significant pots in a while and seemed frustrated often making big bets into pots. Most of the time his big bets were met by folds, but I had seen him lead with a big bet and fold to a re-raise.

What do you do when he donk bets the flop?

Full Tilt Poker MiniFTOPS Event #12 $109 (antes from the start) No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t30/t60 Blinds + t7ante - 9 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: t5586
UTG+1: t6265
UTG+2: t7350
Hero (MP1): t5965
MP2: t3921
CO: t5477
BTN: t7879
SB: t3224
BB: t5149

Pre Flop: (t153) Hero is MP1 with J J

3 folds
Hero raises to t180
3 folds, SB calls t150
1 fold

Flop: (t483) 5 3 8 (2 players)

SB bets t540
cmitch ?????

What is your action?

a. Call. Why? Plan for rest of hand?
b. Fold. Why?
c. Raise. Why? How much? Plan for rest of hand?

The home low limit cash game the other night turned out to be a lot of fun. I got to see a few people that I haven't seen in ages, drink some beer and splash around some chips. I played a ton of hands and ran pretty good. We played $0.25/$0.50 NL with a $50 buy-in. I walked away +$80 (after buying beer.)

We were using multi-color poker chips without denominations, so Steve printed a list of how much each chip was worth and posted it on the wall. The denominations were so confusing that it took about 2 hour before I finally stopped referencing his list.

CrackinAA
I won a big pot pretty early. I was the big blind. It folded to Steve in the sb and he raised to $3. Since I was playing almost every hand, I decided to call with 3c4c. The flop came 256. Steve bet $7. I called. The turn was a 9. Steve bet $12. I shoved. He called with AA.

2 outer ftw
About 10 mins later Dave raised to $3 in mp. One person called. I made it $9 otb with AA. Dave called. Everyone else folded. The flop was Q99. Dave checked. I bet $14. He shoved. I called. Dave had QQ. I was drawing pretty slim until the Ace hit the turn. Yikes!!

We started out 9 handed and lost a couple of people after about 2 ½ hours. We lost 2 more people about 1 ½ later and wound up playing 5 handed for a while which made things a lot more interesting.

Overall I had a great time getting together for some poker and beer. I think (and hope) it is going to become a once a month thing.

I am going to a home cash game tonight. Usually, I get excited about a home game when there are fish with money, but tonight there are different reasons. We are playing a very low limit cash game ($50 max buy-in I think), but it should be a little like a time warp to 2003-2005. One of the regulars from our old Wednesday night game is trying to put together a semi-regular game (once a month or so) in his new game room above his garage. A few (maybe 4-5) of the regulars from the Wed game should be there tonight - maybe even a couple that I haven't seen in years.

My original connection with the old regular Wed night game was due to random luck. My wife and I were in the UB Aruba check-in line in 2003. We started talking to the two guys in line directly behind us. They were both from Orlando also. One of them had won the Aruba package online and his friend was lucky enough to come along for the ride. I don't remember how, but we wound up meeting a couple more people that were also from Orlando later in the trip. I doubt there were more than a handful of people there from Orlando and we randomly had met 4 of them. We all exchanged numbers and email addresses when it was time to head back to the real world.

Fast forward to a month or so later - I got a call from one of the guys that we met asking if I was interested in coming to a home game. It started much like most home games - we shoved the dining room table and the kitchen table together and played $20-$40 sngs. There was even a ramp (part of a pizza box) between the tables since they were different heights. The game gradually grew with real tables, dealers, tourney clocks, and of course rake. It was no longer our "home game." It was now called Orlando-UPC. The sngs turned into 2 table sngs and ranged from $80 - $250 on Wed and Sunday. I tried to make it every Wed night and always had a great time.

My visits to the game became few and far between after our son was born in Sept 2005. Loopy (the originator of this blog that has stopped posting) even wrote a trip report in 2005 after our first time back months.

I rarely made it to the game over the next several years and it gradually morphed into something different. It was moved from it's original location to a guy's house near downtown. The games got bigger and there was even a bouncer from one of the downtown night clubs there for security. The original regulars gradually stopped coming to the game as often (for a variety of reasons) and were replaced with new regulars. I remember heading to the game a year or so ago and knew only 3-5 people of the 20 or so that were there.

Orlando-UPC closed it's doors sometime last year shortly after the guy that ran the game got married. They had a pretty good 5 year run.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of the old faces tonight. There should be plenty of beer flowing and chips flying.

I googled my screen name the other day and came across the usual stuff - blogger game hands, hands people post that didn't involve me but I was at the table, a random suckout, other blogs that link to mine, etc, etc.

A few pages in I stumbled across the following post I made on a poker forum way back on 7/16/03:

"I have been playing on Poker Stars for a while now. I just signed up for Ultimate Bet. I've only played a few hours so far, but it seems like UB is not as user friendly as PS. Maybe I'm missing something or haven't found all the features yet. Maybe you guys can help.

UB - Is there any way to view other tables in a tourney? Is there a way to make notes on players (other than my own pad and paper)? Is there a place where you can see the chips that each player has during a tourney?

Thanks for your help. I guess I might be spoiled by the features (or familiarity with) at Pokerstars."

I laughed on some many levels:

- It was over six freaking years ago. I had been playing since probably the end of football season - Jan 2003 (a few months prior to Moneymaker). I can't believe that I have been playing online almost 7 years.

- UB's early tourney lobby really sucked.

- Shortly after that post, UB became my favorite site and I rarely played anywhere else until FTP came on the scene. It could have something to do with me winning an Aruba package about 1 or 2 weeks after I made that post (It may have even been a couple of weeks before that post). I remember having no real clue about how to play tourneys when I won my Aruba package. I played my cards, my draws, and remember constantly asking myself "Will/can he call if I raise all in here." (Myabe that was my first clueless exposure to hand reading)

- Wow, how the mighty have fallen. UB lost their original market share and failed miserably to capitalize on their early entry into the online poker world long before anyone even knew the term "superuser" The main reason was piss poor management and customer service. They started having weekly and sometimes daily crashes and were horrible at sorting things out.

- I miss the early UB/online poker days. I don't miss UB, but I miss the "friendly" feel the site had back then. You were playing against the same people all the time and most of the regulars knew each other and chatted during tourneys. I enjoyed watching final tables because at least 2 or 3 of my online "friends" were at most final tables. Jack asses and abusive chat were few and far between.

- I miss the small field medium buy-in tourneys that ran regularly. My decision to play a tourney or not back then was sometimes based on whether or not it was going to be over 100 players. Between 50-99 players they paid 10 spots and 100-200, they paid 20 spots. I regularly played the $50 - $100 75-150 player tourneys during week day peak hours (8PM EST - 10 PM EST)

- I think a MBA class could use the online poker early years through the initial launch of FTP as a great study in online business launches in the early years. It would and interesting study of what was done right and wrong and how that translated into the poker site's current revenues.

Wow, this turned into a rambling post that could have probably been summed up as, "I'm old and I miss the early years of online poker even before I found Party Poker.:

WCOOP starts tomorrow and the Mini-FTOPS is right around the corner. I haven't played many tourneys lately, but will probably play a couple WCOOP events and several Mini-FTOPS events.

The WCOOP schedule sucks during the week for anyone with a job (me) and sucks on the weekend for those with families (me again - I rarely play when the kids are awake on the weekends). They do have a few 8 PM EST events that I may try to play.

On the other hand, it seems like the Mini-FTOPS is geared towards the working man with a ton of 9 PM EST tourneys. I will probably several of these not only because of the time, but because you can buy into any of the the events with FTP points. I currently have around 100k ftp points and will probably use most of them during the Mini-FTOPS.

Right now I am considering playing the following events:

WCOOP

Event #5 - $109 8 Game $50k Guarantee (Fri 8 PM) - I feel comfortable playing all these games and am probably weakest in the stud and stud h/l. I should have an edge in the LHE rounds because there are a ton of NLHE players that don't have a clue about all the nuances of LHE. I haven't played triple draw in a while, but played it occasionally way back in the day when UB first starting spreading it (5 yrs ago?).

Event #8 $215 LHE $400k (Sat 4:30 PM) - I would really like to play this but it is during the day on the weekend and it is also on the first day of college football, so it is probably a no go.

Event #23 $320 NLHE (10 min lvls) (Next Fri 9/11 8 PM) - I will probably play this one if I satellite in.

Mini-FTOPS

Event #1 - $22 NLHE $200k guarantee (4,400 ftp points)
Event #3 - $22 O8 $30k guarantee (4,400 ftp points)
Event #12 - $109 NLHE antes from start $250k guarantee (21,800 ftp points)
Event #14 - $55 HORSE $50k guarantee (11,000 ftp points)
Event #15 - $22 NLHE turbo 6 max $100k guarantee (4,400 ftp points)
Event #17 - $33 NLHE 6 max rebuy $200k guarantee (6,600 ftp points)
Event #19 - $22 LHE 6 max $50k guarantee (4,400 ftp points)
Event #21 - $33 RAZZ $25k guarantee (6,600 ftp points)

I'll try to post some interesting hands/tough decisions.