O-Poker

Since I haven't been up for posting much poker content lately, I thought I would share a video that had me LMFAO.

Party Hard. Life is short. You never know when your ticket will be punched.

I haven't played too many MTTs lately and was wondering if the MP's shove over my short stack raise is a +EV shove. I'm curious (not because I lost the hand) because I have been in the same situation several times before in both MTTs and SNGs and am not sure where the cutoff line for hands would be.

Tourney - FTP $50/$50k - 12 players left
Me - 6 BBs after losing a decent size pot about 6 hands earlier (not to MP); I have been active, but not overly active. I don't think that I have shoved from SB to MP's BB or raised his BB very often since we hadn't been at the same table for very long.

MP - 15 BBs remaining. If he shoves and loses to me it leaves him with around 8.5 BBs.

CO - Has been playing fairly LAGgy with the big stack and has called some shoves with a fairly wide range of hands. I would say he is calling MP's shove with any pair/ATo+/AXs.

SB/BB - would both have a very tight range for calling his shove.

So, the question is - Is MP's shove a +EV shove considering he is probably sitting around 6th or 7th with 12 players remaining? (payouts for 10-12 is $720; 9th - $923; 1st - $11k; 2nd $7k; 3rd - $4.8k; etc)

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold'em Tournament, 5,000/10,000 Blinds, 1,000 Ante, 6 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter


MP: 149,371
CO: 453,614
BTN: 24,813
SB: 343,550
BB: 155,638
Hero (UTG): 60,306

Pre-Flop: (21,000) A 6 dealt to Hero (UTG)

Hero raises to 59,306 and is All-In, MP raises to 148,371 and is All-In, 4 folds

Flop: (139,612) 4 5 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: (139,612) 6 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (139,612) K (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 139,612 Pot

MP showed T K (a flush, King high) and WON 139,612 (+79,306 NET)
Hero showed A 6 (a pair of Sixes) and LOST (-60,306 NET)

GO GATORS!!

I got a little nervous, but book another National Championship for the GATORS!!!!!!!

Sometimes I go on auto-pilot (multi-tabling while watching TV, etc) amd I forget one of the most basic things in poker that I should be asking myself every time I play:

What am I hoping to accomplish with my bet/call/fold in this particular hand? What do I think will be the results of my action? What is my plan if the results are different than I expect?

Sounds simple enough, but it seems that I sometimes forget to ask myself those basic questions before I act. I could go into further detail, but it varies so much depending on the situation. The important thing is to have a plan for each hand with a detailed reasoning that makes sense.

I was going to do a long post about poker goals for the New Year, but decided to keep it simple and to the point.

Online
1. Blog more (with poker content and analysis)
2. Always play my best poker ("A" game) no matter what game I'm playing.
3. Spend more time reviewing my sessions.
4. Watch more training videos (and really pay attention while I'm watching)
5. Read hand histories/strategy posts on forums and post difficult decisions.
6. Play more blogger tourneys. They are always fun.
7. Make Supernova on Pokerstars by the end of April

Live
1. Try to make it out to the WSOP this year (either for ME or prelims). This might be a little difficult finding the time with the new business, but I'm going to try to make it happen.
2. I'll have to figure out more live goals as the year goes on and I see how busy I will be with work.

Not too comprehensive right now, but I'm not sure how much work will get in the way. I'll probably set some more specific mini-goals in the near future.

Fire destroyed Vinnay's friend's house on Christmas. He lost everything. To make matters worse, he was laid off from a long time job 2 weeks ago.

Even just a small donation will help. Go to the blog that Vinnay put together at HelpJeffOut and make a donation.

From Vinnay's blog:

"A friend of mine, Jeff, has had an unfortunate Christmas. His home was destroyed by a fire on christmas morning and declared a total loss. Fortunately, he was not home at the time and no one was hurt, but he did lose his cat Maurice, along with all of his possessions. The fire was started in his tenants apartment, and quickly spread throughout the house. To make matters worse, he was just laid off from his long time manufacturing job.

Jeff is a home game poker player, and reader of many of your blogs. He is a RPG'er, and beer drinker. He is a hard-working fucker who has battled dyslexia his whole life. He's a toker, and he only has one ball. He's a flyers fan (I guess I can forgive him for that). He's one of the most generous people I know. And he needs some help.

We have set up a site to help raise some money for him to help get him back on his feet. If you can give that would be great, but please do me a favor and link up the site for me.

http://helpjeffout.blogspot.com"

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Dolphins going from worst to AFC East Champs!!! Go Phins!!!!



oh yeah and GO GATORS!!!

I was on the lucky side of this hand in a limit holdem blind battle last night. (It still counts even though I only used 1 of my whole cards.)

It looks like pokerstars is in beta testing with a pin number (input by clicking on numbers with the mouse) and a RSA security token (a USB key that has to be attached to your computer to play). Pretty Awesome!!!

This is great news and should dramatically reduce the amount of hacking. Hopefully, FTP will follow suit or is currently working on similar security.

It looks like you will have the option of using the pin or the rsa token, so it probably won't cause a wait for new or casual users.

One of the beta testers has posted his initial thoughts in a 2+2 thread (link to thread).

Quote from the thread:

"FWIW I first thought the PIN would be useless. Then when I tried it and realized the numbers are in a different order each time, I changed my mind... this is total protection from keyloggers as long as your email password is secure (and you don't type it... I realize some people do, such as those who use webmail accounts rather than pop3).

Anyone that can get at your email can still get your PIN no problem if they have your password. But as long as your email password is different from your pokerstars password, this does protect you from all kinda of Phishing... plus if you use the same password for Stars as you do for something else and that password database is poorly protected or just a straight-out scam, this would save you.

I know a few people who went to 'poker forums' linked to via AIM chat with hackers... they then promptly created accounts, with the same username/password they use for stars, giving the hacker their login info. This would stop that, as well as a few other things.

I'm going to be a RSA Token user myself, but we'll have to wait a bit longer for that."

I posted some goals for Nov 19 - Dec 31 on Nov 19th. It mostly focused around limit holdem. I was feeling good about the game and after a really good run (around $1.60/hand over 10k+ hands), I felt like it was the game for me. Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe, it is just running bad (with a little bit of tilt mixed back in). I'm not sure. I'm still up at LHE but have given back around 2/3rds of what I won. It isn't fun and I'm thinking that I was just running extremely well at the beginning. The downswings in limit can be brutal, depsite the fact that it is LIMIT.

The good news is I turned a lot of my pokerstars FPPs into cash and am on the positive side of the MTTs.

So, I'm giving up the goals I set. I'm not really sure why I ever set number of hands type goals. I think it forces me to play when I normally wouldn't.

I'm not off track, but feel like I need to get back on track. (Not sure if that makes sense, but I am always hard on myself when I feel like I am playing below my capabilities.) I have taken quite a big break from NLHE and I think I am missing it. I'll probably screw around with some tourneys and cash games over the next few days before deciding where to focus next.

GL and GO GATORS!!!

It was a small field, but it had a very nice overlay.

I was scanning the tourneys on pokerstars and saw that the $109 HORSE tourney with a $5k guarantee only had 25 people registered and was about to start. I decided to give it a shot and wound up winning the thing 3 1/2 hours later.

It was $2,250 for 1st thanks to the $1,800 overlay. Weeeeee!!!!

I wound up winning it heads up because my opponent didn't seem comfortable with heads up LHE. He was using his entire time bank on every street eagerly hoping the O8 round would get there. All the while I was eating away at his stack and finished him off in the 2nd hand of O8.

(my sn on ps is sportingimag)

I'll make this a quick update since I've got a busy day in front of me.

Goal Update (11/19 - 12/31)

1. Play 30k hands of LHE

I ran pretty bad since the last update. I am sitting at -$1,200 over almost 6k hands. The biggest losses came from a couple of bad 30/60 LHE sessions where I mainly had 2nd best hands and lost one big pot (capped on every street except river) to a guy chasing a flush and hitting vs. my set.

I'll probably stick with 5/10 and 10/20 for a little while and see how things go.

2. Play my PCA step tickets

I have played several step tourneys and am down to one Step 2 ticket and one Step 3 ticket.

3. Make an attempt to play at least one PCA super sat.

I haven't play one yet. I am going to try to satellite into the $650 sat on Sunday. (last shot for me)

4. Play at least 15 MTTs and maintain a positive ROI.

I think I played 1 or 2 and didn't cash in either. I'll check before the next update.

Good News

The last week wasn't all bad. I was able to turn around 40k pokerstar FPPs into around $2k by playing the 5,400 FPP Sunday Million sats. I then used the T$ to play the double or nothing sngs.

I finally made the time to play one of the BoDonkey tourneys last night. I had a blast.

I don't know everyone's screen name at Bodog yet, so it took a few orbits before I realized Waffles was at my table. Rizen was also at the table (two to my left), so I was looking forward to shoving atc against him to try to suckout for the bounty. Unfortunately, he had a family emergency and wasn't able to make the tourney. (Hopefully, all is well.)

Shortly after I realized who waffles was, I wound up busting him when we got all in on a 9 high flop with my K9 vs. his gutshot which turned into a open ended flush straight and flush draw on the turn. Luckily for me, he didn't hit one of his 28 outs (his calculation) and I busted him out. The bustout came five days late, since he had a bounty on him last Thursday.

It was good to see a few faces, (errr, screen names) that I haven't played with in a while. Unfortunately, I got knocked out by one of them, TripJax, when we got all in preflop with my QQ vs. his AK for the chip lead. Ace on the flop and GG me.

I had a blast playing blogger poker and plan to try and play again next week (not sure if there is a tourney tomorrow night).