Archive for January, 2010

I was really blown away by The Onion’s tribute to Salinger. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen in their pages, and that’s saying something. Not only is the irony spot-on, but they mimic his writing style brilliantly as well:

In this big dramatic production that didn’t do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud.

On a more serious note, the New York Times also ran a very nice tribute:

Nearly everybody loves “The Catcher in the Rye,” and most readers enjoy Mr. Salinger’s first collection of short stories, “Nine Stories.” But the work that followed, the four long short stories paired together in two successive books as “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction,” were less reader-friendly and provoked more critical comment, leading eventually to the retreat of the wounded author into solitude.

This was as much the consequence of critical failure as of authorial arrogance. These books challenged conventional notions of fiction and conventional ways of reading as radically as the kind of novels that would later be called post-modernist, and a lot of critics didn’t “get it.” The saga of the Glass family is stylistically the antithesis of “Catcher” — highly literary, full of rhetorical tropes, narrative devices and asides to the reader — but there is also continuity between them.  Read the complete post...

Sadly this guy quit me immediately after this hand, it was worth it though:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $20.00 BB (2 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($3284.50)
SB ($6929.50)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A, 10
SB bets $40, Hero raises to $160, SB calls $120

Flop: ($320) 7, 10, K (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets $160, Hero calls $160

Turn: ($640) A (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

River: ($640) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets $200, Hero raises to $999, SB calls $799

Total pot: $2638 | Rake: $0.50

Results:
SB had J, A (one pair, Aces).
Hero had A, 10 (two pair, Aces and tens).
Outcome: Hero won $2637.50

I believe I’m generally pretty good about not tilting, but for whatever reason some stuff was getting under my skin the other night. I felt like I’d been losing a lot of pots to bad luck, and though it’s hard for me to keep accurate track of how I’m doing across several tables over several hours, I felt like I was probably down a few buy-ins. What put me over the edge were these next two hands. They were played against the same player, in the same orbit, and I think they illustrate that I was already playing sub-optimally:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP ($985)
CO ($1946.25)
Button ($1000)
SB ($1142.55)
BB ($1154)
Hero (UTG) ($2331.75)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Q, Q
Hero bets $40, 3 folds, SB raises to $88, 1 fold, Hero calls $48

Flop: ($186) 2, 9, 8 (2 players)
SB bets $58, Hero raises to $143, SB raises to $306, Hero calls $163

Turn: ($798) J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($798) 9 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $222, SB calls $222

Total pot: $1242 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had A, A (two pair, Aces and nines).
Hero had Q, Q (two pair, Queens and nines).
Outcome: SB won $1239  Read the complete post...

Michael Craig’s The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King takes readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of (at the time) the highest stakes poker game ever played. In search of a new challenge, banking prodigy Andy Beal challenges the best poker players in the world to play for stakes so high that millions of dollars change hands in a session and even these seasoned veterans can barely handle the swings.

As a poker player, I found PBSK fascinating for a number of reasons. For one thing, there were a lot of little details about Bobby’s Room (the high-stakes section of the Bellagio poker room, named for Bobby Baldwin) and the people who play there that I didn’t know. Craig writes for a broad audience, but even as someone who is relatively in-the-know about the poker world, I came away with a much better sense of the culture and traditions of that game. There were even a few regulars I hadn’t heard of, which I suppose is in itself a statement about the nature of the game.

Title notwithstanding, the book’s truly central characters are Beal and Doyle Brunson, not Beal and Howard Lederer. Craig chronicles the two men’s parallel struggles, Brunson’s to herd a team of notoriously stubborn and independent poker players into a functioning team with a 10-figure bankroll, and Beal’s to find an edge against the game’s greatest.  Read the complete post...

Full Tilt Poker recently introduced some new small stakes tables in a format they call “Rush Poker”:

Available exclusively at Full Tilt Poker, Rush Poker* is the ultimate high-speed poker experience.

This new poker format is designed to minimize your wait time between hands and keep you in the action. You’ll join a large player pool and face a different table of opponents every hand you play. When you fold your hand, you’ll be rushed to another table for a new hand right away.

To play even faster, use the Quick Fold button to move to a new table for the next hand immediately.

The basic idea is that you always have a hand to play. The second you decide you want to fold, you are instantly assigned to a random new table, with new opponents, and have a new hand to play.

In my opinion, this is a fantastic idea and a great example of allowing online poker to be its own game rather than just a derivative of live poker. No one enjoys sitting and waiting for others to finish playing a hand so that the next one can be dealt, and now you don’t have to. Just because this is a necessity in a live setting doesn’t mean sites like FTP can’t take advantage of the magic of the interwebs to provide a better (or at least different) experience.  Read the complete post...

When starting a session last night, I noticed that there were two 40/80 games going with several players whose names I did recognize. That’s usually a good sign, so I snatched up the last open seat at each and played a few hands while googling the unfamiliar screen names.

It turns out I didn’t recognize these guys because they are regulars in games so big I don’t even keep an eye on them to see if they’re ever worth playing. One guy was described as a “regular” at 300/600, which doesn’t even run regularly, so I’m not sure whether one can really be called a regular in them. In any event, I decided these weren’t actually games I wanted to play in.

In the meantime, though, I picked up some cards and won some big pots, including this one:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $80.00 BB (5 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB ($13765.10)
Hero (BB) ($8080)
UTG ($14597)
MP ($19746.50)
Button ($17475)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A, A
UTG bets $240, 3 folds, Hero raises to $820, UTG calls $580

Flop: ($1680) 10, 10, 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $1212, UTG calls $1212

Turn: ($4104) A (2 players)
Hero bets $2468, UTG calls $2468

River: ($9040) 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $3580 (All-In), 1 fold  Read the complete post...

Truthfully, I don’t think I played this very well, but the results are pretty cool!

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (6 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($1209)
MP ($1027)
Hero (CO) ($1302)
Button ($1490.75)
SB ($2925)
BB ($1748)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 6, A
UTG bets $35, MP calls $35, Hero calls $35, Button calls $35, 2 folds

Flop: ($155) 2, 9, 8 (4 players)
UTG bets $95, 1 fold, Hero calls $95, Button calls $95

Turn: ($440) 4 (3 players)
UTG bets $240, Hero raises to $1172 (All-In), Button calls $1172, UTG calls $839 (All-In)

River: ($3863) 5 (3 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $3863 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had 9, J (flush, Jack high).
UTG had J, 10 (high card, Jack).
Hero had 6, A (flush, Ace high).
Outcome: Hero won $3860

I had the pleasure of playing with Liv Boeree in the 2008 WSOP, spent basically an entire day sitting on her immediate left. Poker media are generally pretty quick to promote anyone who can handle chips and has two X-chromosomes as both ravishing and a competent card player, and it’s a nice change of pace to meet a woman who actually fits the bill. She was certainly easier on the eyes than most of the greasy, overweight slobs I find myself staring down (and yes, I’m aware that I could fairly be described as a greasy, overweight slob myself- thanks for pointing it out, though).

That said, I don’t think this Maxim spread is particularly flattering to her. I bet you’ll look anyway though. Just be warned- I chose a pretty tame one for the blog, but obviously some of the pictures are Not Suitable For Work. Oh, and thanks to Wicked Chops Poker for first bringing my attention to Liv Boeree’s photos. If you weren’t satisfied with these pictures, they’ve got quite a few more of other women, most of whom have no connection whatsoever to poker. You’re welcome.