What a @#$% Day

Ugh, spent 8 hours playing today, and just about everything that could possibly go wrong did. Set under set in the Stars $300, K8< A8 on an 88J flop in the FTP $300, flopped nut flush loses to set in the PLO UBOC event, AT< A8 after AK< KK in the NLHE UBOC event, I lost a ton of big draw vs. strong pair confrontations (on both sides of the equation) at cash, etc etc etc. The only thing that prevented it from being my worst day ever was finding a known fish sitting alone at a 25/50 HU table. He never bought in full, but at those stakes, stacking a guy several times for 25 BB's adds up pretty quick. Sorry for the whine. … Read full post

UBOC Event 1

The Ultimate Bet Online Championship commenced last night with a $200 6-max tournament. The great structure and the 6-max format meant there was a lot of room for post-flop maneuvering, and I felt I played very well for most of the tournament. We started with a little over 600 players, … Read full post

Restuarant Review: FIX

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about FIX, but my opinion after dining there last night is that it’s overrated and overpriced. I’m not generally particularly snobby about food or demanding about service, and though I like to eat out, I don’t go to expensive restaurants very often. … Read full post

Book Review: Pot Limit Omaha

Chris Ferguson’s introduction to the game of Pot Limit Omaha is strongly grounded in mathematics and game theory, just what you’d expect from the computer science PhD. It’s a little light on tournament theory for a chapter in a tournament strategy guide, but it does a very good job of … Read full post

PLO Bluff

I make a lot of continuation bets in PLO, but other than that, it can be tricky to pull off a bluff. The biggest mistake most players make is overvaluing hands that are strong in Hold ‘Em but marginal in Omaha, so once they call one street, they usually don’t … Read full post

Book Review: Omaha Eight or Better

Unlike most of the other chapters that the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition dedicates to games other than No Limit Hold ‘Em, Mike Matusow’s “Omaha Eight or Better” really is dedicated to tournament strategy rather than to the fundamentals of the game. Unfortunately, I ultimately found his few … Read full post

10/20 Live at the Bellagio

I played this for a few hours last night, thinking the games would be softer than usual because of the current Five Diamond series they are running. Wrong. Almost everyone in the game was a regular, and although I was still one of the best players at the table, there … Read full post

Book Review: Limit Hold ‘Em

I might as well disclose up front that I am not very good at or knowledgeable about fixed limit hold ’em. In some ways, that makes me unqualified to review a text on the subject, but it also plants me squarely within the target audience of Howard Lederer’s contribution to … Read full post

I Can’t Believe I Got Away With This

Sorry I don’t have an exact hand history, as this came from a heads up match on UB, which doesn’t write HH files to your hard drive, and on a computer without Poker Tracker. I was playing against an aggressive but not great player, and we had a history of … Read full post

Book Review: Read ‘Em and Reap

Although retired FBI Special Agent Joe Navarro is the primary author of this book, the largest name on the cover is that of Phil Hellmuth. This establishes the tone of the entire book, whose very valuable core content is surrounded by an equal amount of fluff, hero worship, and self-promotion.… Read full post

$1500 Bellagio Prelim

Man I hate live poker tournaments. Only the biggest buy-in events have a reasonable structure, such that even when you’re playing for thousands of dollars, you don’t get a lot of room to play poker. But every now and again I tempted by them, because the atrocious play does kind … Read full post

Tricky Deep PLO Spot

Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
5 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
CO: $784.95
Button: $146.10
SB: $662.20
Foucault: $702.30
UTG: $397.40

Pre-flop: (5 players) Foucault is BB with :4s :2d :3s :5d
UTG raises to $12, CO calls, Button folds, SB calls Foucault calls.… Read full post

The Narrows

On Friday morning, we got the chance to explore the region of Zion called The Narrows that we had to pass on Sunday. As the name suggests, it’s a particularly narrow portion of the canyon that is both one of the most scenic and one of the most difficult to … Read full post

Thanksgiving in Utah

The plan for Thursday was to rise early, rent appropriate gear, and hike/wade Zion’s most famous region, The Narrows. Emily woke up not feeling particularly well, however, and so we nixed that and I got breakfast alone while she slept.
It was a crisp, quiet morning, and I enjoyed the
… Read full post

Angel’s Landing

I’m currently on vacation, spending Thanksgiving with my girlfriend in Utah’s Zion Canyon. Yesterday, we hiked a beautiful trail called Angel’s Landing. Though most of it was paved, it was still strenuous at times, as were ascending over 1000 feet in about two miles of horizontal distance.

We departed from … Read full post

FTOPS Main Event

The $500 NLHE Main Event was yet another in a long series “close but no cigar” FTOPS finishes for me. We started with quite deep stacks, and so I came out of the gate swinging:

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter… Read full post

My Cousin

There are a lot of things I like about living in Boston that I didn’t like about the area where I grew up in Maryland. But I do miss my family, which particularly on my father’s side is very close, and nothing kills me like my 10-year old cousin Hannah, … Read full post

Recent History

These hands were both against an absolutely atrocious player. The first one is pretty straightforward and solidified for me just how wide is range is going to be when he makes these stupid little 4-bets pre-flop:

Full Tilt Poker, $4/$8 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History … Read full post

FTOPS Event 11

I almost didn’t play the $500 HORSE FTOPS event last night because I was pretty tired, but generally the quality of play in these things is so bad, and the opportunity to play large-field, mixed-game tournaments so rare, that I didn’t want to pass it up. I had also forgotten … Read full post

FTOPS Event 10

Last night was the $300 rebuy with 6-handed tables, which is the FTOPS event in which I felt my edge would be largest. Though my finish wasn’t anything spectacular, I was quite happy with how I played. Here’s one kind of interesting hand:

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 80/160 … Read full post

New Frontier Implosion Las Vegas 11/07

The New Frontier was significant because it was the first of the ‘theme hotels’ that have become a Vegas staple.

My girlfriend was there in person and said there was like two inches of dust on the cars and sidewalk and everything in the vicinity and that the people nearby

… Read full post

FTOPS Event 9

This was a $200 PLO8 tournament, and needless to say there was some extraordinarily bad play to be seen. I ended up bubbling it, but you don’t care about that. Let’s look at some hands.

Coming Through the Back Door

Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Blinds: … Read full post

The Stork

These hands were all against StorkDelaMork. He’s a regular in the mid- to high stakes on FTP, pretty tight but also smart and capable of tricky play.

I Don’t Fold Sets

Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $3,374.50
UTG: $3,160.50… Read full post

FTOPS Event 8

Since I was away over the weekend, this was only the second FTOPS event I played. It was a $1000 NLHE tournament, and although I lasted about three hours, I really didn’t have any interesting hands come up. I ended up busting to this psychotic mouth-breather:

Full Tilt Poker, NL … Read full post

Friends and Fish

I spent the last few days in New Jersey and New York, visiting first a friend from high school who is now studying German literature at Princeton, then two friends from college who recently got engaged and are now living together in NYC, and finally having dinner at the home … Read full post

Home Game Redux

I’m in New York this weekend visiting my old friend and roommate Logan, and since two other players from the home game Logan ran for three years in Cambridge are also in NYC now, we were able to get a game going last night. We started out playing with $.50/$1 … Read full post

Musil Quotes

I’m currently reading Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities,” a gift from a friend of mine who is a student of German literature. It’s a very insightful and well-written book with a lot of humorous passages, though it’s a bit long-winded at times. Anyway, I recently came across a few … Read full post

An Easy Value Bet Many Players Miss

Sorry I don’t have the exact HH for this, but it was from early in a nightly $129 bounty tournament on Ultimate Bet. Effective stacks were about 3000, with blinds 15/30.

The UTG player opened with a pot-sized raise to 105. The action folded to me in the BB, and … Read full post

The Poker Film

I mentioned some time ago that Nat Arem was working on a documentary about a group of college students who had made a small fortune playing online poker. Well, the movie is finished now, and I’d suggest having a look. It’s broken into five parts, so you don’t have to … Read full post

FTOPS Event 1

Nothing exciting to report. It was a $200 tournament with 6 players to a table. My starting table was pretty soft but I never got anything going, despite a run of big starting hands. In the first hour I had Aces twice and Kings once but got no action with … Read full post

Charming Betsy

Full Tilt Poker blogger and editor (their book is pretty good, and addresses some subjects not covered by a lot of the poker literature) has an interesting piece on the applicability of international law to online gaming in the US. He mentions that superstar attorney Alan Dershowitz, representing BetOnSports, … Read full post

I Got Owned

During the early stages of my Sunday tournaments, I was also playing a few cash tables, and ended up getting into a very interesting heads up match. The other guy was a decent player, reasonably aggressive, and in it for the long haul. In many circumstances, I’d actually prefer to … Read full post

The Sunday I’ve Been Waiting For

After more than a year of playing all of the big Sunday internet poker tournaments, I finally won one of the @#$% things. There were 815 entrants in Ultimate Bet’s weekly $215 tournament, but they guarantee a $200K prizepool, so there was an overlay of about 20%. After just over … Read full post

Largest PLO8 Pot I’ve Played

Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Blinds: $3/$6
7 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $588
UTG+1: $1034.10
Hero: $531
CO: $276.10
Button: $405
SB: $193.50
BB: $770.30

Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is MP1 with :ad :7s :4s :jd
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls $6 … Read full post

UB Resizable Tables

Ultimate Bet has recently introduced resizable tables for their poker client, meaning that you can now treat them like any other window on your computer and adjust their dimensions to fit as many as you like on your computer screen. This will likely have the effect of making the games … Read full post

Stars $300

Wednesday is the only weekday when I play tournaments anymore. I like the $300 weekly on Poker Stars with 20-minute blind levels, and because I’ve found that tournaments and cash games don’t mix well, I play some of the other big nightly tournaments to round it out. I can’t really … Read full post

October

October was a solid month for me. Unfortunately, I’m still not putting in enough hours. I’m only playing about 25 hours/week. Overall this year, I’ve only played about 2/3 as much as I was hoping to play. Combined with some sustained bad luck in tournaments, this means that I’m only … Read full post

Several 3-Bet Pots Vs Same LAGtard

For those who don’t know, LAGtard refers to a player who is loose and aggressive to a fault. He’s often a reasonably smart and tricky opponent who just gets too fancy and ends up making some fundamental mistakes such as playing too many pots out of position or calling too … Read full post

Largest Stud/8 Pot I’ve Played

This kind of thing happens in Stud/8 sometimes: the pot goes multiway, and the players leading for each half of the pot keep jamming small edges but everyone else is priced in to keep calling along. The guy showing the Q is nuts to 3-bet 3rd with a K calling … Read full post

Kinda Sexy Stud/8 Calldown

Hand #12886186626
7 Card Stud *High-Low* ($5/$10), Ante $0.50

*3rd Street* – (0.80 SB)

JRod34: xx xx 5d___folds
foucault82: Jc Jd 3c
360CF: xx xx 8d___calls
KoolAidKills: xx xx 6h___folds
jcards911: xx xx 6s___calls
panther44: xx xx 4d___calls
MR WHOOOPS: xx xx Qd___folds
lajollan: xx xx Jh___folds

*4th Street* – … Read full post

Barry G on the Legalization of Internet Poker


Barry Greenstein has just launched a new website called Poker Road which looks pretty sweet. It features blogs by Barry himself, his son Joe Sebok, Kevin “BelowAbove” Saul, and others, plus regularly scheduled radio and TV shows, articles, and even a comic. The general tone seems to be fun and … Read full post

Fun Calls

Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 4 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $1,142
UTG: $1,241
BTN: $3,029.05
SB: $1,411

Pre-Flop: A Q dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG folds, BTN raises to $30, SB folds, Hero raises to $102, BTN calls $72

Flop: ($209) 2… Read full post

Rough Spot 200 BB’s Deep

Villain is a decent LAG but he does have trouble getting away from kinda strong hands when he should. I’ve got a pretty wild pre-flop image but have only shown down big hands when I play big pots. The guy in the middle is new to the table, don’t know … Read full post

I Just Don’t Believe 4-Bets Anymore

3-betting pre-flop has become very popular in the mid-stakes FTP cash games, in part because it’s tough to counteract with 100BB stacks. Recently, though (and I am part of this trend), people have started making smallish 4-bets leaving themselves room to fold to an all in. Particularly when you are … Read full post

Boston Debate League Tournament One

The first round of the first tournament of the Boston Debate League’s fourth season has just gotten underway. With about forty students competing, it is one of our largest events ever. Unfortunately, 90% of the debaters are from 50% of the schools in the League. While these schools are doing … Read full post

Absolute Poker Statement

As most of you probably know by now, there have been very credible allegations of cheating on a site called Absolute Poker. Many of the most reliable players in the highest stakes games online are taking these accusations seriously, and Nat Arem in particular has done some amazing investigative work … Read full post

An Instructive Final Table

On Thursday, I won this little $100 PLHE tournament with 6-person tables that Poker Stars runs every afternoon. For some reason most NLHE players don’t play PLHE tournaments, so this always has small fields. There were 18 runners in this particular tournament, and 16 of them were awful. That’s par … Read full post