Poker content: marginal. But don't fret. Despite the fact that I've been on a personal poker run from hell for about the last six weeks, when I've had the odd moment to play, there's a couple of Haley specials on the way --- involved topics that I want to explore more fully.
In the meantime, however, a friend of mine forwarded me this link to a list of all-time great country-western song titles. Note that these are for real, not made up:
Here are a few of my faves from the list:
We Feed Our Babies Onions So We Can Find 'Em In The Dark
One Day When You Swing That Skillet (My Face Ain't Gonna Be There)
I Would Kiss You Through the Screendoor but It'd Strain Our Love
He Went To Sleep and The Hogs Ate Him (Now Claude's Gone Forever)
She Looks Good Through the Bottom of My Shot Glass
Your Negligee Has Turned To Flannel Nightgowns
Get Off The Stove, Grandma, You're Too Old To Ride The Range
I Fell for Her, She Fell for Him, and He Fell for Me
I Spent My Last Ten Dollars on Birth Control and Beer
and for the card players...
I Gave Her My Heart And A Diamond And She Clubbed Me With A Spade
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
My Favorite Poker-Blog Spammer Kook Hath Returned...
It was precisely a quarter of a year ago (cue ominous music here), that I received a strange, strange comment spam from schizophrenic party unknown. 6,500 words of weirdness, it was, nor was I the first among us pokery-heathen types to have been 
bestowed with this author's gift. I'd noticed it first on a Michalski post over at Pokerati, and Falstaff commented that he'd received not only the same original, but an even longer and kookier follow-up.
I've either received the follow-up that Falstaff or yet another screed from the same poker-mesmerized commenter; his style is, shall we say, unmistakable. I've also done a bit more searching around the web and has determined that this is an equal-opportunity spammer, who slaps and copies huge chunks of his various 'messages' into the comments sections of a broad assortment of entertainment and lifestyle blogs. He often signs his posts with such addresses as 90srevelrycyclejustifiedwithclintonlegacy @whychelseawasbeatenwithanuglystick.com, which is kinda funny, at that. Evidence within his posts suggest that's he middle-aged (50-ish?), may have a Jewish upbringing, and lives, generally speaking, in the California Bay Area.
In a way, it makes me glad I don't live in California, not that people like this don't exist elsewhere. After all, it's kooks like these that got the likes of Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback elected.
This latest bowel movement to pollute my inbox is just short of 26,000 words. No, I'm not gonna subject you to all of it, but I do think a quick top-ten list of passages is wholly called for. Actually, I could do ten top-ten lists from this stuff....
So without further ado, 'Ten Things That Some Lunatic Who Spams Poker Blogs Really Believes,' all lovely misspellings intact:
10) "They said there were like 100 Ronald Reagans spanning the length of his long career:::Hollywood, govenor of California then President of the United States. They say less than half are still alive today. I wonder if we set records with this individual."
9) "The optimal ascention senario is when parents depart Earth with their young children BEFORE their minds are posioned by this society. The next best-case senario is when an individual finds the path themself and makes their way out before puberty. Children who go up before puberty are candidates to remain the most superior of all life forms::The asexual. Expect these people to experience subsequent temptations once they arrive to further shrink the pool of candidates. Another example males are inferior to females:::Expect circumcision to play a part in this elimination round."
8) "Your virginity may buy you tens of thousands of years up there. So many of you homeschoolers recognize the cancer that is the public school system yet allow cable television into your home, defeating the purpose."
7) "Lassie was the clue::::The freely admitted there were multpiles, just as there are multiples of your favorite celebrities."
6) "Too many think they saved many during the Noah's Flood event. I suspect black people are very confused regarding their current state and I think this topic can shed light:::: These people living seaside on the Mediterranean during times of lower sea levels were slated for Termination. They were teetering on the brink for a long time. Expect that the gods offered clues prior to the event. If the gods wanted to save any of these people they would given them a second chance by sending them to higher ground. Count on very few being saved, and those whom were are the Ned Flanders rather than the Homer Simpsons."
5) "Yes, they ARE malicious and vindictive and yes, they WOULD beam a brain into a brain-less clone prior to a CAT scan:::
1. Had Hurricane Ivan DESTROY Grand Cayman (1999 vacation) and slice up through the middle of Alabama a mere six months after I was there for ONE full month.
2. Had Hurricane Wilma move up through the Caribbean and park on Cozumel (2002 vacation) for TWO FULL DAYS
3. Used Oakland A's to send a clue (dynasty, win only in crisis, chokers), and to deliver the desired message they inflicted the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 (FOR YEARS there have been very few blacks on this team).
4. Dog food poisoning 2007
5. E-coli spinach issue of 2006
6. Obviously, they love to be malicious and vindictive.
6. Hawaiian earthquake after Hawaiian jewelry store visit.
7. Hawaiian flooding 2006
8. Local flooding 2006, including Devil's Slide
9. Lake effect snow event of 2007 because I enjoyed the humor behind it
10. I often expressed I enjoy the dynamics/news coverage of hurricanes…
11. Six within the last year. There were a whole lot more in the years preceding.
12.
13.
14.
Or, more appropriately::::
111.
112.
113.
114.
And finally::::
115. The gods alter the script for the Apocalypse because I sprawled their plan all over the internet."
4) "It will ensure they can position out my rightful benefit package, immortality, entitling them to grant favor based on generosity instead. My seething hatred for those who violated me will ensure I will be beemed to the center of a star on year 10,001."
3) "3:15p. Fuck you god. Computer just went out. Had over a paragraph. I'm so sick of this CHEATING shit. You're all big boys. You raped the disfavored with boss just like you raped me to get boss. Take it like a man, immoral PIGS PIGS PIGS."
2) "The gods use these BLCloneHost tools in many ways. One way is in the context of dating. They will justify the abuse by instructing the computer to create golddigging thoughts. Of course with Italians this thought isn't artificial because so many are an affront. But as I personally know anyone involved with these people are in trouble, for computer-inspired thoughts often will be compensated, a foreboding reality for the people of the 20th century. They gods switch these tools for a new Brain-LessCloneHost and the computer pushes their date into perceiving a difference yet also pushes them into not caring or not wanting to see. The result is she ends up sleeping with multiple men."
1) "Poker/gambling web sites are all controlled by the computer. Other players in the room can be the computer, role playing virtually, stealing the disfavored's money in real time or, ironically, granting them a living by giving them free money, like we saw with Seabiscut. Other times the players are disfavored, granting them good cards so the disfavored player never has to get a job, ensuring he has no chance in this life and has to be reincarnated for he never achieves decency." [DAMMIT! I was gonna buy into this one until the 'Seabiscut' (sic) reference. Except it's donkeys, not racehorses.]
Well, true enough, the author of this is seriously in need of psychological help. Oh, wait, he's already rejected it:
"People who pursue psychoanalysis as a professtion are special, insigfhtful people who do have some depth. Sometime during their education or shortly thereafter they are told the truth, that their chosen profession is preditory, and to do the right thing means walking away from their educational investment. But it is either do this or initiate the clock, for if their stay in their profession their potential is limited."
Sadly, this guy is likely too far gone for psychoanalysis. But it doesn't mean it's not good reading, right? It reads like Redpill would, after about 20 years of forced daily LSD and forced Rev. Wildmon indoctrination.
Oh, no, it's starting::::to::::make::::sense::::to::::me after all. It's the colons; they're the clue. Each colon has two dots, and represents a deuce. I should play all hands with deuces and auto-push on 2-2. Deuces never looses!!!
bestowed with this author's gift. I'd noticed it first on a Michalski post over at Pokerati, and Falstaff commented that he'd received not only the same original, but an even longer and kookier follow-up.I've either received the follow-up that Falstaff or yet another screed from the same poker-mesmerized commenter; his style is, shall we say, unmistakable. I've also done a bit more searching around the web and has determined that this is an equal-opportunity spammer, who slaps and copies huge chunks of his various 'messages' into the comments sections of a broad assortment of entertainment and lifestyle blogs. He often signs his posts with such addresses as 90srevelrycyclejustifiedwithclintonlegacy @whychelseawasbeatenwithanuglystick.com, which is kinda funny, at that. Evidence within his posts suggest that's he middle-aged (50-ish?), may have a Jewish upbringing, and lives, generally speaking, in the California Bay Area.
In a way, it makes me glad I don't live in California, not that people like this don't exist elsewhere. After all, it's kooks like these that got the likes of Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback elected.
This latest bowel movement to pollute my inbox is just short of 26,000 words. No, I'm not gonna subject you to all of it, but I do think a quick top-ten list of passages is wholly called for. Actually, I could do ten top-ten lists from this stuff....
So without further ado, 'Ten Things That Some Lunatic Who Spams Poker Blogs Really Believes,' all lovely misspellings intact:
10) "They said there were like 100 Ronald Reagans spanning the length of his long career:::Hollywood, govenor of California then President of the United States. They say less than half are still alive today. I wonder if we set records with this individual."
9) "The optimal ascention senario is when parents depart Earth with their young children BEFORE their minds are posioned by this society. The next best-case senario is when an individual finds the path themself and makes their way out before puberty. Children who go up before puberty are candidates to remain the most superior of all life forms::The asexual. Expect these people to experience subsequent temptations once they arrive to further shrink the pool of candidates. Another example males are inferior to females:::Expect circumcision to play a part in this elimination round."
8) "Your virginity may buy you tens of thousands of years up there. So many of you homeschoolers recognize the cancer that is the public school system yet allow cable television into your home, defeating the purpose."
7) "Lassie was the clue::::The freely admitted there were multpiles, just as there are multiples of your favorite celebrities."
6) "Too many think they saved many during the Noah's Flood event. I suspect black people are very confused regarding their current state and I think this topic can shed light:::: These people living seaside on the Mediterranean during times of lower sea levels were slated for Termination. They were teetering on the brink for a long time. Expect that the gods offered clues prior to the event. If the gods wanted to save any of these people they would given them a second chance by sending them to higher ground. Count on very few being saved, and those whom were are the Ned Flanders rather than the Homer Simpsons."
5) "Yes, they ARE malicious and vindictive and yes, they WOULD beam a brain into a brain-less clone prior to a CAT scan:::
1. Had Hurricane Ivan DESTROY Grand Cayman (1999 vacation) and slice up through the middle of Alabama a mere six months after I was there for ONE full month.
2. Had Hurricane Wilma move up through the Caribbean and park on Cozumel (2002 vacation) for TWO FULL DAYS
3. Used Oakland A's to send a clue (dynasty, win only in crisis, chokers), and to deliver the desired message they inflicted the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 (FOR YEARS there have been very few blacks on this team).
4. Dog food poisoning 2007
5. E-coli spinach issue of 2006
6. Obviously, they love to be malicious and vindictive.
6. Hawaiian earthquake after Hawaiian jewelry store visit.
7. Hawaiian flooding 2006
8. Local flooding 2006, including Devil's Slide
9. Lake effect snow event of 2007 because I enjoyed the humor behind it
10. I often expressed I enjoy the dynamics/news coverage of hurricanes…
11. Six within the last year. There were a whole lot more in the years preceding.
12.
13.
14.
Or, more appropriately::::
111.
112.
113.
114.
And finally::::
115. The gods alter the script for the Apocalypse because I sprawled their plan all over the internet."
4) "It will ensure they can position out my rightful benefit package, immortality, entitling them to grant favor based on generosity instead. My seething hatred for those who violated me will ensure I will be beemed to the center of a star on year 10,001."
3) "3:15p. Fuck you god. Computer just went out. Had over a paragraph. I'm so sick of this CHEATING shit. You're all big boys. You raped the disfavored with boss just like you raped me to get boss. Take it like a man, immoral PIGS PIGS PIGS."
2) "The gods use these BLCloneHost tools in many ways. One way is in the context of dating. They will justify the abuse by instructing the computer to create golddigging thoughts. Of course with Italians this thought isn't artificial because so many are an affront. But as I personally know anyone involved with these people are in trouble, for computer-inspired thoughts often will be compensated, a foreboding reality for the people of the 20th century. They gods switch these tools for a new Brain-LessCloneHost and the computer pushes their date into perceiving a difference yet also pushes them into not caring or not wanting to see. The result is she ends up sleeping with multiple men."
1) "Poker/gambling web sites are all controlled by the computer. Other players in the room can be the computer, role playing virtually, stealing the disfavored's money in real time or, ironically, granting them a living by giving them free money, like we saw with Seabiscut. Other times the players are disfavored, granting them good cards so the disfavored player never has to get a job, ensuring he has no chance in this life and has to be reincarnated for he never achieves decency." [DAMMIT! I was gonna buy into this one until the 'Seabiscut' (sic) reference. Except it's donkeys, not racehorses.]
Well, true enough, the author of this is seriously in need of psychological help. Oh, wait, he's already rejected it:
"People who pursue psychoanalysis as a professtion are special, insigfhtful people who do have some depth. Sometime during their education or shortly thereafter they are told the truth, that their chosen profession is preditory, and to do the right thing means walking away from their educational investment. But it is either do this or initiate the clock, for if their stay in their profession their potential is limited."
Sadly, this guy is likely too far gone for psychoanalysis. But it doesn't mean it's not good reading, right? It reads like Redpill would, after about 20 years of forced daily LSD and forced Rev. Wildmon indoctrination.
Oh, no, it's starting::::to::::make::::sense::::to::::me after all. It's the colons; they're the clue. Each colon has two dots, and represents a deuce. I should play all hands with deuces and auto-push on 2-2. Deuces never looses!!!
Monday, August 20, 2007
Bodog Bloggeraments Coming Soon
Oh, yeah, I got the invitation, too, and if you're reading this, you're also invited. From my contact at Bodog marketing:
Bodog is pleased to announce it’s first ever Poker Blogger Tournament with added prize money courtesy of Bodog.
As a poker blogger, I am delighted to extend this invitation to you to play in this tournament, taking place starting on August 28, 2007.
Bodog is adding a total of $125 in bonus money to the tournament. If you are one of the last 5 players to be eliminated prior to being paid out by the standard payout structure, you will get your buy-in returned by way of a $10 bonus. If you finish 2nd in the tournament you will receive a $25 bonus. And if you finish first, Bodog will give you a $50 bonus.
This is a limited invitation-only tournament so the field will be comprised only of other bloggers and their readers. It’s Bodog’s way of saying thank you for acknowledging your contribution to the great game of poker.
The tournament will run weekly on Tuesday evenings and will require a password for entry that all invited bloggers can promote within their community.
Details of tournament:
Start date: Tuesday August 28, 2007
Tournament Name: “Online Poker Blogger Tournament” at Bodog
Entry Password: bodogblogger
Buy-in + fee: $10 + $1
Payout: Standard Bodog payout structure
Bonuses:
T$50 bonus paid to 1st place finisher.
T$25 bonus paid to 2nd place finisher.
T$10 bonus paid to the 5 players that are eliminated prior to payouts.
These bonuses will be awarded within 24hrs of the tournament completion.
T$ = Tournament Credits. These can be used as a buy in to almost all scheduled tournaments at Bodog and have a ratio to cash of 1:1.
T$ can also be combined with cash to buy in to tournaments.
Day of week: Tuesdays
Start time: 8:35pm ET
Bodog has committed to run this tournament every Tuesday through October 2nd. If participation warrant’s it, we’ll be able to keep it running and possibly increase the prizes and/or turn this into a poker league with an ongoing leader board!
If you haven’t played at the Bodog Poker Room before, please download and install the free software client at:
http://www.bodog.com/poker/download-poker.jsp
If you’re not yet a Bodog member, sign up for your free account by clicking the “Join Now” button in the Poker Room client.
Bodog is pleased to announce it’s first ever Poker Blogger Tournament with added prize money courtesy of Bodog.
As a poker blogger, I am delighted to extend this invitation to you to play in this tournament, taking place starting on August 28, 2007.
Bodog is adding a total of $125 in bonus money to the tournament. If you are one of the last 5 players to be eliminated prior to being paid out by the standard payout structure, you will get your buy-in returned by way of a $10 bonus. If you finish 2nd in the tournament you will receive a $25 bonus. And if you finish first, Bodog will give you a $50 bonus.This is a limited invitation-only tournament so the field will be comprised only of other bloggers and their readers. It’s Bodog’s way of saying thank you for acknowledging your contribution to the great game of poker.
The tournament will run weekly on Tuesday evenings and will require a password for entry that all invited bloggers can promote within their community.
Details of tournament:
Start date: Tuesday August 28, 2007
Tournament Name: “Online Poker Blogger Tournament” at Bodog
Entry Password: bodogblogger
Buy-in + fee: $10 + $1
Payout: Standard Bodog payout structure
Bonuses:
T$50 bonus paid to 1st place finisher.
T$25 bonus paid to 2nd place finisher.
T$10 bonus paid to the 5 players that are eliminated prior to payouts.
These bonuses will be awarded within 24hrs of the tournament completion.
T$ = Tournament Credits. These can be used as a buy in to almost all scheduled tournaments at Bodog and have a ratio to cash of 1:1.
T$ can also be combined with cash to buy in to tournaments.
Day of week: Tuesdays
Start time: 8:35pm ET
Bodog has committed to run this tournament every Tuesday through October 2nd. If participation warrant’s it, we’ll be able to keep it running and possibly increase the prizes and/or turn this into a poker league with an ongoing leader board!
If you haven’t played at the Bodog Poker Room before, please download and install the free software client at:
http://www.bodog.com/poker/download-poker.jsp
If you’re not yet a Bodog member, sign up for your free account by clicking the “Join Now” button in the Poker Room client.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Liquidity Issues
One of the things I'd like to do but am having difficulty with at the moment is moving some funds off poker.com and into another site; Poker.com seems to have discontinued their relationship with ePassporte, hence the bother.
It's the result of having all your success at one site over a short period, in a bit of variance within variance, if you know what I mean. It's beginning to be a bother, so if anyone can assist me with this --- you'd need to have an account both at poker.com and also at one of Stars/Bodog/Tilt --- give me a holler. If I don't know you well, you'll need to do the transfer first, but I will be adding in a few percent as a premium for whoever can help me out. And as most of my readers know, I'm a reasonably reputable sort.
It's the result of having all your success at one site over a short period, in a bit of variance within variance, if you know what I mean. It's beginning to be a bother, so if anyone can assist me with this --- you'd need to have an account both at poker.com and also at one of Stars/Bodog/Tilt --- give me a holler. If I don't know you well, you'll need to do the transfer first, but I will be adding in a few percent as a premium for whoever can help me out. And as most of my readers know, I'm a reasonably reputable sort.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The Zogman Game
"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness." --- Miller, from Repo Man
It was Tuesday, July 31st, and John Caldwell (a.k.a. Schecky) and I were swapping e-mails and Skype messages, as we do most days. John's the editor-in-chief of PokerNews.com, and, oh yeah, my boss. We were having a slow news day, a common malaise in the weeks immediately after the WSOP, and we were scrounging a bit for stories.
"What do you think of this one?" John asked, as he forwarded a release from the Heartland Poker Tour, detailing the rags-to-riches tale of Dan Zogman, the winner the day prior of the HPT event at Majestic Star over in Gary. The release stated that Zogman did something not quite Moneymaker-esque, if along the same lines, in running a $100 satellite seat all the way to the championship of the Majestic Star main event, worth some $228,000.
It being the aforementioned slow news day, I suggested we go for it, and I did the quick rewrite myself. I had to scrape a bit for details to flesh it out, in the process learning that Zogman was a resident of McHenry, IL, which is three suburbs north of Carpentersville, where I live. Which was also kinda cool, if hardly stunning: five of the six finalists in this HPT event came from the Chicago area. But to make a long story short, we got the story up for overnight, where it appeared on August 1st. I also sent off an e-mail contact late in the day to Byron Liggett, who was the press liaison for the HPT. Byron had sent the release over to John along with a photo, and just because a lot of photos don't work well in our system, I wondered what else he might have from the event. A couple of days later Byron sent over a couple of other photos, too. We ended up not being able to use them because of a technical hitch on our end, but it wasn't a big deal; the story was already aging a bit and it did have the HPT logo tied in when we first ran it, anyway.
Now, the segue:
Back in March or April, while doing some web surfing, I had encountered something called the McHenry Poker Club while searching through listings on a site called Meetup.com. One of the banes of my moving down here is that I was no longer in contact with a live poker game, as I had been (with several) up in Wisconsin, and while I hadn't been looking for any particular game, I'd definitely missed a live home game in general. That said, however, this McHenry Poker Club looked like it was a struggling entity at best, with between two and five people showing up for very occasional tournaments at a member's house.
It was about that time that my workload increased dramatically, with the WSOP looming. So I pretty much shelved any idle thoughts about learning more about the McHenry Poker Club that I had for a few months, while I took care of other business.
Funny, though, as on Thursday of last week, another message from that board popped into my inbox, saying that they were getting ready for another meet. So I thought about it, and finally typed out a message to the group saying I hoped to check them out in person and play, despite being an idle/new member, as soon as I could figure out a convenient time, since the dates they mentioned didn't work.
A few hours later, channeled through the same list, I get an e-mail from... Dan Zogman. He had also just been doing some web searching, I later found out, and also uncovered the McHenry Poker Club linkage and extended an open invitation of his own. In it, he said he knew of plenty of games in the immediate area and that new players were always welcome to show up.
So, since there was already three- or four-sigma synchronicity in play (and since I really was dying to find a live game that would fit my schedule), I e-mailed Zogman back. That was on Thursday, and I ended up being invited to his private game on Friday night the 10th, which drew 21 players (smaller than normal, for what I've been told), for both a fun NLHE tourney and a later cash game for the losers.
The poker itself isn't important, nor the stakes --- which as far as anyone is concerned, were for play money. Let's just say that I only played three pots of note in the tourney. In the first, I took down a sizable multi-way pot with a strong post-flop raise. The other two were against Dan himself. In the first, he had me in a flush-over-flush situation when we both had two clubs buried, and somehow, when he check-raised me on the turn (both of us having already made our flushes), I got away from my made hand. Then I found aces a few hands later and ended up in a pot against Dan again. In this hand, I pushed after the turn and was ahead of Dan's top pair/OESD with one card to come, but he rivered a five to make his straight and knock me out. I got my chips in with the best of it; the rest, as they say, is poker --- busted with honor, but busted nonetheless. As for Dan, a very likeable guy, whatever horseshoe he was riding was still intact, for he won the thing a few hours later. But as I said, this really wasn't about the poker.
Despite the small crowd, it was a bit of a circus atmosphere, with a news crew from the Northwest Herald there to take photos of Dan and his home game as well. Dan's got a basement decked out for poker, lemme tell ya. You'll see a glimpse of it and him by clicking here.
As for me, I'd checked my press badge at the door... almost.
When I arrived there, he and and his wife, Mary Jo Belcore-Zogman (who also plays, and plays very well) were checking out some of Dan's online press clippings from his HPT win. They happened to click on the PokerNews.com writeup while I was literally walking in the door and introducing myself to the early-arriving players, and after a couple of minutes of small talk I said to Dan and Mary Jo, "You know, there's one thing I'm curious about. The release said that you'd won your way in on a $100 satellite, but you had to win two or win a super-satellite, right?"
The reason is because HPT main event seats go for $4,000 or so, not counting the juice. Winning a $100 single-table sit-'n'-go isn't going to pay for that $4,000 seat, and it had been nagging at me, because I knew something in what had been sent to us was somehow incomplete or not quite fully explained. Not necessarily wrong, but goofy, somehow.
But Dan said, "Yeah, all the stories are wrong. I won a $450 to get in." He meant one of the regular satellites to the HPT main event, which were $400+50 to enter, not $100. And of course, all the stories would then be wrong, since they were all just rewrites --- or in the lazier cases, copy-and-pastes --- of the release that the HPT had sent out.
I asked Dan if he wanted me to fix it the following day. He wasn't concerned about it, so I didn't worry about it much more. Besides, I wasn't at his house as a reporter, even if I did make a mental note of the error; I figured I could write back to Byron Liggett (who had sent out the release) and see if he knew what was up; I'd never met Liggett but had corresponded with him just a couple of times in recent months.
Anyhow, after about seven hours of poker and one superb roast beef sandwich, I had finally exhausted my supply of play money. So I bid the night's late stragglers adieu, promised to return, and hopped in the car for the 35-minute drive back home. And I still had a little bit of work to do, though it was nearing 3:00 am. I wanted to get a story into the PN system for the overnight crowd, which my bosses like to see done, and by 4:00 am I had that already-edited story loaded in and available for public view.
I was overtired, but still not ready to sleep, so I jumped over to Bloglines to see what latest news and gossip was about. I also still had that nugget in my mind about the HPT story not being correct, when I stumbled across this post by flipchip on the LasVegasVegas.com blog. This was the first notice I'd seen that veteran poker writer Liggett, who I had just been about to contact, had passed away on Reno on Monday. And that was a wake-up slap at 4am, lemme tell ya; if it hadn't been for Liggett's HPT press release just a week before, I never would have heard the name Dan Zogman, whose house I had just spent the night at, playing cards. And about the mystery of the $450 buy-in, versus the $100 as stated in the release?
Meh. Some things just aren't that important, after all. I'm sure the HPT has other concerns at the moment, as does Liggett's family. My condolences, of course, though I barely had contact with the man. As for the wrong factoid in the release we ran, there was no way of knowing if Liggett even assembled the original information for the story... and if he was working from his home in Reno, then the answer would be very likely not, and he was just repackaging bad info that had been sent his way in the first place. Mary Jo wrote me later that they (she and Dan) hadn't met Liggett, again suggesting that Liggett wasn't at Majestic Star. Nor is this unusual. A lot of working media --- yours truly included --- do the majority of their work in a remote manner.
The HPT story as it initially ran was in error, I guess, but it's a story already losing its freshness. Zogman still won it, even if it wasn't quite as much a rags-to-riches tale as pitched. In the long run, no one will care how much Dan started with; it's the big payday on the end that's important. I quietly updated the detail in the story and don't plan on visiting it again.
But synchronicty? Oh, yeah, in spades. Sometimes life is just very spooky, know what I mean?
It was Tuesday, July 31st, and John Caldwell (a.k.a. Schecky) and I were swapping e-mails and Skype messages, as we do most days. John's the editor-in-chief of PokerNews.com, and, oh yeah, my boss. We were having a slow news day, a common malaise in the weeks immediately after the WSOP, and we were scrounging a bit for stories.
"What do you think of this one?" John asked, as he forwarded a release from the Heartland Poker Tour, detailing the rags-to-riches tale of Dan Zogman, the winner the day prior of the HPT event at Majestic Star over in Gary. The release stated that Zogman did something not quite Moneymaker-esque, if along the same lines, in running a $100 satellite seat all the way to the championship of the Majestic Star main event, worth some $228,000.
It being the aforementioned slow news day, I suggested we go for it, and I did the quick rewrite myself. I had to scrape a bit for details to flesh it out, in the process learning that Zogman was a resident of McHenry, IL, which is three suburbs north of Carpentersville, where I live. Which was also kinda cool, if hardly stunning: five of the six finalists in this HPT event came from the Chicago area. But to make a long story short, we got the story up for overnight, where it appeared on August 1st. I also sent off an e-mail contact late in the day to Byron Liggett, who was the press liaison for the HPT. Byron had sent the release over to John along with a photo, and just because a lot of photos don't work well in our system, I wondered what else he might have from the event. A couple of days later Byron sent over a couple of other photos, too. We ended up not being able to use them because of a technical hitch on our end, but it wasn't a big deal; the story was already aging a bit and it did have the HPT logo tied in when we first ran it, anyway.
Now, the segue:
Back in March or April, while doing some web surfing, I had encountered something called the McHenry Poker Club while searching through listings on a site called Meetup.com. One of the banes of my moving down here is that I was no longer in contact with a live poker game, as I had been (with several) up in Wisconsin, and while I hadn't been looking for any particular game, I'd definitely missed a live home game in general. That said, however, this McHenry Poker Club looked like it was a struggling entity at best, with between two and five people showing up for very occasional tournaments at a member's house.
It was about that time that my workload increased dramatically, with the WSOP looming. So I pretty much shelved any idle thoughts about learning more about the McHenry Poker Club that I had for a few months, while I took care of other business.
Funny, though, as on Thursday of last week, another message from that board popped into my inbox, saying that they were getting ready for another meet. So I thought about it, and finally typed out a message to the group saying I hoped to check them out in person and play, despite being an idle/new member, as soon as I could figure out a convenient time, since the dates they mentioned didn't work.
A few hours later, channeled through the same list, I get an e-mail from... Dan Zogman. He had also just been doing some web searching, I later found out, and also uncovered the McHenry Poker Club linkage and extended an open invitation of his own. In it, he said he knew of plenty of games in the immediate area and that new players were always welcome to show up.
So, since there was already three- or four-sigma synchronicity in play (and since I really was dying to find a live game that would fit my schedule), I e-mailed Zogman back. That was on Thursday, and I ended up being invited to his private game on Friday night the 10th, which drew 21 players (smaller than normal, for what I've been told), for both a fun NLHE tourney and a later cash game for the losers.
The poker itself isn't important, nor the stakes --- which as far as anyone is concerned, were for play money. Let's just say that I only played three pots of note in the tourney. In the first, I took down a sizable multi-way pot with a strong post-flop raise. The other two were against Dan himself. In the first, he had me in a flush-over-flush situation when we both had two clubs buried, and somehow, when he check-raised me on the turn (both of us having already made our flushes), I got away from my made hand. Then I found aces a few hands later and ended up in a pot against Dan again. In this hand, I pushed after the turn and was ahead of Dan's top pair/OESD with one card to come, but he rivered a five to make his straight and knock me out. I got my chips in with the best of it; the rest, as they say, is poker --- busted with honor, but busted nonetheless. As for Dan, a very likeable guy, whatever horseshoe he was riding was still intact, for he won the thing a few hours later. But as I said, this really wasn't about the poker.
Despite the small crowd, it was a bit of a circus atmosphere, with a news crew from the Northwest Herald there to take photos of Dan and his home game as well. Dan's got a basement decked out for poker, lemme tell ya. You'll see a glimpse of it and him by clicking here.
As for me, I'd checked my press badge at the door... almost.
When I arrived there, he and and his wife, Mary Jo Belcore-Zogman (who also plays, and plays very well) were checking out some of Dan's online press clippings from his HPT win. They happened to click on the PokerNews.com writeup while I was literally walking in the door and introducing myself to the early-arriving players, and after a couple of minutes of small talk I said to Dan and Mary Jo, "You know, there's one thing I'm curious about. The release said that you'd won your way in on a $100 satellite, but you had to win two or win a super-satellite, right?"
The reason is because HPT main event seats go for $4,000 or so, not counting the juice. Winning a $100 single-table sit-'n'-go isn't going to pay for that $4,000 seat, and it had been nagging at me, because I knew something in what had been sent to us was somehow incomplete or not quite fully explained. Not necessarily wrong, but goofy, somehow.
But Dan said, "Yeah, all the stories are wrong. I won a $450 to get in." He meant one of the regular satellites to the HPT main event, which were $400+50 to enter, not $100. And of course, all the stories would then be wrong, since they were all just rewrites --- or in the lazier cases, copy-and-pastes --- of the release that the HPT had sent out.
I asked Dan if he wanted me to fix it the following day. He wasn't concerned about it, so I didn't worry about it much more. Besides, I wasn't at his house as a reporter, even if I did make a mental note of the error; I figured I could write back to Byron Liggett (who had sent out the release) and see if he knew what was up; I'd never met Liggett but had corresponded with him just a couple of times in recent months.
Anyhow, after about seven hours of poker and one superb roast beef sandwich, I had finally exhausted my supply of play money. So I bid the night's late stragglers adieu, promised to return, and hopped in the car for the 35-minute drive back home. And I still had a little bit of work to do, though it was nearing 3:00 am. I wanted to get a story into the PN system for the overnight crowd, which my bosses like to see done, and by 4:00 am I had that already-edited story loaded in and available for public view.
I was overtired, but still not ready to sleep, so I jumped over to Bloglines to see what latest news and gossip was about. I also still had that nugget in my mind about the HPT story not being correct, when I stumbled across this post by flipchip on the LasVegasVegas.com blog. This was the first notice I'd seen that veteran poker writer Liggett, who I had just been about to contact, had passed away on Reno on Monday. And that was a wake-up slap at 4am, lemme tell ya; if it hadn't been for Liggett's HPT press release just a week before, I never would have heard the name Dan Zogman, whose house I had just spent the night at, playing cards. And about the mystery of the $450 buy-in, versus the $100 as stated in the release?
Meh. Some things just aren't that important, after all. I'm sure the HPT has other concerns at the moment, as does Liggett's family. My condolences, of course, though I barely had contact with the man. As for the wrong factoid in the release we ran, there was no way of knowing if Liggett even assembled the original information for the story... and if he was working from his home in Reno, then the answer would be very likely not, and he was just repackaging bad info that had been sent his way in the first place. Mary Jo wrote me later that they (she and Dan) hadn't met Liggett, again suggesting that Liggett wasn't at Majestic Star. Nor is this unusual. A lot of working media --- yours truly included --- do the majority of their work in a remote manner.
The HPT story as it initially ran was in error, I guess, but it's a story already losing its freshness. Zogman still won it, even if it wasn't quite as much a rags-to-riches tale as pitched. In the long run, no one will care how much Dan started with; it's the big payday on the end that's important. I quietly updated the detail in the story and don't plan on visiting it again.
But synchronicty? Oh, yeah, in spades. Sometimes life is just very spooky, know what I mean?
Thursday, August 09, 2007
More Live Poker, More Coolers :-D
Heh. Maybe the reason I prefer online is because I suck at live poker. Nahhh...
Wednesday found me scheduling a rare morning off for myself to drive down to Hollywood Casino in Aurora for another stab at their weekly $160. The tourney is a little too fast-paced (in terms of blinds) and a little too juice-heavy for me to want to make it a regular thing, but once in a while, I just want to take a shot. My first two tries had come up dry, though I'd made the top half of the field in each, with a legitimate shot at cashing each time.
After yesterday, color me oh-for-three. And what a way to go out... I've got this cooler thing down to a science.
We were inside of 30 players, with me probably in the top ten in chips, when, one hand after holding pocket kings and getting no action, I peeked under and found pocket queens. I had about 11,000 in chips (up from a start of 2,500), the blinds were 400/800 and about to jump. UTG limps, the next seat to my right pushes for another 1,000, or so, I make it 5,000 and intentionally pot-commit myself without shoving, just to try to create some confusion. Three folds from the seats to my left, and a guy across the way on the button shoves for another 4,000 or so. The small blind skedaddles, and the big blind looks absolutely pained before making the call, putting the total pot over 30,000. He's played some iffy stuff, too.
The UTG guy goes away, and even though I know my queens are beat, somewhere, I shove, because with the blinds only two seats away and ready to jump to 600/1,200, I don't have enough behind to leverage anyone anyhow. And there's a ton in the pot and I only have a few thousand more. Five kicks at a queen or some garbage straight are enough, I guesstimate, to get the last of my chips in. There's also just the slim chance --- maybe 5% --- that the two other stacks both have A-K suited or one of them has pocket jacks. Between that and the 6:1 or so I was getting on the original call, it was an easy shove.
But when the cards were turned over, was I behind? Oh, yeah...
Short stack in UTG+1: K-K
Me: Q-Q
Button: A-A
Big Blind: K-K
Junk on the flop and an ace on the turn.
I go home now.
Live poker is so-o-o-o-o-o-o rigged, don't you think? But I departed laughing --- there are situations, like these, where you are simply doomed to lose your chips.
* * * * * * *
Wednesday found me scheduling a rare morning off for myself to drive down to Hollywood Casino in Aurora for another stab at their weekly $160. The tourney is a little too fast-paced (in terms of blinds) and a little too juice-heavy for me to want to make it a regular thing, but once in a while, I just want to take a shot. My first two tries had come up dry, though I'd made the top half of the field in each, with a legitimate shot at cashing each time.
After yesterday, color me oh-for-three. And what a way to go out... I've got this cooler thing down to a science.
We were inside of 30 players, with me probably in the top ten in chips, when, one hand after holding pocket kings and getting no action, I peeked under and found pocket queens. I had about 11,000 in chips (up from a start of 2,500), the blinds were 400/800 and about to jump. UTG limps, the next seat to my right pushes for another 1,000, or so, I make it 5,000 and intentionally pot-commit myself without shoving, just to try to create some confusion. Three folds from the seats to my left, and a guy across the way on the button shoves for another 4,000 or so. The small blind skedaddles, and the big blind looks absolutely pained before making the call, putting the total pot over 30,000. He's played some iffy stuff, too.
The UTG guy goes away, and even though I know my queens are beat, somewhere, I shove, because with the blinds only two seats away and ready to jump to 600/1,200, I don't have enough behind to leverage anyone anyhow. And there's a ton in the pot and I only have a few thousand more. Five kicks at a queen or some garbage straight are enough, I guesstimate, to get the last of my chips in. There's also just the slim chance --- maybe 5% --- that the two other stacks both have A-K suited or one of them has pocket jacks. Between that and the 6:1 or so I was getting on the original call, it was an easy shove.
But when the cards were turned over, was I behind? Oh, yeah...
Short stack in UTG+1: K-K
Me: Q-Q
Button: A-A
Big Blind: K-K
Junk on the flop and an ace on the turn.
I go home now.
Live poker is so-o-o-o-o-o-o rigged, don't you think? But I departed laughing --- there are situations, like these, where you are simply doomed to lose your chips.
* * * * * * *
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Streaky Up, Streaky Down
The one thing about poker variance that's sometimes hardest to understand is how streaks within streaks can go in opposite directions at the same time. One would like to think that winning or losing streaks are in some form influenced by how well or not well one is playing. That is, when one is hot and confident and playing well, it seems reasonable to expect that the streak extends across all sites where one is playing, or across all formats (assuming comparative skill) or whatever.
It's really not the case. The vagaries of random distribution are such that one can run hot as hell on one site, could as ice on another, totally independent of whether one's results could be looked at as showing tilt or not. In fact, the variance can get so extreme, it can challenge the concept of what tilt really is.
Case in point, ready to be served.
I mentioned in my previous post how well I'd been running over at the Merge network, and the last week, since that post, has seen more and better. I could barely miss. The nightly $3K Guarantee that I mentioned last week, that I whined about being reformatted? After it's reworking, I cashed in the thing the next four nights in a row, including two final tables, bringing my streak to seven and three (including a win) overall. And then to top off my best-ever week on the site, I did *real* well in the $20K. I was a bad beat away from freakin' awesome, but having delivered my own rancid beat to someone earlier in the tourney, I ain't complainin'. I got by far the best side of the suckout trade.
But random distribution has a flip side, too.
I also played some at Bodog. Mind you, I'm fond of the site. I managed to find time over the weekend to play a couple of dozen tourneys, both MTTs and SNGs, and for the weekend I achieved a goose egg. Absolutely nada. Given that there were at least a half dozen SNGs in the mix, you'd think I'd be able to squeeze out a measly cash somewhere in the entire run. But nope, not a one.
So, running good, running bad. To tilt or not to tilt? That's the curious thing. The truth is that a handful of recent showings that seem unusual have a way of sticking in the mind, whether those showings are good or bad. These 'signature' showings can cloud our judgment as to how well we're really running... or if we're running any different at all.
The truth is that short-term results mean squat in terms of real skill, but it's so easy to forget that. A few dozen events, or even a few hundred, mean very little in the absence of true statistical outliers, something I've mentioned previously. Cash in seven of ten MTTs? Or even seven straight? Good run! But nothing more than that. It all ends soon enough, and then it's time to work for the next cash, however long it takes.
It's really not the case. The vagaries of random distribution are such that one can run hot as hell on one site, could as ice on another, totally independent of whether one's results could be looked at as showing tilt or not. In fact, the variance can get so extreme, it can challenge the concept of what tilt really is.
Case in point, ready to be served.
I mentioned in my previous post how well I'd been running over at the Merge network, and the last week, since that post, has seen more and better. I could barely miss. The nightly $3K Guarantee that I mentioned last week, that I whined about being reformatted? After it's reworking, I cashed in the thing the next four nights in a row, including two final tables, bringing my streak to seven and three (including a win) overall. And then to top off my best-ever week on the site, I did *real* well in the $20K. I was a bad beat away from freakin' awesome, but having delivered my own rancid beat to someone earlier in the tourney, I ain't complainin'. I got by far the best side of the suckout trade.
But random distribution has a flip side, too.
I also played some at Bodog. Mind you, I'm fond of the site. I managed to find time over the weekend to play a couple of dozen tourneys, both MTTs and SNGs, and for the weekend I achieved a goose egg. Absolutely nada. Given that there were at least a half dozen SNGs in the mix, you'd think I'd be able to squeeze out a measly cash somewhere in the entire run. But nope, not a one.
So, running good, running bad. To tilt or not to tilt? That's the curious thing. The truth is that a handful of recent showings that seem unusual have a way of sticking in the mind, whether those showings are good or bad. These 'signature' showings can cloud our judgment as to how well we're really running... or if we're running any different at all.
The truth is that short-term results mean squat in terms of real skill, but it's so easy to forget that. A few dozen events, or even a few hundred, mean very little in the absence of true statistical outliers, something I've mentioned previously. Cash in seven of ten MTTs? Or even seven straight? Good run! But nothing more than that. It all ends soon enough, and then it's time to work for the next cash, however long it takes.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Merge Network 'Adjusting' Evening Tourney Schedules (or, 'Rats, There Goes the Neighborhood')
You know you've got too good of a thing going when the good thing gets modified. It's one of those natural laws, Murphy's or otherwise, right? A few months ago I went on an extended rush playing Bodog turbo sit-'n'-goes, which lasted right up until they changed the format, which essentially halved my win rate (percent-wise, over break even) while I learned the nuances of the new format. Based on recent results, I'm still learning....
Now the Merge Network, which is Poker.com, Carbon Poker and a couple of other skins, has changed its evening tourney schedules. Merge is small, as you know, and the network's evening tourneys habitually feature smallish, 100-player fields and nominal overlays. My two favorites were the 7:30 CT $2,000 Guaranteed, with a $15+1.50 buy-in, and the $23+2 buy-in $3,000 Guaranteed at 8:45. The $2K always offered a $600 first prize, and the $3K brought $900 for first. Yeah, small stuff, but fun and profitable, in its own way. I'm very much in the Todd Brunson school of thought on game selection --- if I know a lower game is likelier to provide a steady, solid comparable win rate, I'll opt for it.
But back to Merge. Darned if I didn't win the $3K on Tuesday night, and not for the first time. No skill brag here --- when you catch A-A, K-K and Q-Q (twice) at the final table, you should win it. Still, it's part of a nice push I've had there when I've had the chance to play in recent months.
I opened up the software on Wednesday evening to play a bit and watched as it did another of its frequent self-upgrades. Merge updates its software more frequently than any other site I could name, including Stars or Bodog, so this was not unexpected. But what was unexpected was that the $3K was no more, at least as a $25 tourney! To quote Charlie Brown, "Auggh!" In its place was a different $3K tourney with an $11 entry. The first prize was still $810, but it means climbing over more than twice as many bodies to get there. Not that I won't try, of course. The win rate's been just too durned good.
It's odd, though. This leaves the network with only one regularly scheduled weekly event with a buy-in over $20, and that's the $20K on Sundays, which I play when I can. What it means is I no longer have as much of a reason to leave any amount of money on the site --- I can play the events I wish to with a relatively smaller 'roll, and I'll try to find a way to move the remainder over to Stars and Bodog, difficult though it is at the moment. I'm not sure that's what Merge had in mind when they made the change. They're supposed to be creating reasons for me to keep money there, not taking reasons away.
On the plus side, I think I'm going to be able to take a shot at a Heartland or Circuit satellite (or two) in the coming months. I'd like to buy in directly to the main but that will remain out of reach for a year or two, I believe. I'd be idly interested in selling a small piece of myself, but want to make sure it's largely my money on the line. It's actually more painful for me when I lose someone else's money, so I'd rather it be mostly mine at stake. Maybe I can do what that Dan Zogman guy did in the recent HPT over in Gary. Zogman, who lives only three suburbs north of me, ran $100 into $228,000 early this week.
Yeah, I know. But we can all dream, can't we?
Now the Merge Network, which is Poker.com, Carbon Poker and a couple of other skins, has changed its evening tourney schedules. Merge is small, as you know, and the network's evening tourneys habitually feature smallish, 100-player fields and nominal overlays. My two favorites were the 7:30 CT $2,000 Guaranteed, with a $15+1.50 buy-in, and the $23+2 buy-in $3,000 Guaranteed at 8:45. The $2K always offered a $600 first prize, and the $3K brought $900 for first. Yeah, small stuff, but fun and profitable, in its own way. I'm very much in the Todd Brunson school of thought on game selection --- if I know a lower game is likelier to provide a steady, solid comparable win rate, I'll opt for it.
But back to Merge. Darned if I didn't win the $3K on Tuesday night, and not for the first time. No skill brag here --- when you catch A-A, K-K and Q-Q (twice) at the final table, you should win it. Still, it's part of a nice push I've had there when I've had the chance to play in recent months.
I opened up the software on Wednesday evening to play a bit and watched as it did another of its frequent self-upgrades. Merge updates its software more frequently than any other site I could name, including Stars or Bodog, so this was not unexpected. But what was unexpected was that the $3K was no more, at least as a $25 tourney! To quote Charlie Brown, "Auggh!" In its place was a different $3K tourney with an $11 entry. The first prize was still $810, but it means climbing over more than twice as many bodies to get there. Not that I won't try, of course. The win rate's been just too durned good.
It's odd, though. This leaves the network with only one regularly scheduled weekly event with a buy-in over $20, and that's the $20K on Sundays, which I play when I can. What it means is I no longer have as much of a reason to leave any amount of money on the site --- I can play the events I wish to with a relatively smaller 'roll, and I'll try to find a way to move the remainder over to Stars and Bodog, difficult though it is at the moment. I'm not sure that's what Merge had in mind when they made the change. They're supposed to be creating reasons for me to keep money there, not taking reasons away.
On the plus side, I think I'm going to be able to take a shot at a Heartland or Circuit satellite (or two) in the coming months. I'd like to buy in directly to the main but that will remain out of reach for a year or two, I believe. I'd be idly interested in selling a small piece of myself, but want to make sure it's largely my money on the line. It's actually more painful for me when I lose someone else's money, so I'd rather it be mostly mine at stake. Maybe I can do what that Dan Zogman guy did in the recent HPT over in Gary. Zogman, who lives only three suburbs north of me, ran $100 into $228,000 early this week.
Yeah, I know. But we can all dream, can't we?
Saturday, July 28, 2007
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part III
The cooler. Ever notice how when you run into the wrong cards at the wrong moments, it happens over and over and over again?
Call it what you will, but any time I've tried to play poker during my vacation, it's been a disaster. Total winnings: $0, including both online and live appearances.
Nothing hurt worse than Thursday's return venture to the $50+5 donkfest at the Lake of the Torches casino. I wish I could come up with a more polite term for the proceedings, but the blinds structure almost dictates that idiotic play must ensue. Here's how the tournament progresses, with each level 20 minutes long:
Level Blinds Antes
1 25/50 --
2 50/100 --
3 100/200 --
4 200/400 --
5 200/400 100
6 300/600 200
7 500/1,000 300
8 1,000/2,000 400
9 2,000/4,000 500
10 4,000/8,000 600
...
With only 4,000 in chips to start and only 40 players max, it seldom goes beyond Level 10 or 11. But have you ever seen a more donkified structure? Look at the relation between the blinds and antes in Levels 6 and 7. That's just sick. What I quickly realized was that there was so many chips in the pot before the flop relative to the size of the stacks, due to the excessive antes, that the push-steal was the most viable play past Level 6 or so. (Not that there was a lot of real poker play before that.)
Anyhow, I found aces on the very first hand, and made a jump from my 4,000 start up to about 5,200. From there, though, I won only one small pot the rest of the entire first hour, and was down to about 2,600 when I finally won a race to double through. We'd condensed down to three tables by then, and at the new table my cards went even more dead, and after being forced out of one hand when I missed a flop by a mile, I was soon back down to about 2,600 and on the ropes.
I've long since learned that stealing is about timing, position and table image, and with the blinds at 200/400 and it folded around to me in the cutoff, I tried... with 8-6 soooted. Unfortunately, the older guy to my left (a quiet, weak/tight player), found pocket tens, and was dismayed when I cracked them, flopping the OESD and completing it with a rivered nine.
That just kept me alive, though I won a race soon after to make it down to the final two tables. It was an interesting table --- besides the old weak/tight dude, it had two kids (best friends) so young, both seated to his left, that they needed to wear orange "UNDER" wrist bands to signify that they were old enough to gamble but not yet old enough to drink. Yes, they were aggressive, and yes, one of them admitted to playing a lot on UB. And they stole in position constantly, and both accumulated healthy stacks as we moved into two-table play.
To their left was a woman using a flashy gold-medallion, "WSOP" card protector, like the type you can buy in the souvenir shop at the Rio. She was quite happy to tell her friends and other people that she'd played in the WSOP women's event, and I quite politely didn't bother to point out that based on the play I've seen in that event --- up to and including the final table --- merely playing in it didn't mean a damn thing outside of the personal willingness to drop a thousand. And the table also had my favorite tool from the week prior, who this time I found out was named Chris and who had already been tossed out of the Watersmeet, MI casino for similar toolish behavior.
Chris was in fine form, too, wearing his sunglasses and assuming his Jesus pose, and absolutely insistent that he did not have to say "Raise" before tossing an oversized chip into the pot. (He also admitted that he didn't want to speak because he didn't want to give away anything in his voice. Good lord.) When he continued to harp on his imagined right to raise without saying so, despite the dealers' and floor's insistence that he do so, I couldn't help but goad him on, saying, "You're quite wrong, but I respect your right to not know the rules."
It actually shut him up for about ten minutes. But then an idiot in the seat next to him, too inexperienced to know that you don't commingle chips bet on previous rounds with chips you are planning to wager, caused Tool Chris to go on a verbal rampage, with both players almost tossed from the tourney. Then the tool went on an extended "woe is me" monologue to no one in particular about how the casino had it in for him.
An enjoyable chap. And it made the end of this day's run for me that much worse.
I doubled through at my table again, reaching some 15,000 in chips, then gave about 8,000 to the first of the two kids. Under the gun and having just been clipped for a chunk of his stack himself, he raised. A very short stack across the way pushed for just 600 more. I was in the small blind and found pocket tens, so I pushed, too. I figured that the kid had shown lots of aggression already, whereas I'd been sitting back, and maybe he'd go away and leave me heads-up.
No such luck. He called, with K-J suited. *sigh* The shorty had A-7, and I was way ahead on the all-small flop but couldn't dodge the jack on the turn. I managed to steal one pot moments later, but when we reached the final table I was still one of the shortest stacks, with about 10,000 in chips. By the way, only the top four spots paid, for $1,000, $500, $300 and $200. One of the last players to exit was the kid's young friend, and another was the woman from the WSOP Ladies Event.
With the 1,000/2,000 (500) blinds in place and me in the big blind for the first hand at the final table, I was in deep trouble. Weak-tight from Mosinee was still to my left and was a big stack, with another one a few seats to my right. A terrible calling station was also still in the running, the type of player who thought nothing about calling a player's all-in from the big blind with J-6, and who could absolutely not release a hand where he'd made a pair. How these players advance in tourneys is beyond me, but there he was.
Anyhow, I flopped a garbage top pair of sevens from the big blind and it held up, and I then got my money in with A-K against A-Q and it held up again, and before I knew it I was at 33,000 and narrowly in the lead. Given that about this time the blinds moved to 2,000/4,000 with 500 antes, and there were only 120,000 in chips in play, it tells you just how volatile each hand was. On the next lap, the calling station was on the button when I had the big blind, and he limped and the small blind completed. I peeked, saw 5-5, and pushed... and to my amazement, the calling station went away.
I got clipped by one of the short stacks who drew out on me to double through, and then I abused a couple of the players to build up again. The weak/tight guy wouldn't bet post-flop unless he had a made hand or a draw, and I swiped his big blind both times I had a chance, once before the flop and once after. Soon he wasn't one of the big stacks any longer. Meanwhile, the last of the two kids showed he knew a lot about aggression but not so much about pot odds. He was in the big blind and posted and anted his 4,000 plus 500, the tight-weak guy had the small blind plus ante for 2,500, and the rest of the eight of that were left anted 500 each. So, 10,000 in the pot to start with.
It is, amazingly, folded all the way around to me on the button. I find A-2, not even suited. "How much do you have," I ask the kid.
He counts. "3,700."
"Okay," I say, then add "Raise," to the dealer. I glance at the small blind, who has about 16,000 total. "Let's make it 10,000."
The small blind grimaces and mucks. The kid, though, looks pained, and he hems and haws and finally mucks as well, not willing to call his last 3,700 into a 13,700 pot. Thank you for not recognizing an 'any two' spot! And the kid goes out on the next hand anyhow.
But wouldn't you know it, the tool Chris is still in the running, having doubled through the calling station earlier. Problem was, he'd tried to steal from the calling station with 9-7 suited, for only about 6,000 more. The calling station had K-8 suited, well within his range. Fortunately for this Chris, a seven flopped and the pair held up. You'd think he'd be happy. No, instead he berated the player for making the call, as he berated two other players for bluffing at dry side pots in bustout situations. It shows again that there are two basic types of poker idiots: those that don't know how to play and those who are willing to tell those bad players how to improve in a hurry.
But as I had to get out of another pot, the tool Chris doubled through again to move into the chip lead, over 40,000. I'm still at around 29,000 at this point, and seven players remain.
When this happened. With 10,000 in the pot pre-flop, I'm dealt A-K on the cutoff. It's folded to me again. I could open for 10,000 or so or I could push what I have, and I decide to push to keep the short stacks from limping in to the proceedings with marginal cards. The weak/tight button dutifully goes away, as does the shortish small blind. And the tool? He calls, and turns over pocket aces. Nasty cooler. And sure enough, I am out in seventh, three spots from the money.
Why there? Why in that spot? In retrospect it doesn't matter whether I make a standard raise or push, since he would have re-raised there and I would have been obligated to make the call. He did admit that he didn't want to play for all his chips in that situation, but with aces, you don't have the choice. That pre-bubble reticence is what I had been counting on and taking advantage of to move up the board, but it all went to hell in one ugly spot. I'll take that pot pre-flop the vast majority of times in most instances.
It's just a case of horrendous timing, and it came at the hands of the one player I really didn't want to see win, because he was such an obnoxious dickhead.
But that's poker. When it runs bad, it runs real bad.
Call it what you will, but any time I've tried to play poker during my vacation, it's been a disaster. Total winnings: $0, including both online and live appearances.
Nothing hurt worse than Thursday's return venture to the $50+5 donkfest at the Lake of the Torches casino. I wish I could come up with a more polite term for the proceedings, but the blinds structure almost dictates that idiotic play must ensue. Here's how the tournament progresses, with each level 20 minutes long:
Level Blinds Antes
1 25/50 --
2 50/100 --
3 100/200 --
4 200/400 --
5 200/400 100
6 300/600 200
7 500/1,000 300
8 1,000/2,000 400
9 2,000/4,000 500
10 4,000/8,000 600
...
With only 4,000 in chips to start and only 40 players max, it seldom goes beyond Level 10 or 11. But have you ever seen a more donkified structure? Look at the relation between the blinds and antes in Levels 6 and 7. That's just sick. What I quickly realized was that there was so many chips in the pot before the flop relative to the size of the stacks, due to the excessive antes, that the push-steal was the most viable play past Level 6 or so. (Not that there was a lot of real poker play before that.)
Anyhow, I found aces on the very first hand, and made a jump from my 4,000 start up to about 5,200. From there, though, I won only one small pot the rest of the entire first hour, and was down to about 2,600 when I finally won a race to double through. We'd condensed down to three tables by then, and at the new table my cards went even more dead, and after being forced out of one hand when I missed a flop by a mile, I was soon back down to about 2,600 and on the ropes.
I've long since learned that stealing is about timing, position and table image, and with the blinds at 200/400 and it folded around to me in the cutoff, I tried... with 8-6 soooted. Unfortunately, the older guy to my left (a quiet, weak/tight player), found pocket tens, and was dismayed when I cracked them, flopping the OESD and completing it with a rivered nine.
That just kept me alive, though I won a race soon after to make it down to the final two tables. It was an interesting table --- besides the old weak/tight dude, it had two kids (best friends) so young, both seated to his left, that they needed to wear orange "UNDER" wrist bands to signify that they were old enough to gamble but not yet old enough to drink. Yes, they were aggressive, and yes, one of them admitted to playing a lot on UB. And they stole in position constantly, and both accumulated healthy stacks as we moved into two-table play.
To their left was a woman using a flashy gold-medallion, "WSOP" card protector, like the type you can buy in the souvenir shop at the Rio. She was quite happy to tell her friends and other people that she'd played in the WSOP women's event, and I quite politely didn't bother to point out that based on the play I've seen in that event --- up to and including the final table --- merely playing in it didn't mean a damn thing outside of the personal willingness to drop a thousand. And the table also had my favorite tool from the week prior, who this time I found out was named Chris and who had already been tossed out of the Watersmeet, MI casino for similar toolish behavior.
Chris was in fine form, too, wearing his sunglasses and assuming his Jesus pose, and absolutely insistent that he did not have to say "Raise" before tossing an oversized chip into the pot. (He also admitted that he didn't want to speak because he didn't want to give away anything in his voice. Good lord.) When he continued to harp on his imagined right to raise without saying so, despite the dealers' and floor's insistence that he do so, I couldn't help but goad him on, saying, "You're quite wrong, but I respect your right to not know the rules."
It actually shut him up for about ten minutes. But then an idiot in the seat next to him, too inexperienced to know that you don't commingle chips bet on previous rounds with chips you are planning to wager, caused Tool Chris to go on a verbal rampage, with both players almost tossed from the tourney. Then the tool went on an extended "woe is me" monologue to no one in particular about how the casino had it in for him.
An enjoyable chap. And it made the end of this day's run for me that much worse.
I doubled through at my table again, reaching some 15,000 in chips, then gave about 8,000 to the first of the two kids. Under the gun and having just been clipped for a chunk of his stack himself, he raised. A very short stack across the way pushed for just 600 more. I was in the small blind and found pocket tens, so I pushed, too. I figured that the kid had shown lots of aggression already, whereas I'd been sitting back, and maybe he'd go away and leave me heads-up.
No such luck. He called, with K-J suited. *sigh* The shorty had A-7, and I was way ahead on the all-small flop but couldn't dodge the jack on the turn. I managed to steal one pot moments later, but when we reached the final table I was still one of the shortest stacks, with about 10,000 in chips. By the way, only the top four spots paid, for $1,000, $500, $300 and $200. One of the last players to exit was the kid's young friend, and another was the woman from the WSOP Ladies Event.
With the 1,000/2,000 (500) blinds in place and me in the big blind for the first hand at the final table, I was in deep trouble. Weak-tight from Mosinee was still to my left and was a big stack, with another one a few seats to my right. A terrible calling station was also still in the running, the type of player who thought nothing about calling a player's all-in from the big blind with J-6, and who could absolutely not release a hand where he'd made a pair. How these players advance in tourneys is beyond me, but there he was.
Anyhow, I flopped a garbage top pair of sevens from the big blind and it held up, and I then got my money in with A-K against A-Q and it held up again, and before I knew it I was at 33,000 and narrowly in the lead. Given that about this time the blinds moved to 2,000/4,000 with 500 antes, and there were only 120,000 in chips in play, it tells you just how volatile each hand was. On the next lap, the calling station was on the button when I had the big blind, and he limped and the small blind completed. I peeked, saw 5-5, and pushed... and to my amazement, the calling station went away.
I got clipped by one of the short stacks who drew out on me to double through, and then I abused a couple of the players to build up again. The weak/tight guy wouldn't bet post-flop unless he had a made hand or a draw, and I swiped his big blind both times I had a chance, once before the flop and once after. Soon he wasn't one of the big stacks any longer. Meanwhile, the last of the two kids showed he knew a lot about aggression but not so much about pot odds. He was in the big blind and posted and anted his 4,000 plus 500, the tight-weak guy had the small blind plus ante for 2,500, and the rest of the eight of that were left anted 500 each. So, 10,000 in the pot to start with.
It is, amazingly, folded all the way around to me on the button. I find A-2, not even suited. "How much do you have," I ask the kid.
He counts. "3,700."
"Okay," I say, then add "Raise," to the dealer. I glance at the small blind, who has about 16,000 total. "Let's make it 10,000."
The small blind grimaces and mucks. The kid, though, looks pained, and he hems and haws and finally mucks as well, not willing to call his last 3,700 into a 13,700 pot. Thank you for not recognizing an 'any two' spot! And the kid goes out on the next hand anyhow.
But wouldn't you know it, the tool Chris is still in the running, having doubled through the calling station earlier. Problem was, he'd tried to steal from the calling station with 9-7 suited, for only about 6,000 more. The calling station had K-8 suited, well within his range. Fortunately for this Chris, a seven flopped and the pair held up. You'd think he'd be happy. No, instead he berated the player for making the call, as he berated two other players for bluffing at dry side pots in bustout situations. It shows again that there are two basic types of poker idiots: those that don't know how to play and those who are willing to tell those bad players how to improve in a hurry.
But as I had to get out of another pot, the tool Chris doubled through again to move into the chip lead, over 40,000. I'm still at around 29,000 at this point, and seven players remain.
When this happened. With 10,000 in the pot pre-flop, I'm dealt A-K on the cutoff. It's folded to me again. I could open for 10,000 or so or I could push what I have, and I decide to push to keep the short stacks from limping in to the proceedings with marginal cards. The weak/tight button dutifully goes away, as does the shortish small blind. And the tool? He calls, and turns over pocket aces. Nasty cooler. And sure enough, I am out in seventh, three spots from the money.
Why there? Why in that spot? In retrospect it doesn't matter whether I make a standard raise or push, since he would have re-raised there and I would have been obligated to make the call. He did admit that he didn't want to play for all his chips in that situation, but with aces, you don't have the choice. That pre-bubble reticence is what I had been counting on and taking advantage of to move up the board, but it all went to hell in one ugly spot. I'll take that pot pre-flop the vast majority of times in most instances.
It's just a case of horrendous timing, and it came at the hands of the one player I really didn't want to see win, because he was such an obnoxious dickhead.
But that's poker. When it runs bad, it runs real bad.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part II
The need to get away from poker after my personal 24-hour finale on the last day of the WSOP had been overpowering, as mentioned in my previous post. Poker ha' been berry berry good to me, as it returned me from the land of destitution to being a working, productive member of society. Still, enough was enough, and I needed a few days without poker. Except for showing up and being bounced mid-pack in the Thursday tourney at the Lac du Flambeau casino --- said experience which I may repeat later today --- I needed to let real life trickle back in.
So, adjourning to the Northwoods was needed. I mentioned lots and lots and lots of fishing, and that was part of it. Also included was a round of golf with my father and a chance to show up and say hi on my mother's birthday, and since they live up in this part of the state, that was all part of the plan as well. I also did the 'Potter' thing, buying the seventh and final book in the series and enjoying the final chapter in Rowling's coming-of-age epic. The last book is indeed a power-packed close, as Falstaff mentioned, but as someone who used to edit a fiction magazine, I found the denouement here sorely lacking. It's a wonderful tale with a great climax, but five thousand pages of character development demands rather more than a nine-page epilogue.
I'm reminded, for comparison's sake of the last half of the third book of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. In that book, the epic battle with Sauron is concluded barely half way through Return, and then it's a matter of closure for the characters, the "Scouring of the Shire" phase (to name one of the chapters therein) that resolves all the intricate story threads. It's the part of the Rings trilogy that the third movie really fucks up, as well, where one can appreciate the growth of the characters and fully understand how they fit into the greater scope of Middle Earth, as time's inevitable changes occur.
Such character closure is sorely lacking in the wrap to the last Potter book, leaving wide open the possibility for some "after" tales. Half the characters killed off in the book were done so for no reason other than to demonstrate to the readership that, This is important stuff! Characters are dying here! --- which isn't quite as valid a reason as it sounds. In a phrase, the final chapters of Deathly Hallows feel rushed; it seems as though Rowling saw the end in sight and wanted done with it, after a decade's great work.
So, adjourning to the Northwoods was needed. I mentioned lots and lots and lots of fishing, and that was part of it. Also included was a round of golf with my father and a chance to show up and say hi on my mother's birthday, and since they live up in this part of the state, that was all part of the plan as well. I also did the 'Potter' thing, buying the seventh and final book in the series and enjoying the final chapter in Rowling's coming-of-age epic. The last book is indeed a power-packed close, as Falstaff mentioned, but as someone who used to edit a fiction magazine, I found the denouement here sorely lacking. It's a wonderful tale with a great climax, but five thousand pages of character development demands rather more than a nine-page epilogue.
I'm reminded, for comparison's sake of the last half of the third book of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. In that book, the epic battle with Sauron is concluded barely half way through Return, and then it's a matter of closure for the characters, the "Scouring of the Shire" phase (to name one of the chapters therein) that resolves all the intricate story threads. It's the part of the Rings trilogy that the third movie really fucks up, as well, where one can appreciate the growth of the characters and fully understand how they fit into the greater scope of Middle Earth, as time's inevitable changes occur.
Such character closure is sorely lacking in the wrap to the last Potter book, leaving wide open the possibility for some "after" tales. Half the characters killed off in the book were done so for no reason other than to demonstrate to the readership that, This is important stuff! Characters are dying here! --- which isn't quite as valid a reason as it sounds. In a phrase, the final chapters of Deathly Hallows feel rushed; it seems as though Rowling saw the end in sight and wanted done with it, after a decade's great work.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part I
Technically, I'm still on it... since I remain in Wisconsin's Northwoods as I type. You know it's time for a vacation when the thought of turning on the laptop brings a bit of revulsion, but turn it on this morning I did, and I'm banging away on te keys bright and early. This post has a little bit of poker in it, but not too much.
I headed out from my apartment not long after the WSOP final table concluded last Thursday morning. I'd been up for about 24 hours straight when Yang caught that six to fill his straight and win the title, and I'd been monitoring it both through the PokerNews reports, which I'd been editing a bit in a post-publishing sense, and a live web feed of the action as it was being broadcast on ESPN pay-per-view. Second straight year I've stumbled onto a link of that nature roughly half way through the final. I was rooting for Rahme to win it all, though that didn't happen.
Anyhow, I said my nitey-nites to Jonno in the chat, rolled over on the couch, exhausted, and napped for about two hours. Then I forced myself up, showered, changed, and headed up to a storage unit I still have near Milwaukee. There I fetched some extra fishing gear, and from there I boogied further north, stopping in Wausau to say hi to my folks, then pushing on to where I am at the moment, in the woods not far from Harshaw, just east of the Tomahawk River. By the time I made it up it was night again, and my first day of vacation was already in the books. You know that sick, head-spinning feeling you get when you're way over-tired and you finally succumb to the bed? That's how I was.
Thursday the 19th, then, was the first day I actually did vacation-y things, and believe it or not, it included some poker. On Thursdays there is a small tournament at the Lake of the Torches casino in Lac du Flambeau; that casino's unintentionally funny poker operation was mentioned once before in one of my posts.
I had an ulterior motive, too, since the PokerNews site often serves up casino reviews. Despite the fact that I'd ripped the amateurish nature of the Flambeau casino operation earlier, I wanted to give them a second chance, to see if they'd somehow work their way up to a baseline of professionalism, and I could find a way to include them.
*sigh*
I played the 40-person Thursday-afternoon tourney, and watched as the tourney director (the casino's poker room manager) used a convoluted system to move players from one table to another, in a manner so time consuming it kept a table in play far longer than it should have, and through a system that I don't think I can explain. Supposedly, according to the locals, she was breaking the tables in a way designed to keep players from having to catch the blinds twice in rapid succession, rather than just dealing out vacated seat cards from the other tables. (Which would have been fine, had she not allowed players to dawdle for several hands to skip their next blinds anyway.)
Oh, and she broke down Table 3 first, instead of Table 4, as per the pre-tourney schedule. You'd think that with only four tables, you could get stuff like that right.
But though the tournament organization was shoddy, it paled compared to the bad decision rendered by the dealer at my table in a confusing moment. The dealer, a young, overweight guy whose name was Jason or Jeremy or something like that, allowed this to transpire.
The small blind was dead, and there was only a big blind of 400 in chips. It was folded around to the cutoff who said raise, and threw in 1,000. The big blind folded. The button, a sunglasses-wearing, tool wannabe --- he simply wasn't good enough to be a tool proper --- announced "Call," and threw in another 400, leaving himself 200 short. He had another 6,000 or so behind, so that wasn't a problem.
The dealer correctly told him the big blind that he owed another 200, at which point the big blind said, "It was for 1,000? Then I want to fold." And he reached out and grabbed all of his chips, including his posted blind, and pulled them back into his own stack, then tossed his cards into the mark.
The dealer did nothing, but started to reach for the muck to begin a new shuffle. I was shocked, and from my seat said, "Wait, you can't do that!" And the dealer looked at me like I didn't know what I was doing. I explained that the big blind announced 'call' and was obligated to pay for that call, even though he mucked his cards.
And the dealer -still- got it wrong, and instead ordered the big blind to pay just the 400 of the original blind to the cutoff raiser, and not the entire 1,000. And the tourney went on. This yahoo was qualified to deal a tournament exactly how, I wondered?
I bounced out a short time later, in about 17th out of 40, when I tried to steal from the button and ended up flopping a huge draw, which subsequently didn't connect. So be it; the guy I tried to steal from was one of the big stacks, who appeared to be one of only about three people I saw that actually knew how to play. He flopped a set against my steal attempt, and when I had 15 outs twice, the chips were gonna go in. So that part of it was fine.
But as a whole, the tournament was interesting and frustrating... and so very, very amateurish. I had looked forward to seeing if the venue was usable for a proper review-type piece, but now I'm torn on the whole topic.
More from vacation later.
I headed out from my apartment not long after the WSOP final table concluded last Thursday morning. I'd been up for about 24 hours straight when Yang caught that six to fill his straight and win the title, and I'd been monitoring it both through the PokerNews reports, which I'd been editing a bit in a post-publishing sense, and a live web feed of the action as it was being broadcast on ESPN pay-per-view. Second straight year I've stumbled onto a link of that nature roughly half way through the final. I was rooting for Rahme to win it all, though that didn't happen.
Anyhow, I said my nitey-nites to Jonno in the chat, rolled over on the couch, exhausted, and napped for about two hours. Then I forced myself up, showered, changed, and headed up to a storage unit I still have near Milwaukee. There I fetched some extra fishing gear, and from there I boogied further north, stopping in Wausau to say hi to my folks, then pushing on to where I am at the moment, in the woods not far from Harshaw, just east of the Tomahawk River. By the time I made it up it was night again, and my first day of vacation was already in the books. You know that sick, head-spinning feeling you get when you're way over-tired and you finally succumb to the bed? That's how I was.
Thursday the 19th, then, was the first day I actually did vacation-y things, and believe it or not, it included some poker. On Thursdays there is a small tournament at the Lake of the Torches casino in Lac du Flambeau; that casino's unintentionally funny poker operation was mentioned once before in one of my posts.
I had an ulterior motive, too, since the PokerNews site often serves up casino reviews. Despite the fact that I'd ripped the amateurish nature of the Flambeau casino operation earlier, I wanted to give them a second chance, to see if they'd somehow work their way up to a baseline of professionalism, and I could find a way to include them.
*sigh*
I played the 40-person Thursday-afternoon tourney, and watched as the tourney director (the casino's poker room manager) used a convoluted system to move players from one table to another, in a manner so time consuming it kept a table in play far longer than it should have, and through a system that I don't think I can explain. Supposedly, according to the locals, she was breaking the tables in a way designed to keep players from having to catch the blinds twice in rapid succession, rather than just dealing out vacated seat cards from the other tables. (Which would have been fine, had she not allowed players to dawdle for several hands to skip their next blinds anyway.)
Oh, and she broke down Table 3 first, instead of Table 4, as per the pre-tourney schedule. You'd think that with only four tables, you could get stuff like that right.
But though the tournament organization was shoddy, it paled compared to the bad decision rendered by the dealer at my table in a confusing moment. The dealer, a young, overweight guy whose name was Jason or Jeremy or something like that, allowed this to transpire.
The small blind was dead, and there was only a big blind of 400 in chips. It was folded around to the cutoff who said raise, and threw in 1,000. The big blind folded. The button, a sunglasses-wearing, tool wannabe --- he simply wasn't good enough to be a tool proper --- announced "Call," and threw in another 400, leaving himself 200 short. He had another 6,000 or so behind, so that wasn't a problem.
The dealer correctly told him the big blind that he owed another 200, at which point the big blind said, "It was for 1,000? Then I want to fold." And he reached out and grabbed all of his chips, including his posted blind, and pulled them back into his own stack, then tossed his cards into the mark.
The dealer did nothing, but started to reach for the muck to begin a new shuffle. I was shocked, and from my seat said, "Wait, you can't do that!" And the dealer looked at me like I didn't know what I was doing. I explained that the big blind announced 'call' and was obligated to pay for that call, even though he mucked his cards.
And the dealer -still- got it wrong, and instead ordered the big blind to pay just the 400 of the original blind to the cutoff raiser, and not the entire 1,000. And the tourney went on. This yahoo was qualified to deal a tournament exactly how, I wondered?
I bounced out a short time later, in about 17th out of 40, when I tried to steal from the button and ended up flopping a huge draw, which subsequently didn't connect. So be it; the guy I tried to steal from was one of the big stacks, who appeared to be one of only about three people I saw that actually knew how to play. He flopped a set against my steal attempt, and when I had 15 outs twice, the chips were gonna go in. So that part of it was fine.
But as a whole, the tournament was interesting and frustrating... and so very, very amateurish. I had looked forward to seeing if the venue was usable for a proper review-type piece, but now I'm torn on the whole topic.
More from vacation later.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Good to See the Li'l Dwarf Back in Biz
Big bad news: That Iggy's Guinness and Poker blog had been hacked (or otherwise accidentally excised by the folks at GooBloggergle).
Small good news: At least comments worked.
Big good news: GooBloggergle was able to restore the blog, based on tens of thousands of complaints.
Small bad news: Iggy got the comments shut off again right quick.
:-D
So all's well that ends well, mostly. Though the next time he bops through Chicago and doesn't tell me, I'm goin' on a dwarf-swattin' mission...
Small good news: At least comments worked.
Big good news: GooBloggergle was able to restore the blog, based on tens of thousands of complaints.
Small bad news: Iggy got the comments shut off again right quick.
:-D
So all's well that ends well, mostly. Though the next time he bops through Chicago and doesn't tell me, I'm goin' on a dwarf-swattin' mission...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
You Either Get Older... Or You Don't
*sigh*
While perusing some tournament offerings connected with the "Summer Champs" series on poker.com, I discovered I was eligible for the $500 Guaranteed Seniors event.
I'm not sure if I should be depressed or happy. Nothing left but Geritol and sippy cups, methinks...
:D
While perusing some tournament offerings connected with the "Summer Champs" series on poker.com, I discovered I was eligible for the $500 Guaranteed Seniors event.
I'm not sure if I should be depressed or happy. Nothing left but Geritol and sippy cups, methinks...
:D
Monday, July 02, 2007
Hasenpfeffer is Indeed a Stew....
There is so much crappy and pointless writing in the poker world that's it hard to remember that the good stuff exists as well. One site that I'd forgotten all about was the 'Bigger Deal' poker blog, featuring Anthony Holden, Al Alvarez, Lee Jones and several others. Catching up on Short-Stacked Shamus's postings --- and where does that guy find the time?? --- I remembered that I hadn't visited that other site in a good long while.
I was poorer for it, too.
Those guys can write. Anthony Holden has up a wonderful 'Nixon in China' piece that's way too good to be wasted on us poker cretins, while Lee Jones tossed in a well-constructed piece on something he thinks is going to occur in online poker in the next few years: the adaptation of anonymous user IDs by the online sites. This means that you wouldn't know the identities of the other players at any given table, and the logic behind it is to short-circuit all the third-party software add-ons (like PokerHUD and PokerTracker) that are in many ways the bane of the average online player's existence... even if they don't know it.
What Lee correctly points out is that the shark-to-fish ratio in the online game is getting out of whack and is only going to get worse, in large part due to these third-party products. I couldn't agree more. There are some that are largely innocuous and have value in a historical way, while others were designed solely as technical system 'cheats' and really have no place in a 'fair' poker game.
But the devil's in the details. Lee added in some additional thoughts in a follow-up comment to one of the site's visitors, and it's here where I disagree. Not the first time I've ever disagreed with Lee, either, in the form of a post. One of the very first pieces I ever did for the Kick Ass Poker site was an examination of a Card Player piece Lee did that was in essence of a haranguing of players who stall at the online bubble. I don't like stalling, but the way it occurs online is something that Stars has always had it in its powers to alleviate, but has chosen not to. That post is available here (scroll down a bit); it's a real blast from the past.
I actually had a line in that old post, reading back through it, that I'm rather proud of:
There is no difference between a poker player who "takes the clock," and a winning football team, in the last minutes of a game, that lets the play clock wind down to "1" before snapping the ball. Both are playing within the constructs and rules of the game, at a time when the situation demands strategies markedly different than during most other periods of play. That the play is tedious and maddening is a sign that the structure and rules of the game itself are imperfect, not that the participants are "cheaters."
Anyhow, back to the current Lee Jones post, and another point where this unfortunately-not-modest voice from the peanut gallery disagrees with Lee. Lee says this:
Comment from Lee Jones
Time: June 29, 2007, 11:53 pm
Reply to tuff_fish…
Hi Tuff - multi-tabling is a fact of online poker life, and we can no more eliminate it than we could (e.g.) the chat box. Note that even if a site offered “no-multitabling” tables, a player could still play at such a table on that site, and as many other sites as he wished. So a “no multi-tabling site/table” is an impossibility.
Furthermore, multi-tabling is actually *better* for individual fish. Let’s say that player Shark456 is capable of 2.5 BB/100 (”big bets per hundred hands” - a common metric among serious online players). Wanting to increase his hourly income, he plays two tables instead. It’s a virtual certainty that he will *not* make 2.5 BB/100 at both tables. Instead, he’ll make perhaps 2.0 or 1.8 BB/100. Well, he’s happy because he’s making much more money per hour. But the fish at his tables will be happier because he is taking less money off each individual table. The more he multi-tables, the lower his per-table income, but until he hits some threashold, the greater his hourly income. As long as his per-table income drops, the fish get happier (and healthier).
Ultimately, yes, Shark456 is taking more money away from the poker site, but by spreading the pain over many fish rather than just a single table’s worth, he probably leaves the fish population healthier.
At least, that’s my perspective.
Regards, Lee
And I responded to it like this, long-winded to be sure, but I wanted to illustrate the point:
Hi, Lee,
Noticed your argument in the response to Tuff; pardon me for saying this, but that's where your logic breaks down. Your argument about the per-table rate by sharks leaving the fish comparatively healthier would only work in the case of a single shark (or a small, finite number of sharks) in the pool.
Unfortunately, your original post quite dramatically indicates the opposite, that the shark-to-fish ratio is increasing, and because of this, the fish aren't likely to keep voluntarily diving in. If all of a sudden there are eight multi-tabling sharks at each and every table, then the fish are going to get pounded... no matter what.
I mentioned the Malthus thing for a reason, as a way of hinting that the issue here is indeed one of diminishing resources, otherwise known as new fish. Perhaps a more relevant reference would have been the example of the effects of hunting on populations of rabbits and coyotes (or wolves, in some instances) in controlled-population studies. In those, it's been repeatedly shown that left on their own, rabbit and coyote populations will repeatedly cycle from high to low, as long as a base source of food for the rabbits is available. The rabbits keep on breeding --- as rabbits are wont to do --- and after a couple of seasons lag the the coyote population also takes off, because there are so many juicy bunnies to eat.
The coyotes have happy times, so they keep on breeding, too, and build up so fast that they also overpopulate, eating too many rabbits. Both populations collapse --- the rabbits first, then the coyotes (or wolves), who experience starvation --- and the whole process starts anew.
The cycle can be influenced from outside, too. Usually the studies introduce a hunting season, showing that by allowing the culling of the predator base (the coyote or wolf), both populations can be maintained at artificially high levels.
What's happened in poker is an influence from the opposite side, translating the bunnies to fish and the coyotes to sharks. The difficulties encountered by new fish in funding accounts or in reaching a point of competitiveness with the ever-evolving sharks is like a drought for the rabbits in the above: it removes the base food source and is likely to make the population crash occur earlier --- it chops off the high point of the cycle.
Your argument re: multi-tabling also leaves room for debate. Yes, players could multi-table by playing one table each at a multitude of sites, but that would be a bit more difficult to manage in the massive quantities that some multi-tablers perform. I'm not sure that there are 24 distinct poker networks out there, but there sure are 24-table players. And trying to get the software of 24 different sites to work in harmony would be... interesting, wouldn't it?
What you haven't touched on at all is the fact that opening up multi-table play in the first place was a case of the poker sites wanting to (a) increase rake and (b) grab a -relatively- bigger slice of the online pie. Unfortunately, business pressures are a part of that, but I can't imagine a world where "grow the business" pressures don't exist. No one -forced- poker sites to allow multi-tabling; they did it to make money.
The biggest flaw in your theory that I can see is that it implies a voluntary cooperation on the part of all sites to allow anonymous-ID poker. The only reason some sites would have to go to anonymous-ID poker would be to short-circuit the third-party products that exacerbate the shark-to-fish problem, but a lot of those sites add money into the poker cycle as well. Given that there are sites out there that actively allow the promotion of ads for these products, it seems unlikely that the entire poker world is going to turn altruistic all at once. Poker's always been an "I got mine" type of existence, but the players aren't the only ones doing it. The sites do it as well.
Would I play on a site that featured anonymous ID's? In a heartbeat. But there's a whole class of players out there that would consider it an affront to their existence --- and they do generate lots of rake.
At least for the time being....
I respect Lee very highly, but the argument he makes still seems a bit myopic. It's not just the players who've created the current imbalance, but a whole slew of market factors working in concert. It's also why, though I'd absolutely love to see Lee's idea come to pass, I'm less confident that it'll occur in the time frame Lee envisions.
I hate playing devil's advocate. Unfortunately, I'm good at it. (*sigh*) Back to the prison, now.
I was poorer for it, too.
Those guys can write. Anthony Holden has up a wonderful 'Nixon in China' piece that's way too good to be wasted on us poker cretins, while Lee Jones tossed in a well-constructed piece on something he thinks is going to occur in online poker in the next few years: the adaptation of anonymous user IDs by the online sites. This means that you wouldn't know the identities of the other players at any given table, and the logic behind it is to short-circuit all the third-party software add-ons (like PokerHUD and PokerTracker) that are in many ways the bane of the average online player's existence... even if they don't know it.
What Lee correctly points out is that the shark-to-fish ratio in the online game is getting out of whack and is only going to get worse, in large part due to these third-party products. I couldn't agree more. There are some that are largely innocuous and have value in a historical way, while others were designed solely as technical system 'cheats' and really have no place in a 'fair' poker game.
But the devil's in the details. Lee added in some additional thoughts in a follow-up comment to one of the site's visitors, and it's here where I disagree. Not the first time I've ever disagreed with Lee, either, in the form of a post. One of the very first pieces I ever did for the Kick Ass Poker site was an examination of a Card Player piece Lee did that was in essence of a haranguing of players who stall at the online bubble. I don't like stalling, but the way it occurs online is something that Stars has always had it in its powers to alleviate, but has chosen not to. That post is available here (scroll down a bit); it's a real blast from the past.
I actually had a line in that old post, reading back through it, that I'm rather proud of:
There is no difference between a poker player who "takes the clock," and a winning football team, in the last minutes of a game, that lets the play clock wind down to "1" before snapping the ball. Both are playing within the constructs and rules of the game, at a time when the situation demands strategies markedly different than during most other periods of play. That the play is tedious and maddening is a sign that the structure and rules of the game itself are imperfect, not that the participants are "cheaters."
Anyhow, back to the current Lee Jones post, and another point where this unfortunately-not-modest voice from the peanut gallery disagrees with Lee. Lee says this:
Comment from Lee Jones
Time: June 29, 2007, 11:53 pm
Reply to tuff_fish…
Hi Tuff - multi-tabling is a fact of online poker life, and we can no more eliminate it than we could (e.g.) the chat box. Note that even if a site offered “no-multitabling” tables, a player could still play at such a table on that site, and as many other sites as he wished. So a “no multi-tabling site/table” is an impossibility.
Furthermore, multi-tabling is actually *better* for individual fish. Let’s say that player Shark456 is capable of 2.5 BB/100 (”big bets per hundred hands” - a common metric among serious online players). Wanting to increase his hourly income, he plays two tables instead. It’s a virtual certainty that he will *not* make 2.5 BB/100 at both tables. Instead, he’ll make perhaps 2.0 or 1.8 BB/100. Well, he’s happy because he’s making much more money per hour. But the fish at his tables will be happier because he is taking less money off each individual table. The more he multi-tables, the lower his per-table income, but until he hits some threashold, the greater his hourly income. As long as his per-table income drops, the fish get happier (and healthier).
Ultimately, yes, Shark456 is taking more money away from the poker site, but by spreading the pain over many fish rather than just a single table’s worth, he probably leaves the fish population healthier.
At least, that’s my perspective.
Regards, Lee
And I responded to it like this, long-winded to be sure, but I wanted to illustrate the point:
Hi, Lee,
Noticed your argument in the response to Tuff; pardon me for saying this, but that's where your logic breaks down. Your argument about the per-table rate by sharks leaving the fish comparatively healthier would only work in the case of a single shark (or a small, finite number of sharks) in the pool.
Unfortunately, your original post quite dramatically indicates the opposite, that the shark-to-fish ratio is increasing, and because of this, the fish aren't likely to keep voluntarily diving in. If all of a sudden there are eight multi-tabling sharks at each and every table, then the fish are going to get pounded... no matter what.
I mentioned the Malthus thing for a reason, as a way of hinting that the issue here is indeed one of diminishing resources, otherwise known as new fish. Perhaps a more relevant reference would have been the example of the effects of hunting on populations of rabbits and coyotes (or wolves, in some instances) in controlled-population studies. In those, it's been repeatedly shown that left on their own, rabbit and coyote populations will repeatedly cycle from high to low, as long as a base source of food for the rabbits is available. The rabbits keep on breeding --- as rabbits are wont to do --- and after a couple of seasons lag the the coyote population also takes off, because there are so many juicy bunnies to eat.
The coyotes have happy times, so they keep on breeding, too, and build up so fast that they also overpopulate, eating too many rabbits. Both populations collapse --- the rabbits first, then the coyotes (or wolves), who experience starvation --- and the whole process starts anew.
The cycle can be influenced from outside, too. Usually the studies introduce a hunting season, showing that by allowing the culling of the predator base (the coyote or wolf), both populations can be maintained at artificially high levels.
What's happened in poker is an influence from the opposite side, translating the bunnies to fish and the coyotes to sharks. The difficulties encountered by new fish in funding accounts or in reaching a point of competitiveness with the ever-evolving sharks is like a drought for the rabbits in the above: it removes the base food source and is likely to make the population crash occur earlier --- it chops off the high point of the cycle.
Your argument re: multi-tabling also leaves room for debate. Yes, players could multi-table by playing one table each at a multitude of sites, but that would be a bit more difficult to manage in the massive quantities that some multi-tablers perform. I'm not sure that there are 24 distinct poker networks out there, but there sure are 24-table players. And trying to get the software of 24 different sites to work in harmony would be... interesting, wouldn't it?
What you haven't touched on at all is the fact that opening up multi-table play in the first place was a case of the poker sites wanting to (a) increase rake and (b) grab a -relatively- bigger slice of the online pie. Unfortunately, business pressures are a part of that, but I can't imagine a world where "grow the business" pressures don't exist. No one -forced- poker sites to allow multi-tabling; they did it to make money.
The biggest flaw in your theory that I can see is that it implies a voluntary cooperation on the part of all sites to allow anonymous-ID poker. The only reason some sites would have to go to anonymous-ID poker would be to short-circuit the third-party products that exacerbate the shark-to-fish problem, but a lot of those sites add money into the poker cycle as well. Given that there are sites out there that actively allow the promotion of ads for these products, it seems unlikely that the entire poker world is going to turn altruistic all at once. Poker's always been an "I got mine" type of existence, but the players aren't the only ones doing it. The sites do it as well.
Would I play on a site that featured anonymous ID's? In a heartbeat. But there's a whole class of players out there that would consider it an affront to their existence --- and they do generate lots of rake.
At least for the time being....
I respect Lee very highly, but the argument he makes still seems a bit myopic. It's not just the players who've created the current imbalance, but a whole slew of market factors working in concert. It's also why, though I'd absolutely love to see Lee's idea come to pass, I'm less confident that it'll occur in the time frame Lee envisions.
I hate playing devil's advocate. Unfortunately, I'm good at it. (*sigh*) Back to the prison, now.
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