Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Poker Writing Redux

YTD: +$40627.47

Internet journalism has been a reoccurring theme here. It never ceases to surprise me. Clicking onto Pokerpages today I was fascinated to see a section titled “Top European Poker Players”. Well it was worth a click. There are some strange names there to put it mildly. And some strange omissions. A couple of the players, whilst European in origin, play almost exclusively in the US. One of the players, “The Nugget” I used to know very well. I am sure that he wouldn’t describe himself as a tournament player, or at least I hope he doesn’t. He has had some nice results of late, but his primary focus and ability has always been cash games. Yet one of the most successful big tournament players is not included. I am of course referring to Julian Gardner. Even when you take out his WSOP 2nd, his record across Europe in the late 90s was phenomenal and his winnings turn the Nugget into fool’s gold. But let’s not let the facts get in the way of some pretty pictures. Let’s have some more stuff by Paul S!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing the nuggett could never be described as is a pretty picture Dave.
Ariston

Big Dave D said...

Ariston,

Were you on the scene before Gareth turned pro? He was literally living on a couple of hours sleep a night and looked like the proverbial bucket of shit. I used to joke with him that animal testers were abandoning sleep deprivation testing on monkeys and using him instead.

gl

Dave

Big Dave D said...

Matthew,

Heh. If you read back a lil my "iron cojones" have been firmly kicked off recently :-)

In terms of learning PLO, I would advise the following:

1. Buy the Bob Ciaffone books.
2. Read 2+2 PLO forum
3. Check out Crockpot's winning poker tips on PLO...you can find the address on 2+2
4. Read this blog and especially all the comments.
5. Play online, ideally for at least 0.5-1 blinds, which would prolly need a br of about $1-3k. I wouldnt really play until you got to this level, simply because PLo online below these limits can create bad habits, if youre not careful.

gl

Dave

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave,

I have been reading and enjoying your blog for a while now. Sorry things are not going quite so well at the moment. I have been playing quite a bit of micro limit PLO which has been going well and I was interested in what you meant by point 5. What kind of bad habits do I need to watch out for? Are you referring to the tendency to play a 'just the nuts' kind of game?

Jim

Anonymous said...

If I am not mistaken, the .5-1 blinds would mean that it is a PLO game with small blind of fifty cents, and the big blind of a dollar. One of the bad habits which I have noticed below this level are that players become too loose and chase cards they should not because it is relatively cheap.

LlamaKing

Big Dave D said...

Yes in general the games below a dollar BB, whilst often very profitable, are that way because almost no one in them is taking them especially seriously. Mostly players are "taking a shot" and the effect of this is that it effectively becomes a just play the nuts game by good players. This is even more pronounced for PLO8b.

This also means that when you get above this level you are in danger of being outplayed by the people there who are often taking it very seriously and have consideravble experience.

To some extent its a bit like my game mechanics I talked about in another post:

http://internetpokerpro.blogspot.com/2004/07/evolutionary-cycle-plo-and-plo8b.html

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave its paul spillane, can u contact me please paulspills@hotmail.com cheers mate