Fuck 'Em and Their Law

YTD: +$27516.80

Well it’s been an interesting time since we last spoke. Interesting as in the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

As 2+2ers may be aware, I have had a momentary digression into the world of No Limit holdem. Very momentary. After a good early run, I found myself at almost exactly a breakeven point. So I stopped. Why?

• I was too loose. Up to the 5-10 level, ring games, the standard of play was mostly snug. Most games had 2, at most 3 people, seeing the flop and I found having to play so tight quite dull. What made it worse was that even if you found a good hand, you often had to abandon it if a nut peddler woke up. Quite often I stacked myself, normally with QQ, getting frustrated against an obvious AA.
• The obvious solution is to play short-handed. The problem then was that the game requires too much judgment. One of the beauties of PLO is that unless you have a complete brainfart, it is rare that you are drawing terribly thin. If you are off your game at NL though, you can find yourself looking down the throat of 2-3 outers quite often. Unless you are playing super tight, you really do need to know your foes tendencies. Some guys, if you massively over-raise and they call, they have a set; others, well they just have TPMK.

So I went back to PLO.

For a while.

It struck me, really for the first time, how little action and how small the prospects are for a PLO player once he gets to the 2-4 level. At prime playing time there are maybe 5-6 400 games, 0-2 1000 games, 3-7 2000 games and some bigger shorthanded games here and there. But that is it for the entire of the net. And to be frank, some of those games aren't that good either.

Coupled with this, where are the new players going to come from? They are all hitting the holdem games. As a slightly tangential example, if a higher stakes plo8b game starts up on Stars, 4-6 of the players will be old faces, one of whom I have been playing since the long gone UB game at the turn of the millennium.

So I have taken up knitting instead.

Or at least, the poker equivalent of knitting...limit holdem. Early signs are encouraging. I am not a complete fish. I am not going on tilt (yet). I am 6 tabling without losing my sanity. Let's see what happens.

Inhale, Inhale, You're the Victim

YTD: +$35339.16

I have a confession to make. Several really. The original purpose of this site was not quite as philanthropic as perhaps it seems. As a business man (or a business, man) I had visions of turning this “Internet Property” into a stream of beautiful Benjamins. Incredibly, there was a phrase for this in the ol’ Dot Com Boom, which was “monetize eyeballs”. People got millions on half-assed ideas on how to do this. I kid you not.

So what happened? I realised that I just don’t like poker players. Now this probably comes as no surprise to Constant Readers, in fact “don’t like” smells like a severe understatement. But if you do a poker business, and my thoughts were around a Rakeback/Advice kind of style thing, then, axiomatically, you have to deal with Poker Players. Whinging, moaning, acting like 1.4 wannabes…say my old buddy Wintermute or his equivalent joined up? Emails full of drunken diatribes about strippers and “funny” picture emails galore.

Excuse me, I’ve just brought up a little sick into my mouth.

Of course the chance of a real catch like Wintermute of 2+2 fame was unlikely; but I had to face the fact that he is far from a sole example. Lots of people like Jackass. And now they play poker too.

So that dream died, and I had my boot on its neck.

One of the things that tickled me of late is the powerful argument – I have won more money than you, therefore I am more right than you. This is closely followed by the I have won MUUUCH more than you; therefore I am actually a more evolved form of life, ignorant amoeba boy.

Such arguments always tickle me. Despite the title of this blog – ok it was chosen with a view to marketability, as was the original URL – I am not a full time player. Nor do I have any wish, large Lottery win to one side, of being one. Almost *anyone* who is playing for a living should be making more than me. End of story. Yet still this powerful debating tool still rears its ugly head.

A fine example can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/767vu

I am still not clear whether Rolf S wilfully tried to misread the thread we “debated” in. I still think it was a sad and not unexpected case of turf-guarding. But it has ended up being one of my favourite threads on the now almost useless PLO forum at 2+2.

Come play my game I'll test ya