Internet Poker Pro

Blast from the Past

2007-06-23T15:37:00.000+01:00

WSOP '07 has prompted me out of my lethargy. God, I miss the old days. Listening *live* to the Mortensen main event win. Those newspaper like reports Conjelco used to do. Glazer, when he wasn't fantasising over Hellmuth in the hot tub, actually mentioning what was happening in the cash games. But now the ESPN sport steamroller is flattening everything, even to the extent the live coverage now is no longer live. Amusingly, one of those WSOP inbreeds, who is so irrelevant that I can't bother to even google who it was, basically justified that the WSOP was a sport because people watched it and there was a lot of prize money. So if they paid guys to wank on TV that would be a sport? (Ok, they do, its called porn, and is the true purpose of the internet and the reason why playing poker one handed is so essential.) This is the kind of powerful logical thinking that got the US and its 53rd state into Iraqistan I guess.

Andy W, bless him, pointed out that Eli E has saved the WSOP with his prop bets amongst the big game players. Although he was a little kind hearted letting Brunson out of it, I would have let the King of Poker sweat it out a little longer, tottering from pee wee tournament to the next, heart thumping through blind pride. It just shows that arrogance can overtake intellect even amongst the best of them. Other breaking news seems to be that some of those big name stars are busto! - gasp! Better breaking news is the *uncapped* 1k/2k/4k NL/PLO that aba is playing in, often just headsup vs Sammy Farha. Now that is a monster game. The gossip so far is that aba is a big winner - at one point they did flips for 100K. (I just threw up :()

Michael Craig. WTF. I mean What The Fuck! I actually liked his book on the Big Game, although when Gryko mentioned, in passing, once again fist fucking me in a shorthanded Omaha limit game, that it was a "bit of a love letter to the pros", he got me thinking. But the courtship is now over and it is full on, cheesy, 80s hard core porn. Not since Jesse May did that awful, fawning, can't-speak-with-his-mouth full, interview with Padraig Parkinson has there been such a deluge of sycophancy. Doesn't he get embarrassed at his new "best friend to the pros" status? Don't they get embarrassed? Some of it is bad, most of it is just toe-curlingly awful. For example, he once said Clonie Gowen had movie star looks. Hmmm.

On the poker front, i am ticking along, but not making half as much as I was last year. I have played too many types of game, and with the exception of triple draw, I've won at them all. Just not won well. I've had to ship out a ton of money on that damn real life expenses stuff, which hasn't helped. Ho hum. See you soon. Maybe.

An Interrupted Cry

2006-12-16T18:06:00.000Z

I thought I would do my year end early, not because like MBK I won't be playing much poker, but just to get it out of the fucking way. As I have a lot to say, my usual artful prose will be replaced with semi-random bullet points:

Ennui. For me poker and ennui have always been familiar bedfellows, but fuck me. I could seriously give it up. Maybe.

It's been a good year. Not in the scale of MBK or Wint, but considering my all-round amateurishness I'm moderately pleased. I won just about twice what I won last year. Thank you 6 max NL.

I could and perhaps should have won more. But I spent all my winnings and never really moved up. Goddamn you high on the hog uber-extravagant lifestyle you!

Rolf S's book is by far the best book on PLO. This isn't saying much but is true. Most of the short stackers who have appeared on places like Stars have seemed to have completely misunderstood what Rolf was writing about.

On the subject of Stars, I tried their NL 6 max games and they were much tougher than their old days Crypto equivalents. There were lots of VIP 20, PFR 20 types and the squeeze or thin 3 bet was very common. Bye, bye again Stars.

Betfair – what a fuck up. I mean what a serious fuck up.

If you're not following my blog by a feed reader, you need to. I suspect this will be about as active as GROAN's blog. This could very well be the last post. Then again it might not either. But don't hold your breath.

High Stakes Poker. By far the best poker tv show. Mostly because Gabe Kaplan's commentary is so good. Funny, and occasionally even perceptive.

Danny Boy on said High Stakes show. Man, he was bad. Some bad beats of epic proportions but many, many times he would say “I can't believe you've just so obviously hit a monster and now betting. So unreal. So obvious. But I call anyway.” In comparison Phil Laak looked v v good. And I liked his T-shirts.

One final point, which at first seems obvious, but I've not seen it explicitly said. At the very highest stakes the skill differential is so small you are competiting on bankrolls and the ability to weather variance and emotional control. If all your Foes have 5 times the tank you have, ceteris paribus, you are going to need to be lucky to survive.

Merry Christmas, and Ho, Fucking, Ho.

It's Great When You're Straight

2006-11-11T11:57:00.000Z

This post was going to be a review of Rolf's new book, but I couldn't be bothered. Over the last month or so, since the bubble burst, the NL since has taken a battering. The crypto network went pop, and Betfair have made the inexplicable decision to borrow PokerChamps software, which not only doesn't have hand histories, but shuts the door on all that PT shenanigans. Maybe it was deliberate.

I have been putting in the hours playing a fair chunk of limit hilo, having my usual rush followed by my usual crunch, although this time I have managed to stop playing before I have started losing money in the game. Anyway, envious of MBK - in a good way I might add - I thought I would give PLO a spin again. (Short interlude, I think its telling of all the poker bloggers etc that Ben has bounced back from a crushing setback. Ok, Gryko too but that was awhile ago. Cue Neitzche quotes.)

Here are some hands I'm proud of:

Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $5/$10
8 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: $744.80
UTG+1: $1000
MP1: $1022
MP2: $1104
CO: $1669
Hero: $957
SB: $580.50
BB: $1865.30

Pre-flop: (8 players) Hero is Button with :as :8d :ah :5c
UTG calls, UTG+1 folds, MP1 raises to $45, MP2 calls, CO calls, Hero raises to $80, 3 folds, MP1 calls, MP2 calls, CO calls.

Flop: :kd :2h :jh ($345, 4 players)
MP1 bets $342, 2 folds, Hero folds.
Uncalled bets: $342 returned to MP1.

Results:
Final pot: $345

---

Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $5/$10
3 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
Button: $714.20
Hero: $1509.80
BB: $1689
(Important note..this Foe is very, very aggro)

Pre-flop: (3 players) Hero is SB with :4c :5s :8c :9h
Button raises to $35, Hero calls, BB folds.

Flop: :8d :as :5c ($80, 2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $79, Hero calls.

Turn: :7c ($238, 2 players)
Hero checks, Button checks.

River: :2c ($238, 2 players)
Hero bets $100, Button raises to $310, Hero calls.

Results:
Final pot: $858
---

I just noticed Pete had an interesting post on the ennui descending on the current spate of internet players. My fists got tired thumping the air with joy and my feet sore dancing with glee at the demise of these D&D playing mother-fuckers.

(Please refer to the last post and its comments if this outburst seems a little odd.)

You're a Bleedin' Motherfucker Now Aren't You

2006-10-07T02:27:00.000+01:00

I've just spent a fascinating hour or so reading a great blog. Okay, it was mine. Ego aside, click on some of the old post links on the right, then click on more of them on the new posts you selected. Be sure to read the comments. There is some good shit in there.

Well, the US finally went ahead and did it. They seem to becoming more of a theocracy day by day. It's gonna be hard to tell them from Iran soon. End of off-topic point. The real point is all the fun gnashing and grinding of teeth by all those young bucks on the HSNL forum. I suspect we won't be getting any “How Should I Invest My Millions into Being a Global CEO” posts soon. It's always tears at bedtime when you confiscate the mechanical pencils and d20 dice off the D&D society.

I had a battle through some of the WCOOP. Man, the standard was poor. I was no superstar, but there was a lot of dead wood in the events I played. The Razz event basically became the Bet Every Street event. I got a tiny draw in the plo8b, which I have written up for my paying job, so you will see it at CPE in a few months. Yes, tournament plo8b in a poker magazine. Fair credit to Rolf S; having spent most of my Net time arguing with and insulting him, he now pays me to write obscure stuff with obscurer titles. Back to the WCOOP, the main problem is still one of concentration. For awhile I was in a really good spot in the $320 NLHE, but I'm sure the fact I was playing 4+ other cash games at the same time didn't help my performance. Knowing that I'm unlikely to win, I tend to see them as a waste of time that needs to be filled by playing proper, profitable poker. Thankfully man-flu prevented me from spunking off any more money past the plo8b event.

I have been playing PLO and PLO8b as a change of pace on Party recently. The standard, at least at the 5-10 levels, is still surprisingly low. Unfortunately, I have not been playing great either, and PLO variance has been cruel. Certainly it seems that PLO brings out the gambler in me. I have been more than a little ring rusty. Having said that, I have lost *ALL* my big pots. That is, $17k or so of pots where I've put my money in well, or thereabouts. Also, it's easy how soon you forget how many hands end up being crooked coin tosses. I must be running at 20-30% on them too so results have matched performance. I may persevere though – the games look that good. Thank god for NLHE and its robust crushing edges for bailing me out.

As a general note, if you did know my screen names but now wonder why I'm so damned ignorant, it's simply that I've turned off chat. So no offence.

Not Donne

2006-09-12T09:44:00.000+01:00

Now seems as good a time as any to comment on the WSOP (I originally wrote this before the end of the last Series, fwiw.) Now any Constant Reader will no doubt already know my view on poker-as-sport. If not, check out my old post 'Sport of Kings'. However, there was a very dim, but surprisingly significant chance that poker *could* have ended up as some kind of sport. But I think this WSOP was the death knell.

I am not the first to comment that a successful sport needs successful characters and the clashes and dramas therein. Skill, determination, domination and revival all wrapped up in the competitive arena. Crucially, these participants are aspirational. Everyday Joe Schmoe wants to be his stars, but appreciates and respects that there is an enormous divide between top pro and amateur. But that desire to approach, if not cross, the divide drives behaviour and ultimately unleashes the capitalistic process. Incredibly, against the odds, WPT season 1 almost had this. The continued success of a handful of players gave a sport-like feel to proceedings. How things have changed. Now there is an Everyman feel to tournament poker. It seems like 'anyone' can win a big event. This generates a certain appeal and plenty of drama. But this phenomenon is more in line with reality TV or a quiz show than a sport, and a pretty skill-less one at that. These kinds of things may generate a burst of interest, but that eventually wanes and the ratings die. And there go the sponsors.

For the last few years random donks have been winning dontaskically. Here are some of my favourites. At a WSOP circuit final table, 4 or so handed, Joe Hachem reraises - crucially putting in half his stack. Fellow chip leader reraises allin cold, i.e. he had no contribution to the pot so far, leaving Joe a handful of chips on his obvious, almost regardless of holding, compulsory call. The reraiser had QJs. This play is so bad I’m struggling for words. A better known one is the hand that crippled Greg Raymer in the 2005 Big Dance. Greg raises and continuation bets the ragged flop. He then goes allin on the turn with his KK. His foe has QJs and calls to hit his flush draw. The foe's play is hugely problematic. Firstly, why float no pair, no draw with no implied odds on the flop? Secondly, he called instantly on the turn - no calculation to even see if he was getting the right price. These plays and the success that ensues are akin to a golfing novice wining the US Open with a broomstick. But it gets worse. The WPT is deliberately deskilling the game. The blind increases actually accelerate once you get to the televised final table and it is not uncommon for headsup to be a battle of 10-15 big blind stacks. Lastly, look at the recent WSOP. Would the participants in any real sporting event be treated as shabbily as the poker mugs this year? Would Wimbledon field tatty old balls and saggy nets a la the big HORSE event? For me the coup de grace was the payouts of the Main Event. Once again the organiser arbitrally creates a final table structure to benefit headlines and not players. Nice gradual increases from 9th to 2nd then kachunk, a double the money increase to $12 million for first. I just wish they had done an overt, ugly deal to fuck up those marketing monkeys.

A Change of Pace

2006-08-27T02:01:00.000+01:00

For a change I thought I might talk about actual poker playing, as opposed to the usual GOM rants and ravings. August has been an interesting month. I started late, owing to my hols and got off to a reasonable start. Then, just a week or so ago, I was kicking around Stars looking at the WCOOP schedule, when I saw a new tab. “Other Games”. One click later I was looking at HORSE cash games. I guess the ESPN WSOP stuff was good for something after all. We all want to be Chip Reese now. Pretty soon I was on a 100BB rush in the 10-20 game and I started seeing a new, brighter future as a HORSE specialist. Now this fantasy didn’t quite run into busting down the Big Game in a couple of years, but I hate to admit that I actually was enjoying poker again. Not just enjoying the winning, but the actual game itself. And I could play it seemingly for hours at an end. In one day I did 10 hours, 7.5 in one session. And this was playing multiple tables as well. To put this into perspective, I probably haven’t done a big bet session over 4 hours in two years. It almost felt therapeutic.

Perhaps too much so, as I quickly hit a 170BB downswing and I had to stop visualising the delivery of the Porsche from the Stars VIP scheme. It struck me that I probably wasn’t that good after all. On a closer look, the problem seemed to be, paradoxically, in the HO’ element of HORSE (this is putting aside a pretty bad run of luck in Razz, which is truly a game to create the manically depressed.) The HORSE games are 8 handed but then often ran short. More than this, the H and the O were nearly *always* short, as people sat out to avoid paying the blinds. Now Faithful Readers will know of my issues with short handed Omaha. But I also kinda feel the same about short handed limit holdem too. Whereas I have a vague clue how to play 4 or 5 handed limit holdem – as opposed to the Omaha equivalent – I just don’t like it. Too much play “feels” like being a fish. In fact the levels of aggression are so pumped up and calling to the river very thin is so common it was hard to tell chump from champ. Time and again I would button raise, continuation bet against the BB caller and he would take a card off with just one overcard and no other draw. Whether this is right or not, I don’t really know. It may very well be the right play. I just don’t like playing poker like that.

In the end I think it comes down to the blinds. When the game becomes a fundamental scramble for that blind money, I’m just not as effective. It turns me into an alternating tight passive – insane aggro fish. Back to NL.

FWIW, my second article is up on the Cardplayer site here – probably a bit more similar in tone to the stuff here. And with a pretty picture too.

Time-saving Device

2006-08-02T13:54:00.000+01:00

I´m on my hols again and thankfully Cardplayer has come to my rescue on the posting front. My first article can be found at:

BDD Cardplayer Debut

Feel free to kick me around here.

Take them Dives for the Short-end Money

2006-07-22T08:39:00.000+01:00

The WSOP is shit again. Now not shit in the Harrahs are running it like they are prime contenders in the half-wit Olympics sense. Although, if other reports are even partly true, then they are a shoo in for that particular Championship. Nor do I mean the death of any kind of impartial, non-tourney sycophantic reporting. That died probably a couple of years back. What has really struck me is how bad it has been for those folks who want Poker to be a sport.

Obviously, Harrahs and the Media Circus clearly view poker as just another reality TV show. Because they wouldn’t treat genuine sports stars in such a shoddy way. But unfortunately the results of some of the play seem to be confirming their suspicions. The big names are not dominating. This is bad for poker-as-a-sport. What brings the money into a sport, especially in the USA, is either dominance of, or conflict between, sporting characters. And by characters I mean Tiger Woods not Mike the Mouth. This was always going to be hard for Poker, but crap shoot structures are always going to hurt this. In the WPT, for example, the antes accelerate as you get closer to the big money.

If some of the play is to be believed of the Cardplayer hand by hand, some of the winners have chumped their way to victory. Some of the recent John Gale victory hands were especially dubious. And saddo I am, I tracked Jules Gardner’s 3rd place quite closely and the ultimate winner seems to have played quite poorly. Certainly his move of calling off all his chips with KQs before the flop was very suspect – yes I actually number crunched this one, thanks Andy W.

The ultimate problem is that this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The more like Big Brother or Date My Daughter it becomes, the more it will be treated like cheap, ratings eating TV. But the public may have an unlimited appetite for sport, but far from it for another reality TV show.

Crisis on Infinite Earths

2006-07-01T21:27:00.000+01:00

Well, that was interesting. For those of you that thought I was starting a burgeoning porn empire over the last few days, I'm afraid not. I was hijacked, which was a disconcerting experience as at first, not knowing about this kind of thing at all, I thought my PC had been hacked and I went into full-on anti-virus/spyware frenzy. Several pointless hours later it dawned on me that any hackers would most likely be emptying my bank accounts, not auto-posting pornography links. Anyway, after a spot of reminding, Blogspot got it back.

On a poker front, as June was quite bad, I thought I would have a spin at a few tourneys, to magic myself into profit. No joy. However I did finally figure out what I am doing wrong. Now those that knew of me back in the old, B&M days knew me as a good tournament player. In fact an occassional reader here said he that I was very, very good indeed - I think it was just mindless flattery but it was nice :) He was also aghast at my playing cash. Which showed just how much a "star" I was in those days. Anyway, masturbatory digression aside, I think my problem is that I still play these tourneys like these good ol' days. Some examples.

I'm chipleader on a full table when a tight player just UTG raises, putting in just about 30% of his stack. With 77 on the button I decide to put him to the test and put him allin. He calls with AQ and he wins the race. Standard? Internet-wise, yes. Old school no. If he was facing a real world drive back him into the middle of the night we would say something like this to himself. It is almost 100% certain that I am at best a 50/50. And quite a few times I will be badly dominated. And its a long drive. Pass. On the Net, he thinks a bit more like, fuckit, another tourney in 5 mins, call.

Similarly, with only 10 or so big blinds I face two limpers on the button. Finding KQs I move allin, expecting to increase my stack by 30%. The real worry, the first limper, passes. After some thought, the second limper calls for a big chunk of his stack with 99. Obvious result. Again, classic Internet woolly thinking. His hand wasn't good enough to raise, but is good enough to call a massive chunk of his stack with no extra factors like hitting the bubble or the like.

Well its only been two years now since I stopped playing live. I'm a slow learner.

King's Shilling

2006-06-19T20:52:00.000+01:00

Well the world certainly turns. As the early birds may know, I am now a writer for Card Player Europe. Those who remember my robust dialogues with Rolf S, the European editor, may be a little surprised. However the Dutch have a long history of being both able to enjoy an argument and also being able to put it behind them. So those of you who have enjoyed my midly patronising style can now pick it up in print. Feel free to send raving, mildly insane letters of praise to Cardplayer. For the blog loyalists, there will still be the usual GOM stuff here, and if you want to kick off something based on my articles, then be my guest. This will remain the same old place to hang out and prove how wrong I am and I don't expect a lot of cross over traffic.

Just so this post isnt completely void of poker content, I thought I would just mention that I seem to be having my usual summer. First losing month of any significance this year, although I have been on meagre rations the last few months too. Still winning more than last year though. Touch wood.

I made the mistake of watching the WSOP Main Event on TV. Andy Black looked good. Aaron Kanter and Tiffany Williamsen though....brrrrrrrr.

Gödel

2006-06-02T21:18:00.000+01:00

It has been said that basically the career of a top class mathematician is basically over before the guy’s thirty. It’s a young man game and basically the rest of his life is spent wistfully retrospective. Now I doubt I could be argued as a top class anything but I kinda know the feeling. The best of this blog is not to come. It’s already shot its bolt. One of my favourites was Sport of Kings. It was one of my classic rage against the dying of the light entries where my true vitriolic colours were revealed.

Now against all common sense I actually watched a few televised tourneys to see if I was another pointless Nostradamus or did I really get a glimpse beyond the veil? First, the unintentionally funny. Mad Marty being a tourney director for a proper live event. Now I reported before that he did some sad TV stuff but those vanity 6 player crapshoots barely qualify as poker. But this was a real tourney! It makes you wonder what the qualifications of a tournament director are. Just turning up? Being matey with a load of players and being involved in the worst tourney decision in TV history?

Comedy apart, WTF about the WPT? I can't understand why any serious pro plays in it. Except for the rationale that if you don't stand outside in a thunderstorm you can't get hit by lightening. It that all the WPT has turned into? An exercise of clutching a lightning rod in the dark and hoping to get zapped? I’m afraid so. Let’s have a further look. One of the obvious statements about tournament poker is that you would like to have more chance to exert your skill when the money matters most. This boils down to having more play at the final table.

How does the WPT compare to say the WSOP circuit in that regard? The truth is frightening, unless you are especially conductive. At a Circuit event the blinds increase on average by 30% in each round. At headsup the players had about 200 big blinds of play between them. All good. In the rollin’ dem bones WPT the blinds increase by 60-70% each round, and at headsup the players have an amazing 70 or so big blinds between them. Which often then turns into 30. So with often nearly $500k to $1million to play for, skill has effectively been removed from the equation.

This is basically turning the WPT less into a sport – no surprise there – and more into a bad reality TV show. This is bad for poker for several reasons. Foremost, if other TV teaches us anything, is that people get easily bored with reality TV after awhile. Not in the general, where there is mountains of the inane crap, but in the particular, where shows quickly die after several series or less. Also, and especially so for the poker is sport lunacy crowd, sponsorship will never be interested in the game until there are recognisable characters. Series one promised this, but now every Tom, Dick and Harry is winning an event. Investment does not follow the anonymous.

So although I am envious of the strike it rich crowd I still steer clear of the tournament scene as I know that I just couldn’t cope with the most important poker experience of my life coming down to red and black, odd and even.

Transference

2006-05-04T00:21:00.000+01:00

Bluff kindly gave me a kick to put up a new post, so you have him to blame. I really enjoy 2+2. Not in any productive way, to do with actually playing poker and improving my game, rather just all the shit and patheticness and noise. It seems very similar to a pornography addiction, without worrying about being caught out by the wife. The HSNL forum is a sewer. Most posts revolve around people guessing what the other posters will say and posting it first, or alternatively copying the poster above them, adding no text or value whatsoever. Or alternatively copying the poster above them, adding no text or value whatsoever.

(Who says there isn’t a rich seam of humour in what I post? Oh, hi Wintermute :-)

The PLO forum has got better. Okay, it has got *more*. Most of the posts are still mediocre at best, and the majority of folk there are probably in what David Young would christen “they can count past 13 stage”. BTW for PLO fans Bluff did post an interesting drawing hand problem. I didn’t necessarily agree with all his answers, but I did agree with the point he was getting at. Worth a serious look.

What has really got me very amused recently is a *serious* post on “what I should do with my life” issues. It seems that earning $200K+ isn’t enough for these young kids today, they want to be entrepreneur Captains of Industry too. And surely their skills of fleecing WPT worshipping donks will easily translate into broking/real-estate/CEO stardom? In true 2+2 GroupThink style, responder-after-responder genuinely believed that this question had some validity and was not the product of a too-much-too-soon insanity.

The short answer, would be grow up. I mean this literally. Life is the best teacher and no amount of “I am sure it’s a transferable skill” will actually replace *doing* the damned thing in the first place. You want to work in finance. Well do it. Just don’t think that knowing what a continuation bet is will be a worthy substitute. But there’s more. First off, don’t suppose that because you are a winning player today that you will be a winning player in ten years time. The game we play is almost unrecognisable from that I learnt almost a decade ago, except for the pasteboard bit. The good players evolve line is nice, but some players are just right people in right time and right place beneficiaries, no matter their winrate. There used to be a lot of marsupials on this planet, and they used to be very successful, until they met up with placentate mammals. How many marsupial lions have you seen recently?

The most ridiculous assumption is that poker success has an underlying set of traits or characteristics that would transfer to business success. Now for some real world players this may be true. Some of the skills and meta-game understandings that folk that understand Gary Caron’s old RPG aphorism of “being in the entertainment business” may be of some use en route to the Board Room. But being able to 8 table for 12 hours without going on tilt or insane? Profitable, yes. Transferable, no. Business will always be about people and how you handle them and unfortunately those fleshy, carbon-based things will always a key component. And saying “lol, u suck” may not be the best way to engage with them on the path to wealth and success.

Atlas

2006-03-29T23:34:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a long time again. Also, in true lazy blogger style I will spend the vast bulk of this post talking about the *last* post. However, for the Faithful Reader there is a semi-useful tip at the end.

I didn't reply to the any blogs I would recommend comment. I was once asked this self same question at the table by one of my fans. Yes, I did used to have fans who would invariably declaim that they had learned more from my blog about PLO than anywhere else, just before blink-blink-swoosh they scooped me out of a pot. I replied without hesitation that the best stuff available on the Net was Roy Cooke's stuff. Anything else, he inquired? Silence.

To my mind 99.99% of blogs fall into one of two camps. The first is the Internal Monologue. This takes the form of I played; I lost; I won; here’s the hand. You get the picture. Just as if you had really looked into the mental processes of a poker player, chilling thought though that may be, this can be a fun place to visit but ultimately unrewarding. WTFP. The other kind I term A Day in the Life Of. In these the poker is often a sideline alongside a lot of other Socio-Economic-Political-Military-Complex stuff. I respect that this is what blogging is all about, but personally if I want that kind of stuff I buy a newspaper, figuratively speaking.

On the contentious point of ZeeJustin et al – and at least he’s had the decency to go into quiet mode now – I fall into both camps really. I have from my B&M days zero-tolerance for cheaters. OK, well approximating to zero. If they were very bad players too, then I was happy to deal them in. But the nature of online cheating is more insidious. Although it has been argued that Zee didn’t gain too much of an edge from what he did, by my approximate, rough-and-ready maths, if he was playing 5 accounts at once he was 5 times more likely to win. Although this does not seem to work out to be a big edge like say skilled collusion in a cash game, he is still 5x better off than me. This cannot be insignificant.

However, I have a lot of sympathy with Chaos. I have no doubt that Party was completely arbitrary in how and why it seized the money. Although $100k seems harsh-but-fair, what about if he had $500k in his account. And more tellingly, if he had $20k in his account would they have prosecuted him for the additional $80k? Anyone with any experience of Party can unfortunately answer these questions themselves. Disturbingly, “The Player’s Friend” PokerStars came out of the whole affair very poorly. It seems that in any large stacks NL game I sat in, I might be playing an unofficial team of soft players. The whole notion that online poker is helpless to this is as ridiculous as the idea that it is mostly harmless. There would be a variety of very simple detections and remedies that Stars could put into place, but it’s clear that they simply cannot be bothered. I had some experience of the Stars collusion detection in action – I got some tiny rebate from some collusion play they detected. The whole process was shrouded in the absurd and the ineffective. The amount was so tiny it could have only been one or two blinds; they wouldn’t say what game was involved, or players, or even when. I don’t see myself playing on Stars for some time.

Now the tip. One of the problems with short-handed NL is that no one wants to do the heavy lifting of thinking through things themselves. This is what often makes 2+2 forums and the like self-fulfilling prophecies in terms of advice. Here’s one based on an old favourite. Its often said to isolate with a vengeance against loose players short handed. This is mostly true. Except some of these folk are what I call “Fight Every Fight” guys. What this means is that they do not want to give up on any pot and they will often bet, raise, check-raise on very thin values. Especially in raised pots. So if you isolate raise them, especially in fixed buyin games, you often find them in much more rambunctious mood and harder to play than if you hadn’t. So don’t raise them. Let’sjust play poker through the streets instead.

Republic

2006-02-27T00:00:00.000Z

I was going to write something meaningful and profound, but I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t seem to be the only one with a problem with posting. Most of my favourite blogs have gone very much into silent mode.

Never mind. Favourite was a hell of an exaggeration anyway.

You can tell the poker scene is really exploding in the UK. There are now two broadly available poker mags now on the High Street. Well I say two, but I can’t seem to find Poker Player for love nor money. The new kid on the block is WPT Magazine, or something like that. Now normally I treat the printed word like a Franciscan monk; but UK poker magazines invariable find their way into the bin within a couple of hours.

Now I understand that they are aimed at the lowest common denominator but often they contain advice that is simply, utterly wrong. In one issue of Poker Player, the amusingly nicknamed "The Boy" explained that having a staking plan was a key component in successful cash game plan. That is, sit down with a small amount of money and when you have made a fixed amount of profit, immediately leave. With some additional permutations I can't bring myself to repeat. Now even if this "expert" is just filling word count, this madness should not get past any sane editorial process. Oops.

WPT Magazine, or whatever the damn thing is called, is certainly glossier, and doesn’t have all the usual UK pseudo-player-parasites involved. But it is still outstandingly bad. How about this situation. Three handed in a 5-3-2 payout SNG everyone has roughly the same chips (it is a bit vague here). Either one or maybe both of your opponents go allin. The advice is to pass your AA. At least this will keep the tables healthy.

I couldn't leave you without a comment on 2+2. As pointed out by Beset, there has been some excellent Sklansky-kicking on the HSNL forum. Also fascinating was watching ZeeJustin trying to defend open softplaying as being ethically right as "PokerStars don’t really mind". He then further exemplifies his *ethics* by admitting to playing multiple seats in MTT, which has cost him his ability to play on Party and $100K.

An example worthy of Socrates himself.

Four Ps

2006-02-04T11:52:00.000Z

I have surprisingly found myself still enjoying playing short handed NL. Winning helps of course. As I have commented before, when you play NL you really do feel that the "decision", with all its many variables, is king. In PLO, by comparison, it’s often just playing the maths of the situation. This is down to a very simple factor. In most big hands in NL, you are either really right or really wrong. In PLO, by contrast, big pots are often contested with hands that are very close in value and you are normally either side of a 60/40 shot.

One lesson I would like to think I would bring from my NL game to PLO is the importance of position. When you play NL, especially short-handed, the importance of position is magnified. You can feel how much harder it is to play any hand, especially in a raised pot, when you are first to act. PLO players, unfortunately, treat position almost as an irrelevance, and basically play the same hands wherever they are sat. And this gambling hurts. Here's an example:

You're sat in a six handed NL game with a mix of strong and weak players. You limp UTG with A6 suited (which I would never do, btw) and a good player raises behind you 4 times the blinds and everyone passes back to you. You both have 100x blind stacks. This is a clear pass.

Now look at a comparable situation in PLO.

You limp UTG with a nut suited ragged hand and again the same happens. But being a PLO player you call. The flop comes giving you a nut flush draw and a small pair. You check, the good player continuation bets, as he often does headsup, and you check raise.

He sets you allin.

Oops.

This is a hugely common set of circumstances that you will see at PLO tables from 2-4 and up. Players, often good players, contriving to get themselves into situations where they are putting their whole stack in jeopardy with marginal hands, just because they think position does not apply to them.

It Pays to Be Right

2006-01-11T01:04:00.000Z

I thought I would let you guys do all the work this time. OK, I did have to think of the jazzy titles. Mostly after the first link, you are looking at explanations.

Except for the last one, which needs no explanation.

Pair of Ragged Claws Scuttling

Snail on a Razor
Grocery Clerk (mostly my comments)
Absolutely Goddamn Right

Someday this War's Gonna End

Death Card
It's Gonna Be Hot

And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius

One of Those Guys that had that Weird Light Around Him

A Letter to Hooke

2006-01-07T00:37:00.000Z

I guess we're all here bright and breezy in a new exciting year. And as promised, I am going to do a little PLOing for you old timers out there. Last year, BluffThis! a regular both here and on 2+2, did a very provocative post about tight play in PLO. As per usual, it didn't garner a whole heap of intelligent responses, however, I thought it might be useful to examine his thoughts and give my views here instead. You can find his post at :

http://tinyurl.com/9qzo6

(Quick disclaimer. Bluff has an almost psychopathic hatred of using tools like PokerTracker. I just don't understand it, but I do forgive him :) Is PT as useful for PLO players? Absolutely not. Does it have its uses? Absolutely does. It lets you build rough and ready profiles of players. Now if a guy is playing half his hands and raising with most of them, unlike in holdem, this doesn't *necessarily* mean he's a bad player. But it certainly means he's not a rock. So a raise on the flop is not always the nuts. Also, just for ease of use of reviewing significant hands. PT is a godsend. Diversionary rant over.)

This post of Bluff's is unusual and interesting. Most PLO players just play the preflop quite loosely and with little thought, and then focus from the flop onwards. It’s not unusual to have players with stats of VIP 40%+ and still be winning players. Having said this, there is a profile of winning players, playing circa low 30 preflop and raising with half of their hands they play, so clearly some players are being quite discerning about their standards, if not to Bluff's rigor.

I did feel, though, that there were several elements missing from Bluff's analysis.

1. It's Not the Full Story

If you are going to play as tight as this article advocates then you MUST be raising with the vast majority of the hands you are playing. One of the key raising strategies in PLO is to elevate the stakes when you have an advantage. Clearly, if you are playing this tight, the sheer quality of your hands will be an advantage over the field. So you have to be raising a lot, from all positions.

2. You Need to Link Preflop to Postflop

To my mind, a key element in expert PLO play is how do you link your preflop play to the play running through the streets. One of the reasons I never adopted the raising more strategy was just that I found myself banging it in on too weak values on the flop or the turn. I had a disconnect between my preflop play and the rest of my game. If you are going to be a TAG preflop you are going to need to have an excellent understanding of how you extend this approach against various opponents and situations. The overwhelming advantage and paradoxical disadvantage is that there is no published information on this style of play.

3. It Doesn't Always Win the Most Money

The TAG approach works best in the bigger games. Here, many pots are three way or headsup on the flop, and the game gets NLHE-esque characteristics at times. But certainly from 2-4 and thereabouts, the nature of the game is very different. Many pots are more multiway, regardless of raising, so the UberTAG approach doesn't necessarily have the same impact. Moreover, the pot doesn't need to already be inflated for some schmuck to charge his whole stack in into a poor situation. Bad flush draw, top pair can be a stacking off hand in an unraised pot at the 2-4 level; it may require an inflated, juicier prize in the middle to get people to play quite as loosely at the higher stakes. And of course because of this, it becomes less of a mistake.

These caveats to one side, interesting food for thought for PLO devotees.

Every One's a Winner

2005-12-29T21:20:00.000Z

YTD: +35951.01 (final)

A disappointing year in the end. Sure, I made a profit again, which on the basis of this thing just being a hobby, albeit a dangerously obsessive one, is more than most folk can say about their hobbies. But this was, I felt, the chance of a serious breakthrough year, and as the insane poker boom continues, years like this feel burdened with tremendous opportunity cost.

There were two serious areas of weakness, both of which annoy the fuck out of me in retrospect.

Firstly, I failed in that most important micro-game skill - playing lots of hands. Without a doubt, one of the greatest benefits available to an online player is the capacity to play a ball-breakingly large number of hands. If you have an edge, the more often you apply that edge, the more $ you make. Christ, I sound like Roy Cooke. But it is that easy. There was no reason why I couldn't play a good 180-200k hands this year, but I didn't even get close - ergo, money down the drain.

The second, and to my mind, the more damning factor was how poorly I played the meta-game. I have been playing poker for nearly a decade now and this should be my main advantage, not a Verbal-from-Usual-Suspects-stylee gimpy lame foot.

I played the 5-10 Omaha game too long when I should have just stepped down for a while. I took a calamitous shot at the 10-20 during the worst run of my life and when it was certainly not clear that I even had an edge in the game. I then tottered from poor game selection to poor game selection, wanking money off like a pervert in a sex-movie theatre. 30-60 limit holdem on a short roll for the first time anyone? 30-60 short-handed limit O8b - the game I am officially listed as the World's Worst At, against the best on the net? It was hardly fucking cricket. I start to feel my teeth shake and my eyeballs loosen just thinking about it.

As an "interesting" example of these two factors combined, if I had played my most consistent games, the $400 PLO and PLO8b, exclusively, for the number of hands I should have played in a year, I would have made $100k very easily. Lovely.

So what does the future hold for BDD and this blog?

Well, I am afraid you are going to have to put up with this more relaxed pace of posting. I promised I would never turn this into some kind of wet diary or “I played XXX and won XXX” mindlessness you get on so many blogs, with only cursory views or analysis. So less is more.

Also, finally, I am going to kill the YTD. I accept that the title of the blog is misleading enough – we have explained that already, haven’t we – but the YTD just creates the wrong impression. I am not a pro. Please God, I never will have to be a pro. I originally put the YTD up because at the time, NO ONE was talking about figures. This was 18 months ago, remember. And I felt that the YTD was (a) a sign of seriousness (b) would encourage people to come back.

But the world has turned since then.

Lots of very successful fulltime players talk about how much they are winning, well kinda, ok at least when they *are* winning.

This *doesn’t* mean I am going to get all shy on how I am doing. It just means that it isn’t going to be at the top of every post.

Anyway…Good Luck…Merry Christmas…and a Prosperous New Year for us all.

Interim Management

2005-12-17T20:10:00.000Z

YTD: +$34610.95

Well it's been a while again. I'm in the throes of a very long Christmas vacation so I am doing little playing, or writing. I will do a summary, rather gloomy post to sum up the year before we come to the end of it. And next year I have a nice post based on BluffThis's excellent PLO post on playing tight, and why I didn't feel it was the complete story.

Some things that have tickled me of late:

1. Prahald losing $500k at one point in one session against poker Wunderkid Patrik Antonius. Imagaine, sat in your smalls, scratching your bollocks, click-click, there goes another $100k. No high class, movie-star-look-alike, whores. No Presidential Villa at The Wynn. Just you and your living room and click-click-woosh. Insane.

2. Mad Marty Wilson as a tournament director on UK TV. Oh boy. Alledgedly a lovely fella, he was involved in a very dubious incident on a televised event as a player where he made a counterfitted two pair against a foes higher two, which from his expression he clearly knew, and no one stopped the player leaving the event, even though it had live commentary. It turned out that the Tournament Director had a piece of Marty too. Purely a coincidence, no doubt. And now he too can have that esteemed honour based on a wide experience of directing, well, hmmm, yes, (long silence.) UK TV poker once again in super shape.

3. Back before the Internet made donk plays the norm in tourneys, many "analysts", ok the guy with too much hairspray and the guy with, unfortunately, too much death, used to talk about "The Worst Play in Poker." This was commonly accepted as John Bonnetti crashing his stack into the 3rd place in a 90s Big One when the other stack only had a few blinds worth left. Of course worse plays happen all the time now, and if they win, then all the better. Here's one that seemed to slip under everyone's net:

(before the hand Hachem had about $300k, Pham a bit less.)

Hand #43 - Kido Pham has the button in seat 2, Tran raises to $18,000, Pham reraises to $50,000, Hachem reraises to $150,000, Tran folds, and Pham thinks for a minute before moving all in. Hachem asks for a count of Pham's remaining chips before saying, "It doesn't matter, I call." Hachem shows pocket kings (Kc-Kd), and Pham shows Js-10c.

While the chips are counted down before the flop, Scotty Nguyen says, "I threw away the other two kings, baby." The crowd explodes into laughter, releasing the tension of this big all-in situation.

Hachem has Pham outchipped, and Pham will need to improve to stay alive here.

The flop comes Jc-Jh-2s, and Pham flops trip jacks to take the lead

I guess this answers the question as to what kind of pro Pham is.

Merry Christmas.

Fuck 'Em and Their Law

2005-11-29T21:08:00.000Z

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

2005-11-01T23:58:00.000Z

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

John Stuart Mill

2005-10-23T01:48:00.000+01:00

YTD: +$38362.83

Well it’s been awhile. I was going to write a polemic on the stupidity of poker site management and then low and behold, Party Poker finally did something right. Now I won’t trawl over dead news, but thankfully I did predict that this would be good for Party in private mails and I will buck the trend and say “publicly” that this will be a very successful move. 2+2 was interesting during this time. After the “apocalypse now” response, came the “well, they NEED us multitablers so everything will go back to normal” response. Uh huh. Maybe not. Although multi-ers do provide sizeable chunks of rake they also provide the anathema of online poker profitability – better than breakeven play. In fact often downright good play. As my dear friend Chaos has been saying for some time, and now the public nature of Party’s results clearly show, bad players burn fast. Widespread poker ineptitude is the management mantra. Let’s show those 2+2’ers the road!

Some other things that have caught my eye. A new poker magazine in the UK, completely aimed at the mainstream. Crap. So crap I actually put it in the garbage and pulled out my treasured Card Player Europe issues instead. And just today, in desperate search of poker content I found “Poker Player”, which has so many adverts that it makes Card Player look like the Bible in format. And content so bad even Paul Samuels at Poker Pages was shaking his head.

Anyway. The point of this particular missive was that I caught some interesting WPT shows the other night. The amusing Aviation one, where Surinder played like a meditator on valium. If Paris had undergone a thermonuclear attack by Martians, Tony G had revealed himself to be Beyonce and demanded instant sexual gratification, and the legs had fallen off the table, Surinder would have twitched, looked into the horizon and quietly said “call.” The very next show I saw was the Carlos Mortenson win. Incredibly, some great poker seems to have been played AND actually captured too. But in the aftermath I remembered that His Highness of Rightness, Paul Philips had commented on this show, so I dutifully looked it up. Putting aside his typical, easily denied if necessary, vague assertion of collusion, he was pretty damning about the amateur calling allin on Carlos with TT when David Pham basically had not even a blind left. There was $250,000 difference between 3rd and 2nd. Anyway, pretty sharpish the maths weenies came out of the woodwork and quite rightly showed that this wasn’t a bad call after all, and mathematically it was probably correct. So PP made a full and gracious retraction and apology and that was that. Heh :)

But something stuck in my craw here. It does STILL seem bad, doesn’t it? Regardless of the maths it just does not feel right. And this is the important, if there is one, idea today. There is maths and there is maths. And a little learning is dangerous thing. After those madcap world-ending guys finished inventing Game Theory, one of the problems they quickly faced was that their original view provided for a linear progression of outcomes. In plain speech, something with twice the value should be twice as important or give twice the satisfaction. But the real world doesn’t work that way. One million dollars is often much more than 10x one hundred thousand dollars in terms of value and impact. And being five times dead doesn't necessarily feel much worse than just once dead. (The term mathematician’s use for this is Utility, btw.)

And this was the choice facing our amateur friend. On the one hand was $250K, not insignificant by any measure, on the other $500k. For a student, and we were led to believe not a wealthy one, the opportunity deriving from the second figure is potentially massive. If you factored in utility into the equations, then the seemingly ok call was very, very bad indeed. And it also shows that sometimes you have to trust your gut over supposed “maths.”

X-Post

2005-10-10T17:33:00.000+01:00

No YTD, original content or any of that crap.

Just the only reason for 2+2 ever existing:

http://tinyurl.com/9uckn

Michel: "Boy, I sure hope my 5:4 edge holds up, otherwise I am going to die."

Harmonica

2005-09-27T13:39:00.000+01:00

YTD: +$30564.99

There was a small demand, after my last post on the good ol' days, for some more anecdotes on the heart break and wallet ache of playing poker in the pre-Internet era.

I was going to make the main focus the amusing story of when a player drove across country to confront a well known poker contributor, occasional funny man, and often hard nut. This confrontation was principally around a pick axe handle, brought just for the occasion. On seeing his interlocutor, stepping out of a car with the said debating tool poised for questioning, our comedian said, quietly, coolly "Is that all you've got?" Which if it had been me, would have provoked a fast rewind of existence so far, back into the car, reverse out of the street, Keystone Cops-style, and getting the fuck out of Dodge.

This did not happen.

The next day I saw our jovial friend, still jovial, and as unblemished as he ever could be. Our misguided friend, however, was bundled up like a decade early audition for The Mummy.

Within two weeks, they were both playing at the same table again.

However, I didn't want to make the prime focus of my reminisces *quite* so negative, so instead I have the triumverate of terror.

The Good

Blackpool, in the North of England, was very much an acquired taste, and a poor one at that. However back in the 90s, it was often home to some of the worst cash players in human existence, and that alone made the trip worthwhile. These were the types that thought 10 card Omaha the epitome of skill, and a 8th nut low a solid investment.

However, at my table was a more fearsome bunch. A guy who would later end up European champion. Another, the youngest player to win $1 million at the WSOP. In the hand in question there was some considerable preflop action and on the flop a tight, fearless, aggressive, well known Oriental player went all-in. I put him on a flush draw and called him with top pair and some kind of American wrap - this was some time ago, please! As we were friends and there was no more betting we shared our hands. He had an overpair and a flush draw, which made matters worse as he hit his pair on the turn. I was now in a world of hurt. A seemingly irrelevant river arrived and I desperately shuffled my cards, trying to find something that would win me this monster pot.

"You have the straight," he gently nudged me.

Only he had seen my hand.

Ever since, in the same circumstances, I have repaid the favour for those unfortunates who haven't realised that they have thumped me with their exposed hand.

And as a sad addendum, the player in question got effectively broke and never recovered.

The Bad

Let's Quantum Leap forward half a decade. We are now in a very pleasant cash game playing my game of choice, PLO8b. The main donator in this game was a young, loose student guy, from a very rich family. He was waaay to aggressive and had a waaay to high opinion of his own game. By the river of this particular hand, I had him all-in and declared my hand "Nut full, and a low" and exposed my hand to the table. My low wasn't great, hence the "and a low" phrase.

Well the youngster shook his hand and thought and shook his head some more. "You win" he said, and started to muck his hand.

"No wait!" shouted The Rock, who had not spoke a word for the last two hours and had saw his hand inadvertently as he was sat next to him. This is the key point. At no point was his hand exposed to the table. Rather, The Rock had seen it because the student was taking one last wistful look at it before conceding defeat.

"You have a better low, look" and the Rock showed him.

To say I was fucking livid was an understatement. We both knew why The Rock had done this. He hadn't wanted to let the loose money get into my stack. He wanted a chance to get it himself.

"If he puts his fucking hand down, *I* will show him he's beat me", I said softly, truthfully.

The Rock looked guilty, went quiet again, busted the rich kid and promptly left almost the next hand.

The Ugly

OK time trippers, we are back to the start of my career again. The soon to be WSOP millionaire kid was busting up games all over England. He was good and he was on fire. At the time he was ferried around the country by some old friends, one a small time tourney hustler, the other, well just a hustler at best, at worst a rumoured cheat, although that was to come later.

Having duly bust the cash table again, the young tyro needed a hand carrying his chips to the cash desk and the hustler duly obliged.

Some time later our friend realised that he was £50 short.

Yes, his friend, long established from his recent teenage years, and an older figure by far, many hours spent following the white line with, and whom he would often give money to, well, just because he could, had stolen from him.

Yes, his friendship was only worth £50.

WCOOP

2005-09-18T08:58:00.000+01:00

YTD: +$21828.54

Well that's the end of the WCOOP for me for another year. I only played the two PLO events, both making kaput, but playing very differently in both.

The rebuy event went poorly. I did not have my head "straight" and I decided that as I was likely to not win the event, I should keep my outgoings low. Entering a rebuy event with this approach, especially one where swings can be as severe as PLO, is simply fatal. My stack could have been at least 50% bigger at the first break if I had played my normal game and shortly afterwards my stack took a big hit when I talked myself into believing that a player could not have called bets to the river just to draw to a bad straight. Soon afterwards, IGHN, feeling I never really did myself justice.

The main PLO event did not have rebuys and so it was important to play well right from the off. Which I did. When the blinds are small in comparison to stack sizes then my lack of aggression preflop and playing through the streets style pays dividends. Funnily enough, when the PLO element diminishes and it becomes more tournament poker, then the "faces" start to do much better. I don't think it was a coincidence that the final table of this event had no cash game players in it - the rebuy event was the same, as I recall.

As a whole the event went well and I played something approximating my A game. Some key hands, however, "fated" me to lose. Raising on the button with a very healthy stack with A88 suited, a strong player in the big blind called. I bet the flop when I hit my set, he called, we both checked the turn when a flush draw came and he bet into me on the river when the 3 flush was added to by a straight card. Eventually I summoned up a pass. Later, I called on the button with JJ ss after an early limper. Everyone checked a QQx flop and I took a stab at it. Unfortunately I not only got a caller, I picked up a J on the turn, and payed off a small bet on the river against quads. 0-2 vs destiny so far.

The coup de grace came after the four hour mark. With only 10 big blinds left I raised UTG with QQ64 ss. The big blind, a poor cash player I had some experience with, reraised me. I hummed and hawwed and eventually passed. He showed an AKJ9 ds. The very next hand, my reraiser and I were on the blinds and he raised again. With AA94 ss I reraised and he set me in. His AAJ6 hit two pair and kismet won. Interestingly or not, if I had called and doubled up on the QQ hand, I *still* get busted the very next hand. No wonder I hate tourneys.