missingflops' Blog

Grump's Golden TIcket - Part Deaux

2011-07-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of week's ago I sat down with the Poker Grump as he got ready to play in the WSOP Main Event for the first time. You can see the post with that video right here. On his first day I had a chance to go down and get a little footage of him at Poker News labeled a "Table of Death".

Earlier this week, I had a chance to sit down with the Grump and talk through his Main Event experience:

You can also read Grump's blog posts about his big adventure here. They are all definite good reads! Thanks very much to the grump for taking the time to sit with me on these occasions and share this experience.

Fireworks

2011-07-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was Fourth of July and while I got a good amount of poker in, the "main event" as it were was getting out with Mrs Flops to celebrate the Fourth. I guess you could say we did three Fs: Food; Fireworks and ... Foolishness. C'mon, get your minds out of the gutter!

Grump's Golden Ticket

2011-07-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

When word hit a little over a week ago that the Poker Grump had won Dan Cates' Main Event drawing I knew I'd want to have a Grumpy guest appearance on the vlog and the Grump graciously obliged me with some of his time the other day. Before we get to the video, some backstory for those who might not be familiar.

Cates is one of the most recent (and perhaps the last) online poker wunderkinds. Cates established himself as a successful high stakes heads up no limit player online and was reported to have amassed over five million dollars in online winnings in 2010 alone. Had Cates spent much time playing live, you might ask. Well, not in the US at least because Cates accomplished all of this before turning 21. In fact, the 2011 World Series of Poker is Cates' first run at the poker world's premier series since before then he hasn't been of age to enter any events.

To commemorate his first WSOP main event, and as a means to give back to the poker community, Cates decided to hold a drawing where one lucky winner would join Cates in playing the main event and would do so on Cates' dime. The only qualifying factor was that the winner had to have never played the WSOP Main Event before. When the time came for the big drawing, Grump's ticket emerged from the fish bowl, and now he is in the midst of preparing for the big one. It was fun to sit down with him and hear him talk about the experience:

Playing with Brad Garrett

2011-07-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

The Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas has undergone a pretty substantial renovation recently, along with that they have reopened their poker room, and the other day they held a bit of a promotional tournament for the room. The tournament was hosted by Brad Garrett who has a comedy club at the Trop as well. It sounded like a good time, so Mrs. Flops and I headed out to play:

p.s. Make sure you pay attention towards the end of the video as Mrs. Flops makes a very quick appearance!

It was a really fun event, seemed like pretty much everyone was there having a good time and not taking things too seriously. Well there was the guy who seemed to get a little perturbed when I three bet him preflop a couple of times, but I actually had the goods both times - at least enough of the goods that I would have been OK with a call. Once we got down to the final table everyone was joking and laughing with each other - it's nice when you can play the game and legitimately have fun with the other players.

I'm also really wishing success to Wally, the poker room manager and his staff. Everyone their had a great attitude and you could really see the effort that they were putting in to make the room the best experience for the players that they could. They do some nice little touches like having a Keurig coffee machine in the room so everyone can get fresh coffee if they want as well as setting out plenty of bottles of water for the players to just grab at their convenience. They also run tournaments two or three times a week that add a hotel package as an overlay to the winner. The package includes bottle service for one night at the Nikki Beach Club, a night in one of the hotel suites and breakfast for two the next day.

She's A Cruel Mistress

2011-06-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

Typically when I go out and shoot videos I'll try and get them posted roughly in chronological order. There's typically some lag time involved with the editing process, so often you're seeing videos a week or so after they were shot. This one though, was shot immediately after my (rather brief) appearance at the Venetian DSE tournament on Sunday, June 26. It was a story that was enough worth telling that I wanted to get it posted straight away.

One error in the video to point out is that in the second hand I discussed I referred to the other player flopping a flush, when in actuality it was a flopped set.

One other note I wanted to add in about the video editing is that it is an amazingly time consuming process. I have the easy job, I yammer into the camera for a few minutes and I'm done. Mrs. Flops then literally takes hours to edit the videos and try and turn my yammering into something reasonably coherent. All of the effects, the green screen background, the music and the titles, that all comes from her. So, if you enjoy these videos, then really send some thanks out to Mrs. Flops. If it wasn't for her hard work, they wouldn't get done.

There Is No Substitute

2011-06-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

This is a no poker content video, but I don't think people are going to mind ...

I have a friend who is an automobile broker. I got an e-mail from her a few weeks ago asking if I was available on a certain date. As luck would have it I did have my calendar clear. The event in question was a Porsche driving experience, and there's really not much more to say besides that it was a blast. Take a look:

Nasty Chop

2011-06-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

In general, when I'm playing in a low buy-in tournament I tend to be pretty mellow about chopping. Three's a couple of reasons for that. One, I recognize that these kind of tournaments have a heavy social element and I don't mind sacrificing some EV to maintain that social element. Also (and this is really the more important reason) typically with these types of tournaments by the time people are discussing chopping there may be no more than 20 to 30 big blinds total in play. Such situations are obviously very high variance and I don't mind chopping to deal with that fact. Sometimes though, there's just something about a chop that is so absurd, that you just can't stay quiet - here's one such story:

Makin' Burgers

2011-06-01T23:07:00.000-07:00

A while ago I did a video about making homemade pizza. It was fun and I decided that it was time to do another food video. This time, I'm making bleu cheese stuffed burgers:

Million Dollar Tourney

2011-05-30T02:20:00.000-07:00

Stations Casinos recently ran a series of five tournaments that they called something like the "Million Dollar No-Limit Hold'em" series. It involved four open tournaments each with a $200,000 guarantee. There was then a fifth $200,000 guarantee tournament that was open to the top 25 finishers in each of the first four tournaments plus additional players who accumulated a certain level of results through the first four.

There was a bit of buzz about these events after the first two weeks as the first week's tournament had about a $30,000 overlay, and the second week's tournament had an overlay over $60,000. Perhaps that buzz (plus the fact that the WSOP Circuit was in town the third weekend) led to a much better turnout for the third tournament (the one I played) and no overlay. While I couldn't find a report with the exact numbers for the fourth week, a Station Casinos Blog reported that the fourth week involved there "biggest field" of the four guaranteed tournaments so there would have been no overlay that week either.

I satellited in to the third week's tournament which took place at Sunset Station, and did a video about the series. There were several interesting hands from the main tournament, but including my description of the hands in the video would have made the video waaaaay too long (tl;dw?) , so the hand discussion got trimemd out of the video, but I wil include it below the video:

So, I suppose the best place to start is the hand referenced at the end of the video where I sucked out huuuge, and I'll say up front that I really butchered this hand. I'd like to think it was an example of "audentes fortuna juvat", but in reality I know that it was really an example of fortune favoring the foolish. Here's the hand:

We're at level 2 which in this case was 200-400. My stack is right around the starting stack of 20,000 and both the Villains in the hand have me covered. I am on the button, V1 is in middle position and V2 is in the small blind. V1 has been very active before the flop and after. On the first or second hand of the tournament he raised preflop and fired on the flop turn and river and could not beat third pair when he was called. That play cost V1 half his stack, but he had ground it back up by continuing the aggression. V2 had seemed a bit spewy putting a lot of chips in in marginal spots, but he had improved in a couple of those spots to build up a good stack.

The hand in question V1 raised from MP to 1000. I had seen enough to know that was a wide range from him and wanted to play pots with him while in position. I flat called from the button with 89os V2 flat called from the small blind, the big blind folded. Pot is 3400.

I'm happy to see a flop of 8 9 10, rainbow but know that given that board winning a big pot with bottom two is unlikely. My plan is to play the flop strong hoping to take the hand down on the flop. V1 cooperates with a lead in the neighborhood of 1600. I raised on the button to 4000. Then V2 puts a kink in my plans by checkraising another 6000. V1 thinks for a bit, mutters and folds (I think he may actually have had a strong preflop hand there) and the action is on me.

Obviously the thought occurred to me that V had flopped a straight with either 67 or QJ, but I really felt that a flopped straight on a rainbow board would have slowed things down a bit more. It read like his plan was to end the hand right there and that made me think I might have some fold equity, so after thinking through things a bit I announced I was all-in. V2 quickly called.

This hand really points out the relative strength aspect of poker. Yes I had flopped two pair which is a strong flop to hit, but on that board, given that action, bottom two pair is not very strong compared to other hands that will play hard. Sets, better two pair hands and flopped straights are certainly all in V2's range here. Really, the only thing my bottom two can beat is total air or a pair/straight draw combo like 78, J10, Q10 or 68, and even those hands have decent equity against my hand (about 35%). Given the pot size expecting to fold hands like that is ridiculous as V2 was getting better than 3-1 on a call that wouldn't eliminate him if he lost.

Anyway, it turned out he had top two leaving me with two outs, one of which I spiked on the river. Wow.

I took a few hands and refocused myself, realizing that I had gotten lucky and vowing to play much better from there on out. I did just that and really was starting to pick spots and make plays based on factors besides just the cards I had in front of me. Probably my proudest moment of the day was a hand I played against V1 from the above hand. Recall that he was definitely playing a LAG style, but tough LAG, not maniacal LAG.

He raised from MP again, and I was on the button, again. I called his raise w/KQ. I had chipped up more from my lucky double up above and had decided I had enough capital to make a point with him and therefore called two barrels on the flop and the turn before he finally gave up on the river. He looked up after I checked the river and announced "9 high" and I rolled over the King high hand for the win. Some people might call that spewy, but I knew that there was a decent chance that K high was good on his flop and river bets and I wanted to make the point that I wasn't going to be run over.

The last hand that merits discussion was indeed my last hand. It was instructive, because it had a good lesson about needing to evaluate all parts of V's range in a tougher field. Unfortunately, I do not remember exact stack sizes on this hand, but I can tell you the three people in the hand were all over 75 bb deep.

I had moved to a new table that again included several good players. A good loose player raised from MP for about 2.5 bb. Another player who hadn't been as active, but still seemed like they could make moves three bet from the cutoff to about 5bb. I was in the SB with AKos. I knew that was way ahead of the initial raiser's range. I also suspected that the C/O was on a wide enough range that AK was way ahead there as well. I wanted to try and take the pot down right there and put in a four bet to 11bb. The initial raiser tanked for a moment and then folded. The cutoff instantly min five bet me.

I'll admit that at this point I went into a bit of a vapor lock. In talking to someone later when they asked me why I allowed as how I didn't think I had ever been five bet before. In hindsight, I realize now that once the five bet goes in I'm basically being told that I'm playing for stacks, and so it really is a shove or fold situation. I however, did what people do when they vapor lock and just called. So now I'm in a huge pot, out of position with AKos.

The flop came 944 with two clubs. I thought that was a good flop and initially planned on a checkraise all in to what I was sure would be a c-bet. Unfortunately, the V checked behind. I decided at that point that I am probably good and the best bet is to shove the turn unless for some reason the card is really scary. The 2 of spades hit the turn and I thought that was about as bricky as I was going to get, so I shoved. V went into the tank for a looong time. At this point, I feel like she is tring to decide whether to call with something like TT or JJ. Although she had me covered, it was a big call and would cripple her if she lost. She finally made the call and rolled over 2c3c. I needed an A, K or a 9 (I had the Ac and the 9 of clubs was on the board), but used up all of my rungood on the earlier suckout and couldn't hit a winner. I walked off admittedly with my head spinning a bit.

In thinking about the hand later, I realized that my mistake was not appreciating how wide my opponent's range was. I appreciated that it was wide enough that folding AK there would be bad at least in terms of that individual hand (an argument could be made that given my stack size, there was no need to play for stacks at that point in the tournament) and if V's range was wide enough that folding was bad, then I had enough equity that I could shove profitably there. I should have pulled the trigger, and if I had, I wouldn't have busted on that hand, I just can't see V calling off basically her whole stack with that hand.

The lesson I learned is that in a tough field like that you have to recognize that a hand like AK is a premium hand and can profitably be played strongly. Sometimes you're going to run into aces and that's going to but far more often, a shove in that spot nets me more than 20 bb and puts me in very good shape to keep accumulating chips.

So all in all, it was a really good experience to get in and play against some tougher competition. I look forward to more of that over the summer!

Tiltless

2011-05-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

Busted pretty early from a recent tournament, but had a bit of an epiphany as I was walking out. There wasn't that disappointed, irritated feeling that typically accompanies a bustout. Had I achieved tiltlessness? Watch for yourselves:

A Slowrolling Rant - Plus Seiborg!

2011-05-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

While playing a recent tournament I encountered what I think is a pretty clear slowroll, and I speak my mind about it in this video; then, to lighten the mood a bit I talk about a song/YouTube video that every poker player should check out:

I had intended to embed the Seiborg video here as well, and missed it the first go round, so I'm editing the post to add in the Seiborg video, enjoy!

Loose Button

2011-05-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

You hear it all the time in poker, position is critical. Well, recently I decided to put that to the test in a tournament. I walked in with the plan that, during the early levels, I would play every hand on the button provided there had been no more than one raise. Here's how it went:

Not Nice Nines

2011-05-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

One of the little idiosyncrasies of poker is that it offers up all sorts of apparent patterns to tantalize you. You know what I mean - the people who observe things like "fours are hitting the board a lot today" or "I've gotten J4os three times this orbit, I must be meant to play that hand." Now of course thoughts like this are just examples of the Gambler's Fallacy and if you actually choose to make strategic decisions based on these "patterns" well, please let me know where you are playing. However, if you understand the true nature of these apparent patterns, then they can be a source of entertainment. I remember one day many years ago playing in a $4-$8 LHE game someone won a hand with Q6. Then a few hands later, someone again won with Q6 and of course, it became the running joke at the table that Q6 was the nuts. It even got to the point where in one hand I bet and someone raised. I folded with the observation that I couldn't beat Q6. After my cards hit the muck my opponent (who was typically very solid preflop) flipped over Q6. That was a good laugh for everyone at the table, and to this day whenever I squeeze cards and see Q6 I get a little chuckle.

Of course, sometimes it's not the same hand over and over that helps you, sometimes in a session a certain hand becomes your nemesis, one that you just can't beat. This video is the story of one such session for me ...

Going Deep @ the DSE

2011-05-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

If you follow my Twitter feed then you know that last weekend I final tabled one of the $340 tournaments at the most recent Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza series. I had my trusty Flip Mino along and was able to do brief updates during all of the breaks. So here it is, the story of my run at the Venetian:

I really enjoyed playing this tournament and I learned a lot while doing so. I was definitely very happy with my day 1 play. Looking back I realize that my final table play needed some improvement. There were spots where I should have pulled the trigger on getting money in and I didn't, but I will gladly take that as a lesson for next time.

After my experience at the Venetian and compared to last year's play at one of the $1,000 WSOP events, I have definitely decided that the Venetian will be my focus for tournament series play this summer. I'm sure that I'll play at least one of the dailies at the Rio, and of course, I won't stay away from the Aria daily, but in terms of major series, I think the Venetian is the place I can find the best value this summer.

A Perfect Game

2011-04-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

I talked before on other videos about working to get "in the zone" while playing. One thing that I haven't really discussed is the ability to get in and out of the zone at will when needed. I think having that high level of concentration can be pretty taxing and, if you're going to do so in a tournament or cash session that lasts more than a few hours, I think you need to be able to get in and out of that state.

This video talks about that phenomenon and, seeing as it's springtime now, appropriately references a baseball movie.

Steely Dan Warned Us ... Black Friday Has Come

2011-04-20T02:00:00.000-07:00

Here are my mandatory poker vlogger thoughts on Black Friday:

As noted in the video, there is a ton of other commentary out there addressing aspects of this situation. Here are some good blog links to check out for some interesting thoughts on the subject:

For good insight into the legal nuts and bolts behind the issue check out the Black Widow of Poker's Blog.

Grange95's crAAKKer blog has several pre Black Friday posts that also look into the legal issues of online poker as well as commentary on the issue since the indictments came down.

For lots of discussion of all aspects of "Black Friday" see Bill Rini's Poker Blog.

And, as always, I think the Poker Grump has something worth reading on the subject. As a side note, I'd just say that the Grump was really the first poker blog I regularly read, and it's true, you always remember your first.

For some views on how this situation is impacting people who were serious online players check the pros blogs over at tournamentpokeredge.com (no subscription is required to see the blogs).

For some thoughts on how to deal with the situation see the posts from a couple of mental game coaches: Jared Tendler's post is excellent as is the post from pokerpsyche over at the pokergob site.

I'm sure there are more that could be posted in here, but that's what I've got for now. If there are other links you think should be spread please feel free to leave a comment on those.

I titled the post harking back to a Steely Dan song (dating myself) and I'll end with a slightly more contemporary reference to R.E.M.: while this definitely signals the end of the online poker world as we know it (at least in the U.S.) it's not game over. Poker's been around a long time and people's desire to play isn't going anywhere. Poker will endure.

Team Poker

2011-04-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

Santa Fe recently held a team poker event that I played in along with a couple of other VPN members. Some thoughts on this different format for tournament poker:

Calling Stations

2011-03-27T00:28:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine was talking to me about playing poker the other day and one thing he asked me about was whether it was hard to focus on all the different people at the table at once. I explained that one way to deal with that situation is to start with classifying people into different categories of players which gives you a general understanding of the way they might be playing.

Of course everyone is familiar with many different styles of play, but one thing that I think is really helpful in making the best use of that knowledge is to try and understand the why behind people's decisions to play a certain style. This video looks at what is going on inside the head of a particular style of player - the calling station:

Tunnel Vision

2011-03-21T02:29:00.000-07:00

One thing you hear poker players talking about quite a bit is how a player needs to have a plan for hands that they will be playing. I don't disagree at all with the notion that you need to have a plan for how you're going to play out a hand, but there is definitely a risk in getting too locked in to ones plan and ignoring additional information that comes to light ...

Worlds Colliding

2011-03-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

I think it's fairly common knowledge at least on the forums I participate in that I am a lawyer in my day job. One of the thing that has always struck me a bit about poker is that there seems to be a pretty good overlap between people in the legal field and poker players. I had an experience this week that caused me to think about what is behind that overlap:

By the way, be sure to watch to the end for a special look behind the scenes of shooting these videos!

Butterfly Effect

2011-03-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things about poker is how over the course of a game different events flow and combine together to lead to future events transpiring. It's a reminder of the limited number of things we can control when we're playing. This video gives one example:

Embracing Variance

2011-03-04T04:56:00.000-08:00

The other day I posted about this hand in the VPN strategy forums. I was kind of up in the air about whether the hand merited a post as it seemed like a pretty clear decision to me after thinking through the situation at the table. So I was wondering why it was that I decided to post the hand. Eventually I decided that the hand had some broader implications which led to the notes forming the basis of what I’ve written here.

I had kind of a troubled feeling as I was thinking through my move. Not that I was trying to decide what the best play was, I think I knew that pretty quick. What it was though was a sense that even though I knew what I was going to do, that this was not going to end well. And I think what that sense was at some level was an understanding that a lot of the value of my play came from making it against players who were probably more aware of things than these people likely were.

It should have just taken down the pot right there. The first “villain” obviously had the concept of playing aggressively pre-flop, but should also understand that he has to tighten up when calling a shove. As wide as he was opening, I should fold out a huge part of his range.

The second villain was almost 20bb deep and should need a monster to call off that much, and odds were that if she had a monster she would have just re-raised herself.

Now even though those are a lot of the benefits of shoving in my spot, and those benefits work best against more aware players, I am not saying the shove is –EV against less aware players. I’m pretty confident that when you factor in the fold equity and the equity 88 has against the calling ranges a shove is +EV. When you factor in the bounties, the extra utility from having a much bigger stack the times I win and the fact that I’m still in decent shape if I’m called and lose I’m sure that shoving here is far and away the most profitable play.

Now against less aware players (particularly the ones who won’t fold as much as they probably should) while I’m sure the play is +EV it is definitely higher variance. You’ll get called by a lot more hands that you’re ahead of, but flipping with, against those kind of players, and the odd J10 or KQ hand will end up costing you a big pot.

I think it’s helpful to understand the nature of what was going on in this hand on a couple of levels. First, I think it’s sort of illustrative of the difference between “play bad” and “run bad”. If we accept for the sake of discussion that +EV play equals “good play”, then as I said above, I know that shoving all in was the most +EV play. Therefore, I played good. Now I (marginally) ran bad because although I got all the money in slightly ahead, I ended up losing the hand.

The other thing that is helpful to me is to understand how and why, in these particular dynamics, the play was higher variance then it could have been otherwise. I think that understanding, coupled with the confidence that the play is +EV makes it easier to embrace the nature of the variance and really easier to make the play without worrying about whether you’re just going to end up on the wrong side of variance this go-round. If you can, in fact, just give variance a big ol’ hug and look for those spots that, while marginal, are still +EV you’ll be able to press those thin edges more.

That’s one of the things the best players do, they can press those razor thin edges, over and over and know how to walk the line between extracting value from those edges and taking unwarranted risks. They are also able to acknowledge when that effort to extract value goes awry that sometimes it is just due to the fact that the play is supposed to achieve an adverse result a certain amount of the time.

So, I think what I really learned from this hand was how to feel comfortable making a +EV move, even though there was that little voice in my head saying, “you know there’s a good chance this will not end well.” It was a risk, but a worthwhile risk, and the next time I’m in the same situation, I’ll pull the trigger again.

Enjoying Adversity

2011-02-22T09:21:00.000-08:00

It's amazing the things you can find on the Internet. I recently got pointed to an interview on YouTube with a guy named Josh Waitzkin. If you don't know that name, well, I explain it in the video, but suffice it to say that Josh has a pretty big brain and he knows how to use it. I'm going to embed the YouTube video with Josh's interview in this post below my video, and I'd highly recommend watching it, he's a very interesting person.

And as promised, here's the interview with Josh:

So the next time you find yourself in a playing situation where you feel like complaining about the conditions ask yourself, "If I complain about the conditions am I missing out on a chance to extract an edge over my opponents?"

Paying Off Bad Play

2011-02-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

Well, anyone who has logged significant time playing will start to see lots of "bad" plays. I saw one in a recent deep stacked tournament where someone open shoved 200 big blinds under the gun. Now true, they successfully picked up the blinds (I was in the big blind), but I think anyone who really thinks about poker would not call that a good play. What if someone had called though? That bad play would likely have been rewarded(the open shover had KK).

In this video then, I talk about taking steps to hopefully avoid rewarding such bad plays:

The Pain is The Reward

2011-02-07T09:37:00.000-08:00

One of the eminently frustrating things about poker is the lack of correlation between action and result. When playing golf, if I aim and swing correctly I will strike the ball well and be rewarded with a good shot. Correct actions receive positive reinforcement, and that is a system which operates in harmony with our brains.

When playing poker however, correct plays do not necessarily correlate with pleasing results. In fact, correct plays regularly lead to bad short term results. As a result, poker can cause a dissonance in our brains which we must overcome to operate in this system.

So recently I had an experience that may provide that positive reinforcement that our brains crave ...

You Don't Know Jacks

2011-01-29T00:56:00.000-08:00

One of the things we have to confront all the time as poker players is making decisions based on incomplete information. That can be a difficult situation because it's a pretty common desire to gather all pertinent information before making a decision. So how do we deal with this tension between not knowing and having to make a decision:

Pluggin' a Leak

2011-01-24T02:20:00.000-08:00

In my last video I talked about wanting to seriously work on improving my game. In some of my studies so far I identified a leak and so when I went out yesterday it was with a conscious focus on correcting that leak. Here's what happened:

HPT Report

2011-01-20T02:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a video talking about my experience at the 2011 Heartland Poker Tour stop in Las Vegas:

Why Tournaments?

2011-01-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me a while back why I play tournaments, and I thought the answer made a good subject for a video. Here you go:

A Holiday Poker Tale

2010-12-24T01:15:00.000-08:00

AQ Any Good?

2010-12-21T03:26:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on how in certain situations a "premium" hand might not be so premium. This is one of those things that's very situational of course, but I thought this was a good way to think of things somewhat differently:

Online Poker & the Law

2010-12-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

Last night I was reading a forum thread regarding the (now solidly? defunct) effort by Harry Reid to get an online poker regulation scheme through the lame duck session of congress. I started to type out a response which kept getting longer and eventually I thought, "well, if I was a blogger, I'd turn this answer into a blog post". Since I'm a vlogger though I offer you some video commentary on Poker's recent visit inside the Beltway:

As noted at the end of the video, I wanted to provide some links to other great blogging in this area.

For some of the leading tracking of the course of the bill, take a look at F-Train's posts here.

For some excellent legal analysis about the ability to win this fight in the courtroom, go to Grange's posts in the CrAAKKer blog here.

For a perspective on the future implications for online poker in an unregulated environment, take a look at this post over on Thinking Poker.

For some general overviews of the course of the Reid bill, take a look at Short Stacked Shamus' writings here at Hard Boiled Poker.

And for some generally grumpy thoughts on the issue, take a look at the Poker Grump's posts here.

Thumbs Down @ Red Rock

2010-12-12T02:30:00.000-08:00

I'm typically a "glass half full" kind of person, I try and see the positives in things and definitely tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, but as you'll see here, I really couldn't muster up positives for this recent experience:

Leggo my Ego

2010-12-05T01:19:00.000-08:00

This one is pretty self explanatory:

The Crazy Swede

2010-11-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

One of my recent trips to the Aria resulted in an encounter with a player I decided to name, "The Crazy Swede":

Thank You Thank You

2010-11-24T02:43:00.000-08:00

Appropriate to the season, here are some poker related things for which I am thankful ...

Popping My DSE Cherry

2010-11-06T00:34:00.000-07:00

Recently, I did something I've been meaning to do for a while and that was to play one of the Venetian's DSE tournaments. In terms of results, well, there's nothing to report, but I felt like I gained some knowledge about what to do the next time. So, I've got that goin' for me ... which is nice:

Where Have the Posts Gone

2010-10-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

Just in case people are checking here and wondering where the posts have gone, they haven't stopped, just moved. I've now transferred my vlogging over to a Wordpress site which you can find here if you are so inclined.

Hat Trick?

2010-10-31T01:24:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a day where I had daytime hours free, but had commitments during the evening, I wanted to see if I could get in three consecutive donkaments in three different places:

So, I only got in two out of the three I was shooting for, Mirage lasted too long for me to catch the TI at 2 - still it was a fun day.

Silver Linings

2010-10-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

My last video talked about the start of a weekend getting back to playing after a few weeks off, and this one talks about the end of the weekend. As you'll see, the results didn't pick up much, but I did find some positives to take away from those sessions:

Tournament Play at Aliante

2010-10-07T04:26:00.000-07:00

Recently the poker room at Aliante Station changed their Thursday evening tournament from the regular $65 buy in to a $125 buy in. Although I usually don't get out too much on weekday evenings, I decided to give this one a shot last week. Here's how it went down:

Warning! This video contains EXTREME CLOSE UPS!

Cashout Poker at Aria

2010-10-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

This week the poker room at the Aria began running a new style of tournaments, Cashout tournaments. I had an opportunity to sit down with Mel Judah, creator of the format prior to playing and hear him talk about this different type of tournament offering in Las Vegas:

Poker & Pasta

2010-09-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

In this video I offer some further thoughts on recent play particularly with regard to adjusting to table dynamics and progress playing against the LAG style - plus see some food from a tasty little Italian bistro here in Las Vegas.

Back to the Tables

2010-09-26T04:02:00.000-07:00

Alright so I've been on this little hiatus from poker for a few weeks, but yesterday I got a chance to get back to the felt, so I decided to head back down to the Aria for their 1 pm. I had some fun and made a (very modest) profit; here's the video to tell the story. Plus, this video now with Dancing Girls!

I think it's worth talking some about the monster stack that I referenced in the video because really, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Imagine a daily tournament structure, even a relatively slow one like this one, where with 8 or so people left one stack is still around 200 bb deep. The way that he stacked all these chips was a little, well, interesting as well. Stacks of no more than 20 (which to me is not a problem cause I hate putting more than about 25 in a stack - too afraid I'll knock em over) but he kept all of these stacks in a single row along the rail. Needless to say it got to the point where he was taking up about 2.5 seat widths of rail space. Fortunately when the TD colored up he bought up the vast majority of his smaller value chips so the stack could be somewhat contained. Anyway, that's certainly an interesting experience having that player on your immediate left.

Labor Day

2010-09-08T20:00:00.001-07:00

It was Labor Day so we're talkin' a little poker and a little BBQ:

Weekend Get Away

2010-08-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

Work has been really busy lately and thus just haven't much chance to do a video (or much pokering for that matter). I did take last Friday off and my wife and I went for a long weekend staycation at the Palazzo. Here's how that went down:

"Tell" Me a Story

2010-08-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

One thing I enjoy about progressing as a player is increasing my awareness of what is going with the other players in hands - in other words, getting the chance to make use of tells. I'm certainly not to the stage of pegging someone's hand when they eat the Oreo, but here's a story from a recent tournament where tells came into play.

NOTE: I made an error in the hand description in the video - the flop was two clubs not three. The river bought the third club, the 4 of clubs which paired the non club 4 on the flop. Sorry for any confusion.

From a WSOP Move to Matt Affleck

2010-08-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

Filmed this video the day the latest rumor broke regarding the sale of the Rio. As you will see however, events actually led me to thinking about Matt Affleck's experience at the main event ...

In the event you haven't seen the details of Matt Affleck's exit from the tournament the hand report can be found here. There's an excellent post on the PokerStars Blog that gives amazing insight into the immediate aftermath of the hand, and you can also catch the interview I heard with Matt shortly after his bust out on the Wicked Chops Podcast.

Listen to The Music

2010-08-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

In this video I discuss an important topic - what kind of music to listen to while playing! In particular I reveal my mix designed to inspire you through short stacked tournament play:

So now it's your turn - what kind of music do you like to listen to while playing? Do you have different music that you listen to depending on the type of game/situation you find yourself in?

Also, if you click on the video box above and go to the actual YouTube page with the video you can go to the description underneath the video and find a YouTube playlist with most of the videos mentioned in the short-stacking mix. Maybe you'll find something you like in there.

Randomness BItes

2010-07-26T12:55:00.001-07:00

Well, in my last video I talked about wanting to tune up the aggression a bit and I made efforts to put that into play this weekend. I've got some thoughts about that in this video along with some comment about one of the things that just fascinates me about this little game:

Progress Marches On

2010-07-24T09:31:00.001-07:00

I've been on a hiatus from playing for the last couple of weeks - just taking a break. It's been a good opportunity to reflect on how I can continue to progress as a player:

Post WSOP Wrap Up

2010-07-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

Since the WSOP (and the corresponding busy poker time in Las Vegas) is coming to an end I wanted to kind of recap what I'd been doing during this time. Since a large part of my play during this season has been in the Aria daily tournament, that's where we'll start:

WSOP Report

2010-07-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

So last week I took a trip to the Rio hotel in Vegas to play in my first ever WSOP event. Here's what went down:

Cashin' At the WSOP

2010-06-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

I sat down with AVPer Cashewz recently to talk about his good run in WSOP event #24. Here's what Doug had to say:

Many thanks to Adam at the Aria for letting us use a table for the interview.

AVP Meet Up

2010-06-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

Well if it's early June and there is buzz surrounding a poker tournament in Las Vegas I know the first thing that pops into everyone's minds is the --- AVP tournament!

For those that weren't able to attend, here's what you missed:

I had a bunch of fun playing, even though I was out a far cry from the $. Congrats to LVM for taking home the trophy!

Keeping Things Under Control

2010-06-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of busting out of the same tournament twice in the span of about an hour and a half. Well since I couldn't take something good from that night in terms of results I looked for something good to take away in terms of the mental aspect of the game:

Memorial Day Weekend Poker

2010-06-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

A little video report on my long weekend poker activity:

The Making Of Video

2010-05-27T06:29:00.000-07:00

Recently a fellow member of the AVP boards asked if I would help him with a project putting together an audition video for the PokerStars Big Game. He took a couple of minutes to chat with me on cam as we were filming, you can follow a link to his audition video in this vlog entry:

What Took Him So Long?

2010-05-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

We've all seen situations where players are unaware of how bad off they are in a hand, but what sometimes surprises me is when people are unaware of how good a situation they are in during a hand. Here's a story where I ran into one such player:

Yes, I know you got bad beat - you told me 87549387 times.

2010-05-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

I'm not a computer programmer, but recently I encountered another player who seemed to be caught in a "continuous loop" with wanting to tell a bad beat story. Watch the video to hear about how I (mis)handled the situation:

I'm Back!

2010-05-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

As I think I mentioned a little while ago the Vlog went off the rails a bit when I got sick last month and then have been getting slammed at work. But, now it's back on pace with several videos in the queue to get posted soon. To commemorate my slooooow return to vlogging today's video talks about slowplaying - or as I like to call it, how to lose money more often than not:

Chip and a Chair

2010-04-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I played the afternoon tournament at TI and took some big hits early on. I lost two big pots one with AQ on a Q high flop when KK flatted right behind me and called two streets (river was checked around when the fourth club hit despite KK having the K of clubs). The other pot I lost with AJ where I limped from the c/o after multiple limpers. The flop came AQx and I lost to UTG who limped with AQ. Anyway, those two pots left me very short stacked and thinking it would be an early out for me - not so much:

Yummy Pizza

2010-04-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was on an Alaskan cruise several years ago and stopped in to a little pizza parlor in Ketchikan for a bite. The pizza was not particularly memorable, but they were selling t-shirts and I had to get one because it had the following on the back: "Pizza is like sex, when it's good its amazing, and when it's bad - it's still pretty good."

So with that motto in mind, and since I hadn't played any poker in a while due to a business trip - here are some pizza making tips for everyone:

They're Baaack

2010-04-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

Well, ever since I posted the vid about how pocket jacks don't get enough respect guess what hand I've been getting dealt with far more frequency then you would expect?

Yup, I've been getting a lot of chance to play the hooks lately - here are some more thoughts:

Another Year ...

2010-04-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last week was my birthday which included the expected run of poker themed gifts. Take a look and see what I got:

AVP Plays NLHE

2010-04-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

In addition to the mixed game tournament I posted about last time, the AVP meet also involved a no limit hold em tournament the next day. Here's my video from the Mirage which was gracious enough to host us along with the final hand of the heads up match:

Mixed Game Madness!

2010-03-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Played in my first mixed game tournament this past Friday night in conjunction with the AVP meet up. I had a great time trying out some new games and meeting new people:

Show Jacks Some Love

2010-03-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

Come on now - are those hooks really as bad as everyone says:

Golfing With Fellow AVPers ...

2010-03-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon I freed myself from the day job early so that I could get in a round of golf with a couple of fellow members of the forums over at www.allvegaspoker.com (AVP). A good time was had by all which means that they are both very tolerant of poor golf abilities. Of course, I couldn't leave the camera behind. Here are the results:

Also, I guess the Vlog is progressing because we now have, for the first time ever, deleted scenes:

I'm A Nice Guy - Just Ask People

2010-03-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, usually, when we hear something from someone else at the table about ourselves it isn't positive. Recently, I had the rather pleasant experience of getting complimented at the table. Naturally, I want to spread the word:

In the Zen Zone

2010-03-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

A pretty common observation about athletes when they are performing well is that they are "in the zone". I definitely was feeling in the zone playing the other night, and as described in this video it led to some good results:

Just Goofin' Around

2010-03-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

No poker content here - I was just having fun and the next thing I know the camera's on.

There may - or may not - have been a couple of cocktails consumed before this shoot:

Drunk Guy Giving Away Money

2010-03-08T10:29:00.001-08:00

One of the interesting things about playing poker is the opportunities you have to interact with all sorts of people. Of course, a fair number of those people can lean towards the obnoxious end of the spectrum - but also - a lot of those people can be very profitable to play against. Here's one story I have along those lines:

That's What She Said

2010-03-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of The Office and of course therefore, am very familiar with the use of the phrase, "That's What She Said". In honor of the show returning after its Olympic break tonight, here are some thoughts on how that comes into play at the poker table:

Hangin With My Pops

2010-03-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

I haven't been playing as much the last week as I usually do, but I did get a session in last week with my father who was visiting. Here's how that went down:

Love a Duck!

2010-02-22T06:23:00.001-08:00

This is easily my favorite video posted up to this point. A lot of the reason for that is the large amount of work put in by my producer. She's responsible for adding in all the background work and spends way more time editing the videos than I do yapping at the camera a few minutes a week.

Remember - Always Use Protection

2010-02-18T20:12:00.001-08:00

Today's video is on the all important subject of protection:

Friday Night Tournament

2010-02-15T07:23:00.000-08:00

I played the Friday night Bounty tournament at Aliante the other night and did a video reporting on what happened, here it is:

I thought the chop negotiations (or should I say lack thereof) were interesting. We were down to 10 people. As soon as we hit the final table, someone proposed that the remaining 10 players all be able to keep their own bounty. This is a pretty standard deal in this tournament and I always say yes to that deal. We played just a few minutes 10 handed when we hit the end of a level and were on a break. I called into home to give a report and waited to get back to it. The total chips in play were t362,000 and I was at t96,000. We were coming back to blinds of t4,000 - t8,000. The next level would be t6,000 - t12,000 and I believe they would double every level after that. There were two players with stacks around t40,000 - t45,000. Everyone else had somewhere between 10k and 30k. As it stood then, the top 7 would get paid. The total prize pool was $1700 (if this seems like a small pool, remember that in this tournament half the prize money goes to bounties). The payout structure is 35% to first, 20% to second, 15% to third and then small drops down to seventh.

As the break was ending one of the players who was probably between 20k and 30k asked me if I would take $300 and have everyone else chop. I checked the actual payouts and saw that second place was scheduled to be $340. I told the person who was proposing the deal that I would take $350 and leave the rest for everyone to chop. When everyone got back he proposed that deal and to my surprise everyone said yes without any kind of debate. One of the guys with around 40k was just on my left and I could tell that he didn't like the deal. He said something along the lines of, "we really should wait till a couple of short stacks bust out," and I could tell he didn't really like the idea of giving people who were unlikely to make the money a share of his equity. He finally said that he didn't care and gave the thumbs up to the deal.

I thought the guy who was pushing the deal was pushing a bad deal for himself. If he just waits for the short people to bust then he increases his payout considerably. It's true that the blinds were high, but he should have been able to dodge the bubble, so I figured he cost himself.

I wish I could say that I picked my figure of what I offered to take on some formula taking into account my chip equity or something, but I didn't. I basically knew it was right for me to get somewhere between second and first place money. I looked at the payouts and suggested the next round number higher then second place. I actually didn't think that everyone would agree so quickly. It turns out I had 26.5% of the chips and got 20.5% of the prize money. I think that's a pretty good deal for me being made while we're still three off the money. Even though I didn't get a full payout on my chip equity stack sizes relative to the blinds make that equity pretty volatile. I think if I can lock up more then second place money while we're still not even in the money that's a good deal.

Super Sunday

2010-02-11T06:12:00.000-08:00

Hey, it can't be all poker all the time, today's video has my thoughts on Superbowl XLIV:

A Bountiful Tournament

2010-02-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

One of the regular tournaments I play is the Friday night Bounty Tournament at the Aliante Station Casino. I like this room because by and large I like the people who work there and it's the closest room to where I live. Unfortunately, the room has struggled to get consistent action during the week, but in large part due to this tournament which regularly gets upwards of 60 entrants Friday nights are good nights to go there and get some good action. Here's the story of my latest run at their tournament:

More Tommy Angelo Thoughts

2010-02-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

Here's another video inspired by listening to Tommy Angelo. I talk about connecting the dots between some advise about mental state offered by Mr. Angelo and actual play at the table:

As always, this video is cross posted to my video blog thread at allvegaspoker.com. You can view that thread here. Check out the forums if you haven't been there before - good poker and Vegas discussions there.

Also, I'm definitely soliciting feedback and suggestions for subjects to do videos on. If you have ideas, let me know in the comments.

You Reap What You Sow

2010-01-28T10:56:00.000-08:00

I get a lot of good nuggets listening to poker podcasts. This video was inspired by a comment I heard from Brandon Adams:

I'm In the Zone Man!

2010-01-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite poker thinkers is Tommy Angelo. Last week I was catching up on some podcasts and ran across two interviews with Tommy. As I set out to go play one evening last week, I was thinking about achieving the state of mind that Tommy talks about. This video talks about the results:

Seeing the World through Half Full Glasses

2010-01-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

In my latest video I contemplate the difference between confidence and optimism. These thoughts were spurred by a comment made by a local Vegas player I met through the forums at www.allvegaspoker.com. All of my video entries are cross posted in a thread on their forums. For those not familiar with the site I would highly encourage a visit as it is a great source for information focused on playing live poker in Vegas. Anyway, on to the video:

Adventrues in the Vegas Heartland

2010-01-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest vlog post talking about playing in the Heartland Poker Tour satellites:

Vegas is the Heartland Right?

2010-01-15T07:45:00.001-08:00

This week the Heartland Poker Tour is running an event in Las Vegas. I decided to take a run at this when I saw the event announced a few months ago. They basically have a three tiered structure to the event. Single table satellites lead to qualifiers, qualifiers lead to the main event. There are two different structures for the qualifiers, $130 buy in with the top 10% of the entrants getting seats and $250 buy in with the top 20% getting seats. After looking at the different structures, I decided that the $250 was the best way to go and that I should skip the satellites altogether.

I played in my first qualifier Tuesday night. I was a little nervous going in as I'd never attempted to play in anything but Vegas daily tournaments before. As play started, I was observing what was going on and began to get more comfortable seeing nothing that was too out of line with the type of play I had seen before. I was able to double up early with a couple big hands and chipped up a bit more as stealing opportunities arose. People seemed to really not want to get in against the bigger stack. Then .... (warning, bad beat stories ahead - I know bad beat stories suck, but hey this is my blog)

The first thing that happened was being on the wrong end of AA v KK against a short stack, but that didn't take too many of my chips. A few hands later, I picked up KcQs in the hijack and made a standard raise. The button called and everyone else folded. The flop came KdQhXd. I led for about 2/3 the pot and the button raised a healthy amount. I took some time - he had a good sized stack, but I had him covered, I thought there was a good chance I could knock him out here. I 3-bet, and he hesitated a moment and shoved. I snap called and rolled top two. Rather then rolling the AK I expected to see, the button rolled over KhJd. I had him dead to either two running jacks or two running diamonds. The turn was not a jack, but it was a diamond. It seemed to take an eternity for the dealer to roll the river - a diamond. Wow.

That left me with 7 big blinds and looking for a hand to shove. The next hands I had two face cards and put my tournament life on the line. I got called in two spots and tripled up when I rivered trip jacks. Then a few hands later I doubled up when my A10 held against Arag. I was now sitting at just under the starting stack and was left with about 13 blinds. I was able to chip up some more by shoving playable hands and taking the blinds - it was a pretty passive table.

Right after that, our table broke and I was seated immediately to the right of a big stack, probably around 40k after starting at 10k. As expected, this player was very aggressive. He frequently three bet when there was a raise in front of him often taking the pot down preflop. When he did see a flop he would keep firing till his opponent would fold. It was clear that he felt that with his stack he could simply run the table over and I was sure his range was wide. This was confirmed when he shoved post flop against another big stack. The other guy called with an underpair of deuces and aggro player had shoved A5 with no pair. The board bricked off and agro player was now down to about 10 big blinds. Considering that aggro player was probably pretty close to what average chips would be when the 20 % mark was hit, that was certainly a questionable play. I knew that if I played a big hand in a way that looked weak, he wouldn't be able to resist going after me.

I kept place with the blinds and antes by shoving (I hadn't made any bet other than all-in since getting moved to that table) and eventually looked down at two black queens on the button. This was the spot. I raised to 3x hoping that it would look like I was trying to steal without risking to much. Aggro player looked at his cards, paused a beat and announced all-in. I snap called and he literally groaned. I rolled my ladies over and he rolled over A6 of diamonds. The board was K82 with no diamonds. The turn was another K and as the dealer got ready to burn a card and put up the river, aggro player said, "nice hand" which was of course promptly followed by an A on the river. I shook his hand and left the table actually feeling pretty good. I could play at this level. I adjusted what I was doing to meet the table conditions and it took some sick beats to get me out. I had already planned that failing to win an entry in this event I would play the Thursday night qualifier. Having observed the play Tuesday there was nothing to discourage me from that plan.

Last night's qualifier didn't start as well for me. I tried a couple of steals, but people caught hands so I tightened up. Then I had a couple of good, but second best hands which altogether ended up cutting my starting stack about in half. I was back in shove or fold mode and was able to make some recovery. I went through an orbit where I couldn't play a hand that left me at 5600 with blinds at 300-600. I was in the BB and watched the table fold around to the button. Button was a young kid who seemed to have some idea about what he was doing and he raised to 1700. SB folded and I looked down at two red kings. I shoved of course and button went into the tank. Obviously he didn't have aces, so I just sat there quietly waiting for his decision. He called after about 1:30. I rolled over the kings and he turned over A2 of clubs. I should mention that the call was probably about 3/4 of his stack. That's just such an ugly call for him because there's just no way he's anything better then flipping with me there. Even if I'm making a move with something like J10 he's not in great shape and any pair or any A has him totally dominated. Of course, I wouldn't be talking about what a horrid call he made unless the hand played out the way it did - at least the dealer made it quick this time with an A in the door. The turn bought a third heart raising my outs from 2 to 11, but alas, the river was a brick and for the second time in three nights I walked out of the tournament room well short of the top 20%.

Unlike the night before this time I felt the full disappointment that usually accompanies a bust out. I think it was because my original plan was to play no more than two of the qualifiers figuring that if I couldn't make it in to the main event in two tries that it wasn't to be. Was this really the end of my Heartland dream?

The last qualifier is tonight, and I think I'm going to take another run at it. On one hand, I don't want to be throwing good money after bad, but on the other hand - I'm confident in my play. I definitely can't say that 20% of the people that I've played against so far have outplayed me, so I do feel like I'm +EV in these. Yeah, I think tonight I'll see if the third time is the charm.

Video Freerollin'

2010-01-14T09:44:00.001-08:00

I played last weekend in a freeroll tournament that is actually pretty large as it takes qualifiers from the largest group of locals oriented casinos in Las Vegas - Station Casinos. Here's a video recounting what happened:

Poker Christmas and New Year's Resolutions

2010-01-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest vlog entry talking about what poker goodies Santa brought me:

Big Hands are Fun

2010-01-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

The other day I had a genuine heater that contained a couple of hands worth mentioning.

I bought into the 1-3 game for $300 and had "invested" $30-$40 in hands that didn't produce a return when the first big hand came up. Let me tell you about the other players involved. V1 can only go by the name "Cash Machine". He was a big fan of things like calling to the river with gutters regardless of bets, calling raises with offsuit gappers, and showing down second pair weak kicker in hands with lots of action. Once he'd used up his chips in front of him, he'd consistently go into his wallet, pull out a couple more hundreds and get more chips. I have to say, Cash Machine was without a doubt my favorite player at the table. V2 had just recently sat down and hadn't done anything especially remarkable at the table. We'll refer to him as "Average Joe". I start the hand with about $260 - $270, Cash Machine had a little over $200 and Average Joe had a bit under $150.

Cash Machine limps UTG, Average Joe limps UTG +1, it folds to me in the hijack and I look down to discover AcAs. I raise (to $13 I believe) and it folds back to Cash Machine who calls, Average Joe also calls. The dealer puts out an AKx flop with the A and K being hearts. Nice flop for me. I'm thinking about what my bet should be as Cash Machine checks when Average Joe fires out about $20. This made me pause a bit. Generally I'm not a fan of slow-playing without a true monster and by that I mean better than top set on a board with two to a flush and two broadway cards on it. However, this seemed to be a good time to deviate from that approach since I knew Cash Machine would come along with lots weaker hands. I wanted to keep him in the pot, so I just smooth called. I also suspected Average Joe had the case ace and I was happy to let him keep thinking that was good. I was pretty confident that Average Joe wasn't leading out with the draw. Cash Machine calls as well.

The turn is the oh so beautiful king of diamonds, giving me the second nuts in a situation where it was highly doubtful that either of these guys are playing kings. Cash Machine checks again and Average Joe keeps the lead putting out about $60 leaving a little over $50 behind. Now his hand looks a lot like AK or AQ, so I'm getting his stack and now I don't care if Cash Machine catches up so I just call again. The River is the 6 of hearts completing the flush draw - I hope Cash Machine got there. He checks again, Average Joe goes all in and I just call one more time in the hopes that Cash Machine comes over the top. Cash Machine takes his time an appears to be really struggling with his decision which means he doesn't have hearts. He finally just calls.

I immediately turn my hand over so as not to come anywhere near a slow roll and sure enough Average Joe had AK for kings full, no good against aces full. Cash Machine kind of shakes his head and finally flashes the case king before mucking.

It struck me a few minutes later that the hand bore a lot of similarities to the first scene in Rounders. One player flops aces up while the other flops a set of aces, they both fill up on the turn, flush card hitting the river. I can just say that I like Teddy KGB's seat in that hand much more than I like the other. It also really struck me how many different events have to come together to win a really big pot when you have players playing reasonably. This was definitely the Perfect Storm of poker for me. For example - how often is it that between three players and the board do you have all four aces and all four kings in play?

After that hand, the other big one seems almost trivial by comparison: Early position player raises up to around $13, Cash Machine is still around and calls. I'm in the small blind with KK and three-bet to around $45. Both Vs call. The flop is K67 rainbow and I find myself in the position of slow-playing top set twice in the course of an hour. The original raiser led at the pot, Cash Machine called and I called. An A came on the turn and I led with a small be wanting it to look like I floated an A on the flop. The original raiser goes all in which finally gets Cash Machine to fold. I snap call and roll my hand. The original raiser had AK, so yeah, don't be bringing that AK nonsense up against me!

That was enough for more than a double up and so I decided to go ahead and cash out. Just to show what a heater it was, as I'm racking up the dealer asks if I want to look at one more and I do and look down at QQ. I raise, the V from the KK against AK hand calls saying he wants to get some back. There's an A on the flop, I lead, he calls, I check fold the turn still more than doubled up. It'd been quite a while since I had a heater like that. I'd forgotten how fun it can be.

Aria Tournament Review

2010-01-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

The new poker room at the Aria Casino has started a daily tournament. Here's a video clip with my thoughts on the tournament:

I'm a poster over at the All Vegas Poker Forums which is a pretty fun poker forum. There's a thread for all of the Vlog posts that you can find here.

NY Weekend Report

2010-01-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a VBlog update talking about playing in Vegas over NY weekend and also relating the aftermath of someone deciding to tap on the glass ...

Trying Video

2009-12-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

I've not been a faithful writer in this blog which is frustrating to me. I get a lot of ideas, but then it seems that I'm not near a keyboard and then I don't set aside the time I need to compose numerous entries - whatever.

Anyway, my wife is a fan of several Vlogs and has been encouraging me to Vlog about poker rather then blog. We put the first effort up last night. Here it is for your perusal:

Weekend Update

2009-10-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

I've got several tournaments I need to summarize, but the Cliff's Notes are - won a single table, bubble, bubble. The last one, I have no one to blame but myself, I played a big pot with the only other person at the table who could really hurt me. I'm typically pretty aggressive in tournaments as that style is appropriate for the structures of the tournaments I play. However, there are times when aggression just isn't called for and I need to do a better job of recognizing those situations.

C'mon - We've All Done It

2009-10-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

Let's talk for a moment about the bane of the poker player's existence, that's right, let's address the dreaded suckout. Is there anything poker players hate worse then being on the wrong end of a suckout? You know that feeling, the turn card has been flipped up, you're still ahead and you only have to dodge two or three cards on the river. The blend of satisfaction and terror as the last card starts to turn and the punch in the stomach felling that arises when that last card is one of your opponent's magic bullets.

I'm not going to write - at least not right now - about dealing with being a suckout victim. It happens, we learn to deal with it, next hand. No, what I want to write about is a much deeper, darker thing, that being the fact that we're all suckout artists at one time or another. I think it's time to bring our hidden sucking out shame to the surface. Let's take pride and ownership of our suckouts. I mean, as it says in this post's title, we've all done it.

I will relate a story of a recent suckout I performed. Now to be truly discussion worthy, a suckout has to have something more then just your average, "he had Aces, I had Kings, and flopped a set" tone to it. I mean, there's no doubt that's a suckout, but it's what you'd call your garden variety suckout. I want to tell the story of a suckout of a much more spectacular magnitude.

The setting is the last hand of the third level of a typical daily NLH tournament on the strip. The significance of the last hand on the third level is that it is the last hand where a player can bust and then reenter the tournament. When I am in such a situation and my stack has dropped below starting, I will from time to time, shove with any two cards, the idea being that I'm better off reentering and getting a full stack then being down below starting. Of course, from time to time, you can catch a weird hand and double up. So, we're at that point in the tournament, I'm in an early position spot and I've gotten a little short and decide it's time for the ATC shove. For the record, the two cards in question were a red king and a red 7 (offsuit of course, or if you prefer, double suited). Things quickly fold around to the blinds, and I'm starting to think I'll just be picking those up when the small blind (has me way covered) can barely get the word "call" out of his mouth fast enough. He's so eager that he actually flips his cards (the two red aces) up before the big blind has a chance to complete her act of calling which she was going to do. The dealer stops things and the SB grabs his aces back. The big blind (who only has about 3.5 BB total including what she posted) says something like, "no I was going to call anyway", and sticks it all in. She flips over AQ of spades. So the hands are: AdAh, AQs and Kh7d. Just in case you're curious had this been on ESPN where they put the percentage chance of winning on the screen, the AA is 76%, the AQ is 13% and the mighty K7 is 11%. I'm not worried though. Flop comes with a K and two rags. Hey, that's pretty cool, I actually have outs now. Then the turn comes another K. Wow, that's really cool although I do have one more A out there to dodge. The river of course comes a K because that's how I roll yo. So yeah, I sucked out and I sucked out huge.

Alright, seriously I don't revel in that. And I wouldn't want to be the holder of the AA because I know how that feels, but you know it just happens. We've all been on both sides of the coin and it just isn't something you can get too wound up about it. The post script is that after riding the wave of that hand to a pretty healthy stack, I knocked out the same player on a much more conventional AQ v KJ situation. He just looked at me and said something like, "it figures."

So the next time someone sucks out on me maybe the best way to get past that punched in the gut feeling will be for me to remember that I too will do my fair share of sucking out.

Can't Win Them All - Shouldn't Try

2009-10-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

Some players have a mission to try to figure out how to win every pot in which they are involved. That mind-set is a losing proposition.

Angel Largay, No Limit Texas Hold'Em: A Complete Course, p.178

Boy do I wish someone had told me that when I first started playing poker. I would have saved a lot of money, assuming of course that I would have listened, so maybe not.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty competitive. As a matter of fact, one of the things that first attracted me to poker was the chance to compete at something that didn't require athletic skill (I am, shall we say, challenged in that area). Now being competitive, when I get involved in something I want to win! So naturally, when I started playing, if I was in a hand, I was always looking for a way to win it. You know, like raising in position with second pair after a nitty calling station leads into you on an A high flop. Needless to say that strategy was not successful. Thank goodness I was playing limit back then or I'd be broke by now.

I really appreciate this concept as I have started to play no limit. See flops, and then hit em hard or get out. There's no need to try and win every hand, and if you do, you'll surely go broke.

Random Skill

2009-10-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

The skill in poker has to do with understanding the nature of random events and being able to devise winning strategies in an environment run by random processes.

That quote is from a strategy column by Tony Guerrera that appeared in the July 20, 2009 edition of Poker Player Newspaper. Check out the full column here. I think the rest of the column other than the above quote has a good general observation about elements of strategy necessary for playing against tough opponents, but when I read the quote above I really thought that totally crystallized what it means to be a good poker player.

Understanding the Nature of Random Events - This is probably one of the most difficult things to do as a poker player. It is ingrained in our brains through non-poker activities that doing the "right" thing, making a "correct" choice should lead to a positive result. Poker turns that on its ear because there really is no direct correlation between making good decisions and getting good immediate results. How can this be though? Aren't we 'entitled" to be rewarded for our good decisions? Not as poker players and the reason is - randomness. All we can hope to do as poker players is make decisions that will lead to a good result most of the time. A fair amount of the time too the edge that you are going to have is something like 60/40, so even though it will work out most of the time the times that the result will be good aren't that much more frequent than the times that the results will be bad. So that's the first hurdle you have to overcome in understanding randomness; realizing that you'll do the right thing and lose - a lot.

So surely after you've come to grips with that fact you understand randomness right? I mean, I've come to grips with the fact that I can make the right decision and frequently lose, that's enough isn't it? Oh no my friend, mon ami, mi amigo - you're just getting started. Why, because the true nature of randomness lies not in the fact that in the long run, result A will occur X% of the time and result B will occur 100-X% of the time. That's really just understanding probability. To understand randomness, you have to understand that every time a card flips over the unlikely result has a non-zero chance of occurring and it doesn't what matter one bit what happened the last 3, 10, 100 or 10,000 times - when that card flips over there's absolutely no reason why the unlikely result cannot occur again. In other words, no matter how big your edge, you haven't won the hand until all the cards are flipped over.

Now as my poker playing has progressed I've gotten better at understanding the nature of random events, but I'm still not all the way there. I'm going to keep working on it though - that and, of ocurse the whole "devising winning strategies" part of poker skill.

My Biggest Pot Ever (So Far)

2009-10-20T06:02:00.000-07:00

If I haven't spelled it out in here before, while I've been playing poker for several years it's only been within the last year that I've started playing no-limit. Before then I was all limit hold em. It's no big secret that the two games are very different. One clear difference is that mistakes are highly magnified in no-limit. When I first started playing no-limit then, I blew through several buyins pretty quickly. After a while, I decided that tournaments, with their capped exposure, were a much better way for me to get experience with big bet poker.

It's been close to a year that I have been playing mostly tournaments, and being more comfortable with the game, I've started to stick my toe in the cash game pool. The results have been mixed to this point, usually small wins or small losses, with the occasional donktastic blow-off of a buy in. The worst of those was when I sat down in a session and my very first hand I flopped two pair from the big blind in a limped pot. Unfortunately for me, I flopped bottom two pair and my opponent flopped top and bottom pair (the board was 8 4 2 and he limped in from early position with 82 offsuit). I was smart enough to get right up from teh table and walk away - my first one hand session. But that's really a story for another day.

One difference between limit and no-limit in my opinion is that in limit you really need to get in and push small edges. It's not that I think always pushing small edges in no-limit is bad, but it can certainly lead to some huge swings and I need a lower variance style at the moment. So recently, I sat down to a cash game at the Mirage. I started out very tight, mostly watching and observing players. There was one highly aggressive player who played in many many pots. I watched him show down some pretty marginal hands after betting them very aggressively. I knew that if I could pick up a premium hand against him, he'd pay me off. While I was waiting, another player sat town, he also bet pretty aggressively, but didn't seem as wild as the first villain.

On to the hand in question. My stack was sitting at around $220, and both villains had me covered. Villain 1 (the wilder player) was under the gun and limped. Villain 2 raised to $17 which was pretty standard and something he'd do with a wide range of hands. I looked down at a couple of pocket jacks. Now I know that Jacks get a bad wrap sometimes, but I've always been a fan. Besides that, I knew that I was ahead of V1 and more than likely ahead of V2 with position and a tight table image. I three bet to $45 and only the two villains called. The flop came a beautiful J 7 4 with the 7 and 4 of clubs - bingo! Not a lot of strategy from this point forward, both Villains checked to me, I bet 2/3 the pot and then Villain 1 check-raises me all-in. Villain 2 calls all in for less, and for me, I believe the expression is "fist pump, snap call". The look on V1s face when I called was priceless. He'd used his big stack (which fluctuated up and down quite a bit) to move people off hands since I sat down and the fact that he got called by two players clearly didn't sit well with him. I mentioned to the dealer that I'd like some red cards please and flipped over my jacks. The dealer obligingly put up the 7 of hearts on the turn giving me the second nuts. The river club was entirely inconsequential although Villain 2 did hit the nut flush for the side pot. Villain 1 called for a reload and I spent the next hand stacking chips.

So patience is always important in poker, but one thing I've definitely come to appreciate is that it is a premium in the big bet game, especially when your opponents will go too far with marginal holdings. That one hand made my entire session, just the way that the hand from the other session broke my entire session. It's just not necessary to jump hard on a small edge, not when you can wait for a big one and get paid.

Tourney Results Report #2

2009-10-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today's post is brought to you by the word ... frustration.

I headed out this morning for the TI with the intention to play in both their 11 am and 2 pm tournaments. There were good turnouts for both with 31 entries in the morning event and 49 in the afternoon. In the morning I played pretty aggressively during the first three levels when stacks were still pretty deep. One interesting hand (after I had chipped up a bit) was when from big blind I called a 4x raise from the player in the cutoff with 89 of hearts. The small blind had also called. The flop was J9x with no hearts. I checked, the villain bet about half the pot, the small blind folded and I called. My intention was to check the turn and ether fold if an A or K fell and the villain bet or check raise if the turn bricked. Obviously I would have been perfectly happy had villain checked behind on the turn. The turn did indeed brick, I checked, villain bet about half the pot again, but he didn't look happy about it, so I followed through with my plan and raised enough to put V all in. V tanked for quite a bit and then finally called. I was surprised when he rolled over pocket Kings. Looking back, I don't know that my read was really all that off, I think Villain actually did feel weaker then his hand warranted. In any case, I overcame that setback and kept chipping up nicely. Unfortunately, I hit a bad stretch getting to the final table which included aces getting cracked and the loss of several races and ended up out in 6th place with 4 places getting paid.

The afternoon tournament was pretty brutal. I doubled up early and never looked back. I really took advantage of my stack size. After the first six levels I had increased my starting stack by over 7x and was at 9x the starting stack when we got down to the final table. I was either first or second in chips with close to three times the average chip stack. Unfortunately, I also was at 8 big blinds at that point in the tournament structure. I might have been able to fold my way to the money, but I got to that point by playing aggressively, and I wasn't going to stop now. Once again, races were lost and before I knew it I was down to two and a half blinds. I shoved the first ace I saw, and unfortunately someone else had a better ace. After the turn in that hand I actually had 21 outs to chop the pot to go with my meager three that give me the win so literally half the deck keeps me around, but it was not to be. This time I was out in 9th with 6 places getting paid.

Maybe I need to rethink my strategy for the end game phases of these fast tournaments.

A Strange Slowroll

2009-10-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

So last Friday, I played in a tournament at my neighborhood casino. They offer extra chips if you sign up at least an hour before the tournament starts which I always take advantage of. Typically that leads to me having some time to kill and more often than not that means grabbing a seat at a 2-4 LHE table for a bit. Now 2-4 LHE is not a money making venture, it's strictly for entertainment purposes. Fortunately, there are typically frequent sources of entertainment at the average 2-4 table. One such source was present the other night.

In this situation, the entertainer was either UTG or in the big blind. Four or five players saw the flop. The flop came with a 3 low and two hearts. Entertainer bets, everyone calls. Turn brings the third heart. Entertainer bets, one call, the button player raises. Both players call. The river is a second 3. Entertainer bets, and gets two calls. The entertainer makes a little speech something like, "well, let's see what we have here" and turns over one card, the three of hearts. He then just stands there and the other two players do nothing. Maybe 10 or 15 seconds go by and the dealer says something like "I need to see two cards for you to win." Entertainer then slowly turns over the 8 of hearts for a small flush, everyone else mucks their cards.

One thing I've been trying to do is get a little more chatty at the table. There are several reasons for this. First, I think it makes things more fun if there is chatter going back and forth. Now while my goal is to be a long term profitable poker player, this is really a hobby for me and if I'm going to invest time in a hobby then dang it I want it to be fun. In addition, I think if you're generally friendly to people at the table that can pay off in the long term. Mike Caro talks a lot about wanting to be the person at the table that people don't mind losing to. Finally, I think if you get people talking, then you'll get more information from them, and more information equals power. So yeah, I'm working on nurturing my inner Negreanu. Entertainer had just presented me with a good opportunity to do so.

I turned and looked at him and said, "you realized you just slowrolled yourself." He had kind of a puzzled look on his face but then smiled and said, "well I'm just not paying attention to what I"ve got." My response, "OK, just so long as we don't have to call security to break up an argument between you and yourself."

Tourney Time #1

2009-10-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I headed down the street to play in the Friday night NL bounty tournament at Aliante Station. The hotel started this tournament about two months ago and it has in my opinion helped provide at least one good night of action at what is a nice, but otherwise not too active room. They also recently added to the starting stack and adjusted the levels a bit so that for most of the first two hours there is a good amount of play. Even if you just keep pace with the blinds through the first three levels then by level four you'l still have 13-14 big blinds. That's not deep by any means, but I think that's above average for tournaments at that level of cost. They also added a level in at the fifth level and I think one more. This was my first time playing under the new structure and I liked it a lot.

I did fairly well at the start of the tournament although I lost a fair amount of chips in one hand where I had second pair and a player in front of me with a weak top pair (board was AJ727, I had J10 OTB and he had A5) check called the flop and the turn and then led all in for about 1/4 the pot when the board paired on the river. Interesting thing about that hand was that there was a second V in till the turn that I was far more focused on. I had him read pretty well as I have seen him play before and knew he would not be checking with an A. I had him so well read and knew I could fold him on the turn, but didn't think enough about the second V and what his range could have been. Looking back, I still bet the turn no matter what even though that means I can't get away on the river as there was a flush draw on the flop which the second V would have played the same way. That took me back down below my starting stack about ten minutes from the break and the end of the re-entry period. Right before the break I busted when an OE straight draw missed. Rebuy (reentry) time.

After the break I took my new chipstack and built it up nicely through a combination of good hands and aggressive play. I built it up enough that I was able to lost three decent sized pots One of those hands I lost a race after raising w/suited face cards and lost a race to the all in V's pocket 9s. One hand, I called a shortstack (3bb) shove when I was in the bb with an A5 and a shot at a bounty if I win the hand. I think that's a pretty clear call for any A, but unfortunately V in that hand had AQ. The other was a hand where I raised a small pp, flopped a gut shot, c-bet the flop, checked the turn behind and folded to V's river bet. V was an older gentleman who had definitely struck me as TP. He said after his river bet that he flopped a set, and I believe him. Told him he let me off cheap and considered my TP read on him confirmed. That hand still left me between 10 and 15k in chips so I still had some room to work.

Unfortunately, after that I got pretty card dead, and didn't find a way to chip that up to much more than 20k before the final table and when the blinds went to 1 and 2k I was pretty close to shove or fold territory. I lost one more hand where I was in the bb wK3 in a hand with a UTG limper who I also read as TP (less passive then the other player as I know he had taken some shots at flops with smaller pieces) and the small blind. The flop came K66, I lead for about 2/3 the pot and got raised by the UTG. It was hard to put him on a 6, but not too hard to see him with a K that outkicked me or possibly a limp reraise before the flop with AA or KK, so I had to let that one go. Unfortunately, that left me with only 8bb and in definite shove or fold territory. I folded around till I got to middle position and looked down at A6d. Not the best hand to stake your tournament life on, but with the blinds coming up it's time to choose between the lesser of two evils, so I shoved my 8 bb. The same gentleman right on my left sighed, thought for a few minutes and said "I have to call", so I thought me might have something in the range of pocket 7s through jacks. Turns out it was kings though and when I couldn't catch an A or enough diamonds I was done. I collected enough bounties that I got back 3/4 of my two buyins though, so it could have been worse.

Overall I was pretty happy with how I played. I'm really starting to notice that I'm able to pick out different strategies that will work better against different players based on how they are playing. I'm developing more skill at reading people, putting them on hands and detecting weakness. Most importantly, there wasn't one hand that I look back on and say, wow, I wish I had played that differently. It wasn't a profitable night, but it was a good poker playing night. If I keep up with the latter, then the former will take care of itself.