Harrah's Side Area

In the annals of U.S. history it's clear as day that time and again the Native Americans were screwed over by white people. I find myself today in another stunning example of that trend, Harrah's Rincon in Southern California. This property is on reservation land. It's a small two-square-mile valley surrounded by impassable, rocky, barren hills that's twenty miles from the nearest major road. Estimated value of an acre of land here: fuck-all.

Side note: those with a Spanish background might be tempted to pronounce Rincon "rin-CONE". It's actually pronoucned "RINK-on", though the Spanish word for 'side area' would be a fitting descriptor for this forgotten, benighted chunk of nowhere.

The casino itself is nice enough, I guess. But if you don't know this place is here then there's no way you'll ever find it. That might explain why only 106 players showed up for the $5,150 WSOP-C tournament I'm here to cover.

I can't get back to Vegas fast enough.

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Am I Dreaming?

Last night I spent a couple of hours at the Dream Team Poker pre-party. Their second event kicks off today at Caesar's Palace (the first was at the Hard Rock in early November).

If you're not familiar with Dream Team Poker, it's a $550 poker tournament. The twist is that, although you play individually, you also play as a team of three people of your choosing. The finishes of each team member are aggregated for an overall team score, and then prizes are given out individually and on a team basis.

At first blush I was less than impressed. I don't care about team jerseys, which come included with your buy-in; I'd rather see that money put in the prize pool. The team-scoring concept, while a somewhat novel way of potentially spreading the prize pool around a bit, seems gimmicky; here I simply refer you to Bill Rini's excellent post Eight Tips on Pitching Your Idea to an Online Poker Room. The price point of the tournament ($550 per player) seems high enough to drive away three casual players but low enough not to interest the marketable "big name" pros.

And yet.

The event has generated lots of "buzz" and I can't figure out why. The tournament was capped at 170 teams and sold out. There were a surprising number of "Tier 2" pros in attendance at the party last night. [On this point, I will air my suspicion, based on a few informal conversations last night, that many of them were given exemptions by Dream Team Poker. Not that there's anything wrong with buying your own publicity -- but it would help to explain the buzz.] It seems that everyone in poker is talking about this tournament.

Am I missing something here? I feel like, once the novelty of the concept wears off, this will just be another PokerDome.

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Gonna Go Back in Time

During the 10/20 game, I walked over to a garbage can to throw out an empty coffee cup (black decaf, thanks).

I still drink black decaf while playing poker. No idea why -- I don't drink black decaf anywhere but at the poker table.

While there, I noticed SoxLover in a nearby 2/5 NLHE game. More accurately, I noticed a stunning Asian woman chatting with SoxLover in a nearby 2/5 NLHE game. A strange sensation swept over me, and it took a few minutes before I realized that the sensation was me wanting to go talk to SoxLover and find out how he was faring at his table.

(Really, she was *that* attractive. Do you think I'd willingly subject myself to SoxLover's poker tales of woe if she wasn't? I may be Under Suspicion, but I'm not insane.)

I stand by this statement. And it's nice to see (by the way) that the whole "Under Suspicion" thing has gone by the wayside.

To his credit, SoxLover attempted to introduce me to his new friend, characterizing her as "another Manhattan lawyer", but she was involved in a hand and didn't respond. Her Borgata card stood behind her impressive stack of chips, and although it was at tilted at an angle, I could make out her first name: CK. I made a mental note and returned to my game. Without huggling her.

Hot Asian chicks who play poker = swoon.

Ah, remember huggling? That was two years ago already! Yes, two years ago this month, a lithe, stunning vision presented herself to me in the Borgata poker room. And even though it was three weeks before we spoke, and another six months after that before we huggled, my perseverance and charm paid handsome dividends. I live with that stunning Asian woman now, and she only gets more stunning to me every day -- especially when she's railing on about the stupidity of purple golf clubs or asking me where "her cat" is.

I'm not the most expressive person. I very easily settle into comfortable routines where I just kind of do my thing and (often) keep to myself. The two of us are very similar in that way and once in a while it causes some bumps in the road. That said, I've never seen a single road in my life that didn't have a pothole in it. Once you slap me around, I snap back out of my little solitary reverie, get my eyes on the road and steer around those minor disturbances.

So, here's to two years of having this wonderful woman in my life. She's my CK, and I wouldn't trade her for anyone. Go get your own and keep your mitts off mine.

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This is Why People Hate LHE

Tuesday night during the BBT4, many people typed anti-LHE sentiments into the chat box. "Limit holdem is ghey" probably captures the flavor of most of them. Generally, NLHE players despise limit holdem because of two interconnected reasons. (1) It is impossible to make a pressure bet to ward off draws, and (2) it requires lots of decisions after the flop.

I like the game, but sometimes limit holdem reminds me of the old video game "Gauntlet". In certain levels of Gauntlet, there was a bubble that roamed the screen randomly. If the bubble touched any of the four players, that player would absorb the bubble and become 'it'. ("Blue Valkyrie is 'it'.") The undesirable side effect of being 'it' was that all of the monsters on the screen would stream towards you. There are times in limit holdem where it feels like everyone is gunning for you, and gets there, no matter how slim they're drawing.

I'm running bad lately. Flop the nut flush, lose to two full houses. Flop the nuts with a set, lose to a turned straight and a rivered flush. Flop top two and lose to a gutshot straight. Rinse, repeat. Those beats are painful but they're usually at least "justifiable". It's the incoherent beats that are excruciating.

To prove my point (and here is where I disclaim any bad beat story payments), 70/40 maniac raises from under the gun. Three cold callers to me, I have Ah-3h so I figure, what the hell, suited ace is pretty good here, let's see a flop. I don't like cold-calling preflop but there are always exceptions. Big blind also calls for a six-way flop of As-Tc-3s.

Ok, even tho I have two pair, this board sucks. I'm going to have to ram and jam and cross my fingers. Checks to middle position, who bets. Guy to his left raises, I 3-bet. Big blind takes three to the face, UTG takes three to the face, I get one fold and everyone else calls.

Turn is the 8s. Big blind checks, UTG bets. Now I call absolute bullshit on this bet. He doesn't have a flush. So after one caller, I raise. Only under-the-gun calls.

River is the Ks. UTG bets and I want to kill myself. Of course, given his rep and the fact that there are already 19 big bets in the pot, I can't fold. He shows 6c-Ts. He flopped middle pair, absolutely no draw and called through a bet and two raises to go runner-runner to a ten-high flush.

THAT is why people hate limit holdem.

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On Defending the Big Blind in LHE

I took a bunch of shit last night for one particular hand I played from the big blind. It's probably worth a look.

Blinds were 400 and 800. I had 15,010 to start the hand. Action folded to the small blind (12,722) who raised.

Generally speaking, I defend my big blind with a wide range of hands. When facing a late-position raise like this, you're getting 3-to-1 or 3.5-to-1 to flop something good. That's really more like 4-to-1 or 4.5-to-1 since 90% of the time your opponent is going to continuation-bet, and when it's the small blind raising you have the added benefit of position.

In a heads-up pot against a player whose opening range is pretty wide, there are very few holdem hands that have less than 20% equity. Most of them contain a deuce or a trey. Depending on board texture you can even move your opponent off their hand with total air, since your opponent probably raised light and missed the board anyway.

You can't go overboard with this. Ten-deuce is still a garbage hand no matter what Doyle Brunson says. That said, against a probable steal-raiser you can defend with almost anything. I use Abdul Jalib's definition of almost anything -- all hands but Q3 J4 T5 94 84 73 62 32 (or worse, in each case). Obviously the bigger, more connected and more suited your cards are, the better off you are. But this is one of those rare times in holdem where Sklansky's "gap" concept -- that you need to have a better hand to call a raise than you do to do the raising -- doesn't apply.

Back to the hand. I called the raise to a flop of As-7d-9c, which the small blind bet. The ace is, of course, a scare card for my opponent. I could easily raise this flop. But the place for the pressure bet in holdem is on the turn, especially heads-up on a dry board. A very standard line for an ace here is to call the flop and go for a raise on the turn. Which is what I did.

The turn fell 6d. Perhaps sensing danger, the small blind checked to me. I bet and he called. The river was the Jh. When he led into me, I suspected he made two pair. I raised, he called and then typed some unhappy remarks in the chat when his Jd-9s rivered two pair went down in flames to my 8d-5c turned gutshot straight.

You can call me a donkey if you like. Maybe I am; maybe this is a donkey play. But I had a plan for the hand, which was to raise or bet the turn regardless of whether I hit. It turns out my plan wouldn't have worked in this instance but that's results-oriented thinking. Lots of times the turn bet/raise will buy me the pot.

If you only play premium holdings in the blinds, you give up way too much equity. That's especially true in a tournament setting, where you can't wait forever to be dealt good starting cards.

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So Close...

I really wanted this one -- for bragging rights as the first with two victories -- but I was crippled in the end by Jordan's turned set against my top pair. Shortly thereafter I got my chips in with QJ against A5, 89x flop never improved. At that point the limits were so huge that any one of us could have won or gone out in fifth, with the average stack having about 6.5 big bets. In fact I think everyone had the chip lead at some point during five-handed play.

Oh well! It was fun anyway.

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A Numbers Game

If in the short term poker is a game of people, in the long term it's a numbers game. You make the proper decisions often enough and over time you show a profit. The "time" component is the variable that provokes debate: just how long the long run is; what constitutes a proper sample size; and how running above expectation makes players think that they're better than they are.

I've logged 100 hours in the Mirage Poker Room in between my travels the past few months. 100 hours represents about 4,000 hands. I'm solidly in the black for those 4,000 hands but am I a winning player? I have 3,500 hands played on the internet recently, again showing a solid profit. Am I a long-term winner?

It's generally accepted that a meaningful sample size is 10,000 hands at a minimum. I'd have to put in another 150 hours at the Mirage and another 35 hours three-tabling on the internet before I could hope to draw any conclusion. In this case, math is NOT idiotic -- it's a rational tool for deductive reasoning. Just as you can't deduce that if one plane falls out of the sky, all planes will fall out of the sky, so you can't deduce on the basis of a few winning or losing poker sessions that you are a winning or losing player.

But there are more losers than winners. Shamus cites Alan Schoonmaker and Jay Lovinger for the statistic that somewhere between 85% and 92% of internet players are long-term losers. That is, internet poker room managers confirm that 85-92% of players will lose more money than they win over the course of a given year -- be it in cash games, multi-table tournaments, sit-n-goes or some combination of all three.

That's a staggering number. Sure, the rake can be difficult to beat and will eat into the profits of players who would be marginal winners, turning them into losers. But 85-92%?

Once upon a time the internet sites frowned upon multi-tabling. When the restrictions against multi-tabling were eased (more players playing more tables equals more rake at zero incremental cost, after all -- a numbers game of its own) the "long run" became significantly shorter, allowing players to improve much more quickly than they used to be able. How is it that, at most, 15% are winners?

Again, like yesterday, not that I care. I'd rather the games be full of losers than winners. Assuming I'm part of the latter and not the former.

--

Skillz is limit holdem tonight. I'm trying to decide right now how much I hate myself, since I fully expect that there will be some jaw-droppingly horrific beats.

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A Game of People

Been playing a bunch of poker the last couple of days, it being Madness and all. The games have not been as good as I would have hoped, last night especially. The poker room and casino were hopping more last Saturday than they were yesterday.

The games have also been full of locals. The main game last night was a last-longer contest among me and no fewer than five locals -- not necessarily great but also not the softest spots -- to see who'd give up and go home first. After seven hours I conceded. Sleep seemed preferable to the continued grind.

One player at my table was a local that I'd never played with before last Saturday. Last week and last night she was wearing sunglasses to play $10-$20 LHE, prompting me to immediately label her a douchebag (or whatever the female equivalent of a douchebag is). It's bad enough when I see small stakes NLHE players wearing sunglasses. LHE is even less of a "soul reading" game than NLHE. Most players you'll encounter in a $10-$20 game aren't observant of much more than their own cards even if it *were* that much of a "soul reading" game.

I was therefore predisposed not to like this player and was soon proven correct in that initial judgment. She was the stereotypical "world's greatest poker player", always telling you what you had when she folded -- never correctly with my hands -- and whining if you out-drew her. When she would hit her own slim draw on the river not a word would pass her lips. Last night she tapped the glass repeatedly against a poor player on my left after he out-drew her three times in thirty minutes. No surprise that he soon left the table.

Her style was LAG. Given the tightness of the table that wasn't a bad way to play. But she was one of these poker players who seems like she's out to prove to everyone how capable she is. It's a personality I've encountered more often at the poker table than one would expect -- the type that projects an outward image of super-strong, capable, cool bad-ass but, internally, is horribly insecure. That image projection is a coping mechanism and the "strength" is soon revealed to be quite brittle, like an iron girder that has mostly rusted through.

I wonder if the solitary nature of poker has a tendency to draw those types of people. Their insecurity hinders the development and maintenance of large numbers of friendships. That would make poker a natural fit.

Not that I care. Their chips are just as red as anyone else's.

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Poker Sites on Not-So-Secret Oz Internet Blacklist

I've been Down Under twice in the last four months. The Aussies I knew before I arrived, and the ones I met after, were to a person a fun-loving, good-time-having, heavy-drinking brand of crazy degenerates. Thus I scratched my head today when I read that (a) the Oz government is considering restricting access to certain "depraved" websites (in the name of protecting the children, of course!) and (b) the preliminary blacklist was leaked and includes every major poker site. What in the Queen's name is going ON down there? Internet filtering? No poker sites?? No porn??! Pleeeeeeeeease mate.

More personal to me, pokernews.com is included in the current blacklist. RTFT gets a fair amount of Aussie traffic thanks in no small part to my assignments covering the APT, the APPT and the Aussie Millions for PokerNews. There's been a great development of poker Down Under which potentially could be stunted in a very UIGEA way if this poorly thought-out legislation goes through. I'd hate to lose Aussie readers because of it.

Oddly the main PokerNews portal for Oz poker, PokerNetwork, is NOT included. I guess the powers that be have decided that homegrown poker is not nearly as depraved as the international variety.

Someone needs to get Shane Warne on this right away.

[Edited to add: Haley pointed out to me that the pokernews.com inclusion on the blacklist was a sub-directory dealing with Duplicate Poker only. I noticed that without realizing the significance -- it seems to be targeted at Duplicate Poker rather than PokerNews itself. That might explain why PokerNetwork wasn't on the blacklist. Still, the fact that poker is targeted at all is alarming.]

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March Madness

If it's March, it's time for Spring Break.
If it's time for Spring Break, it's time for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
If it's time for the NCAAs, it's time for lots of young people to descend on Vegas to get their drink and their gamble on.

Saturday night I was at Mirage for the first time in a month. I took CK and a friend down to the Strip so they could drink without worrying about driving and figured, "Why waste the trip down here?"

The Strip and especially the Mirage Poker Room were the busiest that I've seen since we moved here last May. Not only did the $20-$40 game get up but a $40-$80 game got up as well. The $20-$40 had two especially soft spots to start but I elected to stay put at my even-juicier $10-$20.

My opponents included a bald Russian guy who may as well have been playing his cards face up (seriously, the guy was such a tell box that I was able to call his hand down to the suits a couple of times); a middle-aged Pakistani who played 85% of his hands and called all the way down if he caught even the smallest piece of the flop; an old man that I've played with before, accent unknown, who was just plain bad; an Eastern European guy who thought ace-king was the nuts; and a local nicknamed Mr. Potato Head because, well, he looks like Mr. Potato Head. They were all on my *right*. On my left were a bunch of local tight-boxes.

The loose-passives have a tendency to make this kind of table swingy even when you have position on them. Very swingy. I left a winner but I may need to re-think my strategy when I encounter those conditions. There's no way I should have two 25-bet swings in three hours.

I'd really like to go down to the Strip tonight. Even though Wednesdays are the worst day for action, I think with the college tournament starting at 930am tomorrow morning that the games tonight will be atypically good. Poker's version of March Madness. Unfortunately I have to conduct a media interview that I stupidly scheduled for 7pm.

There's always the rest of the weekend.

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Spring Cleaning!

A week or two ago I posted a reminder to myself to do some spring cleaning. Well, spring's a few days away. Today seemed like a good day.

Welcome to the new layout for Riding the F Train. Twenty five months of orange text on a black background was more than enough. We've moved from an old two-column setup to one of those snazzy, new-fangled three-column setups that were all the rage two years ago. The color scheme is simpler and crisper. I'm still making a few tweaks but things should settle within the next few days. At least the crowd that hated the black background should be happy now.

Tags have been added to all of the 2009 posts in another effort to catch up with what was fancy two years ago. I also expanded the blogroll based off of my own bloglines and a few other things. Despite that, I'm sure I've missed a few people. There will be further updates over the course of the next few days but if you'd like a link feel free to drop me a comment.

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My PLO Primer

Ok, so you want to know how to win a PLO tournament? It's easy.

Register late, then win your flips and run good.

When the tournament started I was monkeying around with my new car in the garage. I came inside for a minute and saw CK playing. With late registration still up, I quickly fired up Full Tilt and registered -- going so far as to bring the laptop into the garage so I could "do two things at once".

Turns out I couldn't do two things at once. I made a spectacularly bad play early on in a pot with NumbBono, donking off half my stack with two pair against a set on a dry board. From there I came back inside and focused on the tournament alone.

Also, I started to run like a god.

I can't tell you how many times I flopped or turned a set or a straight and had it hold up. It was pretty sick. I was playing a small-ball approach preflop and then pounding the pot when I had the best of it.

I was only all in at risk of elimination twice: Riggs potted from the small blind and I called with 6h-7h-3s-9s. It's not a great hand but it had some connectivity and two suits, which was enough for me against an open-raiser from the small blind whose range was likely wide. Riggs made a c-bet of 3/4 pot on a flop of 2d-2s-5s and folded to my jam. Two hands later I flopped a set and a gutshot to a wheel and got it all in on the turn against TheCloserX's top two pair and bigger gutshot. The river blanked to give me the pot. That was the only time I was all in and called the whole tournament.

From there I chipped up to about 7,500, which put me solidly above par for the first time. Then came the hand of the tournament.

Tony Eusebio shows [Kc 3c 7d Ad]
asphnxma shows [5c 6c 9h 8c]
*** TURN *** [4s 6d 9d] [Qs]
*** RIVER *** [4s 6d 9d Qs] [Ks]
Tony Eusebio shows a pair of Kings
asphnxma shows two pair, Nines and Sixes
asphnxma wins the pot (12,334) with two pair, Nines and Sixes
Tony Eusebio stands up

I had Tony covered, but only by about 1,400 chips. Talk about scary. I potted preflop and Tony called from the blind. He checked the flop to me; I bet pot. He then moved in for a little more than a min-raise and of course I had to call. I was a slim 5-to-4 favorite, but my edge held and vaulted me to second in chips.

Once I had chips I was willing to gamble a bit because -- as I said last week -- I'm not playing for points. I'm playing for first. It also never hurts to run good.

iaatg6296 shows [Qd Qh 3s 6c]
asphnxma shows [Ts 9h Jd 7h]
*** FLOP *** [Qc Th Ks]
*** TURN *** [Qc Th Ks] [9c]
*** RIVER *** [Qc Th Ks 9c] [5c]
iaatg6296 shows three of a kind, Queens
asphnxma shows a straight, King high
asphnxma wins the pot (3,052) with a straight, King high

iaatg6296 was very short and I had chips to burn. This was an easy preflop call.

asphnxma shows [Kh Jd 4h Ad]
scottc25 shows [Kd 2s 6d As]
Uncalled bet of 7,386 returned to asphnxma
*** TURN *** [Js 5h Ac] [6c]
*** RIVER *** [Js 5h Ac 6c] [8s]
asphnxma shows two pair, Aces and Jacks
scottc25 shows two pair, Aces and Sixes
asphnxma wins the pot (7,386) with two pair, Aces and Jacks
scottc25 stands up

A great flop for my hand.

asphnxma shows [6d 8c Ah As]
kickyourace shows [Th Jc 9s Qs]
Uncalled bet of 708 returned to asphnxma
*** TURN *** [6c Jd 8h] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [6c Jd 8h 6h] [9h]
asphnxma shows a full house, Sixes full of Eights
kickyourace shows a straight, Queen high
asphnxma wins the pot (12,084) with a full house, Sixes full of Eights
kickyourace stands up

That hand was a little scary before the six popped off on the turn. kickyourace didn't have enough chips to hurt me (~5-6k to my 21k), but he would have brought me back to the field. From here I started crushing, mashing and slaying.

asphnxma shows [Kh Jh Th Jd]
on_thg shows [Qh As 5h Qs]
*** TURN *** [4c Ad Jc] [Qc]
*** RIVER *** [4c Ad Jc Qc] [2h]
asphnxma shows a straight, Ace high
on_thg shows three of a kind, Queens
asphnxma wins the pot (21,064) with a straight, Ace high
on_thg stands up

I let out a cry of disgust when the queen hit the turn, not realizing it had given me a straight. I wonder if on_thg made the same mistake.

asphnxma shows [7h 6d 8h 8d]
cracknaces shows [8s Ts Td 7d]
*** TURN *** [8c 9h 4d] [Kc]
*** RIVER *** [8c 9h 4d Kc] [Kd]
asphnxma shows a full house, Eights full of Kings
cracknaces shows two pair, Kings and Tens
asphnxma wins the pot (36,324) with a full house, Eights full of Kings
cracknaces stands up

Yep, another set and straight draw combination. Turns out it was the case eight, too.

asphnxma shows [2c Ks Kc 9h]
TuscaloosaJohn shows [3d Kh Ah As]
*** FLOP *** [2d 2s 4s]
*** TURN *** [2d 2s 4s] [4h]
*** RIVER *** [2d 2s 4s 4h] [7s]
asphnxma shows three of a kind, Twos
TuscaloosaJohn shows two pair, Aces and Fours
asphnxma wins the pot (23,616) with three of a kind, Twos
TuscaloosaJohn stands up

Poor TJ. He potted preflop to 3,500, then called all in after I re-potted. This was a disgusting way for him to go out of the tournament and it was close to the money bubble too.

asphnxma shows [2c Ks 6h 3c]
ChampSampson shows [Ah Jh Ts Th]
Uncalled bet of 830 returned to asphnxma
*** TURN *** [4s 5d Ad] [2s]
*** RIVER *** [4s 5d Ad 2s] [8h]
asphnxma shows a straight, Six high
ChampSampson shows a pair of Aces
asphnxma wins the pot (31,076) with a straight, Six high
ChampSampson stands up

In my defense, this pot was limped on my big blind. Not even I am so crazy as to play K-6-3-2.

PirateLawyer shows [9d Qs Jh Kc]
asphnxma shows [Ks 3d Kh 5s]
*** FLOP *** [8h Ac 5h]
*** TURN *** [8h Ac 5h] [Th]
*** RIVER *** [8h Ac 5h Th] [8d]
PirateLawyer shows a pair of Eights
asphnxma shows two pair, Kings and Eights
asphnxma wins the pot (41,104) with two pair, Kings and Eights
PirateLawyer stands up

Hey look, a hand where I was actually ahead preflop, thus sparing me from being the focus of this week's PL rant! (I kid, I kid.)

jeciimd shows [Kh 8d 3c Kd]
asphnxma shows [As 8c 4d Ad]
*** FLOP *** [7c Jh 3h]
*** TURN *** [7c Jh 3h] [6s]
*** RIVER *** [7c Jh 3h 6s] [6c]
jeciimd shows two pair, Kings and Sixes
asphnxma shows two pair, Aces and Sixes
asphnxma wins the pot (43,016) with two pair, Aces and Sixes
jeciimd stands up

And another! When we got down to five-handed, I was most worried about jeciimd and twoblackaces. That shouldn't be interpreted as a slight against cemfredmd or methos26; just that twoblackaces and jeciimd appeared to be the stronger players. However jeciimd took a couple of beats, moving from second in chips to about even with the other four players. It was a great piece of fortune for me because it allowed me to attack anyone at will.

methos26 shows [Ad 5c As Kc]
asphnxma shows [9h Ah 4d 2d]
*** FLOP *** [Td 4h 8c]
*** TURN *** [Td 4h 8c] [9s]
*** RIVER *** [Td 4h 8c 9s] [6c]
methos26 shows a pair of Aces
asphnxma shows two pair, Nines and Fours
asphnxma wins the pot (67,936) with two pair, Nines and Fours
methos26 stands up

The hand against methos26 was the loosest call I made all night, by far. I can't even tell you why I made it (I potted preflop, he re-potted all in, I called). I semi-apologized in chat afterwards by typing simply, "That was a loose call."

asphnxma shows [Js 5d 9h 9c]
twoblackaces shows [2s Qh Ad Tc]
*** FLOP *** [6s 8s 8c]
*** TURN *** [6s 8s 8c] [Kc]
*** RIVER *** [6s 8s 8c Kc] [6h]
asphnxma shows two pair, Nines and Eights
twoblackaces shows a pair of Eights
asphnxma wins the pot (50,672) with two pair, Nines and Eights
twoblackaces stands up

By the time of this hand I had an eight-to-one chip lead on both of my remaining competitors and was simply going for the kill. twoblackaces opened for pot (14k) leaving himself 10k behind. Three-handed, I figured his opening range was pretty wide. I also saw the opportunity to eliminate twoblackaces and even though my hand looked like garbage, my "poker sense" told me to jam. It turned out we were flipping -- 51-49 in favor of twoblackaces.

cemfredmd shows [Qh Jc 5h 5s]
asphnxma shows [Qd 6c Qc 5d]
*** FLOP *** [4d 7s 3c]
*** TURN *** [4d 7s 3c] [9s]
*** RIVER *** [4d 7s 3c 9s] [9c]
cemfredmd shows two pair, Nines and Fives
asphnxma shows a straight, Seven high
asphnxma wins the pot (47,376) with a straight, Seven high
cemfredmd stands up

Heads-up lasted about ten hands. cemfredmd started with 21k to my 230k. The stacks shifted to 13k and 238k before I got him all in with Kh-Jh-Td-8c against his Ah-9c-4d-2d. I had a ton of outs going into the river on a board of 4c-3h-Qs-6h, but I missed them all to double him to 27k. Interestingly, my hand was the preflop favorite, 56-44, no doubt due to its connected-ness.

Two hands later we got it in again (above) and this time I had cemfredmd crushed -- as much as one can have someone "crushed" preflop in PLO. I didn't even realize I flopped a straight until after I was reviewing the hand history.

And that was it. Game over. BBT TOC seat secured.

One hand that I didn't play at the final table which had me thinking: We were five-handed. I started the hand with 138k. The next biggest stacks were methos26 (SB, 45k) and twoblackaces (BB, 32k). I opened pot (10.5k) with 8h-9c-Tc-Jc. Action passed to methos26 who called from the small blind before twoblackaces jammed all in.

This is the only hand that sent me into "the tank" all tournament. I knew it was a big decision and immediately hit the time bank button. My problem wasn't necessarily twoblackaces' jam (tho clearly I would have preferred to see a flop before committing another 22k); my problem was that I wasn't sure what methos25 would do if I called. I envisioned a situation where I was playing for one-third of my stack (44k) against two opponents. Not the situation I wanted to be in with my hand and my chip position in the tournament. I could easily wait for a better spot, in a heads-up pot, with a stronger hand; with the blinds at 1.5k and 3k, my opponents could not. After mulling it over for thirty seconds I mucked. I think discretion was the better part of valor there, but I still wonder...

I can now sit back and play whichever of the rest of the BBT4 tournaments I feel like without worrying about securing a TOC seat. Not that I was worrying -- but it's definitely nice to lock up a seat early. Now I can donk around like I usually do instead of trying to "focus". My "focusing" last night consisted of starting to drink in hour 3 and cranking up the energy music once I reached the final table with the chip lead (70k; jeciimd was second with 40k).

Thanks to everyone who was on the rail cheering me on. Sorry I wasn't in a chatty mode last night -- it was all business. Also a big thanks to CK for making dinner while I was still playing (making dinner is usually my task). Congrats to everyone else who made the final table. See you in the TOC!

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PLO(mg!)

One day I'll learn how to play PLO. Until then I'll delude myself with this:


Hey BBT4: Good morning, good afternoon and good night.

Tournament recap will come later today. Right now I'm on deadline for an assignment I picked up two minutes after the tournament ended.

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Is It That Time Already?

Now that the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is over (Huck Seed!), it's back to a period of relative quiet for me. My next tournament gig isn't until the end of the month. Until then I'll be doing the usual -- writing articles for various outlets and playing some poker. Given the lack of mid-stakes LHE games in Vegas and CK's repeated success at low-stakes NLHE, I keep thinking I should go back to NLHE. For now I remain stubborn.

The 2009 World Series of Poker is starting to creep over the horizon. The application form for media credentials was out a week or two ago and the tournament rules were released this morning. The rules are bordering on LOL-unenforceable this year (see Rules 30(B) and 36) in response to certain events from the 2008 WSOP. I'm looking at you, Scotty Nguyen and Phil Hellmuth.

The WSOP will mark one year of my working in poker and being out of corporate law. While I haven't been able to play as much as I would have liked and no longer have access to the great mid-stakes games at Borgata, it's been a great year.

I have no regrets about leaving my former job in the Eastern European stock and real estate markets. Those markets have been battered horribly in the last ten months. One of the main indices in Russia, the RTS, peaked the day I quit and is off 75% since then. Latvian shopping center and office tower projects were a huge revenue-generator for my former company the last few years. Now the Latvian economy is contracting so quickly (because it was so reliant on credit and foreign direct investment, both of which have almost completely dried up) that the whole country needs a bailout. And, most directly relevant to me, my replacement was laid off just after the start of the year. I have no doubt that I would have been the one to get the axe had I still been there.

There are many question marks hovering over the WSOP coverage and the poker media industry in general. But I'm not worried. I'm still working on a regular basis and I have a bunch of projects in the hopper which could bear significant fruit going forward. Most importantly, I'm far happier now than I ever was in law. That's really all that matters.

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2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship: Flack's One Call

The story of Day 1 at the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championships had nothing at all to do with poker. When the second of the four brackets commenced play, everyone in the media noticed that Layne Flack's seat was occupied by David Oppenheim. The official response from Mori Eskandani, when questioned about the switch, was that Flack has been in a car accident the night before and first alternate David Chiu was not able to be summoned to Caesars in time for the tournament. Oppenheim thus subbed in.

There turned out to be more to the story than that. Rumors quickly swirled through the room that Flack had actually been arrested for DUI. That turned out to be true; the charges against him are speeding, failure to yield to an emergency vehicle, and DUI. Flack was cooling in his heels in the county lock-up, awaiting arraignment, at the start of his bracket. That meant he would only get one call for the whole day, and he certainly wasn't going to be using it in his heads-up match against Vanessa Selbst.

I'd like to imagine that instead the call went something like this:

Russ Hamilton: (sleepily) Hello?

Flack: Russ. It's Layne. Listen - you know that one call you never want to have to make? I'm making it. Can you use some of your super-user money to bail me out of jail?

Hamilton: Layne? Layne who? *click*

Oppenheim went on to beat Selbst, sucking out with an overpair of aces that made a running two pair after Selbst flopped bottom two and got all of her chips in the middle. Flack, for his part, seems unlikely to beat the charges against him given his history of erratic behavior.

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Internet Poker Musings

* Every time I click the "Leave Table" button on PokerStars, a dialog box pops and asks me, "Do you really want to leave?" I feel like what it's actually saying is, "Are you fucking nuts? These people are HORRIBLE. Stay! Stay!"

* Seat change option - why hasn't this been implemented yet on any poker site? Sure, you can just stand up and sit back down at a different seat, but I'm all for one-click convenience.

* Multi-accounting has become the scourge of internet poker. Someone that I consider a friend, and a generally decent guy, was recently hit with a three-month ban from PokerStars for "account sharing" (although the evidence seems damning that he was also multi-accounting). I found the news incredibly disappointing -- almost like steroids accusations in baseball. Just when you think that maybe the worst of the worst is in the past, you realize that you've barely scratched the surface. In the case of online poker, the overwhelming trend -- apart from insider super-users -- is that the perpetrators are in their early 20s. That makes sense since that encompasses largest internet poker demographic; but I have a feeling that the invincibility of youth, combined with the amount of money up for grabs on a regular basis, makes taking these cheating risks all too common.

Once upon a time you could restrict connections to a server by IP address. That was no longer practical once wireless routers made home and office networks the norm. There needs to be a better mechanism in place to prevent such occurrences than self-regulation and the "Honor System". Whether it's by harsher punishment of suspected multi-accounters and account sharers (though most of those people easily circumvent their bans anyway) or the development of new security methods, something has to be done to crack down on a problem that undermines the integrity of the games and the confidence of the people who play them.

The sad truth is that many of the new generation of players feel "it's no big deal" because "everyone else is doing it anyway". Which is exactly what many major league baseball players felt before the popped their first PEDs.

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2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship Brackets Announced

The brackets have been drawn for the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship which gets underway later today. The draw is as follows:

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In the clubs bracket, Team PokerStars Pros Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu will slug it out, while in the hearts bracket it's a Full Tilt Battle Royale between Erick Lindgren and Howard Lederer. In diamonds, David Benyamine v. Gus Hansen promises some intrigue; the spades bracket has fire-against-fire match-up when Ilari Sahamies and Gavin Smith go to war. Chris Ferguson, the defending champion, has drawn the voice of High Stakes Poker, Gabe Kaplan, as his first-round opponent.

Action kicks off at noon Pacific time on Friday. Hurry up and get your brackets in!

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NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship

If it's March, it must be bracket season. While most of the sporting world is awaiting Selection Sunday with no small amount of anticipation, the tiny sliver represented by poker gets its bracket bonanza tonight at Pure. That's where the brackets will be drawn, on what for lack of anything better I'll call Thrilling Thursday, for the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Play kicks off tomorrow at Caesars Palace here in Las Vegas.

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There's been endless rumination about players that should have been included but weren't, players that shouldn't have been included but were, and about who the likely favorite is to win the whole thing (apparently, Chris Ferguson). One late-breaking piece of news is that Ivan Demidov will not attend and has been replaced by Hevad Khan. Don't expect Khan to engage in any of the theatrics that first brought him to the attention of the poker world during the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event; he has been extremely subdued since then, almost to the point of lobotomy, perhaps due to his sponsorship deal with PokerStars.

This is a made-for-television tournament that, due to an extremely aggressive blind structure, is hard to take seriously as anything other than an infomerical for the 64 participants. That also makes handicapping the field quite a challenge (not that ESPN didn't try). But that's ok. We all have guilty pleasures. Yours might be "The Bachelor"; mine is watching Phil Hellmuth's aces get cracked by Tom Dwan on the third hand of their match.

Follow all of the action at PokerNews tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.

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BBT4 and Smart Fish

Played my first BBT4 tournament last night. Nothing really to note. I didn't run horribly and managed a few KOs, but I overplayed a few hands and also had some people at my starting table who could do no wrong. Not surprisingly, they wound up heads-up for the title. Points are useless for me since I will not play enough tournaments to top the leaderboard. When I do turn up, rest assured I'm playing for first place and first place alone.

After the Stud-Eight debacle I moved over to $1-$2 LHE to make my buyin back (done) and continue to grind the meager little bankroll I have on Full Tilt. After a few minutes at the table I was treated to a delightful chat session where, oddly enough, one of the worst players at the table told his antagonizer to stop tapping the glass! The antagonizer, who will be referred to as Stupid Guy, and another player started talking about how bad Bad Player was, and about the notes they had on players at the table.

Stupid Guy: here's Bad Player's note:
Stupid Guy: "lhe cash $1/$2 - bad player who plays too many hands, raises in early position with mediocre ace holdings and plays ace+kicker for too long"
Bad Player: got it
Bad Player: good one
Bad Player: well done
Bad Player: you get 4-stars
Bad Player: Hey, Stupid Guy... have you ever considered being nice to donks like me?

Maybe even Stupid Guy realized the error of his ways; he offered a quick explanation that his behavior was not the norm.

Stupid Guy: i usually am actually
Stupid Guy: but you seem capable of taking the abuse
Stupid Guy: probably because you've been a loser all your life

When the bad players at the table are telling other players not to tap the glass at $1-$2 LHE, you know the game's tougher than any live $10-$20 you'll ever sit in.

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Back on the Grid

After the end of the L.A. Poker Classic Main Event, I dropped off the grid for four days for a little R&R and to catch up with old friends. One of my regrets with my travel schedule for the last six months is that I haven't had much time to enjoy the cities I've visited after work was done. No such issue with Los Angeles. An added bonus was getting to miss CK's birthday (before you pass judgment on me, understand that she hates birthdays). She certainly didn't miss me -- she went on a massive poker bender.

Now, however, were both back to work. I have a slew of articles to write this week before the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship kicks off with its bracket party Thursday night at Pure. I'll be covering this one for PokerNews, and I'm told that it's a fairly "light" and fun gig. At the LAPC Main Event last week, Mike Matusow described the tournament as one where players are invited if they've got personality or results. Matusow, never one for modesty, professed to both.

There's lots of spring cleaning to be done around these parts also. Maybe by putting a note here I'll remember to do it -- but probably not.

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