Poker Words - A Poker Blog

Bears Trip

2009-04-18T11:26:00.004-05:00

Last year my friends and I started what I hope will become our annual Bears trip. This is where we all meet in the city of Bears away game for a weekend of heavy drinking, and watching of football. And drinking. Did I mention the drinking?

Last year we went to Atlanta and if not for the last 11 seconds of the Bears game it was an awesome weekend. The stadium, as well as a number of other bars and restaurants were all within walking distance of our hotel, which was really convenient.

The NFL schedule came out yesterday so we have to figure out where to go. I'll be traveling from Chicago. Two of my friends are coming from the East coast, so games out there work better for them. The fourth member of our group is working in Japan for a year, so I'm fairly certain that he's out no matter what, but if there was any chance of him making it to one of the games I think it would have to be on the West Coast.

Here's our options. I don't know very much about most of these cities, so I'm open to suggestions.

9/13 - Green Bay Packers - Opening week. I doubt we can get affordable tickets, and I don't particularly want to go to Green Bay, even if it is one of the more convenient options on the list.

9/27 - Seattle Seahawks - This is one of my top choices. I'd like to visit Seattle at some point. Why not see a football game too? I'm concerned that it would be tough to get tickets though since their fans are pretty hard core.

10/18 - Atlanta Falcons - We already went to Atlanta, but I thought it worked out well. I'd go again. It might be more difficult to get tickets this time around since they might actually be expected to be decent this year, but I think its a good bet.

10/25 - Cincinnati Bengals - I don't know why by I think Cinci is a ghetto town. I've never been, but if I was to pick the most likely place on this list to get stabbed walking down the street it would be Cinci. Actually it would be Detroit, but Cinci would be a close second. It does look like there is some stuff to do near the stadium, so this might work out.

11/12 - San Fransisco 49ers - Another one of my top choices. This has the added benefit of the Niners being terrible so the chances of a Bear win and us getting good seats significantly improve.

11/29 - Minnesota Vikings - meh. Walking around Minnesota in November doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Plus I'd have to listen to that asshole blow his Viking horn for three hours.

12/20 - Baltimore Ravens - Might be good, except for the cold and the fact that I can't go anywhere that weekend because of my wife's cousin's Wedding.

1/3 - Detroit Lions - Walking around Detroit, while probably not fun at any time of the year would be even less fun in January. Plus I don't know about the New Years travel chaos.

So there's the options. I think its probably going to come down to Seattle, San Fran, Atlanta and Cinci. Anyone know of a reason why I should or should not take one of those?

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Home Run Derby

2009-03-29T19:12:00.007-05:00

For the past few years I've participated in a Home Run Derby competion. It is sort of like fantasy baseball without all the work. You basically pick 15 major league players and count up the homeruns that they accumulate during the year. Whoever's team hits the most wins. There were about 10,000 entries last year, with the top prize being about $10K. Of coarse I came no where near the top prize, or any prize for that matter. But I'm going to play again anyways. Here's a list of the players, and their homerun totals from last year.

Group A - Pick 1

Adam Dunn, 40
Ryan Howard, 48
Alex Rodriguez, 35

Group B - Pick 1

Carlos Delgado, 38
Albert Pujols, 37
Carlos Quentin, 36
Alfonso Soriano, 29

Group C - Pick 3

Ryan Braun, 37
Miguel Cabrera, 37
Jack Cust, 33
Jermaine Dye, 34
Prince Fielder, 34
Adrian Gonzalez, 36
Carlos Lee, 28
Ryan Ludwick, 37
Carlos Pena, 31
Manny Ramirez, 37
Jim Thome, 34

Group D - Select 3

Pat Burrell, 33
Jason Giambi, 32
Mike Jacobs, 32
Evan Longoria, 27
David Ortiz, 23
Hanley Ramirez, 33
Grady Sizemore, 33
Mark Teixeira, 33
Dan Uggla, 32
Chase Utley, 33
David Wright, 33

Group E - Select 3

Jason Bay, 31
Carlos Beltran, 27
Lance Berkman, 29
Jorge Cantu, 29
Troy Glaus, 27
Vladimir Guerrero, 27
Josh Hamilton, 32
Aubrey Huff, 32
Aramis Ramirez, 27
Mark Reynolds, 28
Kevin Youkillis, 29

Group F - Select 4

Rick Ankiel, 24
Adiran Beltre, 25
Mike Cameron, 25
Edwin Encarnacion, 26
JJ Hardy, 24
Brad Hawpe, 25
Matt Holiday, 25
Raul Ibanez, 23
Kevin Kouzmanoff, 23
Adam LaRoche, 25
Brian McCann, 23
Nate McLouth, 26
Justin Morneau, 23
Xavier Nady, 25
Hunter Pence, 25
Jhonny Peralta, 23
Luke Scott, 23
Geovany Soto, 23
Nick Swisher, 24
Marcus Thames, 25
Joey Votto, 24
Jayson Werth, 24
Ty Wigginton, 23

And here are my entries. I'm trying to avoid Cubs players so as not to jinx them, but also because most of the people participating are from Chicago so Cubs and White Sox players get picked a lot more than they probably should. I'm also staying away from Manny, even though I have a feeling he is going to have a huge year. I don't like him, and there's also a good chance that he phones it in for half the season. Ohter that that, I tend to pick guys in the national league more than the American because I'm more familiar with them. The rest is just gut feeling. I tried to analyse everything last year and find people who were due for breakout years, or who had deciptivly bad years the year before. It didn't work out so well, so I just went for gut feelings this time.

Team 1

Ryan Howard
Albert Pujols
Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez
Evan Longoria, Pat Burrell, Dan Uggla
Jason Bay, Josh Hamilton, Vladimir Guerrero
JJ Hady, Brad Hawpe, Hunter Pence, Joe Votto

Team 2

Adam Dunn
Carlos Quentin
Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, Carlos Lee
Pat Burrell, Hanley Ramirez, Mark Teixeira
Josh Hamilton, Carols Beltran, ~~Troy Glaus~~ Aramis Ramirez (Lucky for me I'm a procrastinator and didn't send in the form yet since Glaus got hurt)
Matt Holiday, JJ Hardy, Mike Cameron, Adam LaRoche

Team 3

Ryan Howard
Albert Pujols
Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun
Evan Longoria, Mark Teixeira, Chase Utley
Jason Bay, Josh Hamilton, Carlos Beltran
Hunter Pence, Joey Votto, Justin Morneau, Xavier Nady

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Midweek Poker

2009-03-19T22:04:00.000-05:00

My friend Aaron's wife is out of town this week and with his newfound freedom to do whatever the hell he wants he decided to host a small poker game at his house. We've done this sort of thing a number of times recently, where recent is sometime in the last year, and "a number of times" is three or four. It was still a school night so we couldn't play for too long, but we were able to get in a few 6 handed tourneys.

We started off with holdem because that is what we all know and love. I must be rusty because I couldn't find a hand I felt like playing for the first three or four blind levels in a shorthanded friendly, low-buy in game. Finally my cards got better, or I just loosened up and started playing, and things went pretty well.

Nothing really stands out until the hand I got busted on. I had AK on the button, and made a big raise, which Jason called. Jason isn't a very good player by any stretch of the imagination. He plays with us not for the enjoyment of the actual card game, but for the drinking and social aspects. He knows the rules, but not any strategy. He also takes great pleasure is his completely random betting and card selection habits because he knows it frustrates everyone to have no idea what he might be holding. And because of that he's probably a much better player than any of us give him credit for. He has built the perfect loose aggressive random image that I think he actually does a pretty good job of exploiting when he wants to. We all make a big deal out of his willingness to call almost any bet, and the nonchalant smirkiness of his raises but lately he's been laying hands down when appropriate, and only calling/raising when he has a hand. I just don't think we've really noticed, or given him credit.

Of coarse I'm telling you all this to explain why I bet into the nuts when I'd like to think I would have folded to anyone else in the same situation. Back to the hand, The flop is A45 and Jason quickly turns to his neighbor, who was out of the game and asks him a question. I'm fairly certain he asked if aces count as one. At this point anyone with half a brain would have put him on the wheel and gotten out, or at least tread carefully. I didn't do that. I either thought he didn't actually have that hand, or that he didn't realize that it was any good, and bet into him. Again and again, until we went all in on the river. He did in fact have the wheel, and he also had me covered by a couple chips. He went on to win the tourney.

------

Round two was Omaha. Omaha still makes my brain hurt, but I think I might be starting to get it. Either that or the cards finally started coming my way. I was drawing to the nuts rather than hoping my two pair would hold up. I was taking advantage of other people's inability to remember they only get to use two cards from their hand, and I was actually getting good cards. I was rolling. And then, I don't even remember what happened, but before I knew it I had a few busted draws, and I fell into another one of Jason's traps, and I was out. Failing to money yet again.

------

In the past few meetings such as this, round three was Razz, but our resident Razz expert/enthusiast wasn't there, and I didn't want to have to explain it/remember how to play, so we stuck with a holdem varient and went with pineapple. Or crazy pineapple. I don't remember which one is which and I don't feel like looking it up.

For those of you unfamiliar with pineapple, it is just like holdem, except you are dealt three hole cards. You must discard one of the hole cards either before or after the flop, depending on if you are playing crazy pineapple or just the regular sane variety. We played the version where you discard after the betting on the flop.

I never thought the decision on which card to discard would be so difficult, or have such a significant affect on the game, but it did. There were a number of times when people discarded made average hands to chase something better because they didn't think it would stand up.

On the very first hand I had KK9. The flop was KQJ, which looks pretty good for me, although I'm a little worried about a strait. I obviously discard the 9, and then cringe when a ten comes on the turn. Although, I don't know how confident I would have been having the low end of a strait, it would have been better than no end of a strait. The river was inconsequential and someone with T9 took the pot.

It was quite surprising how often the discarded card could have won the pot for someone else.

I didn't fare any better in pineapple than I in any of the other games. This time I was undone by overbluffing with my 722 which completely missed the flop.

Despite nothing to show for it, it was certainly good to play a game for the first time in quite a while. My wife is out of town next week, so I'll be the one hosting the games. Depending on how many people we have, I think I want to make it a cash game dealer calls it for an orbit. I've never run a cash game though so we'll have to see how it works out.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Tourney Time

2009-03-18T23:39:00.000-05:00

Its the most wonderful time of year. NCAA tourney time. As I've said before, I'm not much of a basketball fan. I really only follow the Illini, and maybe the Big 10 conference. I know next to nothing about college basketball. Never the less, I can't wait for the tourney to start. I will sit and watch as much basketball in the next four days as my wife will allow obsessively checking and rechecking my brackets to see if I have a chance of winning. Which I don't.

I'm not going to actually post my brackets. Not that I'm afraid of sharing my picks. I've had no problem doing that in the past. This year I filled out many different brackets at a number of different sites, and I don't really have one bracket that I consider "The" bracket.

For the most part I went with chalk this year. My typical final four consists of UNC, Louisville, Uconn and Pitt, with an occasional Memphis instead of Uconn. UNC beats Louisville in almost all my brackets.

My beloved Illini drew the dreaded 5-12 pairing, and are the perfect team to get upset given their injuries and tendency to go 5-10 minutes at a time without a scoring a single point, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and picked Wisconsin as my 12 team moving on. And Arizona most of the time.

I have very few upsets this year compared to previous years. I thought about it from a "Wanting to win the pool" angle rather than a "Wanting to fill out a perfect bracket" angle this time.

There are two different strategies for filling out your bracket. If you are in a relatively small pool, as mine are, then chances are the people in the money are going to be the ones who pick the winner, and the final four correctly, especially if later rounds are weighted heavier. Picking that 3-14 upset in round one is great, but its a long shot, and not only do you probably get the round one pick wrong, you also probably eliminated a sweet sixteen team. The costs of missing an upset pick are much greater than just missing the round one matchup. Thus picking mostly chalk, is the safer path to victory. On the other hand, if you are in a huge pool, like one of the national online pools, to win you are going to have to get almost every game right. Unless another George Mason happens, there are going to be thousands of people picking perfect elite eight through championship brackets, so not only do you have to do that, but you have to get a number of early round upsets correct.

Only a few hour till game time. I really should have taken some vacation days this week. I think spending all day at a sports bar would have been a good plan.

Go Illini

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Worst. Movie. Ever.

2009-02-28T10:39:00.003-06:00

I have done it. I have found the worst movie in the history of bad movies. This is a movie that was bad that I think the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew would have been at a loss for words as to the proper way to mock it. The movie was Street Fighter, Legend of Chun-li.

Don't get me wrong, I expected this movie to be terrible, but it was considerably worse than I ever could have imagined. I went to watch it at the local brew and view type theater which is perfect for taking in bad movies. You go there have a few beers to enjoy some cheesiness. Its where Snakes on a Plane and every Will Ferrell was meant to be watched. I was expecting some good old lame plot as an excuse for crazy fight scenes type movie, and what I got was an incredibly lame and ofter random plot, while very few fight scenes, none of which were worthy of a movie based off of a fighting video game.

The movie was so bad that halfway through two of the guys in our group stopped drinking. Very little in the movie made any sense and they thought they had it was because they had had one too many.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Poker Legalization

2009-02-26T22:47:00.003-06:00

Here's some potential good news. I saw this article today about a recent study that says the US government could net over $50 Billion in tax revenue over the next decade by legalizing online gambling.

There were couple other interesting items in the article. First of all the study found that online gambling had actually increased in the last three years despite the UIGEA. Also it says Barney Frank intends to introduce legislation this year to repeal that law. Now that Republicans are no longer in control it may actually have a chance of passing. Its funny that now that they aren't in control they are suddenly worried about fiscal responsibility. Perhaps a $50 billion revenue increase will make them feel better.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Too Much Fallout

2009-02-21T17:34:00.003-06:00

You know you've been playing too much Fallout 3 when you go shopping for groceries, and out of the corner of your eye you see one of those red DVD rental boxes, and think "OOohh Nuka-Cola Machine, I wonder if there's any Quantum in there".

That is all.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Free Games

2009-02-07T10:28:00.003-06:00

In effort to sell everything on the planet, Amazon is now selling downloadable games. Stuff like jewel quest and those other cheap games you see everywhere that you find yourself addicted to for no good reason. They have some for free and give you a half hour trial before you buy anything, which is probably all the time you need before you move on to the next one. I like games, I like free stuff, and I especially like it when you buy the games through the banner above because I get a commission.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Whirly Ball and One Hand of Poker

2009-01-26T21:03:00.003-06:00

One of the regulars in our poker group is getting married in a few days and his bachelor party was this weekend. While I'm not a liberty to discuss most of what happened, I would like to comment on a few things.

First of all, if you have a Whirly Ball facility near you, and you've never played you need to try it as soon as humanly possible. It is entirely too much fun.

What is Whirly Ball? Its kind of like hockey, except instead of a stick you use a Hi Li scoop racket thing, and instead of net there's a basketball backboard with a basketball sized hole in the center. And instead of skates, you use bumper cars. Oh, and its a barlike atmosphere. Here's a video.

We also played some poker, during which I lasted a full hand. I had wired nines, and raised 3x BB preflop, two callers. The flop was JJ2 and I lead out, chasing one guy out of the pot. The turn was a third jack, giving be a full house and a lead on almost anything he has. I make a large bet and he comes over the top all-in. Now, unless he has me on a complete bluff, and is pretty ballzy I don't think there many hands that he would do that with that I can beat. I was hoping he had a two. He had the case jack and I went home. Well not home, but away from cards. Good times.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Small Blind Call and Bet

2009-01-17T09:57:00.002-06:00

While my SNG poker game has been nothing to brag about lately, there is one particular move that I've been using with much success. Its nothing new or mind blowingly clever, but it works well.

The situation is this. I'm in the small blind and it has been folded to me. I hate being in this spot. I feel obligated to raise, yet anytime someone raises in this situation it looks like a steal, and it seems like I get called/raised way more than I should. And I never get a good feel for where I am in the hand because I can't tell if my opponent has a hand or is just putting me on a steal attempt. And yet I can't fold. I'm getting 3:1 on my money by calling and he's not going to even challenge me with most hands.

So if you haven't guessed, I've started just calling and then min-betting no matter what on the flop. The min bet actually ends up being a half-pot sized bet. Sometimes I'll make it a full pot sized bet, but usually not.

I've found that my opponents are more likely to fold in this scenario than if I were to raise pre-flop.

Since I only call pre-flop, they are most likely just happy to see a free flop. If I raise they see it as a steal attempt and try to defend, but by calling they see more cards with no risk. Sure sometimes I get raised in this case, but then I've only lost a half bet, and if that happens five times I've still lost the same amount as if I had raised to 3x blinds and got reraised. So I get to see a cheap flop and they get to see a free one.

The automatic bet on the flop is just hoping that they didn't hit anything. Even if they suspect a steal here, they are less likely to try to call my bluff if they've missed the flop as well. And since I just called they have no idea what I have. If the flop is garbage, its possible I called with garbage and hit. If the flop has scare cards, and they don't, then maybe I was setting them up. Either way I've found that more often than not they fold. And if they do call, or raise, and I have nothing, I've risked very little chips and I can get out relatively cheaply.

Nothing too fancy, but I find that it helps me win more than my fair share of blind battles, in a situation where I'm normally not very confident in my hand.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

PokerStars Double or Nothing SNGs

2009-01-10T14:36:00.002-06:00

PokerStars has these new Double or Nothing SNG's. I say new but that may not be accurate since I haven't played there with any regularity in over a year, and its possible I just didn't notice them before. Now its almost impossible not to notice them as you have to sift through a billion double or nothing SNGs just to find a normal one.

They were annoying me to the point of curiosity, so I tried a few. The concept is simple. Its a 10 player SNG where the top 5 double their buy in, and the other five get nothing. The entrance fee is about 20% less than the standard entrance fee.

Given that I've been playing pretty poorly lately I figure that I would try these since I should be able to finish in the top half more than half the time, so it should be easy money.

But its not quite the same as finishing in the top 5 of a normal SNG. There is a very different dynamic that occurs. Once you are down to six or seven players, there is almost no incentive to put yourself at risk. It doesn't matter if you have one chip or a million, when five players are left the game is over. Why try and steal a pot when there's a good chance that if you just fold you'll make it to the money?

I only played four so far, but the strategy seems to be fold unless you have a monster, and if you're the short stack wait until you think you can double up. In both times I cashed there were times when the short stack could barely make a full raise pre-flop, but battled back to cash.

It ends up with everyone, but maybe the chip leader playing not to lose rather than playing to win. I really haven't played enough to decide if I like them or not, or if I think they are money winners long term, but you definitely lose some of the excitement factor when all you're doing is folding and hoping the blinds increase to force that last person out. It is worth a try though, as the chance of losing your money is only 50%.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Poker for 2009

2009-01-04T11:04:00.002-06:00

Its the beginning of a new year, so it seems like a good time to set some goals that I will ignore for the rest of the year.

Before I go there though, lets take a look back at last year.

On second thought, lets not. I played very very little poker last year, and when I did it was bad. I don't think I played with any regularity until the end of the year, and then I didn't play very well.

So what are my goals for this year? I'll start with a very generic, play more poker. I don't know why I stopped playing. I've been somewhat busy, but not so much that I couldn't have made time for a sit'n go every now and then. I still enjoy playing so I don't why I don't do it.

Playing more poker is a pretty lame goal. Its hard to measure except that its any amount is more than last year.

Move up in stakes. I've been playing some $20 SNG's during the past month or so, but I've had a hard time focusing, and that has lead to some pretty poor play. I'll start a tournament and then start watching TV and surfing the web at the same time, so I never get a good read on my opponents, or the flow of the game. I think that the $20 level has lost its excitement for me. I might as well be playing with play money. Its probably not the best reason to move up in stakes, but getting out of my comfort level will force me to concentrate more.

Play smarter. I admit that this is tough to measure, but I think I'll know it if I achieve it. I haven't been playing smart recently. At some point I loosened up my starting hand requirements significantly. I decided that I'm better than most of my opponents, so if I take a chance on some less than optimal hands, and hit, the implied odds justify a little gamble. And if I miss I can get out cheaply. The problem is I don't get out when I miss. I'll miss and so will everyone else so I'll bluff at the pot and get beat by bottom pair. Or I'll hit an ace and have no kicker and not be able to let it go. Or I'll bet the flop and then check fold the turn when I get called. I'm throwing away tons of chips on speculative hands when I need to be waiting for better opportunities and let my opponents get themselves into trouble. This may go back to not having high enough stakes and getting bored during the tourney.

Play more multi-table tournaments. I have difficulty starting these types of tournaments, because they tend to start later than I would like and I'm never sure that I'll have the time to finish them. I think I do better in bigger tourneys and finding time to play them will be +EV overall. Even if its just multi-table SNGs I think I'll do better.

Play some NL ring games. I'm scared of NL ring games. On the rare occasion that I play a ring game I play limit because I'm afraid of losing my bankroll in one bad/unlucky hand of NL. The problem is I'm not very good at limit poker. I play way to many speculative hands and chase way too often. A NL ring game now and then will be good for me.

Stop playing poker in front of the TV. A lot of the time, when I play these days its because I'm half watching something on TV and I'm a little bored, so I add a poker game into the mix. As I mentioned earlier this halves my concentration on the game and results in me losing a lot. I need to either play poker, or watch TV, but not both.

Start tracking my results. I haven't been recording my results in my bankroll spreadsheet recently and I just simply need to do that. Its hard to gauge your results if you don't measure them.

So that's my goals for the next year. Nothing real exciting or mind blowing, but hopefully it will get me on the right track.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Poker Stars World Record Attempt

2008-12-26T16:12:00.003-06:00

Poker Stars is attempting to set a world record for biggest poker tournament. They are aiming for 35,000 entrants for their $11 tournament. There is a guaranteed prize pool of $500,000, which by my math is $150,000 more than the sum of the entrance money. If you are interested, the tournament is this Sunday, 12/28/08 at 4:30PM ET, and details can be found here I'll be celebrating my wife's birthday with family so I won't be participating. Plus I have to work on Monday and with a field that big, I don't think it would end before I had to get up to go to work.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

PokerStars Blogger Tournament 2008

2008-12-09T20:18:00.003-06:00

Woot! PokerStars blogger tournament is back. I was starting to worry that I had missed it this year, or that they had discontinued it. I came in 11th place out of over 1300+ last year so hopefully I can improve upon that and win some ginormous prizes.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 083265

They're mixing it up a bit this year. Rather than just one tournament there are six qualifying events the week before hand. Placing in the top 72 gets you into the final, plus the better you do in the qualifier the better your additional prizes. The qualifiers also offer some other game options like pot limit omaha and 8-game mix, which is nice even though I suck at other games. I'm not sure if you can play in all the qualifiers or you have to pick just one. My guess is the latter, but it would be cool if we could play them all.

The top 100 finishers in the main event win prizes starting with a Step 3 tourney entry and going all the way up to a PokerStars CAribbean Adventure prize package worth $14,300. Last year most of the prizes involved stuff. From duffel bags to iPods to XBoxes and more before the super fancy prizes kicked in. This year its just tourney entries. I'd personally prefer the stuff I think, because chances are a tourney entry is just as good as winning nothing, but on the other hand it would be nice to win my way into a tournament that is otherwise out of my price range.

The only real problem with this year's event is the timing. The main event is Sunday before Christmas and I'm fairly certain that I'm going be at at least two different extended family member's houses that day. So chances are that even if I qualify for the final I won't be able to play, and I bet I'm not the only one. Maybe I can find a sub, or qualify and hope that no one else can make it either, and get blinded into the money. They need a web client or maybe an iPhone app. Then I could play and travel.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Matrix Poker Part 2

2008-11-30T14:51:00.002-06:00

I finally tried one of those Matrix SNG's at FullTilt. Just in case you missed my fascinating post a while ago about the Matrix tourney's they work like this:

9 Player SNG. Each player plays four simultaneous SNGs. 1/5 of the prize pool is allocated via the normal payout schedules to the top three players in each table. The remaining 1/5 of the prize pool goes to the Matrix Points winner. You get points for eliminating other players and outlasting players in each of the four tourneys.

I did a little research online for what other people were saying about the tourneys and the consensus I got from what little commentary was out there was that the format helps mediocre to moderately losing players by giving them access to 1/5 of the pool that they normally wouldn't get, meanwhile winning players will win slightly less than under normal formats.

I don't know if I agree with that or not. I think good players will more often than not last longer in each of the tourneys, thus accumulating more points providing insurance for when they get hit with a bad beat and don't finish as high in as they might normally have expected.

Regardless of whether or not it was +EV, it was fun. I could just be that I was playing four tables again, instead of just the one that I've been doing as I ease myself back into the online poker scene, but I also think the fact that I had the same players at each of my tables helped. There were times when I was looking at the matrix points standings and comparing them to the players at my table to figure out who I needed to outlast more. And I think the fact that busting someone was worth two points, enters into the expected value of any given pot. Finally you can use player's tendencies, or situations on one table against them in another. For example I was in a lengthy heads up battle on one of the tables, and I knew that if I had him with a difficult decision on the heads up table I could easily steal his blinds on the other table.

Speaking of the heads up battle, it had to be the longest heads up match I've ever been in. We got to heads up well before any of the other tables, and yet we were the last to finish up. I think we were at 30/60 blinds when we started and at 250/500 when we finished. That's eight levels. I started out with a 3:1 chip lead, but I just couldn't finish him off. I was playing more aggressively, but fell into the familiar routine of stealing a few small pots, then losing a bigger one when he pushed into my garbage. Eventually he hit a few big hands and I doubled him up. He must have had to go somewhere then because on both that table, and the other table we were still playing he went into all-in or nothing mode. He got bumped from the other table pretty quickly and I once I figured out his new strategy I just waited for big hands for him to double me up. And he did. And I ultimately won.

So I came in first in two of the four, and seventh in the other two. I also won the matrix points pool. It was a $10 entry, and I won $9 for the three first place finishes. Which is $17 profit. If I had entered four separate $10 tourneys instead I would have paid $40 and won $90, for $50 profit, which would have averaged out to 12.5. So in this smallest of sample sizes, the Matrix format was profitable.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Actual Poker Played

2008-11-26T22:13:00.000-06:00

Its a Christmas, er Thanksgiving, miracle! We actually scheduled and held a home poker game this week. One of my friends is going out of town to visit his in-laws for Thanksgiving. His wife left a few days earlier, leaving him home alone to fend for himself for a few days. So we had ourselves a little poker game.

We intentionally kept it small, and the goal was to play a bunch of quick small tournaments. I'm not sure how to actually accomplish a quick tournament without turning it into a complete luckfest, but that really only mattered for the first game.

We started out playing holdem, trying to get ourselves back into the routine. In an effort to speed up the game we halved the amount of chips that we normally start with and dropped the blind levels from 15 to 10 minutes. For the first few blind levels everything seemed to go normally, and maybe it was just coincidence but everyone's chipstack was more or less equal. Then all of the sudden the blinds were so high that any legitimate pre-flop raise committed you to going all-in on the flop and everyone tightened up. It turned into an all-in fest with no one really willing to call anything and the tournament dragged on way longer than we anticipated.

In hindsight I think decreasing the starting chips was a bad idea. Giving people more chips to start would allow them to stay in hands longer, without fear of going broke. Staying in hands longer gives them more time to hit a nice second best hand which would lead to bigger pots and faster eliminations.

After that we tried Omaha High. None of us play Omaha or have any idea what a good starting hand is, or when a good time to fold is, so this was more an exercise in comedy than poker play. While I think my hand discipline was better than most, I don't think I actually won a hand the entire time so I didn't last very long.

Our third game was Razz, in which I think I have a pretty big advantage, because I at least somewhat understand the concept. We had issues figuring out what the ante, bring in, and bet amounts should be, and after playing on FullTilt later I think we completely messed it up, but it probably doesn't matter.

We started Razz with a couple people absolutely refusing to understand what they should do. At one point someone said, "Just tell me when I have to put money in, and how much because I'm not folding" He would then start cracking up every time he got another card. I think he endend up hitting runner,runner,runner A25 to win the hand on the river.

I did well in the beginning of the tournament, but I think I ended up chasing a bit too much and went out third or fourth. I think the hand that did me in had me with two pair showing, but staying in. I had pretty good down cards though and I think I still had a ton of outs, but the seventh street brought me a face card and forced me to fold.

About halfway through the game something clicked for our host and he went from tentatively calling whatever bet was out there because he had no idea where he stood, to actually figuring out exactly where he was in the hand and altering his aggression accordingly.

Not bad for Tuesday night. I can think of worse ways to spend it, despite my pretty poor showing. Now all we need to do is find a way to get a weekend game going with a decent amount of participants.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Matrix Poker

2008-11-22T15:14:00.002-06:00

I logged onto my Full Tilt account for the first time in quite a while this afternoon. They have an interesting new(ish?) tournament format called Matrix tournaments. Its an interesting twist on tournament play.

It works like this: You join a tournament with 8 other people. The tournament consists of four simultaneous SNGs. Top three are paid in each tournament as normal, except that only 20% of the prize pool goes to each of the four SNGs.

The remaining 20% goes to the overall points winner. You get points by outlasting other players, by knocking other players out and by winning tournaments. Top three points earners are paid out with a normal SNG payout structure.

Its a nice twist on bounty style tournaments, especially for those of us that don't have the attention span for just one table at a time. Maybe I'll try one later and let you know how it goes.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Heartland Poker Tour Take Two

2008-11-14T19:20:00.002-06:00

You'll never believe what I did today. I played poker! More poker than I've played in the last five or six months combined. Of coarse that translates to about 15 minutes and maybe 12 hands, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had to go to a client in Indiana today, and about halfway between my house and there is the Majestic Star Casino, home of a Heartland Poker Tour event. Last time the tour came through I wasn't able to make it, but a number of friends went to the first round satellites and qualified with ease. My plan was to get there around 5:00, place in either the $105 or $150 satellite and then play in the $440 at 7:00.

I did manage to get there around five despite the Indians Highway constructions best effort to reroute me to Ohio or Michigan. I was sixth on the list for the $150, but the other four people didn't sign up until almost 6:00.

Here's an observation. Casinos in Vegas = Fun and Exciting, even when killing time waiting for a table to open up. Casinos in Indiana. Sad, Dirty and Pathetic.

On the plus side I turned a dollar into a fat two dollars and twenty cents playing five cent video poker. That's 120% ROI. Beat that. I forgot to turn in the ticket though, so I might as well have lost, but that's not the point.

So the tourney finally starts around 6:00. Little to no chance it will be done in time for the 7:00 qualifier. We get T$1700 with blinds starting at T$25/T$50 and going up every 10 minutes. You basically get one chance to win a pot otherwise your out.

I think eight of my ten hands in the first orbit were K and something in the range of 2-6 offsuit. I'm not trying to complain about my cards, but it was odd that I had King almost every hand.

In the little I saw, the players weren't as terrible as I had been led to believe, but they made up for by being annoying. There were a few of the same players in most pots and they felt the need to give us a play-by-play of each hand. Even when they weren't in a hand they had to tell everyone what they would have gotten. Just shut and play. Is that too much to ask?

I hadn't put in a chip other than the blinds until the hand I went out. I had AKo in late position with a limper or two. I put in a big raise and the BB went all in over the top. She was one of the play-by-play analyzers and had already gone all in with weaker aces, and just complained about how she should have gone with her gut when she folded QKs to two all-ins, and AK and AQ. She would have flopped a flush.

So anyway, I thought there was a pretty good chance I was ahead and I was pot committed regardless. Of coarse she had aces. So I'm out third. I'm also reasonably confident that I could have just folded every hand and made it into the next round. Or at least to 4-5 where I could have played the all-in or nothing game.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Heartland Poker Tour

2008-11-02T20:47:00.000-06:00

Maybe I'm not meant to play poker anymore. I was planning on playing in some satellites for the Heartland Poker Tour. Unfortunately I've been sick all weekend, so instead I spent the last few days on my couch staring at my TV, which half the time isn't even on. Fun. The main event isn't until later in the month so hopefully I'll have a few more opportunities to qualify

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Poker? What's That?

2008-10-31T20:32:00.001-05:00

Remember back in the days when I used to write stuff for this blog? Me too. Good times, good times.

It’s only been seven months since my last post. Everyone is entitled to a little time off right?

So why haven’t I written anything for a while, besides the fact that I’m pretty lazy? Well there are a lot of reasons really, but the main reason is that I haven’t much related to poker since that last post.

I haven’t played online almost all year. I still have money in my accounts at a few sites, but I just haven’t been motivated to play. Maybe it’s the difficulty in cashing out, either real or perceived that makes me feel like what’s the point?

I stopped reading poker books. This happened a while ago. I made it about halfway through Harrington’s first book, and stopped for whatever reason and I’ve yet to go back. I think with all the books I’ve already ready and all the blog posts I’ve gone over that I’ve just burnt out on strategy. And it doesn’t help that most of them go over more or less the same information over and over again. Yes I know, good players are always learning, but I have a short attention span and most poker books are pretty boring.

I stopped reading poker blogs. Even before I stopped writing I had stopped reading blogs as often. I think I oversubscribed to them, so I never had time to read everything. There were a select few that I would read whenever they had new posts, but most I would either skim looking for interesting topics, or just ignore. Now all the blogs I used to read have fallen into the ignore column.

I stopped watching poker on TV. I DVR-ed the WSOP this year, but never got around to watching them. Then last week my DVR flipped out and decided that CSI was a 500 minute long show, and to make room for it deleted everything else I had saved. So I’ll catch them on reruns if at all. I don’t even know who won any of events. I usually do FullTilt’s fantasy poker, but totally forgot about it this year. I caught a few minutes of an episode a few weeks ago and that was all I could stand.

I do miss High Stakes Poker which was by far my favorite poker related show, but my DVR can’t distinguish between new episodes and reruns, and since the GSN runs one new episode and 37 old episodes a week, I got sick of going through and deleting them all. I turned off the scheduled recording at the end of last season with the intention of turning it back on when new episodes start. If new episodes have started then I’m missing them.

I haven’t played live poker in many months. Our “monthly” game has happened once this year. I would be surprised if it ever meets again with any regularity. We tried to organize an office game a few times but it kept falling through at the last minute.

Every Memorial Day I get together with my good friends who live on the east coast, and we inevitably end up playing ridiculous poker games until the wee hours of the night while consuming entirely too much alcohol. This year poker was mentioned I think a total of zero times and I don’t think anyone missed it. Maybe it was because we were having too much fun playing rock band until the wee hours of the night while consuming entirely too much alcohol, or maybe it was because we’re bored of poker.

I’m not bored with poker. I still love playing, and would love to play more often, but I think at least for me that it has hit its peak in popularity and is on the decline. Is anyone else noticing this or is poker still as popular in your circles? I guess if I still read poker blogs I’d have more insight on this.

So what does this mean for my humble little blog? I don’t know. I planned on diverting the focus of the blog to be less about poker and more about whatever else I felt like writing about, but it turns out that I haven’t felt like writing about much recently. I actually did start a number of posts over the last few months, but I never actually finished them and I don’t care to anymore.

On the plus side, I’m thinking about entering some satellites for the Heartland Poker Tour this weekend, so perhaps I’ll have some exciting stories to tell next week. If not I’ll do my best to get some other posts out every now and then. But don’t get your hopes up.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

4th Annual Birthday Poker Tourney

2008-04-12T11:45:00.002-05:00

Last weekend was the fourth annual "Mike's Birthday Family Poker Invitational Fiasco" where I futilely attempt to get my non poker playing relatives to learn how to play poker. As much as I complain about them not getting it, I think some of them may actually be starting to pick up on a few things. I think we even made it through the event without the traditional infinite check loop that they tend to get stuck in.

Lets go around the table and I'll introduce you to this year's players.

To my left we my wife's Aunt Karalee. She claims to have played a lot poker back in the day, and knows more or less what she is doing, but is quite rusty. She has issues with the whole betting "before you get to see all your cards and know exactly what you have" thing. Then again, I don't think I got anyone to raise pre-flop.

(note to self: Next year I need to stress raising rather than calling, and the benefits of limiting the field in a hand where you are favored.)

Left of Karalee was Uncle Jim who isn't a terrible player. He actually won last year or the year before. He is a little tentative in his play, but he did actually raise on occasion which puts him light years ahead of the rest of the table.

After Jim is my father in law and my wife's Aunt Char. I think the only reason they play is because I'm organizing it, and have very little intention to actually play or strategize. I think they are lost causes.

My wife is after them, and I'm proud to say that she is a pretty good player for someone who only plays once a year. I've forced to watch enough poker on TV where she understands strategy, and when to bet or raise or fold. She's probably better than half the people at our regular monthly games. I should also note that she started talking trash about a week before the event claiming that she was going to win and that she had a new strategy. That new strategy was to use the handranking cheatsheet that I provided for everyone.

My parents rounded out the table. They don't particularly care for the poker, but play just to humor me. They do however at least try to play well, and figure out what they are doing. My Dad is also one of the few players to actually use a raise. He's a maniac!

So on to the game. I tried to explain to everyone the value of good hand selection before we started, but I don't think may people paid attention since the average number of players seeing the flop at our eight handed table was 6.

I can't recall as many comical plays as in previous years. I'm not sure if its because they are actually getting better, or if I was doing a better job of moving the game along, or if I just don't find it humerus anymore.

A couple hand of note, which I feel bad about. I crippled my dad when I played ATs for a raise. He called and the flop was ragged, but with two of my suit. The turn was a king and one of the other fifteen people in the hand made a small bet, which he min raised. A bigger bet and I probably would have folded, but I didn't and rivered a flush to beat his AK. Of coarse on the river I made a big raise which he called.

I feel bad because he played a good hand, raised when he made top pair, and still lost. On the other hand, he should have raised preflop like I had instructed and bet more when he made his hand, so hopefully he will learn that for next year. I'm guessing not though.

The other hand was against my wife. I had wired nines and she had AQ. The flop was AQ9 and I took all of her chips, putting me in the chip lead for good. Not much she could do there. She flopped top two pair, and even though I raised her bets, and bet bet big when she checked, its hard to think your hand isn't good in that situation. Unless you've played a lot, and even then its tough to put me on trips rather than AK.

On the positive side, after I raised her bet on the flop, she was about to bet on the turn, and Karalee pointed out that she should check because she knows I'm going to bet anyway. So at least someone is paying attention.

The final three were myself Aunt Karalee and Uncle Jim. I had a huge chip lead and they stood no chance since they weren't willing to bet without a hand and the blinds were a significant portion of their chipstack.

I kept bluffing whenever they would check, and then showing my hand and pointing out that if they check it doesn't matter what I have, if I bet I've got a good chance of winning the pot. No one ever picked up on it though and even after it checks around on the flop and turn, they'd rather check around again on the river than try to steal the pot.

(note to self: Next year do a better job of explaining how to take advantage of position.)

So that was it. After that we got everyone to play wii games. Watching non-video-game playing relatives play Rayman Raving Rabbids is pretty funny. I'd recommend you try that.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Home Run Derby

2008-03-27T21:28:00.003-05:00

A coworker hooked me up with a rather interesting fantasy sports contest. Some guy has been running a home run derby league for going on 25 years now. The concept is rather simple. Major League players are divided into groups based on last year's home run totals. Pick a number of players from each group. Who ever picks the players with the most total home runs wins. Its $11 per entry and last year the top prize as almost $10,000.

Last year I did ok. I blame my non-winning on Joe Crede getting injured early in the season instead of playing like it was his contract year.

Here's my team, assuming I remember to fill out the form and send it in tomorrow. My picks are in bold. I'm breaking my normal fantasy rule of avoiding Chicago players, but I think they underperformed last year.

I was going to fill out a few sheets, but the core team would end up being the same, so I think I'll just stick with the one this year.

Group A – Pick 1
Prince Fielder - 50
Ryan Howard - 47
Carlos Pena - 46
Alex Rodriguez - 54

Group B - Pick 3
Carlos Beltran - 33
Lance Berkman - 34
Ryan Braun - 34
Miguel Cabrera - 34
Adam Dunn - 40
Matt Holiday - 36
Carlos Lee - 32
David Ortiz - 35
Albert Pujols - 32
Alfonso Soriano - 33
Mark Teixeira - 30
Jim Thome - 35
Chris Young - 32

Group C - Pick 3
Pat Burrell - 30
Josh Fields - 23
Adrian Gonzalez - 30
Ken Griffey - 30
Brad Hawpe - 29
Chipper Jones - 29
Paul Konerko - 31
Justin Morneau - 31
Brandon Phillips - 30
Hanley Ramirez - 29
Jimmy Rollins - 30
Dan Uggla - 31
David Wright - 30

Group D – Pick 3
Adrian Beltre - 26
Barry Bonds - 28
Jack Cust - 26
Jermain Dye - 28
Khalil Green - 27
Vladimir Guerrero - 27
JJ Hardy - 26
Torri Hunter - 28
Andruw Jones - 26
Magglio Ordonez - 28
Aramis Ramirez - 26
Aaron Rowand - 27
Frank Thomas - 26
BJ Upton - 24

Group – Pick 4
Garrett Atkins - 25
Carlos Delgado - 24
Curit Granderson - 23
Jose Guillen - 23
Travis Hafner - 24
Corey Hart - 24
Derrek Lee - 22
Nick Markakis - 23
Victor Marinez - 25
Hideki Matsui - 25
Alex Rios - 24
Gary Sheffield - 25
Grady Sizemore - 24
Nick Swisher - 22
Troy Tulowitzki - 24
Chase Utley - 22
Ty Wiggington - 22
Ryan Zimmerman - 24

[***Edit**]
OK, I lied I filled out two more sheets although I think the first is the best.
Sheet 2
Prince Fielder
Adam Dunn
Albert Pujols
Alfonso Soriano
Brad Hawpe
Justin Morneau
David Wright
Andruw Jones
Magglio Ordonez
Aramis Ramirez
Garrett Atkins
Derrek Lee
Nick Swisher
Troy Tulowitzki

Sheet 3
Ryan Howard
Miguel Cabrera
Carlos Lee
Albert Pujols
Pat Burrell
Brandon Phillips
Dan Uggla
JJ Hardy
Torii Hunter
Magglio Ordonez
Garrett Atkins
Derek Lee
Grady Sizemore
Troy Tulowitzki

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

March Tournament Summary

2008-03-26T19:18:00.003-05:00

We had a change in venue for our March Tournament. Our usual host was busy this week, and not wanting to slip into the mode where we wait four months for our next game, we rescheduled elsewhere. We also had to settle for the Easter weekend which cut down on the turnout.

Still, we had 13 and 11 players for our two games, which isn't horrible. I'm a little late with the write up so it may or may not be completely accurate. Its close enough though.

I have a new arch nemesis. My friend Jason, used to be an average player. What he lacked in skill he made up for in trash talking. He wasn't a horrible player but he lacked the patience and discipline to make it in a two to three hour tournament.

I'm starting to think that was an all an act to setup a loose image that he can capitalize on later. At some point last year he just turned a switch and all of the sudden he is winning, not just cashing, at least one tournament per night in our group. He managed to win our point total bragging rights competition last year despite the fact that we scheduled a number of events on days when he was out of town for business.

Going into the night I was leading the points total with two second place finishes, just barely ahead of Jason with his one win. He missed the first game last month because his plane didn't get in on time. So I have to finish ahead of him to maintain my lead.

Things don't start out well. The first hand of the game, I'm in the big blind with 42o, and he's in the small blind. It folds to him and he makes the stander 3xBB raise. First hand of the game, blinds are low, I'm not letting him establish control, so I call and flop two pair. He bets and then calls my raise. The turn is a jack which pairs the board and makes potentially counterfeits my hand. Check-check and the river brings a queen. He bets, and I make the call knowing I'm likely beat. Turns out I probably should have bet the turn because he didn't have a hand until the river and I probably could have taken the pot then. So we're one hand into the game and already he's up and I'm down. Great.

Things turned around shortly after that however. I had pocket kings and my raises and bets kept getting called by the new guy. I haven't played with him before so I didn't know what to expect, but I was certainly nervous when he kept calling. I ultimately went all-in and he called turning of an unimproved big-slick. That hand doubled me up and put me in pretty good shape overall. AK looks pretty and all, but when you are raised pre-flop, and you don't improve by the turn, maybe its time to fold. That mistake allowed the new guy to watch a few more hours of the NCAA tournament than those of us who had to concentrate on cards.

I'm not sure what happened after that. We were playing short handed so the blinds came around often, and I just wasn't hitting flops. Before I knew it I was the short stack and shortly after that busted out in 6th or 7th place out of 13. Very disappointing.

Oh and Jason went on to win.

Game two didn't start out much better. We only had 11 which meant two short tables, and my table was more aggressive than I would have liked considering I wasn't getting cards. I was all set to call it an early night, pushing all in with wired eights oni a king high board, but was generously called by a medium ace that never improved.

Those chips gave me enough to survive to the table combine and then some.

In order to reclaim my first place leaderboard position I had to win and Jason couldn't money, so I had two goals at this point. Jason was crippled on a KK vs QQ hand against his girlfriend, but was taking the chip-and-a-chair mentality and doing well with it. He went all-in on three or four consecutive hands and either doubled up or stole the blinds to the point where he almost had enough chips to start rally playing again.

Then he tried the all-in trick one more time, only this time I had a pair of eights in the hole, and called him. He had two face cards and the board danced all around them, but he didn't improve and he he was out. Phase one complete, now I just had to win.

I managed to cash, but by the time we were heads up I was tired, and willing to gamble a little too much. I pushed with any somewhat reasonable hand and got called by a better one for yet another second place finish.

So on the plus side, I've finished in 2nd 3/4 times this year. On the negative side, my heads up game, which I used to think was pretty good in live poker, has not been performing very well. Maybe its a lack of practice and a sign that I need to start playing online again.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Tourney Time

2008-03-19T23:57:00.002-05:00

Time for the NCAA tournament.

Meh

I think I've watched a total of three college basketball games this year. I have no idea who's good or not. All I know is my Illini suck.

So I filled out a few brackets for various pools, but nothing that I'm proud of. I normally post my picks so you can see who not to choose, but I basically took the favorite all the time so you can probably guess what I picked.

Just for fun here's one of my final four picks.

UNC, Georgetown, Memphis and Uconn. UNC over Memphis in the championship.

I hate UNC. How did they make it that far? I eliminated Kansas and Duke for no specific reason other than that I hate them. Lets see who else I picked.

I don't do that whole "sheet of integrity thing". For every pool I'm in I start from scratch and pick whoever I feel like at the time. There are often a lot of similarities but they aren't identical. And that's why I don't remember who I picked. I made my choices based on instinct at the time, weighted for how much I hate certain teams, and I moved on.

Another bracket's final four: UNC, Wisconsin, Texas, Duke. UNC over Duke in the final. Son of a bitch. I picked UNC again? I suck. Now I have to go find what I picked in my third bracket. If I picked UNC in that one I'm starting from scratch.

Crap. I must have really liked UNC for some reason. Maybe because the last thing I remember about them was them spanking the Illini in the championship game a few years ago. UNC, Wisconsin, Texas, Uconn. UNC over Texas in the final.

So I guess I'm rooting for UNC this year. Unless I manage to go back and change everything before the games start tomorrow.

-----

Oh I'm also in a blind pool where I may very well end up with UNC too. In the blind pool you are randomly assigned a team for every entry you buy. If that team is the favorite and it covers you move on. If it is the dog and comes within the spread you take over favorite and move on. If you are the dog and your team wins you move on.

I have the Play in Winner, Clemson, St. Joes, and Gonzaga. So if UNC wins but doesn't cover in round one I'll be rooting for them in that pool too. I hate basketball

Is it baseball season yet?

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Vegas Trip Recap

2008-03-18T19:10:00.000-05:00

Its been almost a week since I got back from Vegas. Lets see how much I remember. A warning: this is probably my longest post ever, but don't worry. I'm a slacker so you will probably have a few weeks to finish it before I get motivated to write another one.

Day 1 - Arrivals and 0

Travel

Our plane left Chicago at 8:30 in the morning. It was rather uneventful except that it was a bit early to be at the airport and we were both pretty tired since it had been quite a long week at work. Oh and our cat had started freaking out the night before and that morning. He kept going in and out of his litter box, and meowing (which he almost never does) and acting like he was going to convert other objects around the house, such as our nice leather chair into his new toilet. We thought he just didn't like the new litter we had bought so rather than packing I had to go to the store to get new litter. Yeah that's right. My Vegas recap is starting out with a cat story. And one that involves pooping. Can this story get any better?

On the way into the Vegas airport our plane did a circle around Lake Meade and and the Hover Dam so we got a great view from all sides. Who needs to take a helicopter trip out there when you get great aerial views from your plane? We touched down at a little after noon Vegas time, and my brother in law, who we were meeting, picked us up at the airport and drove us to our hotel.

We stayed at Treasure Island, or TI as I guess its being referred to now. It looks like they are toning down the pirateyness of the hotel which is a bit odd since pirates seem to be in these days.

This is my wife's first time to Vegas. She really had very little interest except to see the Hoover Dam and Cirque Du Soleil. She's already suffering from sensory overload and we haven't even been to our hotel yet.

After checking in we decide to wander around a bit to find some food. We headed across the street to the shops at the Venetian. They have it set up inside so all of the shops look like brick buildings and the ceiling is painted like the sky, which is really cool if you haven't seen it before. There were tons of shops, costumed singers putting on a show, and the gondola rides. My wife's initial skepticism about Las Vegas started to wane. We grabbed lunch at some Mexican joint and watched people ride down the river/canal/thingamajig.

Gambling Begins

After lunch we wandered through the rest of the shops and into the Palazzo. My wife mentioned something about some art exhibit that she wanted to see. Or something. I don't know. I heard the word art while standing in a casino so I stopped paying attention. She and her brother went off to the exhibit and left me to play blackjack.

I hadn't heard of the Palazzo before, but apparently its one of those fancy expensive type casinos. The cheapest table I could find was a $15 table. Not that I can't afford $15 tables, but I prefer the $10 tables where my money lasts about 50% longer. Plus they tricked me by giving me mostly $25 chips which made me feel like I should be betting $25 a hand. And I did. Because I'm a sucker.

The table was brutal. The dealer was consistently hitting four and five card 21s and my chips went from $200 to almost $0 in what felt like ten minutes. I started looking for my wife hoping she would return and save me from this humiliation.

A couple times I bet my last few chips and won a hand or two to stay alive. If this was a sign of how the trip was going to go I was in for trouble.

When I tried hitting on 21 I knew it was time to stop. In my defense my hand was something like 2-A-A-A-4-2 and I counted 11 which sounds to me like I should hit. One thing I don't like about blackjack is that the dealer has seen so many hands that half the time she's already decided that I'm going to stay and moved on to the next player before I even add up my cards.

It was about 4 o'clock Vegas time, and 6 Chicago time, and so far I hadn't had any caffeine all day. I had that kind of dazed numbing headache that comes from caffeine withdrawal so I cashed out and went looking for a coffee shop. I had managed to battle back to $120 so I was only down $80. I can live with that.

O - Cirque Du Soleil
Friday night we went to see O. This was to be one of the highlights of the trip, but to be perfectly honest I was a little disappointed. Maybe I had set my expectations too high after years and years of hearing how incredible Cirque Du Soleil is.

It was very entertaining. The set and costuming were fantastic and the acrobatics were incredible. I just felt like it was missing something. The very beginning had a hint of a plot line and every so often they would bring it back, and I kept expecting it to develop into an actual story, but it never did. And while the acrobatics were incredible they tended to get old after a while. Each set consisted of them doing more or less the same move over and over again. It gets less and less impressive with each iteration. It was still a good show and probably falls into the "things you have to see in Vegas" category, but it isn't the best thing you'll ever see, like you may have been led to believe.

Pirate Show

We got back to our hotel just in time for the free pirate show. Again, maybe I was expecting too much for a free show, but this was embarrassingly bad. I was hoping for some sort of pirate battle with cannons and swordfights and pyrotechnics. Instead what we got was Sirens call. Some cheesy lame innuendo ridden crap. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy hot scantily clad women dancing as much as the next guy, but there's a time a and place for it, and in the middle of what I was expecting to be a pirate show is not it. There are plenty of places in Vegas to see women dancing, probably hotter and more scantily clad women at that. And, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was/should have been a kids show and could have been more entertaining for everyone had it been more pirates and less dancing. I really wanted to leave about a minute in, but the crowd had packed us in and we were stuck for the duration.

After that we grabbed a quick bite to eat, and some drinks and called it a night.

Day 2 - Poker and Clubbing

Poker at the Mirage

My wife and her brother headed out to the Hoover Dam in the morning and I wandered over to the Mirage to check out their poker room. It was considerably bigger than the TI's but most of the table's were empty. Could be that it was still early. Their lowest limit game was $3/$6 which was a little higher than I wanted to play since I haven't played limit table games in months. They didn't have any big tournaments running or scheduled soon, but they did have a SNG that needed one more player. Sign me up!

I think it was a $70 tournament with not nearly as much going to the prize pool as I would have liked, but what can you do? I also wasn't thrilled about the blind structure/starting chip count. We started with only $T1000 and blinds at $T25/50 raising every 15 minutes. It turned into a crapshoot real quick.

Shortly after the tournament started, my phone started vibrating. Great. I know that its bad etiquette to talk on the phone at the table, and its probably not even allowed, so I ignored it. A few minutes later it vibrates again to remind me that I have a voice mail. That became a bit distracting so I checked to phone to acknowledge the voice mail and make it stop. Ten minutes later it rings again. WTF? who keeps calling me? I almost never get calls on my phone. Its either my wife, and she and her brother were lost and/or in an accident, or its somehow work related and a server just blew up. Because that only happens when I don't have time to deal with it. So I do the responsible thing and decide to wait until after the tourney to check the voice mail. It would be a lie if I said that wasn't very distracting, but ultimately I don't think it had an affect on the outcome.

Back to the tourney. During that tournament I did make a really good read on one particular hand. One of the players I had pegged as someone to look out for had made a pretty big pre-flop raise. Any raise seemed big pre-flop because the blinds started so high, but I had a bad feeling about the hand. I had AK, and thought there was a good chance I would be in a race, and a better than average chance I was way behind, and I folded it pre-flop That's not something I can do easily but it didn't feel like it was worth putting my whole tournament life at stake so early on, so I let it go and waited for the next opportunity. One of morons to my left pushed all in on the flop with a garbage straight draw and the original raiser turned over aces. The moron rivered the strait and knocked out the aces. I would have had ace high and lost either way. I was proud of myself for that play. Although if the original raiser had turned over AJ and won the hand with her jack kicker I would have been kicking myself even now. That's just how it goes.

I chipped up a little bit early on, and was encouraged by the fact that the two people I had pegged as the decent players at the table went out early. Unfortunately I was soon to follow. I was dealt QQ in early position and made a raise to $T400 or $T500. The short stack to my left moved all-in for less, and someone in later position pushed all in for about $T200 more. The super short stack had garbage, I don't remember but the other guy had a pair of fours which turned into trips on the turn and crippled me. I was then relegated to all-in or fold mode and got not cards worthy of an all-in until I was under the gun an orbit later. I pushed with AJo and the big blind called with something worse. I don't remember what, except that he paired one of his cards and I didn't.

So I busted out fairly early in my first Vegas tournament. Not the result I was hoping for, but what can you do? I was satisfied with my play and as long as I continue to play well things should swing in my favor.

I head outside to check my voicemail to find out what hospital my wife is in or which client's server was on fire back home. Luckily, it was neither of those scenarios. We had asked my mother-in-law to stop by our house to check up on the cat that was freaking out earlier. Apparently he was just going in out his litter box, and she noticed some blood so he was on his way to the emergency vet. Turns out he had a urinary tract infection and he should be fine in a few days after some anti-biotics.

Slots
Treasure Island runs tournaments four times a day. I signed up for the 2:00pm tourney and wandered around the casino for an hour killing time. I put $20 in a nickel slot machine thinking it would take about an hour to run through that, until I realized that you could play up to 10 lines at a time and bet 25 credits. Since I think you have to bet the max to get the best odds for slots (something like the top payouts are proportionally more if you bet the max, or progressives jackpots only payout on max bets) I soon found that $20 only lasts about 5 minutes. If you are lucky. Somehow on my last spin I hit something big and before i knew it I had $50 in credit. Time to cashout.

Something I noticed that make no sense to me at all is that slots in Vegas no longer
accept coins. Even the penny slots don't take change. I hate having loose change in my pocket and on more than one occasion as I was walking through a casino I would have been happy to drop it in a penny slot machine to see what happens. Only I couldn't because the coin slot had a piece of metal welded over it. On every machine in every casino I went through. Now sure, taking my 37 cents isn't going to make or break them, but I'm guessing that I'm not the only one that would rather drop my change in the machine that carry it around all day. 37 cents times however many hundreds of thousands of people that walk through the casino each day has to add up. And its not like the machine isn't already there? The casinos are actually actively preventing me from giving them my money. I don't understand.

TI Tournament
Treasure Island's tournament structure was a bit nicer than the SNG's at the Mirage. $T3500 chips to start, blinds at $T25/$T50 increasing every 20 minutes. It is also sort of a rebuy tournament. They have alternates that fill in as people get knocked out during the first hour. If you bust out, you can rebuy as an alternate. Depending on how many other alternates there are, you can get right back in.

I think after all the rebuys there were over 65 entrants in this tourney. Most of my table was from the same bachelor party and were either terribly hungover or drunk.

Someone busted out on the very first hand. The board showed 88333, not in that order. He had an eight and pushed all-in, the other guy had the case three. Ouch.

I played OK for a bit, playing pretty tight and winning a few small pots. Then I was dealt queens again and had three callers to my preflop raise. I had to lay them down when no one folded on the flop and an ace came on the turn.

The next hand I limped with most of the table from the small blind with 23s. I flopped a pair and an open ended straight draw which I chased to the river and didn't hit.

Now I was a little tilty since I was getting short stacked and frustrated at not being able to beat this table. On the button I got KT or AT, something like that I tried buy the pot pre-flop. One of the guys I had pegged as a pretty good player limp-called. I missed the flop completely and he checked. I either had to push all-in with my few remaining chips or give up the hand and get destroyed by the blinds in a couple orbits. So I pushed. He thought about it for a while and ultimately called. He had a ace, and better kicker, but as I think back on the hand, that was a ballsy call. Sure he won, but I'm pretty sure represented a hand better than his. For all he knows I started with a pair and he has at best has six outs.

I think he went on to win the tournament. At the very least he was in second place.

I was steaming now. I was very disappointed with my play in that tournament and pissed off that I had not cashed in two attempts. I know its a small sample size, but I considered myself to be better than most of the players in those events and busting out so early in both was frustrating.

I got on the list for the $2/$4 game and walked around until my name was called.

$2/$4 at Treasure Island
As people busted out of the tournament the condensed tables and a new $2/$4 table opened up. I bought in for $100 and before I knew it I was sitting at about $250. Things were finally going right. I was getting decent cards and they were holding up when they were supposed to. I kept beating the same guy who was continually surprised when my AK outkicked his A4. It was kind of amusing.

Unfortunately my luck didn't last and I went pretty card dead for a quite a while. And when I had cards I started getting rivered. It was kind of amusing except for the bad beat part. I would bet betting for the entire hand and the same guy would call. On the turn he would call and laugh, and then hit his card on the river. I think he was actually embarrassed that he kept doing it to me. After a while he started folding early in the hand so his hand wouldn't develop into something he could justify chasing.

I folded a lot for the next few hours. before eventually calling it a day. I finished up about $20 overall. Its nice to get a profit, but again disappointing since I had been up so much more a few hours earlier.

I did get to see a straight flush though, which was somewhat exciting. And it pays a $250 bonus to the player.

Fancy Dinners, Clubbing and the $140 appetizer

For dinner that evening we went to the Company American Bistro in the Luxor. My wife was enticed by one of the reviews she had read in one of the promotional magazines in our hotel. Specifically there was an appetizer comprised of tater tots topped with caviar and served with a shot of vodka. We couldn't find it on the menu, and when we asked about it, the waiter said he'd only seen it as part of a tasting menu, but he'd ask the chef. A few minutes later he returned saying that the chef agreed to make the dish.

When the waiter returned with our drinks he informed us that to make the tater-tot appetizer he would have to open a jar of caviar, and since no one else would be eating it, it would cost $140. Ummmm. Pass. Instead of that we ordered a beet sampler which had quite possibly the most interesting form of beet you will ever consume. It was a beet marshmallow. I didn't realize that marshmallowing was a cooking technique, but apparently it is, because I've eaten a beet marshmallow. It was very odd trying to reconcile the marshmallow texture with the beet flavor in your brain. The two things just don't go together. I'd recommend trying it because I don't think you'll ever see that somewhere else. I'd also recommend the mac-n-cheese side with your steak because it was the best I've ever had.

Here's a bonus tip for those of you that like clubbing and have managed to read this far into the post. I guess LAX in the Luxor is one of the cool trendy clubs for celebrities and what not. You could wait in line like a sucker with hundreds of other people, or you could go to eat at this restaurant before hand and they'll let you cut in front of everyone and get in for free. It's an expensive meal, but if you're in to that sort of thing it might be a good idea.

LAX is completely not our scene. Its not a place we would even consider entering except that we can get the VIP treatment and go in front of everyone. So we wandered around the Luxor for a bit until the club opened up, and watched as the line grew and grew and grew. And then when 10:30 hit we walked in front of everyone and into the club. Or almost into the club. The bouncer stopped me a foot away and told me I couldn't go in because I had tennis shoes on. I'd have been pissed except the only reason I wanted to go in in the first place was to show up the rest of the people trying to get in. Oh well.

Casino Wandering and Sic Bo
We decided to walk back to our hotel from the Luxor. Treasure Island and the Luxor are on opposite ends of the strip so it was quite a hike, but I enjoy walking through all the different casinos just to check them out and this seemed like a good time to do it.

We also found one of my new favorite games at New York, New York. It the only place I've seen it. Its called Sic Bo and its one of those crazy Asian like Pai Gow. There's a three dollar minimum bet and I think the odds are decent, so you can sit there for quite a while on a small budget. The game works like this: The dealer rolls three dice, and you bet on the outcome. You can pick a specific die, which pays out 1:1, or a two die combo, or a specific total, or any pair, or any set, or high/low total. After the roll, the dealer types in the results and the winning numbers light up. With the single dice bet if you bet on three, and the dealer rolls 1-2-3. You get paid out 1:1. If he rolls 1-3-3 you get 2:1, and 3:1 for trip threes. My general strategy was to put a buck or two on two of the single numbers and then a few bucks on the three dice combos which paid out pretty well. $20 lasted for about an hour and a number of free drinks. I'd highly recommend it. It's also a great drunk game because you don't have to think or add or anything like that and you get a bunch of random people to show up at your table to try to figure out what the hell you're playing.

Other than that, our trip back was largely uneventful. We caught a lounge act at Bally's where they were impersonating various member of the Rat Pack, and finally made it back to our hotel. Stupid time change kicked in too. Who ever's in charge of that owes me an hour in Vegas.

Day 3 - More poker and Zumanity

TI Poker Tournament

We started off day three by going to one of those half price ticket places. If you plan on seeing a show in Vegas that isn't one of the top attractions, and don't have a specific day when you want to see it, and won't be terribly disappointed if you can't get tickets, I recommend trying to buy tickets the day of the show at one of these places. They have a bunch throughout the strip and we got good tickets for Zumanity for $65 instead of $130.

After picking up the tickets we wandered over to check out the Wynn since we had not yet been there on our casino tour. We didn't recognize anyone famous in the poker room but there was a final table for a big buy in tournament event later that day so I figured I'd stop back. The casino layout was different. Rather than the maze of slot machines and table games designed to trap you in the casino area, the Wynn's casino had big wide pedestrian lanes, right through the middle and getting in, out and through was not a problem. I found that interesting.

After that my wife went to do some shopping and I headed back to the TI poker room for another tournament. Not quite as many entries in this one but that's ok with me. I think there were 36 after all the rebuys.

Things started out well for me. Early on I had an AJ and some guy who had A9 was sure he had a winner. I had had raised pre-flop and again on the flop, so I wasn't thrilled when he kept calling, and still bet on the turn an river. I reluctantly called thinking he had to have at least two pair and was quite pleasantly surprised when all he had was the 9 kicker. And then I got moved to another table.

I got a little over aggressive with AK and then I went card dead. Before I knew it I was back below the starting chip count and starting to worry about busting out early again.

As the donkey across from me turned over his third pair of aces in two orbits I started to try to count the number of hands I had been dealt since arriving in Vegas, thinking it odd that not one of them was a pair of aces, or even kings. And I had gotten queens twice and both times lost a lot of chips. I was just about to declare live poker rigged when I looked down at beautiful pair of red aces. A couple players limped and it was on me to raise. I had a problem. I needed to raise, but I had just enough chips where going all-in is overkill and yet anything less leaves me with not enough chips to make a significant bet on the flop if I need to. I bet about 2/3 of my stack going for a pot multiplier rather than percent of my chips and got one caller. I pushed on the flop and he called again, doubling me up.

A few hands later and I got my pair of kings and took down another huge pot. And once again as soon as I started to get confident I changed tables as we condensed down to two.

The blinds started creeping up there, and some players weren't willing to invest the 3x blinds that I was raising preflop. Which was nice for me. And usually when they did call I had the better hand which was also nice. And then as I was starting to take command of the table I was moved. Again.

My new table was a bit more aggressive and I had a hard time adjusting. I also stopped getting cards. I tried to take the patient approach to wait everyone out, and while it worked, it didn't leave me in a very strong position.

We finally eliminated the 11th place player and got down to one table.

I had a medium sized stack, but it seemed like every time I got playable cards, the pot was raised in front of me, and I wasn't willing to put my tournament life at risk. Maybe I should have been more aggressive but I was sure that my cards would start improving soon.

I was able to win enough hands to stay alive and before I knew it we were down to four players and I had made the money. I think I was the best player at the table, but I also had the least amount of chips, so I needed a bit of luck to help me out.

I thought I got it in the BB when UTG raised and I had A9. Four handed that looks pretty good. Especially when another round of blinds or two is going to remove any fold equity that I might have. I pushed and he turns over AT. Oh well. I cashed in fourth place for about $175 on a $65 entry. Not the best result but it beats not cashing.

After the tourney we went off the strip (who knew you could do that?) for dinner. My brother in law had to leave after that so he dropped us off at New York, New York where we had a little more than an hour to kill before the show. Time for some more Sic Bo! This is the one game my wife actually enjoys playing. So you better believe we're playing it.

Actually before we got the Sic Bo we had some roulette to play. A few coworkers had given me $5 and number to play. Of coarse it was $10 minimum bets and they all wanted their own spins, so I had to put down my own money as well.

I bought $50 worth of chips and it was gone in 7 spins. I won a bet on red and then went back to picking numbers where I lost everything. I hate roulette.

So we killed time and another $40 at the Sic Bo Table. We got a few other couples roped into the game as we were playing. Its going to be the next big thing. I'm calling it here.

Zumanity
Zumanity is the sensual side of Cirque Du Soleil. And by sensual I they mean topless. OK fine, they had a little more sexual overtones to their routines than the other show, but this was another disappointment. I guess its my own fault for expecting this to be great, but it seemed like they just took their boring acts, made the women topless and called it a show. Now don't get me wrong. I like boobs as much as the next guy. I'm very much a fan of boobs, but there are hundreds of places in Vegas to see boobs, and this is probably near the bottom of the list for places where I think they belong. There were some impressive stunts, but not as many as in O, and the comedy acts in between sets were quite entertaining, but if you really want to see Cirque Du Soleil, they have a show at just about every hotel on the strip, go there. If you want to see boobs, I think most hotels can accommodate you there too, or else go to the stripclubs. From what I hear they're not too bad in Vegas. All in all I felt ripped off by Cirque du Soleil for this trip.

And that was the end of the trip. From there we headed back to hotel. The next day we checked out and headed to the airport.

I'm ready to go back.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com