Poker

This week in poker…

Posted by stevet on April 13, 2006
Posted in: Poker, Random Rants.

I had two very bad sessions in my LLH Challenge over the last two days. Results Here. Hopefully I can snap out of it tonight or tomorrow.

No WWdN for me this week, I was running late from work and ended up way late getting home. Probably saved me $11. I did play in Mookie’s weekly event last night. So. Card. Dead. I went to an M of like 5 and had to wait two orbits before I got anything to push with. 66 against AJ. I lost. It happens.

I now have a very cool monitor setup (no pics yet) of dual 20″ Dell flat panel monitors. Yes it is cool. And extravigant. And mostly useless 🙂

However, it is not as over the top as This Guy. 12 30″ panels mounted on a wall. Damn. Scroll down to see his 5 screen setup for his desktop. “Crazy Jon” indeed.

I have started to play golf on Tuesday mornings. By leaving my driver in the bag (and hopefully getting a bit better) I dropped 15 shots last week. Yeah- that was mainly going from one truely shitty round to a very solid one this week. Mook is having a golf-bbq-poker deal on Saturday. It is best ball, so I don’t need to worry about my score. My goal is to be shooting in the low 90s by summer at Forest Creek here in Austin (rating 71.2, slope 128 from the blues – pretty tricky course). I figure by that time I can shoot low 90s/upper 80s anywhere.

That is all. I am heading out. See you on the felt. Or maybe the links.

Busy week for poker and other things

Posted by stevet on March 28, 2006
Posted in: Poker, Random Rants.

First: GMU? Seriously? Wow. Apparently 4 people in the estimated 6 million entries on ESPN have this Final Four picked. When UConn lost, I lost all of my sheets. Now I root for the Patriots to win it all.

Second: Work. Busy as hell. I’m digging the job, lots to do and learn. But it has made my mind pretty frazzled after work and that makes it hard to concentrate on my hobbies (such as poker)

Third: Poker. My low limit challenge has been hit or miss. I set up a tracking site called Poker Track. It isn’t all that fancy although I am learning CSS to do the colors and formatting. It does work however. I think I am going to try and use FullTilt for the remainder of this challenge. When I clear the 100% bonus I should be pretty close to matching the LLC bankroll with my real bankroll there. The only problem is that they do not have anything lower than 25c/50c – so if I dip below $50 I just have to keep playing. No biggie. I played in the WWdN game tonight. I was doing really well up until these two hands (no bad beats, I promise):

I am in seat 2 (8 handed) with the button to my left just after the first break. I get dealt JJ. drewspop makes it 450 (3x BB) in mid position. I call. 678 rainbow flop. drewspop continuation bets 600. I pop to 1200. He re-pops to 1800. I call time. I don’t think he has the nuts- we are too deep and we have some chip leaders (myself included). Opening raises with AJ, KQ and above seem reasonable. I folded on the flop, he didn’t show. But I have to think I folded to a made hand there and you don’t typically see re-raises with 99 to have the open ended. Either way. I did lose a bunch of chips, but I think I made the right call.

Last hand of the night (about 10 hands later): UTG limps. I have AK in mid on the same 8 handed table. I make it 600 (4x). The UTG (GScottW) makes it 1800. I go all in for 3027, he calls with KK and goodnight SteveO.

Those two hands killed a great run I was having with a solid shot at making the final table. It sucks, but that is poker. I hit FT, made a great limit run and cleared my Poker Tracker bonus tonight- so it isn’t all bad news.

Fourth: I got tickets to Blue October @ Stubb’s in April. Kick ass. I love Austin.

Fifth: I think I will finally get working on the base to my poker table this weekend. When it is complete I will be running a small cash game followed by a tourney to break it in. Should be fun. Those folding legs suck.

Big O – Online, Me not-so-much

Posted by stevet on March 15, 2006
Posted in: Poker.

This will be quick. Raised to 140 in the SB with QQ. Flop was all unders. Bet 500 into a 4 way pot. Call. Raise to 1350 all-in. Fold. Shit. Finally folded, figuring a call and a raise means I was dead to a set or an over-pair. Other caller folded, but the OG better showed her set of 8s. Good Fold.

Collapsed table. Limped with AQo in the SB. Flop is K high all spades (I have the ace of spades). Bet pot on the flop. One caller. No spade on the Turn. Check – 150… errrrr…. call. A on the River. Lead out for 450 all-in to try and knock of KJ or KT. Eventually called with a set of 6s and I go home.

Pretty much sucked.

Sucking wind on the Low Limit Challange right now too. Maybe I should just give up poker for awhile.

WWdN: An Apology

Posted by stevet on March 8, 2006
Posted in: Poker, Random Rants.

After flying back from Vegas today I was pretty much spent. After I got home and cleaned some sort of yellow shit off my checked bag and the back seat of my truck where I put it I was ready to eat some dinner and maybe play some cards. I entered the WWdN weekly event and was playing ok. Got to about 2000 before the first break. Got lucky flopping trips and getting someone to put me all in and I was at 4300. Phone call. My boss. What? Our webserver was hacked? Shit. I told the folks on my table that I had to go and if I could I would make it back. Then I signed off.

Mookie called me as I headed to the office and told me Wil was seated to my left and could collect my chips. Nice of me, eh?

I couldn’t get back into the event. I signed on to check my progress and saw me bust out in 20th spot. Not bad for not playing a hand since the first break.

Sorry folks, but sometimes duty calls. We had a crappy CMS system in place since before I got there and somehow someone uploaded a program and got it to run on our webserver. I don’t think they did any damage, but I had to rebuild a box (nearly from scratch) and get the content moved over.

It is now midnight, and I am running on 5 hours of crappy sleep. I am off to bed.

Vegas Baby! (or The Return to Austin)

Posted by stevet on March 7, 2006
Posted in: Poker.

We landed last Thursday about 8:30 and hit the Crown and Anchor and their amazing Hot Pot. Off to the Saraha- which is pretty much a dive. My buddy was out cold, so I headed to the tables. I played on the 2/4 table for 5 hours or something and ended up down a rack. Only one truely bad beat where one of the off-duty dealers took me to the cleaners when I had AQ top two on the flop and he hit is heart draw on the river with 2-8. Ouch. I laughed it off though- what else can you do?

In bed by 5 AM Friday. Out of bed by 7 AM to golf. We got the Member’s hookup there- only $55 a round. We got back to the hotel about 4 and I needed some sleep. My buddy was supposed to wake me up in time to see the UT/UNLV baseball game. Well we didn’t make it. Probably for the best because UT blew a 10-0 lead to lose 13-12. On to the Hard Rock to see if we can get into The Cult. $20 tickets. Sweeeeet. Very cool concert, but my ears rang for 3 days.

Saturday morning we got up and headed out of town to the mountains. There is a chalet about 45 minutes out of town. They had a few inches of snow on the ground and a great view of the hills around. Saturday was also the 2nd baseball game. They were out of beer in the 2nd inning- did they not realize Texas was playing? We left when they had a 1 run lead- which they promptly lost in the 9th. Grrr… A bit of poker, but only a few hours. I ended up a few dollars.

On to Sunday. Breakfast at the buffet. Nothing says Vegas more than french toast and shrimp. More baseball. This time we left them with a 6-2 lead. They ended up winning 9-8. A bit more dinner at the Crown and Anchor and back to the hotel. Dinner at Del Frisco. What a great steak that was. Then downtown. A bit of blackjack at the Vegas Club and some 2/4 at Binion’s. Lost a rack at BJ and a few bucks at 2/4. I could have done ok but, my buddy was pretty trashed, so we headed back to the hotel.

Monday- more golf. I shot about the same and it only cost us $65 a round. Back to the C and A to see if we could flirt with Jennifer- but she was off shift already. Bummer. She was quite the hotty. I headed to the tables about 7. Unfortunatly I missed the Sahara’s tourney. They ended up splitting 13 ways. Insane. Bad beat jackpot was over 17 grand. It was like 3 weeks old. I started off ok, but then ended up down near a rack. I re-uped and went on a tear. I quickly won my first rack back and more. At one point I was up almost 2 racks. I quit at 2 AM up a rack. My buddy stayed until 5:30 AM when he almost got in a drunken brawl and they kicked him out. Between 2 and 5 the Jackpot hit. Aces full lost to a straight flush.

Wake up call at 5:45 today and 8 hours later I am in the office.

Overall I pretty much broke even on poker. Given a bit more time I could really kill that 2/4 game. Nice to know. Lost some on blackjack, no big loss or surprise there. Given comps of draft beer and food at the local joints I certainly didn’t have a bad weekend.

Good times. Good times.

Big O Online Results

Posted by stevet on March 2, 2006
Posted in: Poker.

I played in Mookie’s online event last night. This is quickly becoming one a great force of online private games. We had TWELVE people. Dear god. I don’t know how Poker Stars even handles that kind of load 🙂

I ended up 7th when the blinds were 50/100 and I had 1300ish. I was in push or fold mode and pushed with QJ to be called by KQ. Drat. I ended up 7th. Which, dedicated readers might notice, is better than I did in Tuesday’s WWdN event. The money wasn’t as good though.

I moved back into my recent cash cow, which is 50c/$1 NL on Stars. I quickly moved to near double my buy in. Nice. I kept playing. People kept donating. I ended up nearly trippling my buy in for a earn rate of over $100 an hour. Why can’t I make this kind of money consistantly? I could quit my day job 🙂

Still grinding on Full Tilt. I have about 1/2 of my Poker Tracker bonus from VPP worked off. My session was slightly positive, which is much better than mostly negative. My bankroll thanks me.

Off to Vegas in a few hours. My bags are packed and my wallet is full. I’ll be getting in at about 8:30 local time. I should be drunk by 8:45 local time. I have not had a drink since Super Bowl Sunday and will start off with my first cold beer and a shot of Jager before I head to the airport.

Back to the promised land!

Posted by stevet on February 28, 2006
Posted in: Poker.

Finally! I made a great run at the weekly WWdN event on Stars tonight. I ended up 8th of 91.

I had to make some ballsy calls and ended up busting out on a flush draw that didn’t get there. The chip leader had turned a straight.

Feels good to play solid poker and have it payoff against a solid field.

Oddest part of the entire event? I never changed seats. Not once from the 10 tables that started to the final table. Pretty cool.

Final Results: FishyMcDonK won. It took almost 3 1/2 hours. Here is a screenshot of the final results:

Update. My favorite hand from last night is as follows. I have 99 on the SB. A mid-possition solid player makes it 4x the BB. It folds around to me and I call, as does the BB. The Flop comes out a very scary AAT. What are the odds he has a A? I think small. I bet out, about 1/2 the pot. BB folds. He goes in the tank. Requests time. The whole bit. He finally lays it down and claims KK. Ouch. I claim ace-rag to make him think he made the right call. I’m all about making people happy 🙂

Grinding it out on FullTilt

Posted by stevet on February 28, 2006
Posted in: Poker.

So I am trying to work off my bonus and Poker Tracker bonus on Full Tilt. I have something like 115 points left to clear PT and well, a bunch to clear the 100% bonus. It is basically grinding. I only have the bankroll to play .25/.50 which is fine- but I am not getting anywhere. Maybe I will head back to SnGs there, I had a hot streak that got ice cold recently.

Plugging away at the .50/$1 NL on Stars. I am making very good upward progress on my bankroll. I have awhile before I move up to the next level, but I think I found a game I am comfortable at.

Two full days (almost exactly) before I start heading to the airport to catch a plane to Vegas. Baby.

Mookie is having his weekly(ish) Online Event at Stars tomorrow night. Join us if you can: