As I was piddling around on the Internet last night, CJ reminded me about the WWdN tournament. Armed with my tasty chocolate soy milk, I signed up and took my seat to Wil’s left.
As the tournament started, I announced to my table that I planned on playing tight. I hope they believed me.
272 hands played and saw flop:
- 7 times out of 41 while in small blind (17%)
- 16 times out of 42 while in big blind (38%)
- 7 times out of 189 in other positions (3%)
- a total of 30 times out of 272 (11%)
Pots won at showdown - 6 out of 8 (75%)
Pots won without showdown - 37
While I’m really glad I signed up, there was at least one who didn’t appreciate my presence 
In the end, my ATo lost to A2s when a 2 showed up on the flop. Thanks to everyone who ‘birded me to my fourth place finish. I might not have been invited to the Playboy Mansion, but I felt like a supah stah!
Posted by Jaxia as Poker, Tournament Poker at 7:23 PM PST
5 Comments »
I thought I’d put this up for the general edification of those of you who enjoy the occasional -EV game. That, and I haven’t written anything in a while, and this makes for some entertaining filler.
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: anyway the wife goes up to the room, & I tell her I’ll be up in about an hour or 2 max
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: so I finally sit down with $200
Beck INCITE: yes
Beck INCITE: $200
Beck INCITE: $25 table? $5?
Beck INCITE: $17.42?
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: $15 min, but I vary my bets I remember having a good initial run
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: but not much after that
Beck INCITE: someone slipped you a roofie?
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: so the wife wakes up an hour or so b4 we have to be on the plane home
Beck INCITE: you are nowhere to be seen, naturally
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: she finds me semiconscious at one of the $25 min tables and I barely remember leaving the hotel
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: Later on the plane I come to enough to ask her how much money I had
Beck INCITE: signs that you may have a gambling problem…
A) wife finds you semi-conscious at a blackjack table
Beck INCITE: [drum roll]
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: She said she cashed in 3 purples, 4 blacks, 28 green and she guessed between 50-100 reds
Beck INCITE: are you f’ing kidding me?
Beck INCITE: did you confirm that you hadn’t gone into your wallet or hit a cash machine?
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: yes
Beck INCITE: so in one night, in a drunken stupor, you ran 200 bucks up to ~3000
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: yes, but I have no idea at what level I was at my apex
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: that’s a long time to play sober or not
Beck INCITE: talk about luck of the devil
Beck INCITE: good work my deranged friend
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: I took that mf*%#(@)’s golden fiddle and played more than one tune
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: But that’s not the best part,
Beck INCITE: it’s not?
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: Laura told me that when she finally dragged me off the table and started walking me outta there, she said, every person at all the open bj tables (players and dealers) and 3 pitbosses gave me an ovation- many of them stood up
Beck INCITE: BAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahha……….
Beck INCITE: no memories have come back to you yet?
Beck INCITE: you must’ve been doing something (beyond mere winning) to draw attention to yourself
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: She was told by a boss that I had acquired the name “Captain F-Bomb” and that after reminding me about 10 times of the no cursing policy sometime during the morning, gave up on trying to fix me because I was not being malicious and kept everyone playing laughing at my jokes and remarks all night long so they never had the heart to oust me
Beck INCITE: you are my hero.
Beck INCITE: you object if i post excerpts from this on my poker blog? (i’ll change your IM to protect the guilty)
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: I do remember meeting a man on 3rd base everyone there refered to as “Big Jim” who used to play football at Iowa who backed me up sometime during the night saying something to the effect of “You kick this boy here out and my money goes with him”
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: also said something like-this hotel ain’t that fancy” - you know I can stay anywhers”
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: don’t remember any other particular player besides him
Beck INCITE: you see my question?
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: oh, yes please post away…
Beck INCITE: i’ll send you a link if/when it’s up
CAPTAIN F-BOMB: cool, and refer to me as “Captain F-Bomb” if at all possible
Consider it done, Captain F-Bomb.
Posted by Beck as Gambling at 3:57 PM PST
2 Comments »
And yes, I even raised preflop:
**edit**
Just a few hands later, I guess he thought I did it again:
Sorry I’ve been gone so long. Didja miss me? I had a great Spring Break and I have a live tournament score from my trip that I need to write up. I’ll get right on it.
Posted by Jaxia as Poker at 6:19 PM PST
8 Comments »
So when it looked like there’d be one for the Full Tilt Poker $13,500 guarantee, I jumped in even though the $69 + $6 buy-in was a little more than my standard range.
Good move.
My run started when I picked off a maniac who re-raised me all-in with pocket sixes. I was in early position with pocket tens. Easy money. Not long after, I was sitting in the big blind with Qd-10s and called the small blind’s minimum raise to see a flop of 5-Q-Q. I milked it so much I nearly doubled up again and left him regretting making a small raise with pocket Jacks.
A couple of daring plays in the next hour brought me to the front of the pack. A mini-disaster struck, though, when I found myself all-in with Anna Kournikova against AA and 77. The sevens turned a set and I lost almost one-third of my stack. But shortly thereafter I got healthy again when I busted a medium-size stack with pocket Queens.
My big break came as the bubble approached. With blinds at 300-600 and antes of 75, the table folded to me in the small blind. I held 10-8 of hearts. I’d been muscling over the big blind since we were seated together, especially after the flop. So I just called and looked to take away his blind on a good flop. The flop came 2-6-6, with one heart. I bet 1000 and he called, but after a great deal of thought. The turn was the Ace of hearts. I didn’t think I’d be able to get away with stealing the pot with ten-high anymore, so I checked and he bet 1200. A very small bet. His bet into a pot of 3725 meant I was getting better than 4-1 odds to hit my backdoor flush. The very small bet almost certainly meant trip sixes. So I made a bit of a loose call, and the river was the Jack of hearts. You can imagine the trainwreck that ensued.
I continued to rake in chips as other players threw themselves against my big stack. Add that to the occasional lucky break and I wound up at the final table, with the chip lead. Any finish better than fifth would outrank my personal best tournament score. But I really was looking for the first-place prize of $3,645.
I got nicked at the beginning when I lost a coinflip to KQ when I had pocket tens. But five hands later I got the other side of it when I busted the shortstack’s pocket nines with KJ suited. Down to five players, I won yet another race when my pocket fours outlasted AJ offsuit, bringing me back into the tournament lead.
That was the high point, though. At three-handed, I called the all-in from a pretty loose player with 77. I was hoping for another coinflip (or that he had a smaller pair), but he was holding pocket Jacks instead and I couldn’t land the two-outer. That crippled me and I went out with a whimper in third place.
I still pocketed better than $1700 for my efforts, though. And just think: if about ten more players had entered the tournament, there wouldn’t have been an overlay, and I’d've found a better place to put my money. Funny thing, this game.
Posted by Mike as Poker, Tournament Poker at 1:09 AM PST
2 Comments »
I’ve gone for far too long without writing anything here. I hope you all can forgive me. I promise to come up with some actual poker content at some point in the relatively near future. For now though, I just wanted to give a wave and point out something nifty I stumbled across today.
All In Magazine has set up a page on their website they call Blog Monitor. I decided to hop over and see what they considered to be top poker blogs. Their blogroll has quite a few listings on it, but I was very pleased to see Steal the Blinds on their list. Granted, that’s not as big a deal as meeting Al Can’t Hang and Dr. Pauly in Atlantic City, but it’s definitely up there.
(Hat tip to Wicked Chops Poker for pointing me to All In Mag’s page in the first place)
Posted by Beck as Pimpin, Poker, Site News at 4:34 PM PST
No Comments »
I was hoping to start a contest wherein we all filled out brackets and the winner got an invite to my “WIN MY SHIRT!” tourney.
Unfortunately, NBC only released the brackets for the National Heads-Up Championship last night, and they start the tournament today.
Sigh. Guess I’ll have to settle for basketball.
Just for fun, though, here’s the brackets.
I would fly out to Vegas right now if I could to see some of these first-round matchups: Dan Harrington vs. Todd Brunson. Josh Arieh vs. David Williams. Greg Raymer vs. Layne Flack. Johnny Chan vs. Carlos Mortensen. John Juanda vs. Doyle Brunson. Ted Forrest vs. Erik Seidel. Jennifer Tilly vs. Paul Phillips.
And what’s a bracket without Cinderellas? Ernie Dureck and Steven Glassner qualified through satellites at Caesars Palace. Josh Lochner qualified via an online tournament at NBCHeadsUp.com.
My bracket will be in the comments. Feel free to submit your own.
Posted by Mike as Poker at 3:33 PM PST
7 Comments »
