This tournament, with 5 minute levels and 1000 chip starting stacks played very fast. Fourteen seats to the $100 satellite to the $1000 satellite to the EPT were awarded out of 110 entrants, and while taking down 1st place had no more value than taking down 14th place, it still feels good:
I post about this not just to brag about my win (though that certainly provided motivation!), but to mention one thing I observed. Like I said, this was a fast tournament, and by the time we got to hand-for-hand play with 23 left before the cash bubble (15-20th received a small cash prize), the blinds were ruinously high for all but the top 5 places or so. While I already had a lock on 1st place and was able to completely run my table over in classic big-stack-bully style, I noticed a major strategy error people were making. Despite hand-for-hand play, players were stalling.
Take a second to think of the ramifications of that. Stalling doesn’t give you any advantage over short stacks at other tables during hand-for-hand play, but it DOES mean that the blinds get bigger sooner. If you’re a short stack, that’s a bad thing. Had I been a big stack, I likely would have instructed my table not to stall. Since I WAS in first, I kept my trap shut and watched the blinds skyrocket, sending players tumbling out with alacrity. Just another small-but-significant stategic consideration to keep in mind.
Posted by Beck as Poker Laws, Poker Strategy, Tournament Poker at 12:29 PM PDT
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Poker is dooooomed!!!
I’d seen things along those lines all the time ever since I started developing an interest in playing serious poker back in mid 2004. I have to imagine people were writing much the same as early as the 2003 WSOP. I can just imagine the conversations about shark jumping. It makes a sort of intuitive sense too: ESPN puts up full spread coverage of the 2003 WSOP and an amateur named “Moneymaker” bad beats his way into the championship. It was all so devilishly preposterous, it seemed only natural to assume things were heading downhill.
Things weren’t.
Every time some new prognostication about the eminent demise of poker came along, some new milestone would prove it wrong. The last such milestone was the size of the field for the 2006 WSOP Main Event. Then, finally, the UIGEA came out. That one finally did it. With online poker sites no longer sending a flood of satellite winners to the World Series, and with many of the worst players driven away from poker all together, things began truly drying up.
But I don’t think poker is dead yet. In fact, I think it’s getting better. I think it might even get up and go for a walk. The reason for my unfailing optimism? I don’t think the UIGEA will stay on the books for ever. You know what I’m looking for? The day after it gets repealed.
In fact, thoughts of what that day might be like were the catalyst behind writing this post in the first place. In fact, I think the UIGEA will turn out to be just a minor footnote in the history of poker. In fact, I think the UIGEA could well turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to poker (and to online gambling generally).
How many people do you think are out there who are gamblers at heart, but who were never willing to gamble online in the sincere (and more-or-less accurate) belief that it was illegal? The UIGEA was news. People heard about it. When it gets repealed, they’ll hear about that too, and the last obstacle buttressing their caution will be torn down. There will be a flood of gamblers the likes of which no one has before seen or imagined pouring out there the day the UIGEA gets repealed. For those in a position to take advantage of it, there will be windfalls to be won the likes of which no professional gambler has ever imagined.
OK, strike that last bit. Every professional gambler has imagined windfalls the likes of which, well, it’s just sick. Sick I tell ya!
Posted by Beck as Poker at 12:11 PM PDT
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It’s actually 137 seats now, and counting. Updates as they come.
6:02 - Make that 139, and 140th gets a grand. I’m “SaylorMarsh” at table 155.
6:06 - Allen Cunningham, currently in first. Man, this guy’s good. Also, this is a double-stack tourney (3,000), blinds start at 15/30, and officially there’s 3,338 entrants.
6:08 - and here’s how A.C. did it.
6:14 - Lucky by 4: table 159 has three FTP pros: Farzad Bonyadi, J.J. Liu and Paul Wolfe. (I’m telling you all this because I haven’t had a noteworthy hand yet.)
6:18 - A couple raises net me the blinds. One round down, still at 2,985, in a clusterbomb tie for 1500th place.
6:27 - I call an MP raise from the SB with 55. Flop K5T, turn deuce, we get all-in, he has KK. SON OF A BITCH. For good measure, he hit the case K on the river for quads. Less than 500 now.
6:28 - Go all-in to steal with A8 of diamonds, get called by the SB with AQ, the JTJT4 board saves me as I get a chop.
6:42 - 88 runs into JJ. IGHN, in two-thousand-and-who-cares-th place. Fastest $535 I’ve ever blown; thankfully I got into this for $24.
Day-after update: Paul Wolfe was doing very well, but some questionable decisions led to him approaching the bubble. With 145 or so left, before the tournament went hand-for-hand, he “disconnected” himself, thus allowing Full Tilt to give him 90 seconds to “reconnect,” and, I’m sure he hoped, bought him some time so that other players could bust out. I know that a lot of amateurs would pull stunts like this, but such actions should be beneath a pro, one who conceivably could buy his own way into the WSOP ME.
Personally, I thought it was disgraceful, and said so in railbird chat. Evidently I came on a little strong, though, since Full Tilt banned my chat for a month. Oh well. Paul Wolfe went out three before the prize. Good. I hope he busts out in the same place in the WSOP ME.
Posted by Mike as Poker, Poker Laws, Tournament Poker, WSOP at 4:59 PM PDT
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How many of you are going to BARGE?
Will you stay for the whole thing?
Are there many women, and if so, are they usually at the SO table?
How big are the events, typically?
Has anyone been to BARGE and WPBT? If so, how do they compare?
Posted by Jaxia as Poker, Tournament Poker at 5:22 PM PDT
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I’ve been playing triple draw on Poker Stars lately, and have found that I have positive expectation just playing according to Daniel Negreanu’s TD section in Super/System 2 and a few items gleaned from Chris Fargis’ blog Twenty-One Outs Twice. I’d like to take my game up a few more notches though, and was wondering if there are any TD resources out there about which I am ignorant. Also, if anyone knows of any poker simulators which can run TD sims, I’d appreciate that too.
Anyone?
Posted by Beck as Poker at 2:44 PM PDT
4 Comments »
Today’s my birthday. Sadly, I won’t be making it out to Vegas this weekend so please redirect the birthday spankings and naked chicks to my home instead.
Have a shot for me!
Posted by Jaxia as Life at 7:27 AM PDT
9 Comments »
I’ve been trying to drive out to Foxwoods once a week (I live in CT now, so it’s not that bad a drive) to keep my live cash and tournament chops fresh. You start with 5000 chips, 25/50 blinds, and 20 minute levels. The blind progression is pretty steep, so you have to play pretty fast to keep ahead after the first hour. 125-150 people typically enter, with first place collecting around $3500.
My table was pretty much all tight, straightforward poker players, with the exception of the guy on my left who would limp into any unraised pot in middle or late position with any two cards, looking to pick up small pots on the cheap. After he got in a tangle with someone holding a set, he shifted gears to play good tight, aggressive poker. I doubled up in the second round, but busted out inside of 10 hands in the 3rd round.
Memorable hands:
2nd round: I limp with 7d-8d. A person behind me raises less than the minimum, having failed to realize that blinds have just gone up. The dealer makes him complete a min-raise, and won’t let him raise more. I’m the lone caller. I flop a straight draw, and call a pot sized bet. I catch my straight on the turn, check raise a modest sum, then push the rest in on the river. The victim calls with K-K on a final board of 4-5-6-9-10 and goes broke two hands later.
2nd round: I see a free flop from the big blind with J-4o along with one limper and the small blind. The A-9-5 flop is checked around. I bet pot on the 9 turn and get called by the limper. I bet 2/3 pot on the 4 that comes of on the river and after much deliberation the guy folds. Later he told me he had A-K, and I believe him. I didn’t bother to tell him he was playing much too tight for a tournament.
3rd round: Disaster hand #1. I limped on the button with Q-9o behind 3 other limpers, and both blinds come along for the ride. The flop is J-9-9 and I do an internal happy dance. The flop checks around to me, and I check behind (mistake #1). The turn is an 8. One limper bets small, one calls, and a short stack raises most of his remaining chips. I reraise big (put that big stack to work!) to get it heads-up with someone I suspect is behind (mistake #2) and am very surprised when the initial better calls. The last player folds. The river is a 5, and the caller now puts the rest of his chips in. I’m pretty sure I’m beat, but I’m getting 9:1 to call, so I do. The short stack has Q-10 for a straight, and the other guy has J-J for Jacks full, a.k.a. the nuts, sending me down to 3000 chips.
3rd round: Disaster hand #2: A straightforward player open raises in late position to 4xBB. I push all-in from the big blind with A-Ko. This is right where I want to be, as just a few hands earlier, the same guy called an all-in reraise with A-To (he spiked an ace to eliminate a pair of 10s) and a win in this hand will have me right back in the hunt. Sure enough, the guy calls with A-Qs. The queen on the flop ends my tournament.
I was generally happy with my play, apart from the one hand that completely knee-capped me. I plead temporary poker insanity.
Posted by Beck as Poker at 10:31 AM PDT
2 Comments »
