Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Poker wisdom and bonuses

In live (or so called Brick & Mortar) poker, the money isn't yours until you've left the table.

In online poker, it isn't yours until you've cashed out.

The other week, on Wednesday, I "found" an unclaimed bonus of $25 at one place I frequent. By Thursday I had doubled that to $50 after being In The Money at Sit&Go's and winning a $10 heads-up game. By Friday, well, I was back at $25... But if I hadn't lost the $20 5-seater tournament and/or a $5 ten-seater tournament I would or could have doubled it yet again to $100. Could'a, would'a, should'a. But I don't think I have to point out the Rounders quote. Yes, of course I have it on DVD.

And for no particular reason (or so it seems) I got a $15 bonus at Partypoker (use registration code MARTYPARTY for a $25 sign-up bonus at your first deposit). Great! Because my account there had $4.75 on it which I could use for absolutely nothing. Smallest Sit&Go entry fee was $5, minimum buy-in at cashgames, yes, $5. Now I have a bankroll I can use again. I hope I'll use it wisely.

Monday, August 23, 2004

Com-pyou-tar

Do you want to do cardgame related stuff on your computer? Some tips and hints for using it in writing:

  • In HTML, you can use ♠, ♥, ♦ and ♣ to get the suits. If your browser supports it, you shold see it here: ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣. However, they are all in black, so do a little more HTML and CSS voodoo-fu to get ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ (Doesn't the Diamonds look a bit off center?)
  • In LaTeX, you get the suits with $\spadesuit$, $\heartsuit$, $\diamondsuit$ and $\clubsuit$. There you would have to do a little voodoo-fu with \usepackage[dvips]{color} and \textcolor{red}{$\heartsuit$} to get it red.
  • In SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics, there's SVG-cards.
  • For Perl, look at CPAN for the module Games::Cards, Games::Cards::Poker and Games::Poker.
  • TrueType Font, the Playing Cards free font cardplay.zip can be used (but JQK faces don't look so hot). The Bermuda Card & Bridge Fonts look better, but cost money.
  • Windows Programming, cards.dll. This contains all of the playing card bitmapped images that games such as Windows Solitare use to display their graphics. N.b., this is (merely) card graphics, not functions to randomize and deal a deck of cards or such. A tutorial for using it in C# can be found here.

Friday, August 13, 2004

Live poker closer to realization

I'm quite an active participant in a swedish website and discussion forum about poker, spelapoker.se, and the guys behind it now say that they're thinking about starting semi-organized tournaments. This is good because? Well, they're based in the neighbouring city, otherwise there's not much live poker around here close by. And I sorta kinda know (of) those guys, having attended the same university about the same time.

And the other day I found green felt, so I can build a poker/card/gaming table. I've also submitted a pre-order for cheap (2 gram) poker chips and for some reason I happen to have a lot of decks (picked one up here and there because they were cheap and suddenly you have one or two decks at work, some at home, one in the bag). One never knows when a challenge might come.
- "I hear yer mighty slick with them cards, mister. Draw!"
-"Uhm, no? But maybe a stud game or Hold'Em?"

And I've bought more tools. A stapling gun (for putting that felt in place) and a jigsaw. But must. Get. Powertools.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

On the bubble in a subsatellite

Silly editing frame managed to wipe out my eloquent writing about my NL Hold'Em tournament play. Writing it again, shorter.

$1 sub-satellite at Expekt, one for each ten players can win seat at $10 satellite, where one out of ten can win seat at $100 final, where one out of ten wins seat at $700 live tournament.

Sixty players, of which I'm one, enter (meaning the six top places go on to the satellite on Sunday), and after an hour, I'm in 3rd place of 26 remaining.

After nearly two hours, I'm at the final table! Shortstacked though, and with only 680 in my stack when the blinds are 300/600, I go all-in with those and my JKo. They don't hold up and I'm out at 8th place. Eighth effing frigging bleeping place when six "get paid". That is called being "on the bubble".

I hung around and chatted a little making a little smiley :-) comment about 8th place and suggesting that two of those remaining could forfeit. Please? One player said that 8th is not as bad as 7th, but... It's still the second most painful place.

Sunday, August 08, 2004

What do you Expekt for free?

About two weeks ago, I installed the client and created an account for playing poker at Expekt. Why, since I already have two other poker accounts elsewhere? Well, they have several freerolls every day. A $200 at 1pm, a $1000 at 5pm and some others you have to have played raked hands to be eligible for.

The 5pm suits me perfectly for taking a shot at immediately after work. And this last week I've been "in the money" a few times. But... It's "600 places paid", if the 3000 players maximum is hit. That means $0.20 (yes, twenty cents) to places 301-600 and increasing very very little.

My winnings this week, if you can call them that:
  • $0.60 for 283rd
  • $1.20 for 167th
  • $1.40 for 110th
  • $1.50 for 82nd

with 3000 players in each. Played in seven freerolls, one was a $200. I haven't, and will probably not, put any of my own money into Expekt.com, freerolls only. I took some of those few dollars and sat at a $1 sit&go twice. One loss and one third place. The 82nd place is probably my best tournament placing with this many entrants. Not very good hourly wages (took a little more than two hours to play) but in the top ten or 1st place, that's where the real free money is. And I enjoy playing poker.

And I was in one $1 multitable just for the heck of it. It was a satellite to Baltic Challenge. One out of ten from that satellite would go on to a feeder, one out of ten from that feeder would go to a final and one out of ten (I think) from the final would go on to a live tournament in Tallinn in Estonia, with boat from Stockholm, hotel and $770 buy-in paid. It would've been cool if I had won a seat in the satellite, but everybody was supertight. 55 entrants, yes fiftyfive, and after an hour 24 were left. I'm out at 21st place after two all-in calls from me didn't hold up.