Well, at least it's winning

I played a LOT at Full Tilt in May, earning me a seat in the Iron Man freeroll at the Silver level. Also, I played every day in May and got a seat in the One-A-Day Freeroll
.

The one-a-day started one hour before the Silver freeroll and had a $2000 prize pool. After more than two hours, I finished in the money, there was 927 participants and 360 places paid. A bit much, a third "getting paid" instead of the usual 10%. A whopping $4 was my prize for 87th place there!

In the Iron Man $15000 freeroll (Silver), there were 809 participants and 180 places paid. I finished in the money there as well. 25th and $60.

The trick is: Don't bust!

But here's my peeve: The payoff is so little. You could play for hours in a tournament and finish in the money, but in the lower parts of the payout structure, and you get 2 to 5 times the buyin when the winner or last three get 100 to 200 times the buyin. It almost doesn't seem "worth it". I put in a lot of effort to get to these freerolls. Well, at least in the Iron Man, there's more put into it by Full Tilt, since the winner of each of the four Iron Man freerolls plays for $5000 more, and the winner there plays for up to $100.000 more but couldn't they add more? A lottery for T-shirts, or random bonuses if you really play the freeroll. Bubble prizes?

On unique thing (I think) for Full Tilt that I've tried is the CAP cash games. I'm mainly a Texas No Limit player, but I'm a bit apprehensive about playing the higher levels. No fear, at the CAP games, which are still No Limit, the maximum you can put in the pot is thirty (30) Big Blinds, so you might not go busto to a suckout or a miracle flop (AK vs 88 on a AK8 flop for example). You can still wield the weapon of a big raise or trying the waters with check-calling/raising and sometimes get paid off, which is trickier to do in Fixed Limit. I railbirded a rare $500/$1000 6-seat CAP game. That was just sick. $30.000 is the maximum bet and there were preflop shoves and stacks of $60.000 shuffling back and forth.

Another somewhat lucrative type is the Token tournaments. $8 for a 18-seat Turbo Sit'n'Go, where five players win a $26 tournament token which can get you into any $24+2 tournament or Sit'n'Go and 6th place get $14. One third of the players get paid, not too hard to reach.

Some time this summer, I'll try the Sunday Brawl. I crave a Big Win.

I wanna go too

Apparently, Iggy finally stopped writing about politics and started playing poker again.

The result? WSOP Main Event, baby!

Quoth:

I played the best weak-tight poker of my life.

Nine drunken hours later.

On a whim, I'm in the WSOP Main Event.

Congratulations...

RoundersBuzz

I recently came across a new site that is interesting both for poker bloggers and card players, RoundersBuzz.com. It is a recently launched social voting website just for poker content. If you are a publisher looking to drive traffic to your site, you can submit poker articles, stories or news at RoundersBuzz. If you are a poker player looking to improve your game, you can quickly sift through the best poker content voted up to the main page by the community.

Besides the main page, there are five Category pages for specific stories. The most popular categories are the two strategy categories; Tournament Strategy and Ring Game Strategy. They also have categories on General Poker, Online Poker Tools and Poker News.

Mushy Shorts

Wil Wheaton, in addition to being a writer, a blogger and for a while having been on Team Pokerstars is also an actor.


He's the one with the beard.

Feel the pretty.

Cat-ch the cards

more cat pictures

Thunk different

I haven't SWITCH.ed, I just got another computer. Now I have one in the kitchen (a laptop), one in the bedroom and two disused ones in the closet. I still lack a tablet PC and/or something like an UMPC.

My cutesy little Mac Mini arrived yesterday. It's got wireless keyboard and mouse and my flatscreen TV (bought with "poker money") has a VGA port.

Also, Full Tilt Poker has a client for Macs, so I rearranged the sofa and cushions and played lying down all evening and morning.


Play Online Poker

Two final tables out of two MTTs played and two SnG wins and one second place out of five SnGs.

I think I can attribute that to the relaxed playing style stemming from the ease of use and that I'm not rushed. Instead of multitabling and using the pre-select buttons - Fold! Check/Fold! Raise! - I seem to be more prone (didyer catch the pun?) to ponder the situation, not just playing the cards.

The fact that I'm streaming dubstep from iTunes radio also helps.

It kind of matches my Neil Poulton designed external hard drive (500 gigabytes, althought I'd like to say "half a terabyte!").

It just works.

Think of the children!

26

Bet de haus

see more loldogs are funny dog pictures!

A drim comm troo

For a while, I've been addicted to the sites I Can Has Cheezburger? and I has a hotdog!, where there are funny pictures of cats and dogs and a witty caption or dialogue, most often it and the comments are written in LOLspeak. The Bible is available in LOLspeak...

In some earlier posts in this blog, I've found and linked some poker related lolcats and loldogs, as you can see.

Now they're having a poker cats contest. I can't wait to see what madness ensues. "We r sending a lucky winnar (+ friend) to Vegas baby!"

kthxbai, nom nom nom. moar plz, mai hed splort.

A family pot

After one or two missed attempts, my and my dad finally went to the nearest (legal) brick&mortar casino together, to play poker.

One time before, we had booked a "Poker Night" package, where you get a dinner and then the dinner guests with the weekly Poker Night package play a tournament with a trophy prize. That night, us two were the only ones booked, we found out... We got "comped" some branded gifts.

Another night we went there just for dinner and some light lottery (slots and low-stakes table games) with a friend of dad. We didn't rule out the possibility of poker as well, but first they had a poker tournament filling up all the tables and dealers, then when tables opened up it was only high stakes.

But now, finally. I was going south (literally) anyway, to welcome my sister and her family back from a three week vacation in Thailand, and dad suggested we make another attempt. At the casino, they've relocated the poker room (more and better tables) and have more (and lower) blinds and buy-ins. Earlier the lowest was usually the rough equivalent of $6/12. 50/100 crowns. Now they have kinda-sorta $4/4. 20/20 crowns. Yes, small and big blind are the same. No flop, no drop, eh?

I get there, he's already waiting and has put us on the waiting list. The poker room doesn't open in an hour. We get dinner. Fish&chips!

I coach him a little, he has never played (that I know of, hmmm) poker at a casino. "The dealer is there to help you, don't make any rookie mistakes as acting out of turn, tabling your cards too early or misbetting" and such. On our way up to the poker room I also suggest that if there's few or no other players, we should hang back a while. It's no good idea to just shuffle the pot back and forth between us, taking money from each other.

No problem, when we get there, it's already full or filling up. We get seats at each end of the table, seat 3 and 8. I buy in for half the maximum buy-in, dad for a quarter of it (he later fills up to the same as me, when he understands that you have to have a buffer to absorb the normal swings in the stack).

My classification of the other players: To the right of me a good deep-stack, who plays the player and the flop. One-or two rocks, one or two maniacs, one or two willing to slug it out with huge bets and reloading. A good mix.

I hit nearly nothing. But daddy needs a new pair of shoes! Is that how the expression goes? *Google* *Google*. Uhm, no, "baby needs a new pair of shoes. He runs good, and has more than doubled up, with at least a nine for the straight (must be so, even if it didn't go to a showdown after the river) and big bets on all streets with two queens and two kings on the table. His opponent mutters something about "No, not this time, sir" and folds. So he didn't have a king. Aces maybe? Dad must've had the boat.

My hit finally comes. AQ and I raise somewhat substantially, get one caller and... nooo, dad also calls. We aren't going to softplay each other, so butt out.

An ace on the flop, good. I bet and they call again. Another ace on the turn, I bet even more and the other player calls, dad raises.

I go all in. With this board, the other player could be on a straight or flush draw, but probably not holding AK/anything better than AQ. What dad has, I don't know, but it's second best.

He calls?! The river is inconsequential, I show my trip aces and he has... two jacks?

So the only big pot I won, was from my own father. I hope he doesn't change his will. :-)

A while later, he's had enough, and I wait for the button to pass me. I'm up about 375 crowns, he's up 450. $1 is about 6.5 crowns. Good for two amateurs and an hour and a half of play. We have to do it again some time. I think we matched each other well. He had a beige suit and tan shirt on, I had black pants, black jacket and black shirt on. Sunglasses and headwear (also hoodies) are not allowed.

A pity that the only really big pot I won was against him. But he can blame noone but himself. At least there's no reason to suspect collusion or softplaying (and the brush knew that we are family).

We go downstairs to the main casino for some slots before we go home. I get a drink (Rusty Nail) and put a hundred in some machine, baffled by the several people I see playing two machines simultaneously. I semi-randomly select a play. 5 Lines, Bet 1, Spin. It bleeps and beeps and then the screen says something about "11 free games", meaning that it will repeat my first play (5 lines) eleven times. I hit some kind of bonus round, it seems. And there I hit some more wins, and more free games. I let it run its course until it finishes, and by then I'm up 150. And now the big question, where the house wins it back: "Do you want do Gamble?" This I've seen before. Double or Nothing on a coin toss, black or red. Heck no! I press Cash Out, after only one play and the coins start rattling out. Dang, another time I won some at a machine here, an attendant came with the winnings, and some machines give you a ticket, but not this one. I jump up and get a cup and gather it up. Maybe I sneer, smirk and scoff at the full-time slot zombies a little. I go back to where dad is, half a Rusty Nail in one hand, a cup full of coins in the other and a shit-eating grin inbetween them.

And I found another coin left in the coin changing machine. Can't lose, baby!