Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Poker Pet Peeves

Last night we, Team PSO, played our 4th team tournament at Pokerroom.com We are currently 3-0 and playing pretty good pokah. Especially last week, we clinched after the 3rd match!

I have a couple poker pet peeves that absolutely bug the hell out of me. Both happened last night, and both were committed by the same player.

1) Raising post flop with 3 people in the pot and 1 player already allin preflop. Now its one thing if you flop a straight and you want to protect that hand, its another if you have pretty much nothing and you raise and chase the other active player out. Memo ... Your Bet does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!! If this is early in a tournament, fine, but this was during the final table where position is key compared to a few extra chips that you might not even get.

2) Big stack pansy play. Last night the chip leader as the SB folded to the short stack BB at least 3 orbits in a row. BB had an M between 3 and 4. Are you kidding me? Raise the damn blind, do not give him free $, if you commit yourself to an allin raise your still in good shape.

The weird thing is this player played a good game other than those two issues of mine, unless he was just getting lucky and I thought he played a good game. I ended up finishing 3rd/16 this round, and we ended up 2nd overall. 4 more rounds to go. JJ was the magical hand for me. Got it 4 times, won all 4 times including 2 doubleups. One was a set over set match. One of these double ups was also my comeback hand, after I was down to about 3M. JJ vs 1010, then next hand JJ vs 33. Put me right back up there.

This unfortunately ended our leading streak, the first time in 15 rounds we have never held the overall lead. Cocky but true, tonight we won't disappoint.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Year of the Dog ... doo doo

1st of all, Happy New Year to all those who celebrated it on the weekend!

I played my Poker.com WSOP qualifier last night. Top 2 go to the wsop:me, next 11 replay again next month. 1st hand KK, sweet. Next hand, AQ, sweet! Then barely played a hand for the next 1.5 hours. Got to about 4M and found AA. Doubled up. Few hands later found AKs in ep. utg limp, 4x raise, folded to the BB which had 1.5x my stack, they called, utg folded. 6-6-8 flop. BB goes allin, I call. AK vs QT. Turn 9, River J. I'm done.

During the long period of limited activity I was able to observe all the other players carefully. I became pretty accurate in guess who had what each hand, and had their playing patterns nailed down. Thus my call on that final hand. Sucks, did all that work for no reason. Oh well, I have another $80+8 coupon to try to get in Feb's qualifier.

The other MTT I played in on the weekend, was a quick Turbo $3r&a on Titan. Though I didn't even know it was an R&A until somebody rebought. Weak competition, lots of bad beats, came in 15th for a whopping $17. Had my KK lose to an AQ which crippled me late, and final hand was A8 vs A10 with my 1.5M left.

On the cash game front, doing an Expekt reload. 100% max $100, 200points required. Going slower than I thought, up and down on that site, reminds me of Martin's. Made some more $ on Paradise though.

On the Casino front, did the Casino Europa sticky bonus, 100% max $100, 8xD+B, + extra $20 bonus. Put it all down the first hand. Me 19, dealer 2. Hole card 7, next card A. Doh! Also did At the Races Casino 100% max £50. 10xD, get bonus, 1xB. Busted my 1st £50. Deposited another £50. Got it up to £88 and got my bonus to make it £138. 10 hands to go at £5 a hand. Lost 8/10, pushed 1, won the other. Don't like this place, but still a good bonus. Others have made $ from here.

Year of the Cock was good for dick's like me, hope the year of the Dog doesn't bite back!

Monday, January 23, 2006

Weekend Play

Didn't get as much poker playing done as I thought I would, but I got some. My ring game play was good, destroyed the Paradise Poker and Bet365 tables for a few hundred each. Played a few hands at Martin's, not much going on.

On the tourney front only played 3 mtts and a few sngs. 2/4 on sitngos on Titan. 1 win, 1 2nd. On the MTT front all 3 were played sunday night.

Paradise Million qualifier freeroll - Busted out 500ish. Not real poker here, people going allin with A high, a lot of suckouts, didn't really pay attention here.

Titan PSO Freeroll - Shortstacked myself early when dude calls by big bet, me holding AJs vs QTs. Hits a runner runner flush with me holding TPTK. Stayed around and bubbled out with my 99 vs AK, with another runner runner flush. Though I was low stack I probably could have tried hanging around until the $, but I felt like winning and going for gold instead.

Party $500k Qualifier - 350+ players, top 14 qualify for the $500k. Finished in 36. Was running ok, then completely card dead after the 2nd break. Couldn't hit a single flop while others did, was completely useless. Ended up putting up my 3M on the BB with KJs when 2 others went in in front. Up against AK and JJ, so I was pretty much dead unless a Spade board happened. It didn't happen, so in other words wasted 2+ hrs of my time.

This week I think were going to start our Pokerroom Team play again. We should kick ass again. Plus 24 is on, so its all good!

Monday, January 09, 2006

Bad Tourney day

Sunday was supposed to be a big tourney day from me. I played 4 tournies, supposed to be 5 but 1 got cancelled. All Freerolls but they all had some +EV to them. Bet365 $30k, Titan $10k, Eurobet $20k, PSO-Titan $2.5k, PSO-UB $2.5k. The only one I monied in was the one I didn't care about.

Bet365 I lasted till about 260ish out of 3600ish. I don't like the prima tourneys, after the 1st break they're just alliins or nothing.

Titan I got knocked out about 1/2 way out of 360ish. Hit my set of 5s. but the other guy had 4s and an OE straight draw. He hit and I was left with just about nothing.

Eurobet was the Killer. $20k freeroll with only 65 players!!! 10th place guaranteed $600. Disappointed in myself. One key play was getting reraised allin with me holding AK and with about 7M left. I couldn't pull the trigger and still question my decision. I eventually lost when my AQ lost to A7 all action preflop. Cutoff limped in, me on SB with about 5M pushed, BB folded. Limper had me covered so called. Stupid 7 on the turn. I guess this is why I hate freerolls. If you're going to call that bet, if you were the first one in the pot wouldn't it make sense to try to steal the blinds instead? Hope that donkey didn't $.

Titan PSO was postponed for a couple weeks. Too bad only 27 people registered for that one.

UB PSO freeroll was funny. I think 2100 were preregistered. 1st hand, a bunch of autofolds, button raises, and I go allin with QQ. Dude must have thought I was just a maniac, and called with K10. Bye bye, I double up. The funny thing is nobody else on the table is active! So I steal their blinds until they're kicked off after the 1st round. Ends up being 120 players left, and all in the $!! With no real interest in this I end up 50ish making $6! Woohoo!

On the casino side, it was up and down. Doing the monthly/reload for InterCasino, Littlewoods, Eurobet, VIP, 32red, and Super Vegas. Inter I'm up some, littlewoods I finished up big, Eurobet up some, VIP doing 2 months worth - was up huge, but now only up a little with 25% through the wr, Super Vegas up some. 32Red finally did one of these with a profit, though a small one of £14. They increased the bonus to max £50 with a 1500wr. Still an awesome deal especially with autoplay. I can't get lucky on this one though.

On the backgammon side, I finished my wr for Gammon Empire $20 bonus. Lost $7 prebonus, but am getting better at that game. This game gets more frustrating than poker, not because of bad players, but some crazy rolls.

Today is my 1st wsop satellite through UB, I better step up my game!

Friday, January 06, 2006

My journey to the WSOP: ME

My goal #2 of 2006 is to participate in the World Series Of Poker Main Event 2006. So I guess a lot of my time the first 1/2 of the year might be allocated to playing a bunch of satellite tournies. $10k is still to rich for my blood to buy direct. So far I'm in 3 direct qualifiers this month.

1) PokerRoom via the Fantasy Poker Challenge. Takes place end of the month and I'll be starting off with the 50th most chips out of 1000 or less. 6:1 over the bottom, 2:1 less than the chip leader.

2) Ultimate Bet. Qualifier on Monday Jan 9th. Qualified with a $5 satellite where top 25 advance. Top 3 out of 1500 are flown to Vegas to play in a live event sitngo where winner gets the seat. Pretty easy play here, I think about 125 people entered so 1/5 go through. Played a nice solid game and got through no problem. Stupid big stack still kept on stealing everyone's blinds during the bubble period even though every player on our table was pretty safe. Buddy just let us see some flops and play for fun, boring folding every hand until the end. Nobody here was going to do something stupid, especially with a handfull of players at the other tables with less than 2M.

3) Poker.com. Qualified last night. Started off playing 2 satellites, a $20 and a $5 last week. Won both. Last night played in the advancing $80 and the $20. Won both and now have a $250 direct and another $80. My $80 one was scary. Was in good chip position until my pocket Js. 4x preflop, called. Bet the A high flop, was reraised, had to drop it. That took a lot of my chips. I was always bottom 3 during the hand for hand time until I tripled up on A2s when I hit my flush. Lost a bunch more chips when shortest stack went allin, folded around to me on the BB and I had to call the 1 more bet with AQ. His 10s held up with a 10 on the turn after the flop had paired my Q. Stuggled again and had to push with JJ. Big stack called with JJ. Well at least I didn't loose! I was down to less than 1 BB on the bubble, but luckily one player was in worse position than I was with less than 1M and the blinds approaching. On the BB he had BB which he folded. On the SB he didn't have much better, but that hand gave me a heart attack. The 2 big stacks were in, and one decides to bet the turn with middle pair, forcing the other guy out. WTF you dumbass!!!! That bet does nothing, the extra few hundred chips does nothing, I would have beat his ass if he lost. Luckily his pair held up and I went through in 11th, just enough to advance.
My $20 game was rather easy. Didn't really pay attention to the beginning as I was playing my other game, and poker.com only allows one window. Became the chip leader after 20 mins and never looked back. Cruised my way through that one using some monster 7-3s and 10-6s to knock guys out. This is my backup if I don't make it through my main one.

Wish me luck!

Sunday, January 01, 2006

New Years Resolution

1st of all hope everybody had a nice holidays. So far mine has been great, but unfortunately good things must come to an end. 2005 has been pretty good for me gambling wise. Haven't crunched my numbers fully yet but I believe I hit the $20k mark for the year +/- 200. Some nice little income to satisfy my spending habbits. Therefore I'm going to set myself some pretty hefty goals for 2006.

2006 Goals
1) Average $2.5k per month (poker/casino) = $30k for the year
2) Qualify for the WSOP Main Event
3) Qualify for a WPT tourney or another major event
4) Win a tourney with a min payout of $2k.
* Will add more or change goals as the year progresses.

I think I can do it, actually hope I can do it.