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May. 7th, 2007 10:32 amA very interesting post from Praz Bansi (part of “The Hit Squad” — team names apparently being de rigeur these days) on the 25K in the Bellagio. (http://www.pokerhitsquad.blogspot.com/)
This kind of spur-of-the-moment stuff was what I did when I was a post-grad, back in 1979 and 1980, although in those days it tended to be a drive to Birmingham rather than a plane to Las Vegas.
Praz gives some nice commentary about the name players he came up against. His observation on Kathy Leibert is entertaining. It was a standard case for Kathy, three minutes after she had sat down and handed out her cards, of “my Aces ran into AK”. Followed by a fume on how badly the opponent played the hand. Er, well, that’s what you want, isn’t it? Lessons from Phil Hellmuth, I guess.
++++++
Is it just me, or do the British moan less about bad runs online (by which I mean, the bad runs are online and the moaning is online) than North Americans? http://themainsdomain.blogspot.com/ is buy a recent graduate from Toronto University. Now, you can learn a lot about poker bloggers from their “about me” section. This site is in the throes of “seriously enthusiastic” about poker. Maybe it's the lure of the money I know is out there, as I have friends who pulled in $1million profits last year. writes John, followed by
My ultimate goal is to make $100,000/yr, which is both reasonable and attainable, as absurd as that may sound to some. It wont be this year, and it may not be next year, but it will happen. Currently I am playing No-limit holdem (NLHE) with a capped buy-in of $100. My monthly goals are $4000, playing ~25-30k hands. My current winrate is 9.52ptbb/100 hands (playing, on average, 3 tables at once) , which is ~$23.50/hr (this is low, as some of my sample includes $50 buyin tables). This equates to almost $50,000/yr.
My stats are still unstable, and I expect my hourly rate to rise as I have increased the amount of tables I'm playing (this will probably negativley affect my winrate, as it detracts attention from other tables). But it's all about that hourly rate.
Now, there are some standard early enthusiasms here. One is the 25,000 to 30,000 hands a month. This is a wearing level. It’s very difficult not to go stale playing this number of hands.
Now, I’m not saying that $100K a year is impossible at $100 buy-in, just that’s it would require a hell of a lot of work, and I doubt that any but the most OCD poker player would fail to go stale.
Fast forward to May 03’s post, and welcome to the “bad run” Many years ago I remember talking about a guy who was good, but not as good as he thought he was, who went professional. My comment was that he hadn’t yet gone through that period when absolutely nothing would go right, and that the test of a player with staying power was how they coped with this.
Today:
4 set over sets the bad way.
2 KK vs. AA
2 awesome coolers
Got my money in as AT LEAST a 60% fave and lost 5 times.
Also, my dishwasher broke and flooded my apartment.
Let the good times roll.
Followed by a hand history where a runner-runner cost him his $250 stack. But, to John, the loss was not $250, it was the size of the pot
So yeah, a 4 way all in, and I'm an 85% favourite, but somehow manage to lose. There's another $1100.
SOrry that every post these days is a complaint but srlsy WTF is going on.
OK, I guess you have to feel sorry for the guy, and he does at least have the sense to apologize for it, but, as I recall being told in the Dungeon once, the problem with bad beat stories is that half the people you tell them to don’t care, and the other half think that it’s funny.
++++
I would imagine that most people read Bluescouse (http://88percent.blogspot.com/index.html) anyway. I mean, this guy’s blog should be in the Racing Post, or The Guardian.
Having zoomed up to £141K in a few weeks, it took Ed less than a week to lose it (although he has also squirrelled away £90K) and posted yesterday morning that his new plan was to deposit £25 each in Betfair and Littlewoods.
Some blogs in the past were obvious car crashes waiting to happen (Roswell was one that springs to mind), with the self-deception the saddest part. But with Bluescouse, it’s great. He knows that he’s a car crash, but he does it anyway. Heaven knows what pits of despair he must sink into, and some of us older types might see it as pure insanity. But it’s great to watch.
Just remembered. In his latest post, Ed writes that he's just got hold of "The Theory of Poker", and hopes that this might help his game.
Worrying, or what?
++++++
One of the banes of the online poker player’s life is how various poker sites “take over” your computer when you are typing up player notes, or whatever. Ultimate Bet is a particular bastard here, while Party Poker, in a rare scenario, is one of the better sites when it comes to not pissing you about.
Anyhoo, Nick Cantwell posted an entertaining story on http://thecloud71.blogspot.com/
I am playing whilst chatting to three other bloggers on MSN messenger, and we are railing each other in each others tournies. I see I have QQ, and raise a limp from an early position, and the early position calls me. The flop comes JJx - a nice flop. Being a turbo tournie I can't hang around, so I know I have to win this hand and to do it I have to play it fast, so I know I'm going to commit all my chips.
At this point I type into messenger -
"If he has a J I am fooked".
In the middle of typing this my pokerstars window becomes the dominant window as it is my turn to play, and the word "fooked" appears in the pokerstars chatbox instead of messenger. Without realising I hit enter, and then play the hand by going all-in.
An indication on how careful you have to be when hitting “Enter”.
I get round this problem by (a) not using MSN Messenger, or indeed any other messenger system, and (b) having two computers, two keyboards, two mice (well, three of each, if you count the laptop). The poker computer only as Pokertracker and the games running.
++++++++
Of course, I am so far out of the live/media loop these days that I don’t even get invited to the book launch of Bigger Deal despite the fact that, of those present, I suspect that only two (Al Alvarez and Tony himself) could claim to have been mentioned in the first book. Yes, I too can claim that honour, although I am not named.
Then again, one reason that I am out of the loop is that I never go to these things, because I have to be up so early in the morning. And, of course, not being in the live “scene” means that I hardly ever meet these people.
I kind of miss this, but devoting yourself to the poker social scene takes up one hell of a lot of time, and most of my days are already parcelled up.
But, if you want one of many accounts of the night at the Loose Cannon, pop along to http://suffolkpunchpoker.blogspot.com/.
++++++++
This kind of spur-of-the-moment stuff was what I did when I was a post-grad, back in 1979 and 1980, although in those days it tended to be a drive to Birmingham rather than a plane to Las Vegas.
Praz gives some nice commentary about the name players he came up against. His observation on Kathy Leibert is entertaining. It was a standard case for Kathy, three minutes after she had sat down and handed out her cards, of “my Aces ran into AK”. Followed by a fume on how badly the opponent played the hand. Er, well, that’s what you want, isn’t it? Lessons from Phil Hellmuth, I guess.
++++++
Is it just me, or do the British moan less about bad runs online (by which I mean, the bad runs are online and the moaning is online) than North Americans? http://themainsdomain.blogspot.com/ is buy a recent graduate from Toronto University. Now, you can learn a lot about poker bloggers from their “about me” section. This site is in the throes of “seriously enthusiastic” about poker. Maybe it's the lure of the money I know is out there, as I have friends who pulled in $1million profits last year. writes John, followed by
My ultimate goal is to make $100,000/yr, which is both reasonable and attainable, as absurd as that may sound to some. It wont be this year, and it may not be next year, but it will happen. Currently I am playing No-limit holdem (NLHE) with a capped buy-in of $100. My monthly goals are $4000, playing ~25-30k hands. My current winrate is 9.52ptbb/100 hands (playing, on average, 3 tables at once) , which is ~$23.50/hr (this is low, as some of my sample includes $50 buyin tables). This equates to almost $50,000/yr.
My stats are still unstable, and I expect my hourly rate to rise as I have increased the amount of tables I'm playing (this will probably negativley affect my winrate, as it detracts attention from other tables). But it's all about that hourly rate.
Now, there are some standard early enthusiasms here. One is the 25,000 to 30,000 hands a month. This is a wearing level. It’s very difficult not to go stale playing this number of hands.
Now, I’m not saying that $100K a year is impossible at $100 buy-in, just that’s it would require a hell of a lot of work, and I doubt that any but the most OCD poker player would fail to go stale.
Fast forward to May 03’s post, and welcome to the “bad run” Many years ago I remember talking about a guy who was good, but not as good as he thought he was, who went professional. My comment was that he hadn’t yet gone through that period when absolutely nothing would go right, and that the test of a player with staying power was how they coped with this.
Today:
4 set over sets the bad way.
2 KK vs. AA
2 awesome coolers
Got my money in as AT LEAST a 60% fave and lost 5 times.
Also, my dishwasher broke and flooded my apartment.
Let the good times roll.
Followed by a hand history where a runner-runner cost him his $250 stack. But, to John, the loss was not $250, it was the size of the pot
So yeah, a 4 way all in, and I'm an 85% favourite, but somehow manage to lose. There's another $1100.
SOrry that every post these days is a complaint but srlsy WTF is going on.
OK, I guess you have to feel sorry for the guy, and he does at least have the sense to apologize for it, but, as I recall being told in the Dungeon once, the problem with bad beat stories is that half the people you tell them to don’t care, and the other half think that it’s funny.
++++
I would imagine that most people read Bluescouse (http://88percent.blogspot.com/index.html) anyway. I mean, this guy’s blog should be in the Racing Post, or The Guardian.
Having zoomed up to £141K in a few weeks, it took Ed less than a week to lose it (although he has also squirrelled away £90K) and posted yesterday morning that his new plan was to deposit £25 each in Betfair and Littlewoods.
Some blogs in the past were obvious car crashes waiting to happen (Roswell was one that springs to mind), with the self-deception the saddest part. But with Bluescouse, it’s great. He knows that he’s a car crash, but he does it anyway. Heaven knows what pits of despair he must sink into, and some of us older types might see it as pure insanity. But it’s great to watch.
Just remembered. In his latest post, Ed writes that he's just got hold of "The Theory of Poker", and hopes that this might help his game.
Worrying, or what?
++++++
One of the banes of the online poker player’s life is how various poker sites “take over” your computer when you are typing up player notes, or whatever. Ultimate Bet is a particular bastard here, while Party Poker, in a rare scenario, is one of the better sites when it comes to not pissing you about.
Anyhoo, Nick Cantwell posted an entertaining story on http://thecloud71.blogspot.com/
I am playing whilst chatting to three other bloggers on MSN messenger, and we are railing each other in each others tournies. I see I have QQ, and raise a limp from an early position, and the early position calls me. The flop comes JJx - a nice flop. Being a turbo tournie I can't hang around, so I know I have to win this hand and to do it I have to play it fast, so I know I'm going to commit all my chips.
At this point I type into messenger -
"If he has a J I am fooked".
In the middle of typing this my pokerstars window becomes the dominant window as it is my turn to play, and the word "fooked" appears in the pokerstars chatbox instead of messenger. Without realising I hit enter, and then play the hand by going all-in.
An indication on how careful you have to be when hitting “Enter”.
I get round this problem by (a) not using MSN Messenger, or indeed any other messenger system, and (b) having two computers, two keyboards, two mice (well, three of each, if you count the laptop). The poker computer only as Pokertracker and the games running.
++++++++
Of course, I am so far out of the live/media loop these days that I don’t even get invited to the book launch of Bigger Deal despite the fact that, of those present, I suspect that only two (Al Alvarez and Tony himself) could claim to have been mentioned in the first book. Yes, I too can claim that honour, although I am not named.
Then again, one reason that I am out of the loop is that I never go to these things, because I have to be up so early in the morning. And, of course, not being in the live “scene” means that I hardly ever meet these people.
I kind of miss this, but devoting yourself to the poker social scene takes up one hell of a lot of time, and most of my days are already parcelled up.
But, if you want one of many accounts of the night at the Loose Cannon, pop along to http://suffolkpunchpoker.blogspot.com/.
++++++++
