Archive for May, 2008
Ship it!
Because things in Omaha go so wrong so often, it feels all the sweeter when they happen to go right. Check out this hand I won on stars recently.
I raised my button, then made a defensive min-reraise on the flop, hoping to see the last two cards cheap. On the turn, I a questionable call (drawing to the non-nut flush is usually a no-no, but because of the way he was trying to bet me out of the pot, I thought a flush would be good). I did made the jack high flush on the river, but had to give my call a lot of thought since he shoved for such a big amount. This player had been slow playing his big hands all session, and I just had a feeling (because of that, the timing of his bet, and the way the hand had played out) that I was good. Indeed it was. I made $160 on that one hand, and am still dancing around my living room.
Stars Payout Schedule
So finally able to blog about something that has intrigued and annoyed me since last Sunday. I finally redeposited after a few months layoff on Stars and decided to play the $10+1 15k guaranteed tournament. They ended up getting 3364 players for a prize pool over $33K. I ended up playing for over 4.5 hours and busted out 20th for a whopping $74.01 for a $63.01 profit. Now the issue I have is that first place was slightly over $4.6K. Now this seems awful small for a 33k prize pool…just over 14% was set aside for first. I thought my payout for 20th place was small also.
Elements of Poker
I just finished reading “The Elements of Poker” by Tommy Angelo. “Wow!” is one of the few words I can say.
The book gives very few strategic comments. In fact, most of the book can be described as Zen-like mumbo jumbo, with Tommy spending many pages on breathing techniques and Yoga. But guess what? It WORKS. Not because I have tried the breathing or other stuff he says in his “elements”. It works, because Tommy is a professional, who knows how to talk about poker. He’s been there, playing his C-game, chasing losses, lamenting bad beats. Every single one of us has been there…
A Couple of Final Tables
Have had a couple of decent runs in the weekly Saturdays with Pauly tourney (a $10+$1 PLO event on Stars) the last two weeks. Was runner-up a week ago (out of 29), nursing a short stack for pretty much the entire tourney in order to survive to the end. Yesterday I finished 6th (of 23), unfortunately missing the cash as only the top three spots paid.
Last week I spent pretty much the entire tourney in near-desperation mode, having made a boo-boo early on that kept me at the bottom of the leaderboard for most of the way. Wasn’t quite as bad this week, though by the time we reached the final table I again found myself with one of the short stacks.
Cashout Problems on Poker Stars
Is anyone else waiting on a cash out from Poker Stars? I keep forgetting about my cashout and I was reading 2+2 today and noticed other people were complaining about waiting on their money…
I cashed out $100 on 4/16.
On 4/24 I received this email from Poker Stars:
————————————-
Hello,
We regret to inform you that due to technical difficulties on our eCheck
processor’s end, some of the cashouts we sent for processing from April
14th to April 22nd have been delayed. Unfortunately, your cashout(s) may
be included.
Waiting to Run Hot
I like to think I have pretty decent BR management – I definitely don’t want to be playing mid/low stakes my whole life and am not afraid to take a shot, but I set aside a certain portion of my roll and wait until I have enough to lose before I try to jump to the next level (I use the Kelly Criterion for this – If you don’t know what this is you should familiarize yourself with the concept).
I have been trying to jump into the $5/10 NL games in Vegas twice now, and it is incredibly frustrating. Both times, I built my roll up to $20k+ and set aside $5k to blow in 5 buyins for the $5/10. Every shot I’ve taken at $5/10, I’ve either gotten sucked out on or coolered. I can not put into words how frustrating it is to feel that I am probably good enough to beat this game but to run just so bad that I can’t just stay at $5/10.
Some Good Points from Kid Poker
Some perspective from Daniel regarding the WSOP changes.
http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-journal.php?subaction=showfull&id=1209797015&archive=
It’s RSS Awareness Day
In recognition of RSS awareness day I want to point out the RSS feeds for my current blogs/projects. That amounts to a total of three right now but come late summer I’ll be launching a few more projects.
There are also numerous RSS readers out there. The one I use is Google Reader. Check it out!
It’s official, WSOP ME Final Table Delayed
What was speculated a few weeks ago is now official, ESPN and Harrah’s Caesar’s will delay the final table till November 9th, almost 4 months after it is played down to the final table. This is bad for poker in my opinion but probably a boon for ESPN and Caesars.
They will play down from 9 to 2 on the 9th and then the HU finale will be played in the evening of the 10th and it will air on the 11th but they are only doing a normal 2 hour show. You would think they can do more than 2 hours…hopefully that will change. Not sure if they will do the PPV like they have done the last 2 years.
