Author Archive
A Good Night at The Bike
Two of my San Diego poker buddies and I had a great night up at the Bicycle Casino in LA this week. My friend, Jake (who goes by chilidog on 2+2), finished 5th in the Legends of Poker plo tournament while Chris and I ran over the cash games. We were playing 1/3 NL Omaha High only with a $80 buy in, which went up by $40 every time you rebought. This is a very strange game to find in a casino, which meant that few of the people at the table knew how to play it well. I invested that initial $80 in the game and left with $1480.
All about Poker Affiliates
First things first. Many, many users believe Full Tilt needs to change it’s affiliate policies. If you are one of them, please visit Onlinepetition.com, and sign the petition asking them to do so.
Now, more about affiliates than you probably ever wanted to know…
A poker affiliate is a company or person that receives a commission for sending new players to the poker sites that they work for. For the most part, affiliates attract new players through online marketing efforts. Their commission can either come as a one-time up-front payment or a percentage of the action the player gives the site for as long as they have an account.
PLO Tourneys
There hasn’t been much written on PLO tournament strategy. Trust me, I’ve looked. So, I’ve been doing some strategizing on my own, which has made me realize how much harder players had it before Super Systems and Card Runners.
This past weekend, I played twelve hours to cash for a whopping $150 profit in the Venetian PLO event, but it was worth it because I managed to figure a few things out.
1. If the tournament is structured like a typical hold’em tourney or stacks aren’t deep enough (you should get substantially more starting chips in a PLO tournament than in a hold’em event) then you pretty much have to win your first pot to have a decent chance at going deep.
Pot Limit Omaha in San Diego
As I previously mentioned, I recently moved to San Diego from Chicago. I am just playing Pot Limit Omaha (or mixed games that include PLO) for the time being, and live games are not surprisingly hard to find. I hear that there is a regular $10/$25 game at the Palomar, which is just up the street from me. Unfortunately, that’s just a tad out of my range, okay, a lot out of my range, but man, would I love to play in that game someday. I catch myself daydreaming about fairy-god-backers every time I drive by.
60 Minutes
60 Minutes finally ran the story about cheating in online poker. It seems like people having been talking about this for such a long time. I actually thought it must have already ran, but I guess not.
Watch the 60 Minutes story Online
I thought they did a good job explaining what happened. It was interesting though to see the buildings where the servers are held and to here some of the players talk about what happened.The only thing I didn’t like was that they over simplified the legality of playing online
The WSOP on ESPN
As a spectator, having the final table play months after the main event is obviously anticlimactic. To combat this, I saved up the last five main event episodes to watch during this week before the final table is televised. This way, I will be fully entrenched and excited to watch some multi-million-dollar -winning action. I still have two episodes left before I am caught up, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the coverage.
Hello again
I haven’t written in a few weeks because I have been on an epic journey. My husband and I are moving from Chicago to San Diego (let me know if you know of any good games there, especially PLO). We took a two week road trip accross the country to California and then left from there for a five week trip to Malaysia and India. I am writing this from Amritsar, India where the Sikhs have a beautiful temple. We are keeping a blog of our trip at sandmtrip.wordpress.com, if any of you are interested in checking it out. It doesn’t have anything to do with poker, but it has been a fun way to document our adventures.
Friend or Foe
While I was in Vegas for almost all of June, I met the nicest lady. She was a Persian woman who lives in Germany, and she and I quickly became friendly. She didn’t speak much English, so I helped her book a flight to see her family in the US. She invited my husband and me to stay with her if we ever visited Germany. I am not fortunate enough to have a big group of people that I travel with. When I travel around playing cards, relationships like the one I had with this woman become very important. They are the people I call when I’m tired of eating alone, need a ride to the airport or advice on my play, and they’re the people I’ll sweat for a long final table.
Interest
As most people know, banks make their money by investing customers’ money. They use fancy calculations to decide how little money they can keep on hand for people that come in wanting to withdrawal. The rest is then invested at a higher interest rate than they pay their customers.
Status Report
I’ve been sucked into poker vortex, and I’m lovin’ it. I’ve managed to win enough in my PLO cash games to fund all of the events that I’ve played at the WSOP. I haven’t had any tournament cashes though. Some poker smarty once said that in tournaments, “all you can do is play well in enough to put yourself in a position to get lucky when the blinds and antes start getting high.” I’ve been within fifteen from the money five times only to run into a sick beat or a cooler. Which is frustrating, since it’s maximum effort and time commitment for no return, but I have been bringing my A game, and I feel good about that.
