It’s now 2 1/2 months later and things are going pretty well. I obviously could not support myself playing poker (yet- ha!) and collecting unemployment. I freelance and started my own line of handmade jewelry. The best part is, I have time to workout and play poker on my schedule.. whenever I’m feeling it. Thinking like a true poker player, I give my jewelry business my top priority, though, because I feel I have the best chance of making money in it.. and using my years of experience in the industry to turn it into a real business but whether it’s the jewelry or poker, I love what I do.

When it comes to poker.. my game is NLHE… and I don’t have the bankroll to play cash at a level I think I could be most profitable. Instead, I chose to play tournaments with structures, buy-ins and overall skill levels that work best for me.  I also just like tournaments better anyway… although I know it’s nearly impossible to make a living just playing tournaments.. money is tight.. I don’t have much of a bankroll anyway so why not play what I enjoy most? I actually won a few tournaments in March in Vegas.. and just missed the money in 8th place at Caesars last weekend.. so it’s not going so badly.

I’m planning to head back out to Vegas 1st week of June for a few tournaments. I want to play in the Venetian Deepstack on the 3rd.. I also like the daily Caesar’s tournament structures and players too (plus I need a rematch after last weekend!).. Oh, and, of course, I’ll swing by the Rio to check out the WSOP madness..

I’ve been posting poker updates on twitter and my personal blog:

http://twitter.com/sandypantalones

http://www.poker-kat.blogspot.com

Thanks to whoever is reading!!

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.

Many markets have affiliate programs, but according to pokeraffiliate.com, “Online poker is without a doubt one of the most lucrative affiliate markets available. What started simply as a ‘refer a friend’ program escalated into what is now providing a full time income for thousands of people with multiple revenue streams.”

Affiliates bring in new players, which is good for the poker community.  They deserve to be compensated for the work they do to get players to sign up. The only problem with the poker affiliate system, in my opinion, is that at some sites, the host site and it’s affiliates leave the player out of the initial contract negotiating process.  This causes new players to be unknowingly forced into unbreakable contracts that are not in their best interest.

At Full Tilt, new players that sign up for a poker site with a bonus code from an affiliate enter an unbreakable contract with a third party.  Some players have even been linked with an affiliate just by  visiting a site which attaches a cookie. Once a player is linked to an affiliate on Full Tilt, she can never terminate her relationship with the affiliate or switch to another affiliate.   Theoretically, a player could negotiate new terms with their affiliate, but that is only if the player can contact her affiliate, which is very difficult to do in most cases. And even then, the affiliate has little, if any, incentive to offer the player a better deal.

So that means, if you signed up for Full Tilt long before you’d even heard of online rakeback, forget about getting it now.   If you’re frustrated that Full Tilt won’t tell you the name of the third party making money off of you, tough.   Want to sign up with an affiliate that will offer you free use of a training site? Too late.  This may seem like a non-issue for most players, but if someone plays a good amount of hours or at high enough stakes, the rake they miss out on is substantial enough to force them to extreme measures.  Many honest players that have held accounts on Full Tilt for years are forced  to choose between continuing to feed the affiliate black hole, breaking the rules by creating a new account, or leaving Full Tilt all together.  Many, many players are trying to negotiate this frustrating situation, and if you don’t believe me, just visit this thread on 2+2 on this topic.  As of now, it’s had over 64,000 views.

It doesn’t make sense for Full Tilt to prioritize relationships with affiliates over players.  Many of the posters on the thread mentioned above told Full Tilt that they would leave unless the terms of their affiliate deal were changed, and Full Tilt let those players walk out the door. The lack of options frustrate me as a player, and it would make me mad if I was an affiliate, since affiliates lose money when players stop playing.  No one wins when players are forced to leave a site, and I wish Full Tilt would correct the situation.

In the next post, I’ll talk about what players can do to protect themselves from an unsatisfactory affiliate deal.

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.

2. If you’ve got chips, calling raises from tight players is very profitable.  Any time during the early and middle stages of a tournament when you’ve got good position and you think someone is raising with a big pair, call them with a very wide range of hands, because they will inevitably overplay their hand.  You can knock them out with as little as two pair or float them on the flop and steal after they fire a second bullet on the turn.  People over play aces much more often in tournaments than they do in cash games.

If someone else has already called the raise, you should narrow your calling range substantially unless you have low cards, like 7654.  If there are one or more callers and you have a hand like this, go ahead and play the hand because you know a lot of the high cards are out already and are therefore less likely to flop.

3.  It’s okay to bet big wraps with position, but better to play them slow out of position.  I unfortunately built a couple of really big pots by leading out with 12-16 card draws from early position, only to have them not come in.  You can, and often should, weather this in a cash game, but in a tournament, where chip retention is just as important as stack building, it can be disastrous.

4.  Changing your style of play based on your table is even more important  than it is in hold’em tournaments.  The guys at my first table liked to see cheap flops, so I potted preflop any time there were three limpers ahead of me, and I won several hands without ever being contested.  Later, I had a much more aggressive table, so I waited for good hands and limp-reraised preflop (Rolf Slotboom style) more often instead. People seem to be less suspicious of late position raises in PLO tourneys than they are in hold’em events, so depending on your table, you might be able to take advantage of this as well.

I know none of this is earth shattering, but hopefully it will inspire someone out there who does know a thing or two about PLO tourneys to do some writing on the subject.

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

Finally, some sleep. It is 11:30am and I am just waking up. The TV is blabbing idiocies about Hillary Clinton and her endorsing Barack Obama. But I just have to watch. I make my way down to the coffee shop. I am so hungry, I say to myself “screw the comps” and just go in and pay for a nice hearty Omelette breakfast. God, it is taking me so long to get going. I don’t know if it’s the 1k I lost the night before or just laziness on my part. I do not feel excited at all. As I sit in front of the Video Poker machine to get my mailings activated, boredom settles in. Man, you can lose so much time in Vegas and survive.

Anyway, I finally get going and decide to visit a friend of mine on the way to the Rio. He just works a couple of blocks north of the Rio, but big mistake, when I find out there’s a big accident on Valley View, which makes the drive down there take like an hour or so. All in beautiful Las Vegas heat and I don’t have A/C. I only get to talk to him for a few minutes, before I get going, damn it. Back in Valley View, I see the “Rio” sign and drive in and… I’m lost. I do have orientation, where the convention center is, but there’s no effing way to get there. I would have to drive out again, go on Flamingo and drive in again, or use a taxi lane, or… ah, let’s just park here.

I know, I have to make my way through the whole casino now, so I Rio is smart like that, because I stop by the sports book and make a bet on Germany against Poland, moneyline -180. I think it’s a good price, should be around -250 IMO, but I’m biased like that. I make it into the Amazon Room, finally, it’s 4:20 (heh), still plenty of time. Just around that time, Aaron W from 2+2 comes and meets me and we make our way to the coffee shop to grab something to eat. He will be participating in the event, too. We talk about all kinds of stuff, getting to know each other, the guys next to us are also going to the event. It seems the whole world around us is talking poker, you start to wonder, if there really are that many more people way more obsessed than me with poker. Wow!

4:55pm. Seating begins. On the way back, we met up with tyler_cracker, also from 2+2 and he’ll be sweating us from the sidelines. I sit down and I’m still not nervous. Wasn’t this supposed to be this big event? Isn’t 1500$ a big chunk of cash to me (nah, not in gambling money)? Am I not nervous that Barry Greenstein is right behind me? Anyway, I get my chips, drinks (yuck, don’t even try that s*** All-In Enegy drink…. gah) and soon enough play begins.

Fold, fold, fold. Everybody exchanges pleasantries. Finally I get KJhh in MP and want to open raise. I throw out a 100$ chip, with blinds at 25$/50$, but I forget to say “raise” so it’s only a call. This will be my first and only mistake in the tourney. The two guys to my right knew my intentions and get out, but the rest of the field calls and we are 4 to the flop. I chase my flush draw, which doesn’t come and quickly I’m down. Chit.

The rest is up and down, up and down. I get TT and improve to set (up), I get AK and don’t improve (down). I get TT again, but it gets capped and have to lay it down on a Ahigh board (down), I complet my SB with K6 and chase a gutter with top pair and hit (up)… 2 hours are gone, break! 2300 chips out of 3000. I’m not happy. On the break, I get to meet the deucescracked LIMIT guys, which is just cool. They go over their tables and it seems I’ve got a fairly easy table, with only 3-4 people really knowing what they are doing, 2-3 people playing just too tight and 2… aem, swimming creatures. Break is over so quickly and we get playing again.

I don’t remember so many hands. I just remember I had T8s in the SB at the end of the 4th hour and it’s like a 4 limped pot to me, so I complete. Flop: 5T8. (Bingo!). Turn J. River A. Get beat by A5. Lol, everybody berates A5 for staying in the pot. He even mentions “Play bad, get there!” By that time the limits are way up though and that pot really hurt me. I go into the second break with only 1200 left. 3BB on next level. Nooooo! Aaron W is out of the tournament by that time. About 600 runners remain out of 880. I feel sick, I’m gonna have to gamble and I’ll go out soon if a miracle doesn’t happen.

I’m in the SB 800 left. 2 limps to me. A7ss….. Ah, raise it! I’m left with 400 chips. KT8 (one spade). I’m not even going to c-bet here, what for? Pray for runner runner spades or an Ace. Check, check, check, check. sigh. Turn 6. Check, check, A5 guy bets, fold. I fold. He has a king always and I was right. He LIMPED the CO with KJo. Wonderful. I’m sitting there with 400 in chips, blinds 100/200. Goodbye event, I guess, I look up the clock. 540 runners left. They are dropping left and right. Barry Greenstein is gone, I saw Phil Hellmuth leaving mumbling a few hours ago, Death Donkey left, that internet kid, sitting on the table next to me has left. Everybody I know… gone.

So I pick up pocket Aces in the CO. Oh, Event #12, stop teasing me… I go all-in. Good player in SB 3-bets and BB folds. He has A8. Flop K28. Player in BB immediately goes on a tear: “I would’ve called you if he didn’t 3-bet. I had K2, you’re lucky”, bla bla. Turn and River xx. I’m sitting on 1000 chips. I sit a few more hands, action is slow. Players are POURING out of the room, the second wave of eliminations is happening. I look up 480 runners. Wow, 80 runners lost in like 10 minutes.

Tight lady raises from UTG. I reraise to 600 from UTG+2 with AKs. “Decent” Commerce 40/80 regular (who has somehow recognized me from me playing there ONCE) looks long and hard at me and 4-bets (5-bet cap). Lady calls, I go all-in, they call. Lady keeps calling down his JJ with 88. Unfortunately the race did not end well for me as neither the K or Ace paired and I’m out. Very happy to be out in such a fashion., a 50/50 chance to triple up.

I’m exhausted! Call my husband, tell him why I had to gamble being so short and then realize I sound like all the other people walking by me in the corridor: “No, you don’t understand, he called me with 5 outs…” Aaron and Tyler are there now and we talk about random poker stuff. Joe Tall appears and Tyler’s boss, who just scored 40K in some NL donkament asks us all, if we want to go flying. “I don’t do drugs”, is the first thing that comes to my mind, but he really just wants to go flying on an airplane, over the Grand Canyon. Funny what a big score does to your outlook in life.

We end up in a cafe with Tyler and Aaron, talking about random life stuff. It gets very late, but the food is yummy and the conversation is good. Tomorrow: Hike Mt. Charleston!

Oh wait, I couldn’t go to bed… I end up playing some blackjack all over downtown and end the night up 260$, yay. Ok, now I can go to bed… 4am, sigh. Interesting day….

Observing was great. We got a lot of data and I’ve got a lot of work for the next few weeks. But this isn’t about work. This is the day I go to Las Vegas. A lot of driving to do today, but I have done the trip before and I know it’s beautiful. So we all get up at around 11 am (after having worked until 5:30 am), I guess we are all just eager to leave the mountain. After driving down the long and winding road, basecamp is reached at around 1pm. I am in the real world again…

Quickly, in the car, leave Southern Arizona behind me. I want to have as much daylight as possible. I grab some drinks on the road, but the one of the things that get me, is that suddenly my A/C is starting to break down in 100F heat. Nooooooo. I guess, the idiot mechanic didn’t think to stop and look to refill the A/C fluid, when I gave him my car to do a major check before the trip. Grrr. But a little is still left, so I drive far and am soon in Phoenix (traffic).

One of the greatest parts of this trip is Hwy 93, which around Peoria turns into a very romantic road. Basically very soft curves winding through the desert. Not many cars or trucks and plenty of two lane roads. It is actually called the Joshua Tree Highway and boy, there are lots of them. There is one stretch (just before the turnoff to Bagdad, AZ, lol) which is so densely populated with these Joshua Trees, that the whole desert is green. But as the Joshua Trees don’t really have a purely green color, but rather a blueish-dark green color, so that in the middle of the desert you have a deep green forest, very surreal.

Eventually you reach Kingman and travel on Route 66 for a while, ooops, sorry, it’s Highway 40 now, which is a boring super fast Freeway with a high concentration of trucks. Always glad to get off a few miles later and get on the road to Hoover Dam, only accessible to cars.

Hoover Dam! Sorry, I’m really bad at taking night pictures. But if you are ever in Vegas, set aside a few hours to visit this marvelous monument. Not much I can say without sounding like a teacher, so just go here and read all about it. It is always exciting driving over it. The bridge they are building around it, which you can kind of see on the left upper part of the image, is gonna go around it. That bridge is impressive by itself, but it will be sad, when the actual highway doesn’t go over the dam anymore.

So Hoover Dam is the last stop before Vegas, yay. I quickly drove to the 4 Queens. Downtown was pretty crowded and my fears were confirmed that they didn’t have a free suite upgrade. Oh well, my 20$ room was good enough and this trip was gonna give me a lot of mailers anyway, so next trip hopefully no dough, hehehe. Since I didn’t have any lunch, I sat down and had a huge New York steak.

Ah, filled and itchy to gamble I headed over to the Rio. What does the WSOP fuss look like? Am I going to see anybody famous? Jeez, I can’t believe I was so giddy. Right while getting off my car at the Valet, I immediately overheard some “Yeah, but he called me with the straight” – type of conversation… ah, poker players. It’s 11 pm, but as soon as I enter the long hallway to the Amazon room, more and more of these conversations get going. The whole hallway isn’t really filled, actually it is kind of empty, but every corner there is somebody on a cellphone telling a hand or people analyzing some play. Norman Chad walks by all serious and all I can do is laugh inside (“Why do you look so serious when going to the bathroom? Did you get whamboozled?”).

Anyway, I quickly go to the cashier and to my surprise there is absolutely no line, just 2 other cashiers are taking entries and this one guy is buying into the shootout and is told he has to wait and will get a temporary registration, but the cashier has no idea why he has to wait. It’s pretty simple if you think about it, but it’s one of the quarrels the people have had this year with Harrah’s mostly at the HU event. Anyway, the reason is that they want to fill the table, so that everybody has the same chance in the shootout (or in the case of the HU event, they want to eliminate the byes). As I stand there pondering these things and why Harrah’s should care about filling the tables rather than getting more contenders in, my cashier is also overwhelmed by the task at hand. Apparently this is her first day at work and she has only been taking satellite entries. Great, no entrants to the events? As the supervisory helps her enter my name and not my rewards number she looks, no STARES at the 1500$ stash of cash. Lady, what will you do when the 50K HORSE people come walking in? Anyway, I get my ticket. It’s set! Tomorrow 5pm.

I go into the Amazon room. Amazing! There’s the 10K mixed event going on. Dolly Brunson staring tired into the distance at a table. Sammy Farha chatting it up. Johnny Chan looking angry (and horribly dressed in some aqua blue silk shirt). Durrr being very intense. Wow, these guys are there and it doesn’t look glamorous or anything, just like any other table in the many cardrooms I’ve visited.

I keep walking and should’ve walked out. To bed. Sleep. I’ve just driven 500 miles and slept very little in the past few days. But what does a degenerate gambler do at midnight at the WSOP? That’s right, walk up to the cash games and start playing shorthanded 20/40 LHE… This was a disaster. Especially with an excellent aggressive player to my right (the two fish I did have to my right left a few hands after I sat down). I have seen the guy before, but I don’t know who he is. Clean shaven asian kid, who can read your soul and is sitting on Mt Everest of chips. Plus my luck sucks. I 3-bet 88, 99, AK against him, flopped whiffed everytime. Also, WTF, I thought only fish were there at the cash games. I don’t see one donkey play, only weak-tight and passive, but nothing where you are salivating. I open KK and only passive to me left calls and hits his Ace on the flop. Anyway, after 2 hours, I stop the madness down 2 racks. I’m tired and beaten. What a horrible start to the weekend.

It is always nice finding a bargain. The hotel in Phoenix certainly was one. It was almost like a nice little mini-suite with sofa and everything for 53$ (tax and everything included), less than my tank filling anyways. For good bargains in terms of hotels, especially in Las Vegas I have two recommendations.

1. You are going to play. Call the casino and ask for a casino rate or poker rate. It all depends what you like and how much you are going to play. Of course poker rates are not that big of a bargain and casino rates you need to be known. But you know, if you are not bold, you’ll never get things in life. Ask for a host and ask how much you have to play for a casino rate (6 hours green action should suffice for everything but the fanciest hotels). Once an established customer, you are known to the host and you’ll be inundated with hotel offers. I haven’t played blackjack in a long time to warrant offers, but I used to get them in the mail like daily. My husband would never pay more than 20$ for a mid-strip hotel (think Stardust, Circus Circus, Riviera, Sahara, Tropicana, Boardwalk etc. types hotels, yes I know some of those have closed). Anyway, buffets and meals are usually comped, too, as long as you don’t chose the fanciest steakhouse in the property. For a high end casino like Bellagio typical casino rates go for around 60$-80$, but then you need to show black action or play at least dollar slots for a long time. phew, long sidetrack… I tend to be that way…

2. Book at Travelaxe . It basically just runs a search for you on all the hotels websites (like Orbitz, Hotels.com, etc.) and therefore you will find the absolute cheapest rate for it. I still can’t believe people paying 190$ for a night in Las Vegas, except for the fanciest of suites. If you are interested in Internet access, be sure to check out this page on Las Vegas Advisor, which has info on all the rates and the places where there is free Internet.

Anyway, Travelaxe also works for other cities, so I found this little hotel/motel in Phoenix for 45$ there. Oh, the bed was absolutely soft and wonderful. Excellent free Wireless, good Cable TV, fancy bathroom and continental breakfast. bellatrix left Phoenix happy. On to Tucson!

Once in Tucson, I stopped by the Trader Joe’s, because astronomers have to bring their food up the mountain. But nothing eventful, except the 100 degree temperatures. I hope it’s not that hot in Vegas. So now I continued my journey to Mt. Hopkins, which is between Tucson and Nogales (Mexican border). Here is a picture on the way already to the mountain. You can see Elephant Butte and Mt Hopkins and maybe even the telescope on top of the mountain next to the telephone pole.

So I met up with my colleagues on the basecamp and made the dangerous trip up the mountain, always an adventure. We arrived pretty early, so I checked some e-mail and just surfed the web.

I won’t bore you with the observing. It went pretty well and we already discovered quite a few new objects. There is a beautiful picture of us opening the dome during sunset. Unfotunately the only good ones I have of the huge 6.5m mirror have only me in front of it, so no pretty telescope images.

I love my job! Really, you will not see me being a poker pro anytime soon, even though I know I could make it. This is much more beautiful and interesting than c/r on the turn with the nuts Tomorrow, just a short little post.

Ok, for those of you who don’t know me, I am an astronomer, well astrophysicist. I don’t know what sounds better. At parties the astronomer is better received, but I guess amongst geeks (category which I associate online poker players with) astrophysicist stands better. Anyway, we got some time at the MMT, which is a 6.5m telescope near Tucson, AZ. I thought:”hey, I’m not doing anything that weekend and I’m a pretty good limit hold’em player. I should stop by Vegas and play WSOP”. Anyway, since I love driving through the desert, I thought I would drive there and just post random stuff along the way. Maybe that way, you can accompany me through the excitement again. I don’t get to play that much live anymore since my daughter was born.

Monday. Still at work during the day. I left around 6pm (3 hours later than planned). Traffic was a breeze out of LA area, however, so not being stuck on I-10 is always a good thing. About 2 hrs out of Pasadena comes the first stop interesting to poker players: Morongo Casino Resort

Ah, that casino holds a special place in my heart (not necessarily a good place). I remember my first few adventures as a BJ card counter. This was it. Early 2004, they had just gotten rid of the hand collection fee that so many indian casinos had back then. So here I was, a new counter with my stupid 5000$ bankroll. Actually, it was 5900$ (ty Cache Creek). I was ready to beat this BJ game. It was a 6decker with 80% penetration, best in the Palm Springs area. They were already building the new casino you see in the picture there, but they were still located in a long bunker type building, which today is a bowling alley.

Did you know you can experience crazy monkey tilt at blackjack? When the dealer just puts beat after beat on you. When you push out the big bets with a big advantage (well, for BJ anyway) and he still pulls out 5 card 21s. Anway, after arriving there on that faithful night in 2004, suddenly I was down 2000$, just like that, wham, wham, wham. It was amazing, i was walking around in total numbness. And like a crazy gamblor, I chased my losses. Ever had one of those U shaped sessions? That one was my first one and thank god it ended going up (I still lost like 120$ for the night, but it wasn’t the disaster of 2000$). But there I was, up for 20 hours, crazy stare, dealers telling me to go home. Ugh, not my proudest moment. Just a cautionary tale for all you people out there playing with an edge, variance is such a bitch.

Anyway, that day was also the first time I really noticed the poker room. I mean, I had seen a lot of people playing poker in Vegas before, but I was always just intimidated watching. I always thought these were really amazing sharks playing, when in reality I was just staring at a measly 3/6 game from afar. Anyway, I noticed all these “children” playing and then I realized, oh, 18 yrs old Indian Casino. That’s right, if any of you kids is reading this, Morongo Casino is where Alan Cunningham just escaped, when he was starting college (he never finished, gee I wonder why) and they would take 18 year olds. The poker room used to be in this tiny room behind glass. But the poker boom was happening, so the room was packed and the air was really bad inside. Really, I was happy to be in the casino with the smokers (it’s not that bad) than in that enclosed room with like 100 people in it with no air.

Ah, how the times change. I managed to get over to Morongo in December 2004 just one week after the new casino and building opened. Fancy! Full! Vegas! After scouting the horrible games now with just 65% penetration, I left in disgust with the 120$ they owed me and 180$ more. I never stepped a foot in the casino ever since and not today either, but it was fun reliving the memories.

Anyway, on I went, whizzing past the Desert Cities (Palm Springs, Indio, etc.). It was getting dark. I made a quick gas stop at Chiriaco Summit. It’s also the site of the Gen. Patton museum, which used the desert as training camp for the army to get used to Saharan heat. And hot it was. It was 9 pm and it still was 85F outside. Anyway, the tanks looked quite ghostly totally surrounded by darkness.

Crossed the CA-AZ without incidents and made another stop in Quartzsite, where the Hi Jolly memorial is. This is quite an eerie cementery to be visiting at 10:30pm, but I enjoyed reading the history of Hi Jolly and his camels. Lots of really old graves there, too with many d. 18xx dates. After that quick stop I hurried on to Phoenix and was at my booked hotel at around 12:30am. Went to bed pretty quickly. Anyway, day 2 (observing at MMT) will be up sometime tomorrow.

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.

• My Poker Blog
• Poker Sift Blog
• Poker Tech Reviews Blog

There are also numerous RSS readers out there.  The one I use is Google Reader.  Check it out!