Online Poker
Shipped my first MTT
Just a quick update… I only play MTTs sporadically and I’m sure I am down lifetime at them… but I shipped a deep stack $22 freezeout on Pokerstars this past Sunday. A great feeling, although because of the deep-stack slow level format it took 10+ hours to win a 400 person $8k prize pool tournament. I felt like I had jet lag at work the next day.
Anyway that has accelerated my plan to move up to $1/$2 since first prize was ~$1550, which is conveniently about the amount I wanted to make before moving up from 100NL. So 1/2 here I come, wish me luck. Best of luck to the three (?) remaining readers of this blog.
The Coaching Debate
This past weekend I had a brief session where I was coached by a local high stakes player. Actually, “coached” is probably overstating it, as a) no money was exchanged and b) he was playing, not me. I watched him on Teamviewer – a very nice collaboration tool that I recommend for poker coaching and sweat sessions – and we were talking on the phone while he played. He played 5-6 tables ranging from 5-10 NL to 25-50 NL at pokerstars.
Reviewing “The Workbook – Exploiting Regulars” from DailyVariance
Recently I was in touch with Tri Nguyen of Daily Variance publishing, and he was gracious enough to offer me a review copy of their new e-book, “The No Limit Hold Em Workbook: Exploiting Regulars.”
Tri is the author of two other well-regarded ebooks on poker strategy, “Let there be range!” and “The Pot Limit Omaha Book: Transitioning from NLHE to PLO.” Tri is a successful mid- and high-stakes player whose books are well received in the online poker community, garnering praise from forum readers and the coaches at major training sites.
The evolution of Bigbamboom
There is hope for all of us trust me. Here is a cool story for you….first my history recently.
It’s been a while – been following the posts of all of you and keeping track of the pokersift site. I’ve played quite a bit and continue my evolution as a poker player. For a while, I kept a decent run of SNG’s especially at the 18man Turbo level, slowly moving up in stakes from 1.75 to 3.25 to 6.50.
Update from the small-stakes
Just a few quick bullet points in lieu of a full post:
Free Money for all you low level grinders
http://www.pokerstrategy.com/u99933
Check out the pokerstrategy link…..After reading many of their articles, and getting the FREE 50$ – I’ve managed to turn it in to a nice profit and continue to grow my roll.
http://www.pokerstrategy.com/u99933
one of Those Nights
Had one of Those Nights last night. The games were insanely good on Pokerstars, I had at least one 65/4 superfish on every table and two had guys with VPIP > 90. Obviously I dropped 7 buy-ins with all the usual beats like losing every pre-flop allin, losing a 300BB pot with Q9 on a KJT flop, that sort of thing.
The Next Step in Poker Marketing?
There’s been quite an uproar on some online sites and forums about the latest promotion from pokerstars. Pokerstars is giving away massive bonuses to ANY UK player who earns a minimal amount of points over the course of May, up to 80,000 points which is most of the way to the exalted Supernova status that small-stakes players like me grind 6 months to achieve (confirmation from a huge 2p2 thread).
I’m quite torn on whether this is a positive step for online poker. I’ve heard at least two compelling arguments for why this makes sense:
Lame (duck) UIGEA
So the UIGEA passed in its final form now (link). I’m sad, really really sad. Why is it that now that I finally am making a money at online poker the US tries to do this in a lame duck session? I don’t even understand how anybody thought prohibition of anything would be a good thing? Please, pretty please, Pokerstars, Full Tilt, Cake, please don’t leave the US. Please don’t make me cash out.
How bad do you want it?
OK, so it has been a loooooooooong time since I wrote anything. There is a good reason for this. I doubted anyone was interested in how bad I was running. Nobody wants to hear how my bankroll was destroyed by coolers, bad beats, and just plain bad plays on my part. Let’s just say it was pretty ugly. I was down in the dumps and back at the microstaked and I had to ask myself how bad I really wanted to be a winning poker player.
