Category Archives: poker

I haven’t been playing a lot of poker lately, mostly because I don’t really ever find the time to set aside a couple of hours (at least) where I can free myself from distraction. The worst thing that I can do when playing a tournament online is to not set aside enough time to do it, or to not sufficiently take away other distractions and leave myself not really paying attention. While not having enough time leads to having to bow out -usually right about when the tournament reaches the money-, playing distracted often leads to some bad plays late in an attempt to make up for not winning the small pots early. When I jumped onto Pokerstars on Monday, I saw that the weekly MATH tournament was just about to start. At the time I decided to sign up for it, there were only 15 people already entered. I Continue reading This week in poker→

Having enjoyed some success playing stud cash games in all forms (doing exceptionally well in Razz of late), I decided to take another crack at NLHE cash. Because stud games are all played in some form of limit, the amount that you can win or lose on any single hand is minimized. So it was my thinking that if I played a solid NLHE game, I would be able to double my money a lot faster. Well that is true, but I can also stack myself a lot faster. My cash game got off to a fast start with what is far and away my largest single hand win to date: And how bad must that have sucked for the other guy? Unfortunately, that was followed almost immediately by my largest single hand loss to date. I was in the big blind on this hand, and there were two limpers Continue reading No Limit cash: A tale of two hands→

Several weeks ago I made mention of my quest to turn my $1.36 on pokerstars into some serious cash. Admittedly, I thought the odds of doing it were pretty grim, but with the future of online gambling (money transfers specifically) currently up in the air, I wasn’t about to transfer any more funds into it (in fact I had transferred my money out of all sites but pokerstars and full tilt prior to this). When I started trying to build up my buck, it was exclusively in stud hi-lo, simply because winning there (at micro levels) was fairly simple. It took a couple of weeks, but I was able to build the initial $1.36 to over $50 in low limit stud. At that point I started risking portions of it on NLHE tournaments. There is just something about the atmosphere of the NLHE tournament that just isn’t there in a Continue reading NLHE: The woman who beats me, but I always come crawling back→

Since returning to work, I have been playing a lot less poker. At first I thought this was going to cause my play to suffer since I wouldn’t have endless amounts of time to hone my skills (making the same mistakes over and over again isn’t exactly honing your skills though, is it?). The truth is that I have been playing far less often, but have been playing far better poker (at least that’s the story I’m going with today). I have been playing far fewer MTT’s, since time simply doesn’t allow for putting aside three hours to play more than once or so a week. My MTT play isn’t that bad when I do play, my last two -both 180 SnG’s- resulted in a final table and a bubble. The final table was my first such appearance at a final table in a field of over 100 people, and Continue reading …And the poker gods were angered→

My aforementioned stud quest has been going pretty well. So well in fact that I have had turned my initial $1.36 into over $50. I have to be honest though, playing at the .10/.20 levels is so easy it almost feels wrong. Sort of like beating up a cripple or something. Unfortunately my bankroll was just getting to a point where I felt comfortable moving up in levels when I decided to waste 60% of it on a couple of buy-ins. My work schedule makes it so that the only blogger tournaments that I am home to possibly play in are the MATH and the WWDN. This week I decided to take a shot at the MATH after not having played a tournament in probably four weeks or so. My finish was really a bit misleading, or at least I think it was, considering I think I made a few Continue reading Pokering→

When the anti-gambling legislation was going through the house a couple of weeks ago, I pulled the majority of my meager bankroll from all the poker sites except for full tilt (I left some in full tilt because they very openly stated that they weren’t going to let this sham legislation put them out of business -which is true for now, but in a few months, who knows). It was actually pretty good timing for me anyway, as I recently started a new job and haven’t been playing a lot anyway. Then there is the horrific run of luck I have been having in Hold Em tournaments -don’t get me started on that. I recently logged back in to pokerstars to check the results of a tournament that I didn’t play in (and with my work schedule there is really only one blogger tourney that I am home to play Continue reading My stud quest→

I spent a long time debating whether or not to sign up for The Mookie last night. Why? The new episode of South Park that was on last night was about World of Warcraft. See, my wife and I have an addiction to a very similar game, and I absolutely had to watch it with her. So when I signed up, I knew I needed to be done in two hours -hell making it two hours in a blogger tourney is a pretty impressive feat. I actually did pretty well, and was still around as it was nearing the second hour. I was about the middle of the pack with 15 or so remaining when the episode of South Park started, so I was between the bedroom and the pc trying to watch it and play my hands. Eventually I just called a couple of pushes (one with A-7 one Continue reading The Mookie→

I jumped into the Mondays at the Hoy (MATHTM) tournament at the last minute last night. I believe this would be the third time I have bought into this one, and since Wil had pimped the tournament on Cardsquad, I was expecting it to be a large field. And it was. More than thirty of the best poker players I know of were there, and with a top prize of well over $200, I think it is fair to say that most of them were taking it fairly seriously (though I think Bone Daddy busted early with a hammer, ’cause it is was a blogger event, and you just gotta play it. What’s up with the blog btw?). I hadn’t entered a Hold ‘Em tournament (not counting the FTP 20k) since my recent win in the WWDN:Not, and have been trying to limit my exposure to NLHE in general. I Continue reading How many tens are in this deck?→

Well, it seems that pokerstars must have a guy whose full-time job requires him to do nothing but bounce around and read the websites of its players. During his daily routine he must have happened upon my site and saw that I was near walking away because I actually managed to pick up a couple of pairs, win a couple of races, and even suck out huge once in the WWDN:Not tournament last night (though with 17 players it really felt more like a SnG). As you would imagine, picking up a couple of pairs, particularly late, combined with winning my races in every case but one, took me a long way in this one. I folded nearly every hand for the first forty-five minutes or so, as I was hanging on just above average in FTP 20k about that time, as well as watching Iak and Smokkee at their Continue reading Success of sorts→