I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker.

I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker. I love poker.

I've been playing a little heads-up lately on pokerstars. Nothing major, just a little $1/2 or $2/4 every once in a while. Here's a beauty that you might all enjoy. You can vew in on pokerhand.org. I also reproduced below. Of course I give this hand up if I don't have the nut flush draw to go along with my KK. This is one of those hands where you hit your draw, get pretty happy and then sit in disbelief as the chips don't come to your side of the table as you expect. Always lots of fun!

Pokerstars Game (?) Hold'em No Limit ($1/$2) - 2025/11/26 - 18:00:30 (ET)
Table 'Yunnan II' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Hero ($122 in chips)
Seat 2: djforever ($225.40 in chips)
djforever: posts small blind $1
Hero : posts big blind $2

Holecards:
Dealt to Hero KK
RAISE djforever, $4 to $6
RAISE Hero , $10 to $16
CALL djforever, $10

Flop: (Pot: $32)
3A6
BET Hero , $22
RAISE djforever, $28 to $50
RAISE Hero , $56 to $106 and is all-in
CALL djforever, $56

Turn: (Pot: $244)
3A6 7

River: (Pot: $244)
3A67 5
>>>djforever said, "gg"

Showdown:
Hero : shows KK (a flush Ace high)
djforever: shows 54 (a straight flush Three to Seven)
djforever collected $243 .50 from pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot $244 | Rake $0.50

We're happy to report that we changed ISP's this past weekend and are now on our own dedicated equipment. Up until now, we have been co-located on a server with other websites. The server was in Canada so we had two issues that were causing speed/response-time problems. First, when other websites experienced high volume our speed was affected. Second, because the server was located in another country, there were basic internet connection issues from time to time.

We believe that the new ISP and the new dedicated equipment should greatly help to solve these issues and result in a faster performing site. Please let us know if you are seeing our pages load quicker. If you are still experiencing any speed issues, do not hesitate to drop me an email or post a comment to this blog entry. I'm at scot@tworags.com.

On another topic, we're in the process of redesigning the site. This should take another month or so to be implemented. The new look will give us a friendlier/less corporate look. It will also better highlight our focus on blogging, trip reports and room listings/reviews. If any of you are interested in seeing some of the new layouts and designs, we would be happy to share them with you and hear your opinions. In the near future, I'll probably post some JPG's of the new interface and ask for comments.

- Scot

Edmond and I met with the marketing folks at the Bike today and we were done around 5pm. I saw no reason to head out the door when the sweat sound of chips hitting the felt beckoned me to stay a while. Edmond agreed to play too, and we were both immediately seated at a $5/$5 table with $300-$500 stakes.

There were 1-3 empty seats during our 2 hour session and the play was fairly loose preflop with many limped pots. Standard 3x or 4x PF raises didn't usually accomplish much to thin the field, and often PF raises as much as $30-40 were made regularly. One guy even raised $100+ PF with one small raise in front of him and won the pot when he was called by two big cards. The $200 guy had 83o!

I bought in for the max $500 and in the first orbit I'm dealt K6 in late position. Four of us see a flop of:

QT6.

The SB makes it 40 and one other guys calls. I decide to make a loose call with botton pair, backdoor flush draw and position. I really did it more because of the position than anything else, but yes, it was a very iffy call.

The turn brings a club. The SB now makes it $100 and the other player folds. The SB was as deep as me so with a minimum of 9 outs and more likely up to 14 outs, it was an easy call for me. The river brought a club and didn't pair the board so I was fairly confident I had the nuts.

The SB made it $140 and had a few hundred left as did I. Now I don't like to hollywood, but to be honest, I hadn't checked my suits since the hand started and I was now not 100% sure I had the clubs -- only 99.8% sure. My problem was that if I looked back at the cards and then pushed it would be so obvious I had the flush. So I pretended to be ready to fold, looking at my cards and then purposely waited a good 30-40 seconds. Not for the hollywood effect, but to separate the looking at my cards from the pushing. Hey, I know it's hard for him to put me on the backdoor flush so it probably didn't matter. He called very quickly and the table clearly was not impressed with my suckout. Even Edmond gave me a look. Hey, it never sucks to win a $1,000 pot. Given the guy's quick call he likely had trips so my 5 outs might not have been good enough, but I guess two pair was possible too.

I stayed with a stack of $1,000 for the next hour or so. Didn’t catch many hands and when I did, I got no action. On two consecutive hands I hit two pair on the flop with QT, and got no action and then raised PF with QQ, got one caller, hit trips, made a standard continuation bet and got not action again. Soon thereafter, this hand came up. Edmond felt I played it like a donk. What do you think?

I’m dealt Q5 on the bottom. A bunch of limpers and I limp too. The flop comes down:

KJ2

An EP player makes it 15 and 2 callers so I call too with the the second nut flush draw. The turn brings the T so the board reads:

KJ2T

And now I have the open-ended straight draw and the second-nut flush draw. It’s checked to me and I make it $30. It’s folded to the guy to my right who raises it $60. He could have a made hand or also a Q. I don’t think he has a K given his call of a small bet on the flop, but I guess KT is possible or even TT.

I'm thinking that he might even have the A so perhaps I don't want to see a club at all. In fact, maybe a miss is my best bet because the club could mean a big loss and an A or 9 might simply be a split pot.

I decide to call and a junk card falls on the river. The guy checks to me. Hmmm… He’s a tight player, but he is not a bad player. The raise on the turn could have meant so many things: he didn’t believe my bet and wanted to take it away with a so/so hand or a draw, he had a draw too with the A, etc. Anyway, no way I’m winning this hand with a check and with both draws missing I felt it was EV to take the chance so I bet $100. He called me with the nut flush! It turns out that I was drawing dead.

Everyone was congratulating him for his check, but I don’t think it was a good move. He didn’t know that I had a missed draw and if I did I wasn’t always betting there. I think he needed to bet there to get value out of his hand the most often. Thoughts on my play and his check?

Going forward nothing very exciting happened. I raised quite a bit with hands like AQ, KQ, 88, etc., and every time got callers and then had to surrender my hand on the flop either to an EP raise or to a RR or call after I made a CB.

There was one hand where I screwed up just a bit (or should I say another hand). I had a flush draw on the turn with second pair and an A on the board. My opponent raised $50 and I’m getting almost 2-1 to call. I have at least 9 outs, but more likely he only had an A so I could have up to 14 outs. I looked at the guy’s stack and he only had $100 more. I just didn’t feel like calling with such a small stack behind him, but I guess it was close.

I decided to leave at 7pm and locked in a profit of $150. Not great, but better than a losing session. I didn’t play my best poker, I probably fell too much into the slow rhythm of the game instead of forcing my opponents to play my game a little more. Does that make any sense? I’m not sure even I understand what I mean!!!

** BTW, we both ate a delicious chicken kabob dinner which was on the house. The service and food at the Bike is always first rate. The players were friendly and management handled a little screw-up very professionally. Here's what happened to the best I can tell. A guy gets busted and buys in for another $130 or so and is waiting for his chips. Somehow he ended up with $230, but only $130 was his, he owed the dealer $100. He proceeds to get into a hand where he doubles up and the opponent gives him $230. Well, a few minutes later everyone realizes that he owes the dealer $100 and the other player $100. He doesn't want to give it back. He finally does, but it takes at least 5 minutes for it to happen. Ed, please correct me if I didn't get the details exactly right.

I had registered for the Pokerstars free-roll blog championship. The tournament started at 12pm CA time, but we had plans to at 12:15 and wouldn't be back for about 3 hours. That gave me 15 minutes to play like a complete maniac and see what I could do with my stack. I figured if I could double or triple my stack size, I might have something left when I returned.

We started with 10k in chips and just went at it from the first hand. For example, on the first hand a guy raises to 150 and there were 3 callers. I quickly made it 3k to go and took it down. This type of thing happened for the first orbit and I was sitting with 16k. So I had substantially increased my stack with no regard for what hand I had and without ever going past the flop. Of course someone could have woken up with a hand, but I tried to feel it out and determine to the best I could when people were hedging their bets.

I then called a raise with 66 and flopped trips. I made pot sized bets against one opponent, but the river brought both the flush and straight possibilities so when he checked to me on the river I checked too. Of course he got there so I was back down to 11k. No problem, within the next orbit I got back up to 19k. That's when my wife came in and told me we had to go. i didn't think a 19k stack was enough to last until I got back, so now I decided to push on every hand until I got called hoping to suck out.

I raised or re-raised all-in on 4 consecutive hands. On the 4th hand a guy called me with AT. I had only 97, but wasn't that far behind. He won the hand and I kept doing it again while my wife yelled from the car for me to join her! I got into two more 40/60 type all-ins and lost them both and I was put out of my misery for good!

Anyway, the moral of the story is that if I actually played like a maniac, BUT had a bit more control it would have really been interesting. I assume this is the way a lot of the better tournament players do it. They start off very, very aggressive to try and build a stack quickly. In this case if I didn't need to do the all-in trick and simply kept on pushing the edges when I knew that guys were not willing to take chances early on, I would have had no problem doubling or even tripling my stack fairly quickly.

I was just playing a 6-handed turbo on PS when this hand came up:

******************************************************************
Big Blind is t400 (3 handed)

Hero (t4855)
BB (t2220)
Button (t1925)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, T.
1 fold, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: (t650) 9, 8, 7 (2 players)
Hero bets t800, BB raises to t1795, Hero calls t995.

Turn: (t4240) Q (2 players)

River: (t4240) J (2 players)

Final Pot: t4240

Hero has Ks Ts (straight, king high).
BB has 9s Qd (two pair, queens and nines).
Outcome: Hero wins t4240.

******************************************************************

Right after the hand the guy I beat starts saying things like 'what a joke', 'I can't believe you f*&&^^ called' and a bunch of things I'll leave to your imagination.

Let's look at the hand. PF I was a 65% favorite. The flop hit me very strong. I had two overs and an open-ended, so while I didn't know for sure, I likely had 14 outs when he pushed and I'm getting 3-1, so it was basically an autocall. As it turns out my outs were good so we were almost exactly 50/50.

My point is that he had no reason to go off... in fact, there's never a reason to go off. Usually the person who gets mad has no reason to be mad. This is poker. We all win when we're ahead, win when we're behind, lose when we're ahead and lose when we're behind. And you run the risk of looking stupid. Either because you're a bad sport, or in situations like this case, you are just plain wrong when you're complaining so you look really stupid.

So the next time you bust out, just shut the (*&%$% up and walk away.

Played in the October tournament series at the Bike last night. The buy-in was $350 with 200 or so runners. I got home around 3:30am and only slept for about 4.5 hours so I'm running on fumes. Here is a quick summary. I'll fill in the gaps in the next post:

- podiman was in from NY and invited me to join him at the Bike last night
- we both made it deep. Podiman was knocked out with about 4-5 tables left. I made it to 19th, just in the money.
- my $525 win amounts to about $25 per hour. Wow!
- I called a guy a pussy after he yelled at a guy for cracking his Aces. The problem was I did this without first even looking to see if i could take him! I was in the 9 seat, he was in the 1 seat, so I never got a good look at him. Luckily, he was not very big and didn't give me any trouble.
- Was short all night. Just grinded the best I could. Was all-in 5 times. Once we had the same hand. The other 4 times I was either about 50/50 or 40/60. Won all 4.
- Had a few big hands in the last few hours when the blinds were high. KK/KK/QQ/AK/AK/AQ. Not EVEN ONE time did anyone raise in front of me or call my raise. Not once. Could never pick up a big hand, or any hand for that matter when I needed one.
- Finally busted when I had to make my 100th move to keep a manageable stack when the 900/1800 blinds were about to hit me and my stack was only 6500 or so.
- This was a bounty tournament. They gave you $25 for every person you knocked out. I played for 7+ hours, made it to 19th and never busted another player. In fact, never was even in a position to bust another player.

I'll fill in some details after I get some sleep.

- S

I haven't played online in months since the old neteller days and wanted to try my hand at some of the wcoop events so Adam suggested I give ePassporte a try. Well I have and so far NO GOOD. I first tried using my Visa card and it was rejected. No biggie. I assumed it was one of those issues with the credit card company not wanting to fund a gambling site so I thought I would use the bank account option. I tried that but received a 'communication error.'

I next tried a second CC and it worked fine. Only funded $150 to start. I won my first $109 sng, but then bubbled a few times, and had a few interesting hands so I needed to reload. Today I tried to use the CC again and received a 'rejected by your bank' error. I called my bank and they told me that they not only didn't reject any transaction, but there wasn't any transaction. So I called epassporte and after waiting on hold for a while was told that they have been having a CC processing issue since Sunday. What? Is this a some type of Mickey Mouse operation? The guy told me to try a bank account. I mentioned that I did on Friday, but received an error. He knew about that but said it was a problem last week and they worked it out. This is not good!

Anyway, I decided to try the bank account option again and received the same error again. Oh, well. I guess I can ask some friends to transfer some money to my account, but maybe this is a sign. Who knows.

I was reading Bond18's recent post The Worst Player I know and it made me think of a video I saw a while back. If you enjoy watching guys go off on their opponent after receiving a bad beat, you'll love this one. Enjoy!

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First Satellite

I made it the Commerce around 3pm. The tournament wasn’t starting until 7pm so I had plenty of time to play a one table satellite. They were running plenty of $120’s so I immediately sat down at one and it started within a few minutes. I only recognized a few regular local pros at the table. A few of the guys seemed pretty green and nervous. One guy asked if anyone was interested in a $50 last longer and I was the only taker. This in itself told me that the table was inexperienced because at the WSOP about 5-6 guys would always want to do it.

We start with $1k in tournament chips and 25/25 blinds/15 min levels. I was fairly card dead and didn’t play many hands. Given the fact that we only start with $1k in chips, it’s dangerous to splash around too much at the start, so I tried to find a good hands. Unfortunately it never happened. When the blinds got to 50/100 I was in the SB with AT and about 550 chips. The button had me covered and pushed. I thought for just a bit and decided to call. He was on a steal with Q8 and my hand held up. On the very next hand I raise to 250 with KJs from the button when folded to me. The BB pushes for 300 more so I’m getting over 2-1, which made it an easy call. He had A8 so I was 46% to win and a J on the turn made my 46% good. My last-longer partner busted out soon there-after so now I’m only in for $70.

Unfortunately, nothing much good happened after my KJ hand. I still never saw a premium hand and didn’t have many steal opportunities. With blinds at 200/400 and 4 people left I’m in the BB and the button pushes and has me covered. I have 850 left after posting the BB and look down at 89s. Not great, but it’s 850 to win 1450 so I’m getting 1.7 to 1. His range is super wide here, likely two overs which I would be 41% to, but he could have one over too with a hand like A5 so I would be a bit closer to 50/50, he could have an under pair which would put me at 50/50 or an overpair which is the only hand I don’t want to see; but this is by far his least likely holding. More important, was the fact that after this hand I have to post the SB and will be left with 650. Any hand I play for the next few hands I’ll definitely need to go to showdown and I won’t be able to win this many chips. Anyway, what seemed at first to be a so-so decision became an easy call for me. He had K7, so I was in okay shape, but his hand held. If you’re interested, here’s a link to an EValuator scenario which looks at this:

Link to scenario 1

This scenario assumes all 4 holdings for my opponent are equal, and of course the are not. Here’s what I believe is a bit more realistic based on the situation:

Link to scenario 2


Second Satellite

It was still only 5pm when I finished the first satellite so I signed up for a second $120. This time I recognized about 5-6 of the players from previous tournaments. Warren Karp was seated to my right. Warren told me about a horrible beat he suffered in the Main Event this year of the WSOP. It was day 5 and they were down to 70 players. Warren had about $1 million in chips and was on the button with blinds of 15/30k. An UTG player makes it $100k and it folds to Warren. He looks down at AA. He feels that the UTG player was likely to have a hand in the JJ-KK/AK range and felt there was a decent likelihood that he would call an all-in. This player had about $1.2 million.. The average stack was about $1.5 million. Warren pushes and the UTG player calls quickly. Guess what he had? 55! Can you believe this guy plays for 5 days, made it this far, is in reach of going really far and calls off almost his entire stack with 55! It boggles the mind. Of course the guy turns a 5 and Warren is out. Oh, well! Warren still had a very nice payday, but it was very painful.

On to the satellite. On the very first hand the UTG player limps for 25. I'm just to his left and look down at 67 and decide to call too. The button and both blinds call. The flop comes 389. A straight flush draw… not bad. The SB makes it 75, the BB calls, I call and the other two players call. The turn was the beautiful 5 so now I have the nuts. The SB pushes, the BB calls (what is going on here?) and I call. SB had 99 so he flopped trips and the BB had A 3 so he has a flush draw. I manage to dodge about 15 outs and triple up. Not bad. I tightened up a bit for a while, but did win a nice pot when I see a flop with KQ and hit trip Q's on the flop.

We got down to 3 players and I was the chip leader, but when one of the remaining players took out the other guy he had a 30-50% chip lead on me. He asked if I wanted to chop and offered me 500 in tournament chips and I took it. He was only getting about $100 more than me, so it seemed like a pretty good deal given that the blinds were now at 400/800 and he was a solid tournament player so it would be a crap shoot going forward.

Tournament

I didn’t recognize anyone at my table, but for the most part the majority of players were solid and experienced. This was a big contrast to my experience at the WSOP where 7 out of 10 players were extremely green and nervous at each starting table. We start with $2k in chips and 25/25 blinds. Levels are 40 mins. This is a very fast structure and you need to get hands and quickly build your stack or you’ll be dead. The next level is 25/50, followed by 50/100 and then 75/150.

I was completely card dead for the first 3 levels. I never saw a pocket pair and the only big A I was dealt was AQ on the 3rd hand. My one mistake – perhaps – is that I splashed around quite a bit. I often limped from MP through LP with suited connectors and I called a few raises from the blinds with hands like AT. I never hit a flop, but I did have a few draws so lost a bit more when I called a bet to see another street. I won one hand in total during these levels – I had KQs and I called a guy down on the flop and turn with a K high board. If he pushed on the river I might have folded, but he checked on the river (I was out of position and checked to him on every street).

It might sound like I was playing very weak-tight, but the cards really dictated my play. Sure I could have made some big bluffs with nothing, but there really was no need for anything crazy yet. I had time -- or so I thought I did!

Towards the end of the 50/100 level I was down to 1300 in chips. I felt it was still just a bit early to push to steal the blinds and I didn’t like raising with only 13bb, so my goal was to go for a steal raise all-in. I couldn’t find a good situation, but then was dealt 88 UTG. As I said, I could have pushed, but felt it would be better to limp, hoping for someone to try and raise and then I would push. That’s what happened. UTG+1 also limps (very loose player) and a somewhat loose player in MP makes it 325 and I push. He pegs me as a tight player and went into the tank. He’s getting about a 50% overlay on his call. He asks if I have QQ/JJ and mumbles something like 'these are the only hands I want to see.'

This tells me that he has AK and he’s worried I have AA or KK. I really think if I said something like 'not QQ/JJ, a little better but you might have one over, who knows!' he might fold. But to be honest, I was more than happy to go against AK and get back into the tournament so I didn’t say much of anything. He counts out the pot and comes to the conclusion that he needs to call. He did have AK and I’m really not sure why it took him so long. He wasn’t concerned about the player to the left of me because this guy was very loose and it was clear he didn’t have much.

Of course an A came on the flop and I was out. The good news was that it was quick and painless and I got to go home at a reasonable hour and watch some of the US Open Women’s semi-finals on TIVO.*