I played this for a few hours last night, thinking the games would be softer than usual because of the current Five Diamond series they are running. Wrong. Almost everyone in the game was a regular, and although I was still one of the best players at the table, there … Read full post
I might as well disclose up front that I am not very good at or knowledgeable about fixed limit hold ’em. In some ways, that makes me unqualified to review a text on the subject, but it also plants me squarely within the target audience of Howard Lederer’s contribution to … Read full post
Sorry I don’t have an exact hand history, as this came from a heads up match on UB, which doesn’t write HH files to your hard drive, and on a computer without Poker Tracker. I was playing against an aggressive but not great player, and we had a history of … Read full post
Although retired FBI Special Agent Joe Navarro is the primary author of this book, the largest name on the cover is that of Phil Hellmuth. This establishes the tone of the entire book, whose very valuable core content is surrounded by an equal amount of fluff, hero worship, and self-promotion.… Read full post
Man I hate live poker tournaments. Only the biggest buy-in events have a reasonable structure, such that even when you’re playing for thousands of dollars, you don’t get a lot of room to play poker. But every now and again I tempted by them, because the atrocious play does kind … Read full post
Andy Bloch and Rafe Furst co-authored this chapter of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition. It’s a solid if elementary introduction to pot limit for players of no limit hold ’em and outlines the basic differences between the games, though not in great detail.
They correctly identify … Read full post
Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
5 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
CO: $784.95
Button: $146.10
SB: $662.20
Foucault: $702.30
UTG: $397.40
Pre-flop: (5 players) Foucault is BB with :4s :2d :3s :5d
UTG raises to $12, CO calls, Button folds, SB calls Foucault calls.… Read full post
Richard Brodie’s contribution to the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition is a solid introduction to playing online poker tournaments. As is appropriate for the format of a relatively short chapter on the subject, he focuses on broad strategic concepts such as when implied odds, blind stealing, continuation betting, … Read full post
On Friday morning, we got the chance to explore the region of Zion called The Narrows that we had to pass on Sunday. As the name suggests, it’s a particularly narrow portion of the canyon that is both one of the most scenic and one of the most difficult to … Read full post
The plan for Thursday was to rise early, rent appropriate gear, and hike/wade Zion’s most famous region, The Narrows. Emily woke up not feeling particularly well, however, and so we nixed that and I got breakfast alone while she slept.
I’m currently on vacation, spending Thanksgiving with my girlfriend in Utah’s Zion Canyon. Yesterday, we hiked a beautiful trail called Angel’s Landing. Though most of it was paved, it was still strenuous at times, as were ascending over 1000 feet in about two miles of horizontal distance.
We departed from … Read full post
The $500 NLHE Main Event was yet another in a long series “close but no cigar” FTOPS finishes for me. We started with quite deep stacks, and so I came out of the gate swinging:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter… Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
UTG+1: $1,960
UTG+2: $2,468
MP1: $2,114
Hero (MP2): $6,516
CO: $336
BTN: $1,092.70
SB: $2,411
BB: $2,543
UTG: $2,484
Pre-Flop: J
T dealt to Hero (MP2)
UTG raises to $70, 3 folds, Hero calls … Read full post
There are a lot of things I like about living in Boston that I didn’t like about the area where I grew up in Maryland. But I do miss my family, which particularly on my father’s side is very close, and nothing kills me like my 10-year old cousin Hannah, … Read full post
These hands were both against an absolutely atrocious player. The first one is pretty straightforward and solidified for me just how wide is range is going to be when he makes these stupid little 4-bets pre-flop:
Full Tilt Poker, $4/$8 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History … Read full post
I almost didn’t play the $500 HORSE FTOPS event last night because I was pretty tired, but generally the quality of play in these things is so bad, and the opportunity to play large-field, mixed-game tournaments so rare, that I didn’t want to pass it up. I had also forgotten … Read full post
Last night was the $300 rebuy with 6-handed tables, which is the FTOPS event in which I felt my edge would be largest. Though my finish wasn’t anything spectacular, I was quite happy with how I played. Here’s one kind of interesting hand:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 80/160 … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 2 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter
SB: $1,408.50
Hero (BB): $1,525
Pre-Flop: 4
4
dealt to Hero (BB)
SB raises to $30, Hero calls $20
Flop: ($60) J 7 7 (2 Players)
Hero checks, SB bets $40, Hero calls $40… Read full post
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday morning entitled, “Establishing Consistent Enforcement Policies in the Context of Online Wagers“. Annie Duke’s testimony has gotten particularly good reviews. It definitely helps to portray poker as a wholesome pursuit when a witness can open her testimony with, “As a … Read full post
The New Frontier was significant because it was the first of the ‘theme hotels’ that have become a Vegas staple.
My girlfriend was there in person and said there was like two inches of dust on the cars and sidewalk and everything in the vicinity and that the people nearby
This was a $200 PLO8 tournament, and needless to say there was some extraordinarily bad play to be seen. I ended up bubbling it, but you don’t care about that. Let’s look at some hands.
Coming Through the Back Door
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Blinds: … Read full post
These hands were all against StorkDelaMork. He’s a regular in the mid- to high stakes on FTP, pretty tight but also smart and capable of tricky play.
I Don’t Fold Sets
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): $3,374.50
UTG: $3,160.50… Read full post
Full Tilt Poker, $10/$20 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker Hand History Converter
Hero (BTN): $3,400.50
SB: $2,154
BB: $2,077
UTG: $3,869.50
CO: $3,701
Pre-Flop: A
T dealt to Hero (BTN)
UTG folds, CO calls $20, Hero raises to $90, SB calls $80, BB calls $70, CO folds… Read full post
Since I was away over the weekend, this was only the second FTOPS event I played. It was a $1000 NLHE tournament, and although I lasted about three hours, I really didn’t have any interesting hands come up. I ended up busting to this psychotic mouth-breather:
Full Tilt Poker, NL … Read full post
I spent the last few days in New Jersey and New York, visiting first a friend from high school who is now studying German literature at Princeton, then two friends from college who recently got engaged and are now living together in NYC, and finally having dinner at the home … Read full post
I’m in New York this weekend visiting my old friend and roommate Logan, and since two other players from the home game Logan ran for three years in Cambridge are also in NYC now, we were able to get a game going last night. We started out playing with $.50/$1 … Read full post
I’m currently reading Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities,” a gift from a friend of mine who is a student of German literature. It’s a very insightful and well-written book with a lot of humorous passages, though it’s a bit long-winded at times. Anyway, I recently came across a few … Read full post
Sorry I don’t have the exact HH for this, but it was from early in a nightly $129 bounty tournament on Ultimate Bet. Effective stacks were about 3000, with blinds 15/30.
The UTG player opened with a pot-sized raise to 105. The action folded to me in the BB, and … Read full post
I mentioned some time ago that Nat Arem was working on a documentary about a group of college students who had made a small fortune playing online poker. Well, the movie is finished now, and I’d suggest having a look. It’s broken into five parts, so you don’t have to … Read full post
Nothing exciting to report. It was a $200 tournament with 6 players to a table. My starting table was pretty soft but I never got anything going, despite a run of big starting hands. In the first hour I had Aces twice and Kings once but got no action with … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker blogger and editor (their book is pretty good, and addresses some subjects not covered by a lot of the poker literature) has an interesting piece on the applicability of international law to online gaming in the US. He mentions that superstar attorney Alan Dershowitz, representing BetOnSports, … Read full post
During the early stages of my Sunday tournaments, I was also playing a few cash tables, and ended up getting into a very interesting heads up match. The other guy was a decent player, reasonably aggressive, and in it for the long haul. In many circumstances, I’d actually prefer to … Read full post
Harvard Law School’s Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society is hosting a conference this Saturday entitled “Innovative Thinking: The Educational Value of Poker” featuring Jim McManus, Mike Sexton, and Dr. Alan Schoonmaker.
The conference will be a convening of academics, teachers, students, and other interested parties to analyze and discuss the … Read full post
Today’s Boston Globe ran an article about the Harvard Law School seminar that I attended recently. I remembered meeting this reporter but thought she was from Harvard’s paper, the Crimson. I probably would have put more thought into how I portrayed myself, but I think I come off … Read full post
After more than a year of playing all of the big Sunday internet poker tournaments, I finally won one of the @#$% things. There were 815 entrants in Ultimate Bet’s weekly $215 tournament, but they guarantee a $200K prizepool, so there was an overlay of about 20%. After just over … Read full post
Adanthar wrote a great piece recently about the potential effect of the Absolute Poker scandal on the Poker Player Alliance’s efforts to legitimize online poker in the US. He cites the lack of a market response to the revelations of cheating as evidence that informal regulation by the community of … Read full post
Full Tilt Poker
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Blinds: $3/$6
7 players
Converter
Stack sizes:
UTG: $588
UTG+1: $1034.10
Hero: $531
CO: $276.10
Button: $405
SB: $193.50
BB: $770.30
Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is MP1 with :ad :7s :4s :jd
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls $6 … Read full post
As some of you may know, the pending Massachusetts legislation that would legalize casino gambling also has the potential to make internet poker a crime. The Poker Players Alliance offers this quick and easy web application for generating a letter to Governor Deval Patrick and the appropriate representatives. I urge … Read full post
Ultimate Bet has recently introduced resizable tables for their poker client, meaning that you can now treat them like any other window on your computer and adjust their dimensions to fit as many as you like on your computer screen. This will likely have the effect of making the games … Read full post
Wednesday is the only weekday when I play tournaments anymore. I like the $300 weekly on Poker Stars with 20-minute blind levels, and because I’ve found that tournaments and cash games don’t mix well, I play some of the other big nightly tournaments to round it out. I can’t really … Read full post
October was a solid month for me. Unfortunately, I’m still not putting in enough hours. I’m only playing about 25 hours/week. Overall this year, I’ve only played about 2/3 as much as I was hoping to play. Combined with some sustained bad luck in tournaments, this means that I’m only … Read full post