Friday, December 24, 2010

A Good Couple of Days for Live Poker

 

Day One

At some point I will get back to doing the WPBT weekend wrap-up. After getting my ass kicked playing poker in Vegas I had to wait a little bit to play after getting back. Wednesday was a day off and I wanted to get as much felt time in as possible so a little after 9am I headed to the Tampa Hard Rock.

They have a new room that was opened a few day prior that has somewhere near 50 tables in it. The room is laid out nicely with room to walk between tables no matter where you are in the room. One noticeable fail is the bathrooms. They are just for the poker room but they are way to small. The mens room has two urinals and two stalls. One positive is they have a computer right when you walk into the room where you can check your comp balance and sign-up for the wait lists. You get $0.60 per hour for games up to 1/3 and $1 for games bigger than that, which is more than you get from other rooms in the area.

Little did I know when I arrived there they were running a high hand promotion every half hour. You had to qualify with quads and both had to be in your hand. It was $500 every 30 minutes and if there wasn’t a winner it rolled over to the next half hour. When I arrived there was a good 15 tables running. I was able to get a seat at a 1/2 ($100 max) table as none of the 1/3 ($300 tables) were running yet.

I won a little bit and was up to around $130 when I picked-up A-K and raised it up to $10 and received a one caller. Flop comes Qh-10h-X. My opponent checks and I decide to check it back. Turn comes the Ah. My opponent leads for $15. If I’m calling the turn I’m going to call his $30 shove on the river which in all likelihood is coming. I tank call and the river brick comes and I call the shove. He turns over the Kh-Jh for the royal. He wins the $500 high hand for the half hour and a $500 bonus for a royal. One interesting thing is that you have to get to the river for the high hand to count. His $15 turn bet almost lost him $1k. He was damn lucky that I happened to have an ace in my hand.

After losing about $85 I moved over to the 1/3 table and sat with a full $300. After dropping down to $225 or so I picked-up the hand of the day. I called a raise to $8 with Qd-Jd along with a couple others and the flop came Kd-8d-5d. Pre-flop raiser bets $20 and I am the only caller. Turn is the 10d and opponent leads for $25. Does he have the Ad here? I call and see the beautiful looking 9d on the river. Opponent leads for $50 and I ship my remaining $160 or so. He immediately says “really?”. There is really only three hands I can shove on the river there, two straight flushes and the Ad. Well it’s obvious my opponent has the Ad now. He tanks for a good three minutes and calls. Now I have to wait 25 minutes for the high hand to hold. I really have to run bad if someone hits a royal before time is up.

So the half hour comes to a close and since the last half hour didn’t have a winner I am in line to win $1k. About four minutes into the next half hour I still hear nothing and I am in a limped pot with 8-8. Flop come 10-8-8. Flop gets checked through and I call a $5 bet on the turn. River is checked to me and I bet $20 and everyone folds. I show the quads and yell “floor”. The floor comes over and I ask if it’s a new half hour and they say it is, they just didn’t have time to announce it yet. That’s $1k in the bank and I get to sweat another half hour for $500 more. It ends up holding and I win $1500 in high hands. After tipping the dealer (who dealt me both) and my profits I walk out with around $1600 more than what I came with. Not a bad day.

Day Two

After working for my last half day of the year I headed to Tampa Downs. I waited for about 30 minutes before a new table was opened. I played for around 90 minutes and had a $3 profit. Not really wanting to play any more cash games I opted for the tournament. This is by far the best structure you will ever find in a tournament. Check it out here. We started with 20k in chips and 20 minute levels. There were 59 runners and it paid the top five.

The structure almost proved to be too good. We made the final table after 5 1/2 hours of play. I was never all-in for my tournament life the whole time. When we reached nine-handed I just wanted to go home. Someone proposed an even chop of $445 each and I agreed. Average stack at the time was 130k and I had 176k. I was probably 2nd in chips at the time. I wasn’t about to hold the deal up cause I just wanted to leave after playing 14 hours the last two days. I ended up with a little over $300 profit on the day.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Micros–Holiday Special

You will have to watch this several times just to get half the stuff.  Awesome!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Saturday, December 18, 2010

WPBT Part Two

Friday morning I slept in a little and went off to play the Wynn $120 tournament at noon. I was able to build up to around 16k from the 10k start in the 3rd level when I check-raised all-in with a gutter, flush draw and overs. I was called by 2nd pair Laughing out loud and couldn’t hit the 18 outer. One of these days I will hit the 18 outer, I just don’t know when.

I did a whole lot of nothing for a while before I went to check out the bloggers at the MGM for some mixed games. Nothing was going early so I made it over to my favorite room. Excalibur. In nine previous sessions there I had yet to post a losing session, that this day would be no different. There was one cowboy hat in the game along with three other good spots. I turned my $200 into $600 in a couple hours.

I didn’t have too many exciting hands but the two most profitable were both against the cowboy hat. I flopped the nuts with Q-10 in a K-J-9 flop and bet every street, $20, $40 and $100 and was called down. The other hand was a flopped top set and I was called on the flop and turn before he gave up.

After the win I walked over to the MGM again and got in on the second 3/6 mixed table to open. I played with $100 for like 3-4 hours with the likes of Poker Grump, Josie, Luckbox, CK and Jess Welman. I ended up losing about $40. I must say Josie runs really well, check out the details here. After playing till about 1:30 or so I called it a night.

Part three to include a Winter Classic recap. Till then….

Thursday, December 16, 2010

WPBT Recap – Part One

 

Thursday – The Arrival

Arrived in Vegas early Thursday morning and grabbed a cab to Paris. I was shocked that I was able to check-in before 10am and I actually got some work done. I was not impressed with the room though. Everything just seemed to be old. For a lesser price, I think Harrah’s (where I stayed the last four nights) is much nicer.

I played the Noon tournament at Caesars. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of t7500 to start and 20 minute levels. Last time I played this one I think it was 40 minutes, maybe I’m mistaken. I bowed out fairly early with nothing eventful happening.

After busting I walked over to Flamingo for some 1/2 action. I can’t remember how I did exactly, but I am pretty sure that I lost around half of a buy-in. After that was over I walked over to the IP to look for some bloggers but found none (it still was kinda early). I blasted through $100 at a five handed 2/4 LHE table in about 1/2 hour winning exactly one hand.

Done with poker for the day I played some Pai Gow and ran good to end up around $100. After some Pai Gow the bloggers started showing. After some BS time I walked over the the Venetian to sweat the Thursday Night game with CK and AlCantHang. CK will now be known as the Asian Cooler (or AC for short). I ended up losing my bet literally on the last play of the game. Tennessee with the back-door cover FTL, FML.

I recovered to win around $40 at Pai Gow back at Paris before calling it a night.

Part two later….

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

WPBT and Current Legislation

As I write this I am less that 24 hours away from hopping on a flight and making my way to Vegas for the WPBT festivities. I didn’t make it last year and I vowed to never do that again.

Reid Legislation

I have done a couple of articles on Rakeback the last few days, which can be seen here and here. Since the last article was posted it looks like the fate of PokerStars and Full Tilt has reverted back to version one and if passed they would be out for a significant amount of time (39 months). Now it looks as if no legislation will pass before year end, which may end up being a good thing.

If legislation pushes through I wouldn’t like seeing the 15 month blackout of online poker. I mean, I do make some money writing about it. What would really suck is to see Stars and Tilt not be available immediately after the blackout is lifted. You would think those sites would be able to grease the wheels with a little bit of extra cash. Isn’t that what Washington is after anyways? Agree to pay a $20 million fine or something like that.

Now the question to answer is what to do with my online money? I’m certainly not worried about not getting it back. I’m looking at how I can profit most before a possible blackout. I think my best shot is to start playing some steps. Try to get as many step 6’s (on Full Tilt) and step 5’s (on PokerStars) as I can. If the US players get shut out of the market they would have to give you cash value for them, right?

I guess it’s time to start grinding away at them. Even if nothing happens between now and the end of the year, the worst that could happen is me having a boatload of step tickets in the bank. That’s not all bad.

After all, I have been running good in the step 1 super turbos lately:

image095

Sunday, December 5, 2010