I lied

I did. I lied.

Last week I said we'd be back to playing the PokerSlut Tour this week, but alas, we won't be.

Some stupid little holiday is interfering with my poker. 'Nuff said.

So, go watch the Olympics with some take out and snuggle up to whatever floats your boat.

PokerSlut Tour will return next week. Yeah, I'm sure. I already checked. No, really.

AIPS Recap

Edit: I apologize, stud recaps apparently are never meant to be done. Be warned.

Last night started a new season for AIPS. I have finished in the top 10 in the season standings the last two years but I am still looking for my first banana. Event #1 thus year was Stud. It's not my favorite game to play by any means but I always seem to fare well in Stud events. I guess I just suck a little less than the rest of the tourney donk crowd.

The structure was a good one, 2500 chips to start, 15 minute levels and starting at 25/50 so the first couple levels actually mean something. You can see people spew off 40% of their chips in the first level alone. There was 51 runners and the final table would be paid. My starting table looked as follows:

Seat 1: joelok (2500 in chips)
Seat 2: BigAl (2500 in chips)
Seat 4: glance302 (2500 in chips)
Seat 5: miccky j (2500 in chips)
Seat 6: scottc25 (2500 in chips)
Seat 7: McCordPoker (2500 in chips)
Seat 8: Poeben (2500 in chips)

I only recognized glance302 and Poeben from prior AIPS events with the rest complete unknowns. The first two levels was a slow climb and at the end of level 2 I was sitting on t3010 in chips. The first really big hand of the day came in level 3 against a short stack of t1200.

I started with (AA)K
10s completes
3c 2bets
I flat - probably a bad play, I need to get the 10s out and go heads-up.

4th street Me - (AA)K7
Villan - (xx)3J

Betting was capped on 4th street and the rest of his chips went all-in on 5th. He opened up (JJ)3J and I never improved and was left with t1625 after the hand. The rest of level 3 and level 4 I pretty much tread water and ended with t1845.

Level 5 I was able to chip up to t2830 by winning two pots. Fast forward to level 6 I lost a monsterpotten to rascony with kings up against aces up and I was crippled to t850. I was able to pick up a couple more pots to stay alive but anted down to t1215 at the end of level 7. Beginning level 8 I was able to double through PokerGeekMN on back to back hands.

Seat 2: scottc25 showed [Ac 2h Ah 3h 3c Kd 2d] and won (2750) with two pair, Aces and Threes
Seat 3: PokerGeekMN showed [Js 9s Tc Jd 9h 2c 5c] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Nines

Seat 2: scottc25 showed [Kd Ks Jd Qc 3s 5d 5s] and won (5820) with two pair, Kings and Fives
Seat 3: PokerGeekMN showed [8h 8d 4s 6s 9h 6h Ad] and lost with two pair, Eights and Sixes

After those two hands I was sitting on t5830 and a healthy stack.

Working down to the the final tables we hit a major hurdle at 14 people. I think we were sitting on that number for nearly 1/2 hour. In that time I bounced around quite a bit between 6th and 12th. Working out way to the final table I busted two players to give me a nice final table stack:

scottc25: shows [Jd 7d As Tc Ac 4d 6h] (a pair of Aces)
PokerGeekMN: shows [2c Qc 5c 8c 5s Js Ad] (a pair of Fives)

The last of PokerGeek's chips made it in on 6th street. Shortly after that I broke the double bubble of the cash and final table with the following:

scottc25: shows [6s Ad Ac 6c 6h 3h Kc] (a full house, Sixes full of Aces)
carbidexxx: shows [9d Ah Kh As 2h 8c 7c] (a pair of Aces)
scottc25 collected 23750 from pot

Starting the final table the stacks were as follows:

Seat 1: ru47suited (19920 in chips)
Seat 2: scottc25 (34910 in chips)
Seat 3: BigAl (26295 in chips)
Seat 4: zorag (11350 in chips)
Seat 6: jherky psych (16120 in chips)
Seat 7: drewfin03 (14285 in chips)
Seat 8: RiceF88 (4620 in chips)

There was only 7 people as someone busted on the other table right before I busted carbidexxx. I was able to hold on to the chip lead for quite a while until we reached 4 handed. Sitting 4 handed the other 3 opponents played a massive pot which busted one and crippled the other. I ended up taking out jherkey psych in 3rd.

(click to enlarge)

All of the chips were in on 3rd street. I actually had to hit on 7th after his runner runner runner boat when I held one of his 4's. Going into heads-up I was a 2-1 dog in chips.

Seat 1: ru47suited (83350 in chips)
Seat 2: scottc25 (44150 in chips)

I was able to flip the script once where i held the 2-1 lead. I had a run of about 8 bring-ins in a row and my opponent had and ace door card 4 or 5 of the times. I was chopped down to even stacks when I lost the big pot to chop one of my legs out:

scottc25: shows [Qh Jc Js Ks Td Tc 2d] (two pair, Jacks and Tens)
ru47suited: shows [8d 8c 5s 9c 8h Kc Th] (three of a kind, Eights)

After the hand I was down 5:1 in chips. I was able to hang on for another 20 hands or so before I busted in 2nd.

ru47suited: shows [4h As 3s Ts 6h Kd 9s] (high card Ace)
scottc25: shows [Jc Qc 6c 3c 2s 7d 8h] (high card Queen)

All of the chips were in on 3rd street. As it turns out any pair or crub would have got me a double. I guess the whistle didn't work that time. Congrats to ru47suited, another Floridian from Bradenton on the win.

Winstar Report

I was in Dallas this past week and after work on Wednesday night I was able to take a trip up to Winstar. Thanks to rain and rush hour traffic it took me nearly two hours to get there. Pulling into the parking lot it almost didn't even look like the same place. The place is like 3 times the size of what it used to be and the tents are gone.

I was put on the waiting list for 1/2 and after about 15 minutes they opened up a new table. The first five hands were a whirlwind. Won the first, lost the second, lost nearly $100 on the 3rd hand with trip kings (vs someone playing K8), all in on the 4th hand and a win on the 5th hand to get back to the starting stack of $200.

After the early action I settled in. About 4 hours into the session and staying around even I finally was able to win a bigger pot and was sitting on around $260. There was a guy in the game that was playing fairly nitty, folding for $1 from the SB, etc. After he eventually loses his first buyin he has his seat locked up so he can get some more money. About 10 minutes later he comes back, buys in for $100 and says I'm all in dark. WTF? Did he just go take his crazy pill? He gets called by 1010 and loses. Very next hand he does the same thing saying "one last time I'm all in." Nobody calls. Very next hand he just limps and I look down at KK. Fuck me, one hands too late.

The very next hand he adds another $100 for $185 total (after losing some to me the previous hand) and says "OK one last time, I'm all in dark again." I look down and what do I see? KK again! I ship and everyone folds. He hasn't looked at his cards until the board runs out for the full sweat. I didn't have too long of a sweat when the flop came out KJJ. After the board ran out he flipped over AQ. How pissed would I have been if I lost that hand?

I ended up playing for another hour or so for a 5 hour session and walked away with $455 in front of me. I felt good about my nl game going in and it proved to be profitable.

PokerSlut Tour XVII Stud

WBCOOP #5 and Month-End Recap

Event #5 for the WBCOOP was last night on Poker Stars. The game was an 8-game mix. At my opening table of six there was only one other live player, a Spanish speaking dude from Montevideo, Argentina. After playing for real the first level of 2-7 we silently ended up trading blinds with the sit-outs. It took about 50 minutes to blind out the sit-outs and we both had 6k in chips with no risk. Next year they seriously need to look into the sit-out issues. Maybe no open registration until 1 hour before the event or something. In reading tweets I saw that change100 had nobody live at her opening table. Both gadzooks64 and jwthoma didn't have quite the same luck as I did, they had to actually play.

When I finally had a table full of live players it was jsut a steady increase for me. I didn't really have any serious drops in my stack at all. I quickly realized the spot to win money off of these muppets was in O8, Stud and Stud8. When we played NLHE and PLO I kinda just hung back and watched the donk on donk violence, although to be fair there really wasn't anything too extreme.

At my highest point I was sitting on a stack of around 20k. I had lost a couple of pots to dribble down to 14k when we were 10 spots away from the bubble when the big disaster hand came during 2-7. I was dealt 8753x and raised. Another big stack at the table 3-bet from the sb and I called. I dew one and hit the 2. Sb leads, I 2-bet and the sb 3-bets. Fuck. We are playing 1k/2k at the time. Sb stands pas as do I and I call the rest of the way down and lose to a #1. Ugh. After the hand I was left with 1700 chips 5 spots short of the money with less than 1 big bet left.

Two hands later in LHE I picked up A5 and raised to put the rest of my chips in. Next to act 3-bets and I am heads-up against K10. I flopped the ace and was able to nearly triple to a little over 5k. The bubble burst shortly after that.

Throughout O8, Razz, Stud and Stud8 I bounced around a bit but was able to work the stack up to 10k when we hit the NLHE rotation. Twice in NLHE I found AK and shipped my 10bb stack and got no callers. PLO went kinda meh and I was left with around 6k when we hit 2-7. I found a hand to go with but didn't win and I busted out 76th and won a SCOOP $11 ticket. Overall I am satisfied with the result.

January Summary

January started out good for me. Playing .25/.50 LHE I slowly increased the roll. One other big boost was having the $75 token at the beginning of the month and converting it to t216. I cashed out $150 of it to add to the roll and played the rest with no results. I did manage to get another $75 token but whiffed going to the t216 again. I made one other investment in a player for $50 which will return me some money.

Then the rush hit. Wanting to get in on the crystal meth of poker I started playing nl10. Early on I was winning. Then about a week ago I just ran into coolers. I was running big pairs and top top into sets and I dropped nearly 5 buyins. I then had the brilliant idea of short stacking nl50. Three $25 buyins later and I was stuck $125 on the day. All that work in the beginning of the month for nothing. Thankfully I made a small rally late in the month and after all was said and done I made a $38 profit for the month. Could have been soooo much more.

I ended up getting Bronze Iron Man on FT. Through Truly Free Poker Training I will be getting two weeks of Stox Poker. I plan on watching some micro NL videos to help the game out. My goal is to get to Silver this month with an outside shot at Gold. After I earn the points for the day on FT I will move over to Stars to build up the roll there. Hopefully I can get to nl25 by mid-March or so.

Live Blog for WBCOOP #4

Why the fuck not. Chances are I'm gonna bust out of this donkfest in 10 minutes anyway.

6:00 - Table 18, Zooks at Table 79. No shock but I don't recognize anyone. 5 sitouts all to my direct left. FML.

6:03 - The Brazilian to my left showed up. Joy!

6:08: Doubled through the Brazilizn. Rivered flush. 3600.

6:10 - Busted one, boat vs straight. After that Brazilian doubled through me when 1010 loses to QQ, at 4k

6:16 - Zooks moved to Table 110. South Ameros and Europeans hit time bank every single hand. WTF! I am beginning to tilt.

6:31 - Zooks doubles to 4700. She has to sit out a bit so she needed to double. Mission accomplished. I am at 4100.

6:48 - I must have the tightest table in blogament history. t3930.

6:55 - t3880 on break. We are down to 3 live players including me.

6:59 - Did 3 pull-ups on break. Man am I out of shape.

7:06 - Zooks t7690, me t4070

7:18 - Our 4 sitouts have 1 pass through the blinds left, finally, missed oesfd down to t3440.

7:22 - Zooks to table 170 and at t10,615

7:25 - yestbay1 moved to my table. Met him during 2008 winter gathering.

7:37 - 35k moved to immediate left, raises nearly every hand. Guess I'm playing for stack. t3900.

7:39 - Called raise with KQ. Flop QQ6. Check check. Turn 7 and I CRAI and called by AQ. Doh. River 6, weeeeee. 316 left.

7:43 = Zooks AA cracked, down to t1900. I'm at t3700.

7:46 - Dude to my left now has t50,000.

7:51 - Out 278th. Zooks just doubled to t5100.

7:55 - 2nd break Zooks at 5k.

8:04 - Zooks out 255th. KK down in flames to JJ pre. Someone said they folded J. J river.

That's it for the live blog. Out.

Part of the Rush

How many other clever titles can bloggers come up with to talk about their thoughts on Rush Poker? Rushin In, A Rush to Judgement, Hot Rushin Women, the possibilities are really endless.
Ok, so like everyone else I am becoming a fan of this for a few reasons. Granted the play is still atrocious, but I tend to think it could stay that way for a little while. Everyone has weighed in on some of the basic pros and cons, and really I don't have anything to add to that. So why rehash it and waste your precious time. I'll give my thoughts on the why and how I feel it is helping my game.

I could never get this many hands in consistently before this new invention. I'm convinced someone with small children came up with this idea. Columbo mentioned on his blog about patterns becoming increasingly "burned into" the brain and I couldn't agree more. Things are starting to click for me a little bit more. Given the fact that I am not multitabling these, I have been able to pay full attention, which has really helped me identify the hands that are bleeding money for me. Sometimes you need things to smack you between the eyes to recognize them, and this has done that for me.

I know one of the biggest concerns or "cons" for the Rush poker is the inability to make any reads on people. For me personally this is a good thing. Why you ask? Well, given the low limits available at these tables, most people aren't thinking that much. I tend to over think. This format has forced me to focus on bet sizing and gut instinct which I think is helping my game. I'm obviously not trying to down play how important reads can be at the tables, but I've been able to take a little bit of a positive from this aspect of the game.

Possibly the biggest thing I've been having to learn is seperating each hand from the next. This format forces you to do that with an entire table of new people. Once you fold the hand is gone and trying to mentally do that is sometimes tough. I feel like I'm getting a little better at this just because I have to be successful in this format.

We'll see how this all plays out. So far it has been a good run. Hopefully it continues. I'm very interested to see how it effects my live cash game play which with any luck may get a test at the end of next month.