ahhh....fulltilt again!

So I spent the past few days at my Aunt's place in Arizona, and was able to log a few hours on Fulltilt. I'll admit the first night I was a little rusty, and got involved in too many hands, ended the night down (hell, I'm only playing small stakes, so being down $7 wasn't too bad, but that meant that I ended down about 30%), but came back strong last night

Here's one thing I realized for sure: I stayed out of about 5 orbits around the table: post blinds and folded to any raises/flop bets. Then I was easily able to take 3 of the next 5 pots: first one I got pocket aces preflop, re-raised preflop, and bet the pot on the flop to take an OK pot. Then 2 of the next 4 hands I made a pre-flop raise or re-raise, and took down those pots uncontested. That put me up already. Then I just sat back again, and called a late-position raiser (who had never been challenged when he button-raised/re-raised since I sat down) from the BB with A-8 off. It was only $1.25 or something to see a flop, I was up and had a good table image that the players seemed to respect. Flop: 3-A-A. WAMMO!! Flop top set!! I bet about 1/3 of the pot: want it callable; he re-raises me... I called. At this point I'm actually worried I might be outkicked. Turn comes a 6, I make a small bet - 1/4 the pot or so - he re-raises. I type "You got the other one, huh?" and there's no response. This may have been a mistake on my part. The river comes the perfect card: 8. I have the stone-cold nuts. I bet smallish; he re-raises - doubles my bet; I re-re-raise which would've put him all-in = INSTANT fold. I type "I thought so."

I've been going back over this hand in my head, and I really think I should NOT have typed the "You have the other one." I wanted him to think I was bluffing him in the chat, but due to my table image I now doubt he'd put me on that since I got SO heavily involved in that one pot. Of course he wanted me to think he had the ace (and if he did, amazing lay-down!), but I think my image and the all-in push made him realize that I wouldn't have done that without an ace. At that point in the hand, you're betting for one of a very few reasons: 1) you're weak, and want your opponent to fold, 2) you're strong, and want a call/re-raise. Unless I have the nuts here, if I was re-raised (even holding an ace in this situation), I would probably NOT re-raise unless the other player had shown weakness throughout the hand. Re-raising means that I'm probably only going to get called by a hand that can beat me. If I have close to the nuts, I'll flat call - just incase I'm beat. If I'm weak but have shown strenght throughout (and conversely, my opponent only came to life on the river really), I may try to bet my opponent out of the pot). But often enough at this point the pot is large enough that simply calling in the long run will be more profitable (as it will guard against being played back at and needing to seriously consider folding).

It was nice: ended up about $25 up for the session; went and played Razz for a half-hour and did a very similar thing: fold fold fold fold fold, and when I came to life I got respect. I folded my way down a bunch, and in one hand came back to even, then started playing a little bit more, went up some, and ended down about $3 for razz due to a seriously bad chase (by the end I knew I was beat, but with a $0.50 bet to win over $3, I had to call with my A-2-3-6-7, even though I figured I was beat. If he was trying to pull off a bluff, after what I had invested it'd been awful, and after investing what I did odds dictated my calling. Ah, well - two nights of playing, about 2.5 hours, and up about $15. Not stellar, but good enough.

Here's the funny thing: both nights I had planned on doing at STT, but thought again and said, "eh, that'd take an hour - I'll probably go to bed before then" only to find myself on both nights for over an hour!

AHHH!! Felt good to play again!

Wednesday night I will be checking out the freeroll tournament, and am most definitely looking forward to sitting down for a "live game." Next Friday I may check out the tourny at work: this week it's gonna be a pot limit Stud/8 tourny. I may change my mind as it's not my best game, but we'll see. But come hell or high water, I'm playing live cards this week!!!! :)

- thePokerDegen

....and he's BACK!

FINALLY, finally, finally -- ended up staying longer than expected at work last night; nothing on the plate for the evening so I decided I'd stay and use the ultra-super-hypersonic-fast internet connection at work to play a little online poker. While I'd love to have played at my regular stomping grounds (FullTilt), even for play money, I know - if they wanted to - the network admins could track any and everything done over the network (and esp. being "after hours" may have triggered a red flag), and honestly I'd like to keep my job, so I tried out this other site I knew of: www.nlop.com. Nothing to download - it's run within a browser using Flash. Perfect.

Bluff Magazine is now one of their sponsors, and they basically run freerolls that (eventually, you have to qualify etc etc etc) offer prizes - including some seats into some big tournys, cash, all that fun stuff. I hadn't played there before, and figured it's better than nothing. So I log in, and get on the list for the next available Sit 'n Go. About 30 seconds later, I'm playing again!! Woo-hoo-hoo!! The drought is over! :)

So the table appears, and I think -- wow, this is gonna suck. starting stack of 500, blinds 10/20 (if you play RiverChasers, imagine a starting stack of 50 blinds 1/2 instead of the usual starting stack of 100). Crap shoot, I'm thinking. I end up drawing the cutoff seat. Cool - late position, maybe start of with a little tester-blind stealing.

The cards are dealt, and - out of the 9 people at the table, 7 people are limping into the first hand!! With all but one early acting opponent limping, I realize this is going to be very much no fold 'em hold 'em. I had crap (J 6 off I think), so I bail on the first hand. Flop comes rags - sb checks, bb bets 20, everyone calls! Betting 20 into a 140 pot?! I'm realizing NOW that no, this is NOT going to be no fold 'em -- this table is going to be ruled by AGGRESSION. I think turn/river everyone checked.... amazing. Next hand - more of the same (but I take quick notice that the same guy who folded preflop previously also folds this hand -- here's gonna be the competition I imagine).

SO - 3rd hand, I'm 3 off the button, AK off, some limpers, and I decide to raise to 95. BB calls, everyone else folds. "Perfect," I'm thinking, "exactly what I thought - they're all going to be very unwilling to invest that much into a pot. Agression will be THE key in this game." Flop comes something raggedy, I'm not even close to connecting, BB checks, I bet about 130 - BB folds. I take down a good size pot. Now I can sit back and coast through the rest of the blind rounds and see if anyone has taken notice that the aggressive play worked.

No. No one here seems to have a clue. No preflop raises; limpers all around - and always min. bets on the flop. Incredible. "Oh how I wish the players on FullTilt would all play like this!" I think to myself! The one player who also folded the first two hands I'm betting is a decent player: he too knows that getting involved early isn't always necessary, that a medium sized-pot in the next round or the 3rd round will be equal-or-greater than a big pot now.

I picked up another pot with a legit hand this time that I got to showdown: I flopped a set of queens and had two players pay me off (busted one of them who hit bottom pair with a horrible kicker)... was glad the rest of the table saw that hand, though - they'll give me credit for the other two pots I won (IF, that is - and that's a BIG if - they're even paying attention like that!). Someone else busted out with crap, and there's three of us dominating the play at this point: me, the other guy I thought would be the competition, and another guy who I think started to watch us put pressure on the players and started getting aggressive (though I DID completely steal a pot off him when I raised on the button preflop with 6/3 off, which he was the only caller, and when he checked the flop to me and I bet the pot, he went away --- why can't they ALL be this easy! :) ).

So the three of us are dominating the table, and end up taking the rest of the table out, me the big stack, the other two tied - but I've got a big lead. I stole another couple of pots, and then got VERY unlucky: I think my dominating put one of the other players on tilt, as he ended up going all-in preflop with 5/2 off; I had 99 - nice hand for three-way, and I had like 2500 chips to his 700, so I called. Flops two pair, he's doubled up. We go back and forth for the next blind round, and then the blinds start having big impacts on him and the other player: I've got over 50% of the chips in play, and am pressuring when I have a decent starting hand, and not pushing too hard. The 5/2 dude busts next when he went all-in on the flop (after, btw, calling a preflop raise of about 200) when hit bottom pair; he gets called by J's, and the 5/2 dude called with 7/3!! wow.....

Heads up with the player I picked out at the get go (and who I tried to stay out of the way of most of the tournament). Two hands later, it's done when his KJ failed to improve (oh yea, and my KK hits a set on the flop). VICTORY IS MINE!!

BOY it felt nice to play again!! And yea, the competition was lame (at least 'till it got down to 4-handed), but still - it was a nice feeling. I can't WAIT to play again! I may check out that freeroll place tomorrow night just to see what it's all about; if not I'll be checking out one of the games at work next week hopefully (AND if not that, next Wednesday I'll check the freeroll). And then once I move into my new place and get my computer back here, I can get back online and start playing again!!

In all honesty it was probably good to have a break in there - I was playing like mad, and a nice little "vacation" away from playing gave me time to read some stuff and think about my game and some things I can do differently to try to take my game up another notch.

That's it from here!

- thePokerDegen

Card-dead

(**note: not a heckuva lot of poker talk here - no strategy stuff or anything, so there - you've been warned!)

Alright, not really card-dead, just cardLESS. I have not played a hand of poker since flying out here 2 weeks ago today. I've, of course, played a little "play money" online games, but, besides being completely bored out of my skull and just dealing out a bunch of hands (mostly o/8) for a couple hours, I haven't played any cards. My life has been consumed mostly by two things: 1) work, and 2) the ongoing hunt for a place to live. And though the hunt has (kind of) come to an end, I still can't play any cards - I don't even get my first paycheck until the end of the month, and that whole check will be going to pay for the first/last/deposit for my new appartment.

AND - now that I've said all that, I remembered that there is that freeroll "league" (sic) out here. Checking out their website again, I will be quite curious to play their tournaments - the two that I will be able to get to are different formats: one is 6 tables of sit n' go's: 1,000 starting chips, 15 minutes blinds - top 3 of 8 at each table make the points, and they just keep on going! Bust out of one, sit at another empty seat and when the table's full start on up again! The other one uses their extended format which basically means a deeper stack and longer blinds (3,000 starting chips + 20 minute blinds vs. the 'regular' format which is 1,500 starting chips + 15 minute blinds). They typcailly run about 4-5 hours. How's the "bounty" part fit in? Well, if someone goes all-in, and you call them and beat them - you also get their 'bounty chip' - which is good for 5 points. Knock 10 people out, and you've got 50 points right there... if you make the final table, the bounty-chips are collected and redeemed, so you'd have 55 points right there (including yours)....so if you koncked 10 people out, then someone knocks you out on the final-table bubble, you only get 50 points. Pretty cool idea - like it!!

I'll be quite interested to see the level of play: each week, the point leader for that week is given a buy-in for a NLHE tournament at one of the local casinos. One of the players won one of these tournaments, which qualified him for another tournament, which he won and won a $10,000 buy-in for a WPT event. The guy cashed that out and walked home with $10,000+ instead.

*sigh* even where I'm staying right now - I have very cheap internet access, very very fast internet connection, but the stupid computers are set up as a kiosk - which basically means almost everything besides internet explorer is disabled. Downloading is disabled, so I can't even get onto fulltilt for some play-money fun. At least, if I can't play poker, I can write about it (or read about it - just got through my second reading of Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book. Makes me realize that I really need to read Little Green Book again: there's stuff like pot odds vs break-even percentage that I really want to get down to a "no-brainer" in my head, so it won't take much time to figure out. I have to say, though, that some of the calls Phil has made because "in the long run" it's a positive equity call I believe are a little questionable. Yes, in a cash game, absolutely. The thing is, though, I really don't believe that that's always the "right" move when it comes to a tournament situation. All in all, though, a great book.

Alright, I'm a little out of it due to some odd stuff going on lately, as well as the totally "unsettled" feeling I've had for a while - and I'm sure will continue to have until I move into my new place and everything slows down a touch. I bet, honestly, that won't happen until January. I mean the slowing-down part. Eh, whatever.... time to move on, though - and hopefully next time I'll actually have something meaningful to say about poker.

- thePokerDegen