JJ's Blog

Can't Miss TV
You want to know the top 5 - can't miss - TV shows for the uni-dimensional poker addict.

1. Any of the shows on the Discovery Channel during Shark week
2. HBO's Entourage
3. Shaq's Big Challenge
4. HBO's Flight of the Concords (just enter "Flight of the Concords" on Utube, pick anything, and prepare to laugh your butt off)
5. ESPN's coverage of the 2007 WSOP. Last night's coverage - Pot Limit Omaha - 2 hours. Yum Yum.

Poker Cheats
Are you worried, just a little bit, about cheating in Poker? Do you get a little cautious when playing at the casino against 2 guys who seem to know each other? Or, the guy that just seems unconscious with his reads? Do you scratch your head sometimes when playing on-line and a player pops into your short handed table for like 4 hands, wins 2 of them, and then leaves?

Yea, me either!

We'll the following article might give you a little bit of a reason to pause. Card sharks to battle computer at poker How much more realistic does on-line poker robots seem now?

Then, there's this. High-tech poker scam bilks casinos of $500K - The only thing wrong with this picture is that the reporters think the casinos lost $500k. The casino's lost nothing. They kept raking every pot. This $500k came out of the pockets of the other 9 players sitting around the table.

I'd like to recommend an excellent read for you conspiracy theorist poker players out there. Catching Poker Cheats. Head out to Barnes & Noble, get a starbucks grande coffee, and browse through this one. It's not really worth buying, but it's worth $1.70 for the coffee and an hour to read it.

Can you believe it? A guy with a gambling problem, Tim Donaghy – Former NBA Official, tried to get an edge in sports betting by providing insider information to his sports betting colleagues. It’s alleged that he may have even bet on games that he was officiating and, worse part, may have attempted to change the outcome of the game with his whistle.

The most amazing part of this story is that intelligent people are surprised by this. It’s pretty sad. But, surprising? No!

This is like being surprised that a cashier at the local department store is caught skimming money from the till, or that the treasurer of the local PTA is caught skimming a few bucks out of the bake sale proceeds. Opportunity + desperation = criminal. Not real surprising!

Now here’s a surprise. I’m coming off back-to-back winning poker sessions. This is very refreshing and, as of late, rare. I forgot what it felt like to win two times in a row.

First session – cash game. $1/$2 H.O.R.S.E. with a kill (plays $2/$4 about 50% of the time). No key hands to recap, but I do have on key observation. I think a player can be successful at HORSE if they are just a decent player at all of the games and avoid playing like a donkey at any of them. I’ve really started to noticed that when we play the Hold’Em round, the whole table shifts from passive, straight forward, check calling players to creative, aggressive, check-raising, 3-betting players. It makes the Hold’Em round a pretty tough round. Then, when we switch to Stud or Razz, I see so many of these same players revert back to check/calling all the way chasing long shot draws. So, maybe the key to winning at HORSE is to make solid call/raise decisions on every single street of every single round. It doesn’t matter if you’re the 3rd best player at the table on every single round, just as long as you’re not the donkey on any of the rounds.

Second session - $80 NLHE tournament (14 players). 8800 in starting chips. After the tournament was over, I was driving home thinking to myself, “Man, I really had to work hard tonight”. It was a real grind. I had the worst run of cards ever. It wasn’t that I was dealt a cold deck. Instead, I was just dealt trash hands for most of the night (especially the final table). I wish I would have recorded my starting hands – trust me, it was unusually bad. In 5 hours of play I was dealt 2 pocket pairs (KK and 44) each time I raised and won the blinds. Whooopee! I was also dealt A-K twice. I won a small pot with one and I forget what happened with the other. So I was dealt 3 premium hands in 5 hours. Pitiful!

On one key hand in the first level, it was folded to me in the SB. I had A-2s and limped. The BB decided to raise his $100 blind to $300. I called. Flop was magic 2-2-8. This guy had recently bluffed off about 30% of his chips in the first blind level, so I was thinking I could stack him if held an overpair or A-K and was trying to “catch up”. I check the flop. He bets $400 into a $600 pot. I call. Turn is a blank. The board reads 2-2-8-10. I check. Setting the trap. He bets $600 into a $1400 pot. I make a little bit of large check raise and make it $2400 (4x) mainly based on the fact that I know this guy doesn’t like to be bluffed. He calls. The pot now has $6200. The river is a blank. The board reads 2-2-8-10-6. I bet $3000. He calls. I show. He mucks. I think I really extracted max value from this hand. Kudos to me for playing a hand good for once.

Later, on the 2nd level, I was dealt a little mini-run of aces (A-8s, A-10, A-Q, A-K, A-K). Each time, I raised preflop and cleared the blinds and limpers. One of these hands, the player to my right made a 3x raise before I made a 3x re-raise with AK. He folded.

This little run combined with my big pot won off of Scott Smith and a few successful steal attempts has me headed to the final table with the chip lead (~27K).

At the final table, I did the right thing and started folding all of my trash hands. I folded and folded. Occasionally, I’d try steal in middle/late position with one of my trash hands and get snapped off with a re-raise. My timing at the final table was horrible. One time Cobra limped with the medium/short stack with AA. I tried to steal by betting about 10% of my stack with a 3x raise and he forced me to fold preflop with a re-reraise. I’m glad he didn’t smooth call and let me catch a little something. I think I’d have gone broke.

On another key hand, I was in the SB with Q-9 (I think). I completed my small blind to $800 after 1 limper. The BB checks. It’s 3 handed to the flop. The flop comes 8-10-K. It’s 3 handed and checked around. The turn is a J. Board reads 8-10-K-J. I made my gut shot and am only loosing to only A-Q. I check. BB Checks. The original limper and solid player (Rock) with a medium stack, bets around $1500 into a pot of $2400. I call. BB folds. The river is a blank. The board reads 8-10-K-J-x. I thought the best way to make value here would be to make this look like a bluff. So, what is the best way to make this look like a bluff? One way, would be to push all in and shout, “I’m all in bitch – you can’t call!” Another way would be to make a larger than normal bet that smelled like a “I really don’t want a call here” bet. I bet $4000 into a pot of $5400. Rock makes a bad read and announces that “I’m probably making a bad call here” as he pushes about 2/3rds of his stack into the pot for a call. I declared my hand and he mucked. He didn’t show, but I’m sure he mucked a King.

I’m healthy again, but the blinds are creeping up, plus I have a very aggressive player (Jay) to my left who is stealing with some increasingly irritating regularity. A few hands later, I finish off Rock with my one suck-out of the night. He is really short and pushes all in for about 4x the big blind. I’m in the blind with Ac-8c and call. He shows pocket 10s – a surprisingly good hand. An ace hits the turn and I’m getting a little healthier via my moderate suck out.

We’re 3 handed. I’m on the short stack with 30k and facing an aggressive, good player to my left with 40k and more of a straight-forward, tight player to my right with about 50k. Papa Rock finishes off Jay when he raises all in and is called. Papa Rock has a gigantic draw - which he hits. So, I’m heads up with a 3:1 chip leader . I was really impressed by his all in push with a big draw after he had just been playing made hands most of the night.

I chop with Papa Rock for 2nd place money plus 25% of the difference which was a straight chip percentage difference.

Good times.

Remember that famous scene from Sienfeld where, about 20 minutes after a wager between Elaine, George, Kramer, and Jerry, Kramer bursts into Jerry’s apartment, slams $100 bucks on the table and proclaims, “I’m out.”

Well, I’m sort of making that same proclamation.

I’ve had the worst run lately.

My golf career is over! I’ve lost my last golf wager. I’ve played my last horrible round of golf. I’ve spent my last dollars on this hopeless pursuit. I’m out!

I’ve also burned through every last dollar in my poker stash. Some of this money was lost playing poker. Most of it on other crap.

The last debacle came from a rebuy tourney/cash game on Saturday night.

SWIM UPSTREAM
First, I digress. I’m thoroughly convinced that in order to succeed a poker, you must follow a strategy that works well in the stock market and in real estate. That is, you need to “swim upstream”. If everyone is selling stocks, you should be looking to buy. If everyone is buying, you should be looking to liquidate. It’s the same thing in poker. If the table is playing loose-aggressive, you should be playing snug and solid. If the table is playing tight/passive, you should be attacking pots.

REBUY STRATEGY
So, how is this related to the rebuy tournament? I’ve read different experts talk about the optimal rebuy strategy and their opinions are all over the place. Some recommend really trying to build a big stack by playing hyper aggressive and rebuying, if necessary, multiple times. Other experts recommend playing a little tighter than normal and playing hands that you would consider calling an all-in push from a hyper aggressive player.

I’m starting to think that the optimal rebuy strategy is to just swim upstream. If you are at one of those hyper-aggressive tables, sit back and pick your spots. If you are at one of those tight/passive tables, attack-attack-attack.

THE TOURNEY
On Saturday night, I was at a pretty tight table during the rebuy period. We had about 9 rebuys in the first hour and a half. I had worked my stack up from 2000 to 3500 by just playing solid, normal poker. I never really had any significant number of chips at risk. Toward the end of the rebuy period, I was on the button with 5-5. The UTG player, who had nursed a short stack for about 45 minutes, had just returned from the walk of shame to the rebuy desk. He was stacking his four $500 chips but found a hand he could limp with. This was followed by two more calls. Then, a somewhat tricky player in middle position raised it to $150 (3x the big blind). This was a small raise. It made me think that he was more trying to juice up the pot than protect a big hand. I really started to assign to him all of the big drawing hands (AJs, 9-10s, etc…). His raise was followed by 2 more calls by players who really did not like to lay a hand down preflop. I can’t give them credit for any strength here. Plus, these two had made several rebuys, so I thought they may be a little “gun shy” at this point.

So with action to me, the pot had $675, I decided to push in $3500. I really didn’t see any strength around the table. The table had been playing pretty tight. I thought there was a real good chance it would be folded around. Worse case, I’d get called by someone who just refused to let a hand like A-J go.

The UTG player, Hespy, made the call and commented that he was planning to push if I wouldn’t have beat him to it. He tables a K-Jo. I’m a small favorite in a $2000 hand, but I have $650 as an overlay. I’m pretty happy about this situation…..that is, until the turn card dashes my optimism. I’m down to $1500 with about 20 minutes left in the round. I then give him some crap about calling off his fresh stack with a hand that is easily dominiated. In end, he was not looking to just limp past the rebuy period either. He was looking for a spot to gamble and double up. He did....via me.

I decide right then and there, I’m not limping into the next stage with 2000 in chips. I’m either going to bust out or build my stack. I switch into high gear. I start pushing with any naked Ace. I even pushed twice with K9. I'm not called once. On the last hand of the period. It's raised to $150 in MP. I have A-10 and push. I really thought I get called here. I didn't. Next thing you know, the rebuy period is over and I have 3500 in chips again and no rebuys. Not too bad!

Shortly after the rebuy period, we condense to 2 tables. I could sense play tightening up, except for two live players with mountains of chips at the opposite end of the table. I play a little looser than normal and am able to work my stack up to around $10k. I fully realize that it will only be a matter of time before one of these big stacks at the opposite end of the table decides to put an end to my aggression by making a stand with a hand like A-10 or 6-6. Anyway, with blinds at $200/$400, I raise for the umpteenth time from middle position to $1500 with 7-7. A big stack at the end of the table makes a large re-raise to about $8000 which has me covered. I really got the sense that this was more of a “please fold” bet than a “please call” bet. If he had a big hand, he might even just call in position and let me, the maniac, bluff off my chips. I’m really thinking that he was making that “stand” that I was anticipating. Plus, I put 20% of my stack into the pot already. So, I went with my read that he held a hand like A-K, A-Q, A-J, A-10. I call. Ali says, “you’re good” and shows A-Q. Nice read! I’m pretty pleased. This is my chance to double up and move up. That is….until the turn card.

I’m out! Down $80.

CASH GAME
Then, the cash game was bad. I misplayed $100 pot. We were playing 4 handed with 4 solid players. Everyone was complaining that the game sucked. I was thinking the only way to make money would be to catch a miracle hand against someone. Just then, I’m dealt 4-4 on the button. The button had been raising about 85% of the time. I raised as well. The BB, Eileen, raised to $12. I thought for a few seconds that she was tired of getting her BB raised and she might be making a play with any Ace. Plus, I really thought that she would be willing to lay down a small pocket pair (8s on down) if she had one. So, I re-raise to $100. What a donkey? I could have made this same move for $50. Anyway, she insta-calls me and shows KK. I’m dead. Reload.

Then, I lost my last $100 when the deck went cold and I was dealt two really good, but 2nd best hands. On the last had I’m dealt K-K. It’s 4 way action to the flop. With $24 in the pot, it goes SB bet $15, UTG call, MPP (me) push for $35, Button fold. The pot has $54. This is going to be a really nice pot that I win especially if it goes call, call. Instead, it goes, SB all in, UTG fold. SB shows a 6-9 for a flopped straight on a board of 7-8-10.

Anyway. I’m down $300.

Like Krammer says, "I’m out!"