Res Ipsa Poker: November 2010

Friday, November 26, 2010

A Turkey Of A Day

Thanksgiving weekend is the most American of holidays. We eat way too much - several times in fact if you have leftovers. Drink too much. Watch football. Get up early to spend money on stupid crap imported from China. You have to love tradition.

A lesser-known (but poker related) tradition is playing in Dr. Pauly's Turkey Cup tournament. This year it was pushed back to nearly midnight thanks to the Jets being on TV, which posed a challenge to eastern time zone peeps who crushed too much tryptophan-laden turkey.

I did sign up for the tournament and I guess you could say I played. By that I mean I dozed off between hands and only regained consciousness long enough to fold or play a hand when the super shrill Stars "hey it's your turn dumbass" buzzer went off. It was a good thing I had the volume turned up to the max because there weren't many times where I managed to stay awake for two consecutive hands.

Here's what I remember: I got AA my first big blind. And got a walk. I got AKs in the big blind shortly thereafter. Got a walk. Come on people. ZZZZzzzzzz. Fold, snooze, fold. I finally got tired of waking up so I called an all in, lost and blacked out.

When I woke up this morning it said I finished 18th out of 56 runners. Not so bad for a zombie. And a first time zombie at that - I don't ever remember having so much trouble staying awake. Must be getting old. Oh well.

And now it's on to a full day of footbaw. Love holidays. Enjoy.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

BOC

I stopped by the casino today. It was just like the WPBT except with 100% less fun and no pai gow.

A work project brought me to the area and I figured I should stop in and sign up for the players club. Not that I'm likely to visit anytime soon, but it never hurts to be on their mailing list. So I did.

As I had heard, their poker room is long gone, converted to a smoke free slots area. The table games crowd was sparse at 11 AM on a Wednesday. So, after I lost $20 on Wheel of Fortune (and then won $15 on freeplay on another machine), I left. Ballin.

Whatever the opposite of degenerate is, that is what I am.

I think I might go play some Rush 5NL.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Mild Monkey Action

I continue to be entertained by the lesser developed life forms that inhabit the world of Rush NL5.

There were some standard swings during my last session. I had AA hold up against QQ and AK for a nice pot which nearly tripled my stack. After I bled some away I then gave up the entire balance to a guy who open shoved a huge stack with AK on a JJT flop. I didn't have too much trouble diagnosing what he had based on the preflop action - and no, I'm not laying down AA when I'm 95% sure the villain has AK or AQ - but there was nothing I could do about the standard Q on the river.

I do think that playing at this level is helping some aspects of my game. I've been getting better about betting to win pots, avoiding fancy plays and trying to trap every time I have a hand. I'm less attached to the play chips and that's the biggest factor. The practice might even offset some of the bad habits that develop from playing against people who fold way too much while simultaneously overplaying garbage far too often.

Good times.

Anyhow, since it's a holiday week I'm looking forward to getting in a few more hands. No goals, no challenges, no aspirations, just pure entertainment.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Rush Poker Mobile

Rush Poker is now available to the public on your Flash-capable smart phone. An Android app is available in the marketplace. I played a couple orbits and I have to say, it's pretty slick. I had no problems.

Is this the future? I dunno but it's pretty neat that poker on a phone has finally happened.

I should note that I only tried it at home on WiFi and have no idea how performance would be on the go or on 3G.

***

Also on the tech front, I was pleased to bumble upon the solution to an annoying problem. Some months ago I got a new router and my old laptop didn't like it. It refused to connect via wifi so I had to cable it. The easy - and in hindsight totally obvious - solution? I needed to update my drivers. Duh. Old wireless card.

The lesson, as always, is that I'm an idiot. This also means that I can make the old 'puter last for a while longer. Which is a very good thing since there is not budget for a replacement at the moment.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Is This Some Sort Of Flashback?

What. The. Hell.

Look. I'm not a professional poker player. I don't play a million hands a month. I'm barely even an enthusiast. But I've played enough online poker - not for real money as far as you know - to know when people are playing bad.*

And boy were they ever playing bad this evening. It was like a trip back to the early days of Party Poker. Or the BOSS network (which was rigged as hell but I digress).

Seriously. People check raising all in with air. Calling all ins with gutshots. I even had a dude call an all in with queen high. I'll give you that this isn't exactly high stakes poker. Rush 5NL. But still. These people are usually nitty not retarded.

Yeah, I'm loving it.

* And yeah, I know, I'm often the one playing bad. I never said I was good, just that other people sometimes are worse.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Bad Beat Insurance

Killing time. I despise days like this, days were I have lots of work to do but struggle with having the discipline to force myself to do it. It doesn't help any that it's 70 degrees outside, in November, and I'm stuck indoors.

I read Dr. Pauly's excellent new post on Pai Gow Poker (it's very much worth your time) and was introduced to something that I haven't seen before: Pai Gow insurance. Apparently there are now tables where you can buy insurance against having a Pai Gow. According to the Wizard of Odds, payouts begin at 3 to 1 for an ace high paigow all the way up to 100 to 1 for the rare 9 high paigow. As a victim of a brutal cold streak the last time I played at the Imperial Palace, those payouts could have saved my bacon.

I tip my cap to whoever came up with the idea. It's the sort of thing that keeps me away from just betting the Don'ts on the craps table full time, or maybe betting on a hit of zero numbers at Keno.

***

The concept of insurance also got me thinking about a new idea for online poker rooms: Bad beat insurance. Get your money in good but got sucked out on? If you bought insurance you get paid!

I'm absolutely certain that this could be done in a way that would be both profitable for the house and fun for the players. Wouldn't you like to get shipped some cash next time you lose to runner-runner perfect? I don't even think it would be that hard to set the rake and the payouts. I'm not going to do it, but I am available for consulting (lulz).

***

Reading through some of my old posts for the links above definitely stirred the pot on Vegas fever. To combat it, I sat down and wrote out a plan - what I would need to do to get there next year. It won't be easy, and there will always be that nagging "you should just apply that money to your student loans dummy" voice, but so far it looks possible. Then again, from 12 months away just about anything looks possible...

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

November Ten

Another monster World Series of Poker came to a conclusion (on television) last night. I ended up watching the ESPN episode version of the final table with commentary. Considering that they had essentially one day to produce it I thought the episode was very well done.

Surprisingly, I didn't find that knowing the order of finish affected the viewing experience. I think that showing the hole cards makes all the difference in the world - something that I definitely had not given enough consideration to previously.

I didn't come to any other startling conclusions. I thought the players for the most part were likable enough. There weren't any obvious egomaniacs - even the Grinder - and the level of play appeared to this amateur to be pretty decent. Better than last year's donkfest anyway.

***

My last two poker sessions have been pretty sad. I'm definitely in the midst of a stretch where the Full Tilt RNG hates me. Nothing I can do but ride it out at the micro limits and wait for better days. I mean I could try and play better but really, you can only get your money in ahead so often.*

I'm so glad I'm not a "pro".

* Okay, I admit it, sometimes I get my money in behind. I'm a sucker for a flopped nut flush draw, too bad I went something like 0-for-7 having them fill yesterday.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Giving Credit

I don't talk much about televised poker in this space because, well, because I don't watch televised poker. I think the last time I was a regular viewer was the year Moneymaker won the WSOP. I saw some of Hachem's run and probably haven't seen three hours of coverage since.

So you can probably understand my puzzlement as to why I found myself watching the live stream of the November Nine (WSOP final table) on Saturday night. It was being broadcast with only a tiny delay on ESPN3, the internet service of the ESPN networks.

No hole card cameras, no Lon and Norm show, none of that jazz. But you know what?

It was good.

Seriously.

It's easy to criticize ESPN for some of the things they do when they package up the WSOP for mass consumption. Sometimes the poker gets lost amidst all the 'entertainment'.

The November Nine stream was pure poker. Sure there was commentary (which was very well done) and some rudimentary graphics showing bet sizes and chip stacks but there is only so much they could do. Much of the coverage was just guys doing what really happens in poker tournaments: Folding.

I stayed up way too late watching and actually wished I could have stayed up longer. It was good TV despite not even being on TV. Kudos to ESPN for showing it.

***

Otherwise on the poker front I only played for a bit on Friday and had good times. I picked up a few bucks early but determined I really wasn't in the mood to play too seriously so I moved all the way down to the land of my people, the rush 5NL tables. Yeah buddy. The players, they were tight. And stupid. Tight/stupid. With the help of a bunch of large cards I abused them for several buyins. It was most enjoyable.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

In The Membrane

I've frequently read that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting the results to somehow be different.

If that's accurate, I must be insane. At least when it comes to poker.

My lack of tilt control is what eventually does me in. I string together a number of winning sessions and then WHAM-O I have one bad one and it just decimates things. And I do this over and over again.

Argh.

I played a little session on Friday. I played bad, but my old buddy the Full Tilt RNG also had it in for me. I got rivered by a constellation of inferior hands. It was sickening. A little more than 1.5 buyins went poof.

Suitably tilted, I moved games and moved down. I just didn't move down far enough. If I had ANY sense I would move down and just play 2NL where I can steam raise at will and still not lose much. That would be too logical. Instead I moved down to my regular PLO game and proceeded to get hammered some more.

Sigh. Those quarter-of-bankroll beatings are frustrating. I had to take the rest of the weekend off to simmer down.

***

I should post this on the forums, but I'll ask here instead. As always, please take into account the fact that I'm not good at poker. You're welcome to criticize my multiple mistakes but yeah, not good at poker. I think I'm remembering the facts right.

The game is Rush NL100. I have 99 in late position. Early position makes a standard raise to 3. I call, both blinds call.

Flop is 965 with two clubs. Checked around to me, I bet it, one of the blinds check raises. I call. Guh.

Turn is another club. I think it was the king of clubs. Blind boy bets out big.

What do you think are the chances that blind boy doesn't have either 87 or clubs?

***

Under miscellaneous, I did pick up an HTC Incredible and have already wasted a fair amount of time messing around with it ... without even scratching the surface of what can be done. Thanks to my invisible internet friends who recommended it.

It remains to be seen whether I can stay under the 150MB limit or whether I'll have to upgrade to the unlimited data plan. There are a lot of places I can use wifi, but it will be downtime where I don't have access that will make the call.