Children, it’s time to head home!

It’s DADI time! My last outing at the previous one was fairly decent. I barely made it to final table where I was promptly dumped on the first hand (Short stack and what not). It was my first time playing a pot limit tournament so kudos to me!

No Limit is the name of the game tonight which means more tools to hang myself stupidly early on for no apparent reason! The key, for me, is discipline. I can’t start opening up 4 cash game tables if I’m bored or try to bully pots with J8s because I have position.

Yes, I can be THAT dumb.

Funny how I know I’m doing stupid stuff, I’m fully realizing that it clearly won’t work and yet, I still go through with it? Am I completely hopeless?

There’s a pretty wicked new promo right now on PokerSourceOnline where you can get a 150$ Amazon gift certificate for opening up a new account at Pokerroom.com. What can you get for 150$ on Amazon? How about a brand freakin new 1 GB iPod Nano? You’ll have to do this quickly since the deal expires on the 30th of June (midnight pacific time more specifically).

Other than that, I’m still running fairly well, grinding it out to the tune of bonuses and rakeback. My win rate is also pretty good so It’s been smooth sailing on all fronts. Long may it continue.

Hope I get to see you all tonight!

So far, so good

The start up to Absolute Poker has been going well. The software is a bit ugly, if not atrocious, but there’s a fine selection of games available and the play is quite fast. Most importantly though, is the ability to clear bonuses while collecting rakeback, which is all kind of awesome. Definitely some interesting numbers for me to keep an eye on throughout the month. I’m up a few hundreds so far and I plan on hitting the tables again later tonight so let’s hope I can keep it up.

The WSOP is now officially underway. I had set a goal to at least make it to some kind of 1500$ event in the next three years and I can safely say that I won’t be getting there for a loooong while. For one, my tournament game is beyond atrocious at this point, so that would be a complete waste of a thousand dollars. Time is definitely on my side to improve it’s just a matter of putting in the actual effort to do it.

I’ll try to make it to the Monday at the Hoy tonight but I can’t really guarantee anything. I’ll definitely swing by to rail on the good folks at one point though.

Later....

Absolute Pokah!

It’s pretty much settled, I’ll probably signup with Absolute Poker as early as tonight. Thisisthenuts.com hands out a pretty decent deal, 100% deposit bonus up to 750$ plus you get to collect rakeback at 28% while clearing said bonus. They also, apparently, offer tons of reload bonuses so I’ll try to take full advantage of that at the same time.

The month of June has been pretty good to me. I’m 200$ short of hitting 2k, which would be one of my best months ever. With eight days left in the month, I’m hoping that a new playing site will help me get over that hump. Again last night I had to take a night off since I couldn’t find a decent 5-10$ LHE game going.

I also received a copy of Harrington Hold’Em Volume 3. I haven’t read it completely yet but what I saw seemed to have been worth the wait. The book mostly focuses on post-flop play, which is definitely interesting. I’ll try to finish it this weekend and post a quick review here.

Good luck at the tables all!

Live Blogging the WWDN

In the efforts of improving my dreadful, rapidly decreasing tournament game, I will be live blogging the WWDN this week. If I know someone out there is reading whatever it is I'm doing in these things, I'll be less likely to act like a chip spewing moron (Yah right...)


- Initial table: S.Nickerson, GRobman, aquaverse, Yours truly, Garthmeister, Maudie and Serne. Decent turnout tonight, 65 peeps

- First hand dealt is 3-9o. Mucked

- While this is going on, I'm checking out the girls of Hollywood Poker. And boy, do I ever wanna do all kinds of nasty stuff to Mary Castro

- Well that was quick. First table is already broken (It took about 4 hands!) when Maudie's pocket 8's go down in flames to AQo who rivers a flush

- New table: Mungo36 aka Guin (MIA at this point), mamboking79, xkm1245, R-Gee, myself, SirF, TransFish, Garth and NewinNov

- Hammer's been dropped already

- Haven't seen a flop yet, nice cards but not good enough to play this early

- Win my first pot (700 chips) in a battle of the blinds where I flop top pair and R-Gee calls me all the way down with second pair

- Only 3 people gone so far

- Lose a few chips in a battle of the blinds where I now have middle pair and he has top pair

- Mungo is now in the house

- Still checking out the chicks at Hollywood Poker. I am now in love with Ashley Dorezo

- I might dump her for Erin Muller though

- Currently down to 56

- I've still haven't seen a flop outside of my blinds.

- And I am now out in 53rd. Ran QQ into Guin's KK and that was all she wrote. With blinds at 15-30, he made it 100 to go, I bump it to 300 and he pushed. I'm almost getting 3-1 so I make the call and IGHN.

I could've laid that down but the odds were good and I wanted to get some chips early. You win some, you lose some I guess.

Couldn’t find a decent 5/10 LHE game afterwards so I pretty much called it a night. It seems I need to find another Poker room to play with. Come next month I might migrate to Absolute Poker. They offer continuous bonuses AND you can collect rakeback while clearing ‘em. Sounds good to me.

June Objective Cleared

Well, I am now done with that stupid Full Tilt sign up bonus. Too bad it resulted in me losing my ass out there. Again, low stakes LHE games at Full Tilt are ridiculously -EV and I’m seriously wondering if I should play there still. There’s really not a whole lot of donks, and tons of tight aggressive players. Where is the profit gonna come from? You pair of aces will only make money if another player has pocket kings or queens. Hitting a big flop doesn’t often lead to a big pot. The end result? A basically break even game where most players end up losing to the house rake.

Enter rake back. My plan for next month is to play a thousand hands on Full Tilt and another thousand elsewhere to see what kind of results I can come up with a full rake back source for the whole month. It should be interesting for sure.

I had a soccer game yesterday afternoon so I missed out on the World championship of Bloggers tournament. I really didn’t have any hopes or aspirations for this thing so I’m not that bummed about missing out. The field was a pretty solid 2200 people. That’s a shitload of donkeys. My first Internet tournaments were the Pokerroom daily freerolls. 2400 entrants duking it out for a 100$ payout for first place. My best result was taking third place once for a 50$ reward. The beginning of these tournament was almost always a laugher. You’d often see 3 or 4 players all-in on the very first hand of the tournament with gems like k-6s or A-3o. All this to say that making it through a huge field like this is no easy task and you really need a good combination of solid cards, good fortune and timing.

I’d really like to bang out a couple of hands tonight but I’m heading out with some friends to watch game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. Should be a dandy!

Later

The Good Grind

I am now fully back into the comfortable zone of grinding. It is it what it is. You play your hands the way they should be played. If they hold up or your draw hits, you win, if they don’t, you shrug it off and move to the next one.

Running bad is hard on the common folk. Losing a thousands of dollars in a few months, weeks or days for a non gambling guy like me will affect your outlook on tons of things. The game is not fun anymore, we fear playing it. We expect, even anticipate, over cards when we see a flop with pocket queens. We back away whenever we get raised on the turn. We play the game with a losing mentality and results end up taking over making solid decisions.

I’ve been through two major downswings in 2006 already and I’m still digging my way out of the second one (Almost out). Did I really learn anything throughout these hard times? I think so. After going through a whole month of losing with the best three starting hands in Hold’em and suffering all those beats that you hear/read about over and over again, I now realize that the biggest culprit in all of this was my own play. Playing in that weak-scared mode to protect my investments further magnified the problems. The pots that I won were smaller than what they should have been, since I backed away from putting more money into pots in fear of another loss, and I ended up losing pots that aggressiveness might have won me outright. Easy to see how you can get yourself stuck into a pretty nasty hole that way. Never again.

I played the WWDN again last night. Lost most of my stack on a semi-bluff all-in where my 12 outs didn’t hit. Winning that huge pot would have launched me towards the final table. Maybe next time?

Thing is, I don’t really know if I’m gonna play this tournament anymore. The people are cool and all but the stakes are becoming a bit low for my levels. I’m hardly focussed whenever I’m playing it since I’m multi-tabling cash games and pulling in pots that are bigger than what first place in that tournament pays. We’ll see how it goes I guess...

Just to prove how much of a self-contradicting moron I am, I will play the Mookie tonight since I have nothing else to do. I also think that today might be the last day of the NHL season so I might check that out for a bit, but I should definitely be ready for the Mook.

You’re oh so swingy…

Last night was a bit of rough. After a +600$ win on Monday, I nearly dropped half of that yesterday. Just your typical run of the mill variance BS. Oh yeah, I ran into quads twice. Yup, I ran into freakin’ quads twice in the same evening. And I had good hands too, obviously, so that cost me a bundle. Odds on this happening please? *Sigh*

The WWDN was an absolute disaster for me. I wasn’t feeling it, I was distracted and I pretty much brought my C- game to the table. This resulted in my worst ever finish in this thing, 57th out of 67. Just flat out terrible.

Still working on the Full Tilt signup bonus. I’ve now released 480$ out of 600$. I should have this completed by the end of the next week. With that said, I really need to add that the LHE games at FT are absolutely terrible. Could this place be more of a rock garden? Most hands rarely ever see a flop and the only way you make any money is if two players start up with big pocket pairs. I won a huge one with AA against KK, my only pot at FT that was more than 6BB but everything else will pick you up the blinds or fold everybody at your flop bet. Haaate!

I don’t know if I’ll have much time to hit the tables tonight since I’ll be heading out with some friends. I’m pretty tired so I might just take a night off and rest these tired old legs.

Beer and Boobies

The international beer festival was a hoot, crappy weather notwithstanding. This being my third straight year of attendance, I have been branching out more and more into different types of beer and I've become more appreciative of a finer product. For my first year there, I stuck to run of the mill beers like Alexander Keith's, Rickard's Red, Heineken and such. A sip of Stout would have had me running for the hills. Now, though I simply cannot get enough of it (Stout).

My first few samplings were mostly of the Black kind. I stumbled upon the McAuslan brewery where I got to sample their Oatmeal Stout. Dayummmm that was some good shit! I like my stouts strong, with a really hefty chocolate taste and this one hit the spot pretty damn well.

I then proceeded to the next pit stop, the brewery "Le Grimoire". The girls handing out the beer here were better than anything else in that damn place. They had quite possibly the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life, a brunette with gorgeous blue eyes. Yum! Their stout, "La Noire Soeur" was okay, but the chocolaty taste was somewhat missing.

I then had nice discovery by sampling a Porter, my first ever btw, called 'Le Corriveaux'. Now this I liked a lot. Really reminded me of the Oatmeal stout I had a few minutes before and I was pleasantly surprised.

And then, the goddess that knocked me flat on my ass, "L'aphrodisiaque" from the brewpub "Dieu du ciel". Easily the finest alcohol liquid I've ever put in my mouth. Folks, this was like drinking milk chocolate beer. A nice dark tan with a syrupy foamy head; coupled with a ridiculous cocoa after taste that sends your senses in ecstasy. Yes, it was that damn good, it is now my life goal to find this thing in a bottle so I can drink some at home.

Since this event was held in Montreal, you can pretty much expect to be surrounded by hot chicks. It's pretty much a given, Montreal always brings out the pretty. One of my friends had just a bought a digital camera so we pretty much went out of our way to ask hot chicks to take some pictures with us. Cool thing about hot French chicks, they'll pretty much do whatever you ask for as long as you're polite. Here's what I mean:

This one's boobs are just as big as my freakin' head. And I have a big head...


I was asking this one if her boobs were real, she pretty much laughed it out saying "Oh, you silly black man you..."


Can't wait to do it again next year!

PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 3816309

Home game with the Donks

I barely squeezed in a few hours at the virtual tables last night. Mostly positive, I’m now back in the black on Full Tilit by 4$. Yay! It’s a start.

Nope, the crux of my evening was spent donking it off with some friends in a home game. Think of it as the Mookie Uber-lite. Most of these guys don’t really care about Poker, they play for fun, but getting better or worst doesn’t really matter to them. I can definitely see some improvements in all of them, but that’s not really important.

With that said, last night’s donkfest reached incredible levels of absurdity. The format is pretty simple; 5$ gets you 2000$ in chips, blinds start at 25/50 increasing every 15 minutes and unlimited rebuys during the first hour.

The rebuys are usually really for one guy. He actually knows more about the game than the others, but the guy simply can’t lay down a hand. He knows he’s beat, he says out loud that he knows that he’s beat yet he calls anyway. He re-bought twice last night. Funny thing is, yesterday, for some reason, everyone kept doing the absolutely worst possible plays to get themselves in awful situations and eventually getting themselves stacked.

For instance, unlimited rebuy guy raises it to 3x the blind from UTG, my brother flat calls and they see the flop heads-up. K-9-4 and the preflop raiser bets out, my brother reraises and other guy pushed. My brother calls. Pre-flop raiser shows AA my brother shows 10-10(??). My brother turned another ten though and stacked the guy.

By the end of the first hour we had reached an unprecedented 6 re-buys for a 5 player tournament!!

I pretty much stayed away from the nonsense and had built myself a nice stack by busting someone when I flopped top two pair to his TPTK. I picked up a few small pots here and there but that was pretty much it. Some luck box, who had stacked 4 players with ridiculous suckouts and re-sucks, was bullying the table by catching or hitting everything in sight. It was sick. I actually ended up going out first after the re-buy period when said Luck box raised from the button and I pushed with AQ from the small blind. Turns out he had KK. I flop two aces (!) but he turns a K to send my arse to the rail.

Poker play will be sparse this weekend since I’m leaving for Montreal tomorrow to attend the International Festival of Beer. This will be my third straight year of attending and I’m pretty stocked about the whole thing. I’ll raise a glass to you bloggers when I’m out there.

Later

Another WWDN flameout

Man that tournament is really starting to piss me off.

Let's recap; it's pretty much the same damn thing that's been happening in this one for me lately:

• Build myself a top five chip stack by the first break? Check
  
  


• Donk off chips by stupidly trying to bully the table waving my big stack like a big stick demanding respect? Check
  
  


• Completely annihilate said stack by running big hands into monster hands for ¾ of my stack? Check

The Coup de Grace was applied by Garthmeister this time. A short stack moved all-in and I reraise to isolate with my pocket jacks. Garth moves all-in behind, I barely have him covered but the pot is laying me 3-1 so I pretty much have to call unless I'm sure he has AA-KK or QQ. Yup, he had KK. I actually flopped a jack but he also flopped a king, so I was pretty much destined to go broke on that hand.

Oh well!!

Cash games have been running a bit smoother lately. I made around 400$ in the past two days on various web sites but lossed about 140$ on Full Tilt. It seems FT hasn't received the message that the "repeated kicking’s to my junk" era is coming to an end and they should consider letting it go soon. Why am I still playing there? Rake back. Most specifically, working on their stupid signup bonus so I can get paid fully.

Here's the deal, most websites will not allow you to receive rake back while you're clearing bonuses. You pretty much can't have your cake and eat it too. Had I put any thought into this, I would have deposited the absolute minimum on the site, and I'd be enjoying fatass 200-300$ rake back payments instead of the scrap that I've been getting for the past two months. Let that be a lesson to you kids out there, if you're gonna register to a new website with the intent of getting rake back, deposit the absolute minimum amount that the site will allow you to. You'll end up getting paid quicker and better rake back than those stupid never ending signup bonuses.

I don't really know if I'll have a chance to hit the virtual felt tonight. I’m heading over to some friends for some beer and Poker so my time schedule is a bit cloudy at this point. Hopefully I can manage some dough in this one also.


Later...