Well I decided to post this quickly as the tourney is still freshly on my mind. I made another solid run last night, this time in a pot limit omaha (PLO), $26 buy-in on Full Tilt. I also made a semi deep run in a small buy on Pstars in a omaha hi lo tourney, finishing 30th out of over 1200 people.

There were some significant hands along with significant runs during this tournament the propelled me from an average stack to chip leader. My first huge hand was in very much a cooler situation but I feel the other guy over played his hand hugely.

I held JJ85, the pot was not raised pre, the flop came down J74 rainbow. This was a heads up pot where I had position, the other player led out and we were both quite deep, double average-ish. I raised just more than a min raise, he immediately re raised me the minimum back. At this point, my thought process is this, he is going to have one of two hands, a lower set or a huge wrap draw, something like 5 6 8 9. I re raised him back, hoping it was the set and I was right, he had 44 but he also had 56 for the open ender, he bricked out and I won a huge pot.

there was also a point where I figured out the guy to my left was a very loose player with a ton of chips and I felt I could really benefit from playing him. He started with over 37K and I had about 16K when I started a run that took me to 40K and him down to 14K, I won 7 hands in a row, 5 of them against him with two showdowns where I had nuts!!

After that, I was close to the chip lead, 27 players paid and I held the chip lead for 90% of the time from 30 down to 10. I entered the final table 2nd in chips and ended up chopping 5 way for just under 2nd place money, I was sitting in 3rd place at the time, just behind the two chip leaders.

So, this is a great time for me to chat about two items, PLO strategy (in multi table tourneys) and deal making. Strategy in any multi table tourney is huge and if you can find something that works, success won’t be far behind. First off pot limit tournaments never have antes, this allows you to sit on stacks for a very long time. So, if you’re short stacked, you can play very tight and hang on, until you start flopping hands. On the short stack, I recommend attempting to see cheap flops with high return hands, ie, any pairs, double suited, connected hands, etc, etc. Obviously there is going to be some gamble in there, but with any short stack play, gamble is going to be involved.

Moving on to playing a big stack, in this position, I love to control the play with limps or min raises. At one point during that tourney last night, I was limping 80% of the pots and betting out on the flop to get folds about 80% of the time. If you raise I recommend to only call re raises against opponents that can’t hurt you. It is very easy to play just the short stacks in these tourneys, risking 15% of your stack or less to add very useful chips.

My biggest recommendation is, don’t get married or overplay high pocket pairs. Pocket pairs are the downfall for most players in this game, mainly aces. Did you know, if you have pocket aces and no draw post flop against a player that has just one pair and 3 other cards, the odds are almost even? Aces are good in situations where you can get most of your stack in, heads up, pre flop. In these situations you will most likely be up against KK or AKJT type hands, which is exactly what you want.

The next reccomendations is, don’t pay off river bets when draws get there, no matter how strong you were prior to that river hitting, the guy is going to have it 8 times out of 10 and the bets are usually big enough to never be profitable over time. Key to PLO, let your decent, big hands go.

On to deal making, man this is another long post, sorry, lol!! When it comes to deal making you have to factor in a lot of things. We made a deal 5 handed last night, first place would have paid, over $1500 and 5th place was under $500, that is a big spread. Not to mention first place was $1550 and 2nd place was $980. In this situation, if I can lock up close to 2nd place money, this deal should be made every time. I may have been the favorite to win last night but PLO comes down to a lot of flips and luck so it’s not as easy as saying I should get 2nd place everytime in these spots. I would have almost guaranteed that I would have come 3rd so taking almost $200 more than 3rd place money and $40 less than 2nd place money was value for me. Don’t let your ego get in the way here, poker is about variance and locking money down, vs taking chances, it’s the smart thing to do. Anytime you can get in to top 3 range in tournaments, that’s where you want to be!!

Hey,

Well, after a nice Easter long weekend spent in Disneyland, I flew back in to town yesterday and played the daily double tourneys last night on Full Tilt. I went out of one early on but I was able to build a nice stack in the other one when this hand came up.

Average stack was about $26K, my stack was $20K, re raiser had $30K and first all in had $45K. So I raise AA up in 1st position to $3675, blinds were 700/1400 I think. 3rd position re raises to just over $12K, leaving himself with $18K behind, next position ships, I call and the re raiser calls, quickly. The hands, my AA, re raiser QQ and first all in, KK.

So what do you do with QQ there, I know for me, I can easily fold QQ here. Perhaps earlier in the tourneys, I may not because people can get a little crazy on occassion but when blinds are big, deeper in any multi, there is no way one of the all in guys don’t have AA or KK here. The re raiser still had half of average which is a playable stack, for the times you are good here but still in a flip against AK, it’s never profitable to call, IMO. I did win the hand, which threw me right in to the mix in this tourney, with about 100 people left.

I proceeded to build my stack up to over $100K, calling smaller stacks all ins with AQ or better, or pocket 88’s or better. I stayed above average until we got down to about 27 people, picking my spots well and grinding, lots of folding.

We got down to about 15 people, I fell below average but was able to get doubled up in a couple very good spots, my AK vs AJ, my 86 clubs vs 87 spades, after a 963, two club flop. I made the final table in about 6th spot out of 9 left, fell to the short stack with 8 people left. From there it was mostly all in poker, I got it in good three of four times, holding each time and grinded down to 4 players, where I ended up being extremely short, we played 4 handed for a lot of hands, until I finally shipped QT in the small blind in to KT, for about 7 big blinds, when blinds were 12K/24K. I didn’t get there and busted in 4th, which I was quite happy with.

Hopefully this means a good run is coming and I could sure use it as I’m sure everyone could!!

Only a short post today as I have to get to bed.  What a ridiculous couple of weeks!  I started playing some of that new Rush Poker on Full Tilt and was doing absolutely great.  Good cards, good reads, and overall just good poker had me up $400 in two days playing .25/.50.  Then, in 3 days time I lost that in what can generously be called the complete opposite of the first two days.  Actually, that’s not true.  I was getting the good cards but wasn’t flopping anything remotely decent, and the play in a lot of the bigger pots I played was so horrible it was unbelievable.  Ridiculous suckout after suckout, with two occasions having flopped set over set only to see the person river the one outer.  I started the week with just over $800, moved up to over $1200 and now currently sit at around $500.  I don’t blame all of the mass setback on bad luck.  I am pretty honest with myself and know when I’m playing badly but I can honestly say that I only misplayed maybe a handful of hands.  It was all I could do to not puke all over my monitor and keyboard.   It’s amazing to me that people still make some of the calls or plays that they do, and I know people are going to say that’s poker (top two dumbest things people say at the table) but still.  When a guy raises preflop, another guy reraises and you look down at 4 4…what are you beating?  People will say “implied odds” and all of that other crap but please.  You still have to be getting close to 8-1 to call but people just see “I have a pair…I call”.  Idiots.  OK, that’s my rant for now.  Actually, it leads me to two topic ideas for other posts so stay tuned for those.

Well I would like to thank Justin for the introduction. I’m really looking forward to actually documenting some of my thoughts and looking forward to useful feedback. As mentioned I have had some nice scores and great experiences over the last year that I will be sharing with you, including two trips to Vegas where I played in a couple of WSOP events and also watched a large amount of the WSOP Main Event final table. Today, I’m going to introduce myself and share all this with you, in the future I plan to break down a lot of my thoughts on making money online, playing sit n go and multi table tournaments.  I plan to break down tournaments where I run deep, mostly when I make final tables but also where I feel I have played really well or not so well.

So, about me, well I have mostly played on Full Tilt over the last couple of years, 99% of my play comes in multi table tourneys and sit n goes. I would personally say all of my success is in multi table tourneys and my leak is in sit n goes. Recently I just started playing on Poker Stars again where I just had my latest decent score, grinding out a 4th place finish in a $27 turbo tournament with about 950 runners. Honestly, I would break this tournament down more if it wasn’t just bunch of random standard all in pre flop hands where I actually ran decent. I would say including my bust hand, 66 all in vs A9 (called), I was in good over 90% of the time, it is nice when most of those hold up and I do get results when this happens. I do find a lot of success in Pot Limit Omaha (PLO); I have at least 6 outright wins on Full Tilt in daily PLO tournaments, ranging from $10 re-buys, to $26 knockout, to the nightly $26 tournament. I have also final tabled the $216 PLO Saturday tournament more than once in the last year. I do hope to get in to deep discussions around PLO going forward, more on the multi table tournament strategy side of things.

My biggest scores have come since the end beginning of August last year, when I ended up making a 5 way chop in an FTOPS event for 3rd place money and over $24K. Everything seemed to go right in this tournament and it was an amazing run. It was a limit, Omaha hi/low tournament, very slow, with over 1100 people, with a buy-in of $216. I played from 6PM until after 3AM, as I said, a very long night!! Shortly after that I had back to back great tournament in the nightly $163 NL hold’em, where I finished 4th and 3rd respectively, both for very nice scores. My last big score was in the $75 buy-in, $40K guaranteed where I ended up chopping heads up, essentially getting almost all of the 1st place prize money. This run ended at the end of September, since then I have had some smaller scores, mostly between $400 and $1,800, still waiting for the next big win to cover, hopefully another trip to the WSOP.

Live success is still yet to come for me but I did experience some amazing things this past summer. I finally went to the WSOP of poker for the first time, where I played in two events, the $1,500 PLO and the $2,500 HA (pot limit hold’em and pot limit Omaha). I couldn’t believe the names I ended up playing against. The first tournament, I will tell you, once I survived my first table, I should have cashed this tournament but I fell about 50 spots short. My first table had a number of pros throughout the day, the biggest names were Chino Rheem and Andy Black. Of my starting table, I was the only one to make it through, everyone else had busted when the table broke and we busted a huge number of players throughout the day. I moved to a table with a guy that made the final table (Dario Alioto), a player that is considered the best online player in the world (Isaac Baron), Ivan Demidov, along with others and Andy Black eventually followed me there. I busted in a hand where I had top pair and a wrap draw against another players top pair with a better kicker. I came 135th out of over 850, top 81 got paid.

My 2nd tournament was quite an experience; this is where I got to play with Daniel Negreanu, Scott Fischman, Kevin Saul, Jeff Schulman, Eric Baldwin and some other, very, very good players. I really played two very interesting hands in this tournament, one against Daniel Negreanu and one being my bust hand. The one against Negreanu was a PLO hand where I started with AA85 double suited. I raised in 2nd position and had about 5 callers. The flop came out K83 with one spade. I decided to play the hand slowly as AA at this point is not that strong in PLO, so I checked. Daniel bet in position and everyone else folded to me, I called. The turn was the 4 of spades, so this card gave me the nut flush draw and a gut shot straight draw along with my aces. I checked, Daniel bet and I re-raised him about half my stack, he almost immediately called. The river was an 8, which ended up giving me trip eights with an ace kicker. I shipped my stack in, which was 3,500ish, into a pot that was over 4,000. The first thing he said was, so you have kings full? I didn’t say a thing, I just stared forwards. He ended up tanking for 3 minutes, thinking and said, ok, if I fold, actually dealer, I fold, but if you can show me KK, I will give you $200. He then went on to muck his hand showing an 8. I mucked my hand and we went on to the next hand.

I ended up talking to him at the break, not revealing my hand but he told me he would have paid me $500 to see my hand. He told me that he had an 8 with a queen kicker and he also had a queen high flush draw. Looking back at the hand, I feel like I really should have almost checked the river, or put out a smaller bet and he may have actually put me all in or called as did hit a very good river card. He also told me he would have paid me if the flush had hit. So, I ended up grinding this tournament, not getting too many cards and not having any luck with Kevin Saul and Negreanu directly on my left the whole day. My bust out hand was very unlucky in a lot of cases. It went to the flop 5 way, I was quite low, around 6K, we started with $7,500. I had JJT8, the flop was TJQ, the first player led out, then two callers, I went all in, Kevin Saul called along with one other player. There was about $25K in the pot and no side pot. The turn was a really bad card for me because I’m looking for the board to pair but it was an 8. This is bad for me because I have less outs and now any Q9, T9, J9 went ahead of me. Kevin Saul immediately went all in and the other player folded showing K9. Kevin showed 79QJ for the straight and top two pair, so I had 4 outs to hit, the river did pair the queen which gave him a higher full house. It is unfortunate that if the player with K9 had pushed Kevin on the hand I would have won but that’s how it goes.

I also played a number of Venetian Deep Stack events on this trip, cashing one for over $2,000 to recover some money from my trip. As I explained, this was an amazing trip with some unbelievable experiences that I wouldn’t have changed for anything. I hope to play in the Main Event this year and it works out, possibly some other events along the way. I do work full time so at this point, poker is just a part time thing for me, I’ve always said, if I get enough money in the bank to pay all my bills for a year, I will take 6 months off work to try and play full time. No luck yet but that day could still come!! So, sorry for the long 1st post but this should give you a quick breakdown of my experience and I look forward to going in to some tourneys and strategies in more detail in the future.

I wanted to take the time to introduce a new writer for this blog/site.  His name is Greg and he goes by the name of gr24 on Full Tilt.  Over the past year or two, he has had pretty good success in online tournaments, garnering a 3rd place finish I believe it was in an FTOPS Omaha event and a $24K payday.  There have been other deep runs as well but I will let him introduce himself in greater detail.  He will be writing about a lot of the similar things I do, detailing how he’s been doing and hopefully some tips as well.  I’m not a very good Omaha player at the moment so I’m hoping maybe he will provide some of his own insight into the game as well as No Limit Hold Em.  Welcome Greg!

As for myself, it’s been the usual rollercoaster.  I haven’t had the time to play many tournaments and the ones I’ve been playing have gone decently compared to the buy ins.  I had a 4th place finish in a $10 $10K guarantee which was a nice win but the cash games have been the toughest lately.  I’m not playing as much as I had anticipated being able to play and as such, my game has suffered a little bit.  My account is back down to just under $900, and while some of my friends are still saying that’s pretty good considering where I started from I want to get my roll up to where it was and more.  I know I have to stay patient, grind it out, and hopefully the results will start to come again.  The problem is working two jobs, and when I get the spare time I have my son and I’m not giving up on that time just to play .50/$1 poker or tournaments.  He’s funny though.  Sometimes when it’s raining and there isn’t much to do he’ll just say “Dad, why don’t you try to win some money in a tournament today?”  He’ll pull up a chair beside me and watch for awhile, until he gets bored anyway but he’s asking questions about why I made certain laydowns and why I bet a certain way, or why I played a particular hand.  Nothing like a little father/son bonding time over a poker game.  lol

While I’ve been playing, I’ve also been watching the action at the nosebleed levels on Full Tilt again.  Isildur1, the man who brought a whole new meaning to aggression at the tables has returned to the game.  You may recall late last year that he lost $4M in one session to Brian Hastings, who had plenty of help from Brian Townsend with what they call data mining.  Basically the two of them, along with Cole South, got together 50K hands from their combined hand histories in heads up matches vs. Isildur1 and started looking for patterns or flaws in his game.  That’s OK to do by yourself with your own hand histories but you’re not allowed to collaborate or use info from others’ as well.  It’s in the Terms and Conditions of the site.  So, after all was said and done Isildur1’s bankroll was decimated and he took a hiatus from the site.  The action therefore took a hit as not many of the top guys were in there playing each other as much or for as much money but over the past couple of weeks it’s heated up again.  Just yesterday there was a 6 man $300/$600 PLO (Pot Limit Omaha) table of Isildur1, Brian Townsend, OMGClayAiken, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Urindanger, and LarsLuzak.  Pots of course, were constantly in the 6 figure range but even so I felt Isildur1 was making a big misake.  The day started out with him playing 5 tables of heads up NLHE vs. Luzak at $300/$600.  Isildur1 actually left the tables to go play PLO.  Hardly anyone wants to play him at No Limit Hold Em as that is his better game by far and he crushes most of the people out there.  He’s finally got a guy like Luzak, who’s considered a pretty good but not necessarily great player, to play him at his game and he leaves?  Dumb!  I know the action is consistently bigger at PLO but you’ve got to play where you’re going to be most profitable.  He was doing pretty well as I logged off but for the most part, the players don’t want any part of him heads up and try to get him to play as much PLO as possible.  He should know this and if it were me I would tell them “Fine, I’ll play you PLO but only 3 tables.  You have to play me at least 2 or 3 tables of NLHE as well”.

Well, the results are in for this year’s Bluff Magazine Award winners.  Sorry it has taken this long to get the results (if you don’t know them already).  I’ve just been really busy but I’m planning on writing more often.  As for the the winners there were a few surprises, a few that were not surprising at all, and a few that could have gone either way.  Below are the results compared to who I thought was going to win…

Favourite Player of 2009: I chose Phil Ivey on this one and it looks like a lot of people agreed with me.  Garnering 68.6% of the vote over a very popular Daniel Negreanu certainly shows what kind of respect and what kind of year Phil Ivey had this year.

Top Poker Blog for 2009: Like I said in my predictions, I don’t read much of these so I took a shot in the dark with Wicked Chops and it looks like I got lucky.  As Bluff Magazine pointed out, a combination of poker news, gossip and hot girls is popular.  No kidding!

Top Poker Show: My first error.  I went with the World Series of Poker on this one but 47.4% of the voters went with High Stakes Poker.  With the degree of action that Tom Dwan brought to the table this isn’t a surprising result really and I guess a lot of the voters forgot how the last half of the season was not nearly as fun to watch as the first half.  That being said, my mistake was probably in focusing on the last few episodes of the WSOP instead of the whole thing.

Favourite Online Poker Site: PokerStars had been dominating this category the last few years but I figured with the amount of action at the high stakes levels and with the emergence of Isildur1 instigating a lot of it, Full Tilt might take over this year.  Apparently 49.3% of the voters agreed with me as it took down PokerStars by just over 5%.  These two sites are easily the biggest and best in the world as third place Ultimate Bet/Absolut Poker only garnered 3.7% of the vote.

Favourite Poker Forum: I sort of took the easy way out by not trying to predict a winner, just saying it would be between PocketFives and TwoPlusTwo.  I’ll only take half a point here as TwoPlusTwo did take it down, although I was surprised that BluffMagazine.com did come in second.  Suck ups!  Probably trying to get a deal on a subscription by voting for them.  lol

Favourite Las Vegas Poker Room: Having never been to Vegas I could only go by what friends have told me and from what I’ve read in reviews so I went with the Bellagio.  Garnering 54.4% of the vote, the Bellagio did take it down.  Man, I’m doing pretty good here!

Best Poker Twitterer: My pick was Joe Sebok although I did say that Doyle Brunson would probably win it.  In a tight race, Doyle took it with 33.1% compared to Sebok’s 30.4%.  They’re both fun to read and I do follow them both as well as third place finisher Barry Greenstein.  Still haven’t seen Erik Seidel’s though and am still surprised Negreanu’s wasn’t an option as he is obviously very popular.

Best Online Poker Player: Now, I knew I was going to get this one wrong because I picked someone that wasn’t even on the list.  As I said in my Bluff Magazine Awards 2009 post, I’m guessing the names that are on here have more to do with the fact they made their names online before going to live games than for whether they are actually the best player.  I had picked Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius as the runner up as they more than crushed the online scene again this year.  But I did say that Tom Dwan would be the probable winner and I was right.  Do I get a half point for this one?  Dwan took 45.8% of the vote and I did call Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond as the second place finisher so…yeah, taking a half point.

Favourite Poker Villain: In a way, no surprise here with Phil Hellmuth taking it.  The real winner should have been Luke Schwartz but he isn’t nearly as well known to us in North America so naturally it came down to Hellmuth and Mike Matusow.  Hellmuth took 43.6% of the vote over Matusow’s 31.8%

Top Story of 2009: This one wasn’t even close and I don’t think anyone was kidding themselves that it would be.  With the biggest margin of victory, Phil Ivey making the final table of the WSOP Main Event garnered 73.9% of the vote.  Maybe it would have been a little closer if they had taken out the Phil Hellmuth Arrives as Caesar option and replaced it with Jeff Lisandro winning 3 bracelets but I don’t think it would have closed the gap by much.  Ivey making the final table was just too big of an event and it helped turn the Penn and Teller theater into something resembling a college basketball game.

Well, I only got 6 out of 10.  A couple were really close calls but that’s all right.  How did you do?  I have a feeling a lot of these names could be back for the awards of 2010 and hopefully there will be a lot of the same excitement that we saw in 2009.  Will a big name pro make the final table of the Main Event this year?  Can Full Tilt maintain it’s momentum from the end of the year?  What will Phil Hellmuth come up with for his entrance into this year’s Main Event?  Will the Durrrr Challenge ever actually end?  I don’t know but it will be fun watching to find out.

At this time every year, Bluff Magazine gets ready to dole out it’s annual Readers Choice Awards.  This year there are 14 categories and 4 choices in each category.  I haven’t seen if the winners have been announced yet so I will pick who I think should win and who probably will win in most of the major categories.  There are some categories, such as best Podcast or best Poker Forum that I won’t even try to guess a winner as I just don’t know enough about them.  Feel free to voice your own opinion though.

Favourite Player of 2009: A) Phil Ivey B) Jason Mercier C) Daniel Negreanu D) Bertrand Grospellier (Elky)

For the past few years my favourite player to watch has been Daniel Negreanu.  His uncanny reads at the table, his stellar play, and his good natured approach at the tables is what makes him very popular.  He’s very accessible to his fans.  However, for this year I’m going with Phil Ivey.  His run at the World Series coupled with his huge wins online at Full Tilt, and seeing him crush the Million Dollar Poker Challenge and Poker After Dark cash games has been amazing to watch.  I don’t think there were too many out there other than friends and families of the other November Nine that didn’t want to see Ivey take it down the Main Even Title.  The respect he was shown at the end when he lost to Darvin Moon, and the standing ovation he got from the crowd told it all

My Pick: Phil Ivey

Probable Winner: Phil Ivey

Top Poker Blog for 2009: A) Wicked Chops Poker  B) Tao of Pauly  C) Pokerati  D) PokerNewsDaily

Tough for me to choose here because I don’t really read any of these.  I’ve read Wicked Chops Poker before and some of their articles in Bluff Magazine so I’ll pick them by default.  lol

My Choice: Wicked Chops Poker

Probable Winner: Wicked Chops Poker

Top Poker Show for 2009 -- A) World Series of Poker B) High Stakes Poker C) Poker After Dark D) World Poker Tour

This was a two horse race between the WSOP and HSP in my opinion.  With Ivey’s run, the improbable run of Darvin Moon, and the chance for Joe Cada to become the youngest player in history to win the WSOP Main Event, the ratings were in huge.  If you listened to the radio broadcast live and then watched the shows you may have been as disappointed as I was as things just jumped around a bit and didn’t quite show how things were playing out.  For example, going to commercial and then coming back to see Kevin Shaffel and Erik Buchman with their AA vs. KK hand.  What happened to showing the players’ cards to the hole card cam and the reaction of the announcers?  And while Joe Cada was obviously very lucky, they only showed those hands where he sucked out and not as much showing how he was willing to mix it up a lot before that.  As for HSP, if it was based solely on the first 7 or 8 episodes it would win easily.  The table started with Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, David Benyamine, Eli Elezra, Illaries Sohamies, Daniel Negreanu, Peter Eastgate, Doyle Brunson, and Barry Greenstein.  The climax of those episodes came in the then largest pot in television history (Dwan and Phil Ivey recently broke the record again on the Full Tilt Million Dollar Challenge in London) when Dwan won just under $1M in one hand when his KQs cracked Barry Greenstein’s AA.  Here’s how it went down…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OColG3ceE_Q

Unfortunately, the group that came after them wasn’t nearly as exciting to watch and the highlight of that show was a prop bet on whether Antonio Esfandiari could do 50 push ups.  The game picked up a little bit when Dwan re-entered the game but not enough because everyone except Patrik Antonius seemed scared of him.  Poker After Dark will never win as long as that Ali Nejad is announcing.  He’s horrible!  And the WPT is always fun to watch but there just seems to be something missing.  I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.  Maybe it’s because less and less name pros are making final tables but I’m not sure.

My Pick: WSOP

Probable Winner: WSOP

Favourite Online Poker Site: A) Poker Stars  B) Full Tilt Poker  C) Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker  D) Cake Poker

Another two horse race between Stars and Tilt.  Ultimate Bet/Absolute are still under a cloud due to the now famous Super User scandals and trust in those sites is not back to 100% yet, and may never get there again.  Cake Poker I haven’t tried as of yet.  I do have it downloaded, just haven’t made my first deposit to play so I’ll stick to the two I play on the most.  Stars had another great year, setting another World Record for most people to play in an online tournament and their Sunday Million $2.5M Guarantee is seeing bigger fields than ever.  However, with the emergence of Isildur1 and the crazy action at the nosebleed levels on Full Tilt this year, I believe they will win this one.  They’ve also adjusted their tournament structures to go up slower, much the same way Stars has already.  This allows for more play and more often than not the better players to shine through more consistently

My Pick: Full Tilt

Probable Winner: Poker Stars

Favourite Poker Forum: A) PocketFives  B) TwoPlusTwo  C) BluffMagazine  D) Full Contact Poker

PocketFives and TwoPlusTwo have been the top two forums for a couple years now.  I have to admit I haven’t read a lot of Bluff’s or Full Contact’s other than to read Daniel Negreanu’s very entertaining blog.  I find myself more and more on the TwoPlusTwo forum than anything else but not enough to make an educated guess as to who will win.  I just assume it will be between A and B

Favourite Las Vegas Poker Room: A) Bellagio  B) Venetian  C) Wynn  D) Caesars Palace

I have never been to Vegas so I can’t say on this one either.  From what I’ve heard the pros say and from what I’ve heard from my friends, the Bellagio is the place to be

Best Poker Twitter: A) Barry Greenstein  B) Doyle Brunson C) Joe Sebok  D) Erik Seidel

This is sort of a weird category.  I’m a follower of the first three and haven’t read any of Erik Seidel’s.  Just the fact that his name is here makes me think I should at least go and see his page.  I’m also surprised Daniel Negreanu’s Twitter isn’t included since he does write every day and he’s obviously very popular.  Barry Greenstein tweets a lot about how he’s doing in tournaments and usually he’ll do it from the table.  I like reading Doyle’s tweets because it’s interesting to see what the Godfather thinks not only about the state of poker but all things in general.  I’d really like to read his autobiography one of these days.  Joe Sebok’s is very entertaining and I love his sarcastic sense of humour while also being very direct with his opinions.  I think him and I are a lot alike and that’s why I love reading his many tweets a day.

My Pick: Joe Sebok

Probable Winner: Doyle Brunson

Best Online Poker Player: A) Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies  B) Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond  C) Tom “durrrr” Dwan  D) “Isildur1″

Obviously all four of these guys are amazing players.  I don’t think you can say Isildur1 was the best this year as he was only around for the latter half of the year before going bust late.  He did create quite a stir in the online poker world with his exploits but not for player of the year.  Ziigmund was seemingly a little more quiet this year than in past years so I think the voting will come down to Galfond and Dwan.  Dwan obviously gets the more publicity out of the two but Galfond just keeps plugging along, consistently winning at PLO (probably his best game) as well as the mixed games.

My Pick: Phil Ivey.  That’s right.  PHIL IVEY!  How can this guy not be on this list?  He crushed all games again this year, made the most amount of money and his name isn’t on the list?  The only reason I can think of is that the names consist of those that made their name online before moving to the live games.  I don’t necessarily agree with that as the title simply says “Best Online Poker Player”.  The funny part is, the runner up isn’t on this list either.  That should be Patrik Antonius!

Probable Winner: Tom “durrrr” Dwan

Favourite Poker Villain: A) Mike Matusow  B) Phil Hellmuth  C) Mark Vos  D) Luke “_FullFlush1_”Schwartz

This one should be easy.  Mike Matusow is not a villain.  He talks a lot but not nearly how he used to and even when he does it’s usually just at Phil Hellmuth.  I don’t consider Phil a “villain” either.  He badmouths some of the amateurs for their play (let’s face it, a lot of the things he says are true) and also gets on Matusow.  He has his usual blow ups and does whine a lot when he’s outplayed or outdrawn so I guess these are the reasons he’s on here.  I’m not sure it necessarily makes him a “villain” though.  Mark Vos I hear has a bit of a temper as well and I’ve seen him talk a little smack on the internet but big deal.  I guess because he’s a little more profile it gets noticed more.  Now Luke Schwartz on the other hand, is a true poker villain.  Coming out and talking trash about Tom Dwan just because he doesn’t like the look of him, bragging about how much better he thinks he is than everyone, chat banned on Full Tilt, getting banned from casinos across the UK not once but TWICE, and the last time because he felt he didn’t have to pay for a sandwich.  Are you kidding me?  This guy is a moron and I wish he’d put his money where his mouth is and play Dwan so he can get busted.

My Pick: Luke”_FullFlush1″Schwartz

Probable Winner: Phil Hellmuth

Top Story of 2009: A) The Durrrr Challenge  B) Phil Hellmuth Arrives at WSOP/WSOPE Dressed as Caesar  C) Five Players Win Multiple Bracelets at 2009 WSOP  D) Phil Ivey Makes WSOP Main Event Final Table

Let’s eliminate the ones that won’t even come close to winning.  Phil Hellmuth’s arrivals aren’t even close to being a great story.  He does these types of things every year and they are very very creative.  It is just a “look at me” stunt while being dressed up with the Ultimate Bet logos and good entertainment but not worthy of this award.  Five players winning multiple bracelets is an amazing thing as just winning one bracelet a year is a pretty big accomplishment, especially with the enormous fields these days.  I just don’t think it’s THE story.  The Durrrr Challenge had the poker world buzzing at the beginning of it.  Online forums lit up with discussions on who would accept and how the sessions would go.  However, after a decently fast start the Challenge slowed to a snail’s pace as both players had to try and find mutual times to be able to play.  With both having lots of commitments in other venues, playing tournaments, TV games etc. it was hard to get the two together on the virtual felt.  A year later, they STILL aren’t done so interest waned.  That leaves Phil Ivey making the final table the biggest story of the year.  The world’s greatest player making the final table of the game’s greatest event was simply huge for the game.  Media from all over covered this story, and even as one of the shortstacked players he was considered one of the favourites.  The atmosphere was electric throughout and when that unfortunate queen hit the flop you could feel the energy leave the room.  But because of the two month build up, because it was Phil Ivey and because it was the WSOP Main Event, this was easily the biggest story of the year.

My Pick: Phil Ivey

Probable Winner: Phil Ivey

There you have it.  Those are my picks and very soon (if not already) the winners will be announced.  Who did you have as your picks, why did you pick them, and how did you fare against the eventual winners?

There is a very common mistake people make at the poker table and it’s thinking the money they’ve already invested in a pot matters in their decision making on later streets.  You’ll hear something like, “Well I’ve already put in so much.  I have to call now.”  This couldn’t be further from the truth and flawed thinking like this will only cost you even more money.

The reason this is wrong is because once the money goes into the pot, it no longer belongs to you.  It belongs to the pot.  The decisions you make from this point on should only have to do with the odds concerning the amount it will cost you to call your opponent’s bet in relation to the pot and the odds to make your hand (assuming you didn’t make it already).

Here’s an example.  Let’s say you and your opponent are the only two in the pot and you’ve each put in $200 by the time the betting is completed on the flop.  There’s $400 and you have an open ended straight draw, no flush possibilities out there.  The turn is a blank and your opponent bets $200 making the pot $600 total.  You’re looking at your hand and think you still have a pretty good draw.  You’ve already put $200 in so far and how can you just let it go like that with a decent draw?  So you call.  The river is another blank, your opponent bets, and you have to fold.  You have now unnecessarily lost an extra $200.  “How so?” you might ask.  Well, let’s go back and look at your decision on the turn.  If you have an open ended straight draw that means you have 8 outs and, as we learned in Pot Odds the Rule of 4 and Betting,  with one card to come you are about 16% or just over 5-1 to  make your hand.  It was going to cost you $200 to win $600 which is only 3-1.  You were not getting the right odds to call and mathematically you will lose money making this call in the long run.

The same goes if you make a bet and you get raised.  Don’t factor in the money you’ve just bet in your decision.  As soon as you push that bet into the middle, whether there’s action or not, it’s not yours anymore.  You can’t pull it back unless everyone folds.  Once there’s a call or a raise it’s gone too.  If you started a hand with $500, bet $40 and got raised, you now only have $460 to use when considering your next move.

So remember, when it comes time to decide on whether to continue in the hand or not, base it on your reads and use the math involved at that moment and not how much you’ve already invested.  You’ll save a lot more money in the end

It’s been I think just over a week since I’ve written here, partially because there hasn’t been much to write about and partially because I haven’t had time to write anything anyway.  In the limited time I’ve had I’ve been playing a bit of poker here and there but not too much.  I’ve just been too busy with work, and twice a week my 9 year old’s basketball practices.  To say the least I’ve been keeping busy.

There have been lots of basketball games on this week and if you haven’t read the About Me post, I’m an avid fan.  There’s been lots of controversy in the NBA regarding it’s All Star voting.  Up until the announcements were made the other night, both Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady were leading their positions to be starter.  This would be an absolute travesty to those that have been playing all year and deserve those spots, especially Steve Nash who is having an MVP calibre season.  Well, the votes are all in now and Nash made a late surge to and will now start over McGrady.  Iverson, on the other hand, will still start. 

The East starters are: LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, Kevin Garnett, and Allen Iverson

Other than Iverson, who has only played 19 games and not at an All Star level, the only problem I had here was Kevin Garnett.  No way should he be starting over Chris Bosh who is leading the league in double doubles and has been a beast all year.  More on this later.

The West All Stars are: Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan (also making a late surge over Dirk Nowitzki who will be in the game regardless), Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash, and Amare Stoudemire.  Can’t really complain about this lineup at all other than I would have personally liked to see Dirk start and Duncan come off the bench. 

I think this could have been a really embarrassing thing for the league if McGrady had made it in after only playing a handful of games and only averaging 7 minutes per game during that stretch.  He isn’t even really on any team right now.  The voting system needs to change.  The fans are given too much say and it’s just a popularity contest now than it is about recognizing those that are having great seasons.  That’s the only reason that Kevin Garnett is starting over Bosh, and the reason McGrady and Iverson are even being considered for the game.  For whatever reason, the fans don’t realize how dumb they look for voting these guys in.  Fans don’t vote for the baseball, football, or hockey all-star games so why should they for basketball.  I say let the players and media vote, and the coaches still pick their reserves.  The fans are still going to attend the games, they’re still going to turn it on the TV.  No fan is going to grumble, “They took my vote away so I’m not watching”.  If they do, let them.  They’re not real fans anyway.  It will still be an entertaining game but let’s put the people out there that deserve it the most.

Bit of a downturn this week, not just for myself but seemingly all over the online sites.  Not too many of the big name pros are showing up on Full Tilt in the past couple weeks so the action has almost become  non-existant.  I’m assuming Isildur1 is not going to deposit anymore money until the whole data mining thing is resolved.  I know he wants some of his money back but whether he gets it is another question.  Pokernews.com posted a pretty interesting question as to whether people should be able to change their screen names as many times as they want.  I’m sort of mixed on this one. 

  I can see why it would be both a good thing and a bad thing.  Good, because you wouldn’t be able to gang up on one player the way that Cole South, Brian Hastings and Brian Townsend did.  After a particularly bad session, you could quit and come back later under a different name.  I think with certain playing styles at the bigger levels you’d be able to figure out pretty quickly who someone is but you wouldn’t always be sure.  It would keep you honest anyway.

As for how it might be bad, I’m not sure.  I guess considering you don’t get to just change identities in a live game, why should you be able to online?  Guys can get together and talk about you on their own time for live game players and try to figure out ways to beat you for next time.  Granted, they don’t have hand histories, stats, and tendencies sitting in front of them while it’s being discussed but still.  For now, it’s against every site’s Terms and Conditions and I don’t see it changing any time soon.

As for how my game is going, it’s been very up and down.  After repaying my buddy back the money I owed him and sending my account down to $1200, I went on a very bad run losing another $450 or so and forcing me back down to the .25/.50 level.  I did get back up as far as $1000, went back down to $750 and now am around the $900 mark.  Some big hands I’ve lost have been some of those that just play themselves out.  After raising preflop with AcKd and getting called the flop came Ad 8d 5d.  We ended up getting it all in on the flop and my opponent flipped over pocket 5’s.  The turn and river were blanks and I was $100 lighter.  Really, just nothing you can do there but I’m also not playing my best at the moment either.  I got into a hand where I got severely outplayed and sucked out on the river with a 3 outer ace.  I had AQ and my opponent had KK.  Never saw it coming, made a bad read on a guy and bluffed all in only to catch it.  I didn’t say sorry or anything because we all know how hollow those sorts of apologies are (after all, we are here to take each other’s money in the end) and nobody is ever really sorry.  I did compliment him for totally outplaying me and he was gracious in saying “nh” but that’s the game I guess. 

So, that’s where I’m at right now, just grinding away as usual.  PokerStars has been terrible and I’m just sort of taking a break from that site for a little while.  I’m only around $220 there and it’s harder playing that far down when I’ve been playing even as high as $1/2 on Full Tilt.  I’ll get back to it soon and hopefully I’ll get going on a run there as well.