Las Vegas Vegas Rates Your Home Game Read Part One Here... Our ex-wife talked us into painting our dining room that shade of burgundy back when we were getting laid, and it took two coats of primer and four of...
Read The Full Article:
http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/archives/002623.php
Add to del.icio.us
Digg this
Post to Furl
Add to reddit
Add to myYahoo!Card Player Magazine has one of those fill-in-the-blank letters that you can have sent to your representatives opposing the bills that propose outlawing online poker playing for money. Do your part - contact your representatives. It literally takes less than 2 minutes to fill out. Maybe even less than a minute.
Read The Full Article:
http://hellaholdem.blogspot.com/2006/04/letter-to-congress.html
Add to del.icio.us
Digg this
Post to Furl
Add to reddit
Add to myYahoo!As online poker grows by thousands daily the range of players is becoming broader. The phenomenon that poker has become in
?
Add to del.icio.us
Digg this
Post to Furl
Add to reddit
Add to myYahoo!I?d been through this before.
****
How do you come down from a rush? To be sure, a rush is that fortuitous combination of playing well and having a little luck thrown in for good measure. Not getting sucked out on when you?re ahead and coming from behind when you?re not. But sometimes, maybe even just a little, you aren?t looking at your play objectively any longer. You could be playing worse than you think - even poorly - but the luck of the rush is still with you and it masks your true performance.
Late last November, I was on a rush. Then came Vegas. And then went my bankroll.
It only took a few days, but I decimated my live game cash roll by playing horribly. My final day in Vegas was spent playing at some lower limits, concentrating more on having fun than anything. I basically threw in the towel. My losses were too large and I couldn?t turn things around. I fell off the horse and watched it ride away. My self-confidence was in tatters.
****
This past February and March, I went on another rush. There was a stretch of about thirty days of playing poker where I posted winning days on all but five. The online and live rolls were at all-time highs and I was playing well. At least I thought so. Because I was on a rush.
****
Thursday night the wheels came off. I played poorly at the medium game and dropped $180. The following night at the local underground raked game, I dropped $420. After I drove G-Rob home, I hopped online and proceeded to drop another $400. Saturday morning I woke up to flush over flush and set over set, dropping another $450.
In the span of about 36 hours, I lost nearly $1500.
****
If you can?t learn from past mistakes, then you shouldn?t be playing poker. If you don?t have the willingness to take a step back and objectively look at yourself and your playing abilities, then you shouldn?t be playing poker. If you?re going to let results dictate the levels at which you play, then you shouldn?t be playing poker.
****
I took a break in the mid-afternoon and hung with the kids. During that time, I thought about the past few days. I could choose to hang my head low, tuck my tail between my legs and crawl back to some lower stakes and rebuild. That?s what I did in Vegas. Sure it worked, but to me, it was almost like giving up even if it was for only a while. I?m too damn stubborn for that. I chose another option. I chose to go back and play. I chose to do my best to put the losses aside and just play good poker. This was another personal test for me. I had to leave the losses behind and ignore them, not let them affect my play.
****
Saturday mid-afternoon session: +$200. Saturday late-afternoon session: +$200. Saturday late-night session: +$300. Sunday morning session: +$200. Sunday night session: +$550. Total winnings? Equal to the total losses. A wash.
****
For some readers, the dollar figures are but a pittance while for others they are significant. For me, it?s within bankroll management guidelines, but it still represents a healthy chunk. But the results aren?t important.
What?s truly important to me was the fact that I was able to turn my play around so quickly in the face of recent, significant losses. That is the test that I passed this time. Yeah, this is all rah-rah-rah BS, me patting myself on the back. But it does represent somewhat of a milestone for me. It is a step up the ladder in improving my own game, a rung that I?d tripped over before.
Read The Full Article:
http://badbloodonpoker.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_badbloodonpoker_archive.html#11446
8459626055600
Add to del.icio.us
Digg this
Post to Furl
Add to reddit
Add to myYahoo!© COPYRIGHT 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Yes, poker and drugs do mix, at least my limited sample size showed over the weekend.
After having my root canals done on Friday, I took some vicodin and logged on for some $2/4 LHE action. The results were good, as I booked a profit of $101 on Friday playing at Imperial Poker ($15 profit, 226 hands) and World Poker Exchange ($85 profit, 157 hands).
On Saturday, I was feeling much better and decided not to take anymore of the vicodin and ended up with a loss of $15 for the day at WPE over 167 hands dealt.
I guess I should have stayed on the "vike"(LOL). And for more than one reason. As good as I felt on Saturday, I felt just as bad yesterday (and played no poker, of course, for the day). I guess it's safe to say that I flunked pain management 101. When you start taking the pain killers, you need to stay on them, so it ended up taking about 12 hours to get the pain under control yesterday. Ugh.
The Rake Free Poker Experiment
Playing at World Poker Exchange has proven to be interesting. For now, I'll be keeping it in my rotation.
Rake really is a silent killer. Just playing 470 hands of $2/4 LHE in my first week at WPE netted me a 100% rakeback return of $46.84. That's 2.5 BB/100 at $2/4 LHE.
Playing in tight and aggressive games can be profitable (even without 100% rakeback). Including my play this morning ($16 profit over 153 hands), I'm running at 4 BB/100 over 623 hands at WPE's $2/4 LHE tables (sure, it's a small sample size). Just because the WPE games have a bunch of 2+2ers in them, it doesn't mean I am playing against world class players. Far from it. And there are usually a couple of weak players at the table who are loose.
Playing in tight and aggressive games is actually fun and a nice change of pace. I actually get to use my brain a bit more and use more poker weapons (bluffs, semi-bluffs, etc.) instead of playing the usual low limit "you have to showdown the best hand" poker.
I have never played at a site where there is so much preflop limp-reraising as there is at WPE. So far I think the limp-reraising there only indicates AA or KK about 10% of the time, if that much.
Reading 2+2 posts on WPE has been fun, too. I have seen where posters are offering $100 to anyone who can craft a hand converter to allow WPE's hand histories into Poker Tracker. Are you kidding me? Whatever happened to using that thing called your brain? Poker Tracker can be a good tool, but it's no substitute for using your mind. It really seems that for most people that it's a crutch.
To Slowplay, Or Not To Slowplay, That Is The Question
Here is my favorite question once again, slowplaying. Here is a hand I played over the weekend. It was a tight and aggressive game with a lot of blind defense. I had been at the table for 25 hands or so and all I can read about my opponent so far in the hand is that he appears to be selective when playing hands:
World Poker Exchange
Limit Holdem Ring game
Limit: $2/$4
8 players
Pre-flop: (8 players) Michael is EP1 with [K? K?]
2 folds, Michael raises, 4 folds, BB calls.
Flop: [K? T? T?] (4.5SB, 2 players)
BB checks, Michael ???
Do you (1) check behind and slowplay or (2) bet here hoping that the BB has caught enough of the flop to proceed and what are your reason(s)?

Add to del.icio.us
Digg this
Post to Furl
Add to reddit
Add to myYahoo!Will the Bodog girls be at the 2006 WSOP Expo Show? World Series of Poker for 2006 is only sixty days away. The mother of all poker tournaments, the WSOP, will start the '06 run of almost fifty days...
Read The Full Article:
http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/archives/002622.php
Add to del.icio.us
Digg this
Post to Furl
Add to reddit
Add to myYahoo!
Powered by blogdig.net