Clearing Bonuses

I was interested to read JimmytheHat over at One Day at A Time talking about how he’s fallen behind clearing his 2007 Iron Man bonus at Full Tilt.  Timely post becuase I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing.  So far I’ve only cleared about a quarter of it and I’m clearly not going to get the whole thing in the time left this month.  I really agree with Jimmy though insofar as you feel forced to play – I’m sure thats exactly the idea the sites have in mind, they want to generate sufficient rake to pay the bonus!  To me that seems like getting you twice – after all, I had to play a lot and generate plenty of rake to qualify Iron Man and earn the bonus in the first place.  To then turn around and say you need to get thousands more points in one month to release the bonus you’ve already earned just seems a little greedy.

But the major problem is that its really hard to play your A game when you know you are really sitting down at the tables just to clear a certain amount of points per day.  I’ve been guilty of this for a few months now and I really need to stop this practice – once I’ve cleared as much of this bonus as I can 🙂  As I commented over on Jimmy’s blog though, you have to be careful that by forcing yourself to play when not in the right frame of mind you dont end up actually costing yourself more money than you make in the bonus!

 I’m behind for January, so on the surface it appears I’ve fallen into the trap somewhat.  Closer analysis though shows me that the majority of the loss has been through some pretty brutal suckouts by villians – generally I’ve been getting my money in good.  So at least I appear to still be making reasonable decisions and plays, and as we all know thats all you can hope to do.  In this scenario at least the bonus/rakeback takes the edge off what would have been a pretty ordinary month.  I downloaded PokerGrapher again the other day, what I might do is post my monthly graph each month and try and see if there’s anything to be learned by what its telling me.   In the meantime, I’ll continue to earn a little more of that bonus for the end of the month – but this is the last time!

Ok I Have to Admit It …

…too tired to play tonight so was just surfing around poker sites and blogs and checking out the latest. I came across this video entry over at Pot Committed … Change100 there is one of the writers for Pokernews.com.  I actually got this video link from YouTube directly, so I hope this isnt copyright … if this is naughty then someone tell me and I’ll take it down.  Anyway the link is an interview between Amanda Leatherman and Annette Obrestad.

I admit, I’m fast becoming a fan of Annette.  I just think its an incredibly good thing for poker to have a bright young woman as one of the premier up and comers in the game – nothing will finally kill the old image of poker as a smoky back room game faster than people like Annette continuing to have great success.  The more poker displays its increasing diversity the better in my opinion.  Anyway, while the interview was moderately interesting, that was actually the first time I’ve heard Annette speak … thats an interesting phenomenon in itself, that online “stars” can become so well known via their online prowess yet many people may never have actually seen the person at all.  Anyway, I kinda expected Annette to have a heavy Scandinavian accent due to her Norwegian origins, but it wasn’t nearly as detectable as I expected. I almost would have pegged her for American if I didn’t know better.  Shame she didnt do well down here in the Aussie Millions – but good luck to her in the future, I think she has potential to be a real superstar of the game.

Omaha Eight or Better Redux

Despite my previous post on O8/b, I seem to do much better in the tournament version of this game.  Played in a $11 tourney the other night on Full Tilt, had 64 runnners, interestingly including Full Tilt pro Karina Jett.  It’s the first time I’ve played in a tourney with a name pro – busting them earns you your buyin back as a bounty.  She wasnt at my table much unfortunately – she did get moved there late but some other guy busted her.  I don’t think she was paying a hell of a lot of attention to it, she seemed to play very few hands and just got it in with a decent starting hand.  I assume its part of their contract to play x number of low level tournaments per month or something.

I managed to cash for 6th position, after three hours of play.  The thing I notice about these tournaments is that the preflop play of the large majority of the field is atrocious.  I realise I’m still a relative novice at this game, but I think I do reasonably well in these tournaments becuase I am very disciplined with my preflop hands – I dont speculate at all after the first few hands.  I’ve read the Full Tilt Tournament Guide chapter on O8/b tournies – interestingly written by Mike Matusow, and I’ve found it to be a really good chapter for offering solid, basic advice for these tournies, enough to give you a decent edge on the majority of the field at this level.

Busted out when getting short on the final table, I raised A4QQ with the A suited into the chipleader who had a very loose starting range.  Not a premium hand but couldnt afford to wait any longer with the blinds really getting up there.  He called with AKxx – lowish x cards, so probably a reasonable play given he had a big chiplead … he made the high with an A and K hitting the board. 

Still, the interesting observation is that I cant seem to make any profit at all playing O8/b cash, yet do reasonably well in the tournament version.

The Hardest Part of a Cold Streak

It goes without saying that if you play poker long enough, you’ll run worse than you ever possibly imagined.  I confess to be facing the worst cold period of my two year poker career … I’ve never seen so many one and two outers since December started.  But that is actually not the point of my post, and I dont think in many ways its the hardest part of being on a losing run.

 No the hardest part is sucking it up, and keeping it all to yourself.  When you get all in of the turn with AA on a T852 board and you get called by A5, and the river comes 5 again, you just want to let everyone know that the 80 VPIP donk you’ve been stalking for the last 30 minutes just hit another two outer.  Then he gets up and leaves the next hand, it makes you want to reach down that internet cable and …. *ahem*

 OK, so I appreciate the irony that this post is about not whining and I appear to be doing so 🙂 Allow me the one moment of weakness please to demonstrate the point!  But seriously, I think this is one of the toughest battles you face in poker, being able to master your emotions and resist the urge to shout your misfortune from the rooftops.  To resist the urge to mail your poker buddies with I got done AGAIN on a 96%/4% shot.  Because deep down, no-one else really wants to hear it.  Especially not if they are also struggling. 

There are players who can just take it in their stride and know that good play will eventually be rewarded.  I aspire to be this sort of player.  I dont think I’m too bad at it … I can generally move on pretty quickly … but not instantly. Not yet.  But I think to be the best player you can be, this has to be automatic, the ability not to think twice, not to berate the opponent for their donk play (you do, after all, want the donk to continue to make terrible calls).

A lot of players focus on what should I have done with this hand, did I bet the right amount, should I call or raise here, and neglect the mental side.  Even more pay lip service to the mental aspect, understand the logic of it, yet forget it all when their AA gets cracked by J6 on the river.  I’m adding this as one of my poker goals for this year – the ability to say Nice Hand sir, take a deep breath, and move on to the next hand.  Because if you can do this, you’re in a much better state to make the right decisions again.

The Omaha Eight or Better Conundrum

Around September last year I decided to give Hold’em a rest and make a serious effort to learn Omaha.  I’d dabbled around in it before, at the very micro stakes just for fun, but in September I decided it was time to diversify my game a bit.  I’d also heard several people say that working on your Omaha game could have extra flow on benefits for Hold’Em skills as well.  So after reading some stuff on various forums, I finally bought two Omaha Books – Slotboom on PLO and Tenner on O8/b. 

I was immediately captured by the Tenner book, I found it logical, easy to read, and interesting.  So I decided to gravitate towards Hi/Lo … the side benefits were I think it tought me concepts that could be applied for other split games, and was also really beneficial to be able to play in HORSE tourneys and SnGs.  Limit O8/b attracted me too as a learning game becuase it is essentially a game of making the nuts – you really know much better where you stand in a O8/b hand than you do in Hold’em … how many outs you have to the nuts etc.  So I read Tenner through carefully a couple of times, made notes and started out.  I’d read elsewhere how playing a solid tight style on really loose tables makes decent money.

8k hands later I’m a big loser at the game.  No where near the success I’ve had at Hold’em.  Its frustrated me substantially.  I’ve used careful table selection, play the right hands, but consistently seem to get outdonked by guys playing random trash.  Or raise up my A235 double suited to see the flop consistently come QJK rainbow.  I don’t know if its just too small a sample but I ended up abandoning the experiement after losing a significant slice of the BR.

Why did I bring this up now?  Becuase yesterday I dabbled in the pool again.  This time I played a few tournies – I actually seem to do better in them than cash games.  Got donked out of the first with ridiculous beats, did well in the second but bubbled in a 390 man $5.50 tourney with AKKJ double suited – got busted by AA who floppped a full house.  Yes I know AKKJ is  high only hand but I was getting a little short.  So the frustration with the game continues – which is a shame becuase on the face of it, I find the game extremely interesting.  I just cant seem to make a hand though.

Aussie Millions Underway

It’s January which means its the time of year again for our major poker tournament, the Aussie Millions.  Historically it has actually been quite difficult to get any coverage of this event here in Australia.  Certainly we never get any live or even delayed TV – for some amazing reason it only gets shown in the US market, despite the fact that we (eventually) get WPT and WSOP coverage on Pay TV.  At least this year there is improved internet live reporting over at Pokernews. 

As far as I am aware, noone from HPC has gone down to play.  In some ways, its not such a good time of year – while it is the traditional time to take some time off work, its also the time to spend with family, and there are also all the other traditional major sporting events to compete with – cricket and tennins most noticeably.  Still, it would be great to get down there one year, if only to play in a minor event and the side games, and just soak up the atmosphere.  Maybe 2009!

First HPC Online Event of 2008

As you may have gathered elsewhere on the site, HPC runs a private Monday night SnG on Full Tilt.  Since I have a recurring tourney set up there, despite the tourney being listed to occur I didnt really anticipate anyone actually showing up on Jan 7.  Nevertheless for some reason I registered mid-afternoon (its an 8:30pm event), just in case anyone wanted to play.  Of course what I had forgotten is that we had plans to go out to dinner for my brother in laws birthday!  9pm arrives and we are just getting home when I remember the tourney started 30 mins ago.  I dash inside to find that there was 3 entrants to make a valid tourney – Vegas and Eeyeo had registered.  Vegas had already busted but I still had about 900 in chips and immediately started typing apologies into the chat box.  Of course, I then went on to win … after a few dozen hands jabbing and weaving as the short stack, I got it all in with TT vs 99, and crippled Eeyeo. Amazingly enough I picked up TT again the next hand and this time won vs 86o  🙂

 I hope the moral of this story isnt that I play better when not actually at the table!  A strange start to 2008, hopefully it will get better from there.  The HPC games have been fun in the last few months of 2007 – I am planning to start up the first HPC league in March, details will be on the forum.

So much for Bankroll Management

Just surfing around this morning and came across this article by Ed Miller.  Essentially his thesis is that BR management is all a sham, at least for recreational players.  He argues that instead you should have a poker “budget” – an amount that you can afford to lose each month. The rationale is that if its a hobby – you wouldnt have a BR for other hobbies, you’d have a budgeted amount per month to spend.  Thats a simplification of his argument, but I think captures the heart of it.

 Personally, while I can see where he is coming from, I think all this does is encourages more recreational players into the fishpond (a good thing! 🙂 ).  While he might be techincally right, having a budget to lose doesnt really encourage good discipline, which is at the heart of good poker.  If you learn to play on a budget rather than a BR, I think its going to be just that much harder to learn the discipline you need to be successful in the long term.  A hobby it might be, but no-one likes losing 🙂

That said, if Mr Miller’s intent was simply to bring in more players into the poker economy, then NH sir!

Back From Sydney

Back from Sydney, where I went up to watch a couple of days of the Australia vs India test …. which ended up as a controversial win for the home team.  A side benefit of the trip however was the opportunity to check out one of the increasing number of “PokerDomes” springing up in Sydney.  We went to the Newtown venue, which I believe is the original, and is located on the second floor of the Newtown RSL club.  After a truly atrocious meal from the bistro, we headed up and were pleasantly surprised with the layout.  Probably around twenty decent sized tables, good cards and chips.  Essentially its a tourney venue (not sure if they are allowed to run cash games), running $30 single table SnG’s almost around the clock.  They also had a $50 multi table tourney running at 9pm.  I entered a single table SnG and ended up chopping for a win when Heads Up.  I came into HU about 2:1 down, then got to a slight chiplead.  My opponent suggested a chop as he was due home and didnt want to cop heat from the wife!  I was a little nasty and declined – I told him I’m only here once so I’d like to shoot for the win.  Next hand I pick up 99 and raise, he calls. I lead into a 7 2 K board and he calls again.  Check-check on rag turn, but he insta moves in on the river A.  I fold and he has the chiplead again, although I still have a reasonable stack.

It becomes obvious he wants to go though as he starts pushing every hand.  I have three hands of 72o, 83o and 62o and fold all three.  He now has me about 2:1, and he looks at his watch again. Its clear I cant outplay this guy so I ask if the chop offer is still valid, and he jumps at it.  $130 each, not bad first go.

The multitable $50 ended up with 30 entrants, and I ended up playing with AFL Brownlow Medallist Adam Goodes who was there after training to have a good time. Incredibly nice guy, he tried bluffing into me on the river, but I called him down with two pair for a nice boost to the chipstack.  Made the final table but the blinds got too high, ended up busting when my 55 all in push didnt hold up.

Overall it was a great night.  Good venue, friendly people.  The play was pretty awful, but it seemed to be a bunch of people just there to have a lot of fun.  Came out $50 ahead so cant complain – and certainly now know where to go if I ever have a spare night in Sydney again.

… and Even More Bad News!

Cardplayer is reporting that Germany will today enforce its own ban on internet gambling.  While this obviously wont have the same effect as the UIGEA in the States, it is yet another reduction in the size of the online player pool.  Kinda surprising, since European attitudes towards these issues seems much more relaxed in general.  Lets hope this isnt the beginning of a trend for 2008, I was hoping events would go the other way this year!