Another Final Table in Razz 2000K

I played the 2000K Razz tourney with Waffkes and we both went deep. Waffles got knocked in 12th after going KKK on 5, 6, 7th street and then seeing a guy hit runner runner to eliminate him. I on the other hand stayed alive with bad cards and doubled up at the right times to see the end. In the end I was card dead when I needed a hand and pushed all my chips inwith A3J. I was ahead until 7th street. I was a nice run but top 4 would have been nice.

I also did well in a HORSE tourney bubbling but playing well. The best part was hitting this.

There is nothing like scooping a pot in Stud hl and then add a straight flush. I got knocked out by another short stack when a call was being pot commited. 7th street knocks seem to happen in Razz and my made 8 lost to a 7 when he caught a 7.

I'm really liking these games and have hit the RAZZ cash tables with some success. I doubled up in a 20 minute session while playing with Waffles playing 2/4. I thought the play would be better but I saw a lot of chasing. I'm hoping this is the norm because I will clean up.

By the way, have a Happy New Year.

Also, I will be married for 14 years come Sunday. My wife and I got married on December 31, 1992, on New Years Eve.

Non-creative Post About The Poker Enthusiast

I’m not the brightest star in the sky. This isn’t a funny analogy, it’s the truth. I have trouble with creativity at times and so I bring this post. I’m borrowing an idea from a few other bloggers who posted about the previous year so here it is.

I went through some of the post throughout since the beginning of The Poker Enthusiast and decided to bring a few of them back. I don’t know why I picked these. They are just some that I enjoyed either writing or rereading.


This is the story of meeting my wife

The daily home game I played at one of my jobs

A story on life’s passions

A road trip story

A Nemo reference

I just liked this one

A story from the past

A poker story

A response to CC

The Story of my termination

Dealing with my future

A story from my younger days

A rant

A poker ideal

A story from the past

The second installment

Another youth story

More poker ideals

My win at the Mookie

Some poker thoughts

A run at a big score

Something about my life


So there you have it. Have a Happy New Year everone.

2006 Review

The end of the year is at hand so I would like to discuss some of the things I did poker wise this year.

The start of my existence in the poker blogging world started at the end of February, 2006. It started as a whimper in that I received $5 on Noble Poker for filling out a survey. I spent a lot of time grinding ultra micro limit hold’em and moved into a comfort zone in the $20 + bankroll in short work. From this point I started grinding different levels of SNGs and playing occasional tourneys in an attempt to hit a bigger score. I eventually hit a few final tables and won a couple and moved my bankroll into the $500 range.

Now even though Noble seemed to be a great place to play, I felt restricted in that the traffic was slow so I opened a Neteller account and deposited $300 at Poker Stars. This was about the same time as (middle of May) that I lost my job and proceeded to tilt off the hard work I had put into the game. Even though I had much more than my starting money, I felt at a lose for a while.

I eventually got my self right and moved back to Noble for most of my play and started my climb again. By the time I started my new job in September, I had moved my bankroll into the 1100 dollar range and created an account on Full Tilt and culminated this run by winning the Mookie back in October.

November was a struggle for many reasons. I had so much to do for work and I was trying to work toward the bronze or silver level on Full Tilt. I went to Japan for a week in the middle of this and destroyed my bankroll during a bad run and some donkey play.

December has turned around the slid for the most part but I’m still struggling to stick to the parts of my game that keeps me winning. SNGs and tourneys under 600 people seems to be where I thrive and yet I continue to through away money at the large field events.

My goals as stated in February were and how I did relative to what they are:

1) Move up levels in LHE staying within my bankroll
This was achieved but abandoned during the course of the year. As I moved up a went away from playing limit because of the grind. I will look at this as a goal for next year.
a) Need 30 buy-ins for each level
I stayed within for the most part. Early on it was not possible to do this and I made a few attempts at higher levels during the year but didn’t play much of this over the last 6 months.
b) Stay within buy-in limits
Now that I look at this goal it is really part of the one above.

2) Play SnGs as bankroll allows
I stick to this plan. I will take a shot at a higher level now and then but not very often.
a) Need 30 buy-ins for each level
See above
b) Stay within buy-in limits
See above

3) Play MTTs as bankroll allows
I love playing MTTs but find myself playing higher then I should. This has caused much of the erosion of my bankroll.
a) Need 30 buy-ins for each level
See above
b) Stay within buy-in limits
See above

4) Win a MTT
I’ve 4 smaller buy-in MTTs during the year. I’ve also final tabled many other tourneys so I will set higher goals for next year.

5) Prove to my wife that poker is an investment, not gambling.
This will not happen.

6) Achieve a bankroll of $3000.
I made a dent into this but will change this for next year. I could have done this if I had been more focused with my play but bleeding money isn’t painful all the time. Sometimes you have to see the pool of blood before you realize you’re hurt.

So overall I achieved many of my goals. Looking back I realize that I didn’t have any real goals for the most part other than bankroll management goals. Now bankroll management is essential to staying solvent but I’m looking for more concrete ideas for next year. We’ll see what I come up with.

*************************

I played some last night and donked out of the $3 turbo before the money. This is twice in a row that I could have cashed but went out trying to chip up. I have no problem with the decision I made in either event because folding to the money would have left me way to short to make a run. Winning either hand would have allowed me to go deep.

I also played in the $4000 HORSE tourney. I was doing well sitting in the top 35 when I had a terrible run of cards that saw me miss every draw I had for the rest of the night. I had three nut draws with made 7s and 8s in RAZZ that got rivered as well as two A234 in STUD HL that didn’t give me the straight or the low in the end. If I hit two of these hands then I go much deeper but it wasn’t to be.

I’m looking at a RAZZ tourney tonight and maybe HORSE. We shall see.

Three Final Tables This Week

Christmas came early as I got another final table this week. There seems to be a trend in that they are smaller events and not hold'em events. This last one was HORSE again. Back to back HORSE final tables must mean that I have a well rounded game. This one had 144 runners so it was smaller put the field was better.

There were a few bloggers in this as well and another at the final table in Poker Poison. She ended in 3rd. High Plains Drifter, Drizz, GCox, SLB, and Love_Elf were also in on the fun. HPD tried to get into the money but just missed after a battle for his life.

JJ also made a final table tonight playing Razz.

Happy Holidays and Poker

It is the Friday before Christmas and the office is dead. They gave the choice of taking today or Tuesday off from Christmas Eve so I took Tuesday. Anyway, I hope everyone out there has a wonderful holiday season.

Not a whole lot today. As you could see from my late night post I did well in the Riverchasers HORSE tourney last night. The thing that I n noticed is that while many of the players were decent hold’em players, many of them had no idea how to play the stud events. I made most of my chips playing RAZZ and STUD and held my own in the other games. I guess this makes sense considering so many players want to play the TV game and don’t realize how playing these other games will make them a better overall player. I believe that it would be dumb to ignore this fact and I will continue to play more RAZZ and HORSE tourneys to exploit this situation. Well exploit is a strong word coming from me so I guess I should say try to exploit.

I played a $1 sng last night to kill some time and played it aggressively. With 4 players left the SB made a move on my BB with a 3x raise. I had chips but I knew it was a steal so I pushed with my 47 off suit to get him to fold. He calls with K5. Great call buddy cuz the only person you’re ahead off is a bluffer. Anyway, I spike a 4 and a 7 and knock him to about 100 chips with my great hand. That but me in the money and where I got knocked out pushing with A4 and getting called by AQ. So, between my 2 games I made $1.45 after getting my buy-in back. It’s always about +EV.

I found this for JJ. It’s something he can look forward to in the future.











Again, Happy Holidays to everyone.

Riverchasers

I played for 3 and a half hours and made a final table for this.

I made 90 cents for my hard work. Thanks Al for a good time and dropping one round of drinks into the prize pool. Made some good plays but got knocked out when I got it all in with two pair vs. a flush on 5th street. I had 4 outs but didn't come in. I never actually made it to the final table because a shorter stack got eliminated on the same hand and so it went from 9 to 7 players.

That's it for now

A Little Fun

Last night was a waste as I signed up for the Mookie 2nd chance shortly before it started. I figured all request for my time had been filled and thus could play. A few minutes into it my wife asked me to give her a hand with some thing so I got super aggressive with an A9 off suit and dumped my ships to SLB. I figured I could sit out for a while if I doubled up and still have chips when I got back. Oh well.

So after I get back to the poker machine I fired up an SNG and won for the big prize of $22.50. At that point it was late so I turned it off for the night.

I was looking some previous post and came across this from back in August. At that time I was nearing the end of my job search and ready to go back into the work world after a summer of doing little if anything constructive. So go here to read this past post and tell me what you think. It is about Bloom’s Taxonomy and how I relate it to poker.

I’ll be playing in the Riverchasers event that is brought to us by Al. He said this:

Cheap bastards rule. I have a Riverchasers cheapy HORSE tourney setup for next Wednesday night. Since I wasn't sure familiarliar those guys with this variation, I decided to set up a HORSE freeroll tonight. I threw $50 at it and let it go. 24 hours later and there are 140 people signed up at this point for a piece of change that wouldn't cover one round of drinks on a slow night.

I’ve played this one other time when there was a mess up and it became a heads-up tourney. Waffles is playing in it and it is a HORSE free roll with a $50 prize pool so I could spend 4 hours trying to win .75. That’s OK cuz it will be fun regardless.

I’m trying to go play a live tourney this Saturday at Worldpoker05’s place. He’s having a parents only party and we’re having trouble find a sitter so maybe we won’t be going. It would be too bad because I’m really itching to play against people and not avatars.

A Reply From Full Tilt and my Razz game

Hello The Poker Enthusiast,

Thank you for contacting Full Tilt Poker Customer Support.

Unfortunately, this raffle promotion was an attempt by a third party to
extort money from our players. We currently do not have any raffle
promotion running. We are investigating this issue and these players are
no longer welcome on Full Tilt Poker and their accounts have been
closed. Our fraud investigators are currently tracking this case, and
you will be compensated for funds lost due to this scam. Please note
that we can only issue compensation once the investigation has been
completed, which may take some time, so we ask for your patience.

In the future, please remember than anything said by a player will
display in blue, observers are in brown, and any communication made by a
member of Full Tilt Poker Support will be in green.

If you are ever suspicious of any promotion, you can confirm all of our
current promotions on our promotions page:
http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/promotions.php

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this
investigation. Best of luck, and thanks for choosing Full Tilt Poker!

Regards,

Heather
Full Tilt Poker Support

I’ll be more than happy to get the $10 back. I think I put a $10 bounty on my head the next time I play the Mookie because I don’t deserve the money based on my stupidity.

I’m going to have a hard time playing the regular Mookie because of church commitments but may be able to play the 2nd chance event. We shall see.

After waking up this morning, I reflected on my game last night as I drove into work. I had a couple of big hands that mad a big impact on the end result. About 10 from the money, I raised with a marginal hand trying to steal the blinds and get called by a 6 while I held a 5 with 7,10 behind. 4th street gave me a 7 and my opponent an 8. I bet and he called. I get a 4 on 5th street and get gets an 8. He checks and I check. At this point I’m sure he just bricked and if I get anything good I will attack. I catch a 2 and bet out and he tanks before folding. This hand moved me into the top 10 and eventually was my savior as I had the bring in bet 7 of 10 hands shortly after. The other big hand was when I was the bring in with a 10 up and A2 behind. My opponent had a 7 and tried to push me off. 4th street gave him a 10 and me a 7 for a tied hand up. I have to be ahead so I bet and he raises and I call. 5th gives me an 8 and he gets a 7. I bet he calls. 6th gives me a 2 and him a 6. Now I’m not sure here but the 2 had to scare him if he bricked. He checks and I bet smelling weakness and he folds. This hand put me in second place in chips and allowed me to raise at will vs. the smaller stacks who wanted their money back.

The bubble took forever to break and a short stack got lucky 4 times in a row at the final table bubble before eventually failing in his quest to survive.

The final table was un eventful as I chipped up and pushed the medium stacks off there hands when I was strong or at least strong looking. One guy made a comment about the deck hitting me in the face when in reality I could have lost many of the hands if my opponents didn’t play so passively. With 7 players left I held almost 50 % of the chips. This is when I went on another bring in string that just shouldn’t happen with 7 players left. Before it was over I posted a 13,000 chip drop and continued to be card dead. I waited and waited for my chances and got paid when they finally came. The game lasted a long time with 3 players left as the other 2 kept passing their chips back and forth. I wont recap the end but I will repeat that is was a fun time.

Who is the Razz King

Waffles claims to be the RAZZ KING but now I’m not sure after this.

I hit some big hands early and kept the pressure on Lucko style. After watching Waffles play a few of these I followed his aggressive play and ran over the table for the most part. Players were week/tight (lol, just like bloggers) and didn’t want to call raises unless they had a good low. It was really an example of playing their cards and not my own. Surf railed for a while but it was a strange night in that nobody was around. SLB did give me a pat on the back per say but no love for the most part in my loneliness. But I kid.

I needed the boost. I had lost some confidence with some late game loses but when it got to crunch time I pushed hard. It was a great time but I got crippled when I had 3467 vs. 9763. We each hit J’s on 5th street and I pair my 3 on 6th while he catches a 10. I have odds to call but catch another J on 7th and lose to his made 10. I still like my chances there considering the number of outs I had. Oh well.

I’m tired. Good night.

More of the Same

I guess the utter gall that an ass monkey like FTPROMO1217 employed during his life fulfilling dream of scamming people for $10 a crack still pisses me off. Who knows how many people got hit with this but with around 30,000 players online at the time, 1% of the crowd would get him $3000. I guess in some ways it’s pretty ingenious if he could get the money off quickly. I’m sure he’s laughing this off as his account gets closed after dumping the money in heads-up sngs.

As a matter as fact, I saw this #%&^%%^ on a heads-up table right after the chat message went out. He was calmly dumping his chips to a friend or to himself in a $20 game, getting knocked out very early and typing “GG” in the chat box when it was over. I didn’t ridicule him for fear of tipping him off. I know the money is gone and that’s fine. The real issue is that he is probably still playing under his real name after acquiring his ill obtained funds.

Go Be Rude had an encounter last week with someone stealing his sign-on and emptying his account. This would be a travesty for anyone who keeps their bankroll on a poker site and goes much deeper then a penny ante scam artist. I personally wonder how that can happen if you have control over your passwords unless your computer isn’t protected or there was a compromise in the poker site security system. I guess one wrong access approval when a Norton pop informs you of a threat could do it.

Anyway, I guess we have to remember that though there are many great people out there playing poker, there are also many low life SOB’s that will try to cheat you out of what you have because the don’t have it. Why earn it when I can take from someone.

End rant.

Doh

One of the drawbacks of being a relatively honest person is walking through life with blinders on. One can’t imagine the low life deceptive but obvious attempts to defraud hard working Americans out of their money. A great example of this surfaced last night as I silently watched Kat make the money in her 5 + .50 tourney last night. FTPROMO1217 placed a chat message stating some promotion and I thought “cool” As I went through the prescribed actions I thought to my self “self, this is a transfer, not a promotion.”. And as I realized this was a scam I when to close the window and but low and behold I paid off the scam to the tune of $10. Immediately I contacted FT and informed them of the scam and their response was typical. They will investigate.

Now I know that I will be mocked for stupidity but I don’t want anyone else to be a moron like me. I don’t expect to g the money back and that’s fine. Life lesson learned.
I can hear Waffles laughing at me now as the KING OF RAZZ reads through his daily blogs.

Not the SNG Machine

Before I start please take time to fill out my survey on the right side of my blog under the heading “The Poker Enthusiast Survey”.

It’s hard to believe that so many players out there continue to dump money into their losing game. As an example I went to shark scope and checked the SNG results of 5 players I faced last night (you get 5 free searches per day) and saw that 2 different players had played over 400 SNG’s and showed a negative ROI in the range of 15-17 percent. Now I know that variance has an influence on results but I would think that playing that many SNG’s as a loser would make me re-think why I’m playing. Now you can go look at my stats and see donkey loser imbedded into my results but that’s not the point. The point is that there are still many players dumping money into our pockets.

As for my results at Full Tilt, the low buy-in events ($5 or less)are less than what I would like but very positive. My $10 buy-ins are negative ROI while the $20 buy-ins are around 18% or so. Not the greatest in the world and much less than my historical data but positive overall. Those damn $10 SNG’s killed me.

Historically speaking, my ROI for SNG’s sits around 38% with a good mix of 5, 10, and 20 dollar games. It has dropped about 5% over a given period of time so I guess I’m wondering if it is coming to a leveling off point or a down swing. This being said, returning to the $5 SNG’s will bring this level back up and allow me to work at improving my game.

The frustrating part of all of this is that I haven’t seen a huge difference in skill from my opponents at any of these levels. For the most part, the $5 games have maybe 2 solid players, the $10 games have 2 or 3 and the $20 games have 3 maybe 4. I guess I think I should be doing better at Full tilt.

Played 8 SNG’s last night and cashed in 4 and bubbled twice. Best hand of the night was hitting a set of jacks on the flop and having two players push in front of me after the flop. One player had second pair while the other had a gut shot draw.

Not much more except that I will be playing live if things work out next weekend. Worldpoker05 is having a gathering and thus a game will break out. That last time we did this we caught a kid doing a bad job of stacking the deck. He pulled a card from the bottom to give himself trips and gave the other guy the nut flush. We didn’t make a huge deal out of it right there but we did make him understand the problem with trying to cheat 8 other guy who are all bigger then him. He said he was sorry.

No Poker Last Night

I had a meeting until after 10:00 last night so I didn't get home until late. I could have play a little but I thought it would be better to stay away for the night.

I have added a survey link that is just for fun. It's something I created and will update from time to time. It is over here.
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I'm going to try to play tonight but will be out on the virtual felt Friday for sure.

Not as Good as I'd Like

This is a look at some recent results of my tournament game minus the Mookie win. I’m not sure what I’m seeing here other than I’ve played a few of these. I’m cashing in about 17% of these so I think this number is good but it appears to me that I’m holding on for a cash and leaving my self unable to get deep. More aggression earlier may lower the % of cashes I get but should allow me to get deeper.

I played 8 SNGs last night cashing in 5 of 8. Not to bad but at low stakes. I also played a token race that saw me knocked out when K10 is gold vs. my aces. I guess I can’t fold aces pre-flop, even in a token race.

In all I had Aces cracked by K10 and 86 on the night. Kings were also of no use as they got beat by 33 and A6 when the flop dropped a pair of 66s for my opponent. So I guess it could have been a really good night if my percentages hold up.

UB gave me $10 because I hadn’t played there in a long time. I gave it right back to them in a few hours of donkey poker. I do like the tourney structures but man do they take forever to finish.

I’ll probably grind some more SNGs tonight but I’m starting to think a week off might be good.

A Weekend Without

With the WPBT event going on in the sin city the weekend chat fest was a little slow. Never the less, on-line poker continued to be played regardless of the missing bloggers.

JJ and hooked up and played the midnight madness Friday while I was playing a HORSE MTT on FT. We both made nice runs in the MM with JJ getting well into it before a huge suck-out crippled him and sent him to the rail. He was on his game and had a really nice stack but it wasn’t to be for him. I wasn’t very disappointed about getting knocked out of the MM because I was making a run in the HORSE tourney. I held the chip lead from about 50 players left and stayed in the top 5 until about 20 left when I missed all my draws in the Omaha h/l portion of the tourney. I held AKQJ double suited and saw a flop of 10, 9, 5. I held the nut flush draw, the nut straight draw and many over cards so I pushed on the only guy left in the hand. He came back at me and we eventually got all are money in the middle. Now if I count my outs I have any club (9) any 8 (3) any jack (3) any queen (2) and any king (3). That’s 20 outs twice. He held 94AA. Now if my math is correct I’m a huge favorite here even though I’m behind on the board. Anyway, I get no help and I’m back to the bottom half of the field. I held on and chipped up some when I got AKJ in stud suited. I hit the Q on 4th street and then the 4th spade on 5th street and eventually lose to a pair of 2’s when nothing comes in. I don’t have a problem with how I played either of these hands but did I play them right. I think the Omaha hand played it self but how about the stud hand. I was trying to get in a position to win and had a great draw compared to my opponents board who didn’t show much of anything. Anyway, I ended up in 13th but missed the final table again.

Saturday night I plat the MM again and made a nice run and was sitting with average chips with about 160 players left. I got KQ in late position and made a 4x raise. The button pushes me all-in. The question I have is that I was getting 2.5 to 1 to call with that hand. I’m only afraid of AK, AQ, and the big three pocket pairs. Should I make this call. It was a newer table so I didn’t have a great read so I folded. SLB suggested I play the “TV hand” but I wasn’t sure. I still hade some chip equity with the fold but eventually got knocked out some where in the 150 range when my opponents 3 outer hit. What do you think?

Being an idiot I didn’t stick with my plan to raise my bankroll by $250 before playing tourneys again. I have no further comment on that.

Good Luck Everyone

With the WPBT event ready to start I would like to wish each of my blogging brethren good luck on the felt this weekend.

I’ve made a decision that I probably won’t keep, to stay away from tournaments until I can increase my bankroll by $250. It’s a decision based on focus and goal setting that was missing during my down turn. Setting this goal and achieving it will allow me to get back much of what I dropped and help me regain the focus I lacked. Looking back, I realize that even though I ran badly for a while I started to chase loses instead of grinding back to maintain my bankroll level. I’m not a huge winner at Full Tilt t all. In fact my ROI is terrible there. It is positive but not at the level I’d like. Overall, on all sites I’m at 38% so I know from history I should be able to achieve my goal in about a week of limited play. If I do I will reevaluate and decide if I should continue for an additional $250 of to take some more shots at some bigger tourneys. Realistically, I can easily make $100 a week or $5200 a year if I stay with the same games but that’s really a grind. Playing these low level SNGs can be tough when you do them over and over again.

I guess I need to be more structured in my approach. I know I have the ability to take down a big tourney but continuing to take shots at bigger buy-ins can have a negative impact on the bankroll unless you’re hitting some final tables.

Ever Been to a Waffle House

I got through my ISO audit without any non-conformances. You have no idea how relieved I am at this since my company has never had one in the past.

I played a few limit SNGs last night ending up the night in the positive. I was disappointed in my results in a $10 SNG since I had my opponent down to 1800 in chips and couldn’t put her away. A double up and then missing on few flops gave her about 5000 chips when I flop an OESD and the second nut flush draw. I pushed her hard and gave up a lot of chips when I missed both draws to her small pocket pair. I eventually went in with a marginal hand and caught a piece that wasn’t big enough and got knocked out.

These limit tourneys are actually faster then many of the no limit tourneys that I’ve played. I’m also seeing that good decision making will pay you off in the long run. You have to make more reads on your opponent and push on those willing to fold in either game and take advantage of the smaller stacks that are trying to stay alive as the blinds increase. I’ve noticed that people are just as willing to fold as the bubble nears in limit and let you steal the blinds. Now these are limit SNGs but the strategy is quite similar. A suckout doesn’t hurt nearly as bad and playing strange hands doesn’t cost you as much.

I also watched and chatted with this guy while he played a 2 table SNG.

We talked about SNG strategy and some of his donkeyness as he hit runner runner for a flush.

Feeling Better

Nothing much today other then I lasted deep into a $5+.50 on FT the other night. I was a nice run that saw may advantages hold up. I could have lasted longer except for the push I made with 77 from middle position after UTG mad a small raise. He had a large stack and was buying lots of pots and I wanted to push him off his hand. The button called my all-in and UTG folded. I had the right read but on UTG guy but the button called with 88 and I didn’t improve. I had chip equity at the time and could have lasted into the top 15 or so but I wanted to be in a position to win. A double up would have put me above average in chips and a good shot to the final table. Oh well.

I was going to make an attempt to play more limit hold’em but made an amendment to the decision. After talking with worldpoker05 and surf, I am taking the best of both worlds and playing limit SNGs. With limit I will not lose all my chip when I get sucked out on and determine if I’m truly making the right reads on players. Right now I’m going to play any limit SNG as in LH, O h/l, HORSE or Razz. I’m going to stay at the 5 and 10 dollar level for now until I get a better feel for the results. So far I’ve played 7 of these and cashed in 6 with 5 wins and a 2nd. The players are week and will to give their money so I’ll give it a try.