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.