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Tournaments on Sunday?
Monday, January 29, 2007 Today I played my first poker tournaments of any kind in almost two months. They're definitely a whole lot more fun than cash games. I played Full Tilt, Bodog, and Stars. I busted myself out of FTP pretty quickly. I decided to open for 97s from early position for no good reason whatsoever, except that I wanted to (guess I was rusty). The flop came A97 and I bet 300. Two players called, and then one of the blinds made it 1200. My thought process was something like this, "Duh, I don't think I have the best hand, but duh, I have two pair and that's a pretty good hand for this piece of junk I opened with, so I might as well move all-in." I moved in, the guy called with bottom set, and I got what I deserved--no help. Fortunately, I cashed in the other two. Unfortunately, I didn't make it deep enough to win any real money, something like 200th out of 1900 on Bodog, and 101st out of 2768 on Stars. Since I don't have any good hands to write up, I wanted to tell two tales of the Bodog Awesome Interface. 1) When you get moved to a new table in a Bodog tournament, the software says, "You have advanced in the tournament to a new table." Hah! 2) In cash games, when you add chips to your stack, a prompt comes up and says (emphasis mine), "Your newly added chips will be effective next hand." Great! I should rebuy every hand knowing how effective my new chips will be. In other news, good luck to Curt Kohlberg, who is in 8th place with 27 players left in the Borgata tournament. And as always, good luck to all my readers this week. RIP, Neteller Monday, January 22, 2007 Actually Neteller isn't dead, but for the purposes of us online gamblers, it might as well be. My friend Matt Maroon has recommended ePassporte, so I'm going to give that a shot. Let's hope it's as smooth as Neteller was (which, based on some of the stories I've heard, isn't asking very much), and let's hope we don't lose too much of the player pool through all of this hullabulloo. I haven't played a tournament since December 8, sticking entirely to cash games over that time, and preferring to watch football on Sundays. I've done OK with the cash games. I haven't crushed them, certainly, but I'm up a nice amount. I didn't log enough online hours last year, nor did I do a very good job exercising game selection. As a result, I didn't win enough online to cover my big buy-in brick-and-mortar tournaments (in which, of course, I failed to make a score). This year, I'm trying to log many more hours online. I plan to become a SuperNova on PokerStars, and also to put in a decent number of hours at Full Tilt. By committing myself to enough time at the computer, I'm hoping that by the time the Foxwoods Poker Classic rolls around, I'll be comfortable taking a shot at something. I may decide to travel to something else before then, but for now, the plan is online only. In other news, I've been having fun betting small amounts on the football games. I actually came in second in a season-long football pool this year, so I viewed playoff wagers as a semi-freeroll. And of course I'm down about $500 betting playoff games. If I had just stuck to betting on whoever I liked against the spread in every game, I would be even. (I'm 5-5.) But of course I chose to bet the wrong games, and I've made stupid over/under and prop bets, etc. Oh well, I only do it for fun, and it has certainly been fun. Who do people like in the Super Bowl, Indy (-7) or Chicago? I haven't decided who I like yet, although I took Chicago to win it all this weekend at 4.4-1, so I guess I'm forced to like them. Good luck to everybody playing poker this week. Happy New Year! Friday, January 05, 2007 I'd like to wish all my readers a Happy New Year, and best of luck with their 2007 pokering. I spent much of 2006 being lazy, from a poker-playing standpoint, and I'm determined to change that in 2007. I've started already. After taking New Year's Day off to spend with Ivy, I logged four hours a day of both poker playing and writing over the next three days, to make three consecutive eight-hour working days. This may not sound like much to those of you with real jobs, but for me it's an accomplishment. I'm hoping to keep this up throughout the year, and I'm hoping it will be good for both my bankroll and the quality of the crap I write. Time will tell. My game of choice so far has been $10-$20 No Limit Texas Hold 'Em. The swings in this thing are fierce. On Day One of 2007 poker, I was up $7k on Stars and ended up winning $4k. On Day Two, I was down $14k on Stars, ended up losing $11k there, but also winning $6k on Bodog. On Day Three, I won $10.5k on Stars and lost $700 on Bodog. Dang. Having not played many NLHE cash games, I didn't fully realize how high the variance was. Or maybe it's just a function of the insane way I play poker. I realize that in my last post I forgot to say what the actual result of the Foxwoods hand was. My opponent had QJo and I busted. I don't want to post too many hands from the No Limit games, because a lot of the same people show up in those games over and over again and I don't want to give away too much information. If anything truly interesting comes up that I feel I can post in good conscience, I will do it. In the meantime, I'll just announce that The Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman is now available. Buy it.  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© 2004-2006 by Matt Matros | All Rights Reserved |
