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The New Sunday Schedule
Monday, April 30, 2007 I played Bodog, PokerStars and FTP's tournaments today. No luck in any of them--or, I should say, bad luck in all of them. I lost three straight coin flips deep in the Bodog tournament to bust about 90 peeps away from the money. I flopped top pair-top kicker against a highly aggressive player on Stars. He called my bet with nothing on the flop, hit his three-outer on the turn and got all my chips. (Against this player, I continued to play my hand as if it were the nuts when an overcard hit on the turn. I don't claim with 100 percent certainty that I played the hand correctly, but I also don't regret the decision.) On FTP, I lost a chunk of chips running QQ into KK, and then lost the rest semibluffing all-in, getting called, and missing. (My opponent had mini-reraised me preflop with A9o, so I guess poker is still good.) Despite a lousy day today, I again had a pretty successful week. I'm trying to get my game in order heading into the WSOP, and more immediately, the Foxwoods tournament next week. To that end, you'll likely find me in the $1k tournament on Full Tilt tomorrow (Monday) night. Also, in an effort to blog more, I'm considering writing occasional posts that have nothing to do with poker. If you either consider this a total waste of my time, or a really good idea, please shoot an email to jacksup@mattmatros.com. Good luck to everyone playing poker this week. Still Posting Monday, April 23, 2007 One of the reasons I stopped posting regularly to this journal is that I just don't feel I have much to say anymore. But anyway, here's what happened the past six days. 1) I started losing heads-up matches. I'm now down to 41-38, modulo tracking errors on my part. 2) I ran real good in Sit 'N Gos, much to my surprise. I'm starting to understand why so many people love these things. 3) I continued to do well in the NL cash games, which made for a very good week overall. 4) I went 0-for-2 in the tournaments yesterday. On PokerStars, I value bet all-in on the river, in position, on a board of KK48K with TT, only to get called by JJ. On FTP, with about half the field left, I got it all-in as a slight favorite and lost. I'm sorry it's not more interesting. The WPT Championship is going on now, and for the first time since 2003, I'm not playing in it. Here were two crazy hands I read about yesterday (information via PokerWire): "In the second hand of the day, Ted Forrest reraised Hollis Stabler and Stabler called. With 3k in the pot on a K87 flop, Stabler threw three 10k chips into the pot, thinking he was betting 3k. Forrest moved all in for approximately 47k and Stabler called. Ted Forrest AA Hollis Stabler QQ Stabler rivered a Q to bust Forrest with a set." The chips do look alike at Bellagio, but I don't remember the 10k chips looking like the 1k chips. And anyway, the 1k should be much more numerous in your stack, and difficult to confuse with the 10k chips. Ted made a good read that a) Stabler's mistake was legitimate, and b) he didn't have much of a hand. Stabler probably didn't have to call for 17k more, as it's hard to imagine that he ever has a good hand (and he has very little equity when he doesn't). But, it all worked out for him. Stabler enters Day Two with 96,975 in chips. "On a flop of Qc5s4s, Freddy Deeb moved all in and an opponent in seat 4 called. The players turned up: Freddy Deeb 5h4c Opponent KdKc The turn and river came 7d8c for Deeb to double up to 100k and eliminate his opponent." I don't know for sure what happened here, but my guess is that Freddy called a raise (or even reraise) preflop, and then made a massive all-in overbet on the flop (the hand took place during level one). It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, but the guy fell for it anyway. Well done, Freddy. Deeb enters Day Two with 115,250. Friends of mine still alive for Day Two: Mark Gregorich 84,200 EPT Champion Gavin Griffin 102,900 Gavin Smith 67,225 Peter Feldman 87,725 Matt Glantz 93,125 Jesse Martin 57,375 Russell Rosenblum 45,550 Good luck boys, and to anyone I missed, and to anyone playing lower stakes forms of poker this week. One More Try Tuesday, April 17, 2007 For the next few months, I'm going to be playing online poker pretty regularly. I'll be doing this in a lead-up to the World Series of Poker, where I'll be spending about three or four weeks this summer. After that I might reevaluate things, but for now, game on. And because the game is on, and because I've had requests/pleas from friends and readers to bring the blog back, I'm going to make one more effort to update this blog regularly. I'm setting the modest goal of twice weekly updates until the WSOP (with semi-daily updates once I'm there). We'll see what happens. For starters, here are the games I've been playing lately. 1. $200 heads-up matches. I'm a firm believer that no one can have a very big edge over any halfway decent opponent in a heads-up match--especially the online variety that starts you with 75 blinds and raises the limits in a hurry. Still, I figure I can earn $15-$20 per match, and I also figure that heads-up matches are about the lowest variance form of poker one can play (and I've been in a low variance place lately, and I expect I will continue to return to that place from time to time). I'm going to play a baseball season worth of these matches (that's 162 of them, for you non-fans), and then consider moving up to the $500 level (a level I've had some success at before, but remember, low variance place). I've run good so far--I'm 33-19 a little less than a third of the way through the season. Here's hoping I don't careen down to .500 by season's end. 2. $300 and $500 Sit and Gos. Those who know me know I hate Sit and Gos, and have never before played them seriously. My philosophy is "get every chip," which is a perfect philosophy for real tournaments. In Sit and Gos, a key part of anyone's philosophy has to be, "try your best to at least finish third." But again, I've been in a low variance place lately, and Sit and Gos are the low variance player's dream. I haven't kept good recrods on my early experience with these, but I know I'm ahead, and I'll try to keep better records going forward. 3. $10-$20 No Limit Hold 'Em. Here is my higher variance endeavor which I will not give up completely. I've found a few NLHE cash games that have been good to me, and I will keep plugging away at them from time to time. 4. Tournaments. I've played very few of these, but I've cashed in a high percentage of the ones I played, and I did have a second place finish in a $20 rebuy tournament I randomly entered a while back. I also made a deep run in one of the big Stars tournaments. I've been saying I might try to enter more of the weekday tournaments, but it hasn't really happened yet. But I had no idea there was a $1,000 tournament on Full Tilt that got 250 players every week. That will certainly be worth looking into in the future. I'm going to try to play more of these in preparation for the WSOP. Also, I'm playing the $3k event at Foxwoods in a few weeks, so you can look for me there. So, that's pretty much that. What else have I been doing? Well, writing about baseball a little. Also working on some of my own writing. Also, I watched pretty much every minute of the NCAA tournament. Also, I played a few events at the Foxwoods Poker Classic. Not much worth telling about from there. I was one of the chip leaders late in the day of the event Gigabet won, but I ended up not even cashing after I lost every showdown after dinner. Anyway, what's everyone else up to? Good luck if you're still playing cards.  September 2004 | October 2004 | December 2004 | January 2005 | February 2005 | March 2005 | April 2005 | May 2005 | June 2005 | July 2005 | August 2005 | September 2005 | October 2005 | November 2005 | December 2005 | January 2006 | February 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | May 2006 | June 2006 | July 2006 | August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 | December 2006 | January 2007 | April 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | July 2007 | October 2007 | January 2008 | |
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