Urgh. Sunday Million Misery

Well not quite knocked out within the first few minutes but nearly. AK as the first hand, hit a K high flop but my opponent hung around long enough for his 22 to hit a third on the turn to complete his set and wipe half my stack out.

Then followed a long card-dead period, and any marginal hands were re-shoved on and I could not call. Eventually managed to get it in with A8 and, of course, was immediately called by AK which held and knocked me out.

Bah

Hope I have a better online February!

After a pretty good December, where I final-tabled the PKR Main Event and cashed for $1200, I have had a torrid start to 2012 in terms of online poker. Probably not helped by my job which has been a bit all-consuming and probably means I have rarely been in the right frame of mind but aside from the cash in the live tournament at DTD, I have failed to register a significant cash from any tournament online and have seen my PKR winnings fade-to-grey pretty swiftly.

Frustratingly, I have generally been playing well but seem to have that cold spell all poker players understand where hours of good play and chip accumulation comes undone just before the serious money when your monster hand runs into an ever-so-slightly bigger monster hand. They call them 'cooler' hands, and I understand that they happen - but right now it feels as though they are mirroring the sub-freezing temperatures outside my window and they have happened time and time and time again.

The thing to do is just keep on going. Keep making the right decisions and when my hands do hold up against weaker holdings, or I spike the miracle 2-outer that my opponents seem to, then it will be ultimately profitable. It just feels like a long haul at times like this.

Anyway, have decided to enter the $200 buy-in Pokerstars Sunday Million tonight. I don't usually play however last night satellited in and after some consideration about taking the money and funding a bunch of lower-buy-in events with it, I have decided to play. Mainly because my work situation means I don't play often during the week so its more fun to take a big punt from time to time as obviously the prize-money on offer is more significant. Clearly, my chance of winning any is low, partly due to the large field size and partly due to the quality of many of the players entering, but it gets my juices-flowing a bit more than entering another faceless $20 tournament would do tonight.

Annoyingly though, I entered another Sunday Million satellite this afternoon whilst the rugby was on (Wales won! Yay!) and finished just a few places off qualifying for another seat out of 170 entries, but once again when I had called a re-shove with AQs and the opponent flipped over A4o, the board ran out to give him a straight-to-the-six and that was effectively over.

Lets hope this evening is better, and I'm not just posting up 'Knocked out within 10 minutes' later on :)

DTD Grand Prix V

Whenever i can, I like to play the three-day Dusk Till Dawn Grand Prix events, as they offer tremendous prize pools at a pretty affordable €50 buy-in. This particular event had SEVEN day one's, stretching from Saturday (1A) to Friday (1G) and the ability for you to re-enter on a different day if you bust out. The upshot was an entry list of 2000+ and a guaranteed prize pool of €100,000.

I decided to play the first Day 1, partly because I knew that some of my poker-buddies from the GNF forum were coming up from the south-west to play that day, but also if I did decide to re-enter I had the pick of all remaining days.

With starting stacks of 15,000 and a very slow structure, this was real deep-stacked poker and recently I have found myself preferring this format, although rarely having the time to play it.

Playing pretty snug at the start of play although playing more hands than I expected and building my stack up bit by bit, I was involved in a massive cooler pot, where my JJ hit a J4x board and ended up getting it all-in with a guy whose 44's hit. The set-over-set situation eliminated him and gave me a healthy stack to work with. Unfortunately it didn't last too long and a table move and a couple of failed pots where I was probably trying to get too 'fancy' saw me approaching a short-stack status. Thankfully a couple of pots saved me - firstly a guy playing KK far too passively against my Ax allowing me to hit the Ace on the turn (he ended up folding), and then a big stack moving to the table who wanted to throw his chip-weight around....I picked up QQ, raised and he called. Flop was Jxx. I bet he calls. Turn was a blank and we both check. River brought an ace. He quickly throws a pot-sized bet out which would be for most of my chips. I tank for a bit and run the hand through, figuring that his likelihood of holding a big ace is pretty small as he would be value betting the river to bring me along, especially as I showed 'weakness' on the turn. Figuring he is trying to buy the pot, I shove all-in and he insta-mucks his cards, taking me up to the 40k mark.

Then I move tables and go on a nice mini-heater. The sort of sequence of hands you dream about, especially when moving to a new table where no-one knows how you play. First hand there I get JJ, raise and call a short-stacks re-shove who shows 99 and my jacks hold up. Two hands later I get KK and call ANOTHER re-shove from a guy who shows QQ and my kings hold up. I use my table-image to steal probably 50% of the pots in the next orbit, and despite a couple of lost pots which slow me down a bit, I'm still looking pretty healthy chip-wise. Following the break, a guy who has clearly had too much to drink starts ribbing myself and the couple of youngish lads at our end of the table for not talking and not smiling enough, the guy keeps on and on and on as well as saying how he is just waiting to double-up through someone. He shoves all-in a few times successfully, but then he shoves and I look down at pocket-tens. I think for a while as I could easily be in a coin flip situation and the one guy I really don't want to give a stack to is this bloke, but eventually call and he shows 77, and my TT holds up. Later on, a fellow-player at the table said he was so pleased when he went. Drink may liven up cash games, but it is so annoying at tournament tables.

After that hand, I pretty much fold my way to Day 2, leaving with a roughly average stack of 77k and the long wait til the following Saturday to play again.

The only other GNF'er to get through to Day 2 was Dann Williams, so I knew there would be some familiar faces at least. On arriving at DTD I suggested that if we both make it to Day 3, I will pay for a hotel room for Dann who was contemplating the prospect of sleeping in his car. I wasn't seriously thinking we would both last though :)

Day 2 started brilliantly. I knew I had the chip-leader from the previous Day 1 with over 200k in chips two to my right, so doubted I would see many cheap flops and pretty much elected to play tight for the first 40 min level to get a lay of the land. First hand though was KJ suited in late position. Mr Chip-Lead raised, I called and the flop was Jack high. He checked, I bet, he called. Turn was a blank. He bet, I raised and he folded, picking up a bunch of chips within minutes. A few hands later I picked up JJ - fast becoming one of my favourite hands this tournament. Again, I had Mr Big-Stack in a pot and the flop came AJx. He bet, I called with my set of Jacks. Turn and river were fairly inconsequential and I managed to win against his Ax hand. Unfortunately not a double-up as I was really hoping for a repeat of the set-over-set in Day 1. The only other hand of note was against a baseball-capped chap who came to the table late. We became involved in a pot where I had Ace-high but had missed the fairly dry Qxx board but had re-raised his turn bet when a 5 dropped. Figuring that the only card he could possibly call my raise with would be a Q, when he called I shut down and we checked the river for him to show a 5! Really surprised at the call but fair play he must have read that I had nothing. I did mentally note that he could get a little out of line without much problem though. All in all, I managed to amass a decent enough stack in the 150k mark by the time my table broke. This was about the time of the money bubble and hand-for-hand, which I pretty much sat out of and didn't take long at all. I was finally in the money and had at least won my buy in back! Yay!

Then the worst possible thing happened. Well, not the WORST possible thing - that would be picking up KK when someone else picks up AA, but I became completely and utterly card-dead. This wasn't even a situation where I could make my own fortune, as there were one or two aggressive players who were raising a lot pre-flop and whenever I picked up a vaguely playable hand it was under-the-gun with 9 players left to act and they were clear folds.

Eventually we broke for dinner, and Dann - who was still in and hovering around the 15-20 big blind range in chips, said he wanted to go and get a takeaway from Nandos. Bad mistake....Nando's was heaving and it took absolutely ages for the food to be prepared, causing Dann to rush off before collecting his food. When you haven't eaten all day, that certainly qualifies as a bad-beat!

Back at the club, Dann moved to a new table and immediately got into an AA vs AK situation to double his stack, which he tweeted about and shortly afterwards moved to my table. Having Dann there didn't seem to change my card-deadness though which went on and on and on....

Eventually, I had a very interesting hand with the baseball-cap lad who had been at my previous table. Shortly prior to it - I was involved in a pot with him, where he called my raise and bet into me on the flop, after which I shoved over the top of him and forced a fold. Anyway, with that still fresh in my mind, I raised from mid-position with A2 of clubs. It folded round to him in the BB and he called. Flop was K5x and I fully expected him to lead out into me if he had a King but he checked and I checked behind. Turn brought a 4, giving me a gut-shot straight draw and an over card. He then put out a big bet which would take just over half my stack. I had to think about this one a bit...I was sure he didn't have a King and had seem him play a low pair on a board with an over card fairly passively earlier (small bet, call raise) so felt that was possibly unlikely. His calling from the blinds instead of raising also ruled out any kind of monster-holding. I felt he was likely holding nothing and was just trying to bully me off the pot, especially as I had re-shoved on him a short while ago. I still had seven probably outs (four 3's and 3 Aces) and calling seemed a bad play as I would be pot-committed if the river blanked or paired the board. It seemed like the only effective play if I trusted my read was to shove all-in. I figured that an all-in shove would look strong enough for him to fold the small pair or Ace-x possibility that most worried me, in fact I felt that an all-in shove would probably get a fold, and if I get a call I am miles behind and just have to put it down to experience. Before deciding I had a good look at him and just felt he looked weak and this solidified my decision to go all-in. He then tanked and talked about how he 'had' to call as its 'only' putting another 45k into the pot, shrugged his shoulders and called. I figured I would be DQ'ed the moment he called, but he flipped over Q9 which hadn't connected at all. The river blanked and I doubled up, and this bloke was furious 'How could you shove with A2?' he asked 'I felt my air was better than your air' probably wound him up even more. He was still moaning about the hand and my play several hands later and he eventually peter'ed out and went bust not long after. I felt good about this hand specifically as obtaining reads, specifically relating to betting patterns, is something I have worked hard on for a while now and it paid dividends in this instance. He probably thought I was a fish that got lucky mind :)

After that hand, I picked up a small pot with 22 but as I wasn't picking up any really decent cards, and after I had shown down the A2 pot above (possibly), I wasn't getting any respect from raises, and had to fold to re-shoves a few times leaving me short and just waiting for a hand to get it in with.

That hand came when a player to my right raised, and I looked down at 55. It was the first pair I'd had for ages, so with just 10 big blinds left I shoved, and Dann started asking for a count and shoved in over the top. The other player folded and Dann flipped over JJ which held up and eliminated me in 85th position out of 2089 and an eventual payout of €250. I wished Dann luck but said he may well be sleeping in the car after all!

Dann looked pretty good stack-wise to make it to Day 3, but eventually busted when his 88 runs into AA, only five minutes from the end of proceedings, but finishes in 51st place which is still a good achievement.

The next Grand Prix is in April which I will hopefully be able to make, but in the meantime I plan on using the €250 being deposited back into my DTD account to try and actually satellite for some events rather than paying the full buy-in, especially as DTD run the 'golden chip' promotion for satellite winners. For this weekends Grand Prix, a golden-chipper who makes the final table would be given a Mini (no one made it), and for the next event they would win a £6k package to an event in the Caribbean, so its certainly worth a shot....Will keep you posted....

Black Friday Summary

Such a long time has passed since my last blog update, and a lot has happened in the poker world since then. I won't go into immense detail about it here as the intricacies are covered in much greater depth elsewhere (google is your friend) but all I will say is that 'Black Friday' shook poker to its core. The Indictment of three big sites (Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and UltimateBet/Absolute Poker) by the Department of Justice in the US for illegal payment processing to US citizens has effectively plunged the US online poker world into darkness with no online access for anyone, at least until poker is fully regulated in the US which may take years. As a result of this all the lucrative sponsored US players are now no longer sponsored, poker advertising in the US is dead and of course, there are far less people in the 'poker economy' than before.

The fates of the two main sites (lets ignore UB for now) couldn't be more different either. Following permission from the DOJ, Pokerstars promptly paid US players their funds back, and converted loyalty points earned into cash. Pokerstars had also long been channelling a lot of time and effort into regional poker around the world and had licences for country-specific sites in places like france and italy. Overall, despite the US player pool vanishing overnight, the total traffic at the site is down only 30% which is amazing. It's still an astonishingly busy site and you can still play huge field MTT tournaments (although the below may have something to do with that)...

Full Tilt on the other hand, managed to completely demonise themselves. Even though they had permission to return player balances, it soon became apparent that the site were unable to do this as they had not segregated the player balance funds from their regular operating costs. After this transpired, the site had their channel-island licence revoked and it effectively shut the site down for good, or at least until a buyer comes along who can also return the millions of dollars to players. The majority of FTP pro's also decided not to play in the world series, which meant some notable absences, including the number one poster boy Phil Ivey.

Clearly, online poker will end up being regulated in the US and the players - and sponsorships - will return. It may even have a bigger boom as the 'legality' of the sites may tempt more recreational players out. But when that happens is anyones guess.

The original 'biggest site' Party Poker may end up being the big winner out of all this if it can strike a deal with one of the big Vegas casino groups to have their software ready to roll. Who knows.

But for now we are operating in a rather odd, post Black-Friday world where traditional poker celebrity somehow seems less valid before and quite possibly a new generation of top-players will emerge. Pokerstars focus on Germany may well have had some reason why we had the first German world champion this year at the WSOP in Pius Heinz and by the time of regulation, there may well be a more even split between the big US names and the big Euro names. Time will tell.

DTD Grand Prix II

This weekend I played in the Dusk Till Dawn Grand Prix II event held at the DTD club in Nottingham. A three-day tournament, it started on Friday and I decided to play Day 1b on Saturday alongside 405 other players (thus making 810 entrants in total and a first prize of 20k Euro).

In terms of my performance I didn't play badly, at least compared to my often common mistake of letting the pot get too big in live tournaments. Part of the reason for this may have been the paucity of decent starting hands I received. Throughout the event, the highlight was AK, a hand I have lost so much money with online in recent weeks, it was only ever going to cost me chips, and 88 twice, but no bona fide monster hands. When the pots were small to start with I rivered a flush once, and turned a full house another, but these were the hands that were never going to make or break me, unfortunately.

As the tourney progressed and the blinds grew, I started to feel the pressure and had to take a back seat and hope that when I did get a decent spot, they would hold up. This happened to some extent but instead of getting me back in it, I just bumped along the bottom. Ended up with two split pots and a couple of blind steals but that was about it. When I did get it all in with a similar sized stack, I had A4s and he had A5s - I hit the 4 on the turn but he caught the 5 on the river. After another steal to bring me up to 5k in chips (the blinds were 600/1200 by now), I picked up 67s under-the-gun so shoved and had three callers, who checked down every street. This was good to see as I had paired the 7 on the turn. Unfortunately, the board also contained four hearts and one of the guys had a Qh to send me home in 119th (out of the 405 on the day) and after seven hours of poker.

Oddly for a live tournament, I stayed at the same table for the duration, and due to watching quite a lot of individuals play could separate the good players from the average ones. Two in particular - Zafar Aslam and Mark Newman caught the eye (the latter, who was the guy with the Qh who knocked me out, is still in the tournament as I type and down to the final 4).

Also special mention to Tom Piccirilli (aka Tom Pich, aka FezioJnr on GNF), a fellow forumer who eventually finished a very impressive 12th in the event and took home over 800 Euro).

After sleeping much of the day away on Sunday, I played a few rush tournies online, including one with over 1600 entrants, in which I eventually ended up coming 20th. This major feat was rewarded by a seemingly paltry prize of $56. I know online tournies are top-heavy and I should be happy with winning 5x my buy-in, but still....

Rush On Demand Tournaments - A love and hate thing

Recently, a number of people who frequent the GNF Forum have been posting up some really good results on Full Tilts 'Rush Poker On Demand' tournaments. This led me to spend a great deal of time over the xmas break grinding this format of game to see what the fuss is about. I thought I would share some of my initial thoughts here.

For those that don't know, Rush Poker is the innovative format of poker whereby instead of being allocated to a table, you form part of a large 'pool' of players who are allocated a table on a hand-by-hand basis. Therefore if you are done with your hand you 'quick fold' and are instantly reassigned a table and receive a new hand. This creates fast and furious action all the way to the final table, which reverts to normal structure. This has been around some time now, however the latest advancement is the concept on Full Tilt of 'On Demand' tournaments, which are essentially Sit-and-Go tournies, that start when a predetermined number of people register but crucially allow a period of late registration (like regular MTTs). This creates larger player pools and thus larger prize pools. The vast majority of these tournaments running at the moment are $4 or $11 buy-in (with the occasional $24 one), and whilst they start with 45 players, they usually end up with 150-250, and generally complete in around 2hrs.

From playing them over the holiday period, I have found them frustrating and fun in equal measure, and whilst I have doubts over their validity for skill improvement of players, I can see how they can be profitable (especially if you run good!). But it is a bit of a love/hate thing, so thats how I will break it down...

Things I love about Rush On-Demand

1. Availability. The On Demand format has seemingly constant stream of tournaments. I have yet to find a time where I couldn't jump into one. That, naturally is both a good and bad thing. Good from a time management perspective, but bad from a bankroll perspective if you are running particularly badly or are tilted.

2. The speed of the tournament. The format and structure means you can get deep (or get knocked out) fairly quickly. You tend to know if you are going on a deep run before the first hour is out. Contrast with normal tourneys where you can play for 3 or 4 hours and leave with nothing. The game slows down when the FT is reached of course, and can often take as long as the preceding 'rush' element. Not that you mind at that stage however, as you are in the money.

3. Lack of chatbox action. Refreshing lack of shit-talking in the chatbox as there is no time as the table changes, and besides as soon as people have folded their avatar is still displaying but they are away on another table in their next hand. This does make a welcome change from all the rubbish usually spouted during a tournament!

4. You are harder to pick up on. No history (until near the FT), makes stealing and aggresion much more profitable and less likely to be picked up on, and whilst I believe online tools for stat gathering/display do exist for rush tournaments, I find it hard to see that most will be able to make any sensible use of this before the final table due to the pace of the game.

5. Lots of mistakes. Less time for decisions forces people into big mistakes against concealed hands and the sheer number of available games makes people 'gamble' a lot more. This is very much evident during the first 50% of the tournament but evens out later. Whilst this is a good thing, it can also be frustrating as the amount of suck-outs and rivered winners seems far higher than in a regular tournament.

6. Quick chip accumulation. If you can build a big stack quickly, accumulating chips seems rather easier than in a regular tournament. Partly I think because, with people being more selective about hands to play, they will be quicker to shy away from a confrontation with an aggro big stack than in a regular tourney where they may not get another opportunity for some time. The counter argument also exists - if you play too tight, or get decimated by a lost pot, then you will face almost constant aggression and you will be forced to gamble sooner than you may like.

Things I hate about Rush On-Demand

1. Tilt! It is far too easy to tilt with this format. There is precious little time to re-group thoughts and composure, especially after losing a pot to a bad beat or making an erroneous big call. For this reason, the format can be a big money-spewer....in many ways the opposite to a 'double or nothing' tournament format (although you would have to be lobotomised in order to be able to withstand the boredom of grinding that format, in my opinion).

2. Big Blind Shenanigans. I have had situations where I have ended up on the Big Blind multiple hands in a row. This has only seemed to happen when I have been relatively shortstacked, and when the blinds are higher this can be immensely frustrating. In a regular tournament you can strategise in terms of picking your moments to push, but this is impossible here. Conversely, the times I have done well I seem have to have been in mid/late position a lot when I receive the good hands. I'm guessing it is supposed to balance out ultimately, but it never feels like that at the time.

3. High Variance. Variance is VERY high, partly due to the turbo structure, partly because you don't build up any knowledge of your table, partly due to fish shoving all in at any chance they get in earlier levels and partly because of the mechanism (lots more hands and people can be more selective) resulting in big hands such as AA,KK,QQ clashing more often. This does make the format feel like a video game sometimes.

4. Not 'real' enough. The feeling that no matter how much you play it, or how well you are doing, that you simply are not playing 'proper' poker. The real skill edge in poker is post-flop, and through much of these tournaments, you are not exposed to these in the same way you are with deepstack poker. It can certainly help you get better in some aspects of the game, but after playing this structure for a number of days, I was yearning for a long-haul deepstack game to slowly chip up in.

5. Addictive. This format is extremely addictive. Far more so that regular poker, where the time investment can often decide when a session ends. This is bad enough when you don't have a problem - but some people do.

So, to summarise - Rush Poker On-Demand tournies are a great deal of fun, and can be very useful if you are on a limited time schedule, however the variance can be brutal and it is often too tempting to play larger games than your bankroll allows for. This is one of my big leaks in general. I am absolutely sure that if you deploy good bankroll management, then this format can be profitable long-term, however from a personal perspective, I'd prefer to keep this game as a sideline to MTTs/STTs to help blow off a bit of steam. Your mileage may vary.

Kudos to Full Tilt for introducing something that is genuinely innovative into the poker landscape though.

Precipice Averted

As most will know by now, the proposed US legislative move to 'legalise poker' in the States, which would have had serious knock-on effects to the whole poker landscape (covered in my last blog entry in December), didn't get passed. Which I personally think is great news for poker in general. Of course, the concern is still there in the sense that any future legislation may use a similar approach, and I think people - especially the PPA - should be alert to the wider picture next time and at the very least push for a more palatable deal. I'd also like to see a more global focus on the poker world, especially from organisations that purport to represent the interest of players. But thats probably a pipe dream...