Monday, April 24, 2006

more live poker

A crucial error in judgement caused me to bust out of the tourney I played in Sunday. It was a $25 short stack tourney with unlimited rebuys, and a $25 add-on.
I made the mistake of going all in on a draw. I did this knowing I was beat.
I should know better than to do that in a tourney. In a cash-game, pushing all-in with a solid draw is more acceptable, but in a tournament, with all your chips at stake, it's really a bad play. Chalk it up as a donkey play. I've learned my lesson.
In the side tourney after the main game, I played a bit better and managed to get to the final three before chopping. So I made back some of the money I lost in the first game.

The alumni for my fraternity which was recently kicked off campus held a poker game to raise money for our bid to reanimate the house was Friday night. The ATO first ever poker tournament was a success. The prize pool was ridiculously small, considering we all dropped a bunch of money on rebuys and an add-on. But, some food was included and pretty much all the beer we could drink. So in that regard, we were all winners.
In the end I finished tied for 5th place. Although I feel I could've finished much higher if the blinds didn't get completely ludicrous. At one point the blinds jumped from $500-$1000 to $4000-$8000! After that any bet was essentially an all-in bet.

We all took home an ATO alumni shot glass, rejuvenated memories, and a thick heady buzz.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Poker lately

I've had one win, a couple bad beat eliminations and a couple second-place finishes in recent live tourneys. My play in these sit-n-go single table tourneys have been excellent, I must admit. I think I'm playing as good as I can right now. That's not to say the money has reflected my play unfortunately. Sometimes the cards just don't fall my way.
I'm resisting the temptation to tell a bunch of bad-beat stories right now. It's quite difficult. It can be stated that my eliminations from these tourneys were indeed ALL bad beats. All of my opponents had less than 5 outs when they drew out on me in the last five tourneys.
Honestly I don't feel a bit pissed off about them. A bit frustrated yes. But by no means am I Matusow pissed. Not remotely Otani pissed.
The last time someone bad beat Otani, he stomped around my house for a solid 2 hours fuming and name-calling. So he thoroughly deserved the new nickname I gave him when he drew out on me to win the latest tourney: Scott "Fluke-Ass, Dumb Luck" Otani.
That's as good-a poker nickname as he's gonna get playing the way he's been playing lately.

I will attribute some of my recent poker playing to Doyle Brunson's Super System 2's chapter on No-Limit play. He advocates an extremely aggressive style. He suggests playing strong draws extra aggressively and big hands cautiously. This style has it's risks, and will result in much bigger swings to your bankroll. It also tends to forces your opponents to take up a more defensive strategy because they'll have to adjust to your reraises. The system is similar to the style of play I already use, but reinforced some of my initial ideas about how to win.
I'll just say, I'll not be lending this book to ANY of my friends.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Rate yourself politically.

I rated as a LIBERAL.

No surprise there.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Bad Beat poker

10 players $30, no-limit freezeout:
My home game Friday night was the wildest game ever. Bad Beats galore. Almost every showdown ended in ridiculously improbably occurences. My KK got killed when Thumb's AQ turned trip Queens. Bootie's QQ caught on the river against ScottO's AA. The hooting and hollaring was at a maximum.
I feel I played a great game. Probably my best game. I had the Marinucci's on my left and right. Both guys are extremely aggressive and tend to throw my game off, but I was able to play well against them despite their hyper-agro style.
At the end the bad beats kept coming and The Bootie took down a fishy-win.
Game two went better for me. The bad beats continued while MMarinucci absolutely dominated the table. He unceremoniously dispatched every player at the table ending up with an incredible enormous stack of chips. I quickly double up heads-up against him and I was suddenly a contender. It came down to him and me, with Mike holding A5s and me going all-in with a pair of nines. He calls.
The flop comes down all blanks with two spades. The turn brought another spade and I was dead in second place.

I played as well as can be expected. I didn't tilt. I didn't donk. But in the end, LUCK was indeed a whore slut who's clearly not to be trusted.