As I’ve shared before I’m currently working hard on improving my limit poker game and so far I’ve been having quite a bit of success with it.

One concept I haven’t quite got sorted yet though is the use of a continuation bet when playing limit, for those of you who don’t know a continuation bet is one made when you have raised preflop with a strong hand but then missed the flop completely. In no-limit poker you can often make a bet large enough that it will scare everyone else away and you’ll take the already large enough pot. In limit, however, your continuation bet is only one SB which is hardly a scary proposition to anyone who even slightly hit the board and often your opponents will have odds to correctly call this bet anyway.

In an effort to improve my knowledge of this topic I went googling (strange, that word isn’t in the Google spell checker!) and came across the following excellent post on “Sounds of a Suckout” by ScurvyDog:

Continuation Bets With Overcards in Limit Hold’em

I’d highly recommend anyone interested in learning more about continuation bets in limit poker check this out, it’s a great read.

Show 29 of Poker Diagram is out:

“Online poker action and chat with Henry and Zog - this week it’s a low-stakes qualifying tournament, plus a quick look at PokerDiagram listeners around the world!”

Tried out a new poker site today, wasn’t really looking for one but came across a free $10 (no deposit required) on VC Poker and thought I’d check it out.

My first impressions of this site are good, they offer a wide range of levels/tournaments in Hold’em, Omaha and Omaha H/L. What’s really interesting is the number of ultra cheap buy-in tournies, they have sit ‘n go’s starting from $0.10+$0.01 and multi table tournies in everyone’s price range! I can’t vouch for the competition, but at least you’ll be able to get plenty of practice in for practically nothing.

A word of warning though, watch out for the “speed” tournies, I accidentally signed up for one of these crazy games and was very surprised to see the blinds increasing every 3 minutes! Unless this is your idea of a fun poker game I recommend you stick to the normal speed tournaments.

Another thing I like about this site is the deeper stacks in standard tournies (2000 tournament chips compared the the normal 1500 or less).

Anyway, I’m off to check out the site a bit more and see if I can’t blow my free $10 on a few low limit tournaments. Any practice is good practice right?

BTW, to get the free $10 bonus enter “pokernews” under the “Promotions” section of the deposit screen in the cashier. If you’re wondering I don’t make any money off this code (in fact I’m probably making money for pokernews.com by promoting it), I’m just sharing it around ‘cos it’s a good deal!

It’s a little out of my price range, but I just had to share the news that PokerRoom.com have launched a new daily tournament aimed at Australian players.

The “Aussie Daily” is a $50+$4 no-limit hold’em tournament and runs daily at 9pm ACT.

Being an Australian myself it’s great to see an on-line room taking notice of the Australian market. I only hope that others follow!

I thought I could resist, but no, I have to do it… Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!

With my recent success in the no-limit game I decided to play in one of Poker Stars multi-table SNG’s. Being new to this type of game I went for the cheapest option I could find, a $1+$0.20 NL Hold’em tournament.

My strategy was reasonably straight forward, play ultra tight early and survive into the later stages. All was going well, I hadn’t played a hand for two orbits when I was dealt the following hand in the big blind:

:Ac::4c:

WARNING: This is probably a bad beat story, I know everyone experiences them and whinging achieves nothing etc. etc. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to! Besides, I’m just reporting on my first on-line no-limit tourney in a while… right?

Anyway, I was able to see a free flop:

:Kc::7c::5c:

I’d flopped the nut flush and decided to slow play it, I check, middle position player bets, the button raises and I call. Original bettor folds and we’re heads up into the turn:

I check, opponent raises, I re-raise, he re-re-raises and I go all-in. He calls and shows me:

:5s::5d:

For three-of-a-kind. I’m feeling pretty confident until:

He hits one of his outs to make a full house, to make things worse he then celebrates like he’s the greatest poker player on earth. I really hate that!

I have no choice but to leave the table, tail between my legs, in 40th place. Time to go and play some limit to boost my confidence then… “I’ll be back”.

Last night I hosted a poker game at my place, $5 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold’em tournament (re buys allowed for the first hour and a half).

As with any low buy-in home game with a few friends it was a mix of skill and interest levels with some people there more for a beer and a chat rather than the cards, however those that were there to play played quite well and we actually had quite an eventful game.

Things started off fairly quietly with a few small to medium sized pots being contested, as we reached the end of the re-buy period some players loosened up a bit and took a few more risks and by the time re buys were over three people had coughed up the dough for another $1500 in chips.

Special mention has to go to Tony for being the first player out before the re-buy period and then the first out afterwards! Unlucky mate!

The rest of the game really came down to one hand it was such a confusing one from a dealing point of view that I don’t remember every little detail but it went something like this:

In middle position I was dealt:

:Ad::Ac:

Lovely, but I wasn’t really sure how to play them until a player before me (Damo) pushed his entire stack into the middle “all-in”, now I think it would be fair to say that Damo had played in a fairly reckless fashion throughout the night and may have been getting more than a little bored by this point. Regardless, I had him covered and in an attempt to isolate him I re-raised all-in myself. Then the fun part, I got three callers!

Unfortunately I don’t remember everyones cards, but a nervous flop, turn and river later my aces held up and I took a comfortable chip lead into the final four.

A short while later I put the short stack (sorry Tania!) all-in with top pair which held up and we went into the final three.

Three became two when the eventual second place winner (Michael Y) knocked out third place (Jono) with a pair of nines (A9 vs AJ).

Heads up play lasted quite a while, I was making bluffs when I felt I could get away with it and really tried to use my fairly considerable chip advantage as best I could. Eventually it came down to this hand:

:Th::4h:

on a flop of:

:Jc::Qh::Td:

I re-raised a small bet all-in and was called with:

:Ac::8c:

I was well ahead at this point and we saw a turn:

Two pair for me and Michael was drawing dead to the river:

I did have some photos of this final hand, however my cameras memory card has decided to die on me so I can’t share them with you. If I fix it I’ll edit them in later.

So, the final standings were:

1st - Myself
2nd - Michael Y
3rd - Jono

And outside the money:

4th - Tania
5th - Michael V
6th, 7th, 8th and 9th - Damo, Jo, Tanya and Suse
10th - Dan
11th - Tony

Disclaimer: The order of those lower placings might not be 100% accurate, I wasn’t taking notes and it took most of my concentration to work out the side pots :)

All in all it was a pretty entertaining evening and importantly I’ve managed to end my run of no-limit failures! Hopefully, as time goes on we’ll have a group of semi-serious players who want to get together on a more regular basis. Time will tell…

In my post on December 13th (Change of Scenery) I mentioned that I’d started playing a few hands over at PokerStars, 3000 hands later I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the site.

At the time Chris mentioned that it was one of the toughest sites that he’d played on. So far I haven’t seen this myself but I have been exclusively playing 5c/10c limit which I think is a lot lower than the limits Chris plays in, I expect I’ll meet some tougher competition as I move up the limits or move into the no-limit games. I will admit though that you need to watch out for “rock gardens” (tables full of very tight, aggressive players) but most of the time there is plenty of easy money at the tables.

The site itself is nice, at first I didn’t like the table layout as much as Champs but it has grown on me over time and actually works very well, the lobby also is well laid out and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

The main selling point for me, however, is the sheer number of games and tables running at any given time, even during normally off-peak hours there is a staggering amount of choice.

So I guess you’re probably wondering how I’ve actually done in my time playing there? Well, here’s the stats:

# of hands: 3067
Hours: 53
BB/Hr: 4.66

So, I’m winning. This is a good thing, but I am still very new to the limit game and 3000 hands isn’t a huge sample to work with. I’ll be reevaluating things as I go, but for now I’m feeling good about Poker Stars…

That’s right, I am no longer a royal flush virgin!

After getting in around 6am this morning and sleeping off quite a festive new years eve celebration I decided to jump on-line for a bit of relaxing poker action. Logging on to Poker Champs I was pleased to find a 5c/10c limit game running (limit usually isn’t that popular on champs) and I sat down to play. 8th hand of the game I’m dealt:

:Jd::Qd:

in middle position and limp in along with a few others and we see a flop:

:8c::Td::Kd:

Quite a nice little flop from my point of view and I decide to have a bet, I get a couple of callers and no one goes any higher so we see the turn card:

I had to recheck it at least three times but I did indeed have a royal flush, my first ever! I bet out and got callers to the showdown where I proudly turned over my cards to show off the best possible hand in poker. Collected a reasonable sized pot and a rather stingy $5 royal flush bonus from Poker Champs (anyone know if this increases as you move to higher levels?).

Really though, in this case it’s not about the money, it’s about the cards. I’ll always remember my first royal flush. Happy New Year!!!