So a funny thing just happened, decided to head over to pokerroom.com for a bit of SNG action. I sign up for one and as I’m sitting there for the first few hands I’m thinking to myself “This table seems pretty weak, why are they only min-raising each other?”.

Then it dawns on me, I’ve signed up for a limit tournament by mistake! Then something else dawns on me, although I’m a profitable limit ring game player I have no idea what strategy to use for a limit SNG. I feel so lost!

It’s currently level 2 and I’m down around $400 in chips already (turned a straight to be rivered by a better straight), the other players strategy so far seems to be “call and pray” so I’ll play tight and see what happens… stay tuned!

—

It’s now level four and I’m starting to suspect this is a bit of a lottery, did I mention it was only a $5+$0.50 buy-in? Many people to each flop calling raises and re-raises, blinds are up to 50/100 so I expect to see the first players dropping out soon.

Oh yeah and I haven’t won a pot yet. Only played two hands though the whole tournament not including the blinds. Maybe I’m being too tight? I have been card dead though.

—

First player is out, straight vs top pair. Calling and praying ;)

—

Second player out, we’re down to 8. Big problem is I’m down to around 700 in chips with the blinds at 50/100.

—

Scratch that, I’m out in 8th place. Got K9o in the BB, checked to see a flop 9 high. Ended up all-in on the river which was a jack, one opponent had J7o the other (who was all-in preflop) had AJo.

Can’t say I enjoyed my first limit SNG experience, personally I see limit as something much better suited to cash ring games where the blinds don’t change. That said, I really had no idea what I was doing :)

Waste of a buy-in, but an interesting experience regardless. If anyone out there can point me in the direction of some good limit tournament resources I’m always willing to learn…

As you can probably tell by the lack of action on the site the past couple of weeks have been pretty slow for me in poker terms. Real life is largely to blame and has been eating in to my poker playing time much more than should be allowed :)

I did, however, get a chance to play some live poker in the Adelaide Casino a couple of Saturday nights back. The Adelaide Casino has a fairly small poker room generally offering quite a limited range of games (That night they were playing 4/8 and 10/20 limit Hold’em and I think 4/8 Omaha), the good news though is that on a Saturday night the 4/8 Hold’em is more loose/passive than your average 10c/20c table on Poker Stars!

Loose/passive is a good thing, especially because earlier in the night I may have had a little something to drink (OK, a lot to drink, this was after a bucks night for a friend of mine!). Playing after drinking is not always a bad thing for me, I tend to force myself to concentrate more and don’t try to be too clever which is a good way to play on these kinds of tables.

Anyway, I bought in for $200, sat down in seat 8 and started to play my normal game which mainly involved me folding a lot of hands while watching 9 way pots get called down to the river, there was no preflop raising (the only person to preflop raise the whole time was myself with AQo, everyone called anyway) and people would call to the river having hit any pair on the flop (regardless of kicker). All I had to do was wait. And wait I did, it was getting late, I was getting tired and all I’d managed to do so far is lose some chips limping in with hands like 88 (hit a set on the flop, got beaten by a flush on the river) and 99 (hit a nine friendly board against KK) and after the first hour or so I was down about $100 when I hit a streak of totally unplayable cards. I was folding so much even the most inattentive players were commenting on it! I decided I needed to play some hands and with no preflop raising happening I limped in with:

:6s::4s:

From middle position. My thinking being at this point that if I hit with these cards I’m making money and these are the last cards players at this table would expect me to be playing. Eight out of the other nine players limp in and we see a flop:

:6h::4h::9d:

I’ve hit an unlikely two pair and decide not to muck around, the player to my right bets, I raise and everyone except the original bettor folds (which surprised me, I would have expected more action). We see the turn:

Lovely, the player to my right bets again and I raise, he calls. This repeats on the river which is a rag and he turns over:

:9c::3s:

For a pair of nines, I show him my full house to take down quite a nice sized pot.

A short time later I make another full house from my pocket 5’s and I decide it’s time to leave (it’s about 4am at this point), although I was only around $10 up at this point it was a nice feeling to have been able to fight back from so far down, really though I was just happy to get a chance to play a few hands!

This past week has been one of my most successful limit poker weeks since I first started playing.

Over on Poker Stars I’ve played just under 3000 hands since last Thursday and I’m up around 280 BB.

Now, I realise some of this is due to variance and I will admit at times I’ve enjoyed some good luck with the cards. Heck, even my pocket jacks have been holding up to the river! For example:

:Jh::Jd:

I’m first to act and raise, the player to my left re-raises and gets four (!) callers. A little nervous about my prospects I call to finish the betting round. So the pot is now 18 SB and we haven’t even seen a flop:

:3s::Td::3h:

Player to my right checks, I bet, the original raiser re-raises and all except one calls. I really don’t think the re-raiser has a three, in fact given previous reads I have to say he could have any over card so I re-raise him back. He calls… and so does EVERYONE else left in the hand!

So going to the turn the pot is 16.5 BB:

I get that nervous feeling and just check this card (weak play? perhaps, but the action has been quite fierce up until now). The original raiser checks another player who’d just called up until now bets and myself and two others call, so we have 22.5 BB in the middle and the river comes:

Now there’s a flush on the board as well. I check. The turn bettor bets and everyone left in the pot just calls.

The late aggressor shows:

:Ah::4c:

Everyone else mucks (checking back later the second best hand was pocket 7’s) and I take down a big multiway pot on a scary(ish) board with pocket jacks that didn’t improve. Good times!

Anyway, I’m getting off topic my point was supposed to be that it’s not all been good luck (though you won’t believe me after that example). I’ve made a few changes to my game which look like they are helping, these include:

1. Not underestimating the bad players, I have made mistakes before where I’ve played against the odds due to thinking that my opponents are poor players. While it’s often true that they are poor, usually at the levels I’m playing at they have exactly the hand they are telling you they have with their bets. Also, just because no one raised preflop, doesn’t mean my ace rag is good. The number of players I see just calling with big hands like AK and AQ is crazy, got to watch what they do after the flop.
2. Raising for value when appropriate, especially preflop. I haven’t been doing enough raising preflop, this past week I’ve been following Miller’s recommendations to the letter and it’s been paying off.
3. In addition to the above, being able to check or fold post flop if I’ve raised preflop and haven’t hit anything. This depends on opponents/position and potential to improve but unlike in NL hold’em a post flop bet on a low board isn’t scaring anyone (no one ever believes you have a high pocket pair at the tables I play on, which is nice when you do).
4. Never drawing unless the odds are exactly right. I’ve been guilty too many times of saying “Well, I’m almost getting odds” … almost isn’t good enough!

All pretty basic stuff really and stuff that I thought I was doing until I sat down and analysed some big losing hands, it’s amazing how plugging a few leaks (and getting some good cards) can make you feel a whole lot better about your game.

Good luck at the tables!

Just wanted to wish good luck to all those playing in the Poker Diagram listener tournament tonight on Poker Room.

Unfortunately I won’t be making it due to the need to actually be awake tomorrow (the tournament is scheduled to run at 4:30am Monday morning local time) and I’m already up too late playing poker! It’s a shame really because I had a great time playing last unofficial one.

Anyway, I’ll stop my whining. I guess I can’t help it if you northern hemispherians are living in the past ;)

There is some conciliation I guess, I can look forward to “watching” from the sidelines via the Henry and Zog’s excellent podcast. No one tell me how it ends :)

Tony sent me this earlier in the week, Bill Rini’s “investigation” into whether on-line poker is rigged ;):

Proof That Online Poker Is Rigged

The post is a couple of years old but I hadn’t seen it before, hopefully some of you haven’t either. Enjoy!

Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it? Making the wrong move at the right time.

I’ve never actually seen “The Cincinnati Kid“, to be honest this quote always makes me think of Card Club. Anyway, I thought it was appropriate for this situation:

Very low buy-in SNG over at VC Poker, middle level, In the BB I’m dealt:

:Ad::5d:

An ultra loose maniacal player directly to my left raises up 3XBB, the action is folded around to me and I decide to play (probably a mistake, but not the point of this post). Even with the raise it’s hard to put him on a hand, any jack, queen, king or ace is possible or some pocket pair.

We see a flop:

:5s::8c::9c:

I’ve hit bottom pair and I’m out of position. In a moment of craziness I decide there’s only one thing for it. All-In.

Don’t ask me to justify this move, I know it was the wrong thing to do. Why? Because this guy is a maniac, unbluffable! Sure I’ve hit the flop a little but he’ll call me with any pair, possibly any over cards and certainly if he has clubs. All this goes through my head after I push the “All-In” button.

He calls and shows:

:Qh::9s:

Top pair, good kicker and I’ve made the wrong move. We see the turn:

Right time! The river is a rag and I knock him out of the tournament.

Just call me Eeyore.

(Oh and in case you’re wondering… I went out in fifth. Trip kings vs a full house – kings full of tens. All in all I didn’t play anywhere near my usual standard, only writing about it because I really wanted to use the Cincinnati Kid quote :))

While I was on my unscheduled break from on-line poker I received an e-mail from Peter S in London, UK who’s interested in getting started playing on-line poker for real money. Like most players entering the world of real money on-line poker he’s a little worried about the integrity of the on-line game. Hi concernt are not about the integrity of on-line poker rooms themselves, but more about the other players playing at these rooms. Some experienced friends of his claim they see a lot of collusion in high stakes games on-line and he was interested to hear whether I’d seen any of this happening myself.

Although I know about the possibility of other players colluding in on-line games, I’ve never really been that overly concerned with it. I have never had any reason to suspect that it has been occurring on the tables that I’ve played and have always believed that if I ever saw anything suspicious that I could just report it to my poker room, get up and move tables as one of the major advantages of playing on-line is the sheer number of different sites and tables to choose from.

My advice to Peter was just to be vigilant, not to play if things didn’t feel right and that it’s probably not that big a problem at the micro limits anyhow. I left it at that and didn’t really give it another thought until today when I listened to episode 64 of Card Club where the guys were talking about a player “ZeeJustin” who was allegedly caught entering multiple accounts into tournaments on Party Poker. These were high stakes games and his accounts would, according the the 2+2 thread here, often end up playing at the same table. The story is a long one and I recommend if you’re interested you go read it yourself, but to cut it short his accounts have been suspended and his funds (rumoured to be in the 6 figure mark) have been seized as per Party Poker terms and conditions).

In my opinion the thing that is so scary about this case is that the alleged cheater was a respected member of the on-line poker community and widely regarded as being a skilled player. Prior to this case I’d always thought of potential cheaters as players who just couldn’t master the game, losing players trying to win anyway they could. I was of the opinion that even when cheating, these players would still have trouble turning a profit against anyone with any experience. In this case we have an experienced, profitable player getting greedy and trying to cheat honest players out of their hard earned bank rolls.

So where does this leave the average player trying to learn the game? It’s hard enough learning how to become a profitable poker player without the risk of greedy, immoral, cheats trying to eat into our profits with these kinds of scams.

Well, the positive thing here is that Party Poker has detected and taken action against the cheating player. This is a good thing, but how many poker sites out there aren’t as proactive in detecting the cheats? Also, how many cheaters are out there avoiding detection? Unfortunately it’s unlikely anyone can come up with an accurate answer to these questions which is why as a poker community we need to be aware that these people are out there and educate ourselves in the methods they are using and how we can detect them.

I recommend all on-line poker players, whether new to the game or more experienced set aside sometime in their poker studies to look into ways players attempt to cheat at on-line poker. The best way to avoid the cheats is to be smarter than them, so educate yourself! Here’s some links to get you started:

Top 10 Ways to Avoid Poker Cheats – This is an excellent resource, I’ll be spending a bit of time trawling through all this information myself.

Player Cheating on www.onlinepokerfaq.com – Contains links to responses from some popular on-line poker rooms.

Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the state of cheating on-line. Have you had any experience with it directly? What do you look out for when playing? Leave a comment or drop me an e-mail!

Just a quick note to say: 

The laptop is back and it’s working and that means I’m back at the on-line poker tables!

It’s going to take me a little while to get back in the groove and find some interesting stories to share with you all, in the meantime I also have to catch up on all the on-line poker community stuff I’ve missed out on in the past couple of weeks. Especially important is catching up on missed episodes of the excellent Poker Diagram and Card Club podcasts… if you need me I’ll be in my iPod :)

Even without the laptop it hasn’t been a complete poker drought these past couple of weeks. Last Monday night our indoor cricket team had a bye so, beer in hand (light – I was driving :)), a few of us decided to head down to Youngy’s place to play a few hands…

With four players (Myself, Youngy, Vaughano and Tony) playing we decided to try and get in two $5 NL “tournaments”, first place takes all, $1500 in starting chips and 20 minute levels. In the first game everyone was playing kind of cautiously for the first five or so levels and it really came down to one hand, a three way all-in! It went something like this:

UTG, my hole cards:

:Ac::Kc:

I raise, Youngy to my left re-raises all-in (I should mention at this point that he doubled up three times after being forced all-in by the blinds but still had a very small stack) for a little bit more. Tony calls and I re-raise all-in hoping to get heads up with Mr Young, Tony throws a spanner in the works and calls (he has me covered, just).

We all turn over our cards:

Youngy:

:2s::2d:*

Tony:

:As::9s:*

I have to admit at this point I’m fairly confident of picking up at least the (sizable) side pot, and am still hopeful of picking up something to knock out Youngy along they way :)

Of course, this is hold’em and anything can happen when those board cards are dealt:
:9d::5c::7c:*

Tony hit his top pair! But I still have hope, a king or a club will put me in front…

:4h:*

DOH!

:3s:*

DOH! DOH!

Youngy and I are out on the same hand and Tony moves well into the chip lead, Vaughano puts up a good fight but can’t overcome Tony’s chip dominance and Tony ends up taking the honours in first game.

Game number 2 was much more action packed and I got a little revenge on Tony early when in the BB I was dealt:

:4h::Jc:

Average cards at best right? Well the table limped around to me and I took the opportunity to see a free flop:

:2c::4s::6h:

An interesting flop, Vaughano in the SB checks and I decide to have a little bet to “see where I’m at” (about half the pot), Youngy folds, Tony calls and Vaughan folds. It’s Tony and I heads up and I’m wondering what he could possibly have to want to keep playing with this board, we see a turn:

I hit trips on the turn and feeling fairly confident that I’m holding the nuts (is there any other topic besides poker where I could get away with that line? :P), I check. Tony bets around half the pot and I just call. We see a river:

This is a potentially dangerous card for me and I’m silently kicking myself a little for slow playing the turn. I decide to just check again to see what he does (I wouldn’t hate a free showdown here), he bets the same amount he did on the turn though at that point something gives me the feeling that he hasn’t improved his hand in the slightest since the flop (can’t say exactly what it was, partly because I’m not 100% sure myself and partly because I don’t want Tony to read this and find out :)). I re-raise a fair amount (about 2x his original bet) and he calls to show me:

:Kd::Ks:*

My full-house wins… ouch! That makes up for the pair of nines ;)

This puts me in a good position chip wise (it’s still only level 1 at this point) so I tighten up a bit and try to let the others fight it out and fight they do! The exact circumstances escape me (earlier in the night we’d all tried a cherry beer from Belgium that Tony had brought from work, it costs $15AUD a bottle and the general consensus was that it tastes like cough syrup… I have a feeling it doesn’t do your memory any good either because there are a few big hands that I just can’t recall :)) but between halfway through level 1 and the start of level 3 both Tony and Youngy managed to get themselves knocked out (perhaps they’ll leave some comments reminding me of the details?), leaving Vaughano and I heads up.

I must admit this was a fun little hour of poker, the chip stacks were fairly even, the blinds were very low and the cards were for the most part interesting. Chips were moving back and forth pretty evenly as we both went through stages of being card dead and I was starting to regret the heads up advice I’d given Vaughano after Jo’s poker night a couple of weeks back because I have a feeling there were a few times there where he used it against me and I was bluffed out of a few chips, however, order was soon restored with the following two hands. The first of which I felt is what turned the game in my favour, in the BB I was dealt:

:Kc::Js:

V raised (as he’d been doing regularly) and I decided to make a stand and re-raised. He called. The flop came something like:

:8c::8s::4h:

V bet into it and I decided it was unlikely he’d hit anything and I put him on nothing trying to buy the pot. Hoping my nothing was better than his nothing I re-raised all-in. He folded and I took down the largest pot of recent times with a bluff (of sorts).

This gave me some breathing room and we swapped blinds for the next little while, until it all came down to this:

In the BB I was dealt:

:Ks::9c:

V min-raised, I called and we saw the flop:

:Ah::Kh::Jd:

V made a small bet and I got that feeling again … he didn’t have the Ace and I highly doubted he had a better King.

“All-In”, I decided to push half hoping he’d fold. I did have him covered, though if I lost this it would be tough to come back.

He called and turned over:

:Js::3d:

I breathed for the first time since he started counting his chips and Youngy dealt the turn and the river:

:7c:

My king’s held up and I took the game… got to give credit to Vaughano though, he played well up until that loose call and there were a number of times where I thought he was going to take the game away from me. Well played!

Thanks to Youngy for having us around, I’m looking forward to the next one guys!

OK, these are getting worse!! :) Does ANYONE know a good poker joke???

—

A doctor tiptoes into the house at 5:00AM trying not to awaken his wife, but it didn’t help.

She woke up and asked “Where the hell have you been?”.

Guiltily he replied “OK, I admit it. I took my secretary to dinner and one thing led to another……”.

“Stop lying”, she interjected immediately, “YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING POKER!”