Badges? We don't need no stinkin badges!

Fairly recently the poker forum that was attached to http://www.lowlimitholdem.com/ got its own life and moved to http://www.lowlimitforum.com/. The folks there talk about Holdem, Omaha, Seven Card Stud and a lot of strange and random things. For the biggest forum contributors there are now badges to use for bragging on blogs and so on. Well what do you know here's a blog now :)





Join me at the Low Limit Poker Forum

The Stox Market is on the rise...

So many things are happening with online poker et al recently that it can be a little overwhelming. All kinds of strategy and advice sites are popping up everywhere as seemingly everyone wants to get in on the action. One Poker Coaching site that is definitely worth the price of admission is StoxPoker.



I've watched several of their videos and they are all extremely good. In most of them they are actually showing you live hands (often 4-tabled) that they are playing and the thought processes they are using to make each action at the table. Most of the videos are made by professional poker players that make their income from playing online at varying stakes and they have material for pretty much any game, limit and type you are likely to want to play. Very highly recommended.

Absolutely the Worst Part 2

Two bits of news. First, Absolute Poker is now saying that an inside programmer "hacked the system" and was, in fact, able to see the hole cards in the tournament in question. The story is being carried on MSNBC here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21381022/. They have promised to "return all appropriate funds" to players and to possibly pursue a lawsuit or criminal charges against the employee in question.

To me this brings up a couple things. First, how can you return appropriate funds to players? The existence of this card-seeing cheater in the tournament totally invalidates the entire tournament. It's not good enough to simply bump everyone up one pay place and redistribute the money. Everyone who played in the tournament deserves at the very minimum a refund.

Next, what is this about pursuing criminal charges? Last time I checked it wasn't for companies to make that call. Criminal charges should be filed by the authorities with appropriate jurisdiction in this case and a complete investigation should be done into Absolute Poker to see what complicity existed in both this employee's access (if in fact the "geek" employee they mention was to blame) and in their total inability or unwillingness to come clean to an obvious case of cheating which only takes a very quick perusal of the hand history to see. Their initial statements in light of the statement today does not exactly make them look squeeky clean.

Absolutely the Worst

Unless you have been hiding under a tree lately you have heard about the recent scandal involving Absolute Poker. The condensed version is that a player named POTRIPPER won a large buy-in tournament at Absolute Poker by making essentially perfect play (the play you would make if you could see all hole cards) every hand for 126 hands in a row. This includes the most talked about hand where he called a massive all-in river bet with a ten high to beat a 9 high flush draw bluff.

Imagine a very skilled poker player who can, through observation, odds and so on, make plays that are perfect plays about 70% of the time. Over the various actions in a hand let's say that he can do an entire hand perfectly about half the time. To do 32 hands perfectly in a row for this skilled player would be about a 1 in 4 billion shot. To do 64 hands perfectly would be about a 16 QUADRILLION (16,000,000,000,000,000,000) to 1 shot. What this person did was about 250 followed by 36 0's to 1 or in short impossible. I have a far better chance of getting a foot massage from Jessica Alba, and believe me that's saying something.

To compound this issue, Absolute is not being very forthright regarding the situation and their reputation may now be permanently marred.

More information on the controversy can be found at:

Pocket Fives
Adanthar's Blog
High Stakes Report

Are you on tilt? How about NOW? How about NOW?!

There are a number of things, as I've gotten older, that I no longer do. For example I no longer ask the question "How could it get any worse?" because I've found there is always a way it can...

I have written articles on tilt and avoiding tilt on http://www.lowlimitholdem.com/ and just when I think I have it licked I am doing just terrible things to my mouse, beating it against my desk and yelling (for the neighbors to surely hear) "No f*&%*ing WAY!" as my opponent makes a one out suckout for a 17 BB pot (the hand in question can be found here). Of course other beats come and sometimes they come in succession very quickly. Flopping two pair is about 49:1 against, but if you're up against the big blind with pocket queens and they have 7 4 suited then it's closer to 50:50.

The longer I play the more I understand why poker players don't want to hear other people's bad beat stories and yet insist on telling their own, and yes I'm telling my own and you as a poker player don't want to hear it. I know, I know...

The point, though, is not the bad beats but the tilt that comes from them that has really damaged my game and win rate over time. I have gotten better at taking beats but I am still prone to tilt when they seem to keep coming and coming and coming. The reality is that if I want to really maximize my poker game I have to get past it and it really really is a challenge.

My last beat was my KK vs KT small blind vs big blind when my opponent caught two tens. Just to type it it doesn't sound all that bad but it sure sucked at the time; so I left the games for a few hours and now I am back, and this time I will keep it together longer than the last time.

What more could you ask?

2007 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker Part 3

3:26pm

Probably the reason I'm lasting so long in this tournament is that I am not catching any cards. Had 1 premium pair (KK mentioned above) this whole time, but that's probably what has kept me in this thing this long.... Right now there are 198 players left (out of 1337) and the average stack is 68k. My stack's 27k still! Going to need to get a double up sometime soon...


3:47pm

Well I had to make a stand with about 13k chips left with blinds at 1.5k/3k so I called a 20k ep raise with 55 and the big stack at the table also called. Both people had AK so I was a 'favorite' in the hand, but alas flop JQx turn T for the nut straight for both of them...
Went out 143/1337 ah well no replacement xbox for me this time but watch out 2008, I'll be back...

2007 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker Part 2

At the break I'm at 17800 chips. It should have been a lot more, but I ran into this hand right before the break:


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t300 (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

MP2 (t5485)
MPC (t16055)
CO (t8100)
Button (t17675)
SB (t19200)
BB (t7950)
UTG (t12525)
UTG+1 (t19510)
MP1 (t10125)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 4d, 4h.

2 folds, MP1 raises to t900, MP2 calls t900, Hero calls t900, 2 folds, SB calls t750, BB calls t600.

Flop: (t4500) 2d, 5s, 3c (5 players)

SB checks, BB checks, MP1 checks, MP2 checks, Hero checks.

Turn: (t4500) Ah (5 players)

SB checks, BB checks, MP1 bets t1500, MP2 folds, Hero calls t1500, SB folds, BB folds.

River: (t7500) 4s (2 players)

MP1 checks, Hero checks.

Final Pot: t7500

Results in white below:
MP1 has Ac Qd (straight, five high).
o has 4d 4h (straight, five high).

Outcome: Hero wins t3750. MP1 wins t3750.

2007 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker Part 1

Well, we're starting the 2007 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (phew that's a mouthful) at PokerStars. The tournament started with 1337 (no joke! - leet) entrants and 10,000 in tournament chips each. Starting Blinds are $25/$50.

Most people are playing cautiously, but there are a few wild ones already. The kind of people that build up a dominating stack very quickly and often lose it just as quickly... Because of the somewhat conservative play it's going to take two pretty big hands to get a large chunk of someone's stack right now. (pardon, folding AQ to a early position raiser)

Raised QQ in early position and got two callers (late pos + BB) flopped a set of queens but two clubs on board... bet $300 into a $400 pot and took the hand down (wasn't particularly looking forward to racing all my chips against a flush draw should they get overaggressive even at a better than 2:1 favorite)

I'll check back in after the tourney's been going for a while.

PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 1254597

ePassporte to Limbo

Since the Port Security bill secured the United States ports (??) by making it illegal for US financial institutions to transfer funds to or from online gaming institutions (including online poker!) the major players (Firepay, Neteller) have turned their back on the US market and other funding solutions have taken their place. One of the more popular of these is (ePassporte) who have actually been around since 2002 (well before the new law) and it's also one with the most problems... Customer support is dismal and requests for help or information about your account can take weeks for response. On the bright side the service runs efficiently most of the time and you can generally sidestep the issues by following some simple rules:

• Don't let your account balance go over $5000. If you do they require paperwork from you and the paperwork is going to take time and lots of it.


• Don't use the new "instant fund" option from your bank account. Doing so will cause your account to be locked for 8 business days (yes business days and they're very strict on that) so if you use this funding option on, say, a Friday you won't be able to get at your money for 12 days (locked from any withdrawal option including visa and atm and online charges). The regular method is slower but typically won't take 8 business days and won't cause your account to be locked.


• Do plan ahead for your withdrawals. If you need money in your checking account you'll have to withdrawal it $600 at a time (and that's IF you've ponied up the extra money to increase your daily limits) and that money will take a week to get to your checking account. You definitely don't want to wait until the last minute when rent is due to start making this withdrawals.


• Do increase your withdrawal limits by paying the $5 fee--taking money out $300 at a time is obnoxious and you'll regret it when you want to. Plus this limit extension may not happen instantly so get it started.


• Do get the physical visa. The price is worth it to have plastic you can use around town.


• Don't expect fast responses from customer support. You won't get them and sometimes they never respond at all.

When the ban on online poker is lifted (and I have to believe it will be) then other funding options will appear and ePassporte will have to get its ducks in a row to compete, but for now they're sort of like the phone company--the only real choice for a lot of people--and they know it. I hope these tips save you some aggravation until then.