This is a pretty cool site.
Damn, I missed this.
This is a fantastic post. I have a lot to say about it, but not enough time right now.
Oh my, something very beautiful just happened to yours truly:
I play AA and KK the same way. I try to get as much money as possible into the pot pre-flop. In late position, I raise. In early position, I might call with the intention of re-raising. I’d only do this at a table where I have great confidence that a raise will come. All poker authors agree that you should occasionally slow play these hands. Varying the play of any hand of course helps you to disguise your hand in the future. However, 95% of my poker playing is against complete strangers, primarily online. There is little to no value to varying your play against people you will, in all likelihood, never ’see’ again. So I almost never slow play AA or KK. When you hold KK (as previously discussed here), by the time you figure out you might be facing AA, you are very pot committed. Thus, I play the two hands the same way.
With QQ through 99, unlike KK or AA, it is more likely than not that the flop will bring an overcard. This sucks. So, for the most part, I want to get heads-up with QQ-99, That way, even if an overcard comes, there is a decent chance that my opponent missed it. Based on the hope that my opponent missed the overcard, I still bet my pair post flop. If the hand doesn’t end right there, well, I’ll know when to run. With QQ-99 in early position, I will call. What happens next determines how I play the hand. Maybe we get a family pot, which is just fine: I will only play post-flop if I get a set. If I get a raise from a guy, I may try to re-raise, which would all but ensure a heads-up flop. I would plan to bet the flop no matter what comes out for the reasons stated above.
I play 88-66 and 55-22 trying to see the flop for cheap and releasing my hand if I don’t get a set. The only differences between the two groups are:
That is my pocket pair basic strategy. There is a lot more to playing pocket pairs, including what to do when you get re-raised. That we can cover another day. I am curious as to other people’s thoughts on basic pre-flop pocket pair strategy. Pls comment below!
I received a very generous bonus offer from Planet Poker recently – deposit $50 and get $100 free. Of course, the usual bonus restrictions apply (play x# hands by such and such date). Their math works out that you earn 50% of the rake you contribute. So if the rake in a hand is $1.00 and their are 5 players in the hand, you get $1 / 5 * 50% = 10 cents. I does not matter if you actually pay the rake (i.e. win the hand) just that you are dealt a hand. This generous bonus combined with a long expiration date (some time in late August) convinced me to give it a go.
I played for a while on Friday and Saturday. There was one hand that I wanted to share. The hand history is not in the format you are used to from Party Poker. The format is tabular and is the same one that Mike Caro uses in his books. See the hand history by clicking below.
The reason I like this hand is that I used several different weapons at my disposal. It is the poker equivalent of the great drive followed up by a perfect short iron followed up by a nice 12-foot birdie putt. I used:
It folded around to me in the button and I found myself with A8. In the button, I love to raise in this situation (A) because you likely get folds but even if you don’t, you are in position short-handed, which is great. The small blind re-raised, the BB called and I thought about the fact that the SB had been playing a bit bizarre all day. The BB was a horrible fish that called anything. He had busted out several times, including four hands ago. Based on the length of time it took him to return and the fact that his previous buy-in was for $23.42, I surmised that he completely used up his bankroll and just did a re-deposit from his credit card. He sucked, so I did not flinch at his cold calling two raises. Based on their previous play (C), I surmised a call was in order.
The flop came AK3. Not great, but good. Juanny, the SB made a pot-sized bet. Derrills, the BB, paused for a while and then called. Juanny’s bet was so quick, I surmised that he clicked the “Bet Pot” button without even looking at the flop. Ordinarily, this might mean that he had something like a pocket pair. However, since the bet left him with almost nothing (85 cents), I figured that he knew that his money was going in the middle of the table no matter what, so he might as well get it in on the flop and maximize his fold equity. I combined the very quick bet from the BB (B) with the loose play of the BB (C) and decided to call.
The turn brought a blank, and not surprisingly, the SB got in the rest of his chips (85c) and we all called.
The river brought a beautiful 3, pairing the board. (This solved my kicker problems by giving me AA33K.) The BB checked. Even though the BB was a loosy goose, I just couldn’t imagine him cold calling 2 raises pre-flop with any hand containing a 3 (other than 33, which surely he would have bet by now). If he had just made a boat, he would have bet his set (or 2 pair) on a previous street. So I figured that worst case scenario was the we both had AA33K. Best case scenario is that I have him beat. Any time I find myself in a situation where I think that I can’t be beat but it is quite probable that I have the same hand as my opponent, I go all in (D). If he calls, I am no worse for it (the rake has already been maxed out). If he folds, I just earned an extra half of the pot. No better way to get a fold than to overbet the pot!
I bet, he folded and I won.
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She is more than just a pretty face at the tables. She has won the World Poker Tour’s Ladies Night, beating out the likes of Jennifer Harman and Annie Duke for the title and is often in the thick of things when it comes down to crunch time in many of today’s biggest tournaments.
Having appeared on numerous television shows including Good Morning America, Gowen is no stranger to the spotlight and is a great ambassador for the game. In addition to playing in major tournaments, she is one of the original members of Team Full Tilt and is a full time representative for Full Tilt Poker and frequently gives lectures to top businesses across the United States.
Gavin “Birdguts” Smith was born Sept. 4, 1968, in Guelph, Ontario, and has been playing poker for more than 16 years. His father taught him cribbage and rummy, but Smith advanced to poker by playing mixed games with his co-workers. In 1996 he became a dealer, and by 1998 he’d started his own poker club. His good friend Erick Lindgren helped bankroll him early in his career, and since then his cash winnings exceed $2.2 million.
Since 2000, Smith has placed in 32, or more, tournaments. Seventeen of his cashes occurred in 2005. He’s made the final table in 21 events and gone heads up in six of them. His first major win was in the 2000 World Poker Finals stud eight-or-better event. In 2005, Smith won two events at the Mirage Poker Showdown, including the championship. Later that year he finished second at the Ultimate Poker Challenge at the Plaza, and third in the Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship.
Smith is a representative of Full Tilt Poker.
I have a long poker post that I have written and need to edit before I post, but some quick thoughts on the Enron verdict –
1.) I still don’t really think Ken Lay did anything wrong short of gross gross negligence, although I certainly was not privvy to all of the evidence that the jury saw and they obviously saw enough to find him guilty. I do think Jeff Skilling is guilty as sin and was in that mess up to his neck, despite his protests of ignorance. Nonetheless, I don’t have any quibble with the verdicts – Enron was a huge company and it failed because a small group of people knowingly broke the law and violated their fiduciary duty to the shareholders. That small group of people needs to be punished for tremendously profound reasons, probably even moreso than some violent criminals whom we more often think of as being “true” criminals.
2.) I also agree that for many of the ex-employees and their families, this is a just verdict. These employees worked hard and invested their money in the company stock, as all the while that same small group of execs looted the company of cash. (The basic story of Enron is this: banks loaned money, (some) employees and (mostly the) executives took that money into their own pockets and then made up earnings reports to convince the banks to lend them more money to keep repeating the cycle every 3 months. Finally the banks caught on and quit loaning them money and the charade collapsed. That’s it, it’s that simple)
3.) Having said all that, I am sick and tired of hearing from all of these ex-Enron employees on TV and the radio complaining about how it’s Ken Lay’s and Jeff Skilling’s fault that they went broke and, most commonly, lost their entire life savings because the stock lost all of its value. NEWS FLASH: Ken Lay didn’t steal anyone’s Vanguard password to prevent them from diversifying their 401(k)’s and Jeff Skilling didn’t hack into anyone’s Ameritrade account to keep buying the stock after it started falling like a rock. Anyone who has 100% of his net worth tied up in one stock is a fool, and anyone who is “a couple of years away from retirement” and is still invested in ANY equities, much 100% into just one stock, is an even bigger fool. Yes, it probably makes you feel better these two crooks are going to jail, but it’s not their fault that you managed your money like a moron. I wish the media would quit putting these fools on TV.
Here is what the ex-employees should be mad about and it’s the only thing that they really can blame these guys for: Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling and the rest of that group caused you to lose your job, at a company as cool as Enron was for a while there, and that’s the only thing that they did to you. Everything else – stock market losses, retirement losses, etc etc – is your own damn fault.
4.) And finally, one more time, for any of the news media who might stumble onto this page from Google:
Sherron Watkins is NOT a whistleblower. Get that through your f*cking thick skulls. A true whistleblower actually tells someone outside of the organization about wrongdoing. Writing a whiny memo to the chief criminal because you are pissed that you’re not getting a bigger share of the loot is not whistleblowing. By this logic, Mr Pink is also a whistleblower. Jeebus. I still don’t understand why people worship that woman.
OK, enough Enron. I promise an actual poker point, soon.
At first I thought, “Well, that’s that. Barry Bonds finally got that home run.”
Then I read the caption and thought, “The Astros must be on the road in San Francisco because the Giants series is over at Enron and he didn’t get a home run…… Hey wait a second, they’re playing Texas at home tonight and I have tickets. WTF is this headline then?!?!”
I guess someone in the web department fell asleep this afternoon or accidentally loaded an archived headline. Funny.
UPDATE: Well, apparently he did hit that home run, just not against the Astros. Now the Chron has it right:
