This post is the proof.
I’ve been playing poker, and doing a degree. And… nope. That’s it.This has kept me busy enough that I haven’t really had time to spend posting stuff on here; and it is a time-consuming process, because this stuff is carefully honed material that takes literally ages to write.
Anyway, me try post more. Probably fail, buy, try.
Seat 1: BretMaver171 (1845 in chips)
Seat 2: dermoth (2984 in chips)
Seat 3: Bronxxx616 (5119 in chips)
Seat 5: Tay89 (6657 in chips)
Seat 7: Toneless (1565 in chips)
Seat 9: zaq13 (5020 in chips)
dermoth: posts small blind 75
Bronxxx616: posts big blind 150
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to dermoth[2h 2d]
Tay89: raises 150 to 300
Toneless: folds
zaq13: calls 300
BretMaver171: calls 300
dermoth: calls 225
Bronxxx616: calls 150
*** FLOP *** [2c Th 6c]
dermoth: checks
Bronxxx616: bets 450
Tay89: raises 600 to 1050
zaq13: raises 3670 to 4720 and is all-in
BretMaver171: folds
dermoth: calls 2684 and is all-in
Bronxxx616: raises 99 to 4819 and is all-in
Tay89: calls 3769
*** TURN *** [2c Th 6c] [2s]
*** RIVER *** [2c Th 6c 2s] [6h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Bronxxx616: shows [6s 6d] (four of a kind, Sixes)
Tay89: shows [8c Ac] (two pair, Sixes and Deuces)
Bronxxx616 collected 198 from side pot-2
zaq13: shows [Jh Js] (two pair, Jacks and Sixes)
dermoth said, “omg”
Bronxxx616 collected 6108 from side pot-1
dermoth: shows [2h 2d] (four of a kind, Deuces)
Bronxxx616 collected 12236 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 18542 Main pot 12236. Side pot-1 6108. Side pot-2 198. | Rake 0
Board [2c Th 6c 2s 6h]
Seat 1: BretMaver171 (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 2: dermoth(small blind) showed [2h 2d] and lost with four of a kind, Deuces
Seat 3: Bronxxx616 (big blind) showed [6s 6d] and won (18542) with four of a kind, Sixes
Seat 5: Tay89 showed [8c Ac] and lost with two pair, Sixes and Deuces
Seat 7: Toneless folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 9: zaq13 showed [Jh Js] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Sixes
It’s very nearly six years since I started playing poker, and I thought I’d seen it all. I have now seen it all.
Oh, man. This is bad.
A.J.Benza, co-host of High Stakes Poker, has been fired by the EVIL SUITS of the Game Show Network. He’s blogged about it – here – and it’s fair to say he’s not taken it too well. (Scroll down past the life-size picture of AJ to get to the text, and maybe close your eyes while you’re doing it). GSN want to replace him with a nubile young lady, presumably because that’s been so successful on Poker After Dark. (Note – HEAVY SARCASM).
There are rumours floating about that Vanessa Rousso will get the gig, which could work. I’d love to see Maria Mayrinck hosting, but I’m of the opinion that she should present every show on television, so that’s hardly surprising. But we’re probably going to end up with another Marianella, and Series 6 of High Stakes Poker is probably going to consist of 40% Phil Laak’s prop bets, 50% Gabe Kaplan flirting with a woman half his age, and 10% boring old poker. The odds on there being a Series 7 just took a big dive.
In other news, I really, really hate Norman Chad.
I really don’t play enough ppker. My results are good, and my ROI is high, but that’s no use to me if my initial investment isn’t large enough. With that in mind, I’ve decided to set myself a challenge, in order to increase the amount of money I’m staking (and hopefully winning).
I’m going to play one hundred STTs this week. At the stakes I’m playing, that should see roughly 80% of my bankroll in action between now and next Saturday. In order to pull this off, I’m going to have to be three or four-tabling for… I dunno. 30 hours? We’ll see.
In the meantime, I’ll be twittering news of my progress as I go on, so don’t forget to follow… http://twitter.com/Bad_Beat_Moth.
Over at the excellent UKGameshows they’re running a slightly unusual competition. Basically, they want someone to code them a program that generates these things -
POKERGRAM
A “pokergram”, there. (I think I played a hand like this recently; I was the poor bastard with sixes full). You can see the solution to this one, along with the details of the competition, over at the UKGameshows site. The winning entry gets a whopping £1000, or, if they prefer their prizes in dollars, a considerably less whopping $1500. Odd. Still, well worth winning either way; I’d do it myself if I had even the faintest clue how…
So, basically, I got bored of Wordpress.com hosting the blog, so I went to town and bought myself a domain name, and some hosting. Welcome, then, to the new Poker Moth! I won’t get fooled again.
Okay, I will probably get fooled again, but that’s not important right now. A quick glance at the blog leads me to the conclusion that I haven’t been posting much of late, which is a shocking state of affairs and quite unlike me. Hopefully, this will now change, as I am inspired to write by the beautiful new surroundings, and the (presumably lifechanging) Google Adsense revenue.
Now, for some content:
I have been playing quite a lot of poker recently, but still not enough. I have been enjoying it.
More soon! (possibly).
I’m listening to a lot of music from 1972 at the moment, FOR A VERY GOOD REASON, hence the title of this post.
I’m playing a lot of PLO, the odd NLHE tourney, and generally keeping my head down. There’s not a lot to blog about. I nearly wrote something about Ivey and Shulman in the WSOPME, but… I didn’t.
So, here I am, filling space. I’ll post something worthwhile soon, I reckon.
I’ve been playing a lot on iPoker of late. I’ve had a Titan account for about a year now, but I’ve never really spent much time there until recently. However, I’ve decided to build the old bankroll with some bonuswhoring, and these days, that means playing on lots of iPoker skins. And I have some THOUGHTS on the software. Random THOUGHTS. In no particular order…
1. The site has the most censorious chatbox I’ve ever seen. “Moron” is verboten. I think “Idiot” might be too. On the other hand, I’ve just seen a player sit down on my table called “CuntOfSpades”. Bit odd.
2. iPoker uses rubbish avatars. Oh, look, I can be a cowboy! Or a businessman! Or a mobster! What fun. Now, obviously, anyone with sense is going to disable these ridiculous gewgaws immediately, but other people will still be able to see them, even if you can’t. So make sure you set your avatar to the “slutty woman in low-cut dress” setting. I’ve lost count of the number of times that some knuckle-dragging moron has cackhandedly tried to bluff me off a pot and then called me a bitch when I’ve checkraised them. Poker-transvestitism can be very profitable.
3. The hand history browser is just plain weird; halfway between a graphical interface and a text one, but with none of the benefits of either. Hell, Betfair might only be able to open a Notepad document, as if it were 1988 or something, but at least you can copy the damn text out of Notepad. POP FACT! iPoker is the third largest poker network in the world behind Stars and Tilt. And yet they can’t even manage a functional hand history browser. And that’s not all…
4. Table resizing. You can’t do it. Srsly. You can have your tables at a standard size, or you can opt for a minimised view. Now, this isn’t that uncommon; Cryptologic used to work in a similar fashion, for instance. What makes iPoker special is that switching from full size tables to the minimised view causes the software to have a seizure, especially is you have more than one table open. It’s particularly catastrophic if you’ve been playing for a while, as the software feels the need to reload the entire contents of the chat box before it will et you play again, for reasons that are completely unfathomable. You may as well go and put the kettle on while it tries to sort itself out.Again, given the size of the network, this is inexcusable.
5. Otherwise… it’s a half-decent poker network. There are a lot of bad players out ther (hello, William Hill!), the Omaha tables are usually pretty busy (Stud, not so much), and they have good tournaments with a reasonably friendly blind structure. And if you’re bonuswhoring, there are a ton of skins with a ton of decent bonuses to chase.
Oh, and it’s rigged, obviously. I know this because someone told me so.
Here’s a fun little quandary for you.
———————————————-
http://www.holdemmanager.net
PL Omaha $0.20(BB)
SB ($19.73)
BB ($9.94)
UTG ($42.11)
Dermoth ($15.36)
CO ($11.98)
Button ($28.29)
Let’s get the introductions out of the way first; the BB is quite loose passive, and the cutoff is VERY loose passive; I haven’t seen him raise in 60 hands, and he plays 60% of his hands. (Yes, I am using tracking software again). As for me, I’m a little bit tilty after losing a 90/10 race a few hands ago.
SB posts (SB) $0.10
BB posts (BB) $0.20
Dealt to Dermoth 4h 7c Ad Ac
fold,
Dermoth calls $0.20
I have a bad habit of limping Aces in Omaha. This is partly because I’ve been playing a lot of full ring PLO, where preflop raising isn’t much better than setting fire to your money. However, I’ve moved to 6max games in the last few days, and I’m a lot busier preflop in the short-handed game, but I still limp a lot of aces for disguise, and the opportunity to reraise shortstacks. No-one’s short enough here to justify that angle, though. I should have raised.
CO raises to $0.90
fold, fold,
BB calls $0.70
So, a raise from the loose-passive player (who I’ve never seen raise preflop before), followed by a call from the other LAP. The pot’s now big enough for me to 3bet and get all the chips in on the flop. Thing is, I’m almost positive the Cutoff has aces as well, and the chances are they’re better than mine. Nonetheless, I decide to pot it back at them and worry about my side cards on the flop (if nothing else, we can divvy up the BB’s money)…
Dermoth raises to $3.70
CO calls $2.80
BB calls $2.80
FLOP ($11.20) Ah 8c 4s
OK, so the Cutoff doesn’t have aces. I’m pretty sure about that, now. The problem here is that my 3bet preflop has effectively turned my hand face-up; there’s no way I can earn any more money by betting here. So, let the checking begin!
check, check, check,
TURN ($11.20) Ah 8c 4s 8d
BB bets $0.20
Owoosay… lol? I couldn’t have dealt this any better myself, and, err, what’s with the minbet? It has to be a spectacularly pathetic blocking bet with an 8 in his hand, surely? No point raising here, I just call and hope that he fills up on the river.
Dermoth calls $0.20
CO calls $0.20
RIVER ($11.80) Ah 8c 4s 8d 8s
BB bets $6.04 (AI)
Oh, fuck off! And the hand history doesn’t reflect the incredible speed with which all the remaining chips went in the middle; with two players still to act, it’s a hell of a bluff. On the other hand, I have the second nuts, I’m getting almost 3/1, and… he’s blatantly got the case eight. Or KK? He could have KK. The minbet on the turn is deranged, but maybe… ah, fuck it, I call.
Dermoth calls $6.04
CO calls $6.04
Oh, fuck off! But there’s no time to digest this disastrous news before the showdown…
Dermoth shows 4h 7c Ad Ac
(Flop 76.1%, Turn 100.0%)
CO shows Kh 3h Jd Ks
(Flop 5.9%, Turn 0.0%)
So the Cutoff has KK! They can’t both have them, can they?
BB shows 7s Qs 6d As
(Flop 18.1%, Turn 0.0%)
!!!
Dermoth wins $28.92, and is very, very surprised…
———————————————-
The moral of the story; don’t play Omaha if you don’t know the rules. It had never even occurred to me that he could be shoving a Hold’em Boat. Although I would have been sick to my stomach if I had pulled out a hero fold there (and I very nearly did), the pain would have been lessened by the thought of the Big Blind trying to work out why he lost to KK. As it stands, he’s probably bemoaning his terrible luck… that lesson will whave to wait for another day.
Omaha is hard. But endlessly entertaining.
Man, it’s been a while since I basked in the reflected glory of Pokertube. Possibly because there hasn’t been that much quality poker telly to write about of late?
UNTIL NOW, that is. I direct your attention to the magnificent Aurrrrt-zee Millions Cash Game 2009, probably the best bit of poker-watchy you’ll see in a long time. There are links at the bottom of the post, but first! Some words.
Americans can’t say “Aussie”. (Or “Craig”. Or “bloody wanker”). They can say “Ozzy”, as in Osbourne, but seem to be incapable of making the exact same sounds when spelled slightly differently. Barry Tompkins, (who plays Presenting Man on the show), is particularly bad at saying Aussie, which I mentioned in passing when I reviewed the first Aussie Millions , back in 2007.This hasn’t changed.
I also mentioned Michael Konik’s obsession with the word “prohibitive”. This has changed, because Konik has been replaced by Bart Hanson, who does an extremely good job of calling the action, but is obsessed with the word “bluffcatcher”, to the point where I started to think he was subliminally advertising some ghastly product of that name. As if that wasn’t enough, the sensation of being subtly reprogrammed to buy BLUFFCATCHER products is heightened by a truly bizarre addition to the AM format – background music. Weird, wobbly, vaguely hippyish ambient background music, of the sort you’d expect to hear in a Scientology Org while they wave an e-meter around and size up your wallet. Then there’s the sound effects; every card the dealer turns over sets off a whooshy burst of white noise , and every bet triggers the “mobile phone receiving a text message” alert. It’s disorientating; your eyes see poker, while your ears hear “Channel Five daytime quiz show”.
Happily, the poker itself is fantastic. There are two shows; the first is a full ring game, featuring the likes of Durrrr, Antonius, Laak, the excellent Niki Jedlicka and the truly awful Andrew Robl, and some Australian guy (mercifully not the one with the sodding crocodile), and the second episode is a heads up match between Durrrr and Antonius, who are clearly deeply in love with each other. (Get a room, guys! Oh, you did). And the stacks are DEEP; the minimum buy-in for the ring game is $200,000 (they don’t specify whether those are USD or AUD, I suspect the former), but Durrrr and Antonius decide to bring seven figure sums with them. I forget exactly how much Antonius is playing, but it’s something like $2,000,000. They sit down for the heads up match with $1,000,000 and $1,500,000 respectively.
Better yet, it’s a mixed game; NLHE and (joy!) PLO. I’m delighted to see Omaha being played on the telly, and it doesn’t disappoint here; there’s one hand in particular which has to be seen to be believed, and several other merely fascinating hands. There’s also some spectacularly inept commentary from Tompkins in the heads up match, which… well, I’ll not spoiler it for you. Links below, and I’ll post some thoughts in the comments.
Watch it. It’s superb.