Poker Moth

Hello, blog.

Sorry I’ve been so quiet, but I’m currently embroiled in an unpleasant, gratuitous and not very nice personal problem that is severely affecting my hourly rate (and a few other things too, but that’s not relevant here).

It shouldn’t have any serious long-term effects, but in the short-term, it’s causing no end of grief. I should have it under control very soon (my tilt control skills WILL prevail), and the blog will continue to be updated regularly (probably more regularly than before, in fact) once I’ve got a grip on stuff.

Please bear with me.

First of all, if you’ve googled for “who is Seda1?” and found this, apologies. I haven’t a clue. Tracy McGrady, or Michael Jordan, or Jay-Z, or Nelly, or Tiger Woods, or Barry Greenstein, or Andy Beal, or someone else entirely. Although it’s surely not Barry G, or even Andy Beal, because the guy cannot play to save his life. And it’s probably not Tracy McGrady, because T-Mac was on court against Cleveland while supposedly dropping over a million dollars to Phil Ivey on Tuesday night.

For everybody else, welcome to the world’s greatest car-crash viewing, the poker rubbernecker’s paradise, the show that makes High Stakes Poker look slower than a very slow… oh, wait. HSP is slower than etc. ANYWAY. I am referring to the “nosebleed” stakes NLHE, PLO, PLO8 and PLHA action on Full Tilt.

At the eye of the storm, there’s Phil Ivey. Full Tilt have set up two tables especially for him; there’s a $500/$1000 heads-up NLHE table (called Ivey Deathmatch), and if that wasn’t sick enough, there’s also a $500/$1000 heads-up PLO table, (Ivey Thunderdome), with a maximum buy-in on either table of a standard 100BBs, ($100,000, in other words). These games have to involve Ivey, it seems, so when the other nosebleed players want to throw money at each other, they have to play lower stakes; in Pot Limit Omaha, that means $200/$400 (heads up or six-handed), while the upper limit is $300/$600 for heads up NLHE. and PLHA (Pot Limit Hold’em/Omaha). PLO8, being a split pot game, gets the full $500/$1000 treatment, (although it’s less popular than the others). It’s enough to make your eyes bleed, never mind your nose – to take the somewhat meagre sounding $200/$400 PLO action, that’s currently averaging at $9704 a hand, and 70 hands an hour. $700k changing hands every hour. On the big Ivey tables, 200k pots are fairly commonplace, and 400k pots have already occurred. It’s only a matter of time before the record for the biggest pot in online poker history ($465,451) is broken.

Who’s brave enough to get involved in this madness? Gus Hansen and Erick Lindgren are the only FT pros to regularly swim in the 200/400 games, with Patrik Antonious playing less regularly, but higher, and the likes of Mike Matusow, John Juanda, and a handful of other red-inks occasionally stick their head out at these levels. Few players (and no red-inked names) venture as far as Deathmatch and Thunderdome. The notable names who do are mainly obscure internet pros; the best are Ziigmund and “Durrrr”, the former a very strong Finnish player, the latter an extremely aggressive 2+2 forum regular who’s been known to take multitabling to ridiculous new levels by playing eight or more of the 200/400 and 300/600 games at once. He appears to do rather well, too.

And then there’s Seda1. No-one but Phil Ivey knows who Seda1 is, and he’s not telling. However, whoever it is, Ivey took $600k from him in Deathmatch on Tuesday, and it’s widely believed that the game was “crossbooked”, which basically means they had a private agreement to play for double the stakes, with the loser forwarding the difference privately after the match was settled. Seems $500k/$1000k just wasn’t high enough… and the upshot is that Ivey is believed to have pocketed over a million dollars of the mystery player’s money in that one session.

There’s a thread on 2+2 with most of the HHs for the major hands in the session here, (WARNING: Contains 2+2) and there’s nosebleed action on FTP from late evening GMT onwards, pretty much every night. Who needs Gabe Kaplan when you’ve got this?

…fool, fool, defined by Websters:

n.

POKERSTARS GAME #15338713295: TOURNAMENT #77010173, $10+$1 HOLD’EM NO LIMIT – LEVEL XVII (2500/5000) – 2008/02/16 – 23:35:15 (ET)
Table ‘77010173 306′ 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: SMOKE225225 (38795 in chips)
Seat 2: SackAttack23 (151632 in chips)
Seat 3: VON COOLIO (100702 in chips)
Seat 4: wildogg2k5 (285979 in chips)
Seat 5: dermoth (102725 in chips)
Seat 6: dabomb1637 (88063 in chips)
Seat 7: hell®aiser (214127 in chips)
Seat 8: soupw (117966 in chips)
Seat 9: happenin33 (338922 in chips)
everyone: posts the ante 500
wildogg2k5: posts small blind 2500
dermoth: posts big blind 5000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to dermoth [Td Qd]
dabomb1637: folds
hell®aiser: folds
soupw: raises 10000 to 15000
happenin33: calls 15000
SMOKE225225: folds
SackAttack23: folds
VON COOLIO: folds
wildogg2k5: calls 12500
dermoth: calls 10000
*** FLOP *** [3d 6s Tc]
wildogg2k5: checks
dermoth: checks

WHY? WHY ARE YOU CHECKING?

soupw: checks
happenin33: checks
*** TURN *** [3d 6s Tc] [Qh]
wildogg2k5: checks
dermoth: checks
soupw: bets 5000
happenin33: raises 10000 to 15000
wildogg2k5: raises 25000 to 40000
dermoth:

dwells up for about half an hour, mumbles “I know I’m beat” about forty times, then

raises 47225 to 87225 and is all-in
soupw: folds
happenin33: calls 72225
wildogg2k5: raises 183254 to 270479 and is all-in
happenin33: calls 183254
*** RIVER *** [3d 6s Tc Qh] [3h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
wildogg2k5: shows [Ts Th] (a full house, Tens full of Threes)
happenin33: shows [Ks Qs] (two pair, Queens and Threes)
wildogg2k5 collected 366508 from side pot
dermoth: shows [Td Qd] (two pair, Queens and Tens)
dermoth said, “nh”

Translation – I hate myself

wildogg2k5 collected 331175 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 697683 Main pot 331175. Side pot 366508. | Rake 0
Board [3d 6s Tc Qh 3h]
Seat 4: wildogg2k5 (small blind) showed [Ts Th] and won (697683) with a full house, Tens full of Threes
Seat 5: dermoth (big blind) showed [Td Qd] and lost with two pair, Queens and Tens
Seat 9: happenin33 showed [Ks Qs] and lost with two pair, Queens and Threes
—————————————————————————

This wretched display of idiocy took place in the midnight $20k. Out in 68th. And the worst bit is, if I had bet the flop, he surely would have put me all-in and I could have got away from it. The queen was my richly deserved reward for being such a donk.

Four and a half hours pissed up the wall, but I can swallow it, just;  I had played extremely well (with no cards to speak of) up until that point, and am fresh from winning a $4.40/180 yesterday. My brief spat of whiny emo tilt is over, thank god.

I have a poker injury. Yesterday saw me coming off worst in a staggering number of challenges where my opponent came in late and hard with very little chance of taking the ball, and ended up breaking bones instead. It currently hurts when I even look at a mouse, never mind attempt to raise someone with it.

Okay, it’s all psychosomatic. Hypochondriatic. Tilt-o-matic. But it still hurts, damnit. If you can permit me to whine about a bad beat for a while, the classic example from yesterday went like this: I was giving out in the chat box a little bit to a table expert, when I was dealt aces UTG. I had an M of about 10 at the time, we were getting close to the bubble, and I wanted to encourage some action, so I only minraised it. The table expert, in mid position, raised pot (or about half my stack), so I typed in “OK, here’s a chance to prove how good you are”, and re-raised him all-in. He called me instantly with 88 (for about half his stack), and flopped his set. Just. So. Irritating. And it’s happening far too often at the moment – I have acquired a new, and completely unwelcome catchphrase – “all I can do is completely outplay my opponents…”  some consolation that is…

Fortunately, I’ve got other, non-poker stuff to do that may earn me some cash (stuff I’ve been putting off for a couple of weeks on account of the briefly enjoyable good run I’ve been having), so I’m likely to be playing less poker for the next couple of days. Ordinarily, this would be a bad idea, but it really needs to be done, and right now I need a little break to get my head straight.

Err, let my wrist heal, even.

How did I miss this? Well, possibly because I get all my poker news from two really, really terrible RSS sources. Welcome to a fortnight ago, courtesy of Pokernews and Pokerworks. And, thinking about it, a family member asked me what the deal was with the Betfair glitch last weekend, and I just looked at him blankly, and forgot about it. (I was pissed).

So, here’s the hot poker news from the beginning of February – Betfair orders poker players to return winnings.

In short, they released a software update which was broken in a rather serious way; in six-handed STTs, in the event of several players going all-in and the tournament being won on that hand, the software was unable to determine who got what prize money. So it paid everybody. Quite how anyone realised this is open to debate; the most plausible situation being that everybody pushed their chips in when three handed in a 6-max STT, the chipleader won the pot taking first place prize money, but the other two players each received second place cash. (Only two people are supposed to get paid in 6-max STTs). Once the third place finisher realised this, he somehow managed to communicate the news to the other players on the site, and they embarked on a spree of 6-maxes with every player moving all-in on the very first hand. Apparently, in that spot, everybody got paid! And once a group of six players had got together to milk the glitch, they worked their way up the limits, until they were merrily grinding their way through thousands of pounds of free money per hour.

I’d be extremely sceptical of this story if it weren’t for the timing; all this apparently took place between 3am and 6am on a weeknight, and at that time, Betfair is dead enough (especially at the higher buy-ins) to allow six people to continuously play against each other without interlopers getting in the way and messing things up. An interloper would mess it up quite badly, though, as would a split pot. (What are the odds of a split in a six-way random all-in? 10%? I genuinely have no idea…). Nonetheless, I guess it is possible that things could have happened that way, although I’m still not ruling out the possibility that this is a viral marketing scam. It all sounds so unlikely…

Seat 2: westwood ( 4,685 )
Seat 6: dermoth ( 5,490 )
Seat 8: mhwu ( 3,325 )
Tourney Level:6 Blinds(100/200-(no ante))
westwood posts small blind [100]
dermoth posts big blind [200]
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to dermoth [ 9d, 8s ]
mhwu calls [200]
westwood calls [100]
dermoth checks
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qc, Jh, Tc ]
westwood bets [600]
dermoth calls [600]
mhwu goes all-in
mhwu raises to [3,125]
westwood goes all-in
westwood raises to [4,485]
dermoth calls [3,885]
** Showdown **
westwood shows [ 8c, 9s ]
dermoth shows [ 9d, 8s ]
mhwu shows [ 9c, 8h ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Jc ]
** Dealing River ** [ 2c ]
** Hand Conclusion **
westwood wins 2,720 from side pot #1 with a Flush
mhwu wins 9,975 from main pot with a Flush
************ Game 311471417 ends ************

No better than I deserved. One of my opponent’s ranges in that spot included stuff like J2 and T9, but the other guy wasn’t putting his chips in with anything I could beat.

I finished third.

Ooh, ooh. Betfair done an software update. I can has usable hand history?

Yes! Sorta. They’ve added a “last hand” button to the tables, and clicking it launches… a Notepad document. Plain text of the last hand played, and the last hand only.

Now, I’m tempted to take the piss a bit, because using Notepad to display text is the software equivalent of turning up at Le Mans in a Robin Reliant. Plus, I used to take the living piss out of Boss for displaying their HHs in Notepad, so it would seem fair to share the mickytaking around equally.

HOWEVER.

I am extraordinarily grateful for a usable hand history option, and it would be churlish to slag them off for fixing the Bad Thing. Semi-fixing. Whatever – the point is, Betfair’s usability just went up several notches, and I am PLEASED. Now, if they can sort out a proper browser in the client which lets you access more than just the last hand played, I’ll be DELIRIOUS. (Especially as I realised yesterday I’ve already got 30%+ rakeback with them. Have no recollection of setting that up, but I’m not complaining).

They’ve added some other stuff in the update, too; best is the improved lobby filtering (begone from mine eyes, foul turbo donkaments), and they claim they’ve tightened up the CPU usage, which can only be a Good Thing.

All in all: YAY.

*edit* Another site update today (11th Feb). From their announcement -

“Following some issues over the last few days we feel the best decision to guarantee stability is to return to the previous version of our software, in order to properly investigate the matter with more scrutiny.

Unfortunately, in the short term this means that the new features introduced recently will not be available.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Marvellous.

I used to believe that I was immune to tilt. I may even have been right, up to a point; I had a very simple, but effective, defense against tilt – I stopped playing. The second I’d feel tilty, I’d go and do something else, often for as long as a week. Tilt’s bad, but it’s maybe not as bad as taking week-long vacations every time you take a bad beat.

I can’t afford to do that anymore ( a lesson I learned the hard way, and am still recovering from) so these days I play through the burn. I’m pretty good at it, too, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that it doesn’t affect my play; all that mumbling and rassenfrassening certainly makes me a lot more aggressive in the blinds (and I’m not exactly timid when it comes to blind defense in my more peaceful moments).

Anyway, in case you haven’t guessed, today was less fun than most. I woke up earlier than usual and played a few tourneys, and flumped out of them all without threatening the cash spots at any stage. I took a couple of hours out, working my frustrations out with a spot of Halo 3, then returned to the tables and played excellent poker for the rest of the day. My reward? Bubble after bubble after bubble, and the only loss I could possibly have avoided was a blind v blind confrontation where I got a bit aggro with second pair on a KQx board, and threw my chips in after kings fell on the turn and river, giving my opponent quads. And while I was behind all the way, the case king on the river was the only card in the deck where I stack off – when he’d called me on the turn, I was sure he had the king (and not the possible flush draw), but it’s much harder to give someone credit for quads than trips. If a queen hits that river, I’m probe-folding my underfull. SAD FACE.

Ah well. Water off a Moth’s back. (Does this work? I’m not in the habit of dowsing moths. Could be fatal, for all I know…)

Ever played the excellent Wii game Endless Ocean? Well, I say “game”, but in truth there’s precious little game in it; it’s just a big, aimless scuba diving simulator/collect-em-up which allows you to muck about in virtual waters, tickling a variety of different sea creatures while absurd Enya-lite music plays in the background. (Don’t let that put you off – you can nix the sub-Enya in the menus, thankfully).

Anyway, in case you hadn’t guessed already, I’m teeing up a hee-larious comparison between Endless Ocean and Betfair Poker. They’re full of fish! They’re both predominantly blue! They’re…

Ok, that’s it. A fittingly crap analogy, there, for this is a crap post. It’s really an apology for my failure to blog about interesting stuff like the Dark Arts, but I’ve become so immersed in Betfair’s world of godawful poker players that I simply don’t have the time, or, frankly, the inclination. It’s such a refreshing change to be cashing (very) regularly again, and I feel excellent.

Bear with me, folks. I’m sure the wheels will fall off soon enough…

Alright, not rigged, no, but I did just take one right between the eyes from the poker gods, and for a few seconds I felt a tiny bit tin-foil hattish. It was only a two-outer, but it was more about the timing; heads-up for the money in a $5.50 MTT, stacks almost even, and me with a great read on my opponent. I’d just got myself level with her, and was feeling pretty smug about myself and my chances, when this happened -

***** Betfair Poker Hand History for Game 307843262 *****
NL Texas Hold’em $5 Buy-in + $0.50 Entry Fee, Level:14 Blinds(1,500/3,000-150 ante) – Friday, February 01, 00:54:31 GMT 2008
$500 GTD Regular $5+$0.50 NLH #124874
Table 1 9-max (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of active players : 2
Seat 2: manos33 ( 91,106.50 )
Seat 7: dermoth ( 86,893.50 )
Tourney Level:14 Blinds(1,500/3,000-150 ante)
manos33 posts ante [150]
dermoth posts ante [150]
manos33 posts small blind [1,500]
dermoth posts big blind [3,000]
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to dermoth [ 2c, 2d ]
manos33 raises to [6,000]
dermoth calls [3,000]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qc, 2s, 5s ]
dermoth checks
manos33 bets [8,000]
dermoth calls [8,000]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3d ]
dermoth checks
manos33 goes all-in
manos33 bets [76,956.50]
dermoth calls [72,743.50]
dermoth goes all-in
Returning uncalled bet [4,213] to manos33
** Showdown **
manos33 shows [ 3h, 3c ]
dermoth shows [ 2c, 2d ]
** Dealing River ** [ Th ]
** Hand Conclusion **
manos33 wins 173,787 from main pot with three of a kind, Threes
************ Game 307843262 ends ************
I was so incensed, I opened Betfair Poker Buddy to get the hand history. As if the beat wasn’t painful enough.

I was behind to start, of course, and maybe I should have raised it preflop, but in that spot, with my perceived skill edge, I’m keeping the pot small until I can see the flop and hopefully work out where I stand. I still like the smooth call on the flop, and I’m happy to pay off A4 or a flopped set on the turn. I am not happy to pay off a turned set, obv.

Still, it’s not all doom; I picked up $100 for second, which nudged January’s results from “fairly poor” towards “almost acceptable”. Bills paid, and the Betfair results from the end of the month have given my asthmatic bankroll a little more breathing room. And the signs indicate February will be better; I’m crushing these Betfair tourneys at the minute,  and now have enough in my BF account to allow some $11 excursions.

(Aside – I’m a bit weird with my bankroll; I treat money in separate accounts as separate bankrolls, which is really, really stupid, but I can’t seem to kick the habit. This is exacerbated with Betfair, which I view as a betting site, not a poker site, so it’s even harder for me to manage that part of my bankroll sensibly. Still, I’ve quadrupled my Betfair account in the space of four days,, so I’m not complaining too much. But as usual, 95% of my bankroll is lying dormant at other sites (well, Stars is still being used occasionally) while I struggle along with the pittance I have in the site du jour. It’s so incredibly stupid, but will I change? Probably not).

So, February is going to be all about Betfair, it seems. If the $11 games are half as fishy as the $5s, it should be fun…