Poker From The Rail
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Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
The Dark Side of Poker
by Drizztdj
The smells that waft from the kitchen are those of your personal chef who moonlights as Food Network Iron Chef mixing some Denver omelets with a freshly squeezed mimosa. The night’s plans are set in motion as a light six hour session at Aria’s private Ivey’s Poker Room with the namesake himself looking to drop another buy-in in your direction. Then it’s on to bottle service at TAO with February Ms. Cyber Girl from Playboy and of course following will be your posse of those who knew you before you turned that initial fifty dollar deposit at Full Tilt Poker into the untold millions stashed away in several Las Vegas casinos lock boxes and a few bricks at home just in case someone wants to bet a few grand on whether or not you can finish a box of Cheerios in two minutes.
Life is easy.
Until you wake up to your kid screaming from the other side of the room as you open your hung-over eyes to the destruction of that box of wine and an open package of chocolate which is followed by a pool of sick. Knowing the crazy neighbor in the adjacent double wide will come banging on your door soon, you quickly clean up the mess from your daughter getting into the Hershey bars again, calm her down a bit while trying to slide on the red and khaki for your cashier’s job at Target hoping that your wife will wake up soon.
“I was one card away from the chip lead”, “Dude, this set over set KILLED me”, “I just dusted off another buy-in do you have anything stronger?”. These are quotes from the table you have heard from people experiencing a downswing as of late and want to drag you into their black hole of poker despair. A few weeks ago I wrote here about how to handle an upswing in Aftermath of Winning and if you are a decent player you have experienced both sides of variance. The highs where the flush cards always hits in your favor, the drinks all have the right amount of alcohol, and that FTOPS jersey is all but yours after winning a satellite into the tournament. But now that box of Franzia is crushed and so is half of your hard earned bankroll in a whirlwind of bad play and bad beats, how are you going to pick up the pieces and get back to the bottle serviced-ballah lifestyle?
First and foremost, everyone has lost playing poker. Repeat this a thousand times and let it soak in deep under the skin until you can brush off that brutal two-outer as 4% of the time that you would not win. Now, that is not to say you are a LOSER or a losing player, as there are plenty of players who are winning players but even those at the top have had downswings and if they ever shared the dollar amounts involved that they bounced back from, you might consider a new hobby.
As a pretty smart scientist once figured out, what starts in motion tends to stay in motion until it is stopped by another force. Those winning players did not let going busto or having to drop down in limits become that stopping force in their climb to banking a WPT bracelet or even taking down the local 1-2 NLHE game on a regular basis. You shouldn’t either. Remind yourself after a tough session that everyone has lost playing poker before, over and over. Then, do some analysis on the session and your last five sessions. Were you thinking about how the five seat always licked his lips when he was bluffing or was your mind replaying the argument with your wife about hiding the chocolate better from your candy-craving daughter? Were you mindlessly clicking buttons signing up for any and every tournament or carefully selecting tournament that you knew you would finish out and were right for the bankroll and skill level?
Shaving off those things you CAN control while playing poker like attention and comfort level will help cushion the things you CANNOT control like those bad beats. Hitting a downswing in poker is inevitable, how big of a downswing is up to you and whether or not you can pick yourself up to trade in that box of wine for something that would be served by a sommelier at a five diamond restaurant.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
Aftermath of Winning
by Drizztdj
After a five day bender in Vegas, pricey dinners at CraftSteak and Picasso, private suite at Lagasse’s Stadium for NFL Sunday, three different front row seats to Cirque du Soleil shows, and of course lots and lots of live poker, you find yourself beaten and slouched over a Megabucks machine at the Gold Coast mindlessly dropping silvers in while waiting on a hot chocolate and flight home. Click, click, click, it seems ages since the fluffy haired waitress asked if you wanted whipped cream on top and answered with a nod. Click, click, click, trying to stay conscious before returning to real life and a 50 hour work week with kid’s hockey practices awaiting your arrival.
All of the sudden bells are going off and you stand up to shout “I DIDN’T DO IT!!”. But a Pai Gow Poker dealer in between shifts kindly corrects you and starts giving congratulations on becoming a millionaire as your gaze comes across the three eagle symbols and a flashing board showing your $15,043,891.71 haul. After paying a hundred bucks for the hot chocolate, smiling wide for the camera with the huge cardboard check, and getting a few salacious offers you hop on the plane back to the frozen Midwest and think…
Now what?
This is an extreme example of sudden success, but the premise is the same as someone grinding MTTs here at Full Tilt Poker for years and making a decent ROI, enough to sustain their way of life as an online poker pro or a recreational player making enough to pay for a trip to somewhere warm during the cold months. The player normally play the $5 – $10 buy in tourney, satellites into the Sunday $750,000 guarantee or the FTOPS Main Event to find a fat six figure score. Much like the hero of the hilarious skit “The Micros”, Chase Berger, who pushed his micro stakes bankroll (this is not a post about smart bankroll management, we’ll save that for our resident pros) in to take down the fictional “The Mega” tournament and is now sitting on seven figures.
Now what?
Recently I have found a moderate amount of personal success at the tables for the past year culminating in my largest online score (note: I’m not a baller, but this was over a mortgage payment from the nightly Rush Poker $12.5K guarantee) last week and looking at a bankroll five times its previous size.
Now what?
There’s the itch to “move up” and start playing larger buy-in tournaments and perhaps raise the blinds on the PLO cash games that I normally infest with my horrible play. That’s the easy move, most likely resulting in a downward spiral of donked off buy-ins in tournaments and cash games making hero calls now that the money “doesn’t matter”. Of course it matters, and people with sudden success like Chase Berger or the dude who hit the slot jackpot have serious choices to make, just like someone who is struggling at the tables. Having an influx of cash should have the player looking at their recent results over the past months, or even a year to see if moving up is warranted. Think the slot jackpot winner should sit down with Ivey and Dwan at a $200/$400 PLO heads-up table just because he could? Of course not, so why would you, dear readers, think about playing higher just because the money is in that cashier’s window? Ok, maybe you do but let’s think about it first before the railbirds laugh you off the high stakes tables.
After checking out my spreadsheets on recent play that I was only ITM in 12% of my NLHE tourneys over the last third of a year and 16% ITM overall. Does this warrant moving my average buy in up from $5-$10 to the $24 token guarantees? Not likely. Having continued success and consistent success would point toward mastery of a certain dollar level and moving up to stave off becoming too comfortable.
Personally, I am not there, but on the flip side with a renewed bankroll taking shots is almost a certainty. Yes, I will be returning to the lower buy-in tournament on a nightly basis, but now with a little extra in the bank, why not take a shot at a few $24-$50 MTTs? Taking extra notes during the Fifty-Fifty or maybe even the Sunday Brawl once a week and evaluate your play afterwards from beginning, middle, and end of the tourney and see if you were outmatched or got unlucky.
More responsibility after taking down a big score than players care to factor in, don’t be that player who tanks it by playing games that are not profitable for your skill set. Find the medium between taking risks and good bankroll management. And lastly, be sure to spend a little on yourself, you deserve it, maybe not a new Bentley but ordering the Cinnamon Monkey Bread after dinner at CraftSteak would add some sweetness to your recent success.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
I generally do not make specific requests for blogger guest posts. Most of these guys have been writing for far longer than my amateurish scraps, it wouldn’t seem very fitting to use too much direction. Pick a topic and riff away. That changed a little when I received another late night Instant Message from Drizztdj with a standard message, “come play some NL08!”. These messages generally arrive late night/early morning on the weekends after the man has consumed at least a handle of his most favored Captain Morgan and I finally took him up on the offer.
What I found was by far the craziest push monkey game I have ever seen. 100 BB shove preflop was standard, post flop play was non-existent, minor tribute was paid to the gods of hand selection. It is truly and honestly the purest form of four card bingo on the planet and Drizz loves it almost as much as his two offspring (or his spiced rum). It was a shocking display of bankroll mismanagement but players would shove/bust/reload almost non-stop and just keep trying for the double up.
I asked Drizz to please please write up a guest post to explain the who, what, and gods help me WHY anyone sane would actually put any part of the roll in this game. Here’s what he sent me. Enjoy.
No Limit Omaha/8, Gamble it Up!
by Drizztdj
Think about the last time you adventured out to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or your closest Indian reservation casino. You, the poker enthusiast, walked calmly past the smoke-filled rows of slot machines and video poker boxes cloistered as over grown video games. Laughing about how people/gamblers would throw money towards a casino game with such lousy odds on winning while confidently walking towards the back poker room. Out of the corner of your eye you see games like Pai Gow, Crazy 4-Card Poker, WAR!, and Ultimate Texas Hold Em’ but that wad of bennies in your pocket isn’t going to be used to chase the dragon and 7-card straight flush bonus on the Pai Gow poker table. No, you’re the man/woman with a plan of timely check-raises and positional continuation bets. You’ve read the forums; you stop by here to check out our red letter pros dropping their knowledge to improve your chances against Vern, the rock in the seven seat who gets so excited three-betting kings pre-flop that he nearly knocks over his wife’s packed thermos of Sanka when he has a hand.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
It’s usually fuel to fire up a fine argument amongst poker players, especially those plied with large amounts of alcohol and a spur under their saddle. What’s the best, poker tournaments or cash games?
It generally goes a little like this: Tournaments are the best format, cash games players rule. Tournaments are for lucksack push monkeys, cash games are for boring rock-garden nut-peddlers. As long as poker has been around there has been an argument for both sides of the equation. Nothing is ever solved but in the end it’s just a matter of preference and comfort zone.
You can count me in with the nut-peddling grinder crew as I generally view the tournament players as a bunch of gamblers looking to get all their chips in the middle on the come. It’s also true I’m so tight that I make Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler look like the world’s biggest LAGtard. Different strokes for different folks. Tournament players find my process of grinding out my daily nut in number of big-bets won the dullest most unimaginative form of the game.
This week’s guest blogger comes along and tells both sides it’s our best interest to cross the line, get our money in the game when the price is right and expand horizons. I’ll let him explain.
Ladies and gentlemen, your guest blogger Drizztdj.
Tournament or Cash Player?
by Drizztdj
Unless you have been living under cryogenic freeze for the past six months, or last decade for that matter, you dear readers are aware of the poker exploits of one Phil Ivey. He flies, he wins, he grinds, he smiles on a rare occasion when certain loggers from Maryland are not outdrawing him at the World Series of Poker Main Event final table (that apple must have tasted bitter after the queen flopped).
He’s a tournament player obviously, right? Nearly won WSOP bracelet number eight by becoming one of this year’s “November Nine”, a WPT bracelet, $12.2 million in tournament winnings, the man excels at closing out the tournament once given the chip ammo piled up from the countless check-raises and reading the souls of those who dared to pony up the entry fee to sit at his table. No emotion unchecked, staying just ahead of the blinds to cash isn’t an option as its first place or no place, Phil Ivey is definitely a tournament player.
But, wait. There’s a little side cash game going on at the Bellagio with millions of dollars on the felt. When the lack of tournament chips appear in front him, the high roller can be seen behind the glass doors of Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio playing for stakes that normal nine-to-five cube monkeys like myself only see while hitting up the play chip games. Only those aren’t play chips they’re $10,000 and $25,000 real currency chips being splashed across the felt on an up-and-down straight draw, or trying to squeeze out a wheel in deuce-to-seven triple draw. Likewise, if you’re a closet online nosebleed railbird like me, you’ll see Mr. Ivey’s avatar taking on all comers at Ivey League, Ivey Showdown, Ivey Thunderdome, and Ivey’s Playground tables, playing with $1,000 /$2,000 blinds all levels limit or no limit and in all games.
So, he’s a cash game savant right?
Wrong.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
The Battle of the Blogger Tournaments 4 started up this weekend with a great showing. Bloggers/readers and a few big name online pros made their appearance in the first few events. These are not your average smaller buyin events, the play is a little tougher than you would expect at these levels. Not unexpected with thousands of dollars in added prizes on the line and 7 WSoP seats.
You will also find some very interesting banter in the chat as a lot of players have seen each other over the course of play and sometimes it gets a little heated. When that happens you need to know how to use it to your benefit.
Funnyman/blogger Drizztdj brings us a primer on that very subject. Stop back later in the week for a roundup of the week’s action as well as Michael Craig responding to the Julius_Goatttt Challenge.
Chatting For Profit
by Drizztdj
You’re a busy person.
Work, kids, school, A-Rod Fan Club President, professional poker player, needs to get a haircut. In the mist of getting twenty-five things done at once, you find the time to sit down at your favorite laptop , PC, or MAC and decide to fire up a few tournament tables here at Full Tilt. With that extra block of time you choose a couple of MTTs with fat guarantees and settle into your chair with a favorite beverage or eight sitting to your right.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat, Michael Craig
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