Poker From The Rail
a Poker Blog brought to you by Full Tilt Poker
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
For the last few years, the poker world knew of a mystery man online who could come up with any random nugget of poker knowledge in seconds. “Kevmath” made a name for himself as an uber-mod on the 2+2 poker forum and then took his skills to the land of Twitter. His ability to find the deepest bits of information without hesitation had many joking the man was a ‘bot or perhaps a crew of cyber-punks grouped together under one name existing on nothing but Red Bull and spreadsheets. It turns out “Kevmath” is actually just one person, a fine young man based in Syracuse, and not some cyborg with plans to take over the poker world one micro-table at a time.
Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers was finally enticed to pull aside the curtain by several interesting offers including a coveted invite from tournament director Matt Savage to the 2011 World Poker Tour Invitational at the Commerce Casino. His public debut occurred in a few online interviews before his first live tournament appearance covering the 2010 November Nine. He has since traveled to tournaments in the Bahamas and Atlantic City with an eye towards his first summer in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker.
I’ve had the pleasure of spending some time with the man. When it was suggested “Kevmath” start blogging, I offered up this space for his thoughts. After a few days to wrap his mind around the experience, he is ready to bring us his first guest post. I look forward to bringing you regular posts from Kevin and hope you enjoy them
My 2011 World Poker Tour Invitational Experience
by Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers
My name is Kevin Mathers, but most people in the poker community know me as “Kevmath” on 2+2 and Twitter, where I’ve managed to make a name for myself in the poker world. A few months ago Matt Savage invited me to take part in the WPT Invitational at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. I’m sure some are wondering: “Who are you?” I’ll get to that in a later blog (maybe).
My trip to LA begins with having to wake up Thursday 4:00am to catch a plane from Syracuse to JFK, then non-stop from JFK to LAX. After finally landing, with much thanks to Matt Savage and the Commerce Casino, I’m riding in style in their town car as they take me to my home for the next four days. I head to the front desk to check-in to my room and decide to take take a look around the Commerce. It’s my first visit to the Commerce, quite the experience to see so many table games in one place without a slot machine in sight. I keep running into rooms filled with action, but nothing that looks like the LA Poker Classic. Eventually I figure out that all the tournament action is in the ballroom upstairs so I make my way there after I check in and throw my bags into my room to check out what’s going on.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Kevmath, WPT
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
By “Tuscaloosa” Johnny Kampis
Since we are a few weeks into the new year, I hope you haven’t broken any New Year’s resolutions you made among the revelry of welcoming in 2011. Surveys have found that a high percentage of people who make such resolutions tend to break them. A major reason why? Those goals are unreasonable. It’s one thing to say you’re going to lose 20 pounds in a given year, and one major undertaking to actually do it.
The same is true of most poker goals. You have a chance to maintain goals if you set the bar at a reasonable level. Let’s take a look at some goals you should not set, as well as good goals and how to reach them.
Set goals for level of play, not winning “X” amount of dollars.
For years I maintained a streak of winning at least $10,000 in a calendar year—a streak that ended in 2010. The reasons are myriad, the largest of which was a reduction in playing time from having a newborn son. Every year my goal for the next year as it pertained to poker was to simply win my five figures for the year, but it’s a goal I could not reasonably expect to keep up. Unless you are playing in games with exceptionally low variance—such as against a weak field day in and day out—it’s hard to maintain a consistent win rate over 12 months.
A graph of some of the top tournament players (who experience high variance) might show a win greater than $1 million one year and a loss of the same amount the next. I recall a post on 2+2 in early 2010 from a guy whose goal was to win $100,000 that year playing low stakes online poker. After he won only a few hundred dollars in January he was never heard from again. Set a standard of play and play to it. If you win your $10,000 or more in a given year all the better.
Pledge to experiment in other games
Sitting at a desk and typing on a computer all day can be quite tedious. Just ask yours truly. So can playing the same $1/$2 No-Limit Hold’em game online for hours on end. If you have yet to branch out beyond NLHE cash games, pledge to try something new this year. I always enjoyed heads-up sit-n-go’s, and tried the ultra turbo variety on Full Tilt Poker last year when they began offering them. I’ve found these quick SNGs both fun and profitable over the long term.
FTP offers no shortage of options if you want to experiment with new games. In addition to the variety of games, from staples like Pot-Limit Omaha to new draw games such as Badugi and Deuce-to-Seven, you can try several different formats, such as capped pot games or steps. Try something new and you may see your profits increase.
Work toward the WSOP or online equivalents like FTOPS
If you are an online regular but haven’t played live poker beyond the casinos in your state, set a goal of traveling to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker. No, I am not saying you should gather together $10,000 to play in the main event. That would be a prime example of an unreasonable goal. Set aside what you can to pay for airfare, hotel rooms and in-city transportation needs, and then use what’s left over to play some poker in Vegas. Perhaps you will have enough to try your hand at one of the smaller WSOP events. Maybe you can only play small cash games or try a tournament at The Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. Whatever your bankroll, just head to Sin City, see what all the WSOP fuss is about and have some fun.
If you can’t afford the plane tickets, visit a major tournament stop near you to try your game against good live competition. If you are the kind of player who just can’t stand live poker due to the slowness of the game, set a goal of playing some FTOPS events this year. Set aside some of your bankroll to play satellites or buy in directly. Take your shot at a major haul by winning one of these major online tournaments.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Tuscaloosa Johnny
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
This week was a super-exciting one in the world of poker, but never mind all that. Exciting is for other people, not for the likes of me. Here’s my nonsense:
5. Gold Coast Closes. Yes, sadly but truly, the Coast has announced that their poker room is officially “closed”, which means “replaced by a few banks of slot machines.” With poker rooms now restricted to only the Rio, the Orleans, the Venetian, Caesar’s Palace, Bill’s, The Excalibur, New York, New York, The Bellagio, The Stratosphere, The Imperial Palace, Circus Circus, Harrah’s, The MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, The Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Aria, The Mirage, Bally’s, Monte Carlo, O’Shea’s, The Sahara, Treasure Island, Flamingo, The Encore and the Wynn, could this be a sign that the “poker boom” is finally over?
4. Bluff Magazine Announces Their Power 20 – The powerful poker magazine has given a powerful list of powerful poker people, which means the people who hold the most influence in the poker world, as it turns out. I was disappointed to discover that this was not a ranking based on odor, but the newsstand guy wouldn’t let me return it. You’ve been warned.
3. Carlos Mortensen Wins A Major Prize – I think we all know that el Matador is one of the most skilled poker players in the history of cards. The former WSOP champ was chasing his fourth WPT championship, the guy was stacked over five million, giving him the chip lead. But I don’t want to talk about that; I want to talk about how he got that stack. Mortensen got all in with QQ vs. KK vs. AA and turned a flush to crack them both. For that reason, we’re going to award him with the first monthly Darvin Award. Named for 2009 November Niner Darvin Moon, this prestigious prize awarded to the player who gets in way behind but gets rewarded anyway. Congratulations, Carlos, and best of luck!
2. Chris Christie Hates New Jersey, Poker, You – So New Jersey tried to officially legalize intrastate online poker for their state, and governor Chris Christie vetoed it. Because he believes in small government, one imagines. Anyway, New Jersey citizens can sleep well tonight, knowing that their wives and kids and grandmothers won’t get violently and brutally two-outed in their beds tonight.
1. Erik Seidel Wins Everything – Erik Seidel has won around four million dollars. Not in his career, no; just in the first two months (and 6 days) of 2011. Your body is 90% water. Erik Seidel’s is 90% run-good. He has Adonis card cappers. He has tiger blood running through unicorn veins. He intimidated Donald Trump. You can’t hope to stop him, you can only hope to contain him, except that you can’t hope to contain him. There are not four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there are five, and all of them are Erik Seidel.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Carlos Mortensen, Erik Seidel, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
Dear NBC suits,
You are sitting on a gold mine and don’t even know it. You need to stop trying to book interviews with Charlie Sheen. Instead, shake things up with the National Heads-Up Poker Championship (HUC) by adding more celebrities to the field, but not just any celebrities, NBC-centric celebrities.
Giddy Up,
Pauly
P.S. Bring back Seinfeld and I’ll stop writing you these nagging letters.
TV executives are the alchemists of Hollywood – half-sorcerer and half-used car salesman. They’re the power brokers who manipulate how the masses view the world, by controlling the content that they air. Case in point is the misleading nature of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship (HUC). The tournament is a “made for TV” event with “invited” participants. Ergo, the HUC is not a true world championship because the top 64 heads-up players in the world were not represented in the field.
So why continue the ruse and try to market it as a sporting event? If NBC suits tweaked the format of the HUC, they could create one of the most popular series on network television by expanding the field to include 16 NBC stars; 8 from current shows and 8 from former hit shows.
Let’s face it, the current HUC format exists to generate revenue from the network and wasn’t created to promote poker. The tournament is deceptive because the eventual outcome fails to determine the best heads-up poker player in the world. If crowning the best heads-up poker player in the world became the prime directive of the HUC, then the selection process would be much more stringent. Alas, from a production standpoint, the top 64 players in the world are not necessarily good for televised entertainment. That’s why NBC suits compromised by creating a TV-friendly formula that’s competitive, watchable, and most importantly – profitable.
Every year at this time, a dozen or so pros are snubbed by execs who determine the invitations using Hollywood standards and not by rankings on the Hendon Mob or PocketFives. As a result, pros get pissed at the selection process (and rightfully so). Poker forums also blow up, with the community posting long-winded diatribes about the injustices committed by NBC execs who omitted (INSERT RANDOM IGNORED PRO HERE). The poker media fans the flames when they flood the intertubes with the litany of players who didn’t get a nod.
Unfortunately, one of the causalities of a “made for TV” event is that some pros are going to miss the cut in one way or another. You really can’t fault the NBC executives because after all, their job is to devise a profitable formula that generates palatable ratings. That’s why they invited a mixture of celebrities (Gabe Kaplan, Jen Tilly, Don Cheadle, Emmitt Smith, and Jason Alexander) established brand names (Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth), big dogs (Phil Ivey and Erik Seidel), and a few fresh faces (Dan “jungleman12” Cates and Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese). Although dominated by North Americans, the suits did a decent job by adding an international flair to this year’s event with players from Denmark (Gus Hansen and Peter Eastgate), Norway (Annette Obrestad), the UK (Liv Boeree and Sam Trickett), Finland (Patrik Antonius), France (Bertrand Grospellier), Australia (Joe Hachem), and Russia (Eugene Katchalov via Brooklyn).
If the NBC suits want to double or triple their ratings, they should embrace the celebrity element in a more grandiose way. Let’s face it – the best poker players in the world are not a big enough draw in our celebrity-obsessed culture. The HUC is widely popular among males aged 18-88, but year after year, the network fails to convert female viewers. The online poker industry could reap the benefits of the HUC adding more celebrities to the field, because the show would appeal to the female demographic, particularly women aged 18-34 with disposable income, many of whom might open up an online poker account because they saw George Clooney or Denzel Washington holding their own against the biggest sharks in Las Vegas.
Suits love bottom lines. The sheeple love celebrities. Simply put: More celebrities equals more viewers and more viewers translate into increased ad revenue. Promoting poker is just an afterthought for TV executives, which is why they should consider altering the selection process. With an added celebrity-element, the suits can finally add the juiced-up HUC to the primetime line up.
Here’s my official proposal to NBC executives: Divide the field of 64 into 48 pros (continuing the tradition of handing out a couple of seats to amateur/pro qualifiers at Caesar’s Palace) and 16 NBC-centric celebrities. The expanded celebrity version of the HUC will include current and former NBC stars – a perfect way to cross-promote their current stars (from shows like Chuck and Community) while exploiting the legacies from the 1980s (Don Johnson from Miami Vice and Mr. T from The A-Team).
Think about the star potential that could occupy those eight seats. NBC has quite an impressive list of former luminaries – Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld), Jennifer Aniston (Friends), George Clooney (ER), Denzel Washington (St. Elsewhere), Martin Sheen (The West Wing), Bill Cosby (The Cosby Show), David Hasslehoff (Knight Rider) – all bona fide A-list celebrities who would guarantee more (female) viewers.
NBC could even create a separate reality show which follows a select group of over-the-hill actors from hit shows in the 1970s and 1980s – all of whom were once considered the brightest stars in Hollywood, but have since faded out of spotlight. America loves comeback stories, so here’s a chance for Greg Evigan (B.J. and the Bear) and John Larroquette (Night Court) to get some face time as they diligently improve their poker game – either by hiring actual pros like Jesus Ferguson to coach them, or spending late nights playing online poker, or flinging around chips in home games with other C-list celebrities.
The preliminary episodes of the HUC would include celebrity qualifiers featuring a different show’s actors playing each other heads-up. Once you got down to 8 current NBC celebrities, then they advanced to the final field of 64. Actors and actresses from a single show would be pitted against each other to determine which one of them would advance for a shot at the final 64. For example, four different members of the cast of 30 Rock (Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Alec Baldwin, and Jane Krakowski) would square off against each other while NBC cameras capture all of their hijinks. The eventual winner would move onto to the next round and engage the winner of The Office. Since that show has a bigger cast, maybe The Office would have an 8-player qualifier to determine their representative.
In the case of Law & Order, a long-running show with so many friggin’ spinoffs and a massive roster of former thespians, they’d field their own bracket of 64 players made up of current and former cast members. I would love to see Ice-T talking smack against Sam Waterston after three-betting with air.
One of my favorite episodes would include qualifiers from Saturday Night Live. Created in 1975, SNL alums are among some of the more successful people in show business. Those hysterical matches could be an entire season itself made up of diverse cast members from the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 00s: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Senator Al Franken, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Dennis Miller, Molly Shannon, and Will Ferrell.
The celebrity spots are also not limited to actors/actresses. Television news anchors (Tom Brokaw) and sportscasters (Marv Albert and Bob Costas) are also welcomed, not to mention Brian Hansen from To Catch a Predator. He’s someone that I hope never ambushes you in a strange kitchen.
With poker’s popularity slowly declining on television and everyone on a nostalgia kick these days, perhaps NBC executives will embrace washed-up celebrities in the twilight of their careers. If they dole out eight seats to former stars, there’s opportunity to exploit hundreds of bloated, drug-addled, botox-injected actors and actresses, all of whom are vying for spots in hopes to trigger a comeback. Those potential train-wreck episodes would be among my favorite guilty pleasures to watch – even better than Animal Hoarders.
The upside of an expanded celebrity format for the HUC is the ability to watch your favorite characters reunite during heads-up matches against fellow cast members from Cheers, L.A. Law, ER, and Seinfeld.
Alas, the only downside is that any former NBC employee would be eligible to play, which means that seats could go to Joey Lawrence (who has two shots to play with former roles on both Blossom and Gimmie a Break), Screech from Saved by the Bell, or the kid who played Cockroach on The Cosby Show. Then again, watching Screech pull off a triple barrel bluff against Phil Ivey would become one of the most epic moments in televised poker history, ranking up there with Moneymaker’s bluff against Sam Farha in the 2003 Main Event.
Think about. NBC is sitting on a gold mine. Screech and Ivey? They have the potential to become TV’s newest odd couple.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Dr. Pauly, Guest Posts, National Heads-Up Poker Championship
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
by Jason “Spaceman” Kirk
These days, when it comes to poker, I’m more of a hobbyist than anything else. The times when I would play thousands of hands a day and try to build a significant bankroll, hoping to move up in stakes or play the WSOP, have faded away in the rear-view. Though I still take my game seriously, I play for entertainment value instead of “Vegas and the f***in’ Mirage.” I want poker to fit into the rest of my life instead of taking up a lot of time.
For obvious reasons, Rush Poker has been great for me. Lately the new Multi-Entry Rush On Demand tournaments have been occupying my time at the tables. These tournaments, which you can find listed directly under the 90-player sit-n-gos in the Full Tilt tournament lobby, seem to have been made with me in mind. Even if there are nearly 500 players in the field, the total running time from start to finish rarely exceeds two hours, and they tend to fill up and run every 5-10 minutes since only 40 players need to sign up to start the tournament, meaning there’s always another tourney to play if I use my four entries or bust out after late registration.
Aside from the speed and availability, one of my favorite things about these tournaments is the number of ways I can go about playing them. First there’s the standard question of what kind of playing style I want to adopt. If I feel like playing tight-is-right poker, the quick-fold button means I can see hundreds of hands per hour, making the three-minute levels more like a casino tournament than your standard online turbo tournament. If I want to see lots of cheap flops and take pots away from people, the kinds of hands I’m playing benefit from being disguised by the fact that I’m at a new table for each deal. And if I just want to play ultra-aggressive, I’m going to have a lot of chances to get my chips in the middle.
Then there’s the fact that I can choose how many tables to play at once. I can play four tables at once if I like, giving me as much action as I can handle, and maneuvering more than one of my entries to the final table means I’ll have all the chips from each of them when I get there. And if I go card-dead on a table or two, I can easily fold all the garbage cards I’m being dealt while playing my better hands on one of the others. Or I can enter twice, slowing the pace of decision-making a little bit. If I bust out early on those two entries, I have the added bonus of checking out the prize pool info to see if it’s worth investing two more entries in this tournament or waiting a minute or two to buy in twice for another tournament that might draw more players.
Of course, I can always fire one bullet at a time. Granted, I don’t do this often, but the option of playing a single entry is there. In many ways that’s pretty similar to playing a regular freezeout, but with competition that plays more like they’re in a rebuy tournament. I don’t have the chance of bringing quite as many chips to a final table as if I were playing more entries, but I’ll have a much bigger ROI when I go deep than if I busted on two or three other entries.
These Multi-Entry Rush On Demand tournaments are easy on your bankroll and your schedule, and it’s not uncommon for first place in the $1+$.10 tournaments to reach as much as $150 by the time late registration closes, giving you plenty of bang for your buck. If you’re a poker hobbyist with a small bankroll, give these tournaments a shot and see what you think.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Jason "Spaceman" Kirk, Multi-entry, On Demand, Rush Poker
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
by Julius_Goat
Yes, another week, another five serious poker items in this week’s news getting torn into silly little ribbons by the logic-shredder that is my brain. Anybody seeking a valid news source from my articles will be prosecuted. Anybody quoting them will be shot. Anybody trusting them is welcome to play me heads up.
5. Racener vs. Mizzi - So there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle starting over on the 2+2 forums regarding some alleged malfeasance. November Niner John Racener has accused BLUFF Magazine player of the year Sorel Mizzi of dealing off the bottom of the deck in Chinese poker. Later, Racener hit the boards to say that his accusation stands, but that he’s dealing with it and considers the matter closed. Now, obviously Racener is a Full Tilt pro, so you maybe be surprised to see this covered right here. Most online sites, they’d clamp down on this sort of thing, asking that there be no commentary made on their official blogs. But Tilt is a classy site, and forthright, and honest, and faces controversy head on, so I’m just going to come out and say the honest truth: I have no idea how to play Chinese poker.
4. WPT Celebrity Invitational 2011 – Though luminaries such as Lou “Diamond” Phillips, Don “Oscar Nominated” Cheadle, and the Fat “Rudy” Hobbit were in attendance, the star-studded final table included Dinara Khaziyeva, Damon Schramm, George Rechnitzer, Dan Heimiller, Davidi Kitai, and Almira Skripchenko. I don’t have a joke here.
3. Vinnie Vinh Wins the LAPC Event #29 – OK, this isn’t huge news except to say that we’re all very happy that Vinnie is still alive and able to finish tournaments without vanishing. One more disappearing act and I would figure him for Keyser Soze.
2. Professional Poker League Announces Its Schedule – This Jeffrey Pollack/Annie Duke helmed attempt to wrest poker from the proletariat “anybody can win!” pit into a more elite “no, not you, Darvin” pros-only PGA model, have announced their first four events. Looks like each event will be in three parts: (1) A $1500 buy-in Pro Am, where the hoi poloi can try to satellite in and rub shoulders with the pros; (2) A special tournament with all money going to Charity, whoever that is; (3) the Main Event, where the pros will compete in a rake-free $20K buyin sort of poker-stravaganza-gasm. Who will win? (Hint: Not you.)
1. FTOPS Main Event Sets A Record – With 14,000+ runners able to buy in 6 times each, the prize pool ballooned to brobdingnagian proportions. We’re talking over eight and a half million in the prize pool of an online poker tournament (or to put it in perspective, nearly 50% of Tom Dwan’s prop betting budget for the first quarter of 2011). By the time it was finished, Blair Hinkle was richer by more than a million dollars, and he didn’t even have to deal with Jeff Probst and lie to fifteen strangers to do it. Holy crap on a stick, multi-entry, thought by some to be the newest fad, just may have turned into the wave of the future. Let’s face it folks, we are living in a multi-tabling world and poker is a multi-tabling girl. The only downside is that if anybody ever multi-accounts a multi-entry, nobody will ever be able to explain the scandal to non-poker people.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
by Julius_Goat
Walt Disney always famously introduced us to the idea, “It’s a Small World After All”, but Walt never had to consider what his opponent’s four-bet range was on an uncoordinated flop, and something like Rush PLO would have melted his face off faster than the lost ark. Let’s face it, the small world is passé: It’s a big world of poker out there.
So what I want to do is this: Each week, I’d like to ruminate (which is legal in my state) on the world of poker, in my utter imitable style, by which I mean I’d like to take real poker things and occasionally make stuff up about them, for the purposes of laughs and mutual enjoyment. Hopefully, we’ll all learn something, or at least I’ll get paid*.
So if you don’t know what happened last week, and (more importantly) you still don’t want to know when you’re done, check out my dumb list.
5. Eastgate Returns. The entire world was stunned when 2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate was walking away from the poker world. Well, OK, not the WHOLE world, but the 2+2 forums started several separate threads, which turned into memes, which turned, like 96% of 2+2 threads, into Photoshopped collages of cookies that look like TJ Cloutier. Where was I? Oh yeah, his retirement ended last week. My guess is that he got drunk and accidentally misclick-blocked himself from his online accounts and was embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe he just remembered that he is really good at poker.
4. High Stakes Poker Shakeup. Word came down that the well-liked host of HSP has been shown the door in favor of professional funnyman and amateur poker player Norm MacDonald, who will be providing commentary over the next season’s action. I have no explanation for this, but my suggestions inlude:
• HSP producers are looking for somebody who will say “crack whore” at least five times an hour (Kaplan was stuck at a woeful 1.2 CWpH).
• This is all an elaborate set-up for an inevitably underwhelming “Welcome Back Kotter” campaign.
• AJ Benza’s elaborate revenge scheme, step 14 of 86.
3. FTOPS Runs Multi-Entry. They say you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. The fact is, you can make an omelet without breaking an egg. You just wouldn’t want to eat it. They also say that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. They don’t tell you what to do if you don’t like lemonade, but forget all that – that’s good advice. Trust Full Tilt to make some hella-lemonade out of some of the sourest lemons of all time. By “lemons”, I mean the multi-accounting scandals that rocked the online world in late 2006, and by ‘lemonade’, I mean the way that Full Tilt was able to alchemize that scandal into a legitimate tournament option. Multi-entry tournament play lets you play up to four different entries at a time, which guarantees that you will win the tournament.** This is not just a flash-in-the-pan, either; Full Tilt has given Multi the main stage on its premier tournament series. The FTOPS Main Event (among others), running this Sunday, is a Multi.
I am just looking forward to the first Multi-Entry Rush Matrix Super Turbo Rebuy tournament series. The way that tournament works is that everybody buys in, and the last person still playing with an unexploded head wins.
2. November 9 Foxwoods Reunion. That’s right, the 2010 November Nine got back together for a $15K freeroll. Strangely, there were 30 runners, and I just didn’t think those guys had gained that much weight. Perhaps it was a multi-entry tournament, or perhaps there is some other perfectly reasonable explanation; I’d find out, but frankly that would require research and this platter of natchos grande are not going to eat themselves.
Anyway, this was a collection of 9 of the most successful tournament players of all time, facing down for a 2nd chance to prove their dominance of the entire poker world. In the end, an amateur named Ben Hopkins, who picked up the top purse, $5K and Lon McEarchern’s upper dentures, beat them all. This means a lot of things, but the most important one is this: If you can find him and best him in single combat, you will become the new Highlander.
1. 70 Miles To Glory. We all know the story. Two young online poker phenoms caught in a prop-bet psychodrama. Ashton Griffin set up a prop that he could run 70 miles in 24 hours at 3:1 and Hasseb Quereshi took him up on it to the tune of $300K, claiming not to realize until the game was already afoot what the bet’s dangerous essential character truly was: that being, a bet on whether or not Griffin’s body would fail. Some have praised the bet as the apotheosis of the “baller” lifestyle of young poker pros, others have blasted all parties as irresponsible and cold-blooded. Rather than weigh in on either side, I’d rather just point out that (1) we are now using the terms “online poker player” and “physical exertion” in the same sentence, which has to be considered progress, and (2) much like Harry Potter helping middle school children in the Aughts, I’m in favor of anything that gets poker players to read. At least without typing “TLDR, LOL.”
*In the interest of full disclosure: I get 50 chicken nuggets for this, still warm.
** This may not be true.
Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Julius_Goat
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
WSOP Schedule Likes & Gripes
By “Tuscaloosa” Johnny Kampis
Everyone was waiting on the edge of their computer chairs for Harrah’s to release the 2011 World Series of Poker schedule, which they finally did January 24th. Not much has changed, which depending on your point of view could be a good or bad thing. Since the “Spaceman” has already filled you in on many of the details let me share my likes and gripes about the plans for the Rio this summer.
I’d like to see them move events around on the schedule more. I can cite the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Split tournament as a prime, and personal, example. This event is always held on the first week of play at the WSOP. It’s one I would have loved to have played in, especially with some Battle of the Bloggers freeroll money I’ve been fortunate enough to win in the past, but due to its presence early on the schedule I’ve never been able to enter. Like most regular folks, I am unable to attend the entire WSOP—even in the pre-baby days around the Kampis household the most time I spent in Las Vegas in the summer was five weeks. Since my focus has been on being there for the Main Event, I have never attended the first week of the WSOP.
The Harrah’s brass should rotate events around the schedule so that those players who only come to town toward the end of the Series can occasionally play the $1,500 O8 tournament, or the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event, to cite another example.
A lower buy-in heads-up tournament would be great, but I can understand why they choose not to offer such an event with a buy-in the $1,000 to $2,000 range. Can you imagine how many tables they would need for a low buy-in HU field? Last year’s HU tournament had a buy-in of $10,000 while that has increased to $25,000 this year. We mortals can merely dream.
Tournament organizers were definitely smart to hold more $1,000 NLHE events on the weekends. Each of five weekends on the schedule features one of these tournaments, which draws crowds of thousands of “weekend warriors” who aren’t quite willing to pony up $1,500 or more for other bracelet events. I sometimes wonder how many people they might draw if they dropped one of the buy-ins for an open bracelet event to $500, like the Casino Employees NLHE tournament. I don’t think they could fit all the players for that theoretical event. Of course, I think the four figure buy-in will never drop to three digits for a bracelet event, either, lest it “cheapen” the winner’s hardware. I have a few friends who have never played a WSOP bracelet event who plan to try their luck in one of the $1Ks this year. Were the buy in $1,500 I doubt they would enter.
While we are on the subject of low rolling, another wise decision is the continued presence of the daily afternoon deep stack tournaments. Harrah’s plans a daily $235 tournament at 2 p.m., a $185 one at 6 p.m. and a $135 event at 10 p.m., all offering more play than the normal cheap WSOP tournaments. They started these last year to keep more of the crowds at the Rio from wandering over to The Venetian for its Deep Stack Extravaganza. Smart move, but I heard that maybe the play was a little too good in these WSOP deep stacks, as it took until the wee hours of the morning to play down to the final table in the afternoon tournaments. Although I doubt they will, organizers should scale back the structure a bit so players aren’t playing until day break.
The rake continues to be ridiculous, but what are you going to do? As long as people keep paying it and continue to show up in droves, the rake will only go up or remain the same. It will never go down. Harrah’s takes 10 percent of the prize pool out of bracelet events up to a buy-in of $1,500. They collect 9 percent of $3,000 events. They even take 4 percent out of the $50,000 Players Championship. That’s a whopping $2,000 (!) per entry. Although it doesn’t expressly list this on the schedule (another gripe of mine about many tournament listings—but that’s another subject for another day) I can assume the afternoon deep stack is $200 + $35. That’s a nifty 15 percent per entry. The rake in tournament poker continues to be harder and harder to beat.
Tags: 2011 World Series of Poker, AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Tuscaloosa Johnny, WSOP
Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
2011 WSOP Schedule and the $25,000 Heads Up Event
by Jeremiah Smith
In all honesty, I’ve never given the overall WSOP schedule much thought. It’s like a pileup on the interstate—you can tell where it starts and have a rough idea of where it ends but everything in between smashes together into an unrecognizable pile of metal and detached limbs.
A number of pros print out the schedule then start going over it with highlighters. Orange means “a must play”. Yellow stands for “has potential”. And green translates to “I have no idea how to play 2-7 single draw but it’s only fifteen hundred bucks!” The realists don’t bother with printouts and felt tip pens. They know that every plan falls apart once you enter Wes Craven’s Spanish Disneyland* and get stuck fifty g’s in the first week.
Yeah, a couple hundred pros will be stuck $50,000 before most of the WSOP crowd rolls into town. Within the first seven days there are two $10ks and one $5k. The first open event on the schedule carries a Showcase Showdown sticker price of $25,000.
Unfortunately, the WSOP officials are eschewing tradition by monkeying with this big-ticket event every year. In 2009, they introduced a $40,000 event since it was the 40th anniversary of the WSOP. Last year they dropped the buy-in to $25k and made it six-handed. The format has changed for a third time in three years. Now it’s a heads-up tournament with the field capped at 256 players.
I don’t get it.
The winner of the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship has to have a great all-around game. It was created to parallel the main event with the idea that, for fifty large, only the best of the best would show up. The event made sense when it was created and naming the trophy in Chip Reese’s honor cements its place in WSOP significance.
I’m not against the idea of a $25,000 buy-in event at the WSOP. But these events lack the context that makes the Chip Reese trophy worth battling for. Yes, it’s a bracelet. But it’s a bracelet in an event that didn’t exist last year and won’t exist next year.
Also, as the buy-in climbs the player pool shrinks. If rebuy events—which were both large and entertaining fields—were eliminated so players with deeper pockets couldn’t “buy a bracelet”, what’s so different about a $25,000 event? Fill in the blank: “This event is important because _____.” I can’t come up with much other than “now we’ve got a high roller event too!” At least the first one made a bit of sense in terms of “40 years” and “40 grand”.
It’s one thing if the buy-in limits the field, but another thing entirely if the field is limited by official definition. In previous years these tournaments were open to anyone who could afford the sticker price. When they added “256 max” to the official schedule, the WSOP has announced two things: 1) only the richest players in the world can earn this bracelet and 2) only the first 256 richest players who sign up have a shot at some diamond-studded man jewelry. In truth, they might have trouble filling those 256 slots. But that doesn’t change the fact that if there were 257 players who wanted their shot at this title, one of them couldn’t take it.
I have a friend who plays no-limit holdem heads-up cash games for a living. When I asked him what he thought about the event, he replied “I think I’d like to play it…but can’t afford it.” He even has a backer with deep pockets for live tournaments. While he has played in the $10,000 heads-up events, the backer doesn’t like risking $25,000 on a single event.
This argument parallels the line of thought that the fields should not be limited in any fashion in bracelet events. This includes the ladies, seniors, and casino employees bracelet events. With a whopping 58 tournaments, the WSOP schedule is crowded enough without “niche” events elbowing their way to a place at the table.
* I was walking through the Rio casino with retired poker writer Alex Henriquez when the “Masquerade Show in the Sky” interrupted our conversation. In between profanities, I could make out Al offering a description as unsettling as it is appropriate.
Tags: 2011 World Series of Poker, AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, Guest Posts, Jeremiah Smith, WSOP
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