I’ve recently signed up at PokerNow (a Party skin) through ECD for their rakeback program. I’ve been wanting to get back to Party for all the bad players, but didn’t want to play anywhere that I wasn’t getting anything else back in return, since I’ve started doing all the comps at ECD and PSO. So I signed up, and started playing with the fish. I just about broke even while clearing my $100 deposit bonus, and then had an awful, awful run of cards, and some pretty bad play because of it. I lost about $360 playing 1/2 6max for three days or so. The deposit bonus helped soften that a bit, as does the rakeback, but it still stings. I’m not at all claiming I played perfectly and it was all the cards’ fault, but let me give you an idea of how bad of a run this was. At 6 handed tables, over the course of three days play, AA has held up 53% of the time, AKo 37%, AKs 23%. Shorthanded (hell, even full ring, probably) those numbers should be much higher. KK has done well, but other big pairs have awful percentages for this stretch. To make it worse, almost all of my AA that lost got rivered and I was pushing them hard when they were good, so I lost that much more with them. The awful run and terrible players that beat me put me on tilt a little bit, and my play worsened because of it, so I lost more money. I decided to take a break from the ring games for a few days, and try out the SNGs.

That turned out to be a good idea. I played 23 $10+1 SNGs, and had 4 firsts, 4 seconds, and 4 thirds, for a 58% ROI (I love PokerTracker), or $145 profit. I don’t know how I feel about Party’s SNG structure, but while it seems like it’d be too fast (start with 800 chips, and blinds go up every ten hands, I think), it’s manageable. They do turn into all-in fests towards the end, but even then, it seems to work out pretty well. Even if I don’t like the structure, if I can make money at them, I’ve gotta play them. I don’t particularly like their multitable SNGs, even though the blinds are timed instead of by handcount, because the payouts aren’t high enough for the amount of time it takes. I’d rather just play the single table ones, I think.

During one of the SNGs, I was pretty shortstacked with four players left.
Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (4 handed) converter

Button (t2000)
penner4242 (t495)
BB (t2425)
UTG (t3080)

Preflop: penner4242 is SB with 7♥, 2♣.
2 folds, penner4242 raises t95 to t495, BB calls t95.

Flop: (t990) J♣, 9♣, T♦ (2 players)

Turn: (t990) 2♥ (2 players)

River: (t990) 2♦ (2 players)

Final Pot: t990

Results below:
penner4242 has 7h 2c (three of a kind, twos).
BB has Ah 8d (one pair, twos).
Outcome: penner4242 wins t990.

I pushed in from the small blind because I was already in for almost half my stack, and doubling up T295 later wouldn’t really do much for me, anyway. Plus, I’d need to do it in the next few hands. I didn’t really have much choice. The only reason I wasn’t all in on my big blind with any random hand was there was another player all in before me, so folding could have gotten me to the money (I didn’t have a good hand – if I did, I would have called). So I doubed through to T990, doubled up again two hands later with the Hilton Sisters, and then fourth place busted a few hands after that. Had I only doubled through once with QQ, I wouldn’t have survived. I owe my placing in that tourney to the Hammer.

After a few days of the SNGs, I decided to try the ring game again, and have recovered $72 of the losses there, so far, in under an hour of three tabling the 1/2 6 max (2.43 table hours). Hopefully, the cards won’t turn as bad as they were before anytime soon.

Oh, by the way, in case you couldn’t tell: I love PokerTracker. 🙂

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