Saturday, I did some board gaming with some friends. Played a couple of games I had never played before, and a game of Power Grid. The first was a game with cooperative gameplay. We were all (except one, the traitor, whose identity was unknown and might not have even existed) trying to win together. It’s called Shadows over Camelot, and was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the traitor ended up winning, but it’s definitely a game I want to play again sometime. The other new game I played was Through the Desert, which is a very quick, fun game. I lost everything I played, but had a good time anyway.

Sunday was the Pokerstars Blogger Championship. I had already won my sweatshirt and hat from being chosen as one of the daily winners, and as expected, that was all I ended up with from the tournament. I feel like I played well, and was pretty happy with every single decision I made. Early on, I had a stack about 2500, and got crippled when actyper rivered a 5-outer on me. Instead of having 4500, and being able to play aggressively and push people around, I had 600, and had to pick my spots carefully. I managed to steal blinds from people sitting out for a while, and then double up with AQ vs Q9, and then double up again through Ugarte with TT vs AQ. I pulled a stop-and-go on the low flop from the big blind, and got called anyway. The blinds were big at this point, though, and I just never got anything from then on. On actyper’s final hand, I had AKs, but had to get away from it, as you can see from that hand history. I was card dead to basically blind and ante me off. My final hand I had A3s in the small blind, and just called all-in, as I had less than one blind. The big blind raised to protect my his hand, and I never improved against his KK. I went out in 354th. Pauly has a nice list of where all the poker bloggers finished. Congrats to everyone who made the money!

This weekend, I also got to set up my Polk XM Receiver. It’s pretty cool. Strangely, the best place for the antenna seems to be in my bedroom closet facing the wall. I also got my replacement Treo 650 from Amazon today, and everything seems to have restored off the SD card nicely. I think once the old one dries out, it’ll actually work again, too, but I needed a replacement before that happened. My new printer/copier/scanner/fax is awesome. I plugged it into my network, and am printing to it from both Linux and Windows as if it’s JetDirect device. I also installed my new 100gb hard drive in my laptop, and managed to get everything moved over to it without having to reinstall Ubuntu. As an added bonus, I discovered my laptop has USB 2.0 (not just 1.1 as I thought), and I have a nice portable 30gb drive now, thanks to this.

Overall, not a bad weekend considering how the end of last week went. (Oh yeah, the drawers I special ordered from Home Depot for my kitchen came in Friday – except they were the wrong size.)

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For future reference: A Treo 650 doesn’t work too well after running through the washing machine. Now I’m gonna be out another $600, plus I won’t have a cellphone until Monday. This happened not even a day after I finally sold my old Treo 600… at least I got $200 for that.

Update: The SD card in my Treo is fine. I haven’t lost any data.

Update 2: I have a phone. Got a free after rebate Nokia from the T-Mobile store with a 1 year contract extension, which is fine since I have no plans to switch anytime soon and I’ve been with them almost 4 years now. I’d been meaning to get a backup/spare phone anyway.

Poker related… I’m putting a bounty on myself for the WPBT Winter Classic. Whoever knocks me out gets a Poker Padz mousepad (thanks to Grinder for finding them, and posting a comment here so I could find him!). These things look cool. I’ll put up a review when I get it. I’d also be interested in getting custom ones made with the WPBT logo, but the information page says minimum custom order is 200 units. Would anyone else be interested? Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll quite get enough people wanting one to make that happen.

I’m sure I had other things to say, but this Treo thing has pissed me off to the point that I don’t want to write anymore.

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Sadly, what I won was not the WWdN: Where’s My Burrito? Invitational. Congrats to Joanne for winning that! With my move and working on the new house, I just haven’t had any time to play online poker lately, and have only been to the casino once in the past two months. My Windows machine is currently sitting in my garage, so I just haven’t been playing. I couldn’t pass this tournament up, though, and managed to get in and play it. I was a little rusty, to say the least, and made two awful calls to bust out early. Then I moved on to the .25/.50 NL cash game, and got destroyed there, though a lot of that was great second best hands as opposed to awful play. Second nut flush, and second nut boat are bad hands at no limit hold ’em when someone has nut flush (damn you, Pauly!) and nut boat. I still had fun playing, though.

What I won, though, is a piece of PokerStars apparel. That will likely be the only prize I take away from their blogger tournament. 🙂 Thanks, Stars!

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I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 1888199

This thing looks pretty cool. While the $12k WPT Caribbean Adventure package looks nice, I really want a Dell 2405FPW. 🙂

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Just a month after my biggest session (Parts I and II), I won my biggest pot in a live game. I’ll get to that. The session started out pretty badly. I lost three hands with A♠K♠, though one of them my ace high was good and I got bluffed out. I don’t remember how I lost the end of my first buyin, but my second one was on a bad beat. I’m not complaining about the beat, and they don’t really bother me anymore, but I feel like describing the hand. I had Q9o in the big blind and called a minimum raise from a nut. The flop was 982, and I bet. He called. The turn was a 4, I bet more, and he called. The river was a 5, and I pushed. I guess a decent amount of money did get in after I was beat, but he called $50 on the turn with a gutshot, and showed me A3. I just mucked my cards and rebought.

In the game for $600, I had just gotten back above water, barely, when I got AKo, UTG. I raised, got a caller, and then a maniac reraised. I was sure he had a pair, but not aces or kings. The two other people in the pot both had under $200, so I just put them both all in, and they both called. They had TT and QQ, and we saw a flop of 9JK to give them four outs between them. AK hadn’t been holding up for me today, though, so I wasn’t at all surprised to see the T on the river steal the $450 pot from me. I was surprised, however, to see how little I reacted to it. I’ve seen it so many times now, I seemed to be able to just let it go.

I don’t really remember how it happened, but I managed to build my last $200 buyin up to $1200. There weren’t any massive pots in there, just a bunch of decent $100 or $200 pots. I then proceeded to lose it all back down to $200, in similar fashion. Raising with good cards and missing, a bad beat, and one bad play, and I was back down $400. This bad beat did get to me a little bit, because the money got in before I was beat, and I made a good, tough call. I had AJ, and raised preflop. The flop was 89J, and I bet $40 when it was checked to me. Someone checkraised all in for $150 more or so, and after thinking about it for a while, I called. He showed Q7s, for just a gutshot and overcard. Running spades gave him the pot, with the J♠ on the river to rub it in my face and give me trips. That one got to me a little bit, and I lost another $40 or so playing badly because of it. A little later, I saw a flop in a raised pot with ATs from the big blind. The flop was AA3, and I checked to trap. The problem was when the raiser bet, I knew I was beat, but just couldn’t get away from it. I called $60 on the flop, we checked the Q on the turn, and I called $60 on the river, to see his AK. I’m just glad I read him for the AK and didn’t push at it harder. In fact, I didn’t bet at all. I just don’t know why I couldn’t fold. Maybe some day, I’ll be able to lay that down.

Anyway, I ended up back down to $200 at some point, and then built back up to $365 when the big pot happened. I was in late position, and called a raise to $20 with A♥J♥. 5 players saw the flop of T♥7♥3♣. The maniac in the big blind (same guy with QQ from an earlier hand) bet $40, and a calling station called. The preflop raiser pushed for $165. The maniac had me covered, and the calling station had $70 behind. I was getting just over 2:1 on the call, and not expecting the maniac to reraise or bet the turn, so with two cards to come it was a good call with the flush draw. I also thought my ace was good if I hit it, so it was an even easier call. As it turned out, the maniac just called, and the calling station called all-in for her last $70, so it was a $165 call at a $705 pot. Easily a correct call, there. The 5♥ on the turn gave me the nuts, and I pushed all-in when the maniac checked. He called for my last $180, and the river was an offsuit 8, which didn’t pair the board or put a possible straight flush out there. I had the nuts, on the river, in a $1065 pot. The maniac showed just a K♥. I assume he had at least a pair on the flop, so something like K7o. He called on the turn with the flush draw in the hopes that I had a lower flush. The calling station had 88 for a rivered set. The preflop raiser showed QQ.

I played for a few more hours, and left the table with $1199, for a nice $599 profit. Twice during the night I turned $200 into $1200. I just wish I hadn’t played all the hands in between. 🙂 My past four trips to the casino have been profitable ones. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that those happen to be the only four times I’ve been there with my hammer.

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I don’t really have much poker content to talk about. I’ve been playing online at Eurobet and Superior (for ECD comp), and I’ve been swinging up and down, but with a generally upward progression. I played live last night for the first time in a few weeks (my parents were here, no time for casino), and made $100 in a pretty uneventful $200NL game. Have I mentioned I hate JJ? Especially when the big blind has the monster 64o.

Anyway, poker has been pretty good lately, but nothing terribly significant to write about. I’m really just posting this because the damn bad beat hand history has been the newest post here for far too long now.

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Yeah, yeah. It’s a hand history. (I’m geek_and_pro, cause I hit enter before I realized the name was too long and I can’t change it. It’s my new account for rakeback at Eurobet.)

I especially like the chat.

***** Hand History for Game 2463531267 *****
$100 NL Texas Hold’em – Tuesday, August 02, 00:14:28 EDT 2005
Table Table 37011 (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: MNShamrock ( $99.28 )
Seat 2: StickmanAA ( $73.05 )
Seat 3: NE_Blizard ( $214.85 )
Seat 5: poker_hammer ( $63.70 )
Seat 4: geek_and_pro ( $107.40 )
Seat 6: budliteman83 ( $41.54 )
budliteman83 posts small blind [$0.50].
MNShamrock posts big blind [$1].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to geek_and_pro [ Kh Kd ]
StickmanAA folds.
NE_Blizard calls [$1].
geek_and_pro raises [$4].
poker_hammer raises [$20].
budliteman83 folds.
NE_Blizard: forget
MNShamrock folds.
NE_Blizard folds.
geek_and_pro: got aces?
geek_and_pro is all-In [$103.40]
NE_Blizard: no
StickmanAA: cal
StickmanAA: call
geek_and_pro: i have kings
NE_Blizard: nh
StickmanAA: ok
poker_hammer: i dont i have 9’s but here we go
poker_hammer is all-In [$43.70]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6c, 2h, 2c ]
NE_Blizard: rutroh
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9d ]
** Dealing River ** [ 7d ]
poker_hammer shows [ 9h, 9s ] a full house, Nines full of twos.
geek_and_pro shows [ Kh, Kd ] two pairs, kings and twos.
geek_and_pro wins $43.70 from side pot #1 with two pairs, kings and twos.
poker_hammer wins $127.90 from the main pot with a full house, Nines full of twos.

Is poker_hammer one of us? And if so, I want my money back. 🙂

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I don’t know how long this has been up there, but about.com’s Slang for Poker Hands page lists 72 (though not specifically offsuit) as The Hammer.

It even links to an article from February that explains it, and links to Grubby.

And damn you, Iggy, for posting that picture of the Red’s jersey. It’s really making me want to buy this.

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When I left off, I was sitting with $260 or so in front of me. My memory on some of the other notable hands I played is a bit fuzzy, and the order in which they happened is just about completely lost. That’s what happens when I stay up all night playing, don’t take notes, and don’t write about it until a few days later. I’ll do my best. What I do know is I was folding a lot, and whenever I was in a pot it was usually for a raise. In fact, the guy in the 8 seat said at one point, “Don’t you ever limp?!” Next time I did, I made sure to point it out to him.

I had QQ in middle position, and came in for my standard raise to $20. This number increased as my stack did. My standard raise at the end of the night (or in the morning, I suppose) was $25. I got too many callers to be happy, but it was a nice pot. I flopped the nuts, Q9x, with two clubs. There were lots of draws out there, so I just put in a nice big bet and took it down. Then I folded for a while longer, my stack over $100 bigger.

I won two more nice pots with aces, both on scary flops that I bet out on. Normally, I wouldn’t really consider 855 a scary flop, but with 5 people calling my $20 raise, they could have had anything. My flop bet gave me that pot, as well as the the one where the flop was AQT. No one had KJ, thankfully. I had AK (offsuit and suited) a few times, and was hitting the flop pretty well with it, and taking pretty good pots. One hand with AK, I made it $20 preflop and got a call from the big blind (the same guy who asked if I ever limped). The flop was AQT, with two hearts. He checked, and I fired out $35. He quickly called, and I pretty much knew instantly I was beat. I put him on two pair. The turn was the 7 of hearts, and he bet out $35. I thought about it for a while, and mucked. Pretty much the only hand he could have that I should be calling there with was QT, as the pot was giving me good enough odds to beat that, even if he had a heart in his hand. If he had a flush, I was drawing dead, with no hearts in my hand. A straight and I was drawing to a split. AT or AQ, and I was drawing real thin. He said “nice laydown”, and I asked “AQ or AT?” He said QT, but of course, poker players don’t always tell the truth. Either way, I know I was beat and couldn’t call that bet.

Later, a pretty solid player with around $250 raised to $20 from early position. It was reraised to $50 directly to his left, by another decent player with around $300. I had them both covered pretty well. It folded around to me, and I looked down to find QQ. I called for time. I could tell from the initial raiser’s reaction that he had a pretty big pair. AA or KK? Possible, but I couldn’t know for sure. The reraiser I was sure had at least AK. If I just called, I had no idea where I was at, and couldn’t get away from it on a ragged flop, so I didn’t like that. If I raised, I’m pretty sure it would end up all-in against the reraiser, and I didn’t want to play a coinflip for $300. Plus, the initial raiser still could have had me beat. I decided to sit this one out, and folded the Hilton Sisters preflop. The rest of the action: initial raiser called, bet out on the ragged flop, and the reraiser folded. They had JJ and AK. Still, I feel just fine laying that down in that spot.

I was in late position with JJ, with an early position raise to $20 and a reraise to $40. I can’t tell you what about the situation was different, but this time I felt comfortable calling. The two raisers just didn’t seem that strong. The flop was KK8, and we all checked. The turn was a blank, and the reraiser bet $40. I was sure I had him beat, so I called. Unfortunately, the initial raiser reraised another $80, and we both folded. I wasn’t at all expecting that checkraise, and I think that was one of the few hands I didn’t play well over the night, and it cost me $80. I also think I might have had the best hand there, but I can’t be sure.

Several more hours of folding and tight play, and I had a very nice sized stack. It was probably around 9am now, and I made what I consider to be the only really close call of the night. When I got home, I had to run the numbers through pokenum at twodimes to see if I actually made good plays. As it turned out, I did. The action had slowed down a lot at this hour, and we had some new players who had come in early to register for the tournament. There were very few preflop raises, so I limped UTG with 33, hoping for a cheap flop. I got in pretty cheap. It folded to the small blind who made a minimum raise, the big blind called, and I did as well.

The flop was 234, with two spades. I was looking good. The small blind started counting out chips, rechecked his cards, and counted out some more. He bet $50, at the $30 pot. I knew right away he had A5, and had flopped a straight. I think everyone at the table knew. I was ready to fold my set faceup, but the big blind called. I didn’t know what he had, but figured at this point that I had to call, with all that money in the pot. The turn was an offsuit 6, so if he didn’t have a straight before, I was sure he had one now. He went all in for $95. I was again ready to fold, but the big blind called, so I did too. I made a mistake here: at this point, I was sure the big blind had a flush draw. I should have put him all in for his last $50 or so and at least get myself a sidepot if I missed my full house. The river was a nice looking 2, and I took down the whole $465 pot. The small blind had A5. The big blind had Q6s for a flush draw.

As I said, when I got home, I checked all the numbers, and I don’t feel like I played this hand wrong. On the flop, it was $50 to call. I was actually slightly favored of the three of us in the pot.

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=1091365
pokenum -h 3h 3d – qs 6s – ah 5c — 2s 3c 4s
Holdem Hi: 903 enumerated boards containing 4s 2s 3c
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
3d 3h 320 35.44 577 63.90 6 0.66 0.357
Qs 6s 277 30.68 620 68.66 6 0.66 0.309
5c Ah 300 33.22 597 66.11 6 0.66 0.334

On the turn, I was getting $370:$95 on my call, or 3.9:1. I needed 3.67:1. It was a close call, but a good one. Had the big blind folded in either spot, I would have had to as well.

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=1091374
pokenum -h 3h 3d – qs 6s – ah 5c — 2s 3c 4s 6h
Holdem Hi: 42 enumerated boards containing 4s 2s 3c 6h
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
3d 3h 9 21.43 31 73.81 2 4.76 0.230
Qs 6s 8 19.05 32 76.19 2 4.76 0.206
5c Ah 23 54.76 17 40.48 2 4.76 0.563

What I like best about this hand, besides the fact that I won a nice pot, was the thought that went into it, my reads on the players, and the fact that I knew it was a very close call when I did it. It feels really good to be thinking about my game at this level, and this is really the first time I can remember doing it.

The game was winding down, as the tournament was getting ready to start. We were playing our last hand, and I found AQo in the cutoff. I raised one limper to $25, and got called by him and the big blind. The flop looked nice, 9JQ, and I bet $50 when it checked to me. The big blind went all-in for $200 more. This same guy had called when I put him all in on a KQ3 flop with Q9 to my AK. I had never seen him get aggressive. I told him, “I think you’re on a draw,” and he responded, “I might be” in a way that made me think he wasn’t. I wish I could say what exactly made me think I was behind, but I eventually folded face up. He showed me his KT for a flopped straight, of course.

All in all, it was a nice ten and a half hour session. Losing a combined $165 on my first and last hands, I still finished up $950, my biggest win at this game so far. All it took was some tight, aggressive play, and a few decent laydowns. I have to keep playing this well. There’s nothing quite like walking away from a game with two racks of reds, and feeling like you actually earned it.

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