Short Stack Poker

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 282007
 

Cracknaces has an excellent post on his blog about playing the short stack aggressively. I’d like to point others to this and also refute his DO #2, which is:

Push in the SB every single time it is folded around to you, no matter what cards you are dealt.

In this case I’d like to use that old poker saying “It depends”. Because if the BB has seen you do this very many times I guarantee he will end up calling you with Ax at some point. Now again, Ax vs two random cards that aren’t dominated is only a 60-40 favorite. So in that case it still depends on exactly how short you are. If you have an ‘M’ of say 3 or less then by all means try and get your doubleup. If not though, pushing every time could just make you last a few extra hands if not go home even earlier.

Short Respite

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 262007
 

Some of you might have noticed my absense the past few nights in IRC. Well I’ve been in Pennsylvania helping attend to my sick grandfather. Things are not going well for him. And since I’ve neglected to attempt fixing my laptop even though I know what’s wrong with it, I have not had a computer with which to attempt to increase my net worth.

That will all change in the next few days fair reader as I continue to attempt to win BOTH of the daily doubles as well as various other of the guarantee tournaments on FullTilt. My thirst to continue to play well and keep this year smoking will hopefully keep me from doing stupid things with the bankroll. That of course would be bad.

I do have a question for everybody though about backing plans. Have you ever participated in selling off pieces of yourself? Did you limit the number of people or just cap the % at say 50%? Did you write up a formal contract? I’d like to hear about this as much as possible. I’m planning on playing in one $1500 buyin event at the WSOP this summer but would love to try and do two or more, depending on if I can get some backers and/or win some satellites. My run through the FTOPS satellites shows me that I’ve got the potential to do this. I’m just thinking it might be smart to get some backing as well. So let me hear what you have to say on the subject.

Quick Update

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 262007
 

For those not in the loop, I’ve been doing a wee bit of traveling back and forth to Pennsylvania lately to spend time with the fam since my grandfather has been in the hospital for the past few weeks. Not much has changed in the old haunts. I’ve been able to hang out with some old friends and try to have a good time as well.

I will say this though. Never have I felt so tired just by sitting around and doing nothing. Hospitals just suck the life out of you! It will feel good to be back home again and actually have ‘stuff’ to do.

Taking Time Off Can Help

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 192007
 

Well as some of you may know, I took a bit of time off from playing poker. I also neglected this blog. That second part wasn’t really hard because I never have been much of a poster anyway. But I digress. In mid-December I was getting pretty burnt out. I was playing poorly but of course blaming it on my donkey opponents, suckouts, etc… I never took the time to reflect on my own play. So with the holidays coming and a vacation on the way I just quit playing cold turkey. After all of the crap with the payment processors I decided that I would go ahead and see what I could do with the remaining funds in my account, which really weren’t all that much. I started playing some MTTs again in probably the third week of Jan and here are my results from PokerDB on FullTilt since then:

Date Tournament/Event Buyin+Rake Place Entrants Winnings
02/19/2007 Hold’em NL $500+$35 38 3217 $3,780
02/18/2007 Hold’em NL (#11292501 Qualifier) $100+$0 2 35 $535 (Ticket)
02/17/2007 Hold’em NL $10+$0 119 829 $15
02/17/2007 Hold’em (Turbo) 6 NL (#12867939 Qualifier) $14+$0 14 119 $109 (Ticket)
02/15/2007 Hold’em NL (#11292501 Qualifier) $24+$0 5 74 $51
02/14/2007 Hold’em NL $10+$0 45 734 $25
02/14/2007 Omaha H/L (Turbo) Limit (#11292222 Qualifier) $24+$0 7 56 $48
02/13/2007 Hold’em NL $10+$0 1 894 $1,716
02/13/2007 Hold’em (Turbo) 6 NL (#11292177 Qualifier) $69+$0 2 31 $216 (Ticket)
02/09/2007 Hold’em DS NL $200+$0 215 1,922 $345
02/06/2007 Hold’em R A NL (#12296516 Qualifier) $10+$0 5 31 $39
02/05/2007 Hold’em NL (#11291993 Qualifier) $24+$0 1 41 $216 (Ticket)
02/03/2007 Hold’em NL (#11292129 Qualifier) $69+$0 3 15 $322 (Ticket)
02/03/2007 Hold’em NL (#12659304 Qualifier) $8+$0 7 34 $10
02/02/2007 Hold’em 6 NL (#12390988 Qualifier) $24+$0 1 18 $322 (Ticket)
01/31/2007 Hold’em NL $24+$0 4 1,140 $1,710

As you can see I’ve been on a pretty solid run. Only mistake I think is throwing $800 into the FTOPS rebuy event. But hey what can you do?

Site is Back Up

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 182007
 

Well after I went and deleted my database, I’ve not gotten at least some of the archives back and decided that maybe I should try and start keeping up with this thing again. Especially in light of my recent results. So tonight I am in the FTOPs main event on FullTilt. It is my 3rd FTOPs event this time around, with one cash (Event #1 NLHE), one early exit (Event #3 NLHE), and one top 1/3 finish (Event #6 NLHE Rebuy). I also bubbled at the final table in sats trying to get a seat in the 6max and HA tournaments.

I will be attempting to live-blog tonight as much as possible and we’ll see how things go. I’ve been on a good run lately and playing really solid poker. In fact if I wasn’t on the downside of variance right now I’d be claiming that the first two months of this year were better than all of 2006, my best year ever in poker. I will detail more of my recent results later on. Hope to hear from all of you!

WPBT Season Start

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 182007
 

Tonight is the first event of the 2007 Season of the World Poker Blogger Tour. While my posts are few and far between, I am a voracious reader of many of the fine blogger publications out there. I also hang out in the IRC chatroom probably far too much. If you haven’t signed up already, then you need to! The party starts at 9pm EST on FullTilt and the format this time around is deep-stack no-limit hold’em. Step up, get in the money, and get your name on the leaderboard.

Long Time Gone

 Jason  Comments Off
Feb 182007
 

Well I haven’t posted on here for a very long time. There are multiple reasons for this. The main ones would be that I haven’t been playing much poker overall, I have a main personal blog so I don’t post normal everyday stuff here, and quite frankly I had kind of stopped *thinking* about the game so much. I’m pretty much resigned that I am a pretty decent tournament player and will continue to play. However, I need to not play as much as I had been and also not let it take up so much of time time whether that is reading books, blogs, what have you. I still love to hang in the WPBT irc room when I play and love the friendships that I have found.

Anyway, today I got a ticket to the $500k monthly tournament on FTP with a $100+9 sat win. So I guess that I might as well take a shot at live-blogging it. This is my 2nd ever $500 buyin event. I didn’t do too bad in the one that I was in on PokerStars even though I bubbled.

6:00pm Cards are in the air. 1,237 people have ponied up either $500+35 cash or got in through a sat. First place will pay a smooth $117k. I start off in the BB with 62os.

6:11pm Well that was fast. I raised with AJs in MP. Yes I realize that it’s a loose play. That’s just what I do. Apply pressure. Flop was QJ3 rainbow. I lead out after the button had called me preflop. Turn is an A so i check, he bets pot and I push. At this point I really don’t care if he had KT for the straight. This early I am trying to chip up and there’s a lot of people that will call with a worse hand. He flips up AQ and I’m down to 120. Next hand I get AQ and push, but don’t hit anything and I’m out. At least I didn’t buy in directly.

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