Wednesday, September 26, 2007

pre-balla post

Well, this will be the last post I make as a grinder.
Next time you hear from me, I will have won the APPT Seoul event and be ballin with an extra $200,000 or so. :D

I'm leaving tomorrow morning to make the casino my home for the next 4days. If there was ever a time I needed to run good in my life, it's this weekend. ONE TIME PLEASE.

I haven't played much at all this week in preparation. It's 추석 (Chuseok) (the equivalent to thanksgiving) here in Korea, so all my teacher friends have had the week off. Obviously this just spells trouble, but we've had some fun times.

The tourney starts on friday at 2pm local time (1am EST). I hope I can get some live games in before that. Maybe tommorow I hope. Though I wont have a tonne of time, because Pokerstars is throwing a party for thier sponsored players on Thursday night. Should be fun. Joe Hachem and Isabelle Mercier are going to be there (they're playing in the event), so I should get a chance to meet them. I'm going to try to befriend Hachem so that maybe he'll give me some money. That would be awesome. Anyways, I'll get some pics.

You can follow my progress at : www.appt.com

GO ME

Friday, September 21, 2007

checkin in

THis month sucks. People stressing me out, and not making much money.
WHATEVER.

APPT tournament is in a week. I'm excited.
There are 2 other sub events, $500entry each. I'll play both if I get knocked out of the main event. Hopefully I can play a lot of cash games as well.

Hopefully I can make some money this weekend.

As far as those championships I mentioned, well I just won the 4th event, which was heads up NLHE. It was the first NLHE event, which I dominate of course. :)

I'm like 8/28 overall at the moment, with 4 events to go. Hopefully I can win that and keep the $500+ in my account fromt he entry fees.

PEEACE.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

misclick ftw

I was doing some thinking about 'fake-misclicks'.

This is basically when you have a very strong hand, and make an abnormally sized bet. This is done with the hopes your opponent will sense some kind of weakness and try to push you off your hand, or call you down with a less marginal holding than they usually would.

Anyways, I was thinking of some ways you could exploit people in this way and came up with something pretty sneaky.

Now, I'm sharing because it wont really work well at my limits -- it's much better at 25NL or 50NL. This is just an idea, I don't nessecarily advocate using this! It's an angle shoot, and probably not very moral.

Also forgive me if this is painfully standard, as I havn't played these limits for some time.

Now, in order for this to work, you need to have at least 101bb's at the table. It's also ideal when you have a few limpers in front of you.

So let's say you're playing 25NL and pick up AA on the button. Two limpers toss in thier .25$ and its to you. Instead of making a standard raise, you now raise to $25.25.

When it gets back to the limpers (or even the BB), they will see the option to call "$25", instead of "$.25".

Also, when you raise, you're only putting 2 chips in (the $25 and the $.25 chip), just like if you were minraising (2 $.25 chips). This is the key, and why it wont work as well at my limits.

It's very easy for your opponents to mistake this raise for a simple min-raise, and call off their stack with trash. Hell, you might even get two callers with your aces!

I havn't tested this, but I think it could interesting. Let me know what you think.

On a similar note, I cam across an interesting story someone posted on facebook. Another interesting angle shoot that I found funny:

"So, I was playing at the MGM Grand's finest $1-$2 no-limit Texas Hold'em table, and, after about 2 hours, was sitting about even, when I get dealt Ace-King of spades on the button. Two guys limp, I raise to $12, and one guy--from now on, Crazy Asian Guy--calls. The flop comes down Ah9s2c, a good flop for me. Crazy Asian checks, I bet $15, he calls. Turn card is the 6 of spades, which gives me a potential nut flush draw. Crazy Asian checks again, I bet $20, and fully expect him to fold. However, he surprises me by just flat-calling again. Turn card comes and it's the Jack of spades, which gives me the nuts with an ace-high flush. Crazy Asian guy--after two straight check-calls--surprises the hell out of me by betting $20 (in 20 $1 dollar chips... remember this, it's important)! At this point, there are only two possible hands he can have: Either AJ (so the jack gave him two pair) or pocket jacks (so the jack gave him trips). Since I have the nuts, I don't really care either way; I'm just thrilled he's betting.

At this point, my only question is how can I get as much money as possible out of him. I doubt he'll call a huge re-raise with the 3-flush on the table, even if he has trips. On the other hand, I'm almost sure he'll call if I just reraise it to $40...but I'm pretty sure I can get a little more out of him. I'm close to just putting $50 in the middle, when I decide to get tricky and do the greatest move in the history of poker.

I let out a big sigh, and start acting like I might fold my hand. I go back-and-forth, and start calling out his possible hands ("You called all the way down with Ace-Jack?" etc). Finally, I say "OK, I'll pay you off" and count off 20 chips... 20 of my 5 dollar chips, so I'm actually re-raising him to $100. I count them out, throw them in the middle, and say "I just have the ace; you have two-pair, right?" and show him my ace of spades (but not the king, of course!). Crazy Asian Guy doesn't show, of course; instead, he looks at the dealer and says "He just raised it, right?". Dealer says yes, and at this point I get pissed.

"What are you talking about? I just called his $20." Dealer points out that I put out 20 $5 chips, and I start complaining again: "But I never said 'raise'! If I don't verbalize a raise, it's just a call!" Dealer informs me that that's not the policy, and I say "This is bullshit. Where's the pit boss?" He calls the pit boss over, I plead my case, the Pit Boss confirms the dealer's decision, and I sit back in my chair with a pissed off look on my face, mutter "such bullshit" under my breath.

Crazy Asian Guy thinks about it for like half a second and calls. I turn over the nuts, and he throws his cards off the table (ace-jack, as I thought) and calls me an asshole and says he hopes I burn in hell. I grab the now almost $300 pot and give him my biggest shit-eating grin.

Poker is so much fun."

Someone told me that this move isn't original, and that Phil laak apparently pulled it off in a really deep game for A LOT more money. Not sure though, and this is the first time I've heard of this, so there it is.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

tilt relief

I've had a couple rough days at the table. But the bright side is I've found a new release for all that stress.

Guns:



I had no idea there was a shooting range in korea. I headed out with a couple friends to lotte world (biggest indoor amusement park in asia... maybe the world? not sure). They've got a skating rink, roller coasters, a huge department store, movie theater, shooting range, bowling alley, folk museum, water park, tonnes of restaurants and stores... it's HUGE.

Anyhow, at the range they had tonnes of handguns to shoot and we rocked them hard.

I shot a glock 9mm or something... I don't know anything about guns except that they're fun. My accuracy was 40%, which the guy said was terrible.

Then we hit up some bowling, where I bowled an aggressive 157, which is unimpressively my best score ever.

So after knocking a bunch of things over, putting holes in things, and lots of loud noises, I'm officially cured of my tilt. :)

Event #2 of the championship is tomorrow -- I hope I can final table it again, and hopefully take the win.

I don't think anyone wants to mess with me anyways --



Wednesday, September 12, 2007

basebrawls in korea are different

Thought I would post this for some of my korean friends to find out WTF is going on in this video:



LOL

Also, we had the first event of the full ring championships this morning. I did OK -- made the final table but ended up busting out 7th... which puts me in 7/28 place overall after one event.
It was a limit hold 'em event which I hate, so hopefully I can do better in the next ones.

Event #2 is pot limit omaha, aka, crack. The game is lots of fun because it has lots of gambool to it -- I'm sure it will be one of the quickest tournaments in the series.

Finally, I've been doing some experimenting with shortstacking. This basically means buying into a table with 20% of full stack. The idea is that you can exploit loose raisers/callers pre-flop, and not have to make many decisions after that.

I've been doing this at 3/6--10/20 and have had decent results over a small sample. (+$500 or so). I don't think it's something I would want to do full time, but it has opened my mind a little more to how short stacks play. I'm gonna keep at it for a while, and try to learn and improve.

It will also give me insight into how some of the higher level players are playing, so I can handle them better when I eventually run into them.

Monday, September 10, 2007

full ring challenge

Not much going on these days. Just playing a lot (~30k hands this month so far) and trying to get prepared for the big APPT event.

Also, I organized a championship/challenege for a bunch of people on my forum.
It consists of 8 events, and the person who does the best overall wins all the entry fees (should be about $5-600, depending on how many people show up).

Should be interesting because I've never played any of the different types of poker seriously.

#1 Limit Holdem - $5 (tuesday sept 11, 20:00 EST)
#2 PL Omahaha - $5 (thursday sept 13, 20:00 EST)
#3 Stud 7 - $5 (tueday sept. 18, 20:00 EST)
#4 NLHE Head Up - $5 (Thursday sept 20 20:00 EST)
#5 PL Omahaha H/l -$5 (Tuesday sept. 25 20:00EST)
#6 Razz - $5 (Thursday sept 27 20:00 EST)
#7 HORSE - $5 (Tuesday, OCtober 2 20:00 EST)
#8 NLHE - $5(thursday, October 4 20:00 EST)

All events are on pokerstars if anyone wants to sweat (private tab of the tournament section -- listed as FRC Event #x.

I'll post updates as I go.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

i suck at blogs

I have about zero things of interest to post.
I"m running good this month, +2k or something. Other than that, enjoy this video and the series. I've seen t before, but dude is funny.