Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

The older I get, and the more I watch football the more I think it is much like poker . Some of what I'll say will probably get me in trouble with some LSU fans and some ardent Saints fans but I do think it's true, so sorry. It's kind of small point that I'm making but bare with me. In the LSU game, Auburn beat them by but seven points but I'd argue LSU was beaten by the better team and should be less happy than the Saints. I know LSU lost by seven and the Saints lost by 13. I know Auburn is now the number one team in the BCS and Cleveland is still... well... Cleveland, but both games illustrate what a swing sport football is. I mean it's kind of like Omaha poker online . In poker, one hand can cripple a chip leader and pump up a short stack. Doesn't matter if the chip leader has played brilliantly all day and the short-stack terrible. Hell, the chipleader can do everything right on the hand and the short stack get incredibly lucky and the short-sta...

Critics of online poker will tell you any victory in online poker games is an empty one. Okay, not going that route today, don’t want to get Nick Shulman on the World of Jenks on you but do want to express my frustrations again with cashing like Allen Kessler in big MTTs. Getting tired of doubling or tripling my buy-in at the lowly stakes I play at when there is so much more at the top of the payscale. I guess it’s better than losing. Watched a bit of TK (TimKrank) win the Sunday Brawl--always can learn poker by watching it at a high level. He owned the final table and I saw he was the most willing to put his opponents to the test. The thing I got out it most was that it seemed like he was most willing to also put his toes in the water and withdraw them when his opponents showed strength, unless he had the hand to do battle. No matter how the previous hand went down he was always willing to apply more pressure. Great to see that when he is playing for 20k and 30k pay jumps. I feel li...

So, I get back for the Auburn-Arkansas tussle, forgoing some Hold'em online and then watch an epic SEC clash. The highest scoring in league history. So much for firing up a Sit and go or two. All I could think about was the inevitable LSU-Auburn matchup. Auburn has a guy who looks like what you’d get if you put Michael Vick, Vince Young, and Tim Tebow in a blender. The dude isn't human. He may be... heisman but not human. Yeah, no letters please I know that's atrocious. Can LSU shut him down? It's strength vs. strength and weakness vs. weakness. In another irony, Auburn hired a defensive coach, the guy that recruited and steered the defense that former coach Tuberville leaned on during their national Championship* run, and yet the defenses under Chizik are among the worst the plains have seen in a long time. LSU quarterbacks might even be able to complete 15 passes against those slouches. Auburn-LSU always has thrilling end of games (with a weird stretch where the ...

So, I planned on sitting down to play Texas Hold'em poker Saturday morning. Changed that up to go to a farm. Got back to the Auburn-Arkansas game and put dabbling in some Omaha til later in the weekend. I've told you that much. I left you hanging with an email from my mom who knows about as much about football as the kid that sports an ascot on Glee. Here's her email: "How about that Auburn football game Saturday! Cameron Newton is great. He can throw, he can run, he can fly, he can leap over tall linemen with a single bound! Wow! What a player! Your daddy and I watched the 65-43 game Saturday in the family room. Almost everytime I went into the kitchen, when I returned to the family room, someone had made a touchdown!" I think if I were to ask her the names of other Auburn football players she'd probably only say Pat Sullivan and Bo Jackson. There is some significance to that for those of you with a casual knowledge of college football history. I think she ...

This weekend I made an appointment to sit down and play some Texas Hold em online poker . I didn't keep that appointment. First I made it for Saturday, then I made it for Sunday. Neither happened. Not to say, I had an empty weekend. In fact, it was just the opposite. I was very busy. Real life keeps intervening in my forays in the virtual world. May have to just put the son in day care and grind a nine to five poker job as I can’t seem to carve out time in my free time to do it as side job. For now, I’ll just have to keep reading bwin poker blog to keep tabs on real online players, that find the time to play. Instead, I went with the wife and kid to a pumpkin patch on the North Shore. Okay, it wasn't a pumpkin patch. It was advertised as that but it was really just a farm, with an okay farm tour and a petting zoo. Red Bluff farm, ever heard of it? Must say I like the name. I don't want to bash the place, because it's a fun place to go, kid friendly, parent friendly, a...

So, I never finished up my home game recap where we played some Texas Holdem games as well as some Omaha poker . I ended up down a bit. But back to the previous post. I was in the middle of a hand with Ray. I held 24 and was stuck a little bit. He popped it preflop and I called from the small (?) blind. Flop was queen high. I checked he bet out. I raised it after he asked if the cash in front of me also played. Only hand that scared me was AQ and considering the earlier hand I thought I might even get him to lay that down as the two other cards on the board made sense for the blind. Ray shoved, and I smiled and folded. He turned over KQ. I told him I had 4 deuce off suit. He and Sam didn’t believe me, so I bet them that I would turn that over to recapture a piece of my bluff. They took the bet. I cashed everybody out and was short when it was my turn. Sam, Ray, and Lee all tipped me for the beers and chips I purchased, but only Ray and Sam were left when I discovered I was short....

The finale for me in that Texas Holdem game came when I shoved under the gun, after having a discussion with Joe B about shoving utg with large blinds and antes. I subscribe to the school of thought of almost any two cards rather than getting into BB and losing that extra money of the BB or having lesser hands getting pot-stuck while you wait it out in the blinds. One hand I don’t like from early position shoves is A or K rag, truth be told I’d rather two littles that are likely live, then getting out kicked. Maybe that's not good math and I need to re- learn poker . Still, in that situation at that time, I was going to fire and hope nobody wakes up with A10 or better. I had A rag and said oh well. The Big Blind told me I was good but had to call me because of his massive stack. He had K10 and hit his 10. I headed for the exit with only myself to blame. This week I also hosted the home game , and I enjoyed seeing Big Smoove, Lee Mc, Joe C, Kyle L, Teddy O, and Sam Cappo. We are ...

The turn was a donut but gave a weird straight and flush draw. I bet again, knowing this guy didn’t have AK from playing with him before and thinking I could get him off a lot of hands. He stayed in the fray and I got a queasy feeling I get when I play online poker and have no idea where I am in the hand. The river brought the flush and the straight to the table. He led out with a pot-sized bet. It screamed to me an overbet that didn’t want to get called. If he had hit, why not check and let me lead the action. Well in textbook Holdem poker maybe he figured I’d be scared and check behind. If that was the case why not value bet? Well, I had shown strength so maybe he thought I could call a pot-sized bet. I counted my chips and the 3600 would halve my stack (as I was near 7k after the betting) and I realized 7k was a decent stack for the second of third level we were at. However 3400 wasn’t. The pot was so big though. I did pick up a tell on him for later. I took out the chips to call ...

Ironically, as he was talking about it I was opening up my hand range and trying to hit big hands against big stacks. Yes, I was playing just the way we were condemning in our conversation. Of course, I bled off chips as people wouldn’t really protect their hands and I never hit my draws. The Texas Hold'em poker tournament that day went pretty well for me from a cards perspective though bad as a player. I found myself in a lot of odd spots which I guess is always true if you play poker tournaments often. The previous week I had stolen a lot of pots with big raises from position with middle pairs when five or six people limped and they’d all fold. I tried the same this week with nothing or little pairs (nothing) and everybody would call. One time I hit my pocket fives and boated on the River against Clint Schafer who stuck around to the end with top pair top kicker (AQ) and I doubled through him. Another time I had pocket fives against a steady regular tight player. This is the h...

Okay, lots to catch up with. Let's start with when I got time to play online poker , I went deep in another huge low buy-in tournament but didn't win the thing. Would be nice to stop hitting the teens, twenties, and thirties and start splashing around in the big payouts of first, second, and third. I can't even remember how I busted out. I must have run good though because even though I single tabled, I was doing a ton of other stuff I needed to do while playing. It's weird I've been playing the bigger multi-table tournaments with a strategy of just being wild and loose and teaching myself how to learn poker from a new perspective and I found some success doing that. But the last couple, I got away from it and played my normal nitty game without giving it much thought. Fortunately, I've had the same type of results. Certainly, I picked some spots to make some plays that maybe I used not to, exploiting my image a little bit more, but it's like I forgot why I...

Ummm. How do you do this? I got 11 months to turn my boy into this brainiac...

Played some online poker last night and only found a single Multi-Table Texas Holdem poker tournament that I wanted to play. As usual, one tabling online leads to a little bit of boredom. For whatever reason I didn't feel like playing Online Sit and go poker tournaments in conjunction like I normally do. So I surfed the net. Below are some of the more interesting places I visited. First a video: The greates Fail videos of the year. Some good ones, some seen a ton ones, and a few new ones sprinkled in there. Might need to fast forward but not a bad way to kill time waiting for a playable hand or guys nursing the time clock on the bubble. BTW, people are saying that's an angle in a debate on 2+2. What? You got a timebank to use any way you want it. I don't like it but it's a part of the game. See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor . -I'm not big on the whole concept that we are a secretly evil country and deserve international hatred. Too much of...

Anytime you play Texas Hold'em poker you got to make big calls if you are going to be a winner in the session or go deep in the tournament. In the previous post, I was deliberating whether or not to make one. The worst is where you make a great call and then it turns into poker bad beat with a bad follow-up card but here there were no more cards to come. His 1500 bet didn’t make sense. I knew he had watched me find folds before so this screamed steal. I looked for tells (that’s too specific really as I more accurately tried to get a feel for his confidence as it’s not like there is a checklist I go through... even if maybe there should be). There is a less than reliable tell where the player tries to appear casual under pressure. It’s a subtle thing, but it's tricky because it’s one a lot of players will actually honestly display, or not hide, when they do have a hand. It’s not the easiest thing to look for. So you have to decide are they acting or are they really comfo...

Alright, so I’m going to go into a little bit about my chop in the weekly Wednesday Texas Hold'em poker tournament over at Harrahs. As previously, mentioned I rode a little bit of luck, I exploited my table image, and had the right timing to not bang into a hand whenever I made a move. I also found folds where sometimes I wouldn’t and had the courage to shove in places I hadn’t before. I’ve previously written that I think this tournament requires a bit of a different poker strategy because of the way they’ve set it up. In fact, it’s more like a Mega satellite poker strategy than you standard poker tournament strategy. I think the blind structure is carefully crafted to induce a chop about four hours into the tournament and to get the poker dealers, floor people, and poker players elsewhere as quick as possible. So in some ways, when you approach the endgame you have to understand that eventually the blinds will overwhelm you and rational players will have to chop. At some point...