Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

Sure, there is an element of luck to poker (thank god if you are a professional for that or else you wouldn’t have a profession) and that keeps them coming back. But luck only lasts for so long. When poker turns a corner, that being when the casual player has an easier time gambling against the house in blackjack and Roulette and Pit games, (and I’d argue that time has already come), there will only be a finite amount of new money in the sport. Why keep sitting down to be the sucker at a table? Where’s the fun in that? So, that leaves the pros grinding against the pros and the gamblers heading to the casinos . Eventually, the money gets grinded away to the lowest possible sieve, so now it’s only the best playing the best. Look at the nosebleed games. Do the players have an edge against one another? Hansen loses millions in a couple of months then wins it back. Dwan does the same. As does Antonius. Meanwhile (sponsorships and backing arrangements being ignored for the sake of simplicit...

I don’t think I have to give up my Krispy Kremes until I pack on a few more pounds and that's a choice I should be able to make on my own. Okay, it's a choice I've already made, but just because I don't eat Krispy Kremes anymore doesn't mean you can't. Right now the hurdles addicted gamblers have to clear to lose their house, wealth, and life aren’t very high. In truth, a (regulated) poker site like https://poker.bwin.com/ will at least try to monitor problem gamblers whereas a bookie who is a phone call or click away will try to soak them dry. There are no compelling arguments against legalizing online poker. None. Gambling is evil and should be outlawed everywhere? Come on, if you are reading this blog you know for some poker isn’t gambling. What happens if they do legalize it? Here’s where I may surprise you. A poker boom, probably not as grand as the Moneymaker effect, but definitely a boom, will hit but just as quickly as the last one faded, if not faster,...

Unfortunately for those of that play Hold'em online the people that make our laws don't understand the world as it is today. I think part of the attraction of young people to Barack Obama was that he at least sold that he related better to young people (I'm not going to get into whether he did or not) whereas most of the old guard don't even bother trying to relate and those that try fail badly. Unfortunately, Congress is mostly unaware and out of touch, there are realities that they just don’t understand, can’t be made to understand, and will refuse to understand. Problem is are country is run by a group of people that time has passed by. This is an old lament every generation makes, but in today's age it's far more true than ever. Those that make the laws and decide where to advertise don't even know what the new digita world is about. I wasted my breath and energy trying to justify the game to gentleman of that ilk (entirely likeable except the way they ...

Having lived in DC, I met some magnificent intellectuals who worked on the Hill that really did the thinking for the guys that could get elected. The guys that could get elected... could get elected… but you didn't want them divvying up the check at the end of dinner. The guys that could figure out a tip for the most part couldn’t get elected. I know of some dirty things about politicians from ten years ago, but I also know of far dirtier things about the guys behind the scenes. So the crux of the problem for Texas Hold em online , poker in its most popular and arguably easiest form, is trying to get people set in their ways, who aren't savvy enough to learn about the new state of things, to understand things realities have changed. GeneD has run into this with sales, and told me stories of trying to convince the decision-maker, too dumb for their own good, how the product Gene is hawking would be beneficial to their company. Of course there is no easy way to say, you a...

Since the end of the Bayou Classic, I've been a bit strapped for time and have only been able to play a little Texas Hold em online . I played in a bloggers freeroll and got smoked being completely impatient. There is a major difference between live tournaments and online games. If I have to make the effort to drive to the casino and am locked in for the day I can wait for the proper moment as necessary, online if I lose I can get stuff done. My baby is a room away, the chores that have piled up are just outside my window, and I have a hundred other things to do if my top pair with middle kicker is no good. So invariably, I’ll get it in bad and quickly X out the window when I bust—especially in the micro-stakes and freerolls—and move on to stuff I should have been doing anyway. A lot of times I won’t even feel guilty about it. I guess that makes me a fish. Fellow bloggers… exploit me! I'm the guy that looks like he didn't learn how to play poker . Bare with me as I’m about ...

As bad as the cards went, the end of the week got worse. The one exception being the poker online tournaments but I'll get to that. On Friday night I freerolled into the nightly with a cash win. I at least balanced my tournament binks with some solid tight cash sessions to lessen the damage to my bankroll. I didn’t play a single satellite or any of the Sit'n go tournaments which is unusual for me and I’m not even sure why. In reflection, I wish I had. In events passed I won plenty of buy-ins chips in those satellites and really only suffered minimal bankroll damage. This go round the cash games weren’t quite matching the tournament buy-ins. In fact some of the cash games ended as losses. I used to prefer the smaller megas that gave away $500 chips with all the rebuys and madness yet for some reason they’ve done away with those. So, back to the table, I like my spot, again, and inexplicably after amassing some chips tried an outright bluff on the only decent player at...

Where was I? The Harrahs Bayou classic and the interesting poker of a couple of lunchboxes. You know the betting now what were the hands? Interested, so was the table and so was I, now we’ll finally get to see some Texas Holdem poker hands from these two lunchboxes. Hitch turns over a pair of sevens. Idiot number two 98. Process that. So basically, I’m waiting to catch a hand with these two and just value bet them large every time. They apparently can’t stop themselves from calling. Of course they start to feed the rest of the table their chips and I can’t catch a hand against them. That’s even more aggravating. There are all kinds of other bad plays that I just can’t wrap my head around far worse than when I poker tournaments online . I talk to Alex Wood, who cashed in the first event, at one of the breaks seeking suggestions for how to handle a table that calls any raise, especially when I can get hit to c-bet and I’m usually playing four or five players. He suggests bet...