another 2nd in 'Stars $22/180p, Angels 2008 postseason gets underway

i've run through 10 $22 / 180 player sng's since my 2nd place finish for $720 last Wednesday and finally had a good shot at taking one down today. i came into the final table 2nd in chips but eventually took out the chip leader after flopping a set of J's (JJok one time) against his 2p then winning a coin flip with him all in shortly after. i was able to take 3 other players out before we got 3-handed and had a comfortable chip lead but I had a stubborn player on my left that kept playing back at me. he finally succumbed to a bad beat against the remaining donk (KK vs 55 aipf) and we got heads up. i had a 3-2 chip lead.

i ground the donk up HU with him having to resort to monkey shoving into my pf raises. i finally called with 99 vs his AsKs. an Ace popped off on the turn and that got him most of my chips. but i still had about 6 bb's left when i limp shoved his pf raise with 88. he called with A-Ts and spiked an Ace on the flop.

very frustrating finish



The BoSox make their way to OC for the ALDS Wednesday. I'd luv to see the Halos pound Boston on their way to the W.S. I'm also hoping to see the Dodgers do well so i can clown on my pops (his fav team) in a freeway series. but, i think the blue crew will have a difficult time getting past the Cubbies.

The Curse obv won't kick in until the NLCS.

Back where it all started…

I’ve been spending most of my playing time at PokerStars the last couple of weeks. ‘Stars is where I first started playing online back in ’04. The first tournament I ever cashed there was a $3 Limit Hold’em tourney. I finished 35th (of 758) for $10.

:D

Things I like about ‘Stars is their fast/stable software, player traffic and variety of tournaments/satellites. The only thing I really hate about playing there is no rakeback.

Monday I played an $11 double-shootout for a seat to the Sunday Million and won it. I promptly unregistered so I could use the t$215 for other tournaments and sngs. I’ve been playing the 180-player sngs and final tabled a few but, couldn’t finish in the top 3.

Yesterday I finally broke through and finished 2nd for $720. 1st paid $1080 so I was a little disappointed not to take it down, especially after getting off to such a great start with over T13,000 chips after the 1st break. The guy I was playing HU would not respect my c-bets (obv) and kept hitting after the flop. I finally shoved into his pf raise with the “tourist” (A7o), he snap called with AQo and that was that.

Here’s a screenshot of my stats after the 1st break. I saw 41% of the flops.



After I doubled up, I started calling pf raises with a wide range from LP in multi-way pots to try and get lucky. That worked out pretty well.

I came into the final table with a middle stack, 5th in chips with the two big stacks to my left.



I just waited for good spots to get my chips in and my timing was dead on. When I finally got heads up, I was at a slight chip disadvantage and never gained the lead. I don’t spend much time playing HU and probably spewed a little too much.

I’ll continue playing these $22 180’s along with some other tournaments on ‘Stars. the structure is pretty good (15 min levels) and the top 3 payouts are decent for a $20 buy-in.

PokerStars just starting running satellites to the PCA so i'll probably take a few shots at that.

advice for Favre

should stayed on the couch with your prune juice son.

Bolts take on the ol' geezer on MNF in SD

the party's rockin' YES

$700 turbo DS anyone?



:D

it's on and poppin' YES

drink all day play all night..

NSFW

our friends at the BuddyDank need to add this to their rotation obv.

LMFAOMusic

rather be fishing for T$ on Tuesday nights?

a comeback may be in the works.

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Pros
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Cons
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Features at the site
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Tips: With this in mind, each time when you sign up at a poker room, you should make sure that you go through a good and viable site with rakeback or poker bonus offers. Once you’ve signed up with a poker room, there’s no way back. Also, Rake Brain has no offers with Poker Stars or Party Poker, which is a pity. But you can’t blame Rake Brain for this –those poker rooms don’t do rakeback. That’s why you can’t get it.

The importance of rake in online poker
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was there supposed to be a BIG game last night?

cuz i missed it. all i saw was the mightee Trojans beat down a team that's been overrated and underachieving for the past few years.

its actually pretty unfortunate because i was hoping for a good game. i don't think Chris "i hurt my peenie" Wells woulda made a bit of difference either. they were outmatched and outplayed on all sides of the ball.

the Angels clinched another A.L. West division title and should end up with the best regular season record in baseball. they'll probably get matched up with the BoSox in the first round of the playoffs which is fine by me. a chance for a little payback on their way to the W.S.

the Bolts / Donkeys game starts in a few mins. should be a good one.

EDIT: Are you fuggin' kidding me?

i picked a real good time to run like gawd

the Fawk Tilt gods had to fugg with me and give me a $5 tourney gg pokah gods.

4 ways to lose a tournament / Winning Tournaments

I've been playing some low buy-in tournaments the past week and doing some reading. i recently came across this p5's article in their archives.

"4 ways to lose a tournament and how to avoid them"

Even though the article is two years old, it's still a helpful reminder of the pitfalls in tournament play and adjustments that can be made to avoid them.

I also picked up "Winning Tournaments - One Hand at a Time" through PokerXfactor by Rizen, PearlJammer and Apestyles ($27.95). When you order the book through PokerXfactor they throw in 25 training videos by the authors. If you're not a current training site subscriber, this is a cheap way to get access to some MTT training videos including Rizen's win in the Stars Million for $156k (5108 players / 5-21-06).

BTW, Rizen final tabled Bodog's 100k this past Sunday.

Vote now!

place your vote on the number of comments i get on my "Presidential Election" post.

Poll on the right -->>

whats your opinion on this year's Presidential Election?

Rare appearance in the 'mOok / soOted Aces are *gold* / Cake sng's / other odds and ends

i decided to make a rare appearance in everyone's favorite bloggah junk-kicking tourney hoping to get seated across from the break-even pokah player. instead i was a seated across from several 'mOokie regs and busted a few within the first hour.

after more than doubling my starting stack i picked up Ac-8c and called a CO raise (after action was folded to him) from the SB and the BB came along. an A-8-x hit the flop and i check-raised the CO who proceeded to shove his stack in with KK. since check-raises get no respeck (especially from me), i gathered his chips and shot to the top of the leaderboard. unfortunately, i made a few mistakes along the way including doubling the host with Kc-Jc vs. K-K but still worked my way to the Final Table with a middle stack. I ended up shoving over the top of a pot-sized pf raise with AKs and lost a flip vs. 8-8 finishing 9th. Speaker took it down making a difficult call HU.

I've been hopping around from site to site trying to get acclimated to Cake Poker and rekindle the love / hate relationship with Fawk Tilt and RiverStars. Although Cake's sng payout structure is attractive, there just isn't enough traffic at the higher level buy-in's to consider it for the SNG Challenge. Another interesting offering at Cake is double-up SNG's with a flat payout structure where the top 5 players in a 10-handed SNG get double their buy-in. While that structure doesn't interest me much, it may be of interest to others who want to build a BR there. Several of Cake's tournaments have overlays but, the overlays aren't as big as Bodog's. this past Sunday's 100k Guarantee at Bodog had a 45k overlay. Pretty incredible. I won't be able to play it this Sunday due to the Chargers home opener. But, i don't see how i can pass on it when they're on the road even if it does take 2 months or more to get paid.

looking forward to the kickoff of the 2008 NFL season. good luck at the tables.