the game doesn't change, only you can

Sometimes the success you perceive to be good can be a little misleading. Things may be going well short-term but in the overall scheme of things, you might just be spinning your wheels. Several small successes don't really add up to one big prize. Tiny little successes get you through each day but cumulatively, they don't really amount to much more than a small sample of self justification that the day was not a total waste.

How many times have you woke up hoping you're gonna do a little better than the previous day, just to do the same or worse? We're an optimistic, hopeful breed. There's really nothing we can't overcome or improve on. At least that's what we've been led to believe.

I've always felt there was something great out there for me. Something to prove to myself that the time I've spent learning, improving and trying to master my skill would show something really spectacular.

It's a real burden.

How many times have you been fully prepared to take on the challenge ahead of you just to fall flat on your ass? It happens. Just because you've been programmed that study and discipline are keys to success, it's not always the case. And that is why success is so difficult to attain and maintain.

If it was easy, everyone would prosper and succeed. This makes us somewhat masochistic, no? Continuously banging our heads against the wall expecting different results, a sense of insanity.

The game doesn't change, only you can.

let the carnage commence

Two WSOP Main Event seats and two preliminary seats will be awarded as part of the Tournament of Champions. One preliminary seat will be awarded to the Player of the Month for March, April and May.

Win a blogger tournament between March 1st and May 31st, play for a WSOP Main Event seat....that is if you don't lose your marriage, kick the dog a dozen times, go insane or wish to take your own life (or that of some other blonkey fish) first.

GL all, lord help us.

SprStoner makes it to day 4 of the LAPC Main Event

there in the money with 63 players left. tough table draw for 'Stoner.

Day 4 Starting Seat Assignments and Chip Counts
(Table 26)
Seat 1: Nick Binger - 122,000
Seat 2: Chris Karagulleyan - 543,000
Seat 3: Hoyt Corkins - 233,500
Seat 4: Matt Woodward - 420,000
Seat 5: Andre Akkari - 296,000
Seat 6: Zachary Hyman - 151,000
Seat 7: Shawn "SprStoner" Glines - 145,000
Seat 8: Men Nguyen - 107,500
Seat 9: David Pham - 16,500

follow the action at 2009 LAPC Live reporting.

gooooooooooooooo!

sick cash game at Commerce / SprStoner makes it to day 3 of LAPC Main Event

I decided to drive up to Commerce Saturday afternoon to play 200 NL and follow SprStoner's progress.

I ended up sitting at a very loose 200 NL game where the standard pf raise was $25. The problem with this kind of table is if you buy-in max, call a few raises and check/fold, you're suddenly down to $125.

That's exactly what happened to me, then i picked up KK and doubled thru A-7o. That's right kiddies, guy calls a $25 pf raise with A7o hits top pair and can't fold. Life is good.

I pick up KK the very next hand and raise it to $25. Asian guy to my left reraises to $60. I shove, he folds and said he had a big Ace. sure thing buddy.

I end up bleeding back down to $175 when this hand comes up. I limp with 3-3 in EP. A few players limp behind. Flop comes Qh-Kh-3h. Guy in the BB bets pot, i call. Everyone else folds and he says he's all-in dark. I call and the board doesn't pair. I was pretty sure he had the flush but i'm not folding a set ever at this table.

I reload. Later, i pick up A-9o and limp from MP. Button and both blinds check. Flop comes A-A-5. Guy in the BB bets out $20, I call. turn brings an 8. BB bets out $20 again, I call. River is an Ace. BB checks and I bet $40 figuring he has a boat and there's no way he can put me on quads. He folds. Obv betting with air. That's how sick this table was.

Hand of the day. With the table so active, raising $25 pf almost every other hand, i limp with K-K UTG. Obv, half the table limp/calls. The flop comes A-Q-J rainbow. I'm pretty much done with the hand ready to check/fold. It checks around and the turn brings a K. All hell breaks loose. Some guy in SB bets out and the BB shoves all-in before it gets to me. It's obv at least 1 of these guys has a 10 for the broadway straight. I only have like $170 total behind and figure it's time to gamble. The button might even have a 10 and can't fold giving me pot odds to triple up. I shove and sure enough, Button says i have the nuts and shoves. SB calls and we have a four way all in with one card to come.

Pair the board babee, ONE TIME!

The case 10 hits the river and we chop it up. Live poker is so sick.

SprStoner made it to day 3 of the LAPC Main Event with 29k in chips, blinds will start at 600/1200 on Day 3. There are 170 players left with 63 getting paid.

You can follow the action at the 2009 LAPC Main Event.

goooooo Stoner!

Today was a good day

After getting some errands outta the way, i headed down to L.A. to pick up Stoner at his hotel on the way to Commerce Casino.

I heard parking at Commerce was a mutha during LAPC so i went straight to the valet hoping they weren't full. Luckily, we drove right up and dropped the car off without delay.

We got to Commerce around 1pm and i hadn't eaten yet. We went directly to the sports bar and ordered lunch then bolted for the cash tables. Luckily, the list was short and we got seated right away but at different tables.

the 200 NL game at Commerce has 3/5 blinds which is higher than most 200 NL games. It's been a while since i played there so it may have always been 3/5. Anyway, as soon as i took my seat i saw a player all-in on a J-J-J-T-8 board with another player contemplating a call. He finally ablidged and it was quad J's vs. boat. Shortly after, I saw trips vs. trips with better kicker taking it down. There was a lot of action at the table with one older asian guy reloading no less than 5 times while i was there. He donated 1k to the table in just a few hrs. 15-25 pf raises getting 3-4 callers was pretty standard. Stoner was seated at another table and got moved after i told him our table was loose.

i bled off about $70 calling and whiffing pf raises then doubled up with AKo after getting it all in a a K-high flop against the old asian guy to get back up to around $250. After bleeding off some more chips speculating flops, i called a raise from MP with Q-To and flopped an OESD. With like $60 in the pot some guy to my right leads out for only $15. There were a bunch of players behind left to act so I just called, they did the same and the turn brought the Kd to complete my straight but there were two flush draws on board. The guy who bet $15, bets out $60 on the turn and i shove my stack in the middle, he calls and shows down two pair. I double up again and have over $400 behind now.

Several hands later, i pick up QQ in MP. Player leads out in EP for $15, i raise it to $50 and it folds around. He shoves for like another $40, i call and he flips 6-6. This puts me up to over $500. I bleed down some more chips then pick up 2-2 in LP and limp after a bunch of limpers. flop comes K-K-7, it checks around. turn is a 6, it checks around again and the river brings a deuce. Guy to my right bets out $25 and i miraise to $50. It turns out i coulda got more cuz he flipped K-8s.

I cashed out $500 for a +$300 profit on the day. Stoner and I headed to the sports bar for a beer before i jammed home. We ran into Jennifer at the bar who had just finished playing the Media Event.

We had a couple of Full Tilt red pros and an actor, Bill Macy at our cash table. Bill was in one of Tina's favorite xmas movies, "Surviving Christmas". One of the Full Tilt pros looked like "Devilfish". But Stoner doesn't believe it was him. He was very active and open raising pf with shit like 84s which was really good for the table.

I might head back to Commerce on Saturday.

Today was a good day.

Live NL Cash Game Friday

I'm heading to Commerce Casino on Friday. With the 10k Main Event starting Saturday, there should be plenty of well known pros roaming the campus.

I'm gonna meet up with SprStoner for lunch. Stoner won his seat into the LAPC Main Event on FTP. After lunch I'm going to sit down at the 1/2 NL cash tables for a while. Commerce is well known for it's fishy tables on the weekends and during LAPC it should be even better than usual.

The guys from PokerRoad radio are broadcasting live. I might stop by to say hi to the crew before i head home.

goooooo SprStoner!

Poker After Dark “Nets vs Vets” this week

This week on NBC three members from the CardRunners team Taylor Caby, Cole South and David Benefield match up against old timers Doyle Brunson, Eli Elezra and Gabe Kaplan in a high stakes 200/400/100 ante no-limit hold'em cash game with a 100k buy-in.

The combined ages of the CardRunners team is 68 years old while Texas Dolly sits at 75.

They agree to play 7-2 bounty where any player who wins a pot with the hammer gets $1000 from each player at the table and they aren’t timid about blasting away with the mightee seven-deuce. Good times.

You can watch segments from last night’s Nets vs Vets cash game on NBCSports and the rest this week’s game on NBC.

Pot Odds and Hand Distributions

There are three books over the history of poker that have truly revolutionized the game. In the early stages of poker, there was "Super/System" by Doyle Brunson. Doyle's book was the first to show people that poker was really a game of skill, rather than entirely a luck game like craps or roulette. In the modern era, Dan Harrington's "Harrington on Holdem" gave millions of players tools for winning poker tournaments that they weren't aware existed before. In between came "The Theory of Poker" by David Sklansky. Sklansky was one of the first authors to really look at the game mathematically, and show how a mathematical approach could lead to successful poker consistently.

One of his most important mathematical concepts was the concept of pot odds. Pot odds determine whether it is mathematically correct to stay in a hand. If the pot is $45 and the bet is $15 to you, you are being offered a 45-to-15 or 3-to-1 proposition. If you think you have a better than 3-to-1 chance of winning the hand, you have an easy call.

However, it's not always easy to know your chance of winning a hand. You might know that you are 35% to make your flush after the flop. This calculation is done in the most basic poker variations even in video poker. But what if it's a low flush and you know your opponent likes to play draws? What if the flop is jack high and you hold an ace? Will you win if you hit that ace or does your opponent already have two pair or a set? This is where hand distribution comes into play.

Using pot odds with hand distributions means you are putting your opponent on a likely range of hands. For example, in one situation you might say: In this particular scenario, this opponent is likely to hold 88-AA, Ax of hearts, AK or AQ with one heart, or two small hearts. Against that range of hands, I am 25 percent to beat the pairs, 75 percent to beat the one heart hands, and drawing dead against the two heart hands. You would then combine your odds against each hand in the range to create a rough estimation of your likelihood of winning the hand. Compare these to the pot odds to know whether you have a call. While it is difficult to make exactly this calculation while in a game, making a rough guess with this goal in mind is likely to result in better decisions.

Venetian DSE Tournament Megapost

I picked a good day to drive up. Clear day without a hint of rain. The drive to Vegas always seems to fly by, coming back....not so much. I got to Harrah's around 2:30pm Tuesday afternoon, checked in and jammed over to Venetian. Within minutes I was sitting down at an $80 single table satellite. Top 2 finishers get $340.

The structure in their sats make them a turbo. You get 1500 chips with 15 min blind levels. But like most sats, they're full of donks. We lost 3 players within the 1st orbit. I hadn't even played a hand yet. In the 2nd orbit, i pick up QQ and raise it to 400 (blinds at 50/100), some guy to my left shoves. I call he shows KK, gg me. I decide to play cash for a bit to see if i can win a buy-in to another satellite.

After about 90 mins, I'm up +$100 at 1/2 NL and cash out to play another satellite. I did well at the cash tables this trip. the only down session i had was before Wednesday's noon tourney, i sat down and ran KK into a player in the BB who woke up with AA. We got it aipf and i didn't get lucky. Other then that one cooler, every other cash game session was profitable.

I get to the satellite area and I barely get into another $80 satellite that was filling up. This time we only lost 2 players in the 1st orbit. Gotta luv these. I pick up KhQh in the BB and smooth call a 3x pf raise. Flop comes 9 high with 2 hearts, i check/raise all in and get snap called by KdQd. I'm freerolling but don't get lucky, we chop the pot. I won a couple small pots after with 66 and 77, in the meantime we lose a few more players and we're down to five. I pick up AA utg and raise it to 400 with the blinds at 75/150. Two players call on the button and BB. Flop comes Q high and the BB leads out for 400. I pause/shove and he calls saying "i hope you have KQ" and shows QJo. Turn is a J and i'm out. He apologizes and I decide to call it a night.

I don't sleep well in hotels without Tina and end up waking at around 8am which is rare for me when i'm at home. I shower up and get back to Venetian to have something to eat. After breakfast, I register for the $330 DSE and take a seat at the cash tables. As i mentioned earlier, i got stacked with KK vs AA. Shortly after Chad walks up and he tells me he final tabled a bunch of tourneys on FTP the last couple days and didn't win any so he doesn't want to hear any bad beat stories. LOL

We take our seats in the $330 and i see KK once during the 2nd level only to pick up the blinds. I lose about $1600 with AKs right before the 1st break at the end of the 3rd level and am down to around 10k to start level 4. Blinds are only 100/200/25 ante in level 4 but there's a big jump in level 8 to 600/1200/100 ante so you can't sit around forever waiting for a monster. We find out the field has 311 players total with 1st place paying $28k, 2nd gets $16k and 3rd pays out $9k. 27 players total will be paid.

Within the first orbit after the break i pick up AsQs utg and limp. The player on the button and another in the blinds have been pretty active so i expect a raise. The button limps after it folds to him, SB folds and the BB makes it $1300. We both call and see the flop 3 handed. Flop comes 7 high with 2 spades, BB checks, i check. Button makes it 2000 to go, BB shoves and I shove. Button shoves as well, I mean why not right? The guy on the button has shown down all kinds of whack hands and even busted AA with J9s after whiffing the flop and shoving into the pf raiser. He caught runners of course. Anyway back to our hand, he shows 8sTs and the BB shows AKo (no pair, no draw just overs). Button had an inside straight draw to go with his 10-high spade draw. A spade binks on the turn and i take down a HUGE pot of around 27k.

I win a couple of small pots pf and lose another one with AQ against the same player i lost 1600 to earlier with AKs. We get involved in a big pot. I pick up JJ in the CO and smooth call his standard raise. Flop comes A-J-X with 2 clubs. He bets out 1700 and I raise it to 4000. He thinks for a bit and shoves I snap call and he shows AKo. I think this was a terrible shove on his part. The only thing can beat is AQ or if i have AK the best he can hope for is a chop. I barely have him covered and stack up around 55k in chips. This is what i finish level 6 with.

I'm off to a good start and have the chip lead at our table going into level 7. Blinds move up to 400/800/75 ante. At this point, I just want to try and maintain my 55k stack through the next few levels, pick up some small pots and hope for a good spot to take out one of the middle stacks. The shortys will start to get restless so I expect some race situations to come up. Not much happens the first couple of orbits until i pick up 99 in MP. A shorty in EP raises all in for about 7k, I call and it folds around. He flips AKo and the flop comes J-9-x pretty much sealing it. He does pick up a gutterball draw on the turn but it never materializes. I have over 60k at this point which turns out to be my high water mark.

Another couple of orbits later i pick up Ac5c in the BB. A shorty that just got moved to the table with only 6k shoves into my BB. I call, he flips AKo and flops a King to double through. Although I realize i'm probably behind most of the time there, it sends a message to the rest of the table not to fuck with my BB. I'm willing to call light.

We get to level 8 and i have around 50k. I pick up AJo in EP and a shorty to my immediate left shoves for around 7k, i call and she flips TT which is good all the way until a Jack binks on the river. Back up to almost 60k.

Then the wheels start to come off.

I pick up JJ and make a standard raise, It folds around to the BB who is the eurodonk that snapped AA with J9s earlier and got all in against me with 8s-Ts in the three way all-in where i tripled up with AsQs. Anyway, he shoves for about 10k and I snap call. He flips Q-To. I fade the Q all the way through the turn and he spikes it on the river to double through. That put me back down to under 50k.

I get down to about 45k after a couple more orbits then we move to level 9, 800/1600/200 ante. I wake up with AA in the BB and it folds around to the button, i'm hoping he tries to steal which he does. I repop and he insta-shoves. I mean he couldn't get his chips in the middle fast enough. He has around 30k and flips 7-7. He say's "bad timing". Then the board runs out and he catches runners for a J-high straight. I'm down to 15k just like that.

Shortly after, Tina texts me wanting to know how its going. I've been sending her updates throughout the day. I text her what just happened and the Dealer tells me she's going to give me a penalty if i use my phone during a hand one more time. I've been very discreet about it the whole time hiding my phone under the table while i message Tina. I tell the dealer, "so the last two bad beats you laid on me weren't enough huh, thanks for the warning". I was pretty pissed at that point with the way things were going but i wasn't ready to just call it quits and shove with any two.

I get to the 3rd break with around 12k and the blinds are about to go up to 1000/2000/300 ante. We play one more level then take a one hour dinner break. I get through level 10 with the same amount of chips and head to Grand Lux Cafe for dinner.

I come back from the dinner break on life support with the blinds at 1500/3000/500 ante just hoping to catch some hands i can shove with. Sitting in the CO after the break I have almost one whole orbit to pick up a hand. After 4 hands, i pick up QJo and shove. A guy who has a hard on for any Ace (he called a reraise shove for 2/3rd of his stack earlier with A7s and ran into AK). He calls from LP and flips A8o. I flop a Q and catch runners for a Q-high straight to double up to 24k.

I get through one more orbit and end up open shoving A9o from MP. Guy to my immediate left reshoves and flips 10-10. I don't get lucky and am done. I played 9.5 hrs to finish 50th for nada. Head to the bar to get drunk then call it a night.

By the way, i came back the following day to see who made the final table and the eurodonk who doubled through when he monkey shoved with Q-To from the BB into my JJ and binked a Q on the river was there. He ended up finishing 7th for $3601. Here were the final payouts for Wednesday's Venetian DSE Tournament prize pool Chad and I donated to.

Anyone who made it through all this, congrats and thanks for reading.

Business trip approved

Last night I received final approval from smokkee.com CFO and primary backer to drive out to the desert for Venetian's Deepstack Extravaganza this week.

I have the most supportive and understanding partner on the planet and it doesn't hurt that she looks damn good in a bikini. But, she did put a bit of added pressure on me saying i must come home with lots of $$. As if I don't put enough pressure on myself already.

I leave tomorrow morning and expect to arrive in LV sometime late Tuesday afternoon. I booked a room for 3 nights at Harrah's ($27/nt) which is within close proximity to Venetian where I'll set up shop. The plan is to play one or two single table satellites into a $330 event Tuesday followed by some 1/2 NL cash, play Wednesday's $330 DSE event if I can cover my buy-in either from a satellite win or cash table play. Then finish up the trip on the cash tables Thursday before I return home Friday morning.

I'm only gonna try to play one event. The tournaments start at noon and play until the final table is formed or 2am whichever comes first. Then final table resumes the following day at 4pm. They've been averaging approximately 300 players in the midweek $330 events. You can view results on Cardplayer.

Sick structure for a $300 MTT, 12000 chips/40 min levels/blinds start at 25/50.

wish me luck

vegas is so close...

smokkee is in a helluva predicament. Tina is flying off to CLE next week cuz her sister had a baby. She's excited about her little niece.

Me? i'm excited about my niece too but i'm also excited about playing some uninterrupted live tournament poker.

I considered LAPC, but LAPC tournaments have a lamo structure, 3000 chips / 40 min levels. the Venetian deepstack series gets you 12,500 chips and 40 min levels.

no brainer really.

so unless Tina locks me to a bumper, pole or fire hydrant, i don't see how i can skip that.

btw, strip hotels are offering rooms at less than $50 a nt and i can satellite into their deepstack $330 event for $80. If i whiff i can recoup losses at the cash tables.

what is poker... ABC's

Hello kiddies !

Poker is a game that's sometimes thought of as the national card game of the US, although it's in fact a game played all around the world pretty much anywhere that card games are played. Many people Play Poker at home with friends, in casinos, and online.

The object of Poker is to win money put into a central pot by the players as they lay bets. There are two basic ways to win at poker. The first and most obvious is to have the best hand, and the second is to bet with a worse hand and get your opponents to fold.

This is the skill part, play worse hands and win or get opponents to pay you off with worse hands.

There are various different forms of poker each of which has it’s own rules, however most poker variations share the same scoring system for which hand is best. In order, these are: Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Straight, Three of a Kind, Two Pairs, One Pair, and Highest Card Ace down to Deuce. Remembering the order in which these score is somewhat important as betting your hand if you don’t know where you stand is not good.

Depending on the poker variant that you're playing, the dealer will deal the cards each round and require players to put in their antes, blinds or bets. These are two different forms of placing an initial bet amount into the pot so that there is something to win. If an Ante is used it is sometimes called buying into the game. The amount required in a Blind or Ante will vary according to the stakes being played for.

Rounds of betting are alternated with the dealer dealing more cards to the players or the community board depending again on the variant being played. Betting will go on until the river (last card) is dealt and a final betting round will then begin. Once the bet runs round the table without any raises being made, the players remaining in the game will showdown their cards and the player with the best hand will win the pot. If all players fold before the game reaches this conclusion then the remaining player wins the pot regardless of the cards they hold.

This is the beauty of poker. The best hand doesn't always win.

When playing poker in a casino or card room, it is common for the house to take a rake from the pot. This is a small amount of money – usually 5-10% - which is effectively paid to the house to pay for things like the dealer and building maintenance, etc.

The most common variants of poker played online and off are Pot Limit Omaha, Texas Hold’em (also known just as hold’em or 5 card stud), draw poker and seven card stud poker.

There are of course many other variations out there and occasionally you may come across them, but if you know the main variants then you should be able to pick up the rules of any others you come across quite quickly.

Poker is a game which requires much discipline, some skill and a bit of luck.

SB / FTOPS / Slow start to Feb

in no particular order

As good as January was for me (+33% ROI), I'm off to a pretty bad start in February (-19%). I'm still spending the majority of my time on Full Tilt playing low buy-in mtt's, sngs and sats.

FTOPS XXXXXXI starts tonight and I expect to play quite a few sats but, will probably bypass the actual FTOPS lotteries altogether unless i string together a sick run of sat wins. I've been using the sats to play smaller fields primarily. BTW, the last two checks i requested from FTP took less than a week to receive and I had no trouble depositing them, well done Full Tilt.

re: Superbowl - is it just me or did the Steelers pretty much catch every break last Sunday including two river suckouts to end each half. I won a small parlay on AZ taking them +7 and the over (47) in the game but, I really wanted to see Warner and the red birds take it down. I'll be very surprised if he calls it quits after their run this year.

Good luck to everyone playing FTOPS, hopefully a blogger takes down a big score in one of those lotteries.