I hate rebuy tournaments. Actually, to be more specific, I hate the 1st hour of a rebuy tournament where you have unlimited rebuys. Everybody plays loose, going all in on gutshot draws, middle pair, even bottom pair. It's so easy to get sucked in and before you know it you've already rebought 4 times and you're still back to your original stack while cocksucking fishes have already quadrupled up.
But admittedly there's also a good thing to it. For a small amount of buy-in, the pot gets quite big. You just have to know how to conserve your stack and not get suckered by all the action. As a lot of poker players would say, the actual tourney starts only after the rebuy/add-on period ends.
So recently, I've added rebuy tourneys to the usual freeze-out MTTs that I play, but with a slight twist. I only register after 55 minutes of play have already passed by. This means that I bypass all the donkey play and go right into the action after the rebuys are almost done. Obviously, I am low stacked and start with a distinct disadvantage. But its still ok because once I avail of the addon then I would usually start with around 20x the big blind.
I then play short stack poker and hope to double up sometime in the next few rounds to get right back in the fight. Of course, things don't always come out my way. But I've played 3 rebuy tourneys using this strategy and I have ITM'd twice. My cost is fixed at 3x the buyin. (2 rebuys and 1 addon) and I don't end up spending too many rebuys trying to outplay the donkeys in the 1st few rounds. Also, I skip the 1st hour and my total playing time is shorter.
I wouldn't recommend this to everyone but I feel its a valid strategy that can reap dividends if you play it correctly.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
SNG Home Game
The other day, my brother invited me to his house for a NLHE home game. Basically a one table SNG with some of his friends for pretty low stakes. 2oo pesos buy in. Katuwaan lang.
After playing online exclusively for quite some time, I was surprised at how slooooow everything felt. From the shuffling to the dealing, to the table banter and the pauses for snack and toilet breaks. Of course there was the element of human tells that you don't get online. But I didn't even need to read the faces or the tics or any of the Caro tells. At that level of friendly play, you just play straightforward poker, read the bets and you'd usually come out on top.
But this post is really not about me winning or losing the home game. I just suddenly realized while playing the home game SNG that it could actually be done thru one of the poker sites and make everything faster. I mean, set up a wireless network, everybody bring a laptop (assuming everyone owns a laptop), register an account, create a private game in one of the sites, assign someone with a big enough bankroll to be the treasurer essentially collecting cash and transferring T$ and then it should be good to go. After the game, the winners can transfer back and collect the dough. Some of the logistics can be done prior to the scheduled start time.
This should make the game much faster. And for the same amount of time that you spend playing the live SNG, you can probably go through 2 or 3 online games especially at a turbo setting. So parang the best of both worlds. You get the speed of online play (i'm sure everybody hates shuffling and dealing cards) while at the same time you still got everybody in one roof and maintain the camarederie, not to mention the drinking and the taunting and trash talking.
The only problem I can see is with regards to the single IP address that will be used by everyone in the game. I don't know if the poker room filters will see this as collusion/multiple accounts and might get you banned. But it is a private game and can be explained as such. You're paying the same rake that the site would normally get for one of their games anyway. Also, I'm not sure how long it takes to set up a private game. Do you need to email site support and is it instantaneous ? Maybe some scheduling needs to be involved.
Has anybody ever tried doing this before ? Kindly comment on what happened as it would be interesting to know the details and how it was done. I think there are also sites like Triplejack where you can set up private poker lounges.
After playing online exclusively for quite some time, I was surprised at how slooooow everything felt. From the shuffling to the dealing, to the table banter and the pauses for snack and toilet breaks. Of course there was the element of human tells that you don't get online. But I didn't even need to read the faces or the tics or any of the Caro tells. At that level of friendly play, you just play straightforward poker, read the bets and you'd usually come out on top.
But this post is really not about me winning or losing the home game. I just suddenly realized while playing the home game SNG that it could actually be done thru one of the poker sites and make everything faster. I mean, set up a wireless network, everybody bring a laptop (assuming everyone owns a laptop), register an account, create a private game in one of the sites, assign someone with a big enough bankroll to be the treasurer essentially collecting cash and transferring T$ and then it should be good to go. After the game, the winners can transfer back and collect the dough. Some of the logistics can be done prior to the scheduled start time.
This should make the game much faster. And for the same amount of time that you spend playing the live SNG, you can probably go through 2 or 3 online games especially at a turbo setting. So parang the best of both worlds. You get the speed of online play (i'm sure everybody hates shuffling and dealing cards) while at the same time you still got everybody in one roof and maintain the camarederie, not to mention the drinking and the taunting and trash talking.
The only problem I can see is with regards to the single IP address that will be used by everyone in the game. I don't know if the poker room filters will see this as collusion/multiple accounts and might get you banned. But it is a private game and can be explained as such. You're paying the same rake that the site would normally get for one of their games anyway. Also, I'm not sure how long it takes to set up a private game. Do you need to email site support and is it instantaneous ? Maybe some scheduling needs to be involved.
Has anybody ever tried doing this before ? Kindly comment on what happened as it would be interesting to know the details and how it was done. I think there are also sites like Triplejack where you can set up private poker lounges.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Season's Greetings !!
Here's wishing the readers of my blog and all the Pokermanila members a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Shut Out
I played in 3 tourneys simultaneously this early Monday morning. And I went 0 out of 3. Yep, so now I'm in the office falling half asleep while feeling slightly depressed. Heheh. No excuses really. Yes, the cards were not falling. But I was also playing like crap.
First was the $100+9 buy in 50K Guaranteed Tourney over at Cake Poker. Played ok until after the 2nd break. Had average stack when I get 10 10. Raised it up. Got reraised all in. Called. And opponent shows AA.
Next up was the $50+5 buy in 125K guaranteed at Pokerstars. Also played ok until the 2nd break. Then I limped in KQ in middle position. 2 other limpers. And flop goes Q 10 10. I fired out a bet, one limper folded, the other limper tanked and then finally pushed all in. I got him covered. I knew from the way he played it that he didn't have the 10. So he had the Q. Since I had a K kicker. The only hand that could beat me was AQ. But who in their right mind would limp AQ. My instinct was telling me I was beat but I made the call and villain fucking shows AQ. This crippled my stack and I don't remember how I actually busted out, but I think I pushed with Ax and somebody called with a pocket pair.
Finally, there was the blogger tourney. Don't remember too much details. Also survived until the 2nd break but was low stacked. Was pretty much hovering around average to low stack the whole tourney. Finally pushed with QJ when my M was less than 8. Got called by AJ. And that was it for me.
My bust outs from the 3 tourneys all happened in a 30 minute span. Which kind of suggests that tilt was probably somewhere in the equation. I wanted to play 3 tourneys at the same time so as not to waste the early wake-up call. This is fine I guess as long as I'm doing well. But it also poses a risk of me tilting from one result and then affecting the others.
But if I only play 1 tourney, I play listlessly because I'm sleepy and just want to get it over with. Heheh.... oh well. Can't be too disappointed. Its been a good year poker wise so far. So hopefully we can still end the year with a bang.
First was the $100+9 buy in 50K Guaranteed Tourney over at Cake Poker. Played ok until after the 2nd break. Had average stack when I get 10 10. Raised it up. Got reraised all in. Called. And opponent shows AA.
Next up was the $50+5 buy in 125K guaranteed at Pokerstars. Also played ok until the 2nd break. Then I limped in KQ in middle position. 2 other limpers. And flop goes Q 10 10. I fired out a bet, one limper folded, the other limper tanked and then finally pushed all in. I got him covered. I knew from the way he played it that he didn't have the 10. So he had the Q. Since I had a K kicker. The only hand that could beat me was AQ. But who in their right mind would limp AQ. My instinct was telling me I was beat but I made the call and villain fucking shows AQ. This crippled my stack and I don't remember how I actually busted out, but I think I pushed with Ax and somebody called with a pocket pair.
Finally, there was the blogger tourney. Don't remember too much details. Also survived until the 2nd break but was low stacked. Was pretty much hovering around average to low stack the whole tourney. Finally pushed with QJ when my M was less than 8. Got called by AJ. And that was it for me.
My bust outs from the 3 tourneys all happened in a 30 minute span. Which kind of suggests that tilt was probably somewhere in the equation. I wanted to play 3 tourneys at the same time so as not to waste the early wake-up call. This is fine I guess as long as I'm doing well. But it also poses a risk of me tilting from one result and then affecting the others.
But if I only play 1 tourney, I play listlessly because I'm sleepy and just want to get it over with. Heheh.... oh well. Can't be too disappointed. Its been a good year poker wise so far. So hopefully we can still end the year with a bang.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Survived
Survival was the operative word as I played the 2nd qualifying round of the World Blogger's Tourney this morning. I deliberately missed the 1st round since it started at 3AM and was Pot Limit Omaha. I just registered and promptly went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I saw that I finished 148th place out of 400 something participants. Didn't really expect to qualify. Just wanted to see how one would finish without playing a hand. Heheh...
The 2nd round was NLHE and started at 8AM with about 500+ players. This one I was definitely playing. The problem was I had to go to work at 9AM. So I devised a plan. I'll play the first hour, hope to double up, then take the 30 minute drive to the office, then continue from there.
As we all know, plans don't necessarily work out the way you would want them. Initial stack was 2,500. I got it up to around 3,200 when I got a nut flush. But this was immediately taken back down to 2,500 when I chased a draw which didn't materialize and I had to fold. And then it was time to go to the office. Traffic was the normal christmas rush and when I got to my PC, my stack was blinded down to around 2K. Not too bad.
Well, to make a long story short. I was basically playing short stacked poker the rest of the way. I was card dead and was just relying on some steals and squeezes to keep my head above water. The only decent card I got was KK somewhere in the middle of the tourney which got paid off by somebody with a lower pair. After that, it was downhill and I couldn't get a hand.
Near the bubble and I had around 5 to 6xBB. I just waited for the action to be folded to me and then I went on hail marys with crappy hands. Really no choice. I think I even went all in with 10 7 offsuit which luckily did not get called. Good thing about the blogger tourney was that the tables were pretty tight. Even the monster stacks were folding liberally and was not too aggressive.
Eventually we got down to 73. I got about 5K left and the blinds were if I'm not mistaken 750-1500. 72 was the magic number. Lo and behold. I get pocket rockets. Yep. Fucking AA. Great timing, poker gods. I already used up my time bank and was just delaying. But I was definitely folding them if the action came to me. I kept on pressing the refresh button on my status screen hoping for the bubble to break. And just like that, 2 players got eliminated and I qualified. Woohoo .... I immediately press ALL IN and my aces got called by a monster stack with 10 6 suited. He flopped 789 and that was it for me. Are we appreciating the irony here ? But I'm in the blogger finals and that's all that matters.
This 2nd round tourney was pretty much my best shot and good thing I qualified as I would have probably skipped all the remaining qualifiers except the last one which was on a Saturday. So nice result for me. Good luck to all the other Pinoy bloggers. I'll see you in the finals. =)
The 2nd round was NLHE and started at 8AM with about 500+ players. This one I was definitely playing. The problem was I had to go to work at 9AM. So I devised a plan. I'll play the first hour, hope to double up, then take the 30 minute drive to the office, then continue from there.
As we all know, plans don't necessarily work out the way you would want them. Initial stack was 2,500. I got it up to around 3,200 when I got a nut flush. But this was immediately taken back down to 2,500 when I chased a draw which didn't materialize and I had to fold. And then it was time to go to the office. Traffic was the normal christmas rush and when I got to my PC, my stack was blinded down to around 2K. Not too bad.
Well, to make a long story short. I was basically playing short stacked poker the rest of the way. I was card dead and was just relying on some steals and squeezes to keep my head above water. The only decent card I got was KK somewhere in the middle of the tourney which got paid off by somebody with a lower pair. After that, it was downhill and I couldn't get a hand.
Near the bubble and I had around 5 to 6xBB. I just waited for the action to be folded to me and then I went on hail marys with crappy hands. Really no choice. I think I even went all in with 10 7 offsuit which luckily did not get called. Good thing about the blogger tourney was that the tables were pretty tight. Even the monster stacks were folding liberally and was not too aggressive.
Eventually we got down to 73. I got about 5K left and the blinds were if I'm not mistaken 750-1500. 72 was the magic number. Lo and behold. I get pocket rockets. Yep. Fucking AA. Great timing, poker gods. I already used up my time bank and was just delaying. But I was definitely folding them if the action came to me. I kept on pressing the refresh button on my status screen hoping for the bubble to break. And just like that, 2 players got eliminated and I qualified. Woohoo .... I immediately press ALL IN and my aces got called by a monster stack with 10 6 suited. He flopped 789 and that was it for me. Are we appreciating the irony here ? But I'm in the blogger finals and that's all that matters.
This 2nd round tourney was pretty much my best shot and good thing I qualified as I would have probably skipped all the remaining qualifiers except the last one which was on a Saturday. So nice result for me. Good luck to all the other Pinoy bloggers. I'll see you in the finals. =)
Friday, December 12, 2008
Shitty Schedule
I just noticed that all my post titles for December started with the letter 'S'. So I decided to just continue with this set-up for the rest of the month. Let's see if I can at least make the title related to the post.
Before anything else, what pinoy blog would be complete without a brief mention of the Pacquiao annihilation of Dela Hoya. I know its a little late but hey what can you do. Every boxing expert said it was going to be a mismatch and it turns out they were right, only it was the other way around. The main man from the Philippines totally dominated the Golden Boy and in the end, DLH quit and no longer stood up for the 9th round.
No matter how ugly it looked. I can understand the reason why the corner and DLH threw in the towel. Even with the huge humiliation that was about to happen. Boxers are supposed to be these gladiators who fight to the end. DLH had no choice. He was being pounded black and blue and had no chance of winning. He already booked $20M ++ from the fight win or lose. Why would he risk getting damaged permanently or even knocked out on his ass ?
Obviously for Pacquiao, it was the biggest win of his career and opens up lots of opportunities including a mega bucks fight with Floyd Mayweather who appears to have decided to unretire to face the Pacman.
The only negative thing I can see from the result of the fight is that it financially weakens boxing as a sport in general. No matter what we say about Dela Hoya. People from around the world paid good money to see him fight. With the rising popularity of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and its encroachment into boxing's profits , I don't think anybody can match DLH's popularity and charisma. Even if we treat Pacquiao like a god here in the Philippines, the average American may not pay the extra $50 for a PPV fight of Pacquiao. I know its kind demented, but that's how the boxing business goes and some of it is admittedly racial prejudice to the smaller Asian fighters.
In other news, as you can see above, I registered for the Pokerstars Blogger's Tourney which is starting next week. This is the first time I am playing this tournament and hopefully I do well. It seems that every blogger has six chances to make it to the finals as there are six qualifiers in different poker disciplines. I myself am only planning to play the NLHE events. Although I know how to vaguely play Omaha and I would want to take every chance to qualify. The shitty early morning schedule is just a killer. I don't think I can wake up early 6 days in a row to play a qualifying tourney and still go to work. So I have decided to just play NLHE although I do think one has a better chance in Omaha if you are good at it just because less people will be playing and there will be lots of dead money from people who are just trying it because its free.
Anyway, Good luck to everybody who will be playing in the events !!
Before anything else, what pinoy blog would be complete without a brief mention of the Pacquiao annihilation of Dela Hoya. I know its a little late but hey what can you do. Every boxing expert said it was going to be a mismatch and it turns out they were right, only it was the other way around. The main man from the Philippines totally dominated the Golden Boy and in the end, DLH quit and no longer stood up for the 9th round.
No matter how ugly it looked. I can understand the reason why the corner and DLH threw in the towel. Even with the huge humiliation that was about to happen. Boxers are supposed to be these gladiators who fight to the end. DLH had no choice. He was being pounded black and blue and had no chance of winning. He already booked $20M ++ from the fight win or lose. Why would he risk getting damaged permanently or even knocked out on his ass ?
Obviously for Pacquiao, it was the biggest win of his career and opens up lots of opportunities including a mega bucks fight with Floyd Mayweather who appears to have decided to unretire to face the Pacman.
The only negative thing I can see from the result of the fight is that it financially weakens boxing as a sport in general. No matter what we say about Dela Hoya. People from around the world paid good money to see him fight. With the rising popularity of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and its encroachment into boxing's profits , I don't think anybody can match DLH's popularity and charisma. Even if we treat Pacquiao like a god here in the Philippines, the average American may not pay the extra $50 for a PPV fight of Pacquiao. I know its kind demented, but that's how the boxing business goes and some of it is admittedly racial prejudice to the smaller Asian fighters.
In other news, as you can see above, I registered for the Pokerstars Blogger's Tourney which is starting next week. This is the first time I am playing this tournament and hopefully I do well. It seems that every blogger has six chances to make it to the finals as there are six qualifiers in different poker disciplines. I myself am only planning to play the NLHE events. Although I know how to vaguely play Omaha and I would want to take every chance to qualify. The shitty early morning schedule is just a killer. I don't think I can wake up early 6 days in a row to play a qualifying tourney and still go to work. So I have decided to just play NLHE although I do think one has a better chance in Omaha if you are good at it just because less people will be playing and there will be lots of dead money from people who are just trying it because its free.
Anyway, Good luck to everybody who will be playing in the events !!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Smokin
I think I'm officially on fire. Besides the ITM in the Sunday Million, there were these 2 other tournaments that I played sometime in the last few days.
The 2nd place was even a bad beat finish as the last hand had my AK suited going up against an A10 which flopped the 10.
Of course, now that I've written about it, the lucky streak will surely end. Heheh....
A cynic might say, how come I only post the wins and not the losses, which to a certain extent is true. But I think its just human nature to brag somewhat when you achieve something. Also much in the same way that I don't post the losses, I also don't post any of the small ITMs which are not top 3. So fair lang. Also, I am assuming that people can easily check the online result trackers if they want to verify if I am a losing player overall and just got lucky in the tourneys that I post. Besides, who wants to read about bad beats and whine stories about losing ?
Just in case you didn't read my Cake pimping a while back. Check out the last tournament in the picture above where I placed 2nd. It was a $10+1 tourney with $1,500 guaranteed. But there were only 117 players overall. So the overlay was a pretty nice $330. Certainly way better than those overcrowded tourneys in Full Tilt or Pokerstars which take forever to finish and are filled with semi pro wannabees.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Some Thoughts from the last tourney
Its been about a week from the time I played the Pokerstars Sunday Million and I wanted to write down some observations and notables that happened during the tourney
I was the one who busted out Rainkhan somewhere in the middle of the tourney. For those of you who are not familiar. Hevad Khan is a well known online poker pro who was once thought to be a poker bot because of the number of tables he played. He is also part of Team Pokerstars and has won millions of dollars online and in live tourneys.
Nothing to crow about really. I didn't outplay him or anything. I just happened to have the right cards at the right time. Middle position and I get AAs. I raise the standard 3xBB. He was in late position and 3 bets me. I had him covered and pretend to tank for awhile then I push all in. He pauses for about 1o seconds then calls. He shows 88s. No improvement and I bust him out.
The other thing that struck me was how aggressive everybody was especially after the bubble burst. I was low stacked just looking for a good place to push and I couldn't find one. Everytime I had a semi decent hand like Ax. Somebody would put up a raise and somebody would reraise which would force me to fold.
I understand about the value of being the first one in (First-In Vigorish) but everytime action was folded to me, I would have super crappy hands like 4-7 off suit. In the end, I probably moved up a few places higher because I couldn't push properly, but it may have ended up costing me the double-up that I needed to advance much further in the tourney. Oh well, lesson learned for next time.
I also realized that I need to master the skill of 3 betting. There were numerous instances where people raised but seems like 80% of the time, those who raised would always fold to a reraise. Now I am absolutely sure that much of those reraise bets were also crappy hands because it happened almost every other hand and the incidence of getting monsters is way too small for it to justify the number of reraises that were going on. So this is something that I'll have to read up on.
I'm currently trying to win another 200+15 ticket thru the SNG steps as I believe the Christmas holidays would afford me another crack at the Sunday Million. =)
I was the one who busted out Rainkhan somewhere in the middle of the tourney. For those of you who are not familiar. Hevad Khan is a well known online poker pro who was once thought to be a poker bot because of the number of tables he played. He is also part of Team Pokerstars and has won millions of dollars online and in live tourneys.
Nothing to crow about really. I didn't outplay him or anything. I just happened to have the right cards at the right time. Middle position and I get AAs. I raise the standard 3xBB. He was in late position and 3 bets me. I had him covered and pretend to tank for awhile then I push all in. He pauses for about 1o seconds then calls. He shows 88s. No improvement and I bust him out.
The other thing that struck me was how aggressive everybody was especially after the bubble burst. I was low stacked just looking for a good place to push and I couldn't find one. Everytime I had a semi decent hand like Ax. Somebody would put up a raise and somebody would reraise which would force me to fold.
I understand about the value of being the first one in (First-In Vigorish) but everytime action was folded to me, I would have super crappy hands like 4-7 off suit. In the end, I probably moved up a few places higher because I couldn't push properly, but it may have ended up costing me the double-up that I needed to advance much further in the tourney. Oh well, lesson learned for next time.
I also realized that I need to master the skill of 3 betting. There were numerous instances where people raised but seems like 80% of the time, those who raised would always fold to a reraise. Now I am absolutely sure that much of those reraise bets were also crappy hands because it happened almost every other hand and the incidence of getting monsters is way too small for it to justify the number of reraises that were going on. So this is something that I'll have to read up on.
I'm currently trying to win another 200+15 ticket thru the SNG steps as I believe the Christmas holidays would afford me another crack at the Sunday Million. =)
Monday, December 1, 2008
Sunday Million Tournament
I've longed wanted to play the Sunday Million Tourney over at Pokerstars. But my office schedule didn't really afford for any flexibility especially early on Monday mornings. Another factor was the steep buy in of $200+15. Both these things really prevented me from trying this big buy-in tourney.
Well, until today that is. Two things went my way. First, today happened to be a declared holiday which allowed me to play. 2nd, I managed to satellite my way to a ticket thru the SNG Steps qualifiers. I spent around $80 of my bankroll to get the $200+15 ticket.
I checked the time and it started at an ungodly 5:30AM. But it wasn't too bad and I managed around 5 hours sleep before I had to wake up. I checked the number of players and whattafuck, it was a staggering 8001 players.
Anyway, I had already psyched myself into playing it and there was no turning back. So how did I do ? Heheh..... I didn't win it or even made the final table. But I did make it ITM in 117th place which I thought was an achievement in itself. I don't really recall any particular hands but I did suck0ut one or two times to enable me to make it that far.
Oh well, let's see if there's going to be a next time. Screenshot of my final place finish attached.
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