Repeat Performance

After taking down the $1k Guaranteed over at Cake a few days ago, I decided to try out my luck again. Wasn't really doing anything last night. Really planned to play the Sunday Million that Monday morning but I didn't wake up in time as usual, so this was the best tourney for my schedule after a long day with the family.

Right off the bat, it looks good. Only 82 people playing giving a $180 overlay. After a few hands, I doubled up with a well hidden straight against somebody's two pair. So I had some buffer to have a leisurely dinner while sitting out.

Came back, still had a good stack, and about a third of the field gone. Time to go aggressive. Stole some blinds, stayed patient. Then bingo. Got KK with 2 players coming along for the ride. And just played TAG the rest of the way and reached the final table comfortably. I actually didn't know that I had already reached the final table until somebody mentioned it in chat. I thought there were 2 tables left. Heheh.

Final table was just me using SNG strategy, stealing some blinds to stay afloat and picking off the small stacks. Unfortunately the big stacks were consolidating. And when we were 3 handed. I had about 35k left against the 2 other players who both had about 90k in chips.

Checked out both player's stats in Sharkscope and found out they weren't really that experienced and were negative profit players. So it gave me some confidence to try out some moves. But I wasn't really getting any cards and knew I'd be blinded out if I didn't make a stand. Finally, in one flop, I had a flush draw. I knew opponent had hit something (top or middle pair). When he led out, I just pushed all in hoping for the fold. But alas, I underestimated the fishiness as he instacalled and showed middle pair. Luckily, river gave me the out and doubled me up.

This tilted opponent 1 and he starts spewing his chips. Unfortunately for me, my other opponent gets the benefit as he flops a set and proceeds to clean up when fish again overplays his middle pair.

And then we were heads up. I had about 70k. Opponent 2 had about 150k. Long way to make up but the blinds were still manageable. So this time, I just raised everything. I wasn't even looking at the value of the cards. Just raised everytime when I was first to act. Folded a few to make it seem like I was honest. But eventually opponent 2 sensed that I was raising with crap and he started playing back. And then I got lucky again. I raised with crap. I think 7-5 or some shitty hand like that. He called. I then proceeded to get the straight on the turn and he was on a flush draw. So he just called me all the way down.

And now I had more chips than him. And this was where he lost his patience I think. So I went back to being hyper aggressive only folding when he obviously had something. Finally I got AQ, raised it up, got reraised, pushed all in, and got called with KJ. All low cards. And that was it.

What's Up, Dude?

Time for an update. I realized that I owe it to my countless and devoted group of less than 10 readers to give them a heads up on what's happening with my poker playing.

Well basically, I'm still alive and playing online. I pretty much just 4 table the $11+1 SNGs in Full Tilt. Around 2 sets every night. Doing relatively well, my bankroll is creeping up slowly these past few months. ROI hovering around 9%-10%. My objective is to win enough in the next few months to sponsor a Singapore trip for me and my family come next summer. Heheh.

My bankroll in FTP is actually more than enough to play the next level. But why bother with the extra stress. I get enough from work such that I want my poker playing to be as relaxed as possible. I can lose 8 games in a row at the 11s and it would just be a small blip in the bankroll. Don't get me wrong. I still go on tilt once in a while. But the low buy in combined with a large buffer keeps me stable as I really cannot do any big damage to the BR unless I suddenly decide that I'll play the nosebleed SNG stakes.

Tournament wise. Well, I do occasionally join some online tourneys mostly at Cake Poker. Haven't really hit any big scores lately. I would ITM once in a while but would then go on a long dry stretch. So my tournament playing is pretty much break even.

I don't know. Lately, I find that I don't really have the patience to sit down in long tourneys. This degrades my tournament placings as I find myself just pushing some semi marginal hands even though there is still a lot of play left.

I think its because poker up to a certain period of time desensitizes you. I've been playing online for around 4 years now if I'm not mistaken. And even though this game has been quite good to me. I've think I've lost some of the drive or the excitement of that one big score. You know, the feeling that you can win anything if you just stay patient and play your game properly.

I've accepted in my mind that the probabilities of playing against thousands of other players catches up to you and no matter how well you play. The suck outs and the bad beats really will happen with this many people in the fray. And you really need some luck to come up the victor.

So I just stay relaxed and take my time. I have a couple of $215 tickets good for the Sunday Million or the Sunday Warm Up which I won in the step SNGs. So I can easily play these if I was inclined to do so. But again, the drive is just not there. The thought of waking up at 5AM on a Monday morning and playing against thousands of people is too tiring.

There is a long weekend up ahead. The August 30 holiday. And if there ever was a right time to play these PS tourneys. This is it. Hohum. ... let's see. If I wake up, I play. If I don't, I sleep. Heheh

Oh and as I was writing and editing this blog post. I entered the $1K guaranteed over at Cake and waddya know. I take it down. Didn't really need luck in this one. Just stayed aggressive all throughout and waited for opponent's mistakes. I do not recall any one time where I had to go on a flip with somebody in this tournament to survive. Maybe its because I never got AK even once. If you notice, it was a 10 dollar tournament with 1k guaranteed. There were only 78 players. So easily $220 in overlay in a very manageable tourney with good structure. Pretty good deal.

Further proof that Poker is not all about Luck

Truth be told, I am one of the unluckiest lucky persons I know. My mother and my wife will attest to this.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been involved in numerous situations where I have had some kind of misfortune dealt to me.

When I was 8, I had to have stitches sewn above my left eye. This was the result of a misguided game where numerous kids in my neighborhood were kicking around this open can of sardines with razor sharp edges and I was the unlucky recipient of the can's trajectory. A few inches more and I would be blind in one eye.

When I was 10, I slipped and fell down this long flight of concrete stairs and broke my nose. My mom was saying she thought I broke my neck as I was not moving when I finally stopped on the bottom landing and copious amounts of blood was gushing out my nose.

During my college years, I was waiting for the light to change in a street corner when this deranged man came out of nowhere and stabbed me in the chest with a freaking kitchen knife. This is a whole story by itself which I will blog about in the future. But rest assured that I had no idea who this man was and I was not even getting robbed. It was just me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could have stabbed anybody who was standing there beside me but noooo .... obviously my powers were too much for him to resist. I almost died then and there and had to stay in the hospital for close to 2 months to recover.

My girlfriend (who is my wife now) and I were on a date and visited a friend's house to pick up something. The friend had a huge chow chow dog tied near their door. When we passed by the dog, the dog just lunged up for no apparent reason and chomped down on my left arm. Seriously man, I did not provoke that dog in any way. I was just walking by minding my own business.

I attended a wedding reception once and I developed a very severe case of food poisoning immediately after. I had to be hospitalized for 2 days. Oh and guess what. It was a buffet but nobody else got food poisoning. It was just me. Think of that weird possibility for a bit so you can appreciate the way fate always smiles on me.

My wife fondly calls me a walking human disaster just waiting to happen. There are various more cases that have happened through the years. Too many to mention but I assure you that everything I have stated is true. No exaggeration or made up stories here. I think I must be secreting some kind of pheromone which attracts the worst kind of misfortunes. Or the goddess of luck was feeling frisky one day and just decided that I should be his boy toy .

With all these seemingly unlucky things happening to me, there is one thing that I do know. I know that I am a winning online poker player. I may not have won anything really really big but I consistently make money playing poker year after year. My stats are all in the black from every site that I play in. I do not confess to be a great poker player. But I am a student of the game and play with the correct math and the concepts that I have learned through the years.

And this is your incontrovertible proof that poker is not all about luck. If it is, and knowing my special kind of luck, then I should be bleeding money and bitching about how I always get drawn out or sucked out. And how I can never seem to catch a break.

But I don't. And that is why it is easy for me to believe that if you work on your game and play correctly, you will make money. Because poker is really more about learned skill than luck.

Of course, the next time I play, the LCD screen might suddenly explode in my face for no apparent reason just when I was about to win the Sunday Million by calling with Aces when my heads up opponent pushed all in with crap. When that happens, then we can talk again.

Feeding the Donkeys

Just a few minutes ago, I was playing a bunch of 11 dollar SNGs over at Full Tilt. And in one sequence of events, I made 3 pushes against 3 different opponents in 3 different SNGs and I was in total shock when all 3 called and all 3 of them won when I was ahead in all 3 pushes.

It wasn't the calls that got me as obviously you'd get random calls in the span of an SNG. It wasn't even the bad beat as that happens all the time. It was the sheer awful play that these players exhibited. They had sufficient stacks to fold but they just called with only semi decent hands.

I was shaking my head in wonder at this surreal turn of events. And here I was thinking that the sit and go games are getting tougher and tougher and the skill level of online players have exponentially improved these past few years. Then I get bombarded with 3 dumb moves right on top of each other. And at one of the supposedly toughest sites to play in. (FTP)

I made a bet to myself right then and there. I will sharkscope these 3 guys and I will fucking eat my grimy mousepad if any of these 3 turns out to be a winning online player. That was how upset I was and how sure I was that these players couldn't be making these kinds of moves and winning, right ? The poker gods can't be that cruel.

And this was the result ....

Ahhh .... there is still justice in this crazy poker world of ours. I am now happy because I have done my part in feeding the donkeys every once in a while to make sure that they do not become extinct. =)

Watch U Want

I have a confession to make. I have not worn a wristwatch for close to 10 years now. I used to wear watches. But for some reason or the other, I just stopped wearing them. I tried to think about the reason why I did this. And I really couldn't come up with anything specific .

I think it was because as cellphones kept evolving, they eventually managed to displace the functions of the watch which was essentially to tell me the time and the date. And since we carry our cellphones every single second anyway. There was no compelling reason to keep on wearing watches except as a fashion accessory.

I also went on kind of a minimalist phase where I shunned anything not really essential in what I wore. I used to wear a necklace and a bracelet. But got rid of them the same time as I stopped wearing watches. I just didn't feel comfortable anymore with things dangling or attached to my body.

My last watch was a Tudor Submarine Something watch. It was actually quite expensive with a retail price close to 100k if I am not mistaken. When I decided to forgo watches, I gave it to my father in law as a gift. When my father in law passed away a couple of years ago, it was returned to me and I eventually sold it to a friend for around 40K. I realized eventually that this selling price was actually a bargain, as another friend who was into watches told me that the model that I had could have fetched a higher price even though it was second hand because it was considered a classic, blah blah blah.

Anyway, I never really felt that I got the raw end of the deal as the watch was quite old and wasn't in good shape with dings and scratches everywhere. So I was quite happy with the amount that I got considering that I had no use for it anyway.

Fast forward to today. And guess what? I am again wearing a watch. A few days ago, I just decided at the spur of the moment that I wanted to wear watches again. I have no idea where the urge came from. I don't know how it came about. I just woke up one day and thought to myself that I wanted to wear a watch.

And so after a little bit of looking around, I bought one. Are you curious to know what watch I got ? It's not a Rolex. It's not an Omega or a Breitling. It's not even a Tag or a Technomarine. My wife was shocked to see me wearing a Casio G-Shock. (pun on words deliberate).

It is the essential everyday watch. It was tough. It was water resistant to 200 meters. It runs on solar energy. It had different date formats, world time, alarm, stopwatch and a bunch of other features that I can use when I travel. I can drop it from a building or bang it against a wall. I can do all these things and it would keep on working. I can even tell the ambient temperature if I wanted to.

It is the ultimate anti-rolex. It was designed to work and last forever but it is relatively cheap. As I grow older, I realized that I don't really care about expensive brands anymore. It isn't even about saving money. I could have easily purchased a much more expensive watch. But it just didn't feel right.

In some ways, it is like a big fat middle finger to all the people who look at your watch and judge you for how expensive it is. The ultimate fuck you to the establishment. It was perfect. Well, perfectly geeky maybe. Heheh...

I can just imagine the jaws of my officemates dropping and their eyebrows raised when they see me wearing this watch. With their rolexes and omegas tucked neatly in their sleeves and then they'll see this big black chunky thing on my wrist. Classic.

Heard it Through the Grapevine

1. Set vs Trips. Not the same. Set is when you have a pair and there is a similar card on the board. Trips is one in your hand and two in the board.

2. Slowplay vs Slowroll. Slowplay is when you have the nuts or close to the nuts and you play passively to induce calls or bets from your opponent. Slowroll is when you act like a moron and pretend you lost the hand even though you have the better hand.

3. I'll call even though I know I'm behind or I'll call even though I know you have the better hand. DUH ..... this is like totally illogical but you hear it all the time from dumb opponents. If you know you're behind, why would you call ? It's primarily a defense mechanism that one makes so as not to look stupid in front of other players. It's like he's saying that all the signs say that you're ahead. But I can't help my stupidity so let me just qualify my call by saying the term to minimize the damage to my ego just in case.

4. Paying tuition. I think this is probably only used in the Philippines. Players use the term loosely to describe the amount that they lost when they play poker. It is like saying that losing is part of the process of learning poker and it is necessary for you to pay a certain amount to learn poker which is actually not true. It is another human defense mechanism to massage one's ego from bad decisions. Personally, I find the term totally illogical. I think it stems from the fact that you pay tuition to learn in schools. But in poker, you gain experience and knowledge from both winning hands and losing hands. So when you win, do you also pay tuition? But you get money when you win. So are you refunding your tuition ?

There are tons of other examples, but these are the ones that I can think of right now. Sorry, I know I'm probably inadvertently bashing other people. But I can't help it. It's like an itch that I can't scratch when I hear people say these things.

Much to everyone's surprise ...

No matter how much negative comments and bashing they got from the media and those last minute flash card snafus. In all fairness, one has to admit that the Comelec did a good job in the country's first automated election. Even with long lines and isolated failures, the PCOS machines did their job and for the first time in the country's history, we are enjoying credible results a day after the election.

From my observation, solving the long queues for the next election should be quite simple. They just need to add more machines and increase the number of voting precints. The process was actually already ok, there was just too many voters for the number of machines allocated.

My own personal experience was pretty positive. I was up in Clark with the family for the long weekend. So I arrived in Manila at around 4PM already and I immediately went to cast my vote in my old high school. And there was absolutely no line. I sauntered up to the desk, got my ballot, shaded my choices, placed it in the PCOS machine, and got my finger inked. I was done in about 15 minutes. My brother went in the morning and he said that he waited 2 hours in line.

So if you think about it, it was just a matter of too many people wanting to vote in the morning, at least in my area.

If you care any iota about the Philippines and its economy, then we can all heave a sigh of relief. Who wins is actually much less important than the fact that we had a fairly successful credible automated election. The worst case scenario of an election failure would have been a big blow to our country's already reeling state .

The successful staging of the election should now allow our country to move on and focus on the bigger problems. One side comment. You really cannot underestimate the charisma of Erap. Even with all the things that he did last time. Filipinos are still voting for him. Everyone thought it was going to be an Aquino-Villar battle, but he is a surprisingly strong 2nd place with Villar a far third. I don't think he's going to win. But his numbers are amazing considering all past events. Hindi mo tuloy alam kung he's really that popular and charismatic or that our masa is really that stupid. No offense. But seriously, that's the only conclusion you can make.