Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Odds Are A Funny Thing

Odds are a funny thing. I have never really thought about them other than in maths class before I started playing poker. The only other things I really dealt with that involved odds was the occasional bet on the Grand National, or a night at the track. Clearly in these situations no bookmaker is stupid enough to give you 6-1 on an event that has a 3-1 chance of happening and of course the odds aren't fixed like they are in poker.

Saturday night defied all odds for me. I went out for a friends birthday and quite randomly ended up in a casino at 6 am playing a £100 Pot Limit game. It was a very lively and social game. Most of the other players knew each other and had busted from a tournie that finished earlier that night. I was a) Drunk and b) Very tired. My friend and I had the first train to catch in about an hour so it seemed like a good idea to stay somewhere that was warm and still serving alcohol.

After being at the table for about 20 minutes a new player sat down. The guy on his right asked how he got on in a tournament on Monday night. It seems they were both at the same final table and one busted and left before the other. This is where the conversation got interesting:

' I won, Nice birthday present for me too'

'Really?'

'Yeah, well I did have a massive chip lead when you left'

'No I mean it was really your birthday? Same day as mine!'

'Yeah it was, well happy birthday for Monday'

At this point the guy on their left looks up at me and my friend, we are mid hand and I initially thought he was mocking their excitement, I was about to be shocked however…

'Are you guys shitting me? It's my birthday on the 9th too!'

Everyone laughs. It's all completely true, we're all waiting while the driving licenses come out when we add to the odds of the situation, all three of them are called Jamie. So here we have three guys, all sitting next to each other, all called Jamie and all born on the same dates in 1977, 1984 and 1985 and somehow got to the subject of birthdays all within about 2 minutes. A few of us take pictures of the three of them holding ID and T9o in their hands and agree to e-mail them.

'What are the odds of that happening' I hear a few people ask over the next few hands.

Another 10 mins in the guy to the left of the three Jamie's said something along the lines of 'I'll have to be a mind reader if I wan't to beat these 3 guys' If I wasn't tired and had somewhere else to go I would have definitely left the table after this happened:

He's dealing and off the back of his comment Says 'Ace Ace King' before he lays down the flop. I'm at the other end of the table and don't see the cards for all the people going crazy. I don't even need to guess what just happened.

Next hand he decides to try again, a little more random call: 'Jack Seven Five' I'm closer to the flop this time and absolutely amazed to see it fall in that order. He gets the flop wrong next hand but calls the 5d on the turn. Two players got up and left even though the player calling the cards wasn't involved in any of the hands.

'If he was cheating why would he do that?' Someone asks.

"I don't care' Says one of the departing players 'I just spent 2 hours building this stack to £400, I don't want to play at this table with someone who calls two flops, in order, two hands in a row. What are the odds of that happening?'

It's nearly 7am, nobody works it out. My question is: What are the odds of 3 people called Jamie all sitting on the same table next to each other AND having the same birthday AND the player to their right calling two flops in order, in a row?

My guess would be QUITE BIG. So next time someone next hits a miricale 1 outer on the river to stack me, I won't be surprised!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Stars Is Here To Stay

It looks like Pokerstars is here to stay. They have released a statement on their website saying that they don’t believe the changes in legislation have any effect on online poker and that it’s business as usual.

This is great news for nearly all poker players. They’ll have a fantastic option as far as which networks they play on and I can’t see how Stars doesn’t become the #1 poker site now in terms of traffic.

It should be interesting over the coming months to see what happens. Hopefully more traffic doesn’t have a negative effect on their industry leading customer support, and allows them to continue to develop new tournament ideas and extend their guaranteed tournaments.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Party + Stars Million

Nasty run for me today in the two big Sunday tournies. I busted just after the 1st break in the Party Million after pushing top 2 pair on the turn with a rainbow and uncoordinated board. It was a massive pot as 3 of us saw the flop after a I stuck in a healty raise. My opponent had top pair top kicker and rivered his second pair. If I won that hand I would have been up to about 2k above average stack, and in pretty good shape on a decent table.

Less than half an hour later I busted from the Stars Million. I was down to a fairly short stack and ended up all-in with AK. The SB flips AT and I smile all the way to the river where he hits his ten.

Not a great performance, but not much I could do with both of my KO hands. I got my chips in with the best hand both times, and both times were my first showdowns. I had a great table at Stars too so I feel like I could have made a good run in either tournie had I won one of those hands. But like they say:

That’s Poker!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

A Day In The Sats

I spent most of today playing satellites to the Sunday Million on stars. I ended up with $645 in entries. I'll use $215 in Sunday and I paid just under $200 to get them so I'll have just over $200 spare which I'll probably use for my tournaments this week.

One Double Shootout win (standard these days) and two from the $11R which is a bit of a crapshoot, but has been the main source of qualification for me in the past.

To prove my point today I qualified with less than 10% of the BB! I was also due to post the BB next hand, so I probably would have collected $33, (a massive $2 profit, I was in for $31) instead of the $215 entry. I didn't even have enough chips to post two antes either.

A classic late stage scenario occurred too. In the final hand of the tournament I was UTG with AA. Someone was all-in on one of the other tables and the SB was all-in on mine. If both of those players lost the hands they were in I would qualify, if not I was all-in in the BB and given that I was the smallest stack, and that we were hand-for-hand (lowest stack gets the lowest position if two players get KO in the same hand), if I lost the hand I would have been out on the bubble. I time out and a big stack in MP pushes. Everyone else folds and MP flips JJ Vs the SB's random junk hand.

MP hit a J on the turn meaning I would have been out, and even though two other players also busted in the same hand, my stack when I busted would have cost me the seat.

So I'm in the Party and Stars Millions on Sunday. It's the first time I have played both at the same time so I hope I can concentrate AND keep an eye on IRC. I'm being staked half my Stars entry by ITH forum members so I hope I make them proud! I also have a stake in the other players playing in our massive chop so I'm sure at least a few of us will make the FT.

Should make the final table negotiations interesting!

Legal Issues

There has been extensive discussion in the last few days about how the possible changes in US laws will effect poker players in the US. I can fully relate to how terribly frustrating it must be to consider the fact that you may not be able to play poker online anymore. The majority of the people I play poker with and lots of the community at ITH are American, which means the game I love to play will probably be a completely different one if/when the sites I play at decide to start banning US players.

This has already happened at one of the sites I play at, but hasn't had any massive effect. I think it's possible there are less bonus chasers at William Hill now, so that's not necessarily a bad thing. However my main poker education is taking place at pokerstars at the moment, and although they haven't come out with a definitive statement either way at the moment, I think it's likely that they will have to go along the same lines as party and restrict US players. This would have a massive effect on the traffic the site experiences. I often play at times when there are upwards of 80,000 players online and if you assume 80% of the players are based in the US, you can expect that number to drop to around 16,000. You would also probably have to expect a further fallout of players due to their normal games not being available due to lack of players, or not being as profitable as games they may be able to find elsewhere. There are of course differences between Party and Stars, Stars is a private firm and has nearly always been a step ahead of the game. I don't expect that they'll give in as easily as Party have, but any company willing to release a statement that knocks a few Billion Dollars of it's share value doesn't do so lightly.

There is talk that they are cooperating for the time being because they may be trying to get on the good side of the law to enable them to take advantage of some long shot loophole at a later stage. I think this is certainly a possibility, I still find it so hard to believe that any company would simply roll over and say 'Well we can't do that anymore, never mind'. There is also speculation that they will be focusing their attentions on the Asian market as a replacement, but why not fight for the US players and double your profits?

Some of my main attractions to online poker will be taken away if all this comes into effect. I won't be able to play in a $3 rebuy tournament with a 30k prizepool. The possibility of them offering a guaranteed WSOP main event seat in a $33 tournament wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't be able to waste a week trying to qualify for the Sunday million, because they simply couldn't offer such a large guaranteed prizepool without loosing a serious amount of money.

But I can't really complain. At least I can play at all. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't play online. I'd probably try to play more live poker, but it's just not the same. Something evil inside me likes the feeling of winning $1000 in a tournie at 3 am while sitting in my living room in my underwear. I would probably only be able to play once a fortnight with less players, no game variety and of course driving 30 minutes to get busted in the first hand is much more frustrating when you can't just open another game.