Staking

I have been doing a lot of staking recently, so I thought since it's more interesting than me talking about bubbling final tables or bitching about losing huge pots in cash games as a massive favorite I may as well write about it here.

There are two types of staking deal I engage in. The first is purely for fun, sometimes they make a little profit, sometimes they don't. I still seek to back + EV players but it's usually for small amounts, a typical deal will be someone playing 50,000 hands of $50 NL and me picking up 10% of a $1k seed fund and taking 60-80% of the profits on my share. I often rail these people, try to give them advice and just enjoy being a part of something they are trying to achieve. I have done a few smaller MTT ones too, backing people 100% for a set number of tournies and taking a cut of any profits.

The second type is more about making money. I have backed people for everything from $50 NL to 30/60 FL sometimes picking up all of their action. On the whole these deals have gone very, very well for me. One person I backed made me just over $4.5k in two separate deals (including makeup from the first) over just two months, and my biggest loss to date has been about $500 which I'm more than happy to write off given how well my other deals have gone.

Last week however I encountered my first real issue. I backed a player $2,000 to play $100 NL 6-max with a 20 buy-in BR over a set number of hands. This player was hugely +EV and after running badly at the start and dropping to $50 NL for a while, he eventually clawed it back and went on a nice run towards the end to finish up at $3800 total. We had a 70/30 split in my favour, so I was due to pick up a tidy $1200 profit and he was going to pick up $600 for his efforts.

Unfortunately after the deal had ended he supposedly decided he wouldn't want to play low stakes after being at $100 NL with his newly earned, but ultimately smaller $600 BR, so he proceeded to try to work up a bit more money using the money I staked him while he still had it.

The story is that he was taking shots and first lost the $600, then lost a bunch while tilting, eventually stopping at $2k. This was over a period of about 2 weeks while I didn't hear from him at all (before this we spoke 3-4 times a week, so initially I thought he had done a runner with the whole lot). I managed to get my $2k back which I was happy about after being frozen out and thinking I might end up with nothing, so at least I didn't actually lose anything on the deal.

Obviously I have no way of knowing if his story is true. He has no way to pay the money back, hence the original staking deal, and the only way he could raise more funds was to get another backer, which I would obviously move to block. So I think I have to write that money off, which is annoying, but I think it would be too much effort and stress to try to get it back when I consider my chances to be pretty low from the outset. Ironically I knew he wanted a larger BR, and if he didn't go silent for 2 weeks I was going to alter the deal slightly in his favour to give him a chance to build a half decent BR and start playing for himself.

All this leads to a few deals I have been arranging recently for the WSOP. I had a couple of stakes for people in prelims but I pretty much broke even on those with one early exit and one small cash. However, I have backed no fewer that 7 people for the WSOP Main Event this year, all on different deals. Some of them are buying straight up percentages, which isn't that good of a deal for the backer, but it's just a bit of gamboool with a potentially huge payouts.

So I'll be watching the ME with interest next week and hopefully one or two of my guys will go deep and make me some serious money...

Bubbling Final Tables Is Fun

I often switch between cash and tournies depending on how I feel, but I generally go in patterns of a week or so playing one, then switching.

I think tonight might be the end of my tournie run for a week or so. I ran up a huge stack in the $10 rebuy on stars and made the final 2 tables 1/18. From there I lost like 459 flips and ended up busting in 13th after shoving over the top of a 3x BB raise with JJ, only for him to tank for like 30 seconds and call with KQ.

I can't win the flip and I miss out on what would have been my first FT for a while. On the bright side, I managed my big stack really well and utilised it to stay the CL from about 60 down to the final 2 tables.

So frustrating.

Well, this doesn't happen live...

It's rare I make any stupid mistakes online with regards to bet sizes or accedental calls, so maybe I should be glad that this doesn't happen more often.

I rushed home from a busy day at work to make the $50k gtd on Stars and a few other tournies. About 10 mins in I get QQ in the SB and it folds to the button who just calls for 20. I bump it up to 100 and both the BB and the button call.

Flop = K85 with two hearts and I go to lead for 275 to see where I am.

Instead, I bet 2775, and the BB instacalls.

Interestingly he has 4h 5h for the flush draw, but of course still hits on the river.

So pissed off with myself now. Not because of the bustout, but because the $50k is pretty much the only decent tournie I can play tonight and I definitely wasn't busting on that hand if I didn't make that mistake.

WSOP 2008

So it's WSOP time again. After seeing a few trip reports and live updates my enthusiasm is definitely back, I can't wait to get out there later in the series to tear it up and lose large amounts of money.

One of my favourite things about the WSOP is the stories it brings. So far this year I have heard of the open shoving cash game player who offered to take his whole table elsewhere to play in a limo (to which they obliged) and more recently today's action from the $1k rebuy event where a handful of people are in for $20k+, twice the buy-in for the main event and still on starting stack. It tilts the hell outta me when I'm in for $150 or something in the $10r, but I guess these guys are playing with the same rebuy period approach as me, just with a LOT more money.

All the stuff I have been reading has made me a little annoyed with myself for not playing any WSOP sats this year. I was really excited when they came out, made a half hearted effort to build a W$ roll and then never really followed up on it.

I look forward to posting some interesting stories over the next few weeks, and hopefully some deep runs from either myself or one of a couple of people I have backed this year.

Biggest Cash Pot

Last week I was having a discssion about poker with a friend of mine who mainly plays live. He got me thinking about live poker again, and since I hadn't played for a while and had a 4 day weekend I thought I'd make an effort to play live.

It's fairly obvious from the title, but it went really well. I played two nights running and on the first night I made the final table of a £10 rebuy with 120 runners. I busted in 5th when I shoved 2 pair on the flop vrs a flush draw for half the chips in play and he hit.

I played a great £5/£5 NL cash game after I busted, but it broke up about 30 mins after I started playing as it was already pretty late.

I decided to play the game again the following night. It's a fair bit above my normal $400 NL games online (pretty much $1k NL) but I feel comfortable in the game, and it's not like I'm playing any significant volume.

It was an interesting mix of players, two or three players who knew each other who were quite old and nitty, two younger guys who were loose and aggressive, and the rest were either really straight forward or really awful.

Unfortunately it's not a particularly interesting hand, basically I raised preflop with AK, two callers, JT3 rainbow board, I raise, a guy in MP folds and the other calls. Turn is an offsuit Q so I bet out again, villain re-raises quite big and I flat. The river is a blank and I bet out 1/2 te pot or so and he jams.

I half expected him to have the same hand, but he flipped JT for flopped two pair and I raked in a pot of about £1200, which is roughly $2400. Not much happened in the game after that, but it was petty sweet to cash out my chips rather than just logging off after a win like that.

Not played much online this week, but have run quite deep in the $50k on Stars a couple of times. I made a pretty bad play in one with about 40 left and a decent stack, which I was pissed off about, but I played again the next night and made a similary decent run. I was runnning sooo bad in the $50k, so hopefully this will be the start of me running a little deeper in it from now on. It's pretty much the only decent tournie that starts at a good time for me, so I play it pretty much every time I'm online in the evenings.

Cash Going Well

Not too much going on recently. Didn't really get anywhere with the Sunday tournies this week. I'm a little annoyed about all the FTOPS events starting at 11pm UK time, but not much I can do about that.

I'm running at about 5bb/100 over the last 20k hands of $400 NL 6-max. Not the biggest sample size ever, but I think I'm finding my feet a little more now. I have invested some time in reading through my HH's and watching some videos on Cardrunners and PXF.

There does seem to be lots more decent multi tabling regulars at this limit, but I'm not struggling to find good games, and they also seem to want to steer clear of me unless someone is really spewing which is a good thing I guess. I'm only playing 3-4 tables at the moment, so I think it would be more of a problem if I wanted to start doing more. I can't see that being any time soon though, so I should be okay.

I'm aware I need to start posting more content, I just never seem to think about this blog. I'll try to make some notes when I'm playing so I remember anything interesting and make sure I post about it here.

Titles?

I'm running out of names for titles, so I might start using the date in future. I should probably be more imaginative, but since my posts aren't that frequent they often cover a number of topics, so nothing really covers them all.

I have had a bit more time over the last week or so to play poker, which has made a nice change. I kept trying to play when I didn't have much time or had other things on my mind which inevitably doesn't work.

The other day I started playing what I thought was two turbo double shootouts because I only had a couple of hours to spare. They were both normal speed which I didn't have time to play. I donked around a bit and true to form when you're not trying, I won both my first tables and ran up big stacks at both final tables just before I had to go. I was 1/3 in the $650 satellite with 2 seats and 1/7 or 1/6 in the $215 Sunday million one with 3 seats.

I gave one of my non poker playing friends a quick lesson on how to play internet poker and handed over the controls. Needless to say he won neither seat, pretty much call/folding his stack into oblivion.

gg $765.

I played the Sunday Million for the first time in ages last Sunday. Unfortunately Monday is now an early start and a busy day for me at work, so normally I don't bother. It was the $530 buy-in this week and I came 70th or so for about $3,000. I basically short stacked the whole tournie, I think I had about an hour or so with above avg stack when was floating around 230k ish and the avg was 150-190k.

It's a bank holiday here tomorrow in the UK, so I'll be playing the Sunday tournies again tonight.

They confirmed the WSOP final table delay I spoke about in my last post. I still think it's a pretty crazy idea, but I guess it's probably never going to effect me. It should at least be entertaining to watch the build up and see what they can do with it. On the plus side, if it does create more hype and get more exposure then it will bring more players to the game, which is obviously a good thing.

WSOP Final Table Delay

As some of you may have heard, Harrahs/ESPN are looking at delaying the Final Table of the WSOP by 3 months. The idea is that they would then have the time to follow the players around, build a back story and make the FT more of a global sporting event than it is now.

Some of the main reactions to this are quite funny:

- OMG What if someone dies in that 3 months
- People will collude and do deals
- People will get trained/coached by pros for a % of their winnings

Although I think all of these points are valid, I don't think any would be that big of a deal.

It's possible someone dies during the WSOP while they still have chips anyway. I realise that this is more likely given a 3 month gap in which to croak, but it's still not something that would be a major concern.

As for the training, I think you would be surprised how little you can teach some people in 3 months. I think the better professional players (if any) who make it would suffer a bit as the level of competition would increase, and naturally there will be more information available on them than the randoms who make it to the FT. However, the dynamics of the tournament can change at any time, so much of what they might learn could change in an instant. They suddenly find themselves short, or double through twice and a few players bust early and leave him 5 handed with a huge chip lead.

I don't think it's possible to practice all of those eventualities, so I still think the player who can adapt and draw on his own experiences will still have an edge.



There are some benefits for the players however. They will fill the poker media for 3 months prior to the big day. Their faces will be on the front of magazines, Stars and FTP will sponsor the non-sponsored players and they'll generally get a lot of exposure that they wouldn't otherwise, because normally we only know who makes the FT the day before. I can't even name the people who busted 6th or 7th in previous years, but I definitely would be able to if I got 3 months of them in interviews/magazines/websites.

After saying all this, I still think it's a bad idea. Harrahs are trying to hold on to a TV audience that is losing momentum. There is a lot of poker on TV these days and not enough people to watch it all. It's difficult as a producer of these shows, because fast paced action with vibrant well known pros is what the majority of poker programme viewers want. Only a minority want to see interesting well thought out hands with detailed analysis. When you're trying to appeal to a wide market you don't want to confuse them by saying that 'He floated the flop so that he could shove over the top of any turn card that was unlikely to have hit villains range'

If they want to appeal to the wider audience then this 3 month gap is the way to go.

I have a solution that probably helps both parties though. It's actually really simple.

Run the WSOP episodes DURING the WSOP. It's a long enough event, with 4 starting days you have plenty of time to edit a story together. Then it might be worth having a day or two gap before the final 18 start. That way they can catch up on the action, show the story so far and still keep the players happy. Play down to 9, break for a couple of days to air the last lot of highlights from the final two tables and build some excitement. Do some bios on the players, market the hell out of the final table then screen it live with a reasonable delay.

As long as they remain smart with which hands they show from the earlier tables I don't think this would be a bad idea at all. It keeps it close to the original format and nobody is going to get whacked to improve the equity of someone else at the table.

Back On Track

Things have been much better since I got back from my holiday last week. I think the break did me some good.

I have been on a good cash game run over the last week, running up about 7 or 8 buy-ins over ~25k hands. I'm enjoying playing less tables with the same earn rate, but the $400NL games are definitely as tough, if not tougher than I expected. While I'm enthusiastic about playing cash I'm going to make the effort to learn as much as I can and put some more time into studying the game. I think table selection is going to be much more important than it ever has been for me. I have never really played at a level where you have to do as much as you can to avoid the good regulars.

I'm also looking around at some other sites, as I tend to stick to Party, FTP and Stars. I need a site with decent ring games and a good rakeback deal so I have more choice when the games are a bit dry elsewhere.

I haven't played many tournies since I got back. I played a couple of the big Sundays but other than that I have just been donking around in a few sats.

Last week I played in an awesome home game with 8 guys, of which only one really knew what he was doing. The stakes weren't high but it was certainly interesting trying to adjust my game to play against people who think 4 cards make a straight, and that middle pair is a hand to bet your house on. I might write up a trip report for that as it was good fun and actually highlighted a couple of aspects of my game that I need to work on.

No Fucking Way

Ugh. If these sats were beyond a joke before then I really don't know what they are now. I made another FT of a Double Shootout tonight, making it 4 in the last 6 tournies. I'd trade any of those for a win on the second table of course, but it just doesn't want to happen. I got HU in this one and got my money in with 2 pair vrs a higher 2 pair.

I then made the FT of an $11 rebuy for the same $650 seat. I was only in for $33 and happy to make the FT, even if I was short. This was a regular speed tournie so we were quite deep by the time we got 4 handed. There was 2 seats up for grabs. I played pretty aggressively and was CL with and M of over 40 for quite a while. The shortish stack kept shoving quite deep over my SB raises and I was looking for a good spot to call. I finally picked up AQ, raised, he shoved and I call. He flips A8 and promptly flops an 8 and leaves me 4/4 and desperate to get back in it. I finally bust after shoving 44 into 77. If win the hand we're 3 handed with 2 seats and I'm a decent chip leader.

These are really starting to piss me off now. I have come so close so many times and like I said in my earlier post I'm giving up value in other games I could be playing instead of trying to build a roll for the WSOP sats. I'm actually up about $150 from playing all these sats from all the $80's and $60's that I have won from bubbling, which is pretty funny.

I didn't play the direct WSOP sat as I played live tonight. Got nothing going there but it was just fun tournie I play with a few friends who don't play too seriously.

Off on holiday for a week now so no poker until I return. Let's hope I can pick up some momentum when I get back. One thing is for sure though, I have already worked harder to win a WSOP seat this year than I did to win either of the two I won last year.

Double Shootout Sickness

The $16 Double Shootouts to he $650 WSOP sat are getting beyond a joke now. I made another FT today (3rd in a row) and was shoving light a lot with 6 left and a stack around 1200 to 1800. I pick up the blinds twice in an orbit and get dealt KK in the BB. UTG opens for 600 and I shove for 1700.

UTG calls with 99 and the board runs out T2JQK. So sick. With how bad I'm running in these can I at least win an 80/20? That pot wold have seen me in great shape and this one paid 2 seats as it was nealry full.

I'm free tomorrow night so I might just buy in direct to the WSOP sat. I don't really want to waste too much time playing these to increase my value when I'm missing out on games where my hourly is much higher. Plus they are now tilting the shit outta me.

FU DS

So I seem to be running pretty much normal in everything now except the bloody $16 turbo Double Shootouts to the $650 WSOP sat. I think I have made FT's in about 8 or 9 of them now to no avail. I have been playing/running well on the first tables but just never seem to be able to get anything going on the second.

Even though I promised myself I wouldn't waste too much time with the steps tournies I have managed to run up a couple of entries to the $215 level from the $27's. There are a few decent players going through them, but on the whole the play is pretty soft, even in the $82's.

I'm going to Egypt for a week in a few days, so hopefully I can turn things around when I get back. Having this trip coming up has calmed me down a bit this week. I have booked a five star all inclusive break for myself and my girlfriend courtesy of some of my poker winnings from last year. Knowing that I could pay for that holiday without putting too much of a dent in my bankroll helps keep me focused on playing well and getting back to the other side of the variance I'm experiencing at the moment.

Running Worse Than Judas

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So yeah, I'm running bad. I can't remember ever running as bad as this. I'm just going through one of those stages where I can't seem to win an 80/20, let alone a flip.

I have now made 4 final tables in $650 satellites since my last post, and managed to come 4th in one that paid 3 seats, 9th on one that paid 6 seats, and I came 8th in two of the double shootouts that paid just the one seat.

Last night at $400 NL I had AA < KK then the very next hand I lost with KK on a K29 rainbow board against AA.

I'm repeatedly shoving hands like AQ or TT into AA/KK and repeatedly getting sucked out on when people shove junk into my monsters.

This has never really happened when I have been running bad before, but I think it's starting to effect my play. It's early Friday night and I was about to settle in for a poker filled weekend. Instead I'm going to take a break until at least Sunday night and go party for the weekend.

Edit: Someone told me not to forget that I MINIMUM CASHED the $55 on Stars last night. Fucking great.

WSOP Sat Time!

At last Stars have started their WSOP sats. I don't have as much time as I would like over the next couple of months, but I'm going to do my best to qualify playing from the lower buy-in super sats upwards.

I got off to an awful start tonight - I played 10 of the $27 Step 2's and only advanced in one. Luckily I managed to run that up to a $215 ticket for a step 4 which I'll probably play tomorrow. In this set of 10 I lost to runner runner quads and 3 other hands where my opponent had less than 4 outs, all in spots which would have seen me either in great shape, or busting someone to win the seat.

My luck improved a little in a $16 DS to the $650 I played later. I made the FT but busted after an AQ shove OTT of a LP raiser was called by JT and the obvious T on the flop followed by blanks saw me down to 300 chips.

So a slightly frustrating start, but all the sats I played tonight were pretty soft. The $82 step was reallly tight, even late on, possibly as a result of a few players working their way up.

I think I'm going to try mainly to qualify for the weekly $650 on Stars and try not to waste too much time on the Steps tournies. The $27 rebuys were pretty good for building a W$ roll last year, so I'll be playing those again alongside the $16 DS's and maybe some of the direct qualifier $215's if I manage to win a few seats to the $650's

The sats on Party also look pretty soft. I bubbled one of the $65 sats to thier weekly direct qualifier, but the play was crazy bad on the bubble, and those certainly very exploitable even if they don't run too often.

I also might look into the bracelet race tournies on FTP if they do those again, but I'd prefer not to use too much of my BR to get over to Vegas from the UK, which makes the Stars $2.5k in expenses look like great value.

Time!

I haven't been able to play much over the last couple of weeks. Work has been really busy and unfortunately that's only going to get worse. I have also been busy at the weekend so my playing time has been severely limited.

Not being able to play tournies has been killer. I have trouble motivating myself to play cash ring and SNG's, managing to post just 3,000 hands of $200 NL 6-max and about 50 SNG's in two weeks.



I'm desperate for WSOP sats to start on Stars and FTP to give me something to focus on. I probably used up my luck by winning two seats last year, but I'm definitely going to make an effort to play lots of sats this year and try to get myself out to Vegas again.

I did manage to get a live tournie in last night. There was a disappointingly low turnout of 80 runners, but it was a rebuy, so at least the prizepool was half-decent.

I made the FT with a little above average stack and busted in 5th when, after shovebotting for a while, I got called light when I had AQ and got sucked out on. I picked up $800 for my efforts though, so i can't really complain.

Credit Card Roulette

I have managed to convert a few of my friends to the delights of Credit Card Roulette. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, every time you get a bill in a restaurant or a bar everyone puts their card on the tray and you spin it. Whoever is lucky enough for it to land in their card gets to pay the bill.

The people I have introduced to this game love it already, mainly because I have picked up pretty much every bill since we started doing it last week.

We had a meal out for 6, I lost that one, followed by the Friday lunch AND Friday night food/bar bills. Then on Saturday night 4 of us were out for dinner and I lost that one too.

It's possible to run bad in other ways than just losing of course. One I actually managed to avoid was on Sunday night, our tab in the bar for about 45 mins which came to a massive $21. Awesome.



In poker related news I had a pretty bad day of it in the Sunday tournies last night. I think I made one first break out of 7 or 8 tournies I played, and that was the $55 buy in at 10pm on Stars, my lowest buy-in of the night.

I made a pretty big mistake in the Sunday Million when I could have called an obvious value bet rather than shoving over the top for the rest of my stack with 2 pair like the LAGtard I am. Only two hands in his range were ahead, but I should have just called and kept the pot smaller. I had him covered but I busted a few hands later.

I just need to learn when to control my aggression in spots like this, but I do find it really hard to give too much credit to unknowns in donkfests like the Million.

Still, I picked up on the mistake and learned from it, which is at least one positive I can take away. I might read through a few hand histories from other tournies and take a look at what I have done in similar spots. I haven't played much the past couple of weeks, so it's nice to come back and still be enthusiastic about plugging my leaks and improving my game.

Sunday 100k Donkfest

I made the final table of the Stars 100k guaranteed last night.

It's a 20,000 player field and I ended up finishing 8th when I finally lost a flip. I played exactly zero interesting hands, since nearly all of the poker I played was preflop. It was fun though, and at least I can say I have made the FT of the biggest weekly online tournie.

I think I used up my luckbox for 2008 already though.

ROYAL FLUSH!

Dealer: arestone has a Royal Flush

I was having a bit of a brutal night until this just happened. I have been playing online for nearly 3 years, logged over a quarter of a million hands and tonight I hit my first Royal Flush.

On the river.

It was an EPT Dortmund sat and I had AdTd in the BB. A short stack shoved from LP and I made the call. I didn't even see it until I read the chat.

Now to get one of each suit...

2007

I had a great year in 2007. Considering the relatively low volume I play I had some great scores over the course of the year, ending with my win in the Stars $35k gtd in December.

I cashed for over $50k in total with an ROI approaching 120% over nearly 1000 tournies. I also managed to win 2 WSOP Main Event seats. It's not a massive sample size, but I think that's about as much volume as I'll ever be able to put in as a recreational player.

Playing the WSOP was definitely the poker highlight of the year for me. I really enjoyed my time in Vegas. When I left I felt like I would leave it a few years before coming back, but after a few months I started to feel like I was ready to go back again. I'll definitely be making an effort to play some sats this year and hopefully I'll be able to get out to Vegas again this summer.

The WSOP schedule isn't great for me this year, so what I might do if I win a seat is fly out and play $10k worth of prelims. I did say I'd do this last year though and still ended up playing the main. It really depends if people I know are going to be in town during the main or if there is a big meetup during the preliminary events.

I flip good in 2008 so far. Went out of both the Stars Million and the Full Tilt 750k on Sunday to big flips. I hope it's not a sign of things to come.

Here's to running as hot in 2008.

November Round Up

It's been another good period for me over the last few weeks. I have been off work for a month in between two different jobs on full pay, so I was able to get lots of poker in.

I didn't intend for it to be an experiment in how much I could make or if I could make a living playing poker, but it certainly gave me a good indication. Cash ring is definitely the bread an butter of the online pro. You can just get so much more done. I did a couple of days of 8+ tabling for long periods and got a serious number of hands in. I'm pleased to say I could almost certainly make a half decent living multi tabling 6 max if I ever needed to, but I doubt I would ever do it by choice.

I think there are so may more rewarding things you could do with your time than spend all day grinding cash games. This might be different at higher stakes, but playing at lower limits gives you the opportunity to get huge volume in and really even out you variance. I didn't even run that well over the month, but still banked an earn rate and overall profit that I am very happy with.

I think if I was going to play full time I would almost definitely have to engage myself in another hobby. I think I would do another degree or get a crappy part time job, otherwise I think I would miss some of the social interaction you can only really get at work.

I had a few decent tournie cashes in November, but of course rather than going really deep in anything when I have the whole of the next day off, I did it last night when I had to be up at 7am for work. I chopped up the $25k on Stars after a 9+ hour marathon. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest field I have made my way though, with over 2600 runners. I was really happy with my play and felt like I made some really good plays late on that paid off. We had been 3 handed for a while with roughly even stacks when one guy got someone else to offer a chop (he was chat banned!). It was worth a fair bit more than 2nd place money based on my chips and I was tired, so I think it was a good decision to chop.

I started a new job on Monday so I probably won't be playing as much over the next few weeks until I get settled in. I think I used up my luckbox for a while anyway.

Jinx

Obviously after my last post I run really bad.

I dropped 8 buy-ins at $200 NL 6 max in one day over 6k hands. It was just one of those days where every time I flopped a set someone flopped a bigger one, or I'd get my money in with the best of it only to get runner runnered and lose the pot. It's one of my swingiest graphs for a long time, I actually started the sesson up 3 buy-ins, took a break then dropped 4 or 5 straight, then made a few back before dropping right back down.

It's taken the rest of the month to undo that session, but I finally broke through the zero barrier a couple of days ago. It certainly made me think a little more about swings and bankroll requirements. In a way I'm lucky I play at a level where the money doesn't effect me, I'm not sure how I would have felt if that was $1k NL or something. That session only really stood out for me because I rarely play that many hands in one go. I'm sure there have been other similar stretches, but they just occoured over a week or more so I didn't notice them as much.

As far as tournies go it's been mixed news. I have bubbled 3 final tables in the last week, which is really frustrating. Unfortunately the downside of playing aggressively when you get down to 5/6 handed before the final table is that you occasionally run into big hands. I did manage to take down a small live tournie for $1k though, which saw one of the craziest HU sessions I have ever played in.

We went from 9 to 5 reeeaallly slowly and then the blinds caught up with us and the last 3 dropped quickly. I got HU with aguy I know quite well, and we both decided that there wasn't enough money on the table and we should just play it out. Every time one of us got short an pushed we doubled, this went on for about 30 hands or so, which takes ages live, until I finally held and won with JT vrs AK.

So I guess I have had some luck.

Running Good

I hate to jinx these things, but I have been on an insane heater recently.

I have made 4 final tables in the last week, all in fields of 100+. That's a crazy number considering I haven't been playing in any real volume. Three of the FT's were online, but the most fun was on Thursday night when I took down a tournament at my local casino.

I went from 8/9 when we sat down to chip leader HU. I actually got a little unlucky on the FT bubble when I was being really aggro and ran into KK. Other than that everything went perfectly. People were folding to my 3 bets like it was their job, and I took down a couple of decent multi way pots early on to give me some room when we got down to 4.

I made it HU with a monster chip lead after busting the guys in 3rd and 4th and we were done in 2 hands. At my first table I was in a bit of a gambling mood and made a few last longer bets. It was so sweet to have one of them come over every now and again to give me money until I busted the last one on the FT.

If only I could always run this good.

FT's, APAT and Harbour Lights

I have played some decent poker in the last few days which started with a FT and 5th place in the 45k at Stars on Friday night for $2.7k. I went into the FT 2nd in chips, but just couldn't seem to get it going. I went out in a flip that would have seen me 2nd in chips again with 4 left. With around 25 left I took a really nasty AA
I played the APAT regional event on Saturday. Slightly tired from the night before, but I still had a good time. I had over 10% of the chips in play with 23 left and busted in 20th. I was running over my table until a couple of big hands crippled me. After that I was sent to the rail after I got my money in with 55 vrs AJ and the flop came J high.

Monday night I played Event 1 of the Harbour Lights festial. It was a much bigger field than I expected for the first event, 120+ turned up to generate a nice prizepool. I floated around my 4k starting stack for the first 3 levels until I doubled up with AA vrs a busted straight draw right after I moved tables. I won another big pot with QJs and then the standard AQ < AT hand against a shortie got me short myself.

I managed to survive a couple of steals until I shoved A6s and got called by KK. An A on the flop gave me false hope, but the K turn sent me packing.

I'm really enjoying my poker at the moment and trying to play live as much as I can, which I enjoy a lot more. I feel like I'm playing well and understanding the game and other players more than ever. A couple of months ago I was feeling a little bored with poker in general, but after taking a step back for a bit my enthusiasm is renewed. I even caught myself reading through some of the hands in HOH3 the other night, which I haven't done for a long time.

Also...

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 9797657

Busyness and the WSOPE

I have been pretty busy over the last week or so and have made exactly zero WCOOP events so far. I decided to put my W$ to good use though and stake some busto +EV players. It’s going well so far with 1 decent cash and a small profit overall. The percentage of the action I have in the remaining events is a little smaller due to the higher buy-ins, but I’m happy with my player selection and hopefully it pays off.

Since I haven’t had much time when I have been online I have mainly been playing smaller tournies and lots of cash games. I’m still killing $200 NL 6 max but I have no real desire to move up. I feel like I have a real edge at this level now but I don’t have the time to study and take my game further at the moment, which I would probably want to do if I was going to make the switch. Table selection would also be a lot more important at the sites I play if I was to move up, and I’m quite lazy/impatient in that respect.

I made the final 3 tables of the Stars $25k gtd $109 last night, but I was pretty short towards the end after a couple of nasty hands. I managed to double after shoving on the flop in a multi way pot, then the level after ITM I lost a flip with 66 vs AK.




On a less personal note I was really impressed that Annette Obrestad won the WSOPE Main Event. That was a really tough field she beat and I think it’s quite an achievement for anyone to win that tournament, let alone an 18 year old girl. I hate to say it, but I think we might be witnessing a legend in the making. If she keeps playing the way she does think how much she could achieve by the time she’s 40.

Party Cash and WCOOP

I haven’t been playing as much poker as I would like recently. I’m finding it increasingly hard to find time to play tournies, especially those with bigger fields. Instead I have been putting a little more focus in on cash games, which are going well.

I have been playing $200 NL at Party after a few recommendations, and I would definitely suggest anyone playing at places like Stars and FTP give it a go. The games are usually quite good at the times I play (around 3pm ET onwards) and I find that table selection, on the whole, is much easier.

I’m looking for something to get me back into the MTT mood, and I’m hoping that with the WCOOP coming soon at Stars I’ll be able to get myself going with a few of the bigger satellites. I plan to buy in direct to some of the events and sat in to a few others, depending on how much free time I have.

I might also look into some sort of staking project for people who are interested in playing in the WCOOP but aren’t properly rolled. I know of a few players who would definitely be +EV against the sorts of fields we should experience during the series, so I might see if I can get a few people interested in playing some of the smaller events if I stake them.

Late WSOP Update

So the WSOP has come and gone. I’m gutted I didn’t cash but it’s only one tournament, right?

I have discussed pretty much all of the interesting hands and overall I’m happy with how I played. I’m confident I was +EV against that field, at least from what I saw and heard about from others.

I was chipping up loads early on and had a decent stack after the first two hours. One of the things I was somewhat concerned about before playing is that I wouldn’t be able to play the way I like to play, due to the WSOP being, well, the WSOP!

I’m happy to report that I played almost exactly how I wanted to, both early on, and later when I got short. I got my money in ahead making an aggressive move into a pot that would have probably seen me through to day two (there was only one level left for the day). I don’t think I could have done more than that given the circumstances.

I haven’t played much this week but I’m slowly getting back into it. I’m thinking about trying to qualify for the PCA if I can get the time off work. I still have plenty of W$ left over, but we have the WCOOP yet to come, so I guess I’ll see how that goes first.

Vegas Prep

I fly out to Vegas on Sunday and have been preparing by playing LOADS of online donkaments and playing live as much as I can.

I have put in a couple of decent live runs with a 3rd and a 4th in the last two weeks. It's been a pain to find tournies locally with semi-deep structures, as most casinos and card rooms in my area favour low buy-in rebuys with really bad blind structures and/or level times.

I feel great about my game as the WSOP approaches and I'm really looking forward to it now. I'll be playing in some different events since I changed my travel dates, so I'll keep those updated here.

Dublin Trip Report

I arrived at the airport on Saturday morning around two hours early for my flight. Normally this should have been plenty of time to check in, get through security and get myself something to eat before boarding the plane. Given that it's only an hour long flight from London, I hate the fact that the whole process typically takes over 4 hours.

The queue for security is absolutely huge. I join the end of the line and I estimate that there were probably around 2,000 people in front of me. The worst thing was that it wasn't even moving. After about an hour and a half I have moved all of 100 metres. At this point I know there is no way I'm going to make my flight. Lots of people around me are in a similar situation. I get talking to a couple in front of me who are off on a honeymoon to Barbados. 'Great start to our marriage' the guy told me in a downbeat tone. 'We only booked the Saturday morning flight so we could spend an extra two days out there' their flight leaves about 10 minutes before mine.

I'm starting to feel really bad for this couple, as a friend of mine sees me as he's walking past. 'Hello mate, how are you?' I let him know I'm a little bored of waiting in line and ask if it's always like this at the weekend. 'We have extra security down on the runways today, so we have much less staff working in normal security, the queue from here is about 2 hours, when is your flight?' 10 minutes later I'm upstairs at a different (and almost empty) security gate where I'm whisked through quickly and find myself airside. 'I definitely owe you a beer' I tell my friend. He tells me it's not big deal and I quickly let him know about the couple standing in line in front of me. I still have no idea if they made it.

I make my flight with little time to spare and board the plane to find I'm the last person on. I have no idea how all those people made it on time. I fail to believe that they all turned up 4 hours early to make the flight. I arrive at Dublin airport and meet Matt (Suited Jock) who I'll be sharing a room with. He's been waiting at the airport for a few hours now so I apologise as my flight was a little late meaning he had to wait even longer. He flashes me a genuine smile 'No worries'.

We jump in a cab to our hotel and I think about cracking a joke about his sexuality being in question at ITH and our sleeping arrangements that night. Given that this is only the second time we have met, I decide to pass. We arrive at the hotel which is surprisingly nice for what we paid. We can't check in yet so we drop off our bags and head out to the card club where the event is being played.

Before long I'm sitting at my table and the first hand is being dealt. I planned to play reasonably loose and aggressive early on and take it from there. I make a strong start and work my way up to 13,000 from a 10k starting stack. Some of the players on my table are really bad. We have two super nit types who don't seem to want to play at all, a couple of guys who call like every two hands and maybe 1 or 2 okayish players who seem aggressive and semi-decent post flop.

I really enjoy making moves in live tournaments that you would never make online. It folds to me in the CO and I raise to 3x with 56s. It folds to the BB who had played maybe one hand in the first 4-5 orbits who makes the call. The flop comes A49 rainbow and the BB checks. I bet out and he thinks a while before calling. There is something about the way he acted in addition to his image that made me make the following play on the turn. The dealer flips an irrelevant 2 and the BB bets out for 1/2 of the pot, looking agonised as he does so. I think for a while and put in a substantial re-raise and he auto folds, flashing an Ace. I can see a couple of the other players on the table making a mental note of the hand and I throw my cards into the muck.

Next orbit I make a mistake by getting a bit deep into a hand during a blind battle and end up having to show 78 on an ATK95 board. My next two raises first in are met by heavy re-raises and I'm forced to tighten up a bit for a few orbits.

In the last level before the break I feel like I have a great table. We still have a couple of really, really tight players who have played maybe 2-3 hands in the first 3 levels, one of which is the BB from the hand above. I lose half my stack when I flop top two pair from the BB in an unraised pot versus a flopped set and make the first break with 5k in chips. I manage to find Matt who also has just over 5k in chips at the break. Neither of us have seen any hands and as play resumes 10 minutes later I hope at least one of us can double up soon.

I have an M of 10 so I'm not desperate but I want to start making a move while I still have chips. First hand back after the break it folds to me in LP and I automatically make a standard raise into the tight blinds on my left. I'm absolutely furious with myself as soon as I realise I haven't looked at my cards. Both cards are still quite obviously in their dealt position and the BB thinks for a while trying an amateur stare down in the process. He eventually folds and I don't look at my cards.

At this point I decide to really take advantage of my table still being quite tight. There are two players who have been very active at the table, and between the three of us we take most of the blinds during the first level. I also place a few re-raises against the other two, one of which I have to fold when villain comes over the top when I'm holding JTs.

I'm back up to about 12k when one of the tight players flat calls in MP. I raise in LP with AsQd and Mr Nit calls. The flop comes A56 and he checks. I bet out and he pushes for about 9k. I think for a while about making the call. I really don't want to go broke with top pair against someone I know has such a small range for this type of move. He's played very few hands, and the hands he has played he's never shown any aggression like this, let alone a check/push. It's possible he's starting to think he has to make a move, but I can't give that idea enough credit to call. If I fold I still have enough chips for a little play. I fold and push my cards over by mistake, I think MP thought I showed my hand intentionally because he looked up and flipped AKs.

I slowly build my stack back up and take a 3 way pot with 99 on a low board. One hand where there were like 3-4 limpers I make a big raise with 89s on the button and it folds round. I see very few hands but manage to steal once or twice an orbit and make the break with 19k, a little above average.

I find Matt and we decide to skip the buffet, which already has a long queue, and look for somewhere else to eat. We are both determined not to eat another Burger King since we ate there at lunch, but after a short walk and no restaurants it's our only real option. We both decide to mix it up and have chicken instead of beef. Crazy stuff.

Matt is up to 23k and we talk about the next stage of the tournie. We are both in good shape now, after being short at the last break. I make it back to my table just in time for the first hand and sit down to commence battle. The next two levels are pretty easy for me, I bust Nit #1 when he pushes his short stack into my 99 with A7 and bust Nit #2 when he limps A9 in LP and calls my push with TT. Both hands hold and I keep afloat for a while picking my spots at a much more aggressive table. Matthew comes and sits behind me, He's busted after taking a coinflip.

The blinds start to get high a couple of levels after the dinner break and I'm starting to get short after backing down to a couple of re-raises. I hold AK on the button and it folds to the CO who thinks for agggesss and finally makes a raise of 6x the BB or something similarly large. I shove for the rest of my stack, the blinds fold and he calls with JJ. No help on the board and I lose my first and only race of the tournament.

We go back to the hotel, get changed and head out into Dublin. Temple Bar is absolutely heaving for the bank holiday weekend. If you ever find yourself in Dublin you absolutely have to visit this area in the evening, you won't regret it. After a long hunt for an ATM we finally make it into a bar and Matt has what he confesses to be only his second ever pint of Guinness.

After a while we head back to the card club. They stopped play at 1:30 am and we arrived just after to find the cash games in full swing. We had heard from the night before that the cash games were pretty lively, so we both sit down at a pot limit game (quite common in the UK) about 3 hands in I have AA in LP with a few limpers. I bet the pot and get two calls. The flop comes 379 and Matt bets out, the player to my right folds and I bet the pot again. I think it took us a few shouts of 'pot' to get our money it but when we do Matt looks up to me and says 'Set'.

No help on the turn or river and I need to get some more chips to sit back in.

I'm not really a massive fan of live cash games, but this one was very soft and Matt was taking full advantage. I made the money back from my earlier stackage and we call it a night. Matt is up a little over two buy-ins from a pretty short cash session.

We come back the next day with the intention of playing some more cash games but there are none. The final two tables of the event have been set up and all eyes are on the action. After a while someone sets up a SNG and we go upstairs to play where we can still hear the commentary from the main tournie.

It's a very social game and since one of the players is dealing we play 11 handed. Most of the players seem to know each other but I don't reconise anyone other than Matt and one of the nits I busted from tournie. He played much, much looser and much better than the day before. He would have gotten much further if he played this way all the time. I win a few decent pots and get HU as a 2:1 chip dog. I'm normally pretty bad HU but my opponent was worse. He hardly ever raised from the button and almost never called a raise after limping. We get it all in on a QTT board when I have Q9, he flips 55 and I hold to take it down.

The timing was perfect for me as I had to leave for the airport about 10 mins later. I go upstairs to wish Matt well in the freezeout he's waiting for and he wishes me good luck in Vegas. It's been a nice warm up but I didn't really see too much action. I had no really interesting hands and nothing that really made me think too much. I didn't see AA-JJ the whole tournie, made a few standard calls/pushes but nothing really stood out. I'm happy with how I played and feel pretty confident now in the run up to Vegas.

If I had won that flip I would have been in good shape with about 40 players left and a real shot at going deep. I can't ask for much more than that really. Lets hope I saved all my luck for the WSOP

Since this is pretty long the following is for the tl;dr crowd:
- Airports are fun.
- I meet SJ and don't make jokes about him being gay
- My table is full of bad players
- They take lots of my chips
- I get revenge by busting them
- AK < JJ
- Temple Bar is awesome
- Matt cracks my AA in a PL cash game with 77
- I win the worlds first 11 person SNG

WSOP Main Event Seat #2

Last weekend I won my second WSOP Main Event seat of the year as the ITH peoples champion. I was down to 500 chips at one point early on, but managed to get a little lucky and battled my way back to win the seat.

This means I can now use the remaining cash from my first seat (which Stars has given me already) to play in some preliminary events. I’m also still able to wear Stars gear so I get to pick up my $1k sponsorship money when I arrive in Vegas. Looking at the events available while I’m out there the following events are the ones I intend to play:

Event #47 - 06/29/07 - $2000 - No-Limit Hold’em

Event #49 - 06/30/07 - $1500 - No-Limit Hold’em

Event #53 - 07/03/07 - $1500 - Limit Hold’em Shootout

Event #55 - 07/06/07 - $10,000 - World Championship No-Limit Texas Hold'em

Clearly if I’m still in on day two of event 47 I won’t be playing event 49. I might also play the $1k SHOE event if I manage to win a sat. I have been playing quite a few mixed games recently and feel that once you take Razz out of the equation I have a decent shot.

I have just got back from Dublin where I played the Irish APAT event. I went out a couple of levels after the dinner break after the CO pushed JJ and I called on the button with AKs with no help from the board. I’ll probably write up a trip report today or tomorrow so I’ll post it here as soon as it’s done.

Sunday Blues

I’m starting to build up the same love/hate relationship with the Sunday tournies that many other tournament players share. The first tournie I busted in last night was the Stars Million. It’s almost standard for me to bubble this tournie, and last night didn’t disappoint. Nearly 6k runners, 810 places pay and I end up busting in 816th.

I also played in FTOPS event #3 at Full Tilt. The $322 buy-in event drew nearly 3,000 entries and generated a prizepool close to that of the old Sunday Millions. I got pretty close to the money in this too, finishing just inside the top 500 when 410 paid. The structure at FT is great though, enabling me to take a couple of nasty beats (JJ < TT and AK < AJ) early on and still build a decent stack with relatively low blinds after the second break.

In slightly more positive news I have now finalised my plans for Vegas this year. I’m flying out from London on the 26th June, which should allow me to take in a couple of preliminary events and spend a bit more time playing in other tournaments and even attend a 4th July BBQ!

I still have a return flight booked for the 12th July, but I may change that now depending on whether or not I play the ME. Stars has now deposited the $10k ME buy-in to all qualifiers accounts, which means we can potentially decide to keep the money. It’s a tough decision to make, and I was much happier when I didn’t have a choice to make. I was really looking forward to playing but I’ll just have to see how I feel when I’m in Vegas.

Golf anyone?

It seems I’m getting increasingly interested in the world of professional poker players these days. I think it’s mainly because I spend so much time in poker forums and talking to other players and I pick up most of the gossip that’s going round in those circles.

My latest obsession was been the interesting ‘Golf Hustle’ story involving Ram Vaswani and Phil Ivey, two very respected pros. Lots of other players have been drafted into the debate including Daniel Negreanu and Barry Greenstein.

The debate centers around a series of games of golf in which Ivey, Ram and a few others played for money. The other games seem to be irrelevant but the issue rests on the last game they played, one in which it was said Ivey didn’t give enough information about the improvement in the standard of his play.

These are lots of different accounts of what happened, the most recent of which is Ram’s, which has been posted on the Hendon Mob website. It’s a shame that it seems to have blown up in the way that it has, and it might stop Ivey getting a game in the future!

As for my own poker it’s been a great run since my last post. I have been grinding out a solid earn rate at 5/10 FL and even felt comfortable enough to jump into a few 6-max games. This level seems much more beatable the more I play it. It appears the jump from 3/6 wasn’t as big as I had initially expected, the style of play is much different in some respects, but I haven’t found it too hard to adjust to.

I have also had some decent tournie success, taking 2nd place in the $35k on Stars on Monday night for over $5k, and making the final two tables in the $25k, only to go out on a 60/40. The $35k FT went so fast, the player I got heads up with had busted the players in 3rd and 4th place, giving him a 6:1 chip lead. There was still a little room to play but unfortunately I ended up busting with 66 vs T9.

I feel like my short handed and bubble play in tournies is really getting there now. I do seem to bust on the bubble a lot more often, but when I don’t I have usually amassed a decent stack and look in good shape to go deep. I’m also really enjoying the new 3k starting stacks in the guaranteed tournies on Stars. I just feel like it gives you a little more room to play early on, and makes a big difference in the middle part of the tournie as stacks are much deeper, enabling you to make more plays post flop, and giving you more options where stealing/re-stealing is concerned.

Nice Weather > Poker

Things have been a bit slow on the poker front for me lately, largely due to the awesome weather we are experiencing here in the UK at the moment. On Friday I managed to make the FT of a small $10 tournament at Stars with nearly 700 runners, I ended up losing a flip heads up for over 70% of the chips in play and took 2nd place for around $1k.

I also had a great run during the week making the FT of a live $200 Freezeout. When we were down to six players the chip leader had around half the chips in play and was doing a good job of playing the big stack. I was raising every hand he wasn’t involved in, and ended in my pushing 4 hands in a row with 5 left before being called when I had AA.

A dream situation saw me up against AK, villain promptly rivered a straight to cripple me and I busted a few hands later for just over $2200.

I have also read recently about the WSOP Main Event structure change. It seems they have taken a note out of Pokerstars book and doubled the starting chip stacks to 20,000, but doubling the blinds at the same time, meaning the changes will make absolutely no difference. It looks like they have decided to double the starting stacks in the rest of the events without changing the blinds, which will probably make the prelim events a little better, giving people more room to play early on. I guess they wanted to make this a blanket change for the whole series, but didn’t want a 45 day Main event. It should make for an impressive looking FT chip count though!

5th Place

Two final tables in two days, one live and one online, and I finished 5th in both. I think it has to be possibly the most frustrating place to finish. Wednesday night I played in a local rebuy with just over 100 runners. I was sitting at a little under average after the 1st break when everyone tightened up and went into freezeout mode.

I managed to take advantage of quite a passive table and picked up a few pots early on that allowed me to take a nasty KK vs QQ beat and come through with something resembling a stack. I got back to about average after winning a flip with 4 tables left and pretty much maintained my stack until the final two tables. When we got down to 5 handed on both tables I was 8/10 and maybe had a couple of orbits to double if I was going to stay in contention. At this point someone proposed an utterly ridiculous 10 way chop and although most people didn’t go for it, 3 of the 5 players on my table agreed.

Needless to say I went hyper-aggro and eventually ended up busting the guy in 10th to make it in the money and to the final table sitting 2nd in chips. Due to the nature of the blind structure and the number of chips in play the final table went pretty quick. I was chip leader for all of a few hands, and I think the 4 players who went out before me did so within the first 15 hands of the final table starting.

Five handed I had to back down in a few pots and eventually ended up pushing AK from the SB and getting called by AQ. Flop brings a Q and I’m already half way to the cashier.

Not an amazing performance but it was nice to get 7 or so hours of live tournament poker in. The luckbox who knocked me out went on to win the tournie and didn’t even tip the waitress who had been working on her own and serving him all night.

My other final table came in the Stars $15k last night. I was so tired from the night before that I was convinced I must have made at least some mistakes late on. In reading the HH today I can’t see anything too bad, but I have definitely seen a couple of spots where I probably didn’t extract as many chips from my opponents as I could have which is something I really need to work on. Overall I was happy with my play and it’s a great feeling to make the FT of a tournie with over 2,000 runners and turn a 1.5k stating stack into nearly a million chips.

Nothing else to report except that I have already made tentative plans for Vegas. At the moment I plan to be there from the 5th July (the WSOP ME starts on the 6th) until the 12th, unless of course I manage to go on a sick run and make day 5, at which point I’ll be extending my stay!

NO TEN! NO TEN!

I won a WSOP Main Event seat on Pokerstars on Tuesday night. I qualified through a $160 Double Shootout satellite which paid just one $12,000 package.

Prior to playing the DS qualifier I had been having a rough time in the smaller satellites trying to build up my W$ bankroll. Playing the $16 DS’s to the $650 satellite I had made 4 final tables and finished 4th in one that offered 2 seats (when 3rd and 4th paid out just $72) and finished 2nd in two others when just one seat was offered, picking up the $72 both times.

The breakthrough finally came when I won two tournies to the $650 in two days. One was through a $24 6-max Double Shootout, and the other from a $27 rebuy. I unregistered I planned to play a couple of the $160’s with the W$ and play the smaller sats again when my W$ roll got low. The tournie I won the seat in was my first shot!

I felt comfortable at both of my tables, and didn’t have to wait too long after winning my first one for the final table to start. I picked up a few nice pots when we were 6 or 7 handed, and just went from there. Heads up was a little nerve racking, $12,000 for first place and just $160 (buy-in back) for second.

It was all over in a few hands. I had a 2k chip lead and found myself facing a standard raise with AKo, I re-raised, My opponent pushed and I called. He flipped TT and a K came on the flop, I got all excited and started shouting ‘NO TEN, NO TEN’ Needless to say it didn’t come!

The chat box in the tournie window went crazy and all my IM/IRC windows lit up. It felt a little unreal for a few seconds, but in sunk in pretty fast, I was off to Vegas to play in the biggest poker tournament in the world.

I expect I’ll be posting my thoughts about the WSOP and the Main Event here over the next couple of months, and I still have to figure out what I’m going to do with my left over W$. It’s possible I might play some more satellites and try to build up enough to play some prelim events. If I’m going to make the 10 hour trip to Vegas, I may as well make the most of it!

Update Time

January and February are busy months for me so I have neglected the blog a little, but things are calming down now so I should be able to post more often. 2007 has been good to me so far, bringing 3 live final tables, finishing 2nd twice and 9th on the third occasion. I was happy with my play in all three tournies and feel really good about my live game at the moment. It still has so much room for improvement, but at least I’m moving in the right direction.

I also made the final 2 tables of a festival event with a much higher buy-in than I would normally play. I still felt like I had an edge on all the tables I played on and busted in 12th after loosing my only coinflip of the tournament.

Online poker has been good to me too, making 2 final tables at Full Tilt in the $3k guaranteed (2/380) and the $9k guaranteed (3/680) and my forays into $100 NL 6-max have been going well, starting to see more typical BB/100 rates with something that’s starting to resemble a decent sample size.

Hopefully I’ll now have more time to play and I’ll be back here making random observations about all things poker related.

WPT Win For Hachem

Well I said I was prepared to be proved wrong, and I was. Joe Hachem has become only the fourth person in history to win both a WSOP Main Event bracelet and a WPT title.

The Bellagio must have been absolutely electric. I do wonder if those same ‘AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE’ railbirds were there again.

It’s a shame these two didn’t meet heads up, for that would have surely made for some entertaining viewing. Negreanu busted in 3rd, a cash that saw him gain the title of biggest WPT all-time money winner.

Hachem overcame a small chip lead to take the title. For most people now surely he has proved that he has the talent and skill required to play at this level, unlike some others who may have not received much respect since WSOP Main Event wins…

This is a quote on the PokerStars website from one of the final 27 players due to play the final of the ‘Moneymaker Millionaire’ in the Bahamas this January:

[i]Leonard "malibu44" Lawrence

Quote: "Chris has just shown that anyone, no matter how much or little skill you have, can win a poker tournament. The reason it has been such a big success over the past few years, is because anyone, and I mean anyone can just walk into a poker tournament, go on a nice run of cards and walk away a millionaire."[/i]

What makes me laugh is that this got up on the website without anyone questioning what was said about someone they are clearly paying plenty of money to promote the site for them. This is on top of the fact that the actual tournament this guy is potentially going to take home a nice payday from is named after the player he’s giving such a generous opinion of.

Joe Hachem makes WPT final table

It seems Hachem isn’t another one hit WSOP Main event wonder. He’s at the final table of the 2006 Five Diamond World Poker Classic championship event. Daniel Negreanu has also made the cut. Not surprisingly in this age of ever more popular live events the final table is going to be televised. It should be a good show as these two and the other players battle it out for the a WPT title.

I always though that Hachem was a great player, but he’s also entertaining and throughly marketable. Pokerstars did a good job on getting hold of him. I think Negreanu has the slight edge here and if you add his stack I don't see how he doesn't take it down. I'm prepared to be proved wrong though.

Negreanu has a slight chip lead over Mads Anderson and has Hatchem outchipped nealry 2:1. I think there is destined to be plenty of action on this 6 handed final table, I’m just gutted I won’t get to see it live…

Nothing Much To Report

It has been quite quiet for me over the last few weeks. I have been short of time to play but have been playing lots of $100 NL 6-max in an attempt to hit goldstar for the first time. I'm pretty close with 5 days left so hopefully I'll scrape through.

I'm starting to get excited about the APAT even next weekend now. I can't wait to play some real poker even though I haven't played many tournies recently. Hopefully I should get some practice in this week before I fly up to Newcastle on Saturday.

It's starting to look like my Oz trip in March may not be happening. It was almost a certainty a couple of month ago but now it's about 50/50. The good news is that if I don't end up going I'll have enough holiday time left to go to Vegas in the summer! I honestly can't decide which one I want more...

APAT

At the weekend I managed to get myself a seat at the UK Amateur Poker Championship which is being held at The Aspers Casino in Newcastle at the start of December. It’s Part of the APAT (Amateur Poker Association & Tour) which has already staged one event so far this year in Birmingham.

The idea behind the APAT is to give amateur players the chance to play a deep stacked live tournament for a nominal buy-in, and bring players away from the shot stack rebuy tournaments which are typically offered in casinos. Most of the live games I play follow a structure of a 800 starting chip rebuy tournament where the blinds reach 200/400 after an hour and a half. It’s a brutal structure and the rebuy period is typically (for me anyway) an expensive one.

Other than that it’s just excuse to go on a night out in Newcastle, which I hear can be a gloriously messy affair, and meet a few players from ITH who are also attending the event. There is a WSOP package up for grabs for the two day event. A field of just 210 runners should make for some interesting and creative play and if I get knocked out early I have a few people to rail.

I’m really looking forward to it now. I hope this will be the first of many trips to live events outside of my normal haunts. Reports from the previous event in Birmingham suggest that there aren’t really any bad players and that the field is generally quite good. Hopefully it will give me some valuable experience of more structured live play, which will help if I ever decide to frequent the WSOP or any EPT events.

Sometimes 90% isn’t enough

Ironic after my odds based last post but unfortunately if you’re a 90% favourite to win a hand on the turn, it means you have to loose 10% of the time. I just wish it didn’t happen to me in the Million last night. We were down to just over 1500 runners from a stunning 6.6k entrants. If I had won the hand I would have had an above average stack and cruising towards the money. Who knows what could have been.

It’s fair enough to say that the odds will even out over time, but that situation might not present itself enough for it to ever even out. In a ring game, if you get stacked with AA you know that over the long term the money will be coming back to you. However if you loose HU on the FT of the Million for the difference between 180k and 95k it’s unlikely that even a very large amount of poker will ever make that back.

Also from tonight I’m thinking maybe I need to mix it up a little more and get myself to a stack where I can take a hit or two, leading to a more aggressive ‘bust early or go deep’ strategy. I do tend to play pretty much ABC tournament poker with a few other bits thrown in every now and again. I think the change would probably make me think a bit more about my game, so I’m going to look over my hand history from tonight and see where I could have mixed it up a little more and see if I can start to apply that elsewhere.

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!

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.

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!

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.

Double Shootout King

I Honestly think I might have to start calling this the Double Shootout Blog. I think I have probably played about 6 or 7 DS in my short poker career, and I have won the seat in 4. I know that’s a small sample size but it’s harder than it looks to win 2 SNG’s back-to-back.

I have about 500 $10 and £10 SNG’s under my belt from back when I started playing. I had a decent ROI and built the bankroll to start playing Limit FR. Maybe it’s my familiarity with the quality of players at this buy-in level added to my more recent experience in higher limit tournaments that gives me an edge.

The one I won today was an $11 6-Max sat to a $280 tournament. Strangely the player HU on the 1st table was much better than the one on the second. At the start of the second table I was lucky to build up to 4.5k early as I took a brutal all-in beating 4 handed, when my AA was cracked by AK. I ran the stats through the ITH hand calculator and I’m a shade under 93% to win the hand! He had a 3.5k stack as second chip leader and put me down to 1000 chips at 50/100. Climbed back and eventually busted my AK friend to play HU with even stacks.

He was pretty poor Heads-Up. He folded in the SB more times then I care to remember, and was calling and min-raising the rest of the time, no match for my super aggressive donkified HU style.

So I’m in the $280 100 seats Guaranteed to the WCOOP Main event. The buy-in to the ME is $2600 so IF by some miracle I do mange to qualify I’ll have a bit of a bankroll dilemma. I made a decision a while ago to always play in tournaments I qualify for but to date my biggest buy-in has been $530. This is in a different league, I guess I’ll have to worry about it when I win the seat!

Blind Stealing

I am often surprised to find that players late on in tournaments are so reluctant to steal. In the later stages in a tournament players at my table I have marked as playing a solid game let their stacks whittle away by not stealing. This isn't to say they are trying to steal and not succeeding for whatever reason, they simply aren't trying. Too many times recently I have seen players in comfortable but low M situations who have worked hard to build their stack just sit there and fold hand after hand, presumably waiting for something good enough to either raise or push with.

The most important thing to remember about a blind steal is that you don't need a hand to do it. I often like to have something in at least the top 50% of hands, just in case I have to see the flop or play the hand down if called. Needless to say if I am re-raised it's an easy fold, you just want the blinds, and you'll rarely catch anything worth playing on the flop. If you miss the flop don't be afraid to make continuation bets. Look at it from your opponents point of view, you raised pre-flop, he had a hand he didn't want to re-raise you with and just called, then you bet out on the flop. He needs a decent hand here to justify staying in the pot, and the majority of the time he won't. Other players at the table may also take you for a real hand, and give your subsequent steal attempts more respect.

So if you're not looking for a hand, what are you looking for?

First and foremost what you need is an un-raised pot, any raise means that you have a good chance of being called by the initial raiser, and probably re-raised if he wasn't trying to steal himself. Attempting to steal with one or more limpers is also not an ideal situation, one of them may have a hand he can call you with and chances are he'll be well ahead if he does. Your raise amount in this situation will also need to be bigger, putting more of your stack at risk. It's always a good idea to use your reads at the table where limpers are concerned. Have they limped a lot? Have they raised the flop after limping? Have they called re-raises? All of these factors you need to take into account.

To pull off an effective steal you also need good position, you don't really want to raise in early position with the possibility of any of the players still to act calling or re-raising you. Usually I would recommend late position, but this of course does depend on a few other factors. If you are in MP and it's folded to you, you might have an ideal situation to steal the blinds if the players on your left are generally tight, short stacked, or a combination of the two.

Blind stealing is only really useful in the later stages of a tournament. Usually the arrival of the antes is a good time to start looking at opportunities. There's not much point trying to steal pots at 10/20 or 15/30 when you start with a 1500 or 2500 chip stack. Players are much more likely to call a small raise at this stage in the tournament, you won't steal as effectively and when you succeed you'll be picking up a minimal number of chips in comparison to your stack.

A successful steal effectively buys you an extra orbit and your called and re-raised steal attempts will be more than made up for by the number of times you steal successfully if done correctly. Raise amounts are central to this working correctly. Not only will they affect the amount of times you are called/win the pot but they will also affect the overall profit you make. Below is an example based on 10 steals, 7 of which are successful and 3 of which are not:

9 handed table – Blinds 200/400 Ante 50

Pot size T1050

Raise amount 2.5 x the BB (T1000)

Profit from steals = 7350

Loss from steals = 3000

Net gain = 4350

Based on a raise amount of 2.5 times the big blind, which should be sufficient at most tables, you gain 4350. If we say the player in this situation is working with an M of 10 (T10500), he is only risking just under 10% of his stack at each steal, meaning any re-raises or other situations where he doesn't win the hand don't cost him much of his stack.

If we change the raise amount to 4 times the big blind:

9 handed table – Blinds 200/400 Ante 50

Pot size T1050

Raise amount 3.5 x the BB (T1400)

Profit from steals = 7350

Loss from steals = 4200

Net gain = 3150

This doesn't take into account the fact that your blind steals may be more successful with a larger raise amount, but I honestly think that the two raise amounts would have pretty much the same effect at most tables. As you can see here the difference in the two raise amounts equates to an extra orbit This may be the difference between getting the hand you have been waiting for and an early exit.

Many people argue about how many times per orbit you should be looking to steal. I think this is generally dependant on your environment as supposed to having a rule of thumb. On a tight table you should be looking to steal more as your opponents are less likely to call. Clearly you need to be more careful when they do call, and especially when they re-raise. At looser tables you should scale down your steal attempts to maybe just one per orbit. At looser tables you are much more likely to get called so you need to really tighten up your requirements for stealing. Look for the best opportunities, smaller stacks in the blinds, tighter players still to act and the CO or button.

The bubble is a fantastic opportunity to increase your blind stealing. Recently I was playing a big Sunday tournament with a decent stack on the bubble and manage to add around 30% to it over 20 or so hands leading up the bubble. This gave me both an opportunity to cash deeper in the tournament almost by default, but also gave me a stack big enough to benefit from the all in fest that is inevitable after the bubble burst using Harrington's 10% stack theory.

Short handed tables give you even more reason to steal. If you are down to the final 2 or 3 tables of a tournament the tables will generally have a low average M. If you are floating around a M of 3-4 then pushing is best. It gives you the maximum folding equity and is probably the only raise that will get any real respect. If you make a 2.5 x BB raise with an M of 4 you won't have enough left to do anything with if you fold when raised, and you probably won't have much choice on the flop if you are called either. This is certainly a time when the 2.5 x BB raise goes out of the window, and you just have to hope nobody wakes up with a hand before you do!

Blind steals also do a good job of disguising your good hands. If you keep your standard raise amount consistent with both your blind steals and your standard raises, any players paying attention at your table will probably give you less credit for you hand. This means your continuation bets will probably have more standing on lower flops, and you are more likely to get paid off when you hit the flop.

It's also worth noting that both effective raise amounts and blind stealing in general add to your stack at any given point, meaning that if double up, you'll be doing so with more chips, adding even more to your stack.

WCOOP Event #13 - $320 PLHE 6-Max

Far from a riveting performance in WCOOP event 13. ($320 PL 6 max) I ended up busting just before the first break. The only one think I can take from the tournament is that I at least made a good laydown. I was up to about 2700 from a 2500 starting stack and was dealt QQ in the SB.

It’s 10/20 so I raise to 60, SB raises to 120 for what looks like a re-steal so I re-raise to 200. He calls and we both see a flop of 957. Two diamonds on board but I have an over pair so I bet out half the pot. He then raises to around 500, I’m worried about what he picked up in the BB at this point. Turn brings a 6, I check and he bets the pot. The bet pretty much puts me all in, he’s bet the whole way, maybe he has a bigger pocket pair, or a smaller one that hit the flop, or even two random cards for 2 pair. I fold and he flops 99 commending my laydown.

That put me down to about 1700, caught nothing for a while until a LP 77. I raise pre-flop and get one caller. The flop is a frustrating 98x and he bets a nominal amount, I re-raise and have to fold to his push.

That puts me down to a pretty small stack, one funny AQ vs AQ all in then end up all in with AK vs QQ, no help and I’m out.

Doubt I’ll be playing any of the events that are left so that’s it for me in the WCOOP this year. I didn’t end up playing as much as I wanted and the two events I did play I didn’t event manage to cash. Bring back the Sunday Million!

WCOOP Event #2 - $530 NLHE

Had a horrible event #2 of the WCOOP. I started okay picking up a few pots without getting too involved. I just didn’t manage to get any cards, and busted about half way through the field. I saw 12/146 flops (about 7%), and a couple of those were in the BB. The few pre-flop raises I did make let me peek at flops which I didn’t hit, and forced me to make continuation bets that were re-raised. I played 3 hands to showdown until my last and lost all three!

So not a fantastic start to the WCOOP but I plan to play in a few more events. I did qualify for $13 so it’s not like it’s a massive hit to my bankroll. I have stakes in a few other players who are still in, so hopefully I have something to post about later!

(on a side note I did manage to outlast a couple of WSOP ME winners!)

A good few days...

I have been playing some good poker lately. I cashed the Stars Million on Sunday. Hardly an exhilarating performance, but I was happy about my play and took a few notes on things I wanted to work on and improve. I do this VERY rarely so I know I was taking it seriously for a change! I retain my 100% cash record for the million which is great, I just need to work on lasting to the bigger money. I hovered around average stack for most of the tournament and was very happy with my play towards the bubble, taking full advantage of a table of a couple of tight and short stacked players on my left.

I have been trying to play some more UK time friendly tournaments this week and work on my game in bigger field MTT’s. I managed to cash in the 10k on Stars last night but, didn’t play much after due to the frustration of my exit.

I played again tonight and went out early. I fired up a $13 Double Shootout to WCOOP event #2. I had a great first table, the HU lasted all of about 5 hands and as we were one of the last tables to finish I didn’t have to wait too long for the final table. The play was actually pretty good, or at least better than I had expected for a turbo. I was pretty quiet but managed to get a chip lead 3 handed and grind one of the players down.

Heads up is always a fun experience for me. I’m pretty erratic and not particularly conventional in my play. 3rd place got nothing 2nd was $240 and 1st was the $530 seat. Still plenty to play for - 20 hands and about 10 all-ins later I took it down. It was absolutely manic but I can now proudly add Event #2 - $530 NLHE to my WCOOP schedule!

Bill Fillmaff

If you haven't seen this yet you have to check it out:

Bill Fillmaff Video

It was posted on the ITH forums and had me in stitches. I have watched a few instructional videos and they all seem to take it so seriously. Check this one out for something a little different.

'He's probably homeless' and 'How did I get all this spit in my mouth' are among my favorite quotes.