Thursday, January 11, 2007

Dreamteam II - It all starts again

Today is the first week of the Dreamteam II competition. I'm in a team called "Chips, Chairs 'n' Prayers" but let's hope it doesn't come to that.

The line up is:

D4ZZLER (CAPTAIN) - Darren
SHANEMcG (VICE CAPTAIN) - Shane
KEITH2202 - Keith
BFA74 – Mark
RINCE7 – Paul
ALSOMATI – Steve
KIRSTEN – Mat
RHINONEIL – Neil

I'm not sure if Daz put these names in any particular order but second from last sounds like a challenge to me!

Unfortunately due to a slight hiccup in communication between me and Daz Howard was not included in the team (sorry Howard!). Still, he's said he's going to play in the £50 freezeout at the Gutshot on Thursdays to I may well include how well he's done by way of updates here...as if there isn't enough competition going on.

The tourney is being run on the new Betfair software. I must say I'm not a great fan of this new look, but that could have something to do with cleaning out my (meagre) account last year playing Omaha whilst sitting in Singapore airport. Sooooo, with these tourneys being $50 buy-in I have reloaded with £300. Hopefully I'll cash a couple of times and not neet to reload before the 20 weeks are up...either that or see the dollar fall to 2.50.

Quick update - played a $0.5/$1 cash game and made $98 in about 20 hands. First $50 with KK, then next when I got to see a free flop of 442 in the BB holding...42! Someone with T2 decided I just had to be bluffing - duh! Just wish he'd bought in for the full $100. Still, that's this and next weeks' entry fee sorted.

Blinds 10/20. 194 Runners . Stack 2000.

Straight into the small blind with 32 off. Not even worth completing. Not quite a full team tonight as Shane hasn't made it for some reason but 7 isn't too bad with the top four scoring.

52. J2. K9. T5.

I've been playing a lot of cash games recently and they're very different from tournaments. Must remember to be at least a little tight at the start, even with position.

J9 soooooted (I fold, see above comment on playing tight!). KT. T5. A7 in the BB, fold to a raise, flop is 568 and the turn a 9! Ah well. 86. 52. Q9.

mikjagger out early - now he used to be in our team but switched. I will not mention karma.

A3. Q9. Hmmmmm, pokerabso (aka rivher) is playing aggressively and no-one is playing back. Maybe there are some easy chips to be had here? I'd definitely start splashing it around a bit if this were a cash game, but it isn't so I'll stick to plan A for at least the first couple of levels....unless I get bored that is. J3. J8.

AK sooted UTG. I limp, 858 flop. 2 turn. 2 diamonds. Call an 88 raise from abso. 7h on the river and he wins with 52. Guess I should have raised pre-flop!

AK soooted again, now in the BB. Abso raised on the button, I pot him and take it down.

Blinds 15/30. 185 Runners . Stack 1930.

K3. AJ on the button, raise it to 88 and take the blinds. J9. Mark gets TT and takes a small pot, then loses a medium pot betting a missed straight draw (and getting re-raised) and is down to 1,400. Plenty of time though.

AT o/s in mid position and I fold to 2 limpers (at this point Howard is probably choking). 63.
AQ early position so I raise to 105 and take the blinds. AJ in the BB. abso raises again from the button (getting to be a bad habit of his) so I call. J82 flop, I check, he bets 140, I raise to 400 he pushes in and has me covered. Hmmmm. Given his aggression I can't really put him on a monster so I call and he shows KJ.

72. 62. J9. 83. abso goes out pushing his last 240 chips in with A8 vs. 44. Hits an 8 on the flop but the turn is a 4. 65. A6 spades, but UTG so I fold it. 94. T6. 45.

Mark 1305
Daz 0 (ooops! AJ in sb vs. AQ in bb)
Neil 2915
Me 3995
Steve 0.

Now Steve must have had what is an early contender for bad beat of 2007 being in the BB with 57 and seeing a flop of 346 rainbow. He gets it all-in against a set of 3s, when of course the river comes the case 3 for quads. Ouch.

Q4. JT. KQ hearts so I pot raise to 105. One caller A98 flop. I c-bet 250, he calls and I shut down and fold to his turn push. 87 in the BB which I fold to a raise and a re-raise. 63 in the sb which I complete with 3 limpers. 478 flop but I fold to a 180 bet.

Blinds 25/50. 169 Runners . Stack 3575

A6 on the button so I raise 140 and take the blinds.

Mark gets AK and then AQ but no action.

T6. J8. Time to start loosening up a little. 76 UTG isn't the spot though even with a K98 flop, and nor is 72 in the BB. 72 on the button. That's a lot of 72s!

Mark all-in with AK against a raiser who folds and he's back to 1,464.

Q8. Q9. J9. 99 in the SB, I raise to 190 and take the blinds. AJ on the button, 3 limpers so I limp too. QJ5 flop all spades (I don't have any) so I fold to a bet. Maybe I should raise pre-flop here, but how much? Anyway, just as well I didn't (not that that makes the play correct) as the flop raiser showed AsKh !

75. T4. A6. AT but fold that mid position to an earlier limper (Howard is now having kittens). BB raises it to 300 and early limper re-raises to 1,000. BB pushes and limper calls. It's amazing how I'm lucking out staying out of trouble. They get it all in AQ vs. JJ.

T5. T4 on the BB. See a cheap flop of T54 all spades. Min bet from sb, I reraise and he folds. Next hand 76 spades on SB so I complete with 1 limper. 3 spades on flop so I lead out 150 and take the pot.

First break.

Blinds 50/100. 153 Runners . Stack 3725.

Have to get a little more active now. T8 spades on the button but fold to a min-raise from the cut-off (who had the JJ so now has a big stack). J8. T3. Q9. T3. It's funny, if you were to ask someone to make up random hands I bet there wouldn't be so many repeats! QJ UTG so an easy fold. J9 in the BB with just the button limping and SB completing - JT2 flop so i bet 240, button calls. Then 560 on 6 turn and he folds.

Lovely muffing by -Phoenix- who's 44 takes out 3013Rich's AA! Next hand I get QQ on Rich's SB and he pushes to my raise with 6c5c. Up to 4,750.

A2. Q5. K8. 77 in the BB at the same time Mark gets AA (fortunately on another table!). J22 flop. Q turn. T river and I fold to a min-bet. He had KJ. Mark bets 650 and takes the blinds.

K8. T9 clubs in the cut off. I pot raise a limper who has been limping a lot and take the 250.

QQ - same guy limps so I pot it again and he folds. Kinda hoping he would get impatient me raising him twice in 3 hands. Next hand he does the same but with KK and makes quads! Ah well, poker gods being nice to me so far tonight. 92 in the BB. K6 in the SB.

Blinds 75/150. 130 Runners . Stack 4950.

46. Moved tables. T8MML on my left which isn't great as he's a good player. AT in the cutoff. Raise to 440 and take the blinds. K8. A7. 63. A4 clubs in the BB but I get a walk. 43 SB fold to a raise.

Neil has 66 and folds to a pre-flop raise. Flop 66x. Then he gets AA but no action.

Raise pot with KQ on the button and take the blinds. 82. 93. 43. A6.

Mark gets QQ and spins up to 4000 after getting called by Donkeyjim with 89(!).

K4 in BB - one limper. K93 flop, bet 320, limper folds. T4. T5.

Daz doing a good job of keeping the chat going.

J5. K3. 96. Q6. Q8 in the SB so I complete against a shortish stack and raise on an AJ8 flop - he folds. 97. 82.

Blinds 100/200. 106 Runners . Stack 5775.

Blinds getting heafty now, down to less than 20 rounds. K9. J4 on the BB and I fold to a raise and an all-in re-raise. T2. J2. 85.

Down to the last 100 runners.

AJ. BB re-raises my 700 raise all-in for 1400 total. Guess I'm behind but getting 3-1 so I call. He has AK - oops but a J high flop saves the day. 85. A6 on the SB fold to a 700 raise. K2. T5.

Kirsten (upgraded from girlfriend to missus since DT1) has just noticed I'm writing a blog and is calling me a sad geek. Charming!

92. J4. 53 in the BB but I get my 3rd walk from -Dealem-. Thanks fella!

67. Q2. AT - raise to 700 and take the blinds. 22 - fold to a raise. T4. 77 UTG I fold.

For the second time tonight the software crashes and I miss out around a circuit getting it up again. Q6 greets my return. K2.

Second break.

Mark 3253
Keith 2837
Paul 1609
Neil 3572
Me 7257

Blinds 100/200 Ante 25. 85 Runners . Stack 7257.

K8. K5. 65. It has gone all-in crazy from the short stacks. JT on the button, raise to 875 and call the extra 600 from an all-in push. He has K8 and I lose. Ooops - first setback of the evening but still on 5379.

97. 87. 87. TT in the big blind. 910 raise from medium stack with 2000 left behind. Hmmmmm what to do. I push, he thinks and calls with 99. Phew - up to 9299. Actually he had more (or rather I had less left over) than I thought. That was probably a mistake which got lucky. A6. KT. A7. 93. Neil up to 5772 pushing to a raiser with AQ who then folded.

QJ sooooted on the BB. SB raises to 600 which I call. Eugh - AT2 flop and I have to fold to his 900 c-bet. Not worth chasing the gutshot there really.

T2. 83. JT. Mark down to 690 chips having 1/2 caught some flops. JT. K3. 43 on the BB. Don't think I'll be getting any more walks tonight. Hmmm - UTG limp so I see a flop of AT8 and fold to a bet.

Mark out in 67th so it's 100 points scoring at least for the four of us remaining.

A3.

Blinds 200/400 Ante 25. 65 Runners . Stack 7774.

96. Keith just doubled up to 3000 with A3 vs A2 lol. A32 board.

73. 93. Haven't played a hand in ages and am drifting down in chips. 800 in the pot each round now and only 9 handed.

A7 spades but have to fold to an UTG 3xBB raise. 84 in the BB fold to the UTG all-in shove. 444 flop!

87 in the small blind. A5. I think if I'm gonna make a move it's going to have to be a re-raise with the action on this table. T2. K4.

Pretty card dead for a while now - gone from 9300 to 6900 without playing a hand.

33 so I call an UTG limper hoping for a cheap flop. A94 not what I'm looking for. Moved tables again. Q6. QT.

Paul out KK vs A9 in 55th for 150 points.

A5 hearts on the BB. 62. A8 on the button so I raise to 1000 and get called by the SB. T72 flop. check check. 4 turn and he pushes all-in so I fold. My feeling is the flat-call on the SB had a big hand - dunno why and who knows if I was right? Down to 4724 which limits my options!

92. J2. 50 left so 300 points each so far for the 3 remaining players. 53. K2 on BB one limper and the SB completes. 972 flop.

Blinds 300/600 Ante 50. 48 Runners . Stack 4287.

K7. J9 spades on the button but it's 1800 before it gets to me. AQ in the cutoff. I push and get called by AT and increase to 7026. Just in time! 82. 74. 94. 52. T2. This is the worst run of cards I have had for ages. 54.

Uh-oh. Neil's taken a big hit and is down to 207 chips. Next hand he quads up to 837 with 23!

QT in cutoff. I raise to 1600 and get the blinds. Q9. 54.

40 left so that's 400 points at least.

Neil's out KQ vs JJ so there's 2 of us left. 22 in the BB but I fold to a raise of 2000. JT in the SB so I complete. T96 flop so I bet 2600 (into 1600) and push to a re-raise. He calls and has 98 which doesn't improve so I go up to 13974. 76. 74. 42. 73. 43. Well, at least these cards make my pre-flop decisions easy. Ooooh - top muffing when Scruples' QJ all-in pre-flop against princep's KK rivers a broadway. That's gotta hurt having flopped a set of kings. Next hand princep gets revenge with his 32 rivering a straight against Scruples' QQ which also made a set.

Break 3.

Keith 7159
Me 13574

Blinds 400/800 Ante 50. 34 Runners . Stack 13574.

Q2 then T5 in the blinds can't stand any heat (especially 4.5k + shoves from small stacks!). KJ on the button looks interesting though...but not for a 5761 shove. 54. AT diamonds so I raise to 2000 and take the blinds. 42. Q7. AJ UTG so another 2000 bet, again taking the blinds. Just as well as I get 82 in the BB and then J3. 30 runners left so Keith and I have both got at least 600 points. 62. KJ hearts. 2400 raise and take the blinds. Q7. A2. 55 (which I fold in 2nd position with 2 all-ins KQ vs A8 and I would have won lol). A3 in the BB, 97 in the SB. I raise it but the BB comes over the top so I fold. Ooops. Q7.

Blinds 600/1200 Ante 75. 24 Runners . Stack 10624.

Getting a bit big now - 2400 per round so my M=5.

73 not helping any mind. Nor is 54. 74.

Big blind and I get 53 hearts which I have to fold to a button all-in raise.

Small blind I get 83. FFS! One more round or so and I'll have to push with any half-decent hand.
72 on the button isn't it. Nor really is K8. Or 82. A5. A9 on the BB. Button pushes in and I call. He has K8 and rivers an 8 - out in 21st. Oh, and only the top 18 cash. Great!

Keith is our final survivor and does a fine job of getting the the final table, where he gains a very creditable 7th. His exit in his own words:

I had 39k, average 55k, blinds 1.5k/3k 150 ish ante. The two chips leaders
in the blinds. KQ diamonds so I raise to 7.5k, didn't want to commit at this point. SB
calls, so does BB. Flop 449 two diamonds, looks promising!
SB NCFC Rob bets 20k, BB DonkeyJim calls, not so promising!
I don't particularly like calling all in with draws and on another day may have folded and played on, 1, maybe, 2 short stacks at the table too. But it was 0115 and I was totally knackered so I thought "Sod It, Chip Leader or Bed" all in for 31.5k. Rob folds A9, Donkey calls with aforementioned 64. No diamond, bedtime.
Incidentally, a 9 came on the river which if Rob hadn't folded would have changed the winner of the tourney.


Paul 55th for 150
Neil 40th for 400
Mat 21st for 600
Keith 7th for 1750

Team Total 2900


Tuesday, January 09, 2007

General Update

Well, it's been ages since I last posted (mostly since the DreamTeam competition stopped) so time for a quick review of 2006 and goals for 2007.

Ended the year positive (hurrah!) - approx £2373 to the good. I say approx because I don't have all my live results noted down. I do however have all the bad ones noted down(!) so this is a conservative figure.

Highlight of the year: Coming second in a $50 rebuy tourney with 1000+ runners for $18,500
Lowlight of the year: No one thing in particular really, mostly just not winning at cash games!

Now, you may be asking, if I won $18,500 how come I'm only up $4,500 for the year - what happened to the other $14,000 !?

Well, there are some large items on the P&L list....

- Had a terrible start to the year playing live going around £1,200 down in the first month
- Played in a $2,000 buy-in WSOP event
- Also lost $2,000 playing cash games in Vegas
- Lost €1,700 playing omaha in Barcelona
- Bought in for some large on-line tourneys e.g. Ladbrokes PMV final at around $950 a pop

the rest went on "learning" how to play cash games! Curiously I have done reasonably well in live cash games (yes, despite those big losing sessions above!) but appalingly in on-line cash.

On that front I recently signed up to www.cardrunners.com and can highly recommend it if you're looking to learn cash game play. It's not great for Omaha but for general approach and NLHE it's pretty good.

Well, I say it's not good for Omaha but in one of the videos the guy brings up his pokertracker stats which shows he's +$185,000 for Omaha...

I also found a great voyeristic site www.highstakes.nu which lists results from the higher stakes cash tables on various sites. Already this year it seems Gus Hansen is doing well on Full Tilt for Omaha:

Winners Results Sessions Hands Hours BB/100
Gus Hansen +$546 722 35 3899 54.78 18.29
Ugadabugada +$514 056 13 1822 20.95 46.73
cmynuts +$276 451 15 1486 19.32 23.55
howisitfeellike +$104 818 21 1337 18.03 1.37
sbrugby +$104 459 25 4293 50.45 3.53


of course, this money has to come from somewhere, and it appears a certain Phil "the fish" Ivey is donating....

Loosers Results Sessions Hands Hours BB/100
Ziigmund -$292 030 17 1703 19.75 -24.35
Phil Ivey -$204 358 8 339 5.53 -102.42
magicpitch1 -$169 810 25 3691 47.58 -5.79
batoelrob -$147 974 6 252 3.38 -79.06
Mr Poker KDH -$138 518 12 866 10.85 -9.54


still I guess he can afford it.

So, what's up for 2007? Well, the second Dreamteam tourney starts on Thursday so I'll give that a go. Also I'm planning on going to Brighton on 27th for a tournament down there. The main focus however is to become a winning cash game player. Reviewing last year's results I win small and lose big - clearly this must change. Looking at some pokertracker results I push way to readily with a draw, so stack off on marginal hands. At the low levels I play ($2-4 and below) there's really no need for this and ABC poker is more profitable.

That's the theory - here's the practice so far lol:

Best Day 148
Worst Day -421
Winning 3
Losing 4
Total Win 298
Total Loss -651
P&L (£) -353


Oh well, plenty of time to turn it around.