Limpin' aint easy!

Hansel: I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree. Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot.

"Zoolander"

It has taken me a while, but I think I have finally figured out how to play the free roll BBP at Poker Pages. You see, after a little messing around with the calculator, I figured that in the early rounds, the BB is less than 1% of the starting stack. That's just too easy. So I put my new found theory into motion last night.

In these tournaments, either someone goes all in on the first hand or they make bullshit raises of $100. I decided to extend my starting hands from, lets say 25% of possible hands to about 95% of possible hands. If I had a decent hand and position, it meant a raise of $500 pre-flop. If my hand wasn't premium, I would limp in if there were no pre-flop raises. In the first few rounds I saw 80% of the flops. But there was method to the madness I think. If the flop didn't help me, I was out of there having lost at most $100 out of $10K, which I could handle. But when I won, I was more than making up for it.

The rest of the table was playing pretty tight, and I was trying my best to get a loose reputation. When I again limped in from early position with 63o (WTF?), there were a few callers and the flop came (6 3 9). I checked it (I think I should have raised the pot, but oh well) and there was one bet in late position of $600 or so. NOW they start betting properly. I promptly re-raised all over him with $3K - hoping it looked like I was buying the pot. I got two callers, and the turn was a beautiful 6 giving me one of the smallest little boats you could imagine. I bet another $2K, which is obviously not the right amount to bet in this situation but I feel was within my strategy. I was hoping and praying one of the others had an over pair or even AK-QJ something similar and was drawing dead. I get one caller and we go to the river with an even better Ace. I loved that river card, and here I am with the nuts thinking about my next bet. I have just under $3.5K and my opponent has just over $2K. I know I have the nuts so winning is not the question, only how much can I win. I have shown strength post-flop so he must know I have at least a pair or a set, but here's hoping he has...and then I realized, I don't have the nuts. A pocket pair of nines or the bullets can put me out. Even 93 or 96 was good enough. Surely even these guys would make a raise pre-flop with a pocket pair of Aces? I decided that I have to be sure of my read and bet $2K, forcing him to go all in if he wants to see. I was hoping he had one Ace, and I was gone if he had two. He folded, and I took down a pretty hefty pot and doubled up without knocking anyone out. I was pleased with the result, but the realization that I did not have the best hand when I thought I did could have been tragic. Never the less, onward I marched. I think that is one thing you can take away from my blog - I know I am not the world's greatest player and I am more than happy to let everyone know how shitty I played my last hand. Algae - I can't see that moving on too much.

It was a great little experiment. I was getting shit cards (like 63o) and still limping, and then getting straights, sets, full house and a regular basis. Sure, if the blinds were a little bigger I would have been out on my ass in one orbit, but I was making 5 or so very small losses of $100-$200 for every win of over $5K. I think that is pretty good, especially when none of them were bluff or overly creative. I can get into a bad habit of trying to slow play mediocre hands, something I am working on, but I think after the 63o debacle I was playing solid poker for the table while still seeing 80% of flops. Mind you, all it would have taken was one aggressive player at the table and my little experiment would have had quite different results. I think I will keep these tactics in my back pocket for when the situations call for it. Ah yes, only in free rolls can you get away with playing intentionally that bad.

My nemesis did catch up with me though - the dreaded pocket pair. I was once again kicked in the groin by a shitty pocket pair. I was holding AJh and another loose player went all-in with a stack about half the size of mine. This was clearly a bullshit call and I decide to play policeman and was the only caller. I show my Ajax, and the villain shows a pair of pocket 5's. The first card on the flop is a 5 and I can say goodbye to that chunk. What bullshit. Sure, going half my stack with AJ is probably not the wisest decision, but I am just getting sick of seeing these stupid small pocket pairs bust me up. What am I doing wrong?
Later on my connection dropped out yet again. That too is becoming tiresome. I'll have to do something about it someday. I have prices and such on wireless broadband (but that does seem a little silly when I only have a desk top and not a laptop), and it is just a matter of convincing the rest of the house hold that it is a worthy investment. Time will tell.

Tomorrow is the first night of using the new poker gear with a full table of punters. I'm looking forward to that as well as the multiple write-ups coming from the MMPBT. If just one other person uses that abbreviation, my job is complete. Remember kiddies, last place will receive my beautiful booby prize of 300 plastic poker chips and a deck of cards from the cupboard somewhere. I think I found the perfect pack too - a promotional pack of Shrek 2 cards from Red Rooster. These are great because instead of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades they have a black slug and bug, and a similar red slug and bug - only the slugs and bugs don't look very different at all. These cards are very useless, and come in a lovely tin presentation box. The picture cards have a little quote from your favorite Shrek 2 characters, sure to provide seconds and seconds of laughs. Good luck, and remember crappy play can be rewarded!

Last night Australian Olympic swimmer Jodie Henry won the women's 100m freestyle, and she broke the world record in the lead up races in Athens. This is both good news and bad news. Good news because hey, that's another world record and gold medal, that rocks! Bad news because...Guess who was the last Australian woman to win that event? Yep, Dawn Fraser. Dawn was on the radio today saying what a great swim it was, which is both incredibly obvious and even a bit of an understatement. I mean, Jodie Henry broke a world record then won a gold medal - what fucking better swim has there ever been? Ok, so Kieren Perkins once broke two world records in the one swim, but that is beside the point. I will have to check the TV guides to see where Dawn will be appearing tonight. She may have even been on more radio, TV and papers this morning but I could only see so many. I wonder what she will come out and make a statement on next? Keep tuning in here at DFW central!

It really is a bit of a joke how as soon as I started to make note of her public opinions, she then goes on an absolute bender with them. Hey, Bender, what a funky robot? Full marks for anybody who now knows what I am talking about.

Seen some excellent reviews for "Hellboy". When I saw the first preview for it some months ago, I thought it looked like an absolute stinker. Then the next preview, about a few weeks ago, I thought it looked awesome and it was back on my "must see" list. All the critics seem to say the same thing, it is better than they expected it to be and really has a heart to it. We'll see, perhaps this weekend. Also on the list is "The Lady Killers", the re-make with Tom Hanks by the Coen brothers. Looks like it should be worth seeing, but it doesn't bring up a pet-peeve of mine. When it comes to re-makes and adaptations, I can not stand those people that immediately pipe up with "Well I saw the original 1912 silent pantomime version written entirely in crayon, and artistically it is so much superior to this new age schlop!". Seriously, piss off. Just watch the movie and judge it for what it is worth. When I was working in the video store we actually had one customer come in and said they walked out 1 hour into the first "Lord of the Rings" because they thought it was not doing the book justice. Hello lady, look what you missed out on. Do you think if instead they showed 23 hours of just the text of the original books across the screen she would have liked it? No, because it is a FUCKING MOVIE! It is a different medium, just watch it and applaud like the several trillion other people who saw it. Besides the fact that I very much doubt this woman could read let alone read something of the nature of "Lord of the Rings", she had heaps of late fees on her membership at our store. Yep, she was not getting any of them erased no matter what. Ah yes, that was one of the simple pleasures of working at the video store - deleting late fees for the nice people. It was good, because they genuinely appreciated you knocking $5 off their late fees, and also the owner was a dickhead so any money out of his pocket was a good move. Hey, we may not have had much power working behind the counter at Video Ezy, but man did we know how to wield it!
That will do for this update. The blog-roll to the side is getting pretty damn impressive even if I do say so myself. I hate that name - "blog-roll". I'm going to have to make up a new one and use it here first - "WORLD EXCLUSIVE" - and see how many days it takes for it to become the standard for all of the internet, and how many seconds it takes for Dawn Fraser to come out and make a statement about it's effect on the Australian Olympic History.

One blog that nearly everybody knows about (and for good reason) that I have yet to plug (except for now) is Cards Speak. I find his comments on betting strategy pretty damn useful, and one look at the archives shows just how much effort goes into this blog. If you are reading Poker on Film and not reading Cards Speak, I would be very surprised. He is on my daily reading list, and should be on yours too.

There are another 3 or 4 blogs out there I have been reading, but I will try to only pimp one at a time and add slowly to the list on the side. A new name for the blog-roll...that will have to wait until next time. Until then, best of luck in the MMPBT!