I just had to post this picture:



This is one of the Hammas leaders that Israel has abducted in the recent insanity in the middle east. I put this picture here because I think it is the worst display of facial hair since, well, the invation of facial hair.

India

India. Visions of exotic far away lands, basmati rice and colorful clothes flash in your mind. But the truth is a much harsher reality. Dirty moldy buildings, millions of tiny banged up cars, mud and mayhem is more like it.
I am here in India for a few days for the first time in my life. I thought living in Africa as a child would have prepared me for the chaos of third world living, but how wrong was I on this one? It is complete insanity. I had to get back to my hotel (which is the amazing new Bombay Grand Hyatt -– highly recommended) and it took about 2 hours to move 2 miles. I guess it was expected since monsoon season is starting and 5 minutes of rain equates to about 2 feet of water on the roads.
How can people live like this? How can they expect to become the next great superpower if their infrastructure is so flawed? I guess that maybe if you live in it you learn to deal with it. And maybe you think I am some sort of spoiled westerner, but I have been in some of the dirtiest most disgusting, densely populated places on earth and it wasn'’t as bad as this place.

But this blog is supposed to be about poker. We'’ll start with the good. As I was sitting at the airport waiting for my delayed flight (20 hours in the air from the east coast) I fired up PokerStars and played a $10 SNG. As the gate agent was calling my zone to board I was heads up when the next hand came up. I got dealt Q-Jo and just called. Dream flop of Q-Q-J and my opponent bets out against me and I just call after waiting a few seconds. The turn was a blank and the guy pushes, to which I reply 'sorry' and call:



And that was it. I have not won a single penny since. I have had the worst jetlag of my life after 20 hours in the air and a 9.5 hour difference and so I have all night to sit and play. But nothing! I have seen about 100 hands with pocket A-A and I don't think any of them were mine. Whenever I get K-K or Q-Q I run into the rockets. A lot of the bad play is my fault as well. Stupid mistakes that me be caused by fatigue. I won't even post my stats because they are so bad I embarrassedsed. Not sure what the next step should be.

I have to do some pimpage

Matt from Poker Savvy Blog Tour has stepped up again and set up another $1000 freeroll for us bloggers:

Date: June 28th, 8:30pm EST
Venue: Poker.com
Prize Pool: $1000
Tourney type: Freeroll

All you have to do to get the password to this freeroll is send Matt an e-mail and he will hook you up. Send an e-mail with the subject line "blogger" to matt at pokersavvy (dot) com.

And while we're at it, go check out Poker Savvy. It is a slick site with all kinds of great offers. One of the better ones is a 150 seat WSOP main event freeroll that you qualify by earning Savvy Points.

Go check it out today.

Playing catch up

It's been almost two weeks since my last post. Fells like the beginning of a confession. Well then I have to confess that I have not been playing much. Here are the low-lights of the past two weeks:

Teaching the wife to play:
My wife has asked me that when we host the next monthly game at our house she would like to play as well. Some of the other wives have been regulars and she likes the social aspect of it all and wants in. I am perfectly fine with that and I actually encouraged it. But she has not played in a very long time and when she did it was some weird stud variation that we thought was what they play in Vegas.
So we are going to find some evening time to sit down and go over strategy. I actually got her logged on to PokerStars to a 45 seat $1 SNG to see how she does. I promised I would keep my mouth shut unless she wanted to ask me something. She has very good intuition but is a little short on patience. It could also be due to the fact that she was really tired. But after a few hand of being totally card dead she decided to play some reckless poker and end her misery. I hope she does better in two weeks when we have everyone over. I also hope I am not the one who busts her out of the game.

Midnight Vegas Tournament:
I had a one night stay in Vegas last week and decided to play in the $50 buy-in with $40 add-on at midnight at the Stratosphere. There were only 14 players and only the top two got paid. I actually tried to calculate the rake and it was a whopping 34%. The paid out $749 while we had 14 buy-ins and 11 add-ons for a total of $1,140. I think that is awful.
Anyway, back to the game. The table was an assortment of nice folks and one total inbred drunk moron who decided to piss everyone off. He bought in with the add-on right away to become the inevitable chip leader. He then started raising every pot to T600 while the blinds were still 25-50. First encounter he had was actually with the dealer when he threw in a 500 chip but never said 'raise'. The dealer then said that he will give him change when others called. At this point he got upset and said that he had raised and that this was the reason he doesn't tip poker dealers in Vegas. The very next hand he while looking away from the table he said 'fold' without throwing his cards in the muck. The dealer explained that he can't touch the player's cards to which the moron kept saying 'I fold' over and over.
Next up was a nice English guy who got re-raised by the moron and taunted to call. The moron kept saying he had the best hand and that's why he re-raised. But he never showed his cards. On the next hand the moron lost with Q-T suited to A-J suited and we all explained that he should not have played that hand since it was not the best hand.... We were slowly pissing him off.
Then I got A-A in the SB and after three limps and a 700 raise from the moron I pushed all-in to eliminate as many players as possible and hopefully get him heads-up. But he folded his pair of 7s and gave me the only compliment of the evening. He Asked where I was from and that I was a good player. He wanted a chance to play against me heads-up to which I replied that all we would need to do to accomplish that is to knock out 12 more people.
All this annoying behavior went on for almost half an hour. Eventually after another one of his 'best hands' was beat and after complaining about the length of the rounds and the blind structure he threw his chips in the middle of the table and stormed off. Good riddance.
We played on till the break and I made a couple of stupid mistakes that got my stack back to average after being the chip leader for a long time. I paid my add-on and decided to play solidly from there. The table merged after two people got knocked out on the same hand on the other table and we were now 9 handed. I played well until I got busted out in fifth place. Here's what happened on that hand:
In the SB I got A-8 suited and only one very loose player limped in. The blinds were 500-1000 and were going up in a couple of minutes to 1000-2000 so I figured I had to make a move before I got blinded out. I raise to a total of 4000 leaving myself only 5000 chips. All of a sudden the BB, who was the chip leader went all-in. I thought about it for a little and tried to remember what he had been showing down. The last hand I doubled up through him was my A-J vs. his A-7. I figured he was trying to put the pressure on me and decided to call. He showed 9-9 and although an 8 came on the flop, another 9 came on the river. I was out in fifth.
I tried to analyze this hand and I think my only other option here was to lay it down and wait for a better hand. I would have lost this hand even if I had Aces or Kings! A-8 suited 5 handed is a decent hand to play. But I should have either bet smaller or I should have folded to his all-in bet. Oh well, shoulda woulda doesn't do me any good.
Right after I busted out the poker room manager called me a side and told me I should have tried to work out a deal amongst the players. That thought hadn't even crossed my mind but I doubt that anyone would have gone for it anyway.
So, I played for 2 hours and lost $90 - not bad for a visit to Vegas, right?

No time to play:
I had a bunch of really good tournaments to play in (PokerStars Blogger WSOP tourney, a $500 guaranteed freezeout $2 buy-in with only 14 players, etc.) and I just didn't have any time to play. Who's the smart one at PokerStars who figured it would be a good time to play on Father's Day anyway? Not sure when I will get to play again...

Been slacking a bit

I have not been keeping this place up to date. But I have been in kind of a funk lately.

Last week we had our monthly neighborhood game and we actually had 14 people show up and play 2 tables. The blinds were too fast I think as we were trying to get three games in. The second game was where I suffered the worst beats, losing with A-A to 9-9 when a third 9 hit the flop. Then to the same opponent when I was severely shortstacked when my A-Q lost to A-4 with a straight on the river. Brutal.

The third game was just a fiasco. I should know by now to not bluff a calling station and I lost a lot of my chips doing that. I should also know that when the other calling station bets out (and goes all-in) she might actually have a hand and I shouldn't call. So I was out pretty quickly. No cashes for me last week. I have to do better next time. Have to.

As for my STT and MTT play, since I've been keeping records I can clearly see that I should limit my play to STTs. Here are the stats:

STT (05-25 to 06-08):
33% ITM (7 of 21) - 5 first, 1 second, 1 third - not bad.
38% ROI

MTT (05-25 to 06-08):
18% ITM (4 of 22) - 2 first
-21% ROI - ouch

Overall:
26% ITM (11 of 46) - 7 first places
12% ROI

Good thing for me the MTTs I played were cheap and nasty. After trying to play the 20 table SNGs on
PokerStars I went back to playing the $5 and $10 single table SNG and placing second and first. I should stick with STTs for now and play patient. Here are two screenshots of my last two wins:

Pokerbility - Personal Odds Calculator - FREE!

I just ran across a really cool tool that you can get today for FREE! It's called Pokerbility and has a really cool design and is easy to use. And now you can get it for free by downloading one of 4 poker sites and signing up a real money account (no need to make a deposit). Check out all the details at Pokerbility.com and save the $49.95 license fee.

Why Pokerbility?

• The most accurate Poker Odds Calculator with the proprietary, patent-pending CombiCalc™ Calculation Method.
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• Use the software to gain a competitive advantage over the other players on the table.
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• Intuitive and user-friendly interface blends into the natural environment of the online poker room.

"These People Are Awesome"

Wicked Chops Poker is awesome. They are the best self-promoting-generating-felating-back-scratching group of bloggers in the poker universe.