Right said BetFred

"I'm too sexy for ....."
Oh, shut up!

What a lousy band. What a great site!
I was invited to play in the $1500 affiliate freeroll at BetFred Poker about a week ago. I thought I was not going to be able to finish the game but eventually made the money. Then instead of holding off for the big bucks I donked it away and finished 9th out of 84. Top ten got paid and I got $30 in my account. I could have easily folded that KQ out of position and made a few more bucks, but I couldn't really pay attention to the game any more and so that was that.

So today I was thinking about taking that cash and moving it over to some place more productive. But once I logged in I saw that I had just enough to play a Rio Jackpot SNG and a Maui Jackpot SNG. If you don't know what that means just read on down , I think I talked about these in the past.

Anyway, I played them both at the same time and won them both! So I went from zero to 30 to 85. Not bad. Not bad at all. Here's Fred's smiling face telling me how much I won:

Ticket to $100K freeroll

So I figured out the quickest and cheapest way to get a ticket to the weekly $100K Monster Freeroll on Party Poker is to play the $11 single table SNG. Not only does the winner get an entry to the weekly, but the top 3 places get paid. When you play the $6 SNG only the winner gets a ticket and nobody gets any money.

So now I need to find a day when the wife will let me sit back and concentrate on the weekly game. The top 2000 finishers in the weekly get an entry into the monthly $1M freeroll. The winner of the weekly gets $12,500 and the top 1000 get paid.

The beauty of Party Poker is that it is just full of bad players. I saw someone call a huge pre-flop raise with 6-3 suited from the small blind. He actually went all-in on the flop with nothing and lost. Some seriously bad play going on.

As for my win, I was chip leader for pretty much the entire game until we were three handed. By then the blinds were pretty big and the short stack was going all-in on every hand. I had him dominated twice and still lost to some miracle straights and flushes and wound up with 1099 chips. But then I used his strategy against him and eventually won the damn thing. Wish me luck in the weekly. And if you haven't done so already (who hasn't?) go to Party Poker and try your luck as well.

Cashes

Well, after bubbling out several times in all kinds of tournaments I finally cashed twice today over at Poker770. The high cash was in the $2K guaranteed that had 426 players. I made it to the last two tables and was sitting in the top half of the field but made a stupid call for almost all my chips by a player who was going all-in every hand. I had KQ and he had A7 and he made a full house on the turn. I was down to about 24 chips with the blinds at 2K/4K and managed to quadruple up once. Then my 66 ran into 99 and I was gone. Still 14 out of 426 is not bad.

Here are the standings:



The first hand of the tournament was important. I was dealt AA in early position and only raise it a little. I got two callers and the flop was AKJ rainbow. I checked and got a raise and a reraise. I check raised them both and the both called. The turn was a beautiful J that made a flush draw possible. All the money went in and we turned over our cards. I had Aces full of Jacks, one guy had a straight and one had Jacks full of Aces. I tripled up on the first hand. Amazing. I was sure that I would get caught with my slow play but luck was on my side.

War Poker

War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

With the recent insanity in the Middle East, I have been thinking long and hard about how this heads-up final table is playing out. Obviously there are more players than Israel and Hezbollah (Iran, Syria, Lebanon, UN, USA, etc.) but I think we don't want to get into a discussion about team poker, so we will just focus on these two.

War is very much like poker. This whole mess started when Hezbollah tried to steal the blinds from Israel by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. They were sure that they would get away with it as Israel had been acting pretty tight/weak for about 6 years since making a huge laydown and giving back the buffer zone in South Lebanon. But Israel woke up with a monster hand and decided to reraise by starting a full scale operation against the aggressive style that Hezbollah was displaying.

Before you know it both sides are representing extremely strong hands and not backing down. Hezbollah fired a few more raises in the form of hundreds of missiles and rockets on the civilian population in Northern Israel. Israel decided to move all in and sent thousands of active and reserve soldiers into Southern Lebanon as well as crushing targets from the air.

As the pot grew with each raise some new developments came into play. At certain times it seemed like one of the sides was ahead and then all of a sudden they were behind. As the final cards fell the inevitable had to happen. A chopped pot? Maybe. The problem is that both sides claim victory. And in this game of War Poker apparently there is no tournament director or floor person that can be called.

So let's see the final hands: Lebanon has over 1000 dead and several thousand wounded. Israel has about 150 dead and a couple thousand wounded. Lebanon has about 15,000 destroyed homes and a collapsing infrastructure. Israel still has two soldiers being held captive. Hezbollah has not disarmed and has no plans to. Israel has still not pulled out of Southern Lebanon. What a mess!

Here's the real problem with this version of War Poker. As in any poker tournament, there can only be one player alive at the end holding all the chips. A chopped pot only prolongs the inevitable which is that a new hand will be dealt eventually and a new battle for the chips will ensue. Which brings us to the real problem - how is this going to end? Do we really believe that a final table deal can be reached, where both sides are happy with the outcome? I doubt it. I think this is a fight to the end and there are no deals. And that makes me sad. Very sad.

Switching back to Party

I heard that Party Poker started some Monster Jackpot. So I headed over to see what was going on. The idea is that they have a set of cash games and tournaments that feed a portion of the prize pool into a huge progressive Jackpot. The qualifiers feed into a $100K monthly that the feeds into a bigger prize pool and so on. It's well over $7M right now.

Party is fish central, seriously. I have seen the weirdest calls, with absolute crap. Players drawing dead with no draw and no hand calling an all-in bet. Totally insane. SO insane in fact that of the 4 or 5 SNG's that I played I either won or made the money all but once. I also played some of the MTTs and didn't cash in any, usually losing to a 2 or 3 outer on the river. But I am getting used to it.

I played in a few Limit MTTs and in one I busted out on the bubble when My AK all-in got called on the turn by a Q2o who caught his Q on the river. Next!

I am also playing the disgusting PokerStars MoneyMaker Millionaire qualifiers whenever I can. 10 FPP to enter and I have about 240 left. Maybe in one of them I will actually win when I am ahead instead of brutally being screwed by the river to a 2 outer. I have decided that I will never again deposit at PokerStars. Never again! Or until I get that urge.

My Titan Poker streak is still going strong. I made three 2nd places in the Jackpot SNGs and was on my way to 5 in a row when I got another river beat. 5 seconds in a row gives you $200. 5 firsts give you the progressive jackpot ($15K an up).

WSOP ME ended. I am waiting to see who will start offering seats to the 2007 WSOP. I'm sure someone already started.

I am going to write a deep post about War and Poker soon. I am still building up to it in my head.