September Swings – Mac Poker Software, Crack, Hyper Turbos and More

Posted by icemonkey9 on Sep 4, 2009 in 100nl | 0 comments

Well September has been a busy month for me professionally.  I've written 10 articles this past week ranging from WCOOP and MiniFTOPS previews to the rise of poker software for a Mac.  For those of you that haven't seen "BlazingStars" and Poker Copilot 2 in action together, it's something to behold.  Basically BlazingStars is a hotkey program and Poker Copilot 2 is a full hand history tracking utility with a HUD.  Both are awesome.  Big news came when PokerTracker 3 people said a Mac version is on the way which is real exciting for me since I'll be on the private beta test.  If you're a dogmatic PC person that thinks Macs are for hipsters, you're definitely wrong.  The operating system and architecture, not to mention the stability are something that even computer neophytes will appreciate.

Poker Playing

So far the start to the month has definitely been very swingy.  I started so cold it wasn't even funny.  I was thinking to myself I really didn't seem to be hitting any flops or big hands, so I did a check in Holdem Manager and sure enough, through 3,000 hands I was hitting 2.6% of sets (supposed to be 11.5%) and looks like I was whiffing bad a lot of the time in other situations. Look at 3bet pots and man I was getting killed by not hitting and my opponent hitting hard so cbetting became suicidal.  That's nothing huge to read into but just confirmed my observations at the table.

There are some mega-frustrating hands that would happen and it seems like hands that are top pair top kicker over overpairs are getting outflopped every time.  And every time, it's against a massive fish.  Take a look at this hand for example:

This guy is a 37/15/3 and his min-raise was pretty suspect.  But the fact that he just kept barreling made me wary that he indeed hit that flop hard and was going with it.  I don't think at any point I was thinking of raising him and maybe on the flop that was a mistake.  I posted this hand and basically everyone agreed it's a crying call at the river.

Anyways hopefully this stretch of "this stuff" happening is behind me (at least where it happens a majority of the time) and I'm judging to simply get my hands in and play some cards.

It's like CRACK

A good internet poker buddy of mine that works for a few of the sites I write with suggested I try hyper turbo multi-table tournaments.  I usually look for a game to give me some variety from the daily grind and WOW these things are fun.  You start with 10 big blinds and the blinds move up every 5 minutes (on Full Tilt) or 3 minutes (on PokerStars).  I have been playing the $7 matrix ones on FTP and those are a great distractor.  I've played four and "taken it down" twice (meaning won at least 1 of the 4 tournaments + 1st place overall bonus). Anyways if you are looking for something stupid and fun, I highly suggest these tournaments.  They are like poker crack.

Congrats to ChuckTs (aka CLEAN)!!!

A good friend of mine, Taylor, just announced that he got hired on as a coach at popular poker training site Stox Poker.  Taylor's a perfect fit over there and I am so glad he got this gig.  As many of you might know Taylor is my coach (when I book sessions that is) and he's dramatically improved my game.  I guess I'm not *too* happy he'll be improving others!  Nevertheless, I think Stox got themselves one of the up and coming stars of 6max online poker.

Vegas Report Coming

I did take my wife to Vegas for 4 days and 3 nights last weekend for her birthday and I do have a report coming soon.  I only played poker over at the M Resort where we stayed one night with no real results to report.  Vegas is kind of played out for me at this point and I don't think I'll be going back for at least six months unless I get some magical assignment to cover the final table of the WSOP.  Anyways, I have a biting commentary about Vegas night clubs coming soon. (they suck)