Poker Videos!

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 28, 2008 in General | 0 comments

Hi all, so after downloading a few videos from people on the CardsChat.com website, I decided to make my own. First, I have to give some mad props to a great program I've discovered called Camtasia Studio 5 - it's the single best PC screen capture (video) utility I've ever used. It has all the bells and whistles, is extremely easy to use, and boasts the Apple H.264 codec so you can export QuickTime movies that look great and are small on file size!

I've created a tutorial on how to compress videos captured with the program, and anyone can download the tutorial video. Check it out here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DQ4A3OJS

Enjoy!

… that’s Poker!

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 25, 2008 in General | 0 comments

Man, talk about going from "Devastating" to "Devastated" in about 48 hours. I went to Melissa's poker/Oscar party last night in LA and walked into a land mine. Actually, what it felt like was being led to the firing squad, only I'm not the one blindfolded, it's the entire firing squad that is. The game was VERY slow, filled with noobs, and I think every single hand went to a showdown. It was a ridiculous game, one that I shouldn't have put $40 on, but whatever. I played well, I just took some hard core bad beats, including:

A10 vs 10 9. I'm a 71-27% favorite. I lose.
10 9 for a made flush at the flop vs Q J for top pair. I'm a 97-2% favorite. I lose (runner-runner for a boat)
KQs vs 3 9 off. I'm a 70-30% favorite. I lose.

The kicker is that I came home and played and a $2 Turbo SNG on PT. I was on the bubble and pushed it to the felt with 10 10 after the SB clearly was trying to steal my BB. He has to call my all in because of pot odds. What happened?

10 10 vs 84 = He hits trips 8s on the flop, and a full house on the river. I was a 86 to 14% favorite on that one.

It made me wonder if either "luck" or "chance" exists ... it's one or the other right? Since I took statistics in college, I believe in chance and playing odds ... but yesterday made me think the moon was in some odd orbit or some planet was misaligned with me, for me to take 4 such bad beats all in a row. Statically speaking I should have only lost 1 of them. Oh well, maybe I'm getting those out of the way and will go on a nice run now. One can ONLY hope.

Another Dominating Performance

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 24, 2008 in General | 0 comments

If I keep this up, nobody is going to want to come to my monthly super home games. We play a $20 buy in, No Limit game, with blinds at .10/.25 with unlimited rebuys for this cash game. As you might remember last time I bought in for $20 and left with $59.

This time I bought in for $20 and left with $79. I played my cards well, picked the rights spots to call an all in when I thought a player was simply getting impatient (worked twice), and didn't over play AK or AQ. All in all it was a lot of fun, and fortunately, everyone that came (we had 9) had a good time too.

Today its off to another home game, my good friend Melissa is hosting a Poker/Oscars party which promises to be a lot of fun. We're starting off with a $20 tournament (she said we might have 10 to 12 players), and afterwards we'll jump into a cash game. FUN!

I Love PokerTracker

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 20, 2008 in General | 0 comments

So I've decided to take part in the public beta (free & open to all) of PokerTracker v3. It's a powerful data tool that tracks all your hands and sorts and mines the data for you to analyze not just opponents, but most importantly, your own game.

After 4 tabling it up the past two days (yay I know I am getting crazy), I have seen a couple of holes in my game. My VP$IP was really solid, as well was my Aggression factor, but my PFR (preflop raise) wasn't high enough, and I adjusted my play accordingly.

The results have been great. Yesterday and today I have seen a steady 10 to 13% ROI on my play, at the microstakes tables of .05/.10, which is a notch below where I regularly play. I'm playing there because I am not used to 4-tabling it up and not used to actually analyzing my play in such depth.

The program offers some amazing features, including 2 that I am absolutely in love with. The first is the hand replay, which lets you replay the hand in a mock video-replay mode, and the second is the automatic graphs that track your progress. It all puts my sad-sack Excel spreadsheet to shame.

I'll definitely be purchasing the program once it's out of beta, or perhaps I can swing a free copy from the developers in return for an in-depth review at our new poker site once it launches. Anyways, any smart poker player should invest in this program ... but I almost DON'T want to endorse it to keep the rest of the rounders online DUMB

Hello/Goodbye – Washington State!

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 19, 2008 in General | 0 comments

So I was visiting my sister in Washington State, and from the CC (CardsChat.com) group I was suggested to play at the Muckleshoot Casino, apparently the biggest poker room in the state. It worked out wonderfully as my wife and sister wanted to go to something called the "super mall" which was enough for me to beg them to drop me off to play some cards while they shopped till they dropped.

They don't have No Limit in Washington - it's illegal. Stupid. They have a game called "spread limit" where the maximum bet is $500. The blinds were $3-5 and the buyin was $500. Too much for my bankroll! They had 4-8 limit and were waiting on signups for 3-6, but given my distaste for limit poker, I played in the $65 no limit tournament (apparently legal), and was given $8k in starting chips. I was thinking - awesome, plenty of chips to actually play some poker! But I was woefully wrong on two accounts:

First: The blind structure was really dumb.
25-50
50-100
100-200
200-400 (25 ante)
400-800 (25)
750-1500 (50)
1500-3000 (100)

With 15 minute blinds, clearly by the 45 minute mark there were plenty of shortstacks, and after 1 hour it just got ridiculous for every stack in the tournament. So the deep stacks were nullified.

Second: I couldn't get two cards to save my life (seriously).

I know a lot of players bi&ch about not getting cards ... well I was keeping track. I played for 1.5 hours and never saw a single pocket pair. The highest hand I got was A9 suited ( a hand I won ), and saw KQ off twice. So I was playing "extremely creatively" to save my life but in the end, if you don't get some cards, you really can't do too much without a couple of lucky double ups at the end to extend the visit, and hopefully start seeing some cards to play with.

Overall:

There was one hand I was beating myself up with, but after thinking about the hand, I think I played it right. I had Q9 off and the flop came Q T 4 with two spades. I bet the pot as the BB and got two callers right away. I figured I'm outkicked or they might be drawing. Sure enough, the spade turns, I bet it anyways for about 1/2 the pot. Yikes - two smooth callers. I'm beat. Checked it around, and sure enough one idiot was playing T2 off for midpair, but the other guy had AJ spades for the nut flush.

The tournament was okay, the people playing were awesome and were really nice to talk to between hands and at the break. In retrospect I should have asked about the blind structure, but I didn't want to sound like a dork so I just bought in. Maybe I would have had MUCH better luck at the 3-6 limit game since it looked so soft once I became a railbird.