Hella Hold'em

What I did today on Full Tilt:

$20 SnG (single table):



$20 SnG (5-table):


Oh baby, step back, cuz I am on a roll!

That 45 player SnG was brutal. I folded until I was down to 8BB or so (awful ugly cards), then doubled up on an all in. Limped into the final table (though only 6 places paid), and managed to double up twice. I was 2nd in chips and feeling quite good, when I endured two awful suckouts -one right after making the money, and one 3-handed.

I'll recount the last one. It involved me having QQ, opponent having 22. We both flopped sets and get all in. He rivered the case deuce.

After all that, I *still* managed to come back from less than 5BB... FOUR TIMES 3-handed!

Then, to my great enjoyment, I knocked out the guy that kept killing me with the beats.

Next hand, got all in with QJs vs A8o, and lost. I'll take 2nd place! w00t!

Tonight I'm heading out to a party which I anticipate will be much fun. A good day all around!

Wow, that subject line makes me think of a commercial for Depends undergarments or something. It was really just meant to be a play on words, really! You know... sit 'n go... get it?

I played in a $20 single table SnG tonight on Full Tilt Poker (I suddenly had the urge to pull an Iggy but I will refrain). I took 2nd place. I rawk.

Mostly, this weekend was spent in downtown Chicago. A friend of mine from high school that I haven't seen in 12 years was in town. We checked out a show called Supernatural Chicago at the Excalibur night club, ate at a fondue restaurant called the Melting Pot (oh good!), visited the Hard Rock Cafe and had burgers at Ed Debevic's. Chicago really is a kick ass city. I need to spend more weekends downtown. I spend too much time tucked away in the suburbs.

Spring break is over and I go back to work tomorrow. Booooo!

I did a pretty dumb thing last week. It's the kind of thing that made me think, "well maybe if I don't blog about it, nobody will notice..." What you might notice, though, is that after a couple weeks of happy posts about my return to FTP, all of a sudden, there was silence.

So, I will air my dirty laundry.

From a measly $40, I pulled my online bankroll up to $400 playing 3/6 LHE. I was running good. I normally play 5/10 LHE at the casino, so I thought to myself... why not play 5/10 online? So I did.

And I ran bad.

Of course I didn't have the bankroll to sit that high. Hell, I didn't even have the bankroll to be sitting 3/6! But 3/6 is where I'm most comfortable online, and I tend to do well there. I shoulda stayed put!

So I blew all but $17 of my online bankroll in two very unlucky sessions at 5/10. I did come away with a mental note, though, that I think I could play comfortably there, if I had the bankroll to do so. I'll just say I don't feel afraid of taking another shot at it someday, as my losses were primarily attributable to bad cards and bad luck as opposed to bad play. (Of course, the statistical sample of hands is very small).

With the unmistakable craving to play some poker festering in my gut yesterday, I sat down to something I haven't played in a while: NLHE sit n' go's on FTP. I played one $10 SnG. I won it.

$50 does not a bankroll make, and it's not enough to sit down at 3/6. Today, I debated sitting down at 2/4 LHE, and decided not to. I'm currently playing in a $10 SnG

[[[[[[[ this post interrupted by a Comcast cable outage ]]]]]]]

Bastards!!!!!!

I blinded out of my 10 SnG while my cable internet was down for 25 minutes, and I'm down to 1,100 chips with blinds at 150/300 in the multi-table.

And.... now I'm out, in 17th place.

I am just not meant to play poker online, am I? If that's not a punch in the gut from the online poker gods, I don't know what is.

F$%king Comcast.

Let's see, what can I do with my remaining $20? Back to the drawing board....

This is why I <3 Full Tilt Poker. I received this via email today:

Dear phlyersphan,

Throughout the early morning on Wednesday, March 14th, many players experienced problems connecting to our Internet Service Provider that were beyond our control. We apologize for the inconvenience as we work with our ISP to implement safeguards to prevent this type of problem from happening again.

As a result of Wednesday's network outages, many of our players were disconnected from our site during play, even though some of our games and tournaments continued to run for several minutes.

If you were sitting at a real money ring game at the time of the outage, any money you had at the table has been returned to your account. If you were registered for, or were playing in a tournament that was voided during this period, your account balance has been adjusted in accordance with our tournament rules.

Additionally, to prevent you from being penalized if you were disconnected from a tournament that continued to run, we have compared your chip counts at times the disruptions occurred with your eventual result, and paid you based on whichever was higher.

For example, if you had 50,000 chips at the time of the first disconnections and only 30,000 chips at the time the tournament was voided, you will receive a payout based on a chip stack of 50,000. Conversely, if you had 50,000 chips at the time of the first disconnections and 70,000 at the time the tournament was voided, you will keep the payment you got based on the 70,000 chips.

Because you were impacted by our outage on Monday, March 14th, we have also credited your account with an additional $5 as a token of our appreciation for your patience during this period.

If you have any questions regarding the status of your account, please contact us at support@fulltiltpoker.com. Thank you for your understanding and we look forward to seeing you online.

Sincerely,

Full Tilt Poker

I received another system message when logging into Full Tilt Poker just now, saying that no SnG's or tourneys will be started until their network difficulties are resolved. It stated that they've been experiencing network difficulties for "several hours" now.

I count at least 12 hours. :-/

FYI...

Full Tilt Poker is having some problems tonight. The whole site went down for a few minutes, and connectivity has been shit ever since. I swear I've lost $50 just in hands that were in progress when I lost connection each time.

Sigh.

No hit n' run tonight. More like stumble the hell all over the place and go to bed.

JEEEBUS another network error message!! WTF!!!

You gotta work it, work it...

I'm working the hit n' run thing on Full Tilt. My sessions are no longer than 1 hour long. I've been 3 tabling the last few days, though sometimes I two-table when I'm also reading blogs or something during the downtime.

I learned a bit of a lesson yesterday that I will be incorporating into my hit n' run scheme. If you manage to score a 17BB profit in less than 10 minutes, take the money and run. Yesterday morning, I found myself up over $100 at $3/6 LHE in the first 7 minutes of play. I caught a couple big hands right out of the gate, and they held up in big multiway pots. I thought, "I should RUN!" but the greed took over. There's always that tiny voice in my head saying, "Hey, look how lucky I just got - maybe this is my Lucky Day!" It wasn't my lucky day, and over the next half hour, I gave back all but $30 of those sweet sweet big bets.

Lesson: When hitting and running, RUN after a big HIT, even if you've only been playing for 7 minutes.

It seems in tailoring my personal HnR rules, I'm going for a "whichever comes first" scenario: log off after a significant hit or one hour, whichever comes first.

My stats since I started this HnR routine about a week ago ($3/6 limit holdem, both full ring and 6-max):

Total hands: 799
VPIP: 22.9%
PFR: 3.88% (yeah, that number has not improved over the years)
BB/100: 2.92

This is, of course, a very small number of hands, but I haven't had a losing session yet, so I'm going to keep at it! It's been so long since I've had any confidence in my ability to be profitable online. It's nice to be finding my online game again, particularly since my return to the casinos went so horribly awry.

I'm playing on Full Tilt right now, and am observing a guy who seems to have some sort of system in place.

He starts at 3/6 limit and buys in for the default 10BB ($60). He doubles his money (or so) by playing crazy-insane aggro-donk. VPIP 64%, PFR 47%. As soon as he doubles, he leaves and logs into a table the next limit up, buying in again for the minimum. He did this on 3/6, 5/10, and 8/16, before starting over again at 3/6.

Anyone ever heard of such a thing? Bizzare. But he's making money. He's not at any one table for more than 10 or 15 minutes, and I'm sure people are more inclined to fold to him initially, not knowing if he's just on a hot streak or is really a maniac. And just when you get out your colored markers to tag him as a maniac, poof! He's gone! (I had jotted his name down in my scooby notebook so as to follow him to his next table, but that's when I discovered his little system).

It's definitely not "poker," but sure appears to be one way to exploit the nature of online play.

I've been dabbling online again with Full Tilt Poker. I'm trying a new "strategy." It's called hit n' run. This strategy is not new. I've just never believed it to be the "right" way to be, or at least no more right than spending hours at the same table online.

I sign on to FTP. Sit down to a couple 3/6 limit holdem tables. Double my money. Log out.

Why log out when I'm winning?

Because given time, at these low limits, the chips more often than not find some way to leak back into the stacks of the scoobies.

In the past, I was of the opinion that sitting for hours on the same online poker tables was the same as sitting for hours at the same live table. It's no different, right, besides seeing more hands online than live?

It's different. Players turn over so quickly at online tables that a table's makeup is almost never the same hour to hour. In a live game, the table can remain stable with the same players for hours on end. I sat at a table a few weeks ago for 10 hours, and in that time, only 2 of the 10 players had changed. That doesn't happen online.

So, when I happen to sit down and win money at a table, I don't assume that I'll continue to win money, because the table's makeup by the time I've won a chunk of change has likely already changed since I sat down.

Get while the gettin' is good.

I've got my name on a couple 3/6 waiting lists right now. I am watching the most glorious visual feat of my 32 year life thus far: NHL hockey in high definition on a gorgeous 57" TV. I <3 DirecTV, my HDTV, and the NHL Center Ice package.

Oh look, a seat is ready. Hit n' run, baby...

I hit up Empress today, hoping to continue the string of good vibes I was on from last night. Things started out well, and I was up $100 quickly. Then, I ran into the worst player at the table... again and again and again.

AQo. I hit the flop with TPTK. I turn trip Queens. I lose to Scooby's runner-runner flush, which he chased from the flop with no pair and only the backdoor draw with 2-3 of hearts.

ATs. I hit the flop with top pair, tens. I lose to Scooby on the river when he hits his 2nd pair with the T5 soooooted.

Another ATs. I hit the flop with top two pair, aces and tens. I lose when the board comes 3-4-5, and of course Scooby's K2 makes the straight. I mean, seriously? What are you chasing on a flop of A-3-10 when all you have is a backdoor straight draw? There's not even an overcard to hope for.

The guy was an absolute moron. By the time the afternoon ended, he had bought in for $1,100 at 5/10 limit. Unfortunately for me, he also moved a hell of a lot of my chips around the table as well.

I rarely went to showdown with less than two pair, and I just got picked off left and right. The Scoobys were biting back today.

I did get an opportunity to hang out a little bit with my friend Tilty McTilt. I haven't seen her in a while. It seems, though, that my reformed version of tilt (reformed from the Shellmuth days) is at least predictable. The primary symptom of my reformed tilt is that my starting hand selection opens up to include suited one-gappers ranging from 4-6 to 8-T. I don't know why, but that's me on tilt. Lots of limping with one-gappers.

I saw a ridiculous number of one-gappers late in the day today.

Needless to say, yesterday's profits are now just a frivolous memory, and my wounded pride will limp through the weekend pondering my fate.

I could really use a weekend in Vegas right about now.

Bow chick-a bow-wow!

Who's house? Run's house...

Yeah, that's right. I'm back in black.

I finally got seated at the 5/10 limit holdem table at Empress around 11pm. It turns out that I waited for a seat almost as long as I actually played, leaving somewhere around 3am. I'm glad I waited, though. Had I gone to Indiana, I would be sitting in a traffic jam on the Indiana toll road right now. (Even iPass can't save me in that case). Instead, I'm not only already home, but I've made myself a snack, pet the cats, and got into my pajamas. Life is good.

My night didn't start off on this chipper note. By the time I'd gotten seated, most of the table had turned over and players weren't nearly as loose as when I'd been observing. I was glad to take the 1o seat, though, as it had done well for the aforementioned sharky regular.

Since the table was a bit tight, I was playing a bit loose, and unfortunately for me I was nailing second-best-hand after second-best-hand (the ol' flopped straight losing to a flush bit, etc). By the time dealer Don arrived, I was on my way to coughing up a buy-in. With dealer Don, though, also came the proverbial loosening of the belts, and we were seeing a lot more people to the flops. Nice.

As I got low on chips, I weighed my options. The table had money on it. The money was moving around. It was definitely not time to leave. I hit up the ATM and stopped by the cage to get me some more reds. The cage cashier remembered me from my first buy in and asked, "What are you playing?" I said, "Poker." He said, "That's your problem. You should be playing blackjack." I said, "Oh hell no!" He informed me that he had given me the "lucky ones" this time, and sent me on my way.

I got back to the table just in time to play under the gun, and I took the hand. Bang bang! Bullets it is! I made out in a sick way, turning a full house against a couple opponents who called me down. I wish I could be more specific, but all I remember is patting myself on the back for my glorious timing as I scooped a nice $150 or so pot. Huey Lewis was on the radio.

That's the power of love, baby.

The family pots continued, and a few of my hands managed to hold up, bringing me to a 10BB profit for the night over 4 hours of play. Hey - I'll settle for "average." That's perfectly fine with me! Give me 2BB/hour any day and you'll see me dance a little jig through the tunnel and out of the casino. (This blog's namesake was on the radio as I departed this evening - and yes, I really did dance a little bit of a jig).

In the "plugging leaks" category, I only paid off one hand tonight that I shouldn't have paid off, where I knew I was beat but paid to see it anyway. In that same vein, every time I laid down a decent hand like TPGK to a coordinated board, I was right on and was absolutely beat. I went a little too far a couple times with low pocket pairs, but when it's 2 or 3 bet preflop with 8 people in, it's hard not to justify seeing the turn for five bucks.

Those Aces were the only big hand I saw. Lots of baby pocket pairs did a whole lotta nothing for me, but I'd rather that than get sucked out on.

All in all, a good night. I have to wake up in 6 hours to attend a webinar for work, and my hope is that I can get my ass moving early enough to get to Empress early enough to make it worth my while. (They close the poker room at 6pm on Fridays). It is so lovely to play poker 15 minutes from home. Hallelujah!

With that, I am off to dream of dancing sugarplums and Broadway on Fifth Street.

Cmon, someone leave! I'm next!



A guy that checked in AFTER me (though we both were on the board for the same time) just got seated before me, which kinda sucks, but we were chatting poker a bit over the past 3 hours and I fully expect to be holding a sizable chunk of his chips an hour from now.



The any-ace regular is still at the table, as is one of the sharky regulars. There's your usual "I'll pay ya off cuz I like you" guy, and a WPT champ with the hellmuthian shades.



If all remains as is, I'll be the only girl in the room. That's generally the way I like it.



The Bangles are on the radio. Hazy shade of winter. It certainly is.



Damn I just got all excited. They called a name... For 10/20, booo! Hehe



I am ready to rumble! My ass is going to appreciate getting off this wooden bench. My brain is going to appreciate something slightly more challenging than playing Brick Breaker on my Blackberry. My thumbs are going to appreciate not typing on this thing anymore!



I do <3 my Blackberry. Most certainly.



C'mon, chant with me: Give Shelly a seat! Give Shelly a seat! Throw me some mojo!



You guys rule. :)

One might think that my extended silence indicates that I've been seated at the only 5/10 poker table at empress.

Nope.

I'm 13th on the list now. There are a bunch of low stacks and cranky old men who look ready to leave.

Looks like I'll be pulling the poker night shift.

I originally hoped to be seated by 10pm, but I think I'm going to have to bump that to 11pm.

I've been waiting too long to give up now!

They just flew thru 3 names on the list. There is hope. Always hope.

I couldn't read any blogs. The cell signal in this dungeon is too intermittant to permit comfortable web browsing. So I'll type till my thumbs fall off.

There are an average of 7 people to each flop on the 5/10 table. Squishy! And the donkeys keep reloading. Normally that would be a good thing, but not now! I don't have a seat!

I'm 18th on the list after an hour. It's likely that a lot of the people on the list are phantom names, so realistically I'm probably 12th or so. Still, nobody is moving. My only hope is that these guys have wives waiting at home that will kick their asses if they don't make it home to tuck the kids into bed. My hope is that, come 9pm or so, the turnover will begin. I mean, hell - these people have to get up for work in the morning, right?

Chances are slim that I'll play poker tonight. I'm sitting at Empress right now, on the list for 5/10 holdem. Ninteenth on the list. 1-9. 19. They're running ONE table. Uno. 1. One 5/10 table, that is. The no-limit game is running, taking up what is normally the 2nd 5/10 table.

I could get in my car, drive the hour to indiana, and probably be seated and playing cards faster than I'll get my seat here.

I thought of going to indiana instead after work, but the lure of a quick drive home post-session sucked me in. Now I wonder if I'll get a session in at all.

I see some familiar faces at the table. I like that, because I've been rather successful at Empress in the past, and I'd love to see that nothing has changed in that regard.

This place is still smokey as hell. The air quality is atrocious. I can almost feel the cancer growing in my lungs as we speak. Anything for a juicy card game, though - right?

A rather bored and frustrated looking poker regular just shuffled by. He must be on the list, too.

If the 10/20 list was any better, I might ponder tiptoe-ing into that game for a swim... But that list sucks too.

I just burped out loud. Whoops.

I had a turkey sandwich down at the Empress deli when I got here. Besides being a little pricy, it wasn't a bad sammy.

I haven't heard a single name called for the poker room in 20 minutes. This is not good.

I think I'll read some poker blogs. I'll be back, if I don't die of boredome first!