STFU MFSOBCSA

Poker Pro Comeraderie

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:55:55 GMT

Tonight was excellent ... seven of us went out to Dal Rae for dinner, then headed back to the Commerce for Karaoke ... shocking how well poker pros sing. We were joined by our favourite chiprunner and our favourite candy-girl.

Then we all headed up to the ballroom in a drunken haze, got a dealer, and opened up a private $40 NL game that was a ridiculous zoo of prop bets, shoving all in, laughing, and bollocksing around.

I recall a line in Rounders ... "the nicer the guy, the worse the poker player."

I couldn't disagree more ... the winningest players I know are always the most mellow and fun.

POY for 2006

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 04:39:36 GMT

Looks like I came in 223 for CardPlayer's POY race last year. 5 final tables out of 88 rated tournaments.

I'm pretty pleased with that ... especially considering that I spent under 6 months in the US.

Played my first event of 2007 today. This year I'm going to aim to play 100 events - and hopefully at least one big finish.

Anybody else here hit the top 1000?

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:28:12 GMT

Just a heads up if you happen to be near Oklahoma ... Winstar Casino in Thackerville will have a $500. splash pot, regardless of game size, every 30 minutes from 1pm today till 1pm tomorrow (Friday).

This year's LAPC

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:52:54 GMT

Who's going to be in LA this Jan and Feb?

I should be down there for the whole of the LA Poker Classic and I'd be happy to meet up with anybody who's down that way.

There's a fun little karaoke bar in the Commerce, so it would be a good venue for getting LJers together.

WSOP results

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 00:58:32 GMT

Made a final table on event 11 ... everything was going well as I was the chipleader coming into the final table.

My interview is here: http://www.cardplayer.com/multimedia?player_id=36230&name=Graham_Duke

A couple of bad beats and I was a shorter stack. I then played a hand awefully which put me in a terrible spot. Busted in 7th, but at least that paid my buy-ins for the series.

Got into the money in the Razz event ... the competition was really soft ... there aren't a lot of real razz players in the world and most of them were playing the $5000 pot limit HE event that day.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=55264

Results from my last trip...

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 10:00:14 GMT

Just got back to Beautiful British Columbia from sunny LA. I had a pretty good run in the Heavenly Hold'em series ... moneyed in 4 events, won one of them, and took 3rd overall for the series.

http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/71851/graham-duke.htm

On the road again...

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 18:05:07 GMT

I'm heading to Vegas today ... will be playing the Bellagio for the next three weeks during the tournament and then I'll be heading to LA for 6 weeks at the Commerce. If anybody is around during this time and wants to say hi, I'm usually around the games from the 30/60 up to the 100/200 limits.

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:51:26 GMT

13k this year and its march.

ZeeJustin Caught Multi-Accounting on Partypoker MTTs

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 03:12:08 GMT

Hey all, just thought you might be interested in knowing this:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=4856097&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

Interesting-- you figure someone with the skill to make money playing online poker legitimately wouldnt need to resort to cheating. What do you guys think?

A little gossip...

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:30:15 GMT

So there I was sitting in the 40/80, my standard game at the Commerce (the action is wonderful - when you get higher, the games are only sometimes good) and Gavin Smith sat down at my table and started playing Dave's chips (you see Dave racking up the chips in this photo) ... Gavin was drunk out of his mind, but being friends and being a nice guy, Dave just let him play off some of his chips.

Gavin proceeded to raise and cap with every hand preflop without looking at his cards ... then, depending on his mood he may or may not look on a later street as he continued to jam it. He took about 2-3 grand off of me alone with some ludicrous hands ... I'll spare you all the bad beat story of my KK running into his 69 ... all in all, he took about 5 grand off the table and everybody was licking their chops. There was a huge table-change list as everybody wanted a piece of him. Unfortunately, he continued to drink and passed out at the table - they had to argue him out of the cardroom ... I later found him asleep in a chair by the elevator. Moments like that are what make poker really enjoyable - I'm not the slightest bit upset about losing the money either - I got paid very well for the trip and I have no idea how good my expected value was with him at the table, but it must have been somewhere between wonderful and astounding.

BUSTED!

Final table goodness

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:18:51 GMT

So yoak got in touch with me when I got to LA and we saw each other around the Commerce a fair amount. He did me a great deal of service both in the advice he gave (Don't got to Hollywood Park if you value your life) to having me over for dinner.

In one tournament of the LA Poker Classic, we found ourselves starting at the same table, so we decided to trade 2% of ourselves and agreed on no busting until we were both at the final table.

Well, the final table went down like this:
http://www.pokerpages.com/tournament/result13947.htm

I think that both yoak and I played a really solid game and a little luck here and there didn't hurt either. I had a blast the entire time I was in the Commerce. The 40/80 game there is an absolute dream all of the time. The 60/120 and 100/200 were sometimes good, but usually not worth playing in - not that they are games I can't beat, but when the 40 is just *that* soft, there's hardly a reason to play anything else - especially a game that you can only scrape out a small edge in.

For final table finishes, they had really nice leather jackets - I was pretty impressed at the quality - here's Jeff and I styling ours ... though it looks like I lost a button on my shirt at an awkward moment - oops.

Anyhow, I'll very likely be at Bellagio in April and back at Commerce in May for Heavenly Hold'em. If anybody wants to try to get in touch with me then, just let me know.

Tournament woes...

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:04:16 GMT

I did pretty well in one of the tournaments so far ... there were about 800 people in the $300+30 rebuy event and I used my first rebuy immediately, then lost one buy-in when I ran KK all in against KT from the BB in hand #1 and he drew 2 tens.

I then rebought again, used the double add-on, and cruised until there were about 80 or so people left (they paid 45) on a short stack. With only $4000 left and blinds of 600/1200 with 200 antes I managed to steal from LP with K5o. The blinds went up to 800/1600 and I doubled through when I shoved ATo and got called by 9Ts. I then piked off $5000 on a raise-fold with KTs and got moved to a new table (I was seated right behind James Woods who was at the next table) ... the second hand I was dealt at my new table was Ac6c in EMP ... with $18,600 in my stack and blinds of 800/1600/200 it should be an easy fold this close to the money, but then something happened. The big blind was this very disshevled black man who looked like he had just rolled out of a garbage dump. He looked at his hand when the cards came out, got up, scratched his ass, and started munching on some food. I decided to go for the steal and as I couldn't afford a raise-fold at this point, I pushed. It folded to the BB who said, "I call, man!" ... then he turned over AA. I got knocked out and learned something new ... don't get greedy when somebody rolls over - they might just be playing dead. Apparently this character was actually a terrible player as I heard a number of bad beat stories from other players who were knocked out by his all-in calls with hands like KQo ... needless to say, this is the first thing I've done in a hold'em tournament in a long time that I feel was a mistake in retrospect. You live and learn. On the bright side, I'm tearing up the ring games, so I really don't care how the rest of the tournament goes.

Heading to sunny California...

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 07:03:04 GMT

Hey all - I'll be taking a road trip down to the Commerce. I'm leaving tomorrow at 05:00, so I should be into the casino by 10pm or thereabouts. I'll be there for at least a week, but more likely a month or so. If anybody wants to run into me there, you can recognize me by my brown suede hat and my Hawaiian shirts. I'll likely be sitting in 40/80 unless there's a particularly tempting 100/200. Feel free to say hi.

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 01:00:23 GMT

I found a BlogSpot blog that might be of some interest to the members of this community here; it seems to be mostly about the computational safety of online poker (ie, why it's not rigged). Good answers for the "P4r7yp0ker is teh riggz0r!" crowd.

Anyone want to (know how to?) syndicate it as an RSS feed?

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:07:58 GMT

Early in a tournament, full table. Your table will break comparitively late.

BB is 20, stacks are all around 1k. two players fold and it's on you, you have 5s5s.

what do you do?

(this is not a trick question, and as usual we're most interested in why you do what you do.)

A little something different...yet totally on topic!

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:32:46 GMT

Anyone read Poker Face: a Girlhood Among Gamblers by Katy Lederer? It's an autobiography written by the younger sister of Howard Lederer and Annie Duke, two of my favorite professional poker players. Katy is also a published poet so her writing is very image-heavy and I just love it. I thought I'd share a quote:

"He fell in love with the game of poker--not just with the cards, but with the money and the banter nd the drugs. He loved the way the last card came, the surprise of it, the exhilaration that coursed through his body when he took a pot. They came only three, maybe four times an hour, but when they did, he'd pull the chips in with the enthusiasm of a child presented with a new toy."

Customized Cards?

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 22:03:09 GMT

Here's a random question for everyone: anyone know a good place for ordering customized playing cards? We have a client with the company I work for who is putting together a poker tournament and they want custom cards made for the event. They want all-plastic cards for the durability, so I of course went straight to Kem Cards but their website is currently down and I wondered about other options. Any ideas?

PS My work doesn't normally involve poker, so this is kind of a neat project for me!

Worst hands to call raises with? (Best hands besides the obvious?)

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:30:53 GMT

What do you think the worst hands with which to call raises are?

I mean, obviously 7-2o is probably the textbook worst hand to call anything with, but I am talking about hands with which you would possibly consider raising yourself had everyone ahead of you limped or folded. Hands that you would definitely limp with at least. Those ones where someone ahead of you makes a minimum raise and you hear yourself saying (almost too quickly) in your head, "Easy call, this is a good hand."

Constructive criticism welcome! I'd like to know if my theories on why/why not to call a raise with these hands are going to lose me money in the future!

Also...obviously position and style of your opponents is a great factor in determining whether or not to call a raise, etc. I am just speaking in general, based on percentages and the like.

Hands I think are the worst to call raises with:

1. A-J

I seem to always get stuck when I call a raise with A-J. I don't ever call raises with A-T, but I think I may soon add A-J to this list as well. Suited or not. If you hit your ace, it's very difficult to fold even though you can easily assume that the raiser holds either A-K or A-Q.

It's like I need to ask myself every time I hold A-J and someone raises in front of me: "What are the situations in which I can win the pot with this hand?" Seems like very few. Still, it's a tempting hand for me to play.

I guess it depends on the style of the raiser. If you know him to be loose/aggressive, it's easier to make the call with A-J I guess.

2. K-Q

Same reasons as above (domination station!), although this one is not as tempting for me to call as the A-J. Should I be calling raises with K-Q though? I always wonder if I am folding in error.

On the opposite side, what are the best/most valuable hands to call raises with besides the obvious premium hands like A-K, AA, KK, etc.?

I am slightly confused as to whether or not calling raises with small wired pairs is a good idea. By my logic, if you apply the same theory I used above with A-J, the opposite should be true, right?

If the A-J is bad to call a raise with because you might hit the Ace and have a hard time getting away from it even though you are probably dominated...is it then a good idea to call with the small wired pairs because you know that if you don't flop a set you can easily fold? And if you do flop a set you can probably extract a lot of chips from your opponents?

I am confused because I often see Poker Pros on TV quickly throw away small wired pairs when there is a raise in front of them.

Any input is appreciated.

x-posted to poker.

Elevation fears...

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:34:37 GMT

So today I made my first forray into the online 80-160. I must admit, I sat down, took a 10 minute drubbing, lost $2K and change without dragging a pot, chickened out, and left the game.

I'm calling this, "dipping a toe in the water," but the water was decidedly cold and I yelped back to the 50-100 and 30-60 games with great speed.

While I'm emotionally neutral enough to play with the same state of mind, regardless of the size of the chips, I can't help but feel like a little kid who's just walked into his first day of grade 8 to see all these grown up gargantuans flinging around heaps of cheques.

Of course I still remember the first time I sat at a live 20-40 and was so excited I was going to piss myself :) Part of me is right now thinking, "don't buck a winning formula - stay where you are FOR EVER," and there's a small part that is saying, "the 200-400 at the Bellagio is calling for you. Where you can start to be a real poker player and not just some dipshit sitting in his home-office in his underpants."

The first voice has been saying that since my 5-10 days ... the second voice gets loud when I'm on a good heater :)

Five Card Draw

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:17:49 GMT

I've started playing five card draw on PokerRoom. I have yet to get my feet wet with real money as I've only been playing regularly for a couple of months now.

I'm tempted to start with 5 card draw instead of Hold'em though. The limit games on PR are really easy. It's not uncommon for me to be +30BB/hour. I'm just wondering if the lowest limit real money tables of 5CD are significantly harder to beat as apposed to the highest limit play tables.

Anyone have experience with this? Also what limits are spread?

One other question - other than Caro's chapter in Super System, what other resources are available for improving my play. One thing I'd like to find is odds since it's hard to calculate pot odds when you don't even know the odds of hitting your hand.

Homegame hilarity...

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 02:03:50 GMT

So last night, I wreny and I got invited to a homegame with the old poker crowd from Kitchener ... the guys that used to always play at my place before she moved in. Anyhow, we weren't certain we were going to go and I certainly was in no mood for any kind of work, but I did want to see the old guys again, so I decided to just get stoned and drunk and go, expecting to lose whatever I brought for a number of reasons:
Half of the guys playing are professionals and all except one are good enough to be professionals ... that one guy brings $200 and leaves five minutes later with nothing but his dick in his hand. That coupled with the fact that it's a no-limit game and I'm a limit specialist means that even at my best I'd likely be a marginal loser in that game.
... but it was a 1-2 game so I bought in with 10% of what I take to a 50-100 limit game. No worries.

So I'm messed up as all hell, and decided that I'd have to just try to bleed off my money really slowly so I played really tight. I got into a big hand, got all my money in with the worst of it, sucked out and doubled through. Good, I only brought $200 and I want to make it last and enjoy the night ... maybe now I won't even lose anything. So I played tight for a while again, got into another big hand as was this time completely dominated when I got all in on a flop of Q72 with my AQ up against AA. I spiked my 2 outer and doubled through again. I sat on my hands for the rest of the game and despite being in a state where I couldn't tie my shoes I walked out of there ahead $550 on the evening. (and the two guys I doubled through were by far the two best players in the game)

There are few things in this world that feel better than being "that guy" ... that fucking asshole grinning across his stack made up of all the cheques he's collected for every competent player in the game ... not that I was a dick about it (I don't think - I really can't remember all that well) ... but how many times have I sat in a 20-40 game where some increadible goon has stacked up eight grand and walked out for the night.

I guess, my actual EV on the night was probably in the -$100 range (since obviously I don't lose my buyin in every parallel universe) and as far as I'm concerned that was expectation well wasted.

So to all my friends here - don't take this the wrong way or lecture me about EV - I know I was throwing my money away ... it was just a hell of a lot of fun at a low stake and I highly recommend you give it a try with some chump change once a year or so.

Percentage of winning players

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:01:47 GMT

I'm not sure if it registered on the radar of the readers here, but I actually read Jackpot Jay's column on ESPN.com for the entire year. I think he caught a lot of flack throughout the year for his play and his writing, but I enjoyed reading it. His 3-part series on dealing with a downswing helped to give me some perspective and get me out of a downswing of my own.

In his last column, he talked a little bit about how few players are lifetime winners. He talked to two people involved in online poker site management, and they said that "only 8 and 7 percent, respectively, of all players on their sites finish the year in the black". The previous "estimates" of lifetime winners I have read all mentioned that only 10% of players are winners. While the 7 to 8 percent numbers aren't shocking, they certainly caught my eye.

Are there any other studies or reports out there that support - or refute - this? Any thought on the impact of it to the poker industry as the bubble bursts?

hey, anyone can have a seat in the main event!

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:48:47 GMT

How lax does security have to be for this to happen?
Given the size of the field and the crack security staff, did this happen more than once?

Ray Zee's "The Different Stages in a Player's Life"

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 21:19:15 GMT

Ray Zee wrote an article about The Different Stages in a Player's Life for Cardplayer magazine a while back. I was wondering if anyone else here had read it and what their thoughts were.

His basic idea (though you should click above to read the whole thing) is that the stages are as follows:

Stage 1: Loose play, little to no grasp of theory. Eventually starts learning to be tighter.
Stage 2: Tight play, learning theory, rockish behavior. Eventually starts experimenting.
Stage 3: Starts with tight aggressive play, experimental, imaginative. Can head towards unhealthy loose aggressive play.
Stage 4: Tight aggressive, with good tools to use based on experience and solid grasp of theory.

Seems pretty spot-on from my experience. That leap from Stage 3 to Stage 4 seems reminds me of The Simpsons episode when Homer was kidnapped in Brazil and jumps from one cable car to the other, though.

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:14:38 GMT

Some of the ugliness of big-time tournament poker