Played the usual 17ET tourney, passed the top 50% mark before busting out. So no joy there. More joy at the cash and SnG tables though. I think i’m getting used to the 0.05/0.10 NL HE tables…busted some balls…had my balls busted some times…came out ahead some bucks and cleared the first 10% of my signup bonus! Cool. Finished 2nd in a 5$ SnG (6 Max) for another 5 bucks…not bad…

Now I’m going to log off and relax a little before the NBA All-Star Saturday begins: Go Dirk! Get the 3 Point trophy 🙂

I was wondering about the whole WPBT thing:

1. How do you get in there (or are you member just by running a poker-blog)?
2. Who is responsible for the online presence?
3. Why has the domain expired (it’s now occupied with a clone of pokerroom.com)?

Can someone enlighten me? Side note: WPBT.info is still available for registration….

1. Call down bets to the river like a donkey early on
2. Chase
3. Don’t hit the flop and believe all raises

That’s the quick wrap-up of my quick first round exit vs Wes (aka Boobie Lover). He busted me up real good (out in 51st of 62), so no round 2 of the DADIII for me. 🙁

Played two Horses today. The first one was heads up and I couldn’t hit a flop to save my life, so nothing to win there (-5.25$). Then I thought that it would be a good idea to test the donkeys at the 5+0.50 HORSE SnG with 8 players. Same shit different tourney. It’s funny sometimes when you can’t catch a hand and if you get one there’s sure as hell (at least) another player holding a better hand (i.e. J-J vs. K-K vs A-A)…I don’t know what it is, but this really makes me think that I’ve run out of luck somehow…(-5.50$).

After the double horse manure I went back to the normal game (NL HE)…first playing the 1$ tourney at 17ET…nothing spectacular to report, busted out in 127th (of 440), but play a good game. So the last resort were the ring games, so I busted some balls at the 0.05/0.10 NL tables (+10$) to come up almost even for the day…cool.

Now I’m going to relax a little before the DADIII starts…where my last funds at PokerStars will be on the line – don’t expect me to be scared money though 😉

In case you missed or forgot it already: DADIII is tonight…so get your lazy behind in gear and sign up!

Password: BlogsAreGay

After my prior rant, I want to get back to a more “normal” post. After the disturbing tourney/SnG session earlier on I decided to give the ring games a whirl as this seems to be the quickest way to clear my signup bonus – after all you get points for every raked hand you’re in, so multi-tabling is definitely an option. So that’s what I did.

I finished the night slightly up despite running into some slow played made hands – sometimes it’s really ironic when you think that you’re slow-playing someone with a made hand, but (s)he thinks the same as his/her made hand is even stronger which happened on numerous occasions tonight (note to self: have another look at the board and if your current made hand isn’t the nuts try to find out where you’re at).

Preface: This is not a post about how online poker is rigged 😉 I know that it isn’t. I’m just trying to figure out what happened today..so I need to do a little bit of thinking aloud. I guess it could all be related to the fact that you’re paying more attention to “bad beats”/”miracle cards” (happening at the table not necessarily including you in the hand) when you’re experiencing a bad day poker wise…

Looking closer at the post title:

1. “miracle card” – What is a mircale card? I would define it as a card that saves your behind when you’re behind, usually on the river – although that definition is a little bit loose as this would be the same as an out (outs). So I guess it’s better defined as a single card (or a single card of one kind) that can save your behind, usually on the river (i.e. your opponent is holding 8c-9c, you’re holding K-Q, board 10c-Jc-8h-8s- ? The miracle card you need is any Ace which isn’t a club…so basically a three outer, even better: opponent J-J, you 10-10, board 8-7-8-3-? the only card that can save you is a ten – this example came quite easily as I’ve seen that exact hand and the miracle ten drop in one of the ring games).
2. “miracle cards” – you need two running perfect cards to beat your opponent, possibly while having to dodge some of those outs (i.e. you need a running 9 and 10, but neither of those can be of a suit (i.e. no spade)).

How often does a miracle card hit?

1. We all know a little “outs-theory”…so if you’re in need of ten to hit and you don’t hold any or see any there’s 4 outs…or if you need to hit a card of a certain suit and you hold two and see two..there’s 9 outs (unless one of the cards completes a better hand for your opponent)…I would say that a miracle card is more in the ranges of a one-three outer…
2. If we consider one-three outers to be a “miracle card” how come that I’ve seen such a miracle card around five times in 3 orbits on three different tables this evening? I mean the chances of a miracle card to hit the river is 2/52 (in case of a two outer…although this isn’t considering some information that we have got and some we haven’t got…hmm…how should I explain that: …you know that the deck consists of 52 cards…10 player table…10x 2 hole cards dealt (20 cards gone)…burn a card preflop (21)…drop the flop (24)…burn a card prior to the turn (25)…drop the turn (26)…burn a card prior to the river (27)… – so we know that 27 cards out of 52 are already gone…in an online scenario you only know 6 of them atm (your hole cards + flop + turn as the chance of peeking at your neighbour’s cards are non-existent)…and you know that there are 25 cards remaining…what you don’t know is if the miracle card is even still left in the remaining deck…I guess that’s why poker is considered gambling (to a certain degree) – after all if we all knew the “shuffling-algo” and all cards what would be the point of playing… 😉 )…pfeew…I lost my train of thought a little now…okay…
3. …so I guess you could say that the name is deserved and a miracle card shouldn’t hit the river all that often (after all that’s why such draws are often referred to as belly-buster or gutshot…)
4. I guess it was just a coincidence that all those miracle cards dropped on numerous tables at the same time…and that’s that? Or is there more to it? I guess not. At least nothing that could be proven without a huge amount of tests (and who wants to deal hundreds of thousands of hands manually and calculate the exact percentages considering that there are roughly 2.6 million (2.598.960 if I didn’t miscalculate) different hands (consisting of five cards))

Now that I’ve got that off my mind I can get some well-deserved sleep (and maybe laugh at the stuff I’ve written above tomorrow morning…although I’m getting more and more excited about getting to work on some of the math that is poker related – maybe I’ll even (at least) try to refine some of the concepts for my use…we’ll see)…night night…

*Caution: Rant ahead*

Hehe…sometimes it’s just not meant to be and you should walk away while you’re not too deep in doo-doo…I decided to do just the opposite.

Start things off with a heads up HORSE match for a fiver. “Donk” off 2/3 of your stack in the H as your opponent hits EVERY single flop while you hit every third-fourth one with middle pair. Great start. Battle your way half-way back in O8b and Razz then let your opponent outdraw you in every hand. Whoop-di-doo…now HORSE but a busted HORS…argh!

Then I thought I should play some of the soft 6$+0.60$ token satellites and to be honest they’re really soft with donks calling all-ins with middle pair etc…unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is the fact that you can’t seem to catch a hand and if you do you get a royal nut-kicking…I’m so mad atm that I could really smash the screen with my keyboard, but I won’t do it…I will log off now in an effort to calm down and get ready for some more action tonight…hopefully with some cards falling my way…(Result of the token SnGs: two 10th place finishes)…

Example hand to show you just how lucky I am today (all money went in pre-flop):

*End rant*

After busting out of the HORSE tourney, I decided to play the WWdN…

Was nice starting with Wil again, unfortunately he didn’t really last long as his pair of queens (KQ) ran into a set of 9s. So he was out first. My next table featured CJ and Sires.

My end came when my pocket nines ran into AK…sure enough the flop featured a lovely Ace and a King…so I’m crippled and All-In in the next hand…where I turn a pair, just to be rivered by a King…out in 21st of 54…

Tonight I thought that mixing it up a little bit would be a good idea as the (extended) weekend was all NL HE. So I log on FTP and see that a 5$ HORSE tourney is about to start. What better way to mix things up than with 5 different games (all limit: HE, Omaha H/L, Razz, Stud, Stud 8/better).

Although I haven’t had the chance to play a single hand of Razz prior to the tourney Razz was one of the best variants of poker in the tourney and the fact that 3 of the 5 variants are Stud (normal, H/L, low) is really good as I consider Stud to be among my best games.

I hovered above average for the first two horses and busted out in the third H because the blinds were just massive (300/600) compared to my stack of 2k…no way to limp in or really push (all limit remember)…so I had to take a shot…didn’t come through…’s all good though….42nd out of 126 is not bad for the first time…

Because I was running late tonight and missed the usual 17ET 1$ tourney on FTP, I played a 4$+0.40$ token satellite. Winner gets a 26$ token and runner up gets 10$. Seems like a good deal with a 9 player table.

I was playing my usual tight game and was starting to get short-stacked. Just in time my pocket threes turned into a monster:

Dem quads beetches! Nice one. After that I pushed from the button with 4-4, 3xBB sort of stealing blinds, when the SB decides to push all-in…now I’m faced with a decision…probably racing for 1200 more….or let him have the 600 + blinds…I decided to call and to my surprise he shows 3-3…he never improved and we’re done to 3 handed. Hero: chip leader, 2nd player around 500chips down and a short stack…Opponent takes him out in the next hand and we’re heads up for the token:

Bad thing though as I push from the button in the 3rd hand. I hold AJo and opponent decides that calling an all-in is a good option with JTo instead of letting the 400 go…sure enough flop is T-7-7 and I never improve…argh! Nontheless I’m satisfied with my performance and I guess I’ll give it another shot tomorrow…