…it’s unbelievable how many hands can go absolutely wrong. I mean we all go through the motion and run bad sometime, but today’s SnGs just destroyed me. The only exception was one of the early one where I took down 2nd place, but apart from that one junk kicking, suck/resuck, suckout or cooler after another…unreal. My personal favourite hands tonight where the following two:

1. (I was too slow to do a screengrab, so here’s the lowdown) KQs in LP, I pop it up preflop, one caller, flop comes down J-10-4 rainbow. Caller in EP bets half the pot, now I’ve got to options: call or raise…I decided to go with the raise, because even if he has TPTK, I still got 13 outs (3K, 3Q, 4T, 3A) and he needs to make a tough call…so I push and he calls…well…turn is a lovely A…now he’s dead to one of the remaining two Aces and three Jacks. Ace on the river. Yuck! After the hand I can’t see a way I can get away from the hand, if I only smooth-call the flop the Ace hit’s the river and there’s no way in hell I can lay it down there. So the only true option would have been to fold after the flop came down, which I didn’t like: I already commited 20% of my stack, I’m in the SnG to win…

So that one went bad…dog preflop, lots of chances on the flop, golden on the turn, shit hit the fan on the river. That’s the way it is sometime. Made a nice comeback after that, but lost a random hand shortly after that to go out as the bubble boy. Annoying.

2. This one is so good it makes you wanna puke, at least it made me almost lose it. How the fuck can this donk call on the flop with top pair no kicker*? What made it even better is that this was the very first hand of the SnG, so can anyone tell me why he feels he needs to call of his stack there? Even better, after the hand he tries to lecture me about how badly I played the hand – damn he’s lucky that the “wireless-slap-down” (TM) wasn’t invented yet.

* after all he runner-runnered a better boat than mine so he’s a genius. Wait, not really. I just told him that he’s a fish and that at least the dough I invested was a good investment as it was material for yet another bad beat post – that and that he had every right to call in that spot, after all his TPNK was s0000ted 😉

So anyway, enough of the rant, if you come across the player x (name removed, after all there’s more than enough fish around bodog, so no point in even going after such a low limit donk), feel free to skin him, he’s a stuck-up, arrogant donkfish, but beware of his unbelievable vaccum-like suckout powers… 🙂

After that lousy shit in SnG after SnG I thought I’d give NL25 another whirl and promptly doubled up…so I’m still up for the session, which is nice, but money can’t buy back the nerves I lose due to such donkeys stealing my money and time…

Man, you wouldn’t even believe how long a friggin SnG can take if everybody, and I mean everybody literally, is a total rock at the table. I tried to switch my style accordingly, but it’s a dance on the razor’s edge as mr. rock x..y will play his Aces just like his old limping ass hand. Sometimes I doubt the randomness of the shuffle and while I know that that’s bs it’s sometimes the only way to cope with the shit, just put it on the rigged deck, lol. I can’t count the number of times I waited for good cards tonight just to push them right into the nuts and I’m not even counting the vicious dominated hand-suckouts (AK vs AA three times, AQ vs AK two times, etc, and  as sure as hell (one of the) case ace(s) showed up every friggin time). Anyway, so I was able to win one nontheless and score a third place to end the SnG session just a little down for the day. Not bad, so I jump into a MTT and the same shit happens. So I decided that tournament poker was not very kind to me today, so ring game time it was.

Donk around a little on the NL10 tables, but was quickly bored with the scared folks folding even to minor bets. So I jumped into some NL25 action and came out ahead by a longshot. Nice one, especially the one hand I stacked a player flop J93 rainbow, he checks I bet, he calls, turn is another J,  he pushes…now he either has the case Jack (with a hopefully worse kicker, which is not playing) or a boat. I call…he shows QJ, I show KJ, river is blank. So all in all a nice session tonight and I’m a step closer to getting the 200 points I need to clear the PSO bonus (9000 points).

I didn’t have the time to finish up a long ass post which I started yesterday, hopefully I’ll have the time to finish it soon – it’s working title is “The Poker Preacher (Part II)”…should be interesting to read, at least I think so, so stayed tuned…

Yes, tonight the poker preacher, aka me, myself and I, held court on bodog’s low limit SnGs. Yes, I signed up with bodog yesterday and no, I didn’t sign up because of mr. WSOP Champion 2006 Jamie Gold. I signed up because I wanted to continue my bonus hunt and bodog seemed like a fine deal. As my favourite online site for free poker gifts doesn’t have a deal with bodog atm I had to look around for another way to get something extra. So I fired up PokerSourceOnline (feel free to use referral code Ingoal if you want to sign up with them) and yup, they’ve got bodog in there list.

So I opened an account and started by depositing some dough – which in term lead to a nice middle in the night phone call to Neteller as I hadn’t confirmed my identity before. Amazing that people are working 24/7 in those call centers. Even more amazing that they have interpreters around, too. Not that I really need one, but the automated phone system said that they had german speaking staff members so I asked for one. Instead of a german speaking staff member I had an english girl plus an interpreter in the line, which was quite funny 🙂

But back on topic. I only played a few minutes as it was really early, yet again, and so tonight was the real first session. I played 6 SnGs and two tabled some NL10, which was fun, although I made a tough laydown which turned out to be a bad one – QQ in the hole, flop is A73 rainbow, I lead out to see where I’m at two callers, turn is another A, I check, one player bets, the other raises. Now I gotta give one of them the Ace, at least that’s what I did. So they push each other all-in on the river and what do they show? 88 and JJ…damn, that would have been a nice pot in that spot.

But back to the SnGs, I realize pretty quickly that the easiest way to make some dough was to wait for monster hands and push with them. You wouldn’t even believe how many times I got called. In return you wouldn’t believe how often I got sucked out on in the later stages (3 handed). But that’s alright, it happens and that’s why poker is fun. You win some, you lose some. But then something happened in the last SnG that just made me go off (a little): I didn’t curse noone out or nothing, I just tried to educate some people – hence the title: the poker preacher 😉

The situation: I hold two pair in the early stages of the SnG and the board is pretty scareless for me so I bet all the way. The only hand that could beat my top two pair would be 9-10 for a gutshot. Sure enough the dude calling off half his stack was holding just that to make him the straight on the river. Alrighty, you made a “bad play” and it payed off – more power to you. But then it happened, yet again: a player at the table goes ahead and tells him what a “nice hand” that was. Excuse me? Let me get one thing out of the way first: we all know that “nice hand” (nh) and “good game” (gg) are overly used these days – because if people were honest they wouldn’t say it all the time, as there’s no need to overuse it, or am I off on this one? But even knowing that, I still can’t understand why people are saying “nh”, “well played”, “wow, …”, “whatever, you’re so groovy,…” on such hands. What’s the point? If I lose a monster vs monster hand (e.g. Kings Full vs Quad Kings, like it happened in one of the SnGs tonight) or I lose to a good hand, because I didn’t believe him/her or because I couldn’t laydown my own (good) hand, then I’m more than happy to say “nh” and I might even add a “(very) well played” if that was the case in the hand. But on such miracle/suckout/draw with incorrect odds/… hands I refuse to say “nh/…”.

Why? Because I don’t like to encourage people to play that way. I mean it’s alrighty to play happy go lucky and neither should or can you assume that everybody (or even anybody at any given table) is playing the game “correctly”, but that still doesn’t mean that everybody needs to get sucked into the “fake poker world”. I mean, new(er) players are brought into the game watching the WSOP, the WPT or poker shows like High Stakes Poker, which is fine, but an edited poker format which only shows “interesting hands” (big bluffs, monster pots, etc) is not the real deal. Why do some players on those shows play they way they play in some of the hands they show you? It might be because the know each other so well, because their observations about the play that session/night/day justifies it, because they know that the other player(s) can laydown a hand (especially out of position), etc. Information is key and knowing basic stuff like outs, pot odds, etc is the only way to make money in the long run. There’s no game without the occasional suckout (even when “perfect players” square off), but don’t let yourself be fooled by such a miracle hand. Yes, you made money with it this time, but x out of 100 times you will lose money with it. Think about it! Think!
So those new players (although I wouln’t want to exclude all the “oldtimers” who still play like shit and get payed off by magic cards sometimes) might not even know what they’re doing “wrong” – which explains why some people are so quickly offended once any player at the table says something about the miracle card or how bad they played that hand, although it’s safe to assume that many of those are just dickheads anyway who feel they’re entitled to win that hand because they made such a “brilliant call/bet”.

Which brings me back to the “poker preacher” title: Although I know that it’s mostly a waste of time trying to educate even one single player at a table at any given time, as most feel that you’re being a “wise-ass” or that they’re soooo good and/or better than you anyway, it might still be worth the time in the long run. I know, some of you might say that it’s not worth the hassle and that educating the “fish” might be a bad move as it’ll be more difficult to take their money and I hear you, but I still think that if the level of play improved just a little bit for everybody, there would still be more than enough dough to pick up, with (a little) less nerve-wrecking junk-kickings 😉
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, after all my regular readership includes many good and even some great poker players, who are more than aware of this and much more, and who are trying to both spread the good word and elevate the level of the game at the same time, but it’s what was on my mind tonight and a good topic to blog about. So excuse my long ass sentences, feel free to add your own perspective about this whole thing and remember: educating even a single player might prove to save YOU personally money, if you happen to cross his/her path, by letting him/her laydown a hand and not outdraw you with incorrect odds 😉

Sometimes you gotta wonder if the old myth of the first time luckbox is really true. Tonight we played our 15th home game with three premiers and a surprise:

1. We bought two real poker tables to replace our old setup of two “normal” tables with some felt overlay.

2. We started our “championship race” – we will play our home game tourney like always, but we take out a small percentage of the prize pool and the final table players will receive points for their finish. At the end of one year from now, the top three in the championship will receive something extra (we haven’t decided yet if it’s going to be cash or prizes).
3. We welcomed a new player

4. The surprise: we’re getting some t-shirts made for all the (regular) players…I’ll post a pic of the logo as soon as I get my hands on the digital files.

The rest was the usual: the usual crowd, the usual setup, the usual payout, etc. So we start off at our first table and I’m running good early on (up almost 100%). Then I’m bouncing up and down until we’re at the final table. I’m sitting in the middle of the pack and after some players bust out we’re on the bubble. Sure enough I’m card dead and have been for a while. So I’m happy to push once I look down at a rag ace…just to be called by our new player, who holds, what a surprise, AK…no help for me and I’m out on the bubble. A few hands later he busts the remaining two players with a pair of threes (vs AKo and A5s)…so first game, first win. Nice…he played well, but he got lucky not only once but on a few occasions. All good though…we all know that variance will kick in sooner or later 😉

After the results were written down we decided to start a second tourney, this time with half the buyin and just one table (only 5 players wanted to play again)…quick summary: Got some good cards early on and maintained my stack until we were headsup…yes…against the new player…it all came down to one hand…I look down at 1010 on the button, but I just call…he checks out of the BB and is first to act after the flop comes down AA5…he pushes…now I’m either in big doo-doo or I’m golden, I decide that I don’t believe he’s got an ace (why would he push there with one?)…so I call and he flips K2o…my 10s hold up and I win the second tourney…w00t.

Now I come home to write this down along with the results and I find that my mail-server is acting up…great to see that all mails of the entire day were rejected (yup, that’s rejected, so no queue…gone…), great…I found that the antivirus software was the culprit…I hope that an update will solve this mess, if not this thing is out of here…alrighty…enough babbling…gotta catch some sleep…see you all on sunday (blogger pods)…if you didn’t signup already head over to pokeronamac and register – it’s more competition for me and the other players who already signed up, but it’s good for Mike (dbirider) and what’s good for Mike is good for us in the long run as I would love to see similar promotions in the future 😉 so get your lazy behind in gear and register, before it’s too late…

Nice, so I log on to PokerSavvy (aff) today and find that 900 SavvyPoints have been credited to my account for the successfull completion of the Mansion promotion. Sweet. What’s really cool though is that I was able to complete it within a day (the requirements were fairly easy: deposit 50$ and wager 50$ in poker, casino or sportsbook – so I basically donked around the blackjack tables and slots for a while and I was done).

So I decided to try the latest PokerSavvy (aff) promotion and signed up for Mansion Poker. Deposited some dough and jumped right into the first SnG (what else is new?). The play dragged on and once again people were calling stuff down like crazy, so I decided to pop it up preflop whenever I held something decent and pound those suckers at every chance after the flop. It worked quite well and I was in a comfortable chiplead, then I was gone in fourth place after getting kicked in the junk three friggin times within two orbits…

1. KK vs J2o, backdoor four flush board goodness

2. KK vs J10s, turned flush goodness

3. A10o vs Q9s, I raised to 6xBB preflop…flop comes down 95A…I push…he calls…just to turn a 9 against me…

Well done there once again. So I played one friggin SnG and I could already rip some of their players’ throat out for playing like friggin retarded half-monkeydonks and having the guts to trash talk after their crappy play…side note: and yes, one single player, probably both the dumbest donkey and the luckiest git I’ve ever seen, sucked out on me in all three hands… (his screen-name is millar33 so beware of him, he must have interbreed CJ’s luckbox with the “Back from the future” home fusion generator…)

I’m going to cool down now and come back with a vengeance later 😉

Edit: To hell with cooling down, I hit the cash tables and what would you think who sat down a few minutes in? Yes, Mr. Suckout himself. I don’t want to get to deep into it, but let’s just say his suckout are limited to SnGs and/or very short-term as I stacked him three times within 20 minutes 🙂