A little gift from pokerstars

Pokerstars made an announcement that they are going to have a bit of a blowout as they approach the 10 billionth hand dealt in their history. When I first started playing online poker in 2004 Party Poker who was the big dog at the time had dealt more hands than any other site. In the five years that they'd been in operation they'd dealt 250 million. Pokerstars expects to deal half that many in the next 10 days and has dealt over 5 billion hands in the last year. When they say poker boom the mean BOOOOOOOOM!!!

So what are they giving away? The lowliest thing is they're adding a few thousand dollars in prize money to about a dozen daily tournaments from now until May 22nd. I'm not going to bother squabbling over that money.

More significantly they are adding $100,000 to the prize pool of the $215 buy in "Sunday Warm up" and $250,000 to the prize pool of the $215 buy in "Sunday Million." The first usually draws about 2,000 players and the second usually draws about 7,000 (and I expect they'll get about 50% more players than usual) so the added money isn't that significant.

In my estimation there will be about $50 in extra equity total if I put up $430 and played both tournaments. However this added money should attract players that normally wouldn't play in these tournaments and for many of them it will have no business playing in a $215 tournament. So on top of the small added bonus money, the fact that the field will be much weaker than usual should add some significant additional value.

Another thing which is always nice is they're offering a 25% deposit bonus on deposits up to $600. For me this is a free $150!

The most exciting thing for some players is they are giving away money to the players that are dealt in on every millionth hand starting with #9,900,000,000. The amount varies depending on the size of the game you're playing in as well as your VIP level and the winner of the actual hand gets much more. The lowest amount would be if you had no VIP status and were playing in micro level games. The winner of the hand would get $250 and the other players dealt in all get $100. I won't go through all the permutations, but the bottom line is for me I'll get paid $2,400 if I win one of those 100 hands and $900 if I'm just dealt in. That would be sweet!

No one knows which tables the key hands will be dealt on, but you can see the hand counter going up so I'm going to make sure I'm playing in 10 games when the key hands are going to be dealt as often as I can. Obviously I won't be playing when all 100 hands get dealt since one is going to happen about every 2.5 hours for the next 10 days or so, but I might be able to at least be logged on and playing when 50 of them are dealt. I have no idea what kind of dollar value to put on this part of the promotion, but I sure will be fired up if I get any piece of that money.

Not surprisingly the ten billionth hand will be much more significant. Getting dealt in is worth $10,000 plus a $5,000 seat in the WCOOP main event and winning the hand is worth $100,000! You can bet that when that hand gets dealt pokerstars will have more players logged on than they ever have before. I will personally be in more games than I ever have before. I'm taking my monitor to max resolution and shrinking those games down as much as I can to give myself the best chance.

When I first started thinking about this I thought "Ha ha! I'll have about a 1 in 1,000 chance at hitting this one!" But I think it's actually much better than that. Pokerstars usually has around 10,000 games going, but the majority of them are play money games and some more are multitable tournaments which don't qualify (only SNG's tables and cash game tables count) I'm going to estimate that for the big hand there will around 2500 qualifying tables and if I'm in 15 games that will give me a 1 in 166 shot of being in the big hand. For the lesser earlier hands there might be as few as 500 qualifying tables if it's late at night meaning I'll have a 1 in 50 shot of hitting each one if I'm in 10 games each time. All of a sudden I'm a little more excited about this part of the promotion.

All that stuff is great, but by far the best thing for me is DOUBLE FPP's for 10 days! Normally I get about $32 in FPP's for every 1,000 hands I play. Between now and May 22nd I'll be getting $64 for every 1,000 hands. If I bust my hump I think I can play between 25,000 and 30,000 hands between now and the 22nd. Which means this part of the promotion will be worth close to an extra $1,000 for me. Thanks pokerstars!

My Last Hand of the Day

I had an interesting hand come up on Thursday. I'd put in my full days work and I'd left 5 out of the 6 games that I'd been playing in. In my last remaining game (a $2/$4 blind no limit hold'em cash game) I was ready to take my last hand of the day. I'd had an uneventful day and found myself ahead a little under $100.

Already thinking about watching the NBA playoffs (Go Warriors!) I was expecting to pick up a crappy hand, dump it, and call it a day. Instead I picked up 88 which while not a fantastic hand, was good enough for me to play. I had just under $160 in front of me which meant if I went broke I'd end up having a losing day and probably a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. "I'll be careful with this one," I thought.

I raised it to $12 and decided I'd be fine with picking up the $6 in pot. But I got called by one player in the field as well as the player in the small blind. The flop came down Q 9 8 with three different suits. I'd flopped three of a kind which I thought was almost certainly the best hand. This is a situation where normally I would consider checking to disguise the strength of my hand, to give the other players a chance to bet if they had a hand like KQ or AQ, to let someone bluff at the pot if they missed or to give my opponents an opportunity to catch something on the turn that would lead them to calling the rest of the way (that was a bit of a run on sentence!). Of course, while there are those benefits, sometimes checking in a spot like this blows up in your face when one of your opponents makes a hand even better that yours.

I decided not to mess around and bet out $24 into the $38 pot (Pesky pokerstars had already take $2 out of the pot for those of you about to challenge my math...E.B.). I was surprised when I got called by both players. I started to think about what they might have and what the chances were that I was behind. I didn't think either had QQ because neither reraised before the flop. The player in the field was a solid regular player and I didn't think he'd call a raise with J 10, but the small blind could have J 10 and be slowplaying a straight. Either player could have 99 and be slowplaying a set. Of course there were 165 possible two card combinations out there all of which I could beat so while I wasn't sure I was going to win the pot, I still liked my chances.

The turn was a five which I thought was a fantastic card. Unless someone had 67 it didn't change anything. The pot had $110 in it at that point and I bet out $60 expecting at least one, if not both of my opponents to give up and fold. Instead the player in the field made it $120 and the other player called all in for his remaining stack (which was a little over $100). Uh oh! I was pretty sure I was beat in one spot and thought there was a chance that I was in third place, but no way was I folding to save my last $60 when there was already almost $400 in the pot.

I crossed my fingers and called for a five on the end. I was pretty sure I'd need to improve to take down the pot and I thought the small blind might have a hand like Q9 so a 5 seemed like my best bet. Come on five! Put a five one it! Five it up! The river came out and it wasn't a five...it was the last eight! Quads baby! Send it!

I made the total nuts on the river so I didn't have to worry about what my opponents had. But I was still curious. It turned out the player in the field who I thought was too good to call my raise with J 10 had called me with 67 and hand turned a straight. The other player who should have folded before the flop, on the flop and on the turn showed 95. I guess he figured he should call before the flop since he was in the blind, he managed to turn second pair and made two pair on the turn. Every decision he made was a massive mistake, but it worked out great for me.

That one pot turned an otherwise marginal day into a solid winning day. Also I just wrote another post on a totally different topic which should be right below this post. Check it out.

A Tiny Bit of Good News for Online Poker

A few days ago Brian Ridgeway sent me an article from MSN that started with the following paragraphs:

Just six months after President Bush signed a law outlawing online gambling, a key Democratic politician has proposed lifting the ban.

Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, on Thursday introduced a bill that would replace the current broad prohibition with strict regulations, including criminal background checks and financial disclosure, imposed on companies that seek to offer legal Internet gambling.

"The existing legislation is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans and this interference should be undone," Frank said. His bill is called the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act.

This can't be bad news. You can read the rest of the article here.

The article has a link to the full text of the actual bill. I read through most of it and it seems promising. Maybe there's hope for internet gambling yet!

It's the Dollars, Not the Pots

The first two days of May have been solid. I've played 6,033 hands which is 10% of my goal for this month. Yesterday I almost had a breakout day when I managed to get ahead almost $700 before I took my lunch break. But, my lunch must have been cursed (Damn those Voodoo practicing grocery store employees putting a hex on my eggs!) because I gave most of it back before the end of the day and ended up winning about $250.

Today was sort of the opposite. I struggled all morning and found myself about even after 2,000 hands. But after eating some blessed shrimp and rice for lunch today, I got crazy hot in the last 1,000 hands of the day and ended up winning just shy of $1,100 for the day.

One interesting thing that happed to me yesterday was playing against a guy who was absolutely terrible, but who won more pots over a small stretch than anyone I've ever seen. During the time I was at the table with him he played 100% of hands to the flop and about 80% all the way to the showdown. The crazy thing was he kept hitting enough hands or bluffing enough people out to keep his head above water.

Pokerstars has a feature (instant hand history) where you can look back and see what happened in every hand since you joined the table. It seemed like this guy (bison bear) was winning almost every pot so out of curiosity I checked the history. In a span of 39 hands he won 27 pots including one stretch where he won 8 straight, lost one, and then won the next 5!!

Assuming that you should win one pot in every 9 it should take you 243 hands to win 27 pots. Much more dramatic is the fact that the chance of winning 8 straight pots should be 1 in 43,046,721. If it was all about the cards, the chances of winning 27 of 39 would be about the same as getting hit with a meteor while you are being struck by lightning on the way to cash in your winning lotto ticket.

But, of course it not always about just the cards. If you're willing to push hard at every pot regardless of the consequences you can bluff your way to victory in quite a few pots. And if you're also nailing a ton of flops you're going to win a bunch more.

You'd think winning so many pots this guy would be up several thousand dollars. WRONG! He'd win a bunch of small pots with massive over bets and then lose it all back when someone else made a hand. He started with $200 and while he managed to run it up to $800 he blew it all back in a dozen hands. He was playing like he had a $2,000 bet that he could win more than half the pots for a half hour or something along those lines.

It was interesting to watch and profitable for me as I was one of the people who relieved him of his winnings once he stopped connecting with the board cards. I've searched for him a few times since, but I guess he hasn't been playing. If I do find him again I'll get into his game as fast as I can and play until I go unconscious or he runs out of money.

April Recap, May Goals and WSOP Heads Up

While April started with a downpour of cash into the Huff money buckets, the buckets sprung a little leak in the middle of the month. April was my best month so far this year, but I know I could have done better and I'm pretty disapointed with my effort level.

While my goal at the begining of the month was 60,000 hands of NL cash games, I only made it to 45,000. I knew 60,000 would be difficult since I had a 5 day vacation in the middle of the month, but 45,000 was still a sub par effort. I had too many days where I stopped playing at 2,500 hands instead of my target 3,000 and a few more where I had to stop after 1,500 or 2,000 because I'd lost my composure after some hard luck. I'll need to work on my mental toughness this month.

I also could have performed a little better in the time I spent playing. I came up just a hair short of my goal for cents per hand in the $1/$2 games and after a few massive beatings, I came up a good ways short of my goals for the $2/$4 games. Of course, the good news is I made more than enough to pay the bills for the month of April and that's really the most important thing.

In May, I'm once again going to shoot for 60,000 hands. Since I have no significant time consuming plans in May and there are 31 days instead of 30 I should be able to make it without too much difficulty. I'll once again be targeting 10 cents per hand in the $1/$2 games and instead of 20 cents per in the $2/$4, I'll be looking to make 15 cents a hand.

I'm also going to add in the goal of 15 workouts. As some of you know I'm in the middle of a weight loss bet with 4 friends that started in the beginning of January. It was supposed to end June 5th, but when the end of April rolled around and none of us were more than 1/2 way to out goal we decided to back off the weigh in until September 1st. So far I've lost about 12 of the 25 pounds I need to drop (I have put on some nice muscle tone though), and after a solid effort for the 1st 3+ months, I've totally slacked off the past few weeks. But, in the words of all of the world's slackers, "Tommorow, I'm going to get back on track!"

I'm going to go on record here and say if I don't make it to 60,000 hands and 15 workouts I'm going to need someone to chum me up and get on the pirahna phone.

Another thing on the horizon is the WSOP, which everyone (Everyone? Yes everyone!) knows was the genesis for this blog (This is my 128th post in less than a year!). This year unfortunately will not be the extravoganza that the 2006 WSOP was. While the WSOP is scalling up (they've gone to 55 tournaments this year up from 40 something last year) I'm scaling down.

On top of the money I lost in the tournaments last year, there was also a great deal of opportunity cost in spending three plus weeks in Vegas (my backers paid for almost all of the expenses so that wasn't a big deal - Thanks again guys and sorry!). It's expensive to not generate any of your standard income for almost a month.

This year I'm only going to play 3 events: $1,500 NL Hold 'em, $1,500 Limit Hold 'em and $1,500 Pot Limit Hold 'em which will take place on consecutive days starting on June 2nd. If I was to go deep in one of these events I'd probably stay and play at least 1 or 2 more. I was pleased to hear that they are doubling the number of starting chips this year, so for $1,500 we'll be getting 3,000 chips to start instead of 1,500 while the blind increases and level lengths remain constant. This means there will be even more play and a greater chance for skill to be the deciding factor.

For my backers from last year, if you're feeling brave (VERY brave) I'll give you a chance to take a piece of me again. I think I want about 40% of my own action which leaves 60% on the market.

If I win this year I'll pay out at 100% up to the amount you've lost on me in any WSOP tournaments and then 90% above that. For example, let's say you lost $1,000 of your investment last year and this year you have 25% of my total action. If I have a net win of $10,000 you'll get paid $2,350 ($10,000 X 25% = $2,500, but you'll get paid $1,000 at 100% and $1,500 at 90% or $1,350 so you're total = $2,350). Also I'll ask that whatever percentage of the action you take, you also take the same percentage of the expenses.

I hope everyone has a great May and I'll keep you posted on any significant (and some insignificant) happenings.

The Chat Box Makes Me Crazy

At every online poker table there is a chat box where the players can talk to each other. Typically in the bigger games there is no chat whatsoever because most of the players are focused on playing instead of chatting. Some of the players just don't care to chat and others are playing in so many games that they can't pay attention to the chat and play at the same time (usually I fall into the latter category).But as you might imagine, there are some people that use the chat box even if no one is responding or paying attention.

The area where the chat is displayed has 4 tabs (chat, stats, info and notes) and I try to click on one of the other tabs so I'll have something on my screen in that area other than the chat. But the chat tab is the default sometime I can't help but notice what people are saying.

I think the original intent of the chat box was to make the game seem more like a real poker game where people are talking all the time. What it seems to be in actuality is a place for people to bitch about their bad luck to a bunch of people who don't care.

It's also a place for know it alls to show off how much they think they know. These guys always have names like "kidsgotskillz" or "thnx4yourmoney" or "Iruleallpoker" and none of them are any good. They tell the other players how bad they're playing (usually just after they lost a pot). They call other players donkeys (really!) which somehow became a term that people who think they are personally awesome in every way use for people who they think are bad poker players. Sometimes they shorten it to simply "donk" as in, "How could you call me there you ****ing donk!" Of course these mental giants often don't bother with full sentences and simply type in "DONK!" or my personal favorite "DONK DONK DONK!"

A few other common expressions that drive me bananas are "obv," and "omg." You'd be shocked (shocked!) to see how many people type in obv after they lose a pot in which they had the best hand at some point. To the best of my knowledge it means something along the lines of "OBViously that was going to happen...obviously I was going to lose that hand because the universe is against me...obviously I am a great player and the only way I could lose was if the fates smashed my hopes of winning that pot like a blacksmith smashing a egg on fiery anvil. Obviously."

OMG is short for "Oh My God" and it also typically comes out right after someone loses a pot. It always makes me think that the person saying it is a 13 year old girl. As in "Like, oh mah god...Tiffany (all 13 year old girls have friends named Tiffany)...I, like, just totally lost that pot to a TOTAL gut shot straight!"

For the record anyone who types in "omg obv" (I've seen it before) should be covered in chum and tossed into piranha infested waters.

A few times after people have won pots from me I've seen them type in "Oops." As in a (totally sarcastically) "Oops! Did I just win that pot? Oops I didn't want that to happen! OOPS! Sorry!" More frequently I find myself in a spot where I know my opponent either has something like a full house or absolutely nothing. So I call, and they have the full house and then they type in "thank you" or "ty." Bastards! Why can't they just take the pot and be happy about it? I have no patience for people who rub it in when they win. Once again, chum 'em up, get on the piranha phone, call in some piranhas, and chuck 'em into the water.

Like I said, I try not too look at the chat box and even if I do glance at it for whatever reason 99% of the time I have no reaction whatsoever. But today I happened to look down in one of my cash games and someone hit me with a "ty" after beating me in a big pot. Then a minute later in the one tournament I was playing (one of my freerolls) this guy says "Acesedai (that's my screen name) you are terrible. You are such a donk!"

"WHAT!" I thought. The thing that blew my mind here was not only had I not been involved in a pot with this guy, I hadn't done anything that was even close to unreasonable. I thought back and in the preceding half hour or so I'd only played three hands. Two of them were medium pairs and since the blinds were big and I was somewhat short stacked I moved all in. I got called once by AQ and won and the other time I'd stolen the blinds.

On the third hand, which was about 4 or 5 hands before this guy started yapping, I moved all in for about 4,000 from the button with A5. The blinds were 400/800 with a 50 chip ante so there was already 1650 in the pot and I would have been more than happy to just win the blinds. But the big blind had pocket tens and called me. I was about a 70/30 underdog, but I flopped an ace and won the pot.

So when the guy said what he said I responed with "Thanks, same to you." Which launched him into this massive rant about how I was moving in way to much and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. At this point he had less than 1,000 chips (I had over 8,000), so I said "Great, hows that 1,000 chip stack working out for you? Good luck with that." On the very next hand he goes broke. But I get more ranting from him concluded with "I KNOW you (meaning me) are a losing player!" WHAT! I know I should have just stopped reading, but I was getting cheezed off (I think that's what it was). So I replied "You couldn't be more wrong." There was a little more back and forth in there, but I can't exactly remember it.

Then presumably he used one of the various websites out there (like sharkscope and the pokerdb) where you can search other players by username and get a summary of their past results. I knew he'd looked me up because he started spiting back correct data about my past results while telling me how much I suck. Let me say that again. HE LOOKED UP MY RESULTS AND CONTIUED TO TELL ME HOW MUCH I SUCK! It made no sense.

So I looked him up. He'd played about 900 SNG's with an average buy in of $20 and was winning about 50 cents per. I won more today than he's won in all the SNG's he's ever played! I tried looking up his cash game stats, but they only keep track of games bigger than $1/$2 NL and $5/$10 limit and he had no data, meaning the biggest games he'd ever played in were smaller than those limits. I pointed out these facts to him and he told me how much I sucked. Somebody get on the piranha phone!

This is why I try to ignore the chat box.

E.B., Pai Gow, and the Dragon

Our favorite game to play in Vegas is Pai Gow Poker. The way the game works is every player is dealt 7 cards which they must split into a 5 card hand and a 2 card hand. You can split them any way you want with the one rule that the 5 card hand must have a higher poker rank than the 2 card hand. For example, if you got dealt A K J 8 8 7 5 as your 7 cards you couldn't make your 2 card hand a pair of 8's, but you could (and would) make your two card hand A K and your 5 card hand 8 8 J 7 5.

Once you've set your hand, the dealer turns over their hand and similarly splits their hand into a 2 card hand and a 5 card hand. If you beat the dealer's 2 card hand with your 2 card hand and their 5 card hand with your 5 card hand then you win. If you lose both hands you lose, and if you win one and lose one it's a push (or a tie) and no money changes hands.

The house makes their money by only paying out 95% on a winning bet (i.e. if you bet $100 you'll only get paid $95 when you win) and by winning exact copies (i.e. if you have KQ in the 2 card hand and the dealer also has KQ in their two card hand the dealer will win the 2 card hand portion, but if you beat them in the 5 card hand you won't lose your bet).

The reason this game is so good is the house has a very small edge compared to other casino games and it's much slower (speed is your enemy in the casino). You might get 120 rolls an hour at the craps table or 100 hands an hour at the black jack table (maybe 200-300 if it's just you and the dealer). Whereas at Pai Gow it's about 25-30 hands an hour and about 40% of those are pushes.

Now that we have that little explanation out of the way, on to the story. On Sunday night I spent the night at the Flamingo, while Jake was at the Paris and E.B. was at the MGM. Jake and I hooked up for breakfast at the Paris around noon and E.B. who'd already eaten said he'd meet us at the Pai Gow tables at the Paris between 1 and 2.
Around 2 o'clock I see E.B. walking from across the room in an apparent daze almost as if he isn't sure where he is. When he got to our table he said "finish this hand, and then I have to tell you the most ridiculous story."

Before heading to the Paris E.B. had decided to play a few hands of Pai Gow at the MGM. He was betting something like $100 a hand on each of two hands (If this sounds like a lot, it is; I usually bet $25 a hand and if things are going really well I might push it up to $50 a hand) when he came across the most tremendous dealer error.

In the past few months the MGM and it's sister properties have introduced a new bet at the Pai Gow table. You can deal 7 seven card hands from the deck which in the past used to be six player hands and a dealer hand. They've since switched it to a dealer hand, 5 player hands and The Dragon Hand (gasp)! The dragon hand is another hand that all 5 players can bet on. After the players look at their own hands and set them how they want, the dealer asks if anyone wants to "Bet The Dragon." Once the players have put their money in a betting circle which says "Dragon" or has a picture of a dragon on it, the dealer turns over their hand, sets it and then sets the dragon hand (they have rules to follow about how to set both hands). If the dragon hand beats the dealer's hand the players, as you might guess, win their dragon bet. If it loses or pushes they lose or push their dragon bet.

What happened at the table where E.B. was the only player was the dealer got confused about the order of operations on the dragon bet. Instead of asking E.B. if he wanted to bet the dragon BEFORE she turned over the dealer hand, she asked him AFTER he already saw what the dealer hand was!!! If she continued that way he wouldn't know what the dragon hand was going to be, but if the dealer showed a good hand he could avoid betting the dragon and if the dealer had garbage he could bet the dragon with a huge positive expectation. This is sort of like playing black jack if you could see both of the dealer's cards. You wouldn't win every hand, but you have such a huge advantage that it wouldn't take long to make some big money.

So E.B, who had come to Vegas with a nice wad of cash, pulled out $5,000 and bet $1,000 on the first hand. He had to go big on the regular hand, because the betting limit of the dragon bet is 2 times your regular bet. Also he was thinking that this was a limited time opportunity because at any time another player could sit down and correct the dealer or the pit boss could notice that the dealer was totally screwing up. In fact, as they normally do, the pit boss came over to watch the first hand that E.B. put $1,000 out there. But before the dealer could say anything or do anything to tip off the pit boss that she was going in the wrong order E.B. said "just kill the dragon hand, I'm not going to bet it this time."

Unfortunately, E.B. got a mediocre hand and lost to the dealer's hand. By the next hand, the pit boss had moved on and again E.B. bet $1,000. This time the dealer got a strong hand so E.B. opted to not bet the dragon and sadly lost his hand again. On the third hand with another $1,000 out there he got dealt a hand that contained no straights, flushes, pairs or cards above jack. A monumentally bad hand. But, the dealer got dealt a king high with no straights or flushes. An almost equally terrible hand. While E.B. knew he would lose his hand he was almost sure to win the dragon hand. So he bet the maximum $2,000 on the dragon hand...and lost! Not only did he not win, but he didn't even push. What a total disaster!

I broke out my probability book and did some calculations. 92% of the time you'll be dealt an ace high or better and of the remaining 8% a good chunk of them would at least push against an average king high. He got TOTALLY screwed at the absolute worst possible time and to make it worse he was out of money so he couldn't try to get it back.

While I'm pretty risk adverse for a professional gambler, in a spot where I'm getting paid even money on a bet where I'm a 10 to 1 favorite, I'd gladly bet $2,000 in a second. To put it into perspective let's say I give you a chance to draw from a deck of cards. If you draw any 2 or the 3 of clubs I win. If you draw anything else you win. How much would you bet if you were 100% sure it was a fair deck?

There's actually more to the story and it involves what happened when he got to the Paris, but that will have to wait for a day or two. Aren't these minor cliff hangers and teasers awesome!