Chris Halverson’s Blog

Well, I made the switch to WordPress tonight. You’ll notice that the design isn’t the same as the old one. I’m not totally satisfied with it, but it’ll do for now. I figured June 1 is a good time to make the switch.

Everything went smoothly, but then again I had set it up in a demo environment in order to test things out and such, so I was fairly familiar with it. Let me know if you’re considering switching and I can get you some pointers and such. I think I got everything redirected correctly so that all the old links should work. Not positive though, so if you find problems, let me know.

My last few appearances at the WBT and PJK tourneys have been less than stellar, so when I saw that Party has been having freerolls I thought, “Hey, free NL practice!” So I went ahead and registered for Saturday night’s freeroll.

I had an hour or so before it started, so I figured what the hell, and sat down at a 1-2 table. Nothing happens for about an orbit then I see the big man sit three to my right. Hmm…slumming at 1-2? We chat for a bit, all the while I’m donating to the table fund. I got a little cocky which turned out to be a bad move. This table was pretty tight and not very good, so when I got AK and was raised on the flop that had a K, I should not have re-raised. Bets all the way down and I lose to a set of tens that he got on the flop. I dropped about 12BB there before the tourney started.

Things went pretty well at the tourney. 1127 people registered! As I was starting, I got an IM from Pauly who said he was going to sweat me. Great. Mr. NL going to sweat my limit grinding ass. One of my first hands I had 99 and called. Flop comes down 99x. Wow, quads! Do I slow play to get some more bets? No…I check, guy bets T450 and I raise all in. Doh! I should have just called or done a smaller raise and tried to extract more out of him. I was so excited to get a good hand though

Level 2 starts and I’m the chip leader at our table when Stinky Pants is moved to the table. Our table fights back and forth until level 4 when we realize that there are only four active players on our table. Well, we decide to bleed off the non-players so we can try to build up some chips. Cheating? Maybe. Either way we did it until after the break. The funny thing is that I split two hands with non-players once they got to the point where they were all in. Nice. Talk about cold cards, I can’t even beat non-players

I hit a run of really cold cards but lasted until level 7. I was at about T1600 and the blinds were starting to eat away at me. The hand that put me out:

Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (10 handed) converter

MP1 (t3045)
MP2 (t6535)
MP3 (t1375)
CO (t710)
Hero (t1640)
SB (t685)
BB (t1775)
UTG (t15173)
UTG+1 (t2675)
UTG+2 (t7442)

Preflop: Hero is Button with A♣, Q♣.
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls t200, UTG+2 folds, MP1 folds, MP2 raises to t700, MP3 folds, CO folds, Hero calls t700, SB folds, BB folds, UTG+1 calls t500.

Flop: (t2400) K♣, 2♥, Q♥ (3 players)
UTG+1 checks, MP2 bets t1000, Hero calls t940 (All-In), UTG+1 calls t1000.

Turn: (t5340) T♣ (3 players, 1 all-in)
UTG+1 checks, MP2 checks.

River: (t5340) 8♦ (3 players, 1 all-in)
UTG+1 bets t975 (All-In), MP2 calls t975.

Final Pot: t7290
Main Pot: t5220 (t5220), between MP2, Hero and UTG+1. > Pot won by MP2 (t5220).
Pot 2: t2070 (t2070), between MP2 and UTG+1. > Pot won by MP2 (t2070).

Results:
UTG+1 shows Ah Th (one pair, tens).
MP2 shows Kh Ad (one pair, kings).
Hero shows Ac Qc (one pair, queens).
Outcome: MP2 wins t7290.

I was excited to see that club on the turn and was scaring the cats yelling “Club! Club!”, to no avail.

I busted out in 274th place. Not too bad if I do say so myself considering my lack of NL play. Yeah, I’m sure there were a lot of no shows, but it takes forever for them to be blinded away, and yes, tourneys are a crapshoot, but I think I played pretty well all things considered. Basically, after level 3 I hit a run of cold cards until the very end. That happens to everybody though (well, everybody except Fossilman I guess), so no complaints.

Anyway, it was fun and I’m glad I did it, especially after my debacle at the ring game earlier.

For you racing fans, tomorrow is a huge day: Formula 1 European Grand Prix, Indy 500, and the Coca-Cola 600. I wonder where I’ll be all day…Here’s a hint, the butt groove will be well worn into the couch tomorrow.

C-note that is.

Friday night was a milestone in my short poker career: I won more than $100 in one session. I know some of you do more than that in one hand, but until tonight I have not been able to clock one of those big sessions. Once again I played one 1-2 table and one 50-1 table. I also had the Stars “simulcast” of the WSOP final going. I was playing the 50-1 table to keep me somewhat focused while limiting the amount I could lose. I find that I don’t get so distracted if I have enough action going on the tables.

The 50-1 table was exactly how I expected, full of calling stations and a few maniacs. I fluctuated quite a bit on that table, going from my $25 buyin down to $4, and back up to end the night at $31 for a net total of $6 or 6BB.

The 1-2 table was wonderful. I only played good hands, and when I did, I pumped them as much as I could. I wasn’t getting hit by the deck, but I was getting enough that I was able to work them hard. No fancy play tonight. If I got trips on the flop, the bet was thrown out, no matter what the rest of the board was. I capped pre-flop a couple of time and I even stole a couple of blinds later in the night. Things went really well and after a couple of hours I was up $50, doubling my buyin. Soon after I won a big pot by rivering my nut flush and got to around $125. Then the goal of winning $100 popped up and I thought I’d keep going until I got it. It took about three more orbits and then I got KK in the big blind and won 8BB on the hand which put me over the $150 mark on that table. I played my free hands, didn’t get anything more and left.

In the end I was up 51BB at 1-2 and 6BB at 50-1 for a total of +$108.

W00T!!!

Once again, it’s easy to feel good about your play when you have a big win, and I have not had time to review the hands yet (almost 500, another record for me). I do, however, feel I played well. I only played worthwhile starting hands and if the flop hit, I played hard. If it missed, I took as many free cards as I could, or I got out. Simple as that. I was doing much more raising, especially on the 1-2 table (which is where I was concentrating). Everything I have read says that this is the way to play and now I’m finally starting to see it.It’s starting to click with me now.

Suffice it to say that it was a fruitful 4 hous of poker

Congrats to Greg “Fossilman” Raymer on winning the WSOP and the $5 million that goes along with it.

I meant to post some real poker content the other day. Basically, I played for a little while and ended up -7BB. I think I played OK, but nothing too exciting. I was more passive than I wanted to be, but some of that may be due to not playing at all for ten days or so.

Thursday night, however, was a different story entirely.

Things were really clicking tonight. I got some good cards, and when I did, I played them hard. I won back to back 20BB hands to end up a net of +35BB. I played one table of 1-2 and one of 50-1 (I was up on both tables). This helped me keep focused, even though the Timberwolves game was taking some attention away. I raised quite a bit more tonight and it paid off. I am really working on being more aggressive as it definitely seems to pay off if used correctly. I was pretty happy how I played, I even check raised for the first time in forever. The great thing was that the other three people in the pot called.

I think I played pretty well. It’s easy to think that when you have a big night, but I still plan on going back and reviewing to make sure I didn’t just get lucky. I know on one of my big hands it was a good play (Axs, two more on the flop, called one bet, made the nut flush on the turn). I think the other one was OK too but I was involved in another hand at the same time, so I can’t remember for sure. I want to go back and check some of the other hands though. I know for sure I chased a couple of things that I shouldn’t have, so I need to find those and figure out for sure what happened.

It sure felt good to play again though.

I’ve finished around 30% of my final papers, and am done with my weekly work for this week. The nice thing is that I can continue on with my paper and should get it done before my Montreal/Indy trip. So I’ve got that going for me.

That means more poker time

Don’t forget, live “simulcast” of the WSOP final table at PokerStars on Friday afternoon.

Geez, in the midst of WSOP week, an article called “Geeks and Poker” shows up on slashdot.org. Even better, I have moderator points right now…

In case you don’t regularly read slashdot, it is entitled “News for Nerds” and is a popular “news” site for (generally) Linux related items. There are a lot of college kids who have no idea what the real world is like. There are also a lot of utopian “everything should be free” types (although I am a huge Linux and open source type of guy, but I also understand the real world), so keep that in mind if you actually read the responses. This really isn’t an “article” but more of a start of a discussion.

Read the article at Shasdot.