Chris Halverson’s Blog

The Monty Memorial turned out pretty good. I outlasted 66 other good players, so I can’t complain too much. In addition to that, I gathered two bounties. I did, however, bubble out which sucked. I surprisingly outlasted a number of much more talented NL players so I felt pretty good.

I didn’t get much for the first couple of (quick) levels. I won one decent sized pot to get up to almost T3000 which allowed me to wait for decent hands for a while. This tourney was much, much tighter than previous ones. In the earlier ones we would normally have somebody go out very, very early and always lose at least a couple of people before the end of the first round. This time it took until the third or so.

Sometime after the break (I hate not having hand histories and don’t tell me their graphical thing is any replacement) I got TT twice in a row and won both times. On the first one I took out Otis to get a $50 bounty when I rivered a third T to fill up tens full of sixes. The next hand I took down a nice sized pot with tens full of sevens. I’m now up to T8400 and looking pretty good for a while.

By this time Scott is to my right and I’m thinking “Gourds”. After a few hands Scott is getting blinded away. I’m in the big blind (200/400) and get 3♣4♣. Scott has T390 so he calls. Next thing I know I’m seeing a bunch of cards flip up because he’s all in. I win with a pair of treys. Sweet, two bounties and I’m still hanging in there.

After a while, the blinds were getting pretty big and I was a short stack. I needed to make a move. My small blind came up and I got 88. It was raised by the button (gh7money) and I re-raised all in. Calling would have only left me with a few hundred and this was as good as time as any. The board came down Q♣9♣2♥K♦5♦. I lost to A♠Q♥. Ug. On the bubble. I really had no choice though. It was a great hand to have to move in with, so I definitely can’t complain. I was also semi-happy to see a caller (although it was an auto-call, being only a few hundred more) as I could double up instead of just stealing the blinds. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way.

It was weird that they kept the tables at 7 or so people. I guess they wanted to keep things moving. It was really bad when it was down to 10 people and they still kept it at 2 tables. Oh well.

Congrats to Iggy on winning his own tournament. Hmmm…That doesn’t sound fishy does it?

It was great playing with some of the new bloggers/readers. It’s been a long time since the last tourney. Thanks everybody for the kind words and for stopping by. Hope you had as much fun as I did.

gh7money, get in touch with me and I’ll send you the DVDs. Email is on the side. Congratulations!

Thanks again Iggy for setting this whole thing up. It went off well this time and everybody had a great time.

Normally I don’t bother talking in the chat, but this was driving me crazy. Table coach was going on and on and on about how bad the players were. I finally couldn’t take it anymore. It’s not quite Grubby or Iggy level, but hey, I’ll do what I can.

Coach: what an aquarium this game is
Coach: he must have q4 you better watch out
Coach: you do everything right, and the fish draw out on ya
Coach: this game has two.. the optimum is 3 or 4
Coach: but they don’t play for very long either. usually
Coach: they seem to know that they are fish
Coach: except theset two
Fish1: YOU MUST WORK IN A LAUNDRY
Coach: you must work next to that little diver guy in the fish tank
Coach: this guy is a bigger fish though than you
Coach: rule i keep forgetting: you can NEVER push a fish off a hand
Coach: queen two off
Coach: what a hand
Coach: number of times I have called with q2 off in 20 years:: NEVER
Coach: but am not a fish like him
Coach: queen two off
chrisdhal: 20 years and you’re still playing 2/4?
Coach: only cause is saturday and have been drinking
chrisdhal: gald you could come down here and coach us, i feel privileged
Coach: when am not drinkin, play 10-20 at caesars in Indiana
chrisdhal: wow, you must be really good
chrisdhal: you should move to vegas, you’d kill ‘em
chrisdhal: didn’t i see you on the wsop tv coverage?
Coach: q7 off
Coach: he plays queen seven off
Coach: queen seven off and queen two off… hope these guys stay awhile
chrisdhal: maybe if you quit making such a big deal about it…
chrisdhal: don’t tap…
Coach: you are right.. am seeking professional help to cease the berating
Coach: my doctor says i got too much hostility
chrisdhal: i can see that, you really need some help
chrisdhal: go have another drink, it can’t hurt

I did like his “you must work by the little guy” jab though, that was pretty good.

The sad thing was that there were 3-4 bad players at the table. I really didn’t want them to leave. I figured if I jumped on him a bit they’d stick around or this guy would get pissed or something. He never took the bait. The best part?

Start of my session: Seat 4: Coach ( $99.50)
End of my session: Seat 4: Coach ( $21.50)

Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed him, he was donating quite a bit Big Fish (the Q2o guy) went from $100, to $6 (and all in), to $120 during this same time. Pretty funny.

My night went OK. I was up 11BB at this table, down 5BB at another, then in my final table I was up 2BB. The last table was wild. I bought in for $100, was down to $30, then hit a $60 full house to get back on track. I’m liking 2-4 even if I’m not “crushing” it yet. I’m working hard on applying Ed Miller’s SSH suggestions. It’s definitely helping overall, but the variance can be quite a big larger (see my 3rd table above), but when you hit, you hit big to make up for it. I’m liking the play, but it just takes some time to get used to it. I played pretty well, still a bit passive on some hands. I’m working on it though.

See you all at Pacific tomorrow night.

Poker

Poker has been going pretty well, although my bankroll doesn’t show that. Tuesday night went well, up 10BB. Wednesday night, down 15BB. Thursday, up 7BB. OK, so for the whole I’m a bit up, and those “swings” are totally within any variance, so I’m not worried or anything, but I’m pissed at my play on Wednesday.

I haven’t gone through all the hands yet, but the ones I did play weren’t the best. I’m trying to work in some of Ed Miller’s tactics, so that can lead to some higher variance too, but I just didn’t play well on Wednesday. I was playing with Drac at a 2/4 table on Wednesday (although I must admit I missed seeing that he sat down until he sent me an email) and the table sucked, he thought so too. I’m not sure why I stayed on that table. Pre-flop raises in EP would cause the whole table to fold. It was a bad, bad table, and I didn’t listen to the voice in the back of my head saying, “Change tables dumbass!” I admit, I was doing some prep for some “real” work that I had to do “after hours”, so I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been. Even so, I did not play well that night. At least I realize it and I can go back and examine what went wrong.

Thursday night was more Ed Miller play. Every night that I play and try to apply some of the techniques makes it easier to do. Aggression is something that does not come naturally to me in poker. I’m still not to the point where I’m raising with AJo, and I’m still nowhere close to as aggressive as he wants, but it’s getting better. There are times I know I should raise, but just call. I know I sould raise, but still don’t. I’ve seen the passiveness lose me hands, especially now that I’m looking for it. I’ve seen aggression win me hands more and more. I still sometimes have trouble doing it especially if I am not running too well. I know it’s the right play, but still don’t do it. It’s a total mental thing that I need to get over (well, that and read SSH again and really try to absorb it). I’m getting there.

I have playing the BBJ tables lately too. Very interesting. Last night when it was at $40K it was amazing what people where playing with. Anything that may in some alternate reality qualify for a BBJ hand was played. Nobody would leave the table, which sucked if they actually got up for a bit as they’d evidently just wait until they timed out. New people would post UTG lest they not get dealt into the hand. It was crazy. When it hit and dropped down to $8K my table cleared out totally within 3 hands. They are some good places to play if you can handle even wilder play as if you have patience you can win some big hands.

The DVDs for my bounty for Sunday’s tourney are copied and ready to go. Of course, I’m kinda thinking I could have saved my time since I’m going to win this thing which means nobody will get the bounty…Oh well, maybe I’ll send them to somebody else after I win. 87 people. Unreal. I’m a big longshot here. If you’re at my table, pay attention, I’m not sure if I’ll easily be able to figure out who takes me out

Racing

Well, kinda. My son went into school this week to get his schedule and have pictures taken. He wore a Ferrari T-Shirt. Oh yeah!!

Schumacher will wrap up the championship this weekend. No problem. Forza!

Misc

I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I subscribe to Audible’s service where you get 2 books a month for $20 no matter what the cost of the individual books are. I love it and listen to them on the way to/from work. Anyway, last month I accidently got a non-fiction book. The description sounded like a book I would like (I like espionage and cop mystery books, especially when in mindless mode in the car), so I didn’t read it closely enough. This isn’t a bad thing, I like non-fiction too, but starting it up and hearing it’s a “true story” is kind of like signing up for a S&G an realizing that you signed up for limit instead of NL. Yeah, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s not quite what you wanted. Oh well, it was interesting, so at least that worked out.

BTW, iPods rock. I got one a couple of weeks ago for my birthday. It is seriously cool. I’ve used iTunes as my MP3 player since it came out for Windows, and the interaction between the two is great. I was hesitant to get an iPod as I figured they were overrated. I was wrong. I used my son’s for a week before I got my own (he has the 3rd gen one). If you’re looking for a portable MP3 player, you can’t go wrong with the iPod.

I just received this from Chip Litre re: his Pacific mods:

Pacific Poker has released an update, version 2.1.1.17. The file which contains the card face images has been changed significantly. It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you install Pacific’s new version, then reinstall all of the mods. They have been updated to match Pacific’s update.

Get Pacific’s update here: http://www.pacificpoker.com

Get the Mod updates here: http://www.niccalo.net/poker/pacificpoker.html

Please don’t play another game on Pacific until you’ve done this!

Chip

Now that the WPBT IV tourney is back on (Sunday, 2004-08-29, 9PM Eastern), you may want to spiff up Pacific’s interface to be easier to see and have better graphics. Go see Chip Litre’s Poker Mods. It won’t take away the “honk”, but it will make it look better. He also has a “no chairs” option for Party and Empire. It removes a lot of the clutter from the tables which can really help if you multitable. This is even better than the “no avatars” option.

You can also check out Poker Software for modified Party tables with odds built right in and replacements for the “Congratulations” banner.