Chris Halverson’s Blog

Saturday presented me with a quandry. I really wanted to play some poker and Drac invited me to a home game that has proven very profitable for him in the past. The problem was that it started at 5pm. I had some family obligations that were going to keep me busy until about 7pm, so that nixed that idea. I’m definitely hoping to hit the next one there though. I was now looking at online on Saturday night, which is not a bad thing (and Friday night finally brought a good reversal to my recent downswing), but I was itching for some live play.

One of my tasks was to run my son down to play paintball. The outdoor site that they had practice at is about 30 miles from my house (between Rosemount and Hastings for you locals). I had a brainstorm and fired up Yahoo Maps. Sure enough, Canterbury is “just” 40 miles from the paintball site. Therefore, it’s about a wash for me to go to Canterbury for three hours or so as opposed to coming home (and potentially have to do house cleaning and such). I bring it up to Mrs. H and she says to go for it.

I roll into Canterbury at about 12:30pm and sign up for 3/6 and 4/8. There’s lines 10 deep on each list already. Yikes. About 10 minutes later they start a new 4/8 table and I’m one of the ones called for it. I sit down and grab the 3s so I can easily see everybody at the table. The table was typical loose makeup, but definitely had a couple of solid people, namely the 5s and 7s. The 1s was a guy in his 40s who talked constantly. He kept saying things like, “Here goes my car insurance money” and “Is anybody else here playing with their rent?” The funny thing is that this really bothered the 5s. I tried keeping him talking and would join in with him a bit because within the first hour he had already rebought. I figured if he was having a good time he’d stick around.

The first hour I was there went pretty well. I was up 4BB and my hands were holding up. It was fun while it lasted. I hit a run of cold cards and basically got blinded away for 2 hours. It also so happened that for about 5 orbits my blinds were raised, sometimes for three bets, while holding terrible hands which caused me to throw them away. Very frustrating.

The 5s left after 2.5 hours up two racks. It was sad to see about half the chips on the table leave. Of course, since he was one of the better, if not the best, players at the table it was OK too.

Looking back (I didn’t write this up right away because I wanted to reflect a little bit), I see my play changed a bit during the session. The table was pretty good. There were a couple of good players, but there was enough other people at the table donating that it could have been OK. I played more agressively during the first hour and it paid off. I gave some away on a couple of hands, but I was pushing them and if I had a decent hand I made sure nobody got a free card.

During the time where I wasn’t getting much, I got very passive. If I did get something, I turned mega-weak. I started getting short stacked, but I was getting up against the time when I had to leave so I didn’t rebuy. That was probably a mistake as I went into stack protection mode.

Basically I look back aand see that I made a couple of crucial mistakes which adversely affected my game. Firstly, I let myself get short stacked. This caused me not to play the odds correctly as I did not want to committ more of my stack. There were a couple of times that had I stayed in for 1SB I would have had the winning hand. Of course, it’s easy to find hands like that, but looking back I think I should have stayed in for some of them such as when there were 5 people paying to see the turn.

Secondly, I got way too passive if I got something resembling a good hand later in the day. I’d limp when I should have raised a couple of times. I should have seen the turn for one bet. I should have raised a flop or two. All these are related to the short stack issue, and I should have never let myself get into that position.

The day ended badly for me. Let’s put it this way. I had 4 diet Cokes (err, Pepsi). Each one cost me about $30 (over 3.5 hours). Ouch.

Was I the sucker at the table? No. There were people who were definitely much, much worse that I was. Was I the best and just didn’t get enough good cards? No, the 5s was probably the best person at the table. He made a number of good raises driving people out and making them pay for their draws. He also made a couple of great calls on scary boards. The 7s was pretty solid too. I defintely wasn’t the worst, nor was I the best. I didn’t play my best and it cost me. I’d like to blame the cards, and while I didn’t get much for a while, the end result was because I didn’t play that well.

It’s frustrating to look back and realize that you made these types of mistakes when some of them were definitely preventable. I know I can’t win every time, but I think I could have minimized the losses here by being a bit smarter.

WPBT V

Since I don’t have much to report, I want to remind you all to sign up for the next WPBT tourney next week. Everybody has complained about the previous ones because they weren’t at Stars. Despite this, we still had 70 people sign up last time. Seventy people at a site that most people hate and at a site that screwed up one week. How many are signed up so far for this one? The one that is finally being held at Stars where everybody said they’d play if it were there?

22

That’s right, a whopping 22 people so far. I’m just hoping this is because we don’t have to pre-register and that there will be a flurry of people signing up that night. If not, then I’m disappointed. Everybody wanted it at Stars and it’s going to happen there, so let’s play damnit! This includes readers. No complaints about bad software this time. Remember, I’m dead money in these things, so that’s $20 more in the prize pool for somebody else. I suck at NL, just remember that.

My Poker Play

Nothing really new to report. I’ve cleared 2 of my 3 normal Crypto bonuses for an overall profit (ie. discounting the bonus I’m still up), despite a horrendous run during my Interpoker play. I put $100 into Stars, paid for the tourney and have earned back the entry fee at the ring games. Still trying to figure out what to do with my massive $12 at UB. The software won’t let me sit down with Spirit Rock yet, so that’s out of the question for now. Haven’t played Party in about a week, but I’ve been harvesting hands like crazy.

After reading a bit about “Spirit Rock” on 2+2, I decided to fire up UB and check him out. He evidently kills the 25/50 NL games for tens of thousands all the time. He is reported to be Prahlad Friedman. Anyway, I fire up UB, watch that for a bit, but it’s pretty slow at that time so I checkout my account, just for grins, and voila, I’ve got $7 sitting there. I’ve also got over $100 in bonuses. WTF? I haven’t even played there in about a year, doesn’t this ever expire? I may have to look at clearing that. OK…Let’s have some fun.

I sit down a a 1+0.10 SNG. Oh yeah, going for broke here. I must say, this had to be one of the tightest low level SNG I have ever played in. These people were taking this seriously. Keep in mind, the winner gets $5. It took two levels to get the first person out. During this time I was the chip leader (!) but everybody else was fairly even, just pushing chips back and forth. Cutting to the chase: I get AA three times, win with them twice. I also won the whole damn thing. W00T! It took just a touch over an hour. For a $1 SNG. Unbelievable. The way I’m looking at this is that I basically doubled my roll with one tourney win I’ve now got almost $12 at UB. Oh yeah, Spirit Rock, watch out, just a bit more and I’ll be there!

After that I pulled up a 1/2 table at Stars so I could see what all the hoopla was about. The only other time I had ever pulled up Stars was to “watch” the 2004 WSOP. After I turned off the animation it was pretty usable.

During the later stages of my incredible tourney win I had a 1/2 game at Party going on. I know, I’m also having trouble figuring out how I could keep my concentration in check while playing in such a huge tourney, but I think it helped to keep me focused. It was a great table though, I doubled up and hopefully am getting out of my downturn.

After playing on three different sites in one night, I have some opinions on software again. I’ve played Party (and skins) so long and so much that I am just used to some of the things that are funky about it. Personally, I like Party. It’s very responsive and easy to figure out who’s turn it is, the chips are easy to see, and such. Basically, while not optimal, it’s never crashed my computer or sent it to 100% CPU like the Crypto sites sometimes do.

Stars, while nice, just doesn’t impress me as much as I thought it would. Everybody raves about it, so I had to try it out. Maybe the tournament structure is much better, but the software on the whole wasn’t as good as I was hoping for. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but I guess maybe it was just hyped up too much to live up to expectations. I can see myself playing here though. The software is good and the game didn’t seem that bad, so I may add this to my rotation.

UB, on the other hand, is still my favorite. First off, it’s so clean. You have to make an effort to clutter it up. Another thing that is kind of neat is the seat placement. At UB you are always seated in the same place, ie. the table “rotates” so that your seat is always right in front of you. I kind of like that. The best feature, and one I wish Party would make available, is the “mini” view. I absolutely love this. It’s also very reponsive and more customizable sound wise. Overall, this is the best software, I just wish more places had the mini view.

I won’t even go into the Crypto sites. At least Interpoker’s version now has “stats” and the ability to take notes. Hopefully the others will upgrade soon. It routinely pegs my CPU at 100%.

Things kinda fell into place tonight. The same things that I was doing the last few sessions worked tonight. Oh well, such is variance.

Wow, what the hell happened today? First, the Gophers lose, for the second year in a row, to a Michigan team that they should have beaten. The threw it away for the second year in a row. This was a great year schedule wise for the Gophers. We don’t have Ohio State or Purdue. If they could have beaten Michigan it would have put them in good position to win the Big Ten. Let’s just hope they keep playing well and end up in a decent bowl.

They did, of course, blow my college pick ‘em because I gave them a huge confidence rating. This is after I forgot to hit the “Submit” button last week after I went through the trouble of actually picking teams. Great.

The Twins blew a big lead, at home, and let the Yankees come back and win it. I logged into AIM tonight and almost immediately this popped up from Pauly:

The Twins should have left Santana in until his arm fell off

I agree. Santana did a great job and this was a do or die game, so why not let him pitch? Even then, they did OK for a while, but then the Yankees did what they did over 60 times this season and came from behind to win.

I’m now officially pulling for the Yankees to take it all.

I’m also now nervous about the Vikings on Sunday. They should win, but this seems to be a cursed weekend for Minnesota sports.

I decided to take it a bit easy tonight and play in the Interpoker $500 freeroll. While playing in the tourney I also played a couple of 1/2 tables. The limit games were up, even and way down. Let’s skip the limit part and jump right to the tourney

Back at the tourney, which I was using for some cheap NL experience in preparation for the next WPBT event, I was holding my own. I’m down to about T500 right before the break and I get A9s and I push. I’m called and I make my flush on the turn and pull it down. Shortly after the break I’m down to T900 and I look and see the lovely Sisters. I push in the cutoff with three callers ahead of me. The blinds drop but the other two call. The Sisters hold up and I more than triple up. This holds me for a little bit and I win a couple smaller pots with some steals.

Pretty soon it’s up to 200/400/50 and I’m sitting at T2300. I haven’t been getting any cards, or at least ones I felt comfortable playing (ie. more experienced NL/tourney players probably would have been more aggressive), so I’ve been getting anted down again. I’m in MP+2 and see the beautiful sisters staring back at me again. They know when I need help and couldn’t resist my charms to come over and help. There’s been two callers and I throw out the minimum raise, hoping to get another caller or maybe a raise in order to push and hopefully take it down right there. The guy to my left raises to T1600 and is called by the BB. I push and both call. Interpoker flips the cards over right away (I love that) and I see I’m in great shape, my opponents have KQo and TT. Nicole Ritchie comes to visit her friends on the turn and I more than triple up again.

I’m doing OK by this point, still a bit below average, but people are falling like crazy. I fold for a bit and then it’s down to about 115 left (out of 750). I’m at about T4500 and I see the Rockets. I throw out a 3xBB raise and am raised all in by two people. Well, at that point I had the best, so I got my money in while I had it. Unfortunately, somebody else’s TT made a set on the flop and I bust out in 108th place.

Such is life in a freeroll, especially one that didn’t pay anything (first is $108, 80th is $0.75). I use it to get some free experience and therefore I don’t expect much from it. I still have a lot to learn here, but I like to do these and some S&G’s so that I don’t look like a total fool at the WPBT tournaments.

I’ve now funded my Stars account for the first time and have registered for the tourney on the 21st. Sign up now and avoid the rush. Let’s show Stars that we can have a decent tournout so that it’s no big deal to have other ones in the future.