Chris Halverson’s Blog

Poker

Due to being a Professional Poker Player™, I received a personal message from my favorite cardroom manager, Ryan Hartley of Interpoker (ahem, Lee Jones could easily take this over if I were to receive an invite to the WCOOP) informing me that it’s now easy to figure out how close you are to clearing a bonus (OK, maybe you got that email too…). Pretty slick actually. They don’t really show the actual amount that is left, but they at least show a percentage. This helps take some of the guesswork out of the Interpoker bonus chase. Not sure if the other Cryptos have followed suit yet, but I would guess that the others that use Wagerlogic may have it too.

I went to check it out and found out that I have three months of bonus left to clear there. Yikes, and September is a few short days away. I may have to go do it at the casino because you can wager it risk free.

I did play a little online poker on Friday night though. Meh.

Cat Update

Just for Felicia and DuggleBogey...

April and others will be happy to know that my new cat is recovering nicely from her delawing. She had it done last Tuesday and all is well.

I did a little research on it after I dropped her off and I’m not sure I’ll declaw another cat. Wow, I should have read up on that when you guys brought it up. I feel bad now.

Of course, I’m not sure my wife could handle seeing the cat climb up the new screen door again. Neither would I, but it was kinda funny seeing her hanging from the screen

Minnesota State Fair

The Minnesota State Fair is in full swing. Barring special circumstances I won’t be going this year. Here’s what Scott’s favorite Minneapolis music columnist, Jack Sparks, has to stay about it:

This is a harvest festival. We all get together and celebrate our sunburnt, drunken, fish-poachin’, gun-shootin’, bike ridin’, pontoon wreckin’ summers. And, if we happen to come across a bare-chested, 300 pound man with a prosthetic hook for a right arm, wearing a captain’s hat, with a distended belly button that would be a b-cup breast if it were on a woman…well, good God woman, that’s worth the $9 in and of itself.

Too true…

Bradoween

Unfortunately I was not able to attend the Bradoween extravaganza this past weekend, but I did get the next best thing: 3 dial-a-shot calls!

• Pauly was first up giving me an update and bragging about his tourney win. Chatted a bit with BadBlood too.
• Heather was next, maybe 3 minutes after Pauly hung up. We chatted for a bit, got a “Hi” from April.
• I then enjoyed the AlCantHang Experience via long distance where I heard Iggy in the background.

  Sounds like it was a great time. Thanks for the calls guys (and gals), it was great to hear from you!

  Poker Aficionado

  I received an email the other day saying that I was mentioned in the book The Poker Aficionado by Peter Thomas Fornatale. Of course, as a Professional Poker Player™ I would expect nothing less, but I was curious anyway. I was sent a copy of the book and found myself on page 97 under the heading “The Best of the Poker Blogs”.

  The blurb about my blog says:

  Known for his obession with collecting free money from online poker bonuses, Chris dissects the low-limit games with his analytical mind.

  The other blogs mentioned were (in the order they appear): Iggy, HDouble, Richard Brodie, Grubby, Linda from PokerWorks, Up For Poker, Me, DoubleAs.

  The book itself is a lifestyle book, not a strategy book. It’s not meant to be read from front to back, it’s ment to be picked up and opened to a random page. The topics are short, no more than a page or two (the book is a small form factor, so the pages are short). They range in topics from rules of various games (and even those are spread throughout the book), advice from other professional poker players such as Matt Matros, Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth, Robert Williamnson III, Scott Fischman and others. These are mostly excerpts from their books or articles and is good advice.

  The advice is short, and most readers of this blog probably won’t get much in that respect, but there are other stories and some interesting facts that make it kind of a fun book.

  Internet

  My Internet connection has been really flaky the last couple of days. This has, of course, affected my ability to play online poker. Well, that and this week’s assignment of writing EJB Entity beans. Woo hoo!

As a Professional Poker Player™ I have to be aware of some concepts that are probably foreign to a lot of you amateurs. I’ll give you an example and hopefully you’ll learn something. You can thank me later.

The concept of the day: Sample Size

Basically, this relates to the number of hands that it takes to get a good statistical bearing on how you are doing. I’ll give you a real life example and how I am going to utilize sample size and it’s findings to my advantage.

During my recent self imposed poker break (during which I squandered the recent Party bonus), I have given in to playing one $20+2 SNG per night (well, last night I played 2). Since Sunday I have played 4 games.

My sample size is now 4.

My ITM (that’s Professional Poker Player™ speak for “in the money”, ie. the top 3 places) percentage is 75%. My ROI (Professional Poker Player™ speak for “return on investment”) is 204%, unfortunately my average finish is 3.25 which is slightly out of the money (1, 3, 3, 6), but we’ll ignore that for now because it doesn’t help my argument.

Therefore, utilizing advanced concepts such as “Sample Size” and “extrapolation”, I am going to play, say, another 225 SNGs this month. Given the stats above, I should yield approximately $10,000 for the rest of the month.

You see, given a sample size, you can “extrapolate” results. Most people would say that 4 is not a “large enough sample size”, but I say, “Ha!”. As a Professional Poker Player™ I am able to see through the numbers, as if I’m seeing into their soul as it is, and am able to base my future earnings on them. Don’t try this at home kids, this is a very advanced concept.

This will be needed because if I extrapolate my ring game winnings losses I will lose approximately $250,000 this month.

In case you think I am at all serious, please don’t. This is a jopke to illustrate a point. Plus I have nothing else to write about unless you want to hear about my trials with JBoss. I also think I’ll only be able to get 100 more SNGs in instead of 225.

As soon as I got done posting last night I went and grabbed a drink (Oban, neat) and sat down to watch some Family Guy. I finished the drink, figured it was still early enough and got a refill.

On the way back to the couch, I noticed that I left my laptop on. I usually shut it down at night because it saves me some time in the morning before I have to pack it up to bring to work.

I’m looking at it and I hear the call of “Play poker! Play poker!”. I thought I had decided to take a little time off (although I still have to clear the Party bonus), but I guess the Scotch got the better of me. I decided I could play one SNG and limit my losses to $20. Professional Poker Players™ like myself have to play fairly often and mix it up a bit in order to keep our edge.

Next thing I know I’m the chipleader with 6 people left. We make the money and we’re about even. I get down to T600 when I got my money in with the worst and was called. Other guy busts out and I’m in 2nd but a 3:1 chip dog. I steal some blinds, make some good bets (well, he folded to them so I have to assume they were good). I then go all in (we were almost even in chips) with Jx on a flop that was KJx. He calls with a K, but I suckout on him with a J on the river. I get Ax on the next hand and push, he only has T200 after the blinds and had to call. I take it down with ace high and I win!

I realize that a $20 SNG is really not much in terms of a win, but he net $78 erases one of my sessions last week. Even Professional Poker Players need a win once in a while to help them realize that they don’t totally suck. I just partially suck, so any win is good at this point.

So anyway, the rest of the week is revolving around EJBs and application servers. No choice in the matter, I have to do it for class. Joy! Actually, I think my biggest task will be getting the app server running correctly (been using Tomcat until now because I haven’t needed anything more). It appears that my IDE (Eclipse with MyEclipseIDE) will handle most of the heavy lifting for me though, so I’m not too worried.

I am, however, getting “Sin City” on Wednesday though (via Blockbuster Online), so I have a feeling I’ll be watching it that night. Oh yeah, Jessica Alba…

Even Professional Poker Players™ like myself enjoy a little overlay once in a while. Therefore Friday night found me playing in a private $5k freeroll at The Gaming Club (my rake rebate site had it setup). While any freeroll is infinite overlay, this one was great because only 68 people signed up with the top 20 paying.

Whoa, even I may have a chance at this one.

I didn’t have a chance to review Final Table Poker before I started (I wasn’t sure I would be home in time to play), and I have yet to finish HoH, so I was on my own.

Surprisingly I was actually at average stack size for close to 2 hours.

That’s right, I was not constantly short stacked.

Maybe some of the reading and videos have paid off.

Maybe I got lucky.

Either way, I actually feel pretty good about how I played. In theory the 68 people who signed up are not just random bad players, after all they went through the trouble of signing up at a site in order to get a rake rebate. Of course, I’m not that good yet know enough to do that, so maybe my logic is flawed.

I did a lot more blind steals and reraising this time around and it paid off. I was in the top 10 for a while, but then just hung around average until shortly after the second break when I got another guy all in and lost (yes, I was ahead when the money got in). I then pushed two hands later when I got a king and I was out.

I finished 26th and just shy of the money. For me it wasn’t bad and I felt like I played well.

Of course, the ring games are still running bad. I’m going to take a few days off and work on my class project and get refreshed.