Chris Halverson’s Blog

Lack of Updates

So I meet up with Jason at lunch Thursday and he asks me why I haven’t updated my blog lately. Then he calls me tonight about something else and then at the end he asks if I’m playing poker yet. When I reply that I’m not quite yet playing poker, he then informs me that since I’m not playing, I should update this here blog. In reality I’ve had a lot of real work (see bottom section) to do and I mostly blog in the morning so I just haven’t had time to do it. Anyway, I’m sure the other 3 of you were wondering the same thing, so here we go…

I’ve continued to play no limit exclusively. By the “money measure”, I’m doing fine, I’m losing less at NL than I did at limit, so that’s good Actually, I’m coming out ahead so far, although I lost about $20 clearing the 1400 hands at Empire (a couple brutal suckouts when we got all in killed me). By “losing” I mean my play was a bit down, I didn’t lose the bonus, so a net of +$180 is now sitting in Neteller. I started on the Cryptos now, but I see Party has another bonus out. 1400 hands in 7, count them, 7, days. Yikes. I’m not sure I can do that, but I have a few days to decide if I want to give it a go.

Despite a couple of major suckouts, you know, from the “I play any Ace” or “I play any sooted” crowd (to raises even), I feel my NL game is improving. I’m starting to see that there are times to over bet the pot as well as some other basic strategies. It’s definitely a different game, and I think I like it better than limit, at least for now I’ve still got a ton to learn in regards to NL, but it’s coming. Some of the learning, and confusion, comes from playing at different sites.

NL At Other Sites

As most of you know by now, I have a tendency to play about 30 different sites during the month going after bonuses. Of course, this really means that I play on 2 major networks, Crypto and Party, so in reality I’m playing a lot at the same tables. One thing that is interesting to me is the default buy in at the different sites. While playing limit, I didn’t really see a big difference when buying into a 1/2 table for $50 at Party or for $40 at Crypto (note, those are the defaults, you can adjust them up or down). In the end, it didn’t really matter much.

In no limit, however, the buy in is much more important. At Party, the default is much lower than the other sites I’ve played on, 50x the big blind. At both Crypto and Prima sites the max buy in is 100x the big blind. This makes for very different play. I’m assuming that the 100x the big blind is more of a “deep stack” no limit game (although there is still a capped buy in). The smaller games sometimes get to be all in fests. By that I mean people pushing all in for $15 pre-flop in order to win 75 cents. While ridiculous, this is a quick way to get a few free dollars. It’s frustrating playing against that, but fortunately I caught a guy doing it the other day (he had done it about 10 times in 3 orbits) when I saw aces, I had him covered and busted him. You don’t see this happening at the bigger stack games.

That’s not to say the play is any better though. There is plenty of bad play at the deeper games, they are, after all, just 50/1 games. Trust me, there’s plenty of bad play at this level.

Playing the deeper games is somewhat intimidating at first. Playing at a 50/1 NL table and having a 3 way pot on the river and wanting to bet the pot can be a $50 bet or more. Then you may be facing a raise and then what? Weak/tight Chris doesn’t like that situation. Tight/aggressive Chris, however, realizes that most other people don’t like that either and uses that to his advantage. I admittedly don’t do it as often as I would like, but I’m getting better. TAG Chris is still learning to be more assertive, but it’s coming.

Then of course there are the times when you flop the nuts and can’t figure out why one, much less two, people keep calling (and in one case, raising) your bets. I mean, on a non-straight flush, non-paired board that flopped all one suit, facing an aggressive bettor (me, who happens to hold the A9 of that suit), what makes you think your raise is going to do anything but make me more money? That’s OK, those are the people you want to be playing against, and thankfully there are plenty of them at every site. EVERY site.

I must say that I like the deeper games better, despite (or maybe because of) the bigger betting. The fact that you can use some betting strategy makes it more fun and maybe more “real”. The Party NL games, while profitable, seem like they’re more of a crap shoot. It helps once you get a stack there as you can force people all in, which immediately puts them on the defensive, but other than that it seems less like a “real” no limit game. Of course, playing at the lower levels at Party sometimes seems like fake poker anyway, so I guess it fits right in.

I guess I’m just wondering if there is anything I should keep in mind about playing differently on the two types of games. Any insight from you NL vets would be appreciated. Basically I just play good hands and don’t screw around. I probably leave some money on the table by not trying to trap, but then again I don’t get rivered much either. I played at one table on Thursday night where for about an hour I won 20% of the hands I was dealt and never when to showdown. This table was pretty passive (obviously), so I took advantage of it and bet hard. It seems to be the “right” way to play, at least at the low levels.

Blogger Table

The other night I was kicking some ass at the Party 25NL. I had almost quadrupled up on one and was up a bit on another. Suddenly Iggy McBoobs sits down to my left. Ruh roh. Not that I was worried so much about his LAG ass (because this is a play table for him, he’d kill me in a real game, no doubts about that, none), but because this would most assuredly turn into the Blogger Table of Death soon. I’ve got $95 on the table and I wanted to lock it in, so I quickly looked at the waiting list and saw no less than 5 other bloggers in line. Damnit! Next thing I know the rail is alive and I’m stuck trying to protect my win. That’s a weak way to play and I proceeded to bleed off $40 of it. What made it even worse was the fact that none of the bloggers got any of it. I’d much rather have one of them get it than some yahoo who just happened to be sitting down at the table (who, of course, quickly become targets for the other bloggers).

I do enjoy playing there though. Well, actually I enjoy the banter more than the play. It’s a total LAG-fest (well, actually it’s been pretty tame while I’ve been there, but I can see it creeping up) which makes it interesting, but the table talk is great. It seems to get the non-bloggers on tilt a lot, which is good. So far I’ve escaped unscathed, but I know it’s only a matte of time before something bad happens.

Work

On a side note, the terror level at work has been downgraded from “major suckage” to “not so bad”. My longtime business partner has quit which pretty much sucks. We’ve worked together since 1991, started a business in 1996 and sold it 2001. I met Mrs. H through him (he was dating her roommate). We have a lot of history and I’m sad to see him go, both personally and professionally. I, of course, wish him the best and I’m sure he’ll succeed.

Since we were the only two developers in the organization that suddenly meant that I became more important. We have a number of home grown apps including a web portal for one of our major projects. Add in some lobbying from my friend and coworker Kent and suddenly I’m being moved back to a group that will allow me to do development. Now I just need to fanagle a raise out of this and I’ll be set. I haven’t totally ruled out going somewhere else, but I’m not as active about it right now. I know, I keep going back and forth on this, but things are better now and I do have a lot of flexibility and such, so that’s hard to give up.

Fossilman

Greg “Fossiman” Raymer (you know, the 2004 WSOP Main Event winner) will be playing Friday night at Stars. He will be playing in a special $100 NLHE Heads Up Sit and Go with the 2+2 King Of The Zoo (KOTZ) winner, Sheriff Fatman. This should be a fun event to watch. It’s at 9PM Eastern time at PokerStars.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 at 9:59 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.