Chris Halverson’s Blog

Pokah

Being a Professional Poker Player™ requires patience. It also requires being able to handle the suckouts and bad beats. Here’s one for you:

I get dealt KJo…

I didn’t get much time to play this weekend, plus the results were such that I just didn’t feel like playing. Four SNGs. Total. Results: 10, 8, 4, 6. Ug. I know, small sample size, many of you play 4 SNGs at a time, much less across a whole weekend I just didn’t have time to play this weekend.

Teh Diet

Monday was the official start of Teh Diet. I’m on a quest to lose 25 pounds. I was going to start next Monday, ie. after the Super Bowl so that I could actually enjoy the food and such at the Super Bowl party I’m going to on Sunday. This plan was, of course, thwarted by The Princess, who is my diet buddy. She basically forced me to start on Monday, so here I am eating salads again.

I also bought celery. Which I hate. With a passion. sigh

In preparation for Teh Diet, I planned for a big blowout meal on Saturday night. Mrs. H and I went to go see Underworld 2 (good movie, especially if you liked the first, and Kate Beckinsale in leather and a corset for 2 hours? how wrong can you go with that?) and then planned on going to the Mongolian Bar-B-Q (Khan’s for the locals), which is quite possibly my favorite place to go to eat (and actually may not be that bad if I stay away from the tons of noodles).

We show up at 6:30 and they say it’s an hour wait. We usually eat at 5:30, so I’m already dying. Now I’m depressed. The Mrs, in her infinite wisdom, suggests Big Bowl at the nearby mall (again for the locals, Rosedale). We go there, me still pouting, and there’s an hour long wait there. Frack!

We look down the hall and see Macoroni Grill. Huzzah! They only have a 20 minute wait. We sign in and then go sit at the bar to wait. I order a SoCo and we get chatting a bit with the bartender. She seems to appreciate a little attention other than the work crap. Finally we get called and Mrs H goes to check in. I stay to settle up and tell the bartender that another order of this will be coming through shortly (some waiters cannot grasp the concept of drinking something straight). When we find out our table is in the bar area, the bartender just smiles and pours a snifter about 75% full of SoCo.

Yeah baby.

Mrs. H and I have had a tough January. We’ve had to work through some tough issues, and it’s taken a week or two to get there, but we have. A decent meal (their pesto is pretty good for a restaurant) and a couple good drinks and we hashed out a lot of what was troubling us. Actually, we had most of it cleared up earlier in the day, but we got everything pretty much cleared up and we’re back on track and things are better than ever.

TV

Finally caught an episode of “King of Vegas”. I so want that hour of my life back. First off, it’s confusing. I more or less know the games and didn’t know what the heck they were doing. Not knowing bet sizes, what they’re betting on, etc. makes it tough to follow.

Watching David Williams double up in three hands of poker to be “Sitting Pretty” was like watching CJ play a tourney. He couldn’t lose. Watching the craps section was painful. The poker deathmatch was even worse.

High Stakes Poker, on the other hand, is pretty interesting. Check it out on GSN for a showing of a no limit cash game. Some of it’s kind of cheesy, but for the most part it’s pretty neat.

Finally…only a couple more days until Survivor!!!

Poker

In order to keep my Professional Poker Player™ status, I have actually been playing a bit lately. To that end, poker has been upgraded from “teh suck” to “mediocre” as of late. I have proceeded to win back about 60% of my losses so far this month, mostly on a string of 3rd place finishes in SNGs (meh). A couple cash game hits have helped a bit too.

I’ve made some mistakes in the a few of these SNGs, but have started to make some strong bubble plays when people are holding on to make the money. Nothing too wreckless, but a bit more aggressive than normal. I’d love to finish the month in the black, but my wireless is acting up the last couple of days which has caused me to not even try.

Affirmation

Just to reinforce to you all that I’m a Professional Poker Player™, it was recently pointed out by the recently engaged Poker Geek that another RSS thief is at it. In this case he splits up poker blogs into “Amateur” and “Professional”. There’s over 100 listed in the amateur listing and 8 in the Professional category.

Guess who’s one of them?

Chopped off the illicit Feedburner feed he setup of my, and other’s, sites, as well as the actual site and such, no need to help him out.

Anyway, that’s just for all of you naysayers out there

Congrats

I’m late to the party but congrats to Absinthe on winning the LAPC Event #1 for a cool $113K. Nice job.

Also congrats go to Chris Fargis on winning triple draw tourney in Tunica.

Being a Professional Poker Player™ with a successful and ever interesting blog (just ask Felicia) has its advantages. There’s the fame, fortune, and women. Basically, think “rock star”.

There’s also the opportunity to review books and videos in return for some cheap advertising. Case in point, the fiction novel “Cards” by Jonathan Maxwell.

I received this book a few months ago and just finished it. This was not due to my super busy schedule or anything, after all it’s only 280 or so pages. What took me so long you may ask? Let’s frame it by using blogs as a reference. What are the two things that, in general (Felicia and I for sure), don’t like to read in blogs?

C’mon, I know you know…

Hand Histories

Bad beat stories

“Cards” has both in spades (pun somewhat intended).

(Spoilers below)

“Cards” is the fictionalized tale of a young California guy who is living the “dream” of playing poker for a living. It shows the life of a grinder in all its glory ranging from busting out and having to borrow money to pay the rent, to borrowing money to get high to blur the fact that he just busted. It relives his trip to Paris and the Aviation Club where he cashes out close to $30,000 while busting the rich French locals. He then takes his roll to Vegas with dreams of playing in the WSOP, only to bust out entirely well before the tourney.

(End spoilers)

Sounds like a good tale, and the tale itself is OK, the downside to the book is that it reads like a newbie poker blog. For example,

On the button I brace to raise without looking. Two seats before me, happy guy raises to 50. I shuffle twice then squeeze: 8…5.

Next hand: 8-5 again.

Next: J-4.

Q-8.

10-2.

6-K.

4-7.

That’s from page 124, but you can open up to almost any page and find something similar.

The upside to his wreckless and wild play is that it reads like a train wreck. You just know this is not going to end well, you just don’t know when or how.

Once again, much like some poker blogs.

The main redeeming value of the book was at the end. Assuming you make it to the end without being totally bored of reading hand histories, you get the advice of a friend who, after the hero limps back to LA after busting out, says:

“The most important element in poker is your bankroll” (Page 278)

In other words, don’t play above your roll and don’t put it all at stake at once. How many times have we read a blog entry that says something to the effect of, “I lost a third of my roll so I stepped up to 10/20 to try to get it back quickly and busted out, but boy are they terrible.” Uh huh, too many times. In fact, sometimes multiple times from the same person.

In the epilogue, the author mentions that he started writing this before the poker explosion and before the proliferation of online sites. This was to show the gritty underside of poker, and to that end he does a good job. The (over)abundance of hand history type of text shows that poker is not all like they show on TV where every hand has a lot of action. We all know that there are a lot of times where you get crappy cards for a long time and it does get frustrating. The author does a good job of showing that.

Did I like the book? Overall it was pretty good. It’s the first fiction poker book I’ve read and it does a good job of showing what “real” poker is like: long stretches of bad cards; strange players in the casinos; bankroll management issues; and how lonely the life of a pro grinder can be. To that end I would recommend it, just be aware that you will get a lot of hand histories and a few bad beats along the way.

As a Professional Poker Player™ I think it’s important to show some advanced play in order to help others who aren’t quite as fortunate as I am. I think I’ll stick by the “a picture is worth a thousand words” mantra, it’s pretty self explanatory.

Yes, I doubled up the hand before, then won the SNG with the Hammer after flopping two pair.

My advanced theory here is: Learn how to flop two pair. It helps if you can do that, you’ll win more often than not. Easy enough

As you can see, this involves me playing actual poker. I know, I know…Slow down…

Basically I’ve decided I am going to play more often now. Even if it’s just 1 or 2 SNGs a night, at least it’s something. I’ve had some good results with SNGs, not enough to base my whole well being on them, but enough that I can come out ahead. Plus there’s more of a defined timeline involved, so that helps me plan things a bit better.

So far I’ve played a dozen or so and am up due to more firsts than other places. Sample size, etc. I know, but I’m not looking to pay the mortgage with this. I just need to stay ahead, earn a bit each month and I’ll be happy.

I’m back at work for the first time in basically a month. It sucks. Nuff said.