Poker

The month of October was almost a perfect run. Ideal from every aspect. Even though I lost big hands I was able to bounce back and make it up quickly. Playing online gives you the benefit of seeing how loose the table is and what the avg pot size is prior to you sitting down. I employ 2 different strategies:

1. Sit at a loose table and play tight waiting for the nuts for a big pay off. I don't start off tight immediately. Simply play loose for the first 10-20 hands showing bluffs, etc, then tighten up and just wait it out. Yeah it gets boring and yes even when you get a donkey chasing his 4 outer he will hit once in a while and cost you a big pot. Odds say you should win more than you loose if he chases. Just raise enough to control the pot odds.

2. Sit at a tight table and play aggressive. In aggressive mode I see ~45% of the flops and preflop raise about 25%. Once the rocks see you are being over aggressive, they tend to try and switch it up and play aggressive. Most of them can't switch styles at low limits and can't adjust to that style of play. I said MOST not all, so you still have to be careful and not too reckless. Even when you catch the nuts they most likely won't believe you so it could be a pretty good payoff too.

October 2007 Graph

Here's the graph for August. Pretty much down and up and then down. I stopped playing at Absolute Poker over the number of hands I lost on the river. As usual it doesn't contain my tournament winnings. I did finish in the money 4/7 MTTs I played in August.

There won't be any stats for Sept since I have yet to play a hand online. I'll post a Vegas report soon.

August 2007 Graph

Had a great month of poker. Here's my graph over July 2007. This doesn't include my profits from tournaments. I made the money 3 times in the $7k Guarantee on Absolute Poker. Finished 3rd in one of them which paid out ~$800.

July 2007 Graph

I'm still making great progress at Dream Poker (Prima Network). I didn't plan on playing today, but I was waiting for work to call me back to do some real work. Why not hop on Dream Poker and play for a little while? Boy did it pay off! Within 20 min I had turned my $100 into $500+ and I wiped out the entire table. I wanted them to rebuy, but no one would take me on .

Yesterday was the PSO Spring League Event #2. It starts at 6pm here on the west coast which makes it tough to play if you work late. Unfortunately, I had to work until 5:45pm, which means I probably wouldn't make the tournament because of the 45 min commute home. Being a little bummed out, a light bulb went off and I decided to call my wife at home to boot up my laptop. Got her to register me for the tournament. I figured the worst case I would just sit out until I got home and see if I could make a run of it with the remaining chips I had left.

What ended up happening was a "play poker by phone" experience. Having someone on the other end who has no clue about the game of poker and myself trying to navigate through the Vancouver rush hour while playing poker on the phone was quite the experience. Thank god for bluetooth! She narrated the hands to me and I had to tell her how much to bet and which buttons to click.

Surprisingly it worked out quite well. By the time I got home my chip stack was double the starting 1500 and I was in good position to start my usual style of play by staying aggressive. I even showed some of my bluffs early on hoping for a large payoff later and it worked out a couple times when I flopped the nuts.

Eventually made it to heads up with zagnuts with a 80k-30k advantage. He did take the lead at one point, but I managed to put him away and win this tournament. +$125 with $220 in PSO points added. So $345 on a $5 and 3h investment. There was also a $20 bounty on me, I should get to keep that too since no one took me out. Not bad results after thinking I'd miss this league event.

I've been playing Dream Poker and as I've mentioned before, I'm doing well. Tonight I was sitting with over $600 on a $100NL table. Six times the buy in for that limit. Dream Poker is part of the Prima Network. In the past I haven't had too much luck there, so I'd generally avoid it. The free gift from PSO was just too tempting to pass up. So not only do I get $120 from PSO, but I'm also up over $1k for less than a weeks worth of playing. At this point it's like my own personal ATM. Let's see how long this can continue.

Like most Canadian and US players, I'm still trying to figure out how to move my online money around. Getting money out of a poker site is easy, you can just request a cheque, but it's when you go to deposit that money into another site we haven't quite figured out yet. Most credit cards block online gambling. Poker might be a form of gambling for some people, I see it as a game of skill.

I guess I haven't really written about poker in a while. Lots of people are wondering what I've been doing and how I've been doing with poker. When pokersouceonline moved out of the great USA because of the politics happening with online gamling, I sort of took a break from online poker. Playing only occasionally at Ultimate Bet for rakeback, and live at Casino Rama and Niagara. I did play a Canadian Poker Tour event and finished 32nd out of 120. Not quite good enough to get paid, but I got a cool CPT pin .

After moving to Vancouver and with at least 4 casinos within the city, I planned to play more live games. I haven't played as much as I like, but once I clear my online bonuses you'll start to see me at either River Rock or Boulevard Casinos. 3/6NL or 5/10NL will be my game is I can get a seat.

So PSO redesigned their website and bumped up their Dream Poker promo up to 12000 PSO points. I just had to do this promo. I deposited $100 (my last deposit using Neteller) and proceeded to play $100NL. Within the required 600 raked hands and in only a week, I managed to build that $100 into $750. I used to hate the Prima network, but I just can't lose.... knock on wood.

The poker league is starting up again. The only problem for me is that it starts at 6pm on the west coast, so I'm not sure I'll get home in time to play each one.

The Johnny Chan Classic is in Vancouver May 6 - 13. I thought it would be cool to play the opening $250k tourny, but I already have plans on that day. I will think about playing the $300k short handed tourny. That should better suit my style of play. I normally play short handed tables online anyways. Anyone want to back me? It might be a good investment.

As most people in the online poker world already know.... Neteller is pulling away from online gambling sites for Canadian customers. Much like they did for US customers a while ago. This will definitely slow down my online playing quite a bit. I had already shifted my focus onto live games here in Vancouver. River Rock and Boulevard Casinos.

I've been trying to figure out what to do with all the money in my Neteller account before the April 9th deadline. I did consider a full cashout, but it may be better to just dump some money into various sites to play around with. I will definitely narrow down my online sites to 3, which will probably be Poker Stars, Absolute Poker, and Ultimate Bet.

Poker Stars has an e-Check option which I hope works with Canadian USD accounts. That would be my preferred way to fund an online account.

Neteller's move is surprising. There has been no political change in terms of online gambling of late. Will Canada follow the US in banning online gambling funds? I guess time will tell. So much for living in a "free" country.