Darkened Poker

There is some interesting inside stories within these 12 episodes behind the scenes type interviews with the poker pro’s.  I especially like how “The Crew” took Dutch boys tournament win and then managed to get high while playing online poker and blow it all.  The only problem is the announcer’s voice and crap intro’s and exits into each segment drive you nuts.  Worth a watch though.

Found this great forum post at “All Vegas Poker” that I have to share, so sad but true.

http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=7710&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=210#p122774

Player Nicknames

1.  Norman Chad-Hole: Guy who cracks the corniest, most overplayed jokes at the table. ” Hey! You know why the call A-K The Anna Kournicova? Looks pretty but never wins! Wokka Wokka Wokka!” You should be allowed to slap this guy once a session.

2.  Phil Hell-Meth-head Guy who can’t shut up at the table, cant stay still. Jumps up after every fold to steal 2 quick drags from his cigarette/crack pipe, all the while yelling ” Deal me in dealer!!” because if he misses just one hand, the bugs and worms in his head will eat his brain.

3.  Daniel Negra-Nerd Spits out statiscal analysis of every hand, and is usually wrong. “Ohh, A-K vs pocket 7′s? Your a 114% favorite cause you got like 54 outs twice.”

4.  Phil Ivey-Watching You The tool at the table who tries to stare into your soul when you make a $10 raise. I Actually had a guy last week do this to me. He took his sunglasses off and turned to stare at me over a $40 pot. He said “Why do you look nervous?” So I said ” Cause I don’t know if you’re gonna call or try to kiss me” He folded.

5.  Eli Ez-She really going out with him? The 22 year old smoking hot model seated directly behind the guy who looks like Tom Petty mated with a Mastodon.

6.  Mike Matu-Suck Dude who spews his buy in all over the table for hours then finally gets a good hand and slow plays himself into oblivion- Begins yelling “F$#K this game! I cant belive my aces lost to 5-6 off suit!” We know buddy, we can’t belive you checked behind him on a board of 3-4-8 with three hearts.

7.  Tom Dw-hat In the Hell Are You Doing? Watched way too much Dwan on High Stakes Poker. Can’t understand why when he 3 bets out of the position with J7 he loses everytime. Thats cause he can read players post flop, and you suck donky sack. DURRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

8.  Phil Laak- of Brains Folds kings face up because he gets re raised. Folds his big blind in a tournement and leaves himself with only 1 BB left cause he “Had Crap” Open bets pocket aces for $200 cause he “Always Loses With them”. Makes you just want to go buy him a tin foil hat.

9.  Sammy Far-Crying Out Loud Guy who builds his $100 buy in to $2100 in an hour buy continually sucking out after calling large pre flop bets with crap. Only good news is he wil spew it all back before the night is over.

10.  David Bennyme-Another Drink This guy is blotto, but keeps drinking and babbling while playing. Usualy gives up too much information- Like he has a King, He only raises when he got top pair, He wears his wifes underwear, etc. TMI for sure.

♣♥♦

Darkened Poker

This video is so brilliant it hurts, the sync up with Phil Hellmouth almost made me cry.

“Ch3ckraise – Cash Out (On My Titt1es)”
Written and Performed by DRybes

Some how it has made it from the 2+2 forums to t-shirt form already.

Must have of the year?

Great video of Jerry bus explaining how he made Layne Flack famous.

Check it out

Once upon a time everything about poker got me excited.  Just showing up with 100$ to a 3-6 limit game had me almost passing out.  Picking up big pocket pairs use to get my heart rate going, flopping a set, straight or flush and I would almost jump out of my seat.  If I made Quads I would turn them over no matter what because I was just so excited just to even get them.  Putting all my money in on a bluff would cause me to stop breathing and any motion to call would cause an instant heart attack.

All that is long long gone.  Once you have a proper bankroll bluffing is just another tool and no real risk of anything.   I have seen so many good hands cracked that I do not dare let myself get excited about any hand until the river is over. In fact it was getting hard to get excited about anything anymore.

Like everything else in life sooner or later the newness shininess of it all wears off and unless you in love with the core of the game you will crash and burn hard.  I have seen a bunch of people over the years that once the excitement of the game itself wears off have to start chasing higher limits to get the adrenaline going again.  Only thing that keeps them going is really big tables of cash:

Heart rate rising a little?

Well the problem is they are not that good and hit the peter principle real quickly.  Instead of moving down and playing the games they can beat they stay at the higher limits because that is were the adrenaline is.  These people will bust hard at some point, they can not help it.  Even if they do manage to survive the first hard level as soon as they get even remotely good they lose the rush and have to move up again.  If your only in poker for adrenaline of winning big money, it will break you.

Seems like the only way to survive poker is if you get your adrenaline and satisfaction from playing every night at the best of your ability and learning something new in poker every day.  For a long time I could not do this, winning chips was how you kept score and I was really results orientated.  If I did not have the chips then it meant they were better than me which was not acceptable.  This leads to tilt and tilt leads to even more losing nights and suffering.  Now that I am only focused on the play of each hand I can have a brutal losing night and still go home happy because I saw or made a mistake that I would now remove from my game and make a whole bunch less mistakes in the future.

I also use to be in a real hurry to get to the highest limit I could because that was were you could earn the greatest amount of money.  I would raise my limits every time I had a bankroll of 20x the buy.  Well one day I won a tournament and suddenly had the bankroll to play in the 2-4 games online.  Well a 2-4 game online is harder than a 10-20 live game and I got crushed hard.  I was dropping limits really quick just to stop the bleeding and soon found myself at even lower limits and bankroll than before my tournament win.  Lesson learned, now I do not move up until:

• 20x the bankroll
• beating the current game for x amount of time and are sure it is not variance of running good ( month or so )
• are not learning anything new, in fact you are bored winning this way and need a new challenge.

I use to build up a big enough bankroll to take on a new level and then just play it until I either beat it or had to drop back down because my bankroll got to small.  What a mistake, after getting killed at the higher level you need a good win once in awhile to keep positive.  In fact if you get stubborn and try to force through until you win you likely burn out and self destruct.  Learning takes time and detecting patterns sometimes does not until you sleep on something for a few nights.  Suddenly by the time you figured it out you have lost so much of your bankroll it will be a long time before you can apply the lessons.

This lead me to now slowly incorporate higher levels into my game over time, in the beginning just one buy in a day at the higher level.  Once the fluctuations at the level slowed down then allocate a higher percent of my time to it.

Effectively now I play three different limits depending on my goals:

1-2, this is my learning level, only playing it single table to watch everyone and study each hand.  Do not care about my results at all, just paying my dues.

.25 – .50, this is my building the bankroll level, playing 4 tables or so, know the level of play very well and can almost play on auto pilot.

.05 – .1, this is my messing around level, if I want to try something new and not risk a lot I can open up a whole bunch of tables and see the results really quickly.

Andy Beal said in his book “The Suicide king” that the paradox in poker is at first the excitement comes from winning big pots and getting good hands.  But to get good at poker you needed to not care about winning or losing, picking up 7 2 or AA and so the game becomes a grind.  Originally I read that and was worried that the game would lose my interest after awhile, but I think the game has gotten even more interesting since I stopped caring about hands and results.  Maybe one day one could learn enough that it would just become a grind but I can not see how that is possible.  There is always better people to play against, different forms of poker to master and the game is always evolving.

A cute little poker playing eye candy does not hurt the adrenaline either:

Heart rate rising a little more