Darkened Poker

This episode was rather confusing.  First Phil Hellmouth re-raises Phil Ivey and gets moved all in on.  At this point he starts talking about how he is thinking of making a stand against Phil Ivey.    The problem is he is trying to do table talk mind games against Phil Ivey.

What could he hope to accomplish:

• Is Phil Ivey really going to stop raising him as much or respect Phil H’s next re-raise because he says he is thinking of coming over the top?
• Is Phil Ivey going to start raising him more since he is only thinking 1 level ahead and Phil H is thinking 2 levels ahead so he thinks it will be easier to trap him?
• Is Phil Ivey going to not respect his re-raises as much in the future and pay him off more now that it could be Phil H making a stand?

Not likely, Phil Ivey is aggressive against all the other players and it seems unlikely that anything anyone says is going to change his strategy.  Phil H really needs to just fold and hope that Phil Ivey keeps it up so he can re-raise or trap him.

Hand starts around 1:30 mark

Then a little while later he play very well and manages to not go broke against Antonio Esfandiari higher flush and you think for a moment that Phil H might survive this table.

But eventually he gets into a hand with Phil Ivey again and goes broke by moving on in on the turn a flush and str8 draw which by itself is often not a bad move but in this case he should have known it was well over 50% likely he was getting called and he was only about 33% to win at best and getting < 2-1 on his money if called.

Big mistake in my mind was after Phil Ivey asks for a chip count and then just called the re-raise on the flop he either has a pretty high flush draw or is slow playing a set or maybe top pair to see a safe turn card.  So moving all on the turn after the K comes just means that he is now going to get called by all sets, flopped straights and now King high flush draws.  The only thing he might get to lay down is the Ace high flush draws.  Even top pair would have to think about calling that all in given all the draws out there.   Kind of a bad play in my mind and he gets stacked, what is even more odd is he only came with 1 buy in and leaves right after.

Hand starts around 6:30 mark

All in All another good start to another season.

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Darkened Poker

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.

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Darkened Poker

I really did not need to see Phil Hellmouth without a shirt ever again, why ESPN would you do this to me.

Body by ESPN

Poker players being featured naked in sports magazines.  Well I guess that ends the debate on if poker is a sport or not.

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?

Tournament poker has introduced a new situation to live poker.  You have to sit there and take whatever the other players are dishing out in terms of verbal abuse.  In a cash game you can always go somewhere else, table change or go home for the night.  But in a tournament you forfeit everything if you leave and you have no idea how long it is going to be till they break your table.  You are stuck and you have to be able to clamp down and weather the storm.  Some players out there know this very well and take a lot of advantage of it.

Tony G ( Antanas Guoga ), Mike Matasow ( The Mouth ), and Phil Hellmouth (The Brat) are some of the most well know talkers that try to get under peoples skin and either manipulate them or tilt them off their game.  I am always blown away by the effectiveness of Tony G, he can take the best pro’s and make them play like little children.

Tony G takes out Russia player Ralph Perry

Now this is an pretty extreme version verbal abuse to put someone on max tilt.  For example when I played with the TiltBoys they are still going for tilt, but they are willing to wait all night to get it and therefor they start off much slower so no one ends up hating anyone else at the end of the night.  My favorite forms of TiltBoy tilt are asking Phil Gordon why he is not wearing his WSOP braclet ( he does not have one yet ) and how his company Expert Insight is doing ( it went under ).  For extra fun you can also ask him what Eric Lingren called him on national TV ( an idiot ).

Now the question is given that is it clear that tilt can be profitable, what is it worth and are all the downsides worth it?

I am pretty sure Ralph Perry will never talk to Tony G again and that is a serious problem.  Just like in the work world everyone you seriously piss off is another bridge burnt.

• More high stakes cash games Tony G will not be invited to
• Less people he can talk strategy with
• Less people that will be recommending him for poker site, sponsorship, advertising deals
• More people he can not play poker with as he will never know their motives.  Everyone will be trapping him to bust him out for the rest of his life.  That makes it hard to play good poker.

Now in our little worlds it is a little different we will not have to worry about sponsorship deals but the other three apply.  Plus we cash game players have to worry about pissing fish off and them not coming back to the game; one of the biggest hurt to your bankroll is money you can no longer win.

Think it is fine to go for a little tilt and get a good player to play a little worse:

• suck out one someone
• show a bluff if you want
• laugh with them for missing a bet along the way once in awhile
• laugh with them for making a bad call once in awhile

Just avoid the going for extreme tile and do not waste it on already bad players:

• verbally abuse someone
• laugh at them when they get sucked out on
• slow roll them
• show them every bluff all night long
• berate their play all night long

The short term gain is not worth it, you chase the long term + EV fish away and are only left playing with the better players that can ignore you and still think your worth their time to play against.  Instead of focusing on tilting people, focus on building a better game.