Eclectic Poker

This week was a varied bag of poker. For starters, the guru asked me to fill in for him at his poker class on Tuesday night at the community college. He had underwent minor surgery earlier in the week, and wasn’t quite back on his feet when Tuesday rolled around. As a result, I got called up to the bigs and got to teach a group of five total beginners and four fairly advanced players some of the guru’s basic strategy. I took the first twenty minutes and just walked through the mechanics of the game, using Wilson’s Turbo Texas Hold’em software to stop the action and describe terminology, the reason for the blinds, why someone was playing the way they were, etc. Then I went into a long discussion of position and the concept that the last guy who acts has a big advantage over the first guy to act, and how to exploit this situation when you have positon on someone else. I also went into the concept of aggression and fold equity. I think I connected to the students, because when the two hour class was over, nobody wanted to leave. We went on an additional hour, talking about starting hand selection, paying attention, and player types. At the end of the third hour, I logged onto FTP and we played thirty or so hands of $1/2 limit. I let the class tell me what to do based on what I had taught them earlier about hand selection. Fortunately, we picked up some decent hands in position, and we were able to score a few decent pots. A nice little win-win situation for the class and me; I made $20, and they got to see how you can make some money at this game. It was also a lot of fun for me to talk for three hours on poker and see some light bulbs illuminate over the heads of some of the students.

Keeping with the theme of eclectic poker, a few days later in the week, the Heartland Poker Tour was broadcast on local TV and Seth Krasne, a guy I have played against in some home games and at the MPT, was featured at the final table. This was the end game of the Tucson HPT tournament that played out last year at Casino del Sol, and it was kinda fun to see someone I knew at the final table. (Astute readers will remember that I also played in this HPT tourney (thanks to a free entry from my buddy Bret) but busted out early (thanks to a run of card-deadness and bad beats). Anyway, it was fun to watch Seth play against the other five guys at the final table and try to put myself in his place to figure out how to play his cards. The interesting thing was how well some players made decisions (Seth, for instance, played pretty smart poker for the few hands they showed), while other guys made some really bone-headed plays, such as a medium stack calling an all-in against a bigger stack with A9s. Dumb. Anyway, Seth finished in 5th place when he got short stacked and had his all-in raise with 55 run into a bigger stack holding 99. The better hand held up, and Seth walked away with a payout of $12K. Not too shabby.

I also played a fair bit of YIPES this week, averaging ~2 hours a day (yes, when I should have been working on my book project; sigh). I did fairly well for the week, having only one losing day in the last seven. I’m now up to over $40 (see chart, above), which was the target for the month of May, so theoretically I can coast for a bit (and get back to my book; yeah, right). Instead, I’ve already started “experimenting” (read: donking) with some other games and higher limits. The worst offender has been the acursed stud hi/lo siren that always seems to tempt me from afar. These low-limit hi/lo games are so damn soft I can’t help myself; unfortunately, the games also attract a number of sharks into those waters, and I am not expert enough to tell the difference between shark and minnow yet (that is, until they’ve taken my money). I really should stick to hold’em in the experiment, but even that is going to get tougher. Now that I’m at $40, and the next month’s goal is $80, I’m going to have to start playing at higher stakes than 2/4-cent if I want to keep above the curve. Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out the 5/10-cent games, so the bankroll may start to resemble a bankrollercoaster for a while. That’s okay, I keep telling myself, as long as I stay above $40 this month I can afford to experiment and (hopefully) figure out the 5/10 game for next month.

Finally, I picked up a couple of interesting poker books at the local used book store last night. One of them I've been thinking of buying new, but found it at half price on the shelves. It is called The Tournament Poker Formula. According to some reviews I've read, it explains how one of the most important factors in how to play a tournament is the blind structure and how fast the tournament is played out. Sounds interesting; I'll delve into it next month, once my own book is finished. Yeah, right.

And that’s about all I have time for this bright and sunny Mother’s day Sunday morning. I gotta go make breakfast for the wife and play the part of a good husband for the day....

All in for now…
-Bug