Making up for lost time . . .

It's great to be blogging again! It's about 5:30 am, I just got home from work. I had one of the top 5 days in sales @ Vogue in nearly 12 years! In mc/visa alone we did over $6700.00, wow! I am absolutely 100% beat but it was really nice to see it come together like it did tonight.

Poker tip of the day:

Two of the biggest mistakes that players make in NLTH tournaments are:

1) limping when first into the pot. It is almost always correct to raise if you are the first one to voluntarily commit chips into the pot pre-flop. How many tables do you see player call, call, call, amazing! Nuff said.

2) In the middle and late stages of a tournament, when there are antes as well as blinds, I often see the small blind fold when they are getting enourmous pot odds to call. In NLTH if you are getting 3.5 to 1 pot odds it is always correct to call irregardless of your cards; 72o included. For example say at a 10 handed table the blinds are 400/800 and each player is anteing 100, therefore there is 2200 in the pot. Often times these donkeys limp and lets say that 2 players call the 800. The pot is now 3800. You are in the small blind w/ 72o and it cost only 400 to call. The pot odds are nearly 10 to 1, or nearly 3 times what is required to make the call! I see players w/ average sized stacks fold in this situation and it blows my mind. Big mistake. These are prime opportunites to hit the miracle flop w/ a hand that your opponents will never be able to put you on. This situation occurs in other positions as well. Oft times even if the pot is raised the BB will still have proper odds to call.

Enough for today, goodnight!

!kcithcS weN yM

Well I should still be in the low 50's out of over 2100 players, my last tourney really sucked . . . 13th out of 35 and the worst streak of dead cards ever. So to kill the monotony of the game I decided to enter all my chat !sdrawkcab. One player actually got mad at me and kept telling me to type in English, or Englis as he put it. He actually contacted the online duty manager who stopped by to remind us to use only English at the tables. Once he figured out what I was doing it was all cool. Most of the table seemed to enjoy it and I got Good Game all around after I busted out (except Kogs, the guy who didn't !ti teg)

Monster online tip of the year

(how to induce a bluff/ or get an all in call):

There is a technique that can help you win or place in far more than your share of online tournaments. In order to be successful in these things one needs to get maximum value out of their rare monster hands. It does no good to have to milk the pot on the river for a few extra chips, you need to give yourself the best possibility to double up your stack w/ your monster hands. Here is how you do it:

Set up: Early in the tournament when your stack is sometimes 100 - 200 times the BB you need to be fairly active. Play some educated "bad" poker. Limp a lot. When it is checked to you make small feeler bets, you need people to see you as a loose player who bluffs a lot, and as an idiot. Normally you will actually pick up enough of these pots to remain even or better, plus the pots are so small in relation to your stack that you aren't risking much.

Step one: Limp with all pocket pairs when atleast one of your opponents has a deep stack. It does no good to hit a set and only win a little.

Step two: Hit your set.

Step three: The Flop- Hollywood, if you are first to act do a slight pause and check. You are trying to do the "old" appears like I am done w/ the hand standard check and get it over with thing. If you are facing a bet you have to pause for several seconds pretending to mull it over, then grudgingly call. The speed at which you make your plays is crucial to getting the best chance for a big river bluff or to have them call your all in on the river. You ideally want to slowly build the pot, many players feel "pot committed" when they have bet twice or called 2 bets regardless of the amount of money. If they ever raise or call a raise this is even more true.

Step four: The Turn- This is a little trickier because it depends on the action from the flop. If they are the aggressor and bet into you it's time to re-raise. Your re-raise should be relatively small in comparison to their bet, usually the minimum. if they bet 1k into you raise them 1k. This accomplishes 2 things: First it builds a bigger pot and secondly it reopens their betting giving them a chance to re-raise you which will give you the double up you need.

If they check to you, you need to pause, pretending to think about the hand and then make a smallish bet, a feeler bet, of about 1/2 the size of the pot. If you are first to act and there was action on the flop you should also make this play. If you are first to act and there was no action on the flop you need to take a good look at the texture of the board, you want to feed them a little line, a bet you feel they will call. If they fold, well there wasn't anything you could do about it.

Step five: The River- The river is actually simpler than the turn. If you are first to act and there has been action pause for just a second and then quickly push all-in. You are trying to appear like you are bluffing and made a rash spur of the moment decision. You will be surprised at how often top pair, crappy kicker will call you in this situation! If they are first to act and you set it up well, many players will bluff at you trying to steal the substantial pot.

Just like live tournaments, online tournaments are filled with level 1 thinking players who will fall prey to this time and time again. Even better players sometimes make mistakes because they will be seeing you as the fish based upon your earlier play. AXs is not nearly as good a candidate for this play because a) it doesn't hit as often, and b) when it does the flush cards scare people. Sets are very well disguised as are double gutter straights.

Current Skill League Ranking

I am currently ranked 51st out of 1980 tournament players @ Bugsy's Club. Click here and then enter jager777 to follow my progress. This is after only 6 tournaments! Of the 275 qualified players who have completed 7 or more tournaments I would be in 48th place. The problem I am going to have is that I don't have enough time to play many tournaments, alot of these players have already played over 25 tournaments so far this month. The current #2 player _boogieman, I destroyed heads up in my first tournament win.

Here are the stats from my last tournament win:

I played 202 hands and won 66 (33%)
I won 17 of 22 hands at showdown (77%) and won 49 pots uncontested! I saw the flop in 17% of hands that were not in the blinds.

It's been a while

I have almost forgotten how to blog. . . My deepest heartfelt apologies to everyone who has stumbled over here in the last several months.

I haven't been playing much poker lately, but have had a couple of cool poker experiences just recently. I was in Vegas for the Gentlemen's Club Owners Conference and Expo @ the Mandalay Bay and sat down for some 1-2 NL. I came up with a slogan for their poker room:

"If you can't beat the 1-2 @ the Mandalay bay, baby maybe you shouldn't play!" If you say it right it has a nice cadence to it.

I broke my first table there. The max buy in was $200.00, 4.5 hours into it I had $1150 and the table busted! I busted 4 players, and the rest had had enough.

In the virtual poker world I just recently started playing again. My preferred site is Bugsy's Club it's a relatively small site, but has awesome software, good small tournaments, and excellent support. They have recently started doing something really cool, they rate your tournament play and award 10k monthly to the players w/ the highest skill ranking. Your skill ranking starts at 1500 and is modified based upon these factors:

1) How well you do in the tournaments
2) The size of the field (# of players)
3) Your current skill rating (lower scores increase more with a good performance and vice versa)
4) The average skill rating of your opponets (how tough the field is)

You also must complete 7 tournaments to be eligible for the cash prizes. So far I have completed 6 tournaments and have had excellent results. 2 outright wins, and in 2 other tournaments I had positioned myself perfectly to cash and or win. In one I went out on the bubble (one before the money) when a player hit runner, runner to complete his straight. In the other tournament at the final table it got all in, my KK's vs. QQ vs. JJ and the jacks turned a set. So out of 6 tournaments I have won 2 outright, made the final table at 2 others, and busted out in the middle of 2.

Here is a hand that crippled me in one of the 2 tournaments that I didn't do so hot in, check it out and let me know your thoughts:

$10 buy in MTT @ bugsy's club, 35 starting players, 18 remain. Level 9 100ante, 400/800 blinds.

I have T22K, slightly above average. 10 players at this table. Straightforward (or so I thought), tight player in the BB has me outchipped w/ T25K.

I'm 4th to act and it's folded to me and I limp w/ As2s. (I used to over limp w/ AXs but have fixed that glitch, this time I decided to play it, mainly because the BB had a deep stack and I wanted his chips).

It's folded to the BB, who checks.

Flop: Ad Qd Ah

"Jackpot I think, how can I extract the most chips, hmmmm"

BB checks

"let's check and induce a bluff on the turn" check.

Turn: 5s

BB checks, "hmmm, why don't I throw out a feeler looking bet into the pot to encourage a raise steal"

I bet 600, BB makes it 4,300.

"excellent I think, lets just call, If I'm ahead like I think, perhaps I can get him to bet into me again on the river, If he is semi-bluffing a flush draw, so what, doesn't feel like that anyway, I think he's trying to resteal"

River: Td

BB bets out 11,100 "hmmm, I don't think he has diamonds but this bet is scary, perhaps he's trying to represent them, I can't lay down 3 aces here, can I, but I don't see any benifit to re-raising allin either, I call."

BB shows AcTc for a full house. "Well that really sux, I wonder how Dutch would have played this hand . . . boy this kid really outplayed me here, but I've still got 5900 left, I'm gonna play my heart out"

Chow