Mookie #6

I won my 6th Mookie!!!
It was a blast and Mookie played great!!! Mookie and I were heads up at the end and I got a very lucky KK to run with.
I have to get up for work in 3 hours!!!

Variance: The Good Kind

It's been a great week for me in tournaments. I won the Math last Monday, 5th and in the money in The Mookie on Wednesday, chopped 1st in The Riverchaser on Thursday.
Yesterday i played the 100k guarantee on Stars and finished 125th of 20,000 players. Thanks to InstantTragedy, Slb159, gcox, katitude, pushmonkey72, and PokerEnthusiast for cheering me on.

I've got a big post rambling around in me concerning MTT play. I'll have it organized and posted soon.

Best of luck at the tables this week everyone.

Mookie Tonight

I'll be playing The Mookie tonight on Full Tilt. It starts at 10:00 pm est and is listed under private tournaments. The password is Vegas1 and it is $10+1 to play. Everyone is invited to join us.
There is a bounty for knocking me out. Eliminate me from the tournament and win $27.72. That amount doubles if you have 7 2 offsuit as your two starting cards!!!

Good luck everyone!!!

Razz: Playing The "Jordan"

The queen door card (first exposed card dealt) hand has been dubbed "The Jordan".
Let's take a look at the odds of playing a similar hand to the one described by Jordan .

Example hand:
Antes= 80
A complete bet from early position of 50 with a 3 up.
A call from late position with a 4 up.
I have a door card of Q and my hand is Q42.
I assume that both players have 3 cards to a 7, at worst 3 to an 8.
Let's look at my best possible position. Player 1 has A38 and Player 2 has 357. They could possibly have worse than this but they could easily have better.
If I run those hands against my Q42 in the razz simulator I see that my chances of winning the hand are roughly 14.55% chance of drawing out. It's costing me 18% of the pot to call and I have 0% deception equity in my door card. In tournament play, if I have a large stack I can afford to see the next card if I choose. It's an easy fold for me, but I wouldn't call it a completely miserable call. It can certainly lead to getting you some loose calls later on which could be just enough +EV to give it some equity. I still think it's a losing propostition overall, but I wouldn't call it a terrible play.

Perspective

Here's a little perspective for you:
A friend of mine was playing a golf tournament with some friends. They go paired up with one of the teams that had a pretty well known golf pro.
After missing a few shots and breaking a club or two, a guy in their group threw his $600 driver in to a lake and let out a scream of anger.
The pro, Gary Player eased over next to the young fella and quietly said, "Son, you ain't good enough to get that mad."

You can judge the size of the person by the size of the things that anger them.

That sentence right there keeps me even keeled in my poker playing. The best thing you can do when you lose a hand, a tournament, or a session is review your play, improve what you see needs improving, and move on. It's all one big session and even a hand that's ahead 80% is going to lose 1 out of every 5 times. If you get all in 5 times with those odds you are probably going to lose one of those hands. Fate isn't always fair but odds will play out over time. If you keep focused on making good decisions, you can prevail.
I am as guilty as anyone of making bad decisions sometimes but the difference is how you conduct yourself and where you go from there.

I am very competitive when I play. I want to win every time. I play to win. I practice, I prepare, and I play hard. I don't enjoy losing at all but it happens sometimes even when you play your best.

Best of luck at the tables this week everyone!!!

Mondays at the Hoy

It's late. I just finished The Math tournament and finished 2nd to twoblackaces. It was a really fun tournament and I feel like I'm finally dialing back in and playing some decent poker....bout time.
Thanks a lot to everyone that railed and cheered me on.

Have a great week everyone!!!

Brickinthenutz

I've added a link to Brickinthenutz on the right over there. It's a blog put together by PokerEnthusiast that is focused on the game of Razz. I guest post there from time to time along with SirFWALGMan, Instant Tragedy, and Jusdealem. Poker Enthusiast is an excellent razz player and does a nice job of explaining Razz strategy. I post some Razz hands and discuss my thoughts during the hands.
He is hosting a private tournament this Friday on Full Tilt. Here are the details:

SLB159's Umbilical KORD
$7+.70 Razz Knockout Tournament
January 18th at 9:00 eastern.

Come on out and join us for a great time.

Rediscovering Surflexus

I have found myself diversifying my game so much in the past two or three months I kind of lost my way in my bread and butter games where I consistently build my roll. I've identified a few leaks that I had strangely developed. I thought I would share a few with you in hopes that maybe this will help someone.

Leak1. Seeing too many flops

I have gained more and more confidence in my ability to read players and hand ranges and I've been seeing way too many flops feeling that I would just outplay my opponents to compensate for being loose. This all began when I tried an experiment and increased my hand range in early stages of MTT's. I found myself getting huge chip leads early in tournaments. The problem was not adjusting in the mid-stages and tightening up properly. I believe I have come a long way in correcting this.

Leak 2. Playing too many different types of tournaments back to back.

I should definitely stick to one type of tournament at a time. It is extremely tough to have a Razz tourney, a limit holdem tourney, and a no limit tourney going at the same time. Make one of them a double stack and another a turbo and it gets even crazier. I am working on playing only one type of tournament at a time and focusing on the strategy for that tournament.

Best of luck at the tables this week everyone!!!

Interesting Hand

I had an interesting hand last night in the late stages of Kat's tournament. Here's the hand history.
Full Tilt Poker Game #4741765903: Friday Nite Blogger Donkament (35333335), Table 2 - 600/1200 Ante 150 - No Limit Hold'em - 0:02:30 ET - 2008/01/05
Seat 1: DontKnow (4,639)
Seat 2: xkm1245 (15,878)
Seat 3: surflexus (36,544)
Seat 4: Astin (32,669)
Seat 5: bayne_s (58,065)
Seat 8: MiamiDon (27,714)
Seat 9: dino_burger (56,491)
DontKnow antes 150
xkm1245 antes 150
surflexus antes 150
Astin antes 150
bayne_s antes 150
MiamiDon antes 150
dino_burger antes 150
xkm1245 posts the small blind of 600
surflexus posts the big blind of 1,200
The button is in seat #1*** HOLE CARDS ***Dealt to surflexus [Ah 8c]
Astin folds
bayne_s folds
MiamiDon raises to 2,655
dino_burger folds
DontKnow folds
xkm1245 folds
5,505 in the pot and it costs me 1,455 to call with Ah8c. 4 to 1 on my money and Don's aggression and range of hands is high so I call.
surflexus calls 1,455
*** FLOP *** [Qc Jc Ts]
surflexus has 15 seconds left to act
I flop a double gut shot straight draw so I think I have 8 outs to a certain win and a small chance that an ace still gives me a better hand as well so 8 outs, maybe 11. I'm still sitting at almost 10,000 even if it goes to the river with Don all in and I lose.
Astin: but then I wouldn't have won
surflexus bets 6,960
I fire out a good pot size bet here to let Don know I have a hand. It doesn't work and he comes over the top for the rest of his chips.
Astin: some friend you'd have been then
xkm1245: now you're catching on
MiamiDon raises to 24,909, and is all in
I'm getting 2 to 1 on my money with 38,829 in the pot and I have somewhere between what I'm figuring to be around a 30-35% chance of winning so it's a borderline call but it's a chance to eliminate an opponent and it doesn't break me so I go ahead and call.
surflexus calls 17,949
MiamiDon shows [Ac 7c]
surflexus shows [Ah 8c]
*** TURN *** [Qc Jc Ts] [2h]
*** RIVER *** [Qc Jc Ts 2h] [9h]
BamBamCan (Observer): llol astin
MiamiDon shows Ace Queen high
surflexus shows a straight, Queen high
surflexus wins the pot (56,778) with a straight, Queen high
MiamiDon stands up
*** SUMMARY ***Total pot 56,778
Rake 0Board: [Qc Jc Ts 2h 9h]
Seat 1: DontKnow (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 2: xkm1245 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 3: surflexus (big blind) showed [Ah 8c] and won (56,778) with a straight, Queen high
Seat 4: Astin folded before the Flop
Seat 5: bayne_s folded before the Flop
Seat 8: MiamiDon showed [Ac 7c] and lost with Ace Queen high
Seat 9: dino_burger folded before the Flop
Don made a comment that this was a horrible play. Looking over the price I was getting pre-flop, I think I'm justified to call there. Once the flop hits and I have a lot of outs to the majority of the hands in the range I have him on, I bet out strong. This is maybe where I made a semi-bad play but once this bet was made I have odds to call his all in. It was a tough hand for Don but I think my play is OK here. What do you think?

Kudos to Luv2Ride00

I played a very good Razz player heads up at the end of a sit-n-go tonight. Kudos to Luv2Ride00. It was a pleasure meeting you. Best of luck in your bigger tournament tonight!!!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year to everyone!
I'm excited about my goals for 2008 and will be making my first trip to Tunica in a couple of weeks to work on a few of them.
Poker Enthusiast has started a Razz Blog and he has asked me to contribute some Razz hand histories along with my thoughts during the hands. I think it's a really cool idea. There isn't many blogs out there dedicated to Razz play. I'll be adding a link over on the side bar for it.

If I don't have you linked up and you wish to be please let me know in the next few days. I'll be going through and updating my blogroll later in the week.

I had the pleasure of playing in the Huntsvegas Christmas tournament Friday evening. It was great to meet everyone there and I had a really great time. It's not a bad drive at all and I hope I can make it over there again soon. I went for about an hour and a half throwing away a ton of junk hands and picking up just enough pots to keep around the average stack when a very interesting hand happened that I completely misplayed on the flop. I had A J of diamonds in middle position and raised it up. I got one call out of the blinds and the flop came out with the K and Q of diamonds and a small card. It was checked to me and I decided I didn't want to get any more in to the pot without even a pair but that was a huge mistake because I could have probably taken it down right there and even if he called I had about half the deck to make a hand with. I checked and another rag hit the board and my opponent bets all in which is for about 2/3 of my remaining chips. I'm getting 2 to 1 to call and I'm really upset that I didn't bet the flop. I go ahead and call as I still think I have about a 35 to 40% chance of drawing out and my hand does not improve. He had a pair of nines. I went out not too long afterwards on a desperation shove as the blinds were about the size of my stack. Hopefully next time I get to play there, I will make a better showing.

Have a great week everyone!!!