The Lucky Donut

Below is the transcript of a post I made to the UK Poker Info forums, which somehow actually resulted in me getting banned from the site and the entire thread being deleted - it was only my 3rd ever post!

Whilst there is clearly an element of smugness in my being able to find fault with the original poster's strategy hints (notably, this is one of the players who used to come to our home game, and now thinks that he is too good for us) I really did enjoy writing this and found it very satisfying to be able to create what I think is a well-reasoned analysis.

I'll let you judge for yourself.  I've colour coded this for your viewing pleasure - my response is in blue, original poster is red and too-good-for-home-game is in green.

The thread began with someone asking for advice on how to play a live satellite tournament, and initial responses advised her to play tight in the early stages...

knowing u always only play prem hands and if I had a good chipstack I would call your raise with anything like 67 suited

ok how come u would call my raises with 67 suited????

if flop comes low cards which gives me some str8 options it would be hard 4 u to call a bet or a raise with cards like AK A10 etc unless u had an overpair but even so if I had an open ended  str8 I would be 2 /1 to hit it.

There are just so many things wrong with this logic...

For starters, let's face it - you're calling a raise with garbage.  You know you are behind in the hand and are - at best - a 2:1 dog.  Assuming the raiser's range from early or mid position is AK-AJ and pairs AA-99 then you are actually going to be a 4:1 dog about 40% of the time (36 ace-hands vs 24 pairs).  Therefore the preflop action is serious negative equity.

(Note: I've since realised I miscounted here, there are 48 ace-hands - 12 suited and 36 unsuited - making you a 4:1 dog 33% of the time.).

Then by smooth calling you just keep adding to your problems.  You not only don't make any attempt to win the pot yet, or to define your hand, you also encourage other well-stacked players to join in and create a pot that becomes very difficult to get away from when you do catch some kind of donkey draw.  You might get the odds to keep going which would be great in a cash game when going bust is not a problem.  But in a tournament you could be risking your future with 4-1 shot after the turn, or have to make another mistake by folding when you actually have the correct odds to draw.

Once you are in this pot, suddenly calling with suited connectors starts to become attractive - but not for you, for the next guy to act, and the next one, and only because of your mistake.  You're just stuck in the middle not knowing where the hell you are at.

But as you didn't mention position at all, lets assume that you are on the button and have great reads on both the blinds and know they are going to fold.  So you smooth-called a raise from a solid player who only plays big hands, and expect them not to bet at almost any flop? Now you're going to raise then back to try and find out how much they like their hand?  The price for this information just went up.

The times your opponent missed, if you've got the balls to raise you'll win a fair pot, probably 3-4 times your investment pre-flop.  The times you're wrong (I can't see why we shouldn't still use the 40% 33% number here) you're making a huge mistake, spewing chips and digging a very deep hole for yourself on the next street.  You are investing much more than you can ever hope to win.

On the other hand if you are talking about a "first to the pot wins" move on a low board you are in much better shape to make this play out of position, which means limping in early position with a shit hand and then calling a raise, or stubbornly defending a blind.  Or maybe you know that the player is transparent and will bet if they hit the flop (or still like their overpair) and check if they miss.  This is about the only opportunity you will have to bet and make it hard for her to call.

The problem here though is that your implied odds are a big fat zero. Whilst no-limit poker allows you to play hands with a negative pre-flop expectation because of the potentially huge payoff you can get when you make a monster hand, calling a raise and playing heads up against a premium hand is not the way to do this.  Your pre-flop call is dead money, and then you're having to make a large bet to win it back, along with the other player's initial raise.  Net profit is what - 3 big blinds?

Finally, if your intention is to outplay Little Miss BigCards when the board comes low and you think she's missed, the hand selection is irrelevant.  You don't have to have a small hand do it - any two will do.

Basically, (original poster), don't be afraid of getting calls like this.  You need 'em.

Apologies for the amazing technicolor dreampost - it seemed a better idea before I painted it up.  Hope it's readable!

I really had wanted to plan this a bit better to take advantage of as many World Cup promos and new player signups as possible, but as usual I'd left it too late.  So after getting back from town today about an hour before kick off, I scrambled to at least find some kind of good value bet I could put on the England game.

I discovered a £60 free bet offer with Victor Chandler.  I've used their poker software but not their sports betting site so I qualified for this as a new player.  After placing your first bet of between £10 and £60 you are awarded the same amount as a free bet to place on another event in future.

The only stipulation is that the first bet you place has to have odds of evens or greater - basically you can't lump £60 on a sure thing at 1/20 odds and still take them for the free bet.

I decided to back England on the half time/full time market at 5/4 - I win £75 if they are leading at half time and win the match. My original plan was to have lots of different free bets working for me all hedged against each other for a sure-fire profit.  With the "odds must be evens or higher" rule, which applies to most promotial bets, this is tricky but I'm sure it can be done!  Without enough time to do it properly though today, I was happy enough having a flutter on England with a second chance free bet still to play.

Sure enough, the early goal means England are ahead at half time and this bet is in good shape.  I wimp out a bit and lay off part of the bet with Betfair, making sure that I'm guaranteed a win - I'll make a net profit of £60 now if England win and £15 if they choke - freerolling!  England win - £60 kerching - and I still have another £60 of Mr Chandler's money to bet with on the next game.

I mentioned I was in town before the game: having realised that I've continued to grow outward since last summer and can no longer fit into most of my shorts, I thought it was time to get a new pair and show off my lovely white legs again.  The world truely appreciates this effort.  With that mission accomplished, Claire also finds herself a bag that will be most useful for our Vegas trip (T-42).

I ponder whether I should get one myself - not the same one of course as it's a woman's bag - but something similar, but kinda more manly.  I don't really know what I'm looking for, but all I can think of is Jack Bauer's bag in the latest season of 24.  This bag went everywhere with him, and of course contained almost anything you'd ever need to use on a counter-terrorist mission, despite Jack having not worked for CTU for quite some time until that morning.

So, I need to find a "Jack Bag". Reckon I can pull this look off?

You just can't beat free money from Party Poker!  Their reload bonuses are very easy to clear even at the low limits, so when a 20% up to $100 bonus popped up on my account yesterday I got busy.

I decided to play for this bonus using $25NL only.  I wanted to see how no limit compared to fixed limit hold'em as I've mostly played $1/$2 to clear these bonuses so far.  Because the wagering requirements are based on a number of raked hands, regardless of the actual amount of rake paid, the limits do not really matter.  In fact a quirk of this system is that you have to play less hands at $1/$2 to clear a bonus than at $2/$4 - although you pay more rake in total, $1/$2 games are raked in 25c multiples, whereas $2/$4 is raked $1 at a time.

I thought you would probably need to play more hands at $25NL than $1/$2 as there would be fewer flops, but really this doesn't seem to be the case - I'd usually bank on slightly more than 50% of hands being raked at $1/$2.

Stand by, stat fans - here's how I did

Hands played:  1540 (for 1000 raked hands)
Hours played:  23.63 (approx 6 hours @ 4 tables)
Rake paid:     $30.10 (so Party Poker lose $69.90 on this promo!)

Amount won:    $35.52 (4.61 BB per 100 hands)
Win rate:      $5.92/hr
Bonus awarded: $100

Rate w/ bonus: $22.60/hr

Certainly not bad for the smallest game in town.  And for those who like even geekier stats, here's how I was playing:

Vol. Put $ In Pot:       14.29%
Pre-flop Raise:           7.21%
Post-flop Aggression:     3.72
Won $ When Saw Flop:     33.59%
Went to Showdown:        20.99%
Won $ At Showdown:       50.91%
Folded SB to Steal:      87.50%
Folded BB to Steal:      80.00%
Attempt to Steal Blinds: 18.57%

So it's a fairly small sample size, but the diagnosis looks pretty good - firmly rooted in the Tight/Agressive camp.  Poker Tracker gives me a little cash bag icon - result!

If I try to be objective, my blind play looks kinda weak, although 8 times out of 10 is probably nothing to be concerned with.  Need more input.  When there are a lot of limpers, as you get in these low limit games, there's not too many opportunities to steal.  I could be raising a bit more pre-flop, but again with lots of limpers I'm aware that my range of hands to raise with is tighter than usual, and limping into multiway pots with small pairs and suited aces becomes attractive.

Oh, and I appear to be rather aggressive post-flop.  That one really surprised me as I still think I check/call too much on the river.  The aggression factor is calculated as the number of times you bet or raise divided by the number of times you call (checking is ignored).  A number between 2 and 3 - betting twice to three times as often as you call - is thought to be nicely aggressive.

Grrrr, then.

Until I started writing this blog all I had put under this domain was a very short page stating that I will buy PokerStars T$.  I never really thought much of it because I never really took it any further - I was thinking about building an automated exchange process like on www.cashmanbrian.com, but that's just another project I never got round to finishing.  But checking the usage statistics, I'm actually still getting a fair bit of traffic to that page.  So I thought I'd put the exact same rushed and pretty unhelpful wording back up.  Here is is :

If you win a seat in a satellite on Poker Stars you can unregister from the event you qualified for and collect the value of the seat in tournament dollars, or T$.

You can then sell your T$ to me for real cash!

I will be putting more information on this web site shortly, meantime contact me at sell@luckydonut.com if you have a seat to sell.

So although the main reason I've done this is to try and keep that position in Google, the offer still stands.  I'll pay $200 real money for T$215 (the value of a Million Guaranteed seat) with transactions done through the PokerStars lobby.

Title sounds like a poker set for babies, doesn't it.

I don't have a date for this - thanks to a hard disk crash all my screenshots (yeah, pretty sad but tell me you don't do it too.  Oh, just me?) have the same timestamp on them.  I'm pretty sure this was my first Royal Flush experience.

This has to be from 2002 or earlier.  Wagerworks ceased to be a long time ago, which is a shame really.  This was a not-for-real-money casino games web site.  You played with play money but the more action you racked up the more player points you got, and those player points could still be redeemed for real stuff.  The site was operated by (then) MGM Mirage, so there were goodies for half a dozen Vegas casinos to collect.

The games were obviously rigged with a positive payback.  I had written a macro to keep pressing the button on Keno or some of the slot machines so I could just leave it overnight clocking up points :)  I never once went broke and won a huge amount of play money along the way!  For the trouble, we earned a few free buffets at and a ride on the Manhattan Express.

Money down the drain, but it had to be done...

This was actually the very first bet I have ever made at a Vegas sports book so it felt good to be backing England.  In fact, come to think of it, it's the first sports bet I've ever placed with a real live bookmaker anywhere!

I'll no doubt pick some more elaborate bets before kickoff.  I'm no good at betting on football (as you can see from the picture above) but there's just so many interesting bets on the World Cup - I don't think I'll be able to resist...

It's been a week since we discovered a hacker had gained access to a few of our customers' web servers, and I'm still playing catch-up because of the little bastard.  For those who understand these things, he apparently used a common exploit with XML-RPC in older Linux versions.

I just haven't had time to keep up to date with Linux lately.  I started getting back into it a bit when I had to an emergency update on the Fedora Unleashed book for Fedora 2 (should have had an author credit really, but instead I got my name in bold in the Acknowledgements...) but it didn't last. So I really don't know what this involves, but Kev our security guy said "I'd be surprised if it hasn't been hacked ten times over" when he took a look at the remains of one of them.  Pretty widespread stuff then.

The hacker, as it turns out, was a cheeky little sod.  He actually tried to contact us whilst logged into one of the machines.  He created a user account called "hi" and sent console messages to one of my colleagues, offering his services to fix our servers.

Seriously - does anyone ever reply and say "oh yes please"?

So let's recap :)  I wanted to play Event 37 $1500 No Limit Hold'em, and also have a crack at a $1060 satellite in Vegas for the main event.  I think we're nearly there.

Party Poker: $411.30
Gutshot: $1400
Blue Sq: $766

Total: $2577.30

That'll do it!

So I've only bloody gone and done it.  My entry form for Event 37 has been faxed, I've wired the money to Harrah's and I am going to be playing in a bracelet event on July 25th.  Takes 3-5 days for the money to arrive apparently, and then I'll get a confirmation from the Rio.  You can be sure I'll post it here once I have it!

You can't register in advance for the super-satellites, you just turn up and play on the day.  Usually these take place at 7pm each night but July 26th and 27th are "Satellite Days" (in addition, July 27th is "Media/Celebrity Event Day" - whatever horrible made-for-tv monstrosity that might be).  If I'm doing well in the $1500 event, I won't be able to play one of these, but that would be a very happy problem to have.  Only the final table will play on the 27th, so if I'm there looking fat for the ESPN cameras I won't really care about the main event satellite!  9th place last year got $23,820 and the winner took over $300k.

The question now is whether I'll actually try and win a seat for the main event online first...

The good fortune continues.  I am H-O-T-T.

Back online this time, and I was logged into Blue Square Poker.  I hardly ever play here - most of the tournaments have rebuys and are complete donkfests.  Potentially profitable, but very frustrating, and there are many other games I'd rather play.  The strong contingent of British players doesn't help.  Makes it a totally different game, and not in a good way.  I'm bound to rant about this some other time, so I'll leave it at that for the time being

I'd actually logged in to check out the satellites for Poker 6, which sounds like a great tournament and I wanted to qualify to have a crack at this.  With live qualifiers as well as online, I was planning on having a few attempts.  However I've since realised I can't play on the second day (going to see Pet Shop Boys) which would make it all a bit pointless.

Anyway, I sit in their freeroll with a $200 prize pool - eventually I finish up with $3 from this - hoorah! - and an alert pops up for a $100 freezeout about to start.  The prize pool is $3.5k guaranteed and there were only 19 players registered at the time.  I'm thinking this could be a great way to press up my winnings from the Party Poker shootouts and I just can't resist.  I scramble for my switch card to get enough money in my account to play and just make it.

One of the annoying things about Blue Sq is that you have to do transactions in £ but then play games in $.  I have Neteller in USD, which is not accepted, and two visa cards on USD bank accounts.  No good - I still have to play in pounds and be at the mercy of their exchange rates.

At kick off there were 26 players registered, but that's still a good overlay on the prize money - works out at $34 each and even with a $9 entry fee they are giving me $25 to taking part, which I always like!  Top five were getting paid, and the top prize of $1470 was as good as my coveted seat in WSOP Event 37.

This game was amazingly different to anything I'd played on Blue Sq before.  People folded.  People knew when they were beat.  There were some very strong players who managed to not go broke with hands that would cost many players their entire stack.  I was pretty impressed.

I was more impressed that I managed to get to the final table with a decent stack remaining.  I was even more impressed that I scraped second place, after being short stacked with 4 remaining.  Two of the big stacks went against each other, leaving three short stacks and a big stack who didn't really want to play any more. 

I think I had quite a tight image, judging by the dialog between Conbert (3rd place finisher) and some railbird. 

conbert : im well ***** off
conbert : lucky donut mr i need a hand to raise
conbert : n sumhow gets thru
SammyArry6 : maybe luckydonut is better?!
conbert : win 55 coinflip
conbert : i had the worst cards when it went 3 handed
conbert : by far
conbert : feels well sick though
conbert : luckydonut thinks a rag ace is a fold heads up

Here's why I'm a bad player too.

conbert : the j9 was turnin point
conbert : bets 288 flop
conbert : 228 flop
conbert : i have 89
conbert : call to trap
conbert : ne he turns j
SammyArry6 : sick
conbert : first time in my life its happened to me

Wow, nice trap with a shit pair.  First time in his life someone hit a 3-outer on him without making them pay for the next card?  I got real lucky.

SammyArry6 : i'm layin fu muppet at 1/100 to win
SammyArry6 : luckydonut available at 25's
SammyArry6 : perhaps it should be 10000000000000000000000000/1?

So they don't fancy my chances.  Well the other guy only had a 3-1 chip advantage...  It actually lasted just one more hand so he woz right innit.

Seat 5 : LUCKYD0NUT has $10,680
Seat 6 : fu muppet has $41,320
Stakes: 600/1,200 Current level: 9 Level up in: 14 min. Break in: 56 min.
LUCKYD0NUT is the dealer.
LUCKYD0NUT posted small blind.
fu muppet posted big blind.
Dealing Hole Cards.
Seat 5 : LUCKYD0NUT has Qd 9c
LUCKYD0NUT called 600 and raised 9,480 and is All-in
fu muppet called 9,480
Showdown!
Seat 5 : LUCKYD0NUT has Qd 9c
Seat 6 : fu muppet has 5s 5d
Board cards [8c 3c Ah 4h Th]
LUCKYD0NUT has High Card : Ace
fu muppet has Pair: 5s
fu muppet wins 21,360 with Pair: 5s

Anything wrong with the push here?

Anyway, 2nd place got me $875.  Total profit from Blue Sq: $766

ANTES/BLINDS
jcc_paco posts blind ($1), akagomme posts blind ($2).

PRE-FLOP
draver calls $2, bluespirit3 folds, Swaps folds, paganini69 calls $2, Spartacus2 folds, vpmaniac folds, lucky_donut bets $4, UFL_Gators folds, jcc_paco folds, akagomme calls $2, draver calls $2, paganini69 calls $2.

FLOP [board cards AS,QC,AD ]
akagomme checks, draver checks, paganini69 checks, lucky_donut bets $2, akagomme folds, draver folds, paganini69 calls $2.

TURN [board cards AS,QC,AD,4H ]
paganini69 checks, lucky_donut bets $4, paganini69 bets $8, lucky_donut bets $8, paganini69 calls $4.

RIVER [board cards AS,QC,AD,4H,4C ]
paganini69 checks, lucky_donut bets $4, paganini69 bets $8, lucky_donut bets $8, paganini69 calls $4.

SHOWDOWN
lucky_donut shows [ QH,QS ] 
paganini69 shows [ 6S,AH ]
paganini69 wins $67.

Talk about spewing... it was pretty obvious this guy had an ace and I was in great shape, so how come I didn't notice that the river card killed my hand?  I guess 6 tables at a time is too many for me right now... I wouldn't normally crank up that many, but I was just starting out and all the waiting lists came available at once.  I figured I'd sit for an orbit at each table and see which ones looked the best...

Still can't believe I didn't see it!

I was working in London for three days last week so it would have been rude not to take in a game or two at Gutshot.  Wednesday was a £30 game with one rebuy.  I needed the rebuy.  Holding 88 on BB with 2 limpers, the small blind completes the bet, so I check.  I don't want to play a small pair unimproved out of position against overcards and these guys like to see a flop.  Trying to isolate is futile so I take a flop and see if I can get lucky.

The flop is a very pretty 853, with 2 diamonds.  The small blind bets 300 and I decide to just call.  I don't very often do this, but I want to try and keep the other guys in the pot and if one of them tries to squeeze me out then I'll be happy to stick my stack in the middle.  If I raise I might not get any more action at all with this board so I'll take my chance against a flush draw, wait for a safe turn card and then get my money in.  In fact the two limpers fold and the turn brings a 2 that is not a diamond.

The small blind instantly moves all in, and how can I not call?  The offsuit 2 is the perfect brick - usually.  But when your opponent holds 46 for the nut straight top set is looking poorly.  Very well played indeed - I didn't even see it.  Even if I had, I don't think I can fold this.  He could have flopped a lower set of hold a pocket pair bigger than 88 and love the turn card.  He could even think that I'm drawing to diamonds and bet without much of a hand at all.  Mostly I'm way ahead here, and I still have 10 outs against the one hand that currently beats me to win.  Please, please, call me a donkey if you can find a way to fold here...

Playing 46 in the small blind... as they say "You'll be alright".  But I guess I'd be calling there for cheap too just in case something wonderful does happen.  Didn't get any further after the rebuy - needed to take a chance with my nemisis hand AJ, dealt myself two aces on the flop, but a ten on the turn gave the other guy a full house.

As fate would have it, I have to stay in London one day longer than I expected.  How can I resist the £50 freezeout that night?  Well, basically, I can't.  This is still a self-dealt tournament, which is a bit poor, but it attracts some experienced players so the dealing isn't too bad.  I'll try to keep this one short, because I can't say I wasn't lucky.

Having literaly not played a hand for the first 90 minutes (and the only one I might have played - the best I'd seen - was QJs, which would have flopped a flush but lost to a full house), I found AA and someone raised into me for nearly all my chips.  AK vs AJ two hands later and I'm back in it.  Was chip leader at the final table for a while, and let a few players knock each other out.

The blinds were getting stupidly high - I had about 25,000 with a 2000 big blinds - so I started talking about a deal.  "I haven't played for 5 hours for a seven way chop" said the next player to be eliminated.  It's totally bad karma to turn down a deal.  I'd have been happy with just over £300 each.  Instead I was able to sit back and watch the field drop down to 4 players before I had to play another hand.  I won with the best hand and the worst hand at the times that mattered most (the blind situation meant things were completely in the lap of the poker gods) and ended up heads up with a small fraction of the chips.  Whilst I was surviving, the other guy was busy knocking out the other two players.  My luck continued though and I doubled and doubled again, enough that my opponent offered me a deal based on chip count and I ended up walking away with £898.  In the books I'm down as finishing in second place, but "joint first" has a much nicer ring to it!  1st place would have been £1208 and second £690, so we were effectively flipping a coin for over £500.  Not something I'm interested in doing really...

Because Gutshot is a borderline-illegal cardroom private members' club and not a casino, you can - and are expected - to tip the dealers.  Which is a bit rich in a game that's self-dealt until the final table, but I had to go along with the winner's suggestion of £30 each.  They'll be alright.

Total profit from Gutshot: £753 (approx $1400)

Leicester Gala is one of the better UK casino cardrooms I've played at.  It has a few quirks: most oddly the tables are all 8-seaters, so with house dealers that's no more than seven players to a table.  Every game is dealer-dealt, which is excellent.  Even the £10 game on a Monday night has a house dealer - fantastic value.  Every tournament is a freezeout with a decent number of chips and 30 minute levels.

They also don't allow cash games, so the side action is in the form of a seven-handed sit and go.  Unfortunately because the card room doesn't make any money - let's face it, how could it? - the dealers are called off to run blackjack and roulette and that jackpot stud poker carnival game as the tables break.  So last night (£20 tournament) after I was eliminated early I ended up hanging around for two hours to get in a sit-and-go.

Actually this is the first time I'd been eliminated early at Leicester - I've had reasonable success before.  The cards just weren't going my way though.  I'd gathered a few small pots when I see AK with the under-the-gun player raising all-in for 500 chips.  Blinds are 100/200.  There's still 5 players to act so I reraise to 1500 to isolate and he shows KQ.  The ace on the flop just helps to fill his straight and he doubles up. 

That player doesn't last much longer and gets replaced by somebody celebrating his 19th birthday with free champagne.  I raise under-the-gun with KK and he reraises me the minimum from the big blind.  I move all-in, figuring the stacks aren't deep enough to play the flop confidently and he calls with AJ.  The flopped ace leaves me with about 800 chips and the table breaks.

I'm all in first hand at the new table with 89o and it does the job.  Next hand I see A9 and do the same thing but get called by a donkey with K4s who hits 2 4s and sends me packing.

So after playing for less time than it took to drive there I decided to try a £20 sit-and-go.  These games have 10 minute levels so you can't hang about.  Fortunately I didn't need to, seeing AA very early on.  I called a small raise, feeling that the table was a bit frisky, and sure enough a player moves all in.  The original raiser calls and I rush to get my chips in to calls of "he's just calling for value".

I'm delighted to see 88 and AT, and my hand holds up to eliminate two players!  The luck continues as I knock out player number 3 with the mighty KJ on the big blind.  Usually I'm not good enough to play KJ, but with a free play and flopping top pair against his, erm, total bluff I'm somewhat ahead.

Heads up I have a 3-1 chip lead, which is only about 8 big blinds by then.  I offer a deal, and he refuses - either he thinks he's great or likes £100 coinflip - but the bad karma rule doesn't work this time.

Key hand comes with my 9T in the big blind and a free play.  Flop is 788 and I move all in.  He instantly calls, asking if I have a 7.  I don't really understand the question - a whole bunch of hands are beating his ace high, 4 kicker!  So in fact I'm slightly ahead here with 14 outs and 2 cards to come, but it doesn't happen.  I'd be betting this hand almost always so I don't think it's awful to push in this situation with hardly any chips to play with.

Received £40 for my trouble though, which almost paid for the night, and I got to play some short-handed poker (albeit briefly) which is always good practice.

One thing to remember if you are planning on playing at Leicester is to get there early. Very early.  Registration opens at 6.30pm for an 8pm start.  The capacity is 56 players (8 tables of 7) and when I arrived at 7.20 I was number 46.  I've missed out a couple of times - the Monday £10 game tends to sell out before 7pm.

This post is serialized and I've already posted the next parts.  Just a cheap trick to try and get you to come back tomorrow really

In case I didn't mention it yet, I'm going to Vegas in the summer and whilst there I will play in at least one WSOP event. Whilst Claire was on a mission to get into the Main Event (and yay! she did it!) I've only had a few goes so far and haven't done particularly well.  I'll still have a few cracks at this, probably on PokerStars or Full Tilt, who are running satellites on the weekend before the event with 150 and 100 guaranteed seats respectively.

I also wanted to try and justify to myself playing a satellite in Vegas.  These come in two flavours - $225 with $200 rebuys (1 seat for every 50 buy-ins) or a $1060 freezeout (1 seat for every 10 players).  Strangely, I'm much more comfortable with the idea of the freezeout than the cheaper rebuy.  It's not a bad structure and a one-in-ten chance of getting through seems achievable if the wind is blowing in the right direction.  Plus, so close to the main event, these games are going to be buzzing, and if I can't make it this ill still be a great experience.

I wanted to win entry to WSOP Event 37 - $1500 No Limit Hold'em, which begins 2 days after we arrive in Vegas and is the last Hold'em event before the big one.  It's not a brilliant tournament with just 1500 starting chips, but a slower structure than the $540 and $225 second chance tournaments that take place every night which I'd also looked at as alternatives, just so I could get a piece of WSOP action.  This one also has the added bonus of being an actual bracelet event!

There are a couple of ways to qualfiy directly for the preliminary events - Bodog and Pokershare both have satellites, but they're at silly times.  You can also use PokerStars FPPs to buy in, but I would need to go flat out, and I'm still getting killed in their limit games (you don't earn points half as fast playing no-limit) so that's not an attractive option.

So I decided to just pick some tournaments and go for the cash to make my entry fees.

First blood was last Monday 22nd May - I played a $20+$2 shootout on Party Poker, which if you've not seen these is quite a strange format.  Each round is a single table tournament with the top three winning money and progressing to the next round.  The game ends as soon as there are three players remaining, with the highest chip count taking first place, which coupled with the fact that you take your chip count to the next table means you can't just sneak through.

I finished 1st in round one for $44.31, second in round two for $47.06, second in round three for $90.36 and 3rd in round four for $201.06.  Total profit on the night was $360.79 - not a bad start at all.  The eventual winner was super-aggressive and that strategy worked for him.  I actually lost with 99 against his 96 offsuit.  What can you do?

I do like this format, and the strategy to not only survive but win enough chips to be able to survive in later rounds is an interesting one.  I've played a couple more since - getting money from rounds 2 and 3 respectively.  I'll win it one day

Total profit (so far!) from Party Poker shootouts: $411.30

Well if I'm finally going to start updating this regularly I need an idea of what I'm going to write.  Oh my god, it's another poker blog.  Just what the world needs.  Well if nothing else, I need to keep updating regularly so that I qualify for the mighty "blogger tournaments".  PokerStars just announced one of these, but unless I come up with two month's worth of fake posts I'm not going to get in that one...

So why am I doing this?  Mainly I have a terrible memory.  Really bad.  If something isn't written down, it never happened - so I'm starting to write things down.  I'll probably spout some random thoughts now and again as well as bore the world to death with my poker antics.

The impetus for getting off my backside and doing this - is that I'm going to be in Vegas for 4 weeks in the summer and I wanted to keep a diary of that trip.  I actually made the same journey last year, and kept a blog for a couple of weeks of it but lost momentum - probably the desert heat or something.  This time Claire is keeping her own blog - on account of getting into the main event of the World Series of Poker - and for those who have too much time on their hands it might be interesting to read both our accounts of the trip and see it from two different points of view.

I also remembered that I scribbled the makings of a travelog from a previous trip to Vegas in Summer 2003.  If I can fish out these notes, I'll use them to fill the space when I have nothing else to say.  Might be interesting for any other Vegas geeks out there... you never know.

OK so I've not quite achieved what Claire's managed to do just yet, but
I'm still having a rather good run lately.  My sights were set a little
lower than the main event, however I'm still GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER BABY.

So here begins my journey.