The Lucky Donut

I'll try not to turn this into a bad beat whinge.  I got beat, but it wasn't particularly bad.  I just want to write the hand down to help me think about how I played it.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

Hero ($20)
BB ($24.75)
UTG ($26.05)
UTG+1 ($37.55)
UTG+2 ($13.65)
MP1 ($36.54)
MP2 ($6.20)
MP3 ($24.15)
CO ($31.85)
Button ($27.24)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Tc, 7h. Hero posts a blind of $0.10.

3 folds, MP1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, MP3 calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero completes, BB checks.

So this call is a bit loose with a poor hand and no position. However this game was playing pretty weak-tight and I'd been able to take down a lot of four- or five-way pots with a single flop bet when the board came low or paired. I was in a seeing-the-flop kind of mood, and this was probably about the worst hand I'd be completing the small blind with.

Flop: ($1.25) 9s, 8c, 6d (5 players)

Hero checks

Mmmm looks good. Let's make sure. My staight is the nuts. and the board is a rainbow. All good. I don't need to show any strength here, with a low board I might not get any action anyway so let's either allow someone else to take a stab or if nobody wants to bet then someone might catch a decent second-best hand on the turn.

BB checks, MP1 checks, MP3 bets $0.75, CO calls $0.75, Hero calls $0.75

OK, two people with chips to give me and two still to act. I like to call here. Make me look weak, nobody will really pay attention and encourage the other two to join in with the calling and the donating

BB calls $0.75, MP1 raises to $1.5, MP3 calls $0.75, CO calls $0.75, Hero calls $0.75, BB calls $0.75.


Now it gets interesting. A minimum raise as a check-raise from MP1 - what the hell does that mean? Does he have a huge hand? Or is he trying to build a pot with a big draw? The hand I've not considered so far - and at the time didn't consider until it was to late - was the mighty TJ. This hand has a decent draw, and pumping the pot vs 4 opponents is profitable as long as nobody comes over the top. Would he do this, though, and risk a reraise from MP3 which might price out his draw completely?

There's a wide range of hands for the min-raiser, most likely a set that thinks it's the best or possibly a limped overpair that wants to know if it's good. Right now there's no hand that I'm behind. It is this bet that I just don't know whether to call or raise. On the one hand, I want to keep everyone around when I have the nuts, but I want to make sure I know that I either still have the best hand after the next card, or that it moves me back to second place so I can get out.

Like I said, I hadn't really considered JT as a threat. I'd decided that I'd slow down to a pair on board, although this is silly. If I figure someone for a set, let's raise it up now because they're never folding it. But what do I do when a Q or 7 falls... I needed to know, and didn't.

So guess what...


Turn: ($8.75) Qc (5 players)

Hero checks, BB checks, MP1 checks, MP3 checks, CO bets $4, Hero raises $14.25 (all in) BB folds, MP1 folds, MP3 folds, CO calls $14.25.


So is my hand good? Maybe... Can I lay it down? Almost certainly not. So I think I have to push now. Against the made straight with JT I'm toast. Against a set I'm still in pretty good shape. If I just call, again I'm possibly giving an inferior hand a chance to catch up before making a difficult decision, and a quarter of the deck will pair the board to give me that decision. The pot's big enough that I'm probably going to have to call even if it pairs, unless I can convince myself there's really nothing I'm beating.

Then again, that $4 bet doesn't really show any great strength. CO has limped along the whole way so far, now everyone checks to him and he bets in position on the first high card to hit the board. Maybe he just has a Q and suddenly likes the look of it, or maybe Qx two pair.

I panic-push, and this isn't a great situation to be in or a great move to be making. The one hand that has me crushed is a distinct possibility, and I'm throwing money away to that hand, whilst if the bettor only has top pair he might well get away from it. I can't really see many better alternatives right now though.


River: ($27) 9d (2 players)


Final Pot: $27

Main Pot: $27, between Hero and CO.

Results:

Hero has Tc 7h (straight, ten high).
CO has 6h 6s (full house, sixes full of nines).
Outcome: CO wins $27.

So I got lucky, and was against a set. Then I got unlucky and he boated to beat me.

What did I do wrong? I think I got too greedy early on. The first flop call was probably best, as long as I was prepared to react to a possible better straight getting there as well as a full house. But after the min raise, and another call I guess it's time to start asking for information, even if I do have the current nuts. I needed to bet big enough to make a straight draw make a mistake and force any made hand to decide whether they are good.

Given a second chance, I sandbag the flop and reraise to $8. I get it all in against CO and still lose. In fact this way I'm giving him twice as much pot equity by putting my money in earlier, but I just don't think I'm good enough to play the hand any slower and confidently make the right decision.

The new Gutshot web site is now live, with one or two components developed by yours truly.  In fact, the bits I wrote seem to be mostly the sections that took a bit of a bash in transit from one server to the other, but I'm sure they'll be OK again soon.  We just need their system admins to put the right server modules back in place and then we're in business again.  Check out the odds calculator and the poker diary.  They're really rather good

I can't take any credit for how this looks (they have an excellent in-house designer) and really my involvement was just a small part of a massive relaunch.  This is a pretty awesome poker web site.  The slick black and orange logo is already all over the cardroom, and now it's made it to the web site as well.  Opinions seem to be mixed about the light-on-dark colour scheme.  I think it looks pretty sexy on my LCD monitor and my laptop, but when I'm reading the forum on my older CRT monitor (which is getting on a bit, and doesn't really do midtones any more) then it does send my eyes a bit funny after a while.

Maybe this web site should carry a "best viewed on a flat panel monitor" advisory!

So much for my quest.  First day went OK, but not great, with me winning a seat to a $50+$4 satellite on PokerRoom, which it turns out is good for any $50+$4 event apart from the one I wanted to play in.  Looks like entry to the Stage 2 Poker Classic is via the Stage 1 tournament only.  Bit stupid really, and a pisser for me because now I have to find a decent $50+$4 to play on there.

In any case, through some combniation of not having a clock in the living room and getting caught up in the previous night's Big Brother on Sky+ over tea, I'd managed to miss the 7pm Stage 2 tournament three nights running.  Played just one more UltimateBet satellite since my enthusiastic qualification mission began, and subsequently turned into a damp squib.  Just too much to do before Vegas (T-14 now!) so it was totally the wrong time to try something like this.

So that UB tournament was a $10+$1 rebuy/addon into a $215 Aruba qualifier and has the dubious honour of having the most blatently rigged final hand in the history of online poker.  The screenshot pretty much says it all.  Click the thumbnail to see the full horror...

Three handed and short-stacked, I move all-in for about 7 times the big blind with a pocket pair.  It's usually ahead here.  The small blind calls with his pocket pair.  He figures to usually be ahead.  Big blind goes mental with the third pair and we're in a three-way all-in situation 77 vs 88 vs 99.  Needless to say the winning hand was belonged to the chip leader so it didn't matter that he was way behind pre-flop.  It was all over 3 seconds later.

I made some notes along the way in this satellite also - see, I started off on the right foot with the quest!  But right now I think leave it at that.

To be continued... sometime, hopefully fairly soon.  Maybe.

The cheese on toast that is Las Vegas is finally back on Sky One for a third season.  Not content with using and abusing every possible Vegas cliche already, they had to end the second series with a casino being imploded, and now it's been rebuilt.

The most impressive thing is that during the construction work, the Montecito hotel appears to have moved a couple of miles along the Las Vegas strip!  In the previous seasons, there were some fairly clever computer generated shots of a shiny fake hotel sitting across the road from Mandalay Bay.  This is the south end of the strip and keep going any further south and you get to see not a lot more than desert, the airport and a freeway intersection.

This is roughly the site of the Klondike casino, as featured in the movie Miss Congeniality 2 - semi-essential Vegas viewing, and although far from a great movie, it's really not that bad for an unnecessary sequel to a film about a beauty pageant....  The Klondike is 45 years old, and is actually due to be getting knocked down itself any day now (although I don't think an implosion will be necessary on this tiny place!). 

So then there's a shot of the strip from a distance in the season opening episode of Las Vegas that shows the all new Montecito glimmering in the distance, right between Aladdin and New York New York.  Monte Carlo has been obliterated, and Manadalay Bay stands alone at the right of the screen.

You can be absolutely certain that if it moves again I'll be taking notice!  In fact I'm starting to wish I'd burned a copy to DVD so I could post a picture :)  There must be someoneelse who cares about this stuff as much as me...?

I have decided to make it my mission this week to qualify for a big event through an online satellite.  Why, I'm not really sure with Vegas just round the corner (T-18!).  But I've not had much time to play poker lately and I decided that if I was make time to play this week then I'd do it with a mission.

I'm still not going to be able to throw myself at this, with hundreds of other real world things to get done before we go away, but any poker I play will be focused on The Mission.  I'm going to try to (gasp) single-table these games too, something I haven't done for quite a while.  Occasionally two quallies I want to play will overlap so I might make an exception, other than that I'll have to see just how good my patience is!

I have identified four possible satellites that I want to get into as cheaply as possible:

OnGame Poker Classic:
Stage 1: $6+1
Stage 2: $50+$4
Stage 3: $300+20
Final: $5000+$200 on Sept 2nd played online down to 45 players
Final 45 play live in Barcelona Sept 28th-Oct 1st

Aruba Ultimate Poker Classic:
Sub-qualifiers to satellites costing $200 or $1000
Event is Sept 23rd - Oct 1st
$10,000 package includes $5,200 entry plus travel and accomodation

Camp Hellmuth:
Satellites are $109, package worth $3000
Event takes place in Vegas Aug 11-13
Camp value $2000 + $1500 expenses paid

Ultimate Bet WSOP $3k Satellite:
$30+$3 rebuys or $50+$5 freezeout.
Prize is $2000 in WSOP entries + $1000 cash.
I'd use this for a main event satellite and another preliminary event.

I've so far played four qualifiers, and so far managed to keep to one table at a time without getting itchy fingers!

PokerRoom $6+$1 Poker Classic Stage 1.  I began at lunchtime with the 12:10 qualifier and it was short and sweet, but thanks to a masterpiece of misplanning this early in my quest I'd already put some bacon in the George Foreman grill before I realised it was about to start and would have been distracted by food shortly afterwards anyway.  8 minutes in and I was busted with QQ, moving in on the flop with my overpair vs two flush draws which both hit on the turn.  I was pleased to see I was ahead but didn't really like the move as my all-in came after I got raised and called by the other two players.  The bacon factor, along with seeing that there was only one seat and one cash place in this satellite with 24 players almost certainly influenced my decision.

$11 feeder to Camp Hellmuth satellite.  I survived 59 minutes before busting out in 6th place - hey at least I didn't have to sit through the break with hardly any chips left...  There were only 9 entrants in this giving us a small overlay on the seat value, but meaning that it was first place or nothing.  With a minimum raise to 120 under-the-gun and one caller I reraise to 340 with 44.  If the min-raiser actually has a hand and comes to life I can get away from this with 865 chips remaining.  The raiser folds, but the weak caller wants to see a flop and I feel I have to move in on the flop when he checks to me as long as the board doesn't look too scary.  He instacalls with JT on a J62 rainbow board (couldn't ask for much better without a 4!) and I'm done.

$20+$2 satellite to $109 Tournament.  As UB now offer tournament dollars, even though this was not a Hellmuth satellite I would be able to use the seat value to play in the event I wanted.  This seemed like good value, with one seat for every five and a half players (I have had decent success in a similar structure on PokerStars) however it was a turbo tournament with 5 minute levels.  In total there were 38 players for 6 seats and $106 cash, but I went dry when it mattered and got called by a rag ace when I needed to steal some blinds.  I went to the rail in 16th place.

PokerRoom $7+$1 Satellite to $50+$4.  This seemed to be a bit better value than the Stage 1 qualifier, with the same value ticket prize.  Finally, things go right and I land a ticket for just over 2 hours work.  I have more detailled notes about this one, and depending on whether it sounds vaguely interesting when I read it back I might post some hands later.  However when I went to register for the Stage 2 tournament, it wouldn't let me use this ticket!  My next mission is to find out why...

Summary:
Played: 4
Cost: $48
Won: $54

Not exactly impressive yet.  About even

After nearly five weeks I finally have confirmation of my entry into WSOP event 37!

I've said previously about the so-called registration hotline and my failure to reach a human and since then a kind poster on the 2+2 WSOP Forum sent me the number for the WSOP registration desk, but so far I'd still only managed to get a recorded message.

I'm loving reading that forum by the way, it's really getting quite excited - even if most of the questions asked are along "can I walk from my hotel to the Rio".  It's actually only about half a mile from the intersection of Flamingo and the Strip, but you'd be walking in oppressive heat over a busy freeway intersection - nowhere to stop and lovely fumes to inhale, and then still have to walk for 20 minutes to find the right end of the Rio itself!  Just take plenty of water, or you'll probably die.

Anyway I'd left messages asking them to call me, email me - anything - to say whether my money had arrived and still no joy.  Finally today Claire convinced me that I should call the Rio's main number and see if I could find anyone to speak to in person on a different extension.  In fact, I did and they were trying to be very helpful.

Firstly I spoke to Ron (or possibly Ray, I didn't write it down) in the WSOP cage, who managed to confirm that my pre-registration fax had gone through but that I was unpaid.  He was only able to check my pre-registration because I managed to fish out my old Harrah's Total Rewards card.  I hadn't even written the number on the form because I thought it might have expired, but it would seem that Harrah's have a very long memory...

So why was I unpaid, I asked.  He said I would have to go to the main casino cage and sign over the wire transfer to the WSOP when I arrived.  He tried to put me through to the cage so I could check they had my money but I got disconnected.

So I called back and asked for the casino cage.   They said I needed to speak to the WSOP cage and put me through before I could argue.  The phone line dropped again before anyone answered.

I called back to the WSOP cage and spoke to Ray (or maybe Ron, whichever one the first guy was not) and he said I'd need to talk to "will call", which I didn't even know existed except if you're going to see Penn and Teller.  They weren't answering the phone, so good old Ray said he'd run over there himself and make sure they took the call.  Can't fault the enthusiasm, if this is for real.  However I was on hold for a good 15 minutes before I finally gave up.

However, something went right along the way as I finally received this email this evening.  A huge relief!

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Congratulations!!  The World Series of Poker is the most prestigious Poker event in the world.  This is a receipt for your payment of the Tournament Entry Fee of $1500 which reserves you a seat in WSOP Event #37 on Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at 12 noon.

Upon arrival at the RIO, to finalize your Registration and to receive your table and seat assignment, please visit our Registration Area, located in the WSOP Tournament Area.  You must complete your Tournament Registration at least one hour prior to your event.  Please be prepared to provide proof of identity via a Drivers License, Passport or Military I.D.

This year’s WSOP will no doubt be the largest and most exciting gaming event in history.  Harrahs continues to lead the industry in creating an innovative gaming experience for valued guests.  Harrahs and the Tournament Staff sincerely wish you, “GOOD LUCK!!”

Robert Daily
Tournament Director, World Series of Poker