Online Poker

Vij was staying with us at the weekend and I'd left him in front of the TV whilst I went upstairs to play some poker.  I'm a fantastic host, as you can tell, but he knows where the kettle is, and that's all that really matters.

When he wandered in I had four tables running and almost straight away I fell into this hand.  Instinctively I began talking through my thought process, which made me look like a genius (naturally) and also made me wonder whether thinking through hands out loud was a good strategy.  If I have to justify every decision to someone else, I should make good decisions.

I made a pretty damn good laydown here, and for the right reasons, but I'm still not convinced by my flop play. It was a little bit on the random side.  Should I be thinning the field with a good but vulnerable hand in a multi-way pot, or should I wait for a safe card or to improve and then re-evaluate? I opted to call, not really knowing whether I was trapping or going fishing.

Still, I folded a set and I was right.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

CO ($41.75)
Button ($60)
SB ($23.55)
BB ($20)
Hero ($77.65)
UTG+1 ($25.40)
MP1 ($71.15)
MP2 ($44.35)
MP3 ($20.25)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 9c, 9h.
Hero calls $0.50,

We're talking about something else, and I limp in on autopilot.

"Chris, you've got a pair of nines on that table."
He points, but knows better than to get too close and risk getting a sweaty fingerprint onto my monitor.

"Yep, I already called, look."

"Didn't you want to raise with that?"

"No, I've got poor position and I want to keep the pot small..."

UTG+1 raises to $1.5,

"... so I can still play if someone raises. Like that. :)"

There was an actual smilie at the end when I spoke

MP1 calls $1.50, 2 folds, CO calls $1.50,

"Any more callers? This will be easy then. If I don't catch another 9 I'm done, but if I do I should be laughing."

Vij nods. He didn't actually nod. He'll have said something, because that's Vij's way, but I wasn't exactly listening. I was waiting to see if I would be able to show off by winning a nice big pot. In fact I don't really remember what else he said at all. Hell, I'm struggling to remember what I said myself and just making up stuff to fill in the gaps.

1 fold, SB calls $1.25, 1 fold, Hero calls $1.

Flop: ($8) Tc, 9d, Js (5 players)

"Yes! Oh, wait. That's sort of good".

SB bets $0.5, Hero calls $0.50,

"Right, let's see what happens."

UTG+1 calls $0.50, MP1 raises to $4,

"Hmm. What's he raising with?."

CO calls $4,

"Oh. This one's got something then."

SB calls $3.50,

"So somebody could have the straight. I'm not scared of him, but he's a worry. This guy probably has a draw, probably just a queen."

I wiggle at MP1, then CO, then SB in turn using the mouse pointer, then pause to work out the pot odds.

"But I do have odds to draw against the straight, so I can call even if I'm behind"

Hero calls $3.50, UTG+1 folds.

"OK, pair it!"

Turn: ($24.50) 4s (4 players)

"That doesn't help anyone, so let's see who's still interested."

SB checks, Hero checks, MP1 bets $14,

"Right. I'm not afraid of him."

CO raises to $36.25, SB folds,

"Now we have a decision, don't we?".

Vij nods, or something, and I press the button for some extra thinking time.

"OK, I don't care what the first guy has, it's probably not much. This is the one who has a hand. He could have the straight, but I can't say for sure. Aaaaagh, what do I actually beat? Anything? Would he really push there with two pair? No.".

I've come to a decision. Folding a set is excrutiating, but there's no way I'm winning.

"He's got two tens, two jacks or a straight."

Hero folds, MP1 calls $22.25.

"God I hope I'm right."

River: ($97) 2c (2 players)

Final Pot: $97
Main Pot: $97, between CO and MP1.

MP1 has Qh Jh (one pair, jacks).
CO has Ts Th (three of a kind, tens).
Outcome: CO wins $97.

My hands thrust themselves into the air.

"Oh yes. I'm good".

And Vij is less impressed than he should be.

Just played another session as a shill for Gutshot's Poker Night Live table tonight.  We all started with $25,000 available for reloading today and the action was fast and furious.  It's difficult to imagine how Barry Martin and Nik Persaud will keep a straight face when they commentate on some of the hands that were, apparently, played at $25/$50 real money blinds!

Here's my favourite today.  The powerhouse never loses...

** Dealing card to Super_Hero: 2 of Clubs, 5 of Diamonds
I_Tilt_Often folded
Super_Hero called - $50.00
kafkakelly folded
RaiseEmUp raised - $300.00
U_Dump_Chips went all-in - $2175.00
1Chipstacker folded
Super_Hero went all-in - $9347.00
RaiseEmUp folded
** Dealing the flop: 5 of Hearts, Jack of Hearts, 4 of Spades
** Dealing the turn: 10 of Diamonds
** Dealing the river: 9 of Clubs
U_Dump_Chips shows: 2 of Hearts, 2 of Diamonds
Super_Hero shows: 2 of Clubs, 5 of Diamonds
Super_Hero wins $4747.00 from the main pot

My first step towards this year's WSOP was via a manic, almost free tournament on Gutshot Poker.  There was only one seat, and yay me!

75 players in and a bunch of rebuys.  It was free to enter but a whopping $0.50 if you ran out of chips.  Which I did.  About ten times.  At the 100/200 level I must have rebought for 500 and moved all-in on five straight hands.  For a $110 seat with less than 50 players remaining, I was always going to take a crack for another 50 cents however silly the structure was.  Finally I won a hand and I was back in the game.  Carried on playing like a lunatic right the way to the end and hit a whole bunch of two outers along the way.

Well, you have to get lucky to win, don't you?

With three left I disconnected.  I was playing from my hotel connected using my phone.  Apparently it drains more battery than it can charge when you are online, although not all the time because I've actually been fine since then.  After an hour and a half of playing though, the phone was dead and I had to wait for it to have enough juice to restart the phone, hop quickly back online and move all in repeatedly and hope for the best.

The best happened. I clearly rock at all cheap all-in pushfests.

The tournament I'm in is a 9-seat guaranteed satellite on 19th June, and it's televised on Poker Night Live.  Most of the seats are actually for a $1000 WSOP super satellite but with flights and accomodation included, so with the cheaper packages the odds are much better.  There's all kinds of free and cheap ways to get into this satellite including a completely free quiz on the PNL TV show.  To be honest, I'd probably pay $110 to play this one anyway.  There's still a very good chance of a decent overlay on those seats!

This is the yummiest hand I've been involved in for a long time. It might be a little premature but I think I'll name it my Hand of the Month. An occasional feature.

It could only be better if the guy married to his suited connectors had a bigger stack that he wanted to throw away. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say his first raise was "creative" and his first call was "speculative". The all in call is still suicidal, whatever way you look at it.

Why is this hand so beautiful though? It's not just the all in call from a hand that was clearly way behind. My re-raise to $7 was perfectly sized in order to allow the short stack to come back over the top with just enough to re-open the action. I could then push and either play for stacks against the third player (it did seem like he liked his hand) or just take my aces against the short stack with some very healthy dead money.

I raised $5, he moved in for another $5.40. Just enough to make a full raise.

It's so good, I'm going to pretend that it was intentional...

--

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (8 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

UTG+1 ($64.55)
MP1 ($29.75)
MP2 ($12.40)
CO ($14.25)
Button ($48.25)
Hero ($70.90)
BB ($51.95)
UTG ($34.25)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ah, Ac.
UTG raises to $2, 2 folds, MP2 calls $2, 2 folds, Hero raises to $7, 1 fold, UTG calls $5, MP2 raises to $12.4, Hero raises to $70.9, UTG calls $27.25 (All-In).

Flop: ($118.05) 7s, Qs, 2d
Turn: ($118.05) Qh
River: ($118.05) Kd

Hero has Ah Ac (two pair, aces and queens).
UTG has 6c 7c (two pair, queens and sevens).
MP2 has Th Td (two pair, queens and tens).
Outcome: Hero wins $118.05.

Here's one hand from my Poker Night Live session.  Don't wait for TV for this one, it's much more exciting if you don't see both sets of hole cards.  It's the POWERHOUSE!

Click here to view movie

I'm playing poker on TV again!

It's almost as exciting as being on an American cable show that got cancelled in the UK before my episode was shown.  This time I'm going to be playing online poker under someone else's name with someone else's money, but still - it's on Poker Night Live!

Not only can you watch this from 9pm tonight (unless it's cancelled in the next few hours) on Sky channel eight thousand and something, you can watch live online here.  Although the only time I've tried to watch their webcast before it was so blocky you couldn't actually see what the hole cards were.  Then again, I was trying to stream it using the 3G connection on my phone - what do you expect?

I'm making up the numbers in a $25/$50 blinds no limit game, sitting down with two dimes.  Wow, looks like it's a somewhat bigger game than I'd usually play, where a dime actually is 10c.  Ah, the magic of television.  The money is real, but every player in the game is a prop so it really doesn't matter who wins or loses.

I'll shatter two illusions in one go.  It's also not live.  We're recording about 2pm.

Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be "Super Hero"...