Moving for Poker

In response to a recent post Jake asked: If online poker goes the way of the Dodo, do you think that you might move to the peninsula/south-bay to maximize the lucky chances/bay 101 nexus?

I would say that for now we're pretty happy where we are and my first step would be to see if I could make enough at The Oaks Club. Of course, I might make a trip here and there to Lucky Chances, but I don't see myself going to Bay 101 since they have instituted a few expensive changes. Instead of time collection or raking $3 a hand they've gone to $5 a hand which is the most expensive juice I've ever seen anywhere. Secondly they have a $3 penalty (which goes in the pot) every time you miss the blinds.

If we have to leave our current house I could see looking to move a little closer to Lucky Chances. Also moving to the L.A. area would be something we'd have to give a little more thought to.

A Quick answer or two to a comment question

In a recent comment my sister posted the question: In light of this post. 1) Does this mean the big carrot is moot? 2) If you play in person, will you play for higher stakes, since you'll be forced to play less hands per hour? 3) Once you've established a reputation in person, are you worried that people will start running for the hills once they see you heading for their table? As in, "It's Dave Huff! We can't beat him! Ahhh!" It sounds funny, but it's actually a serious question.

I would say that The Big Carrot (incentives for playing a given amount in a year on pokerstars) probably won't be my focus. I've figured that it's not worth busting my hump if there's a fair chance that I won't get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Of course I'll continue to play online as long as I can and there's a good chance I'll hit a few yearly milestones, but I won't earn the supernova elite status.

When I play in person, not only is it for higher stakes, but it's a totally different game. In stead of playing no limit tournaments I'll be playing limit cash games. Since I'll only be playing in one game at a time I'll need to play much better relative to my opposition, but my focus will be undivided and I'll be doing much more of "playing the other player" instead of "playing the cards."

Of course, after a while some people will realize that I've been winning consistently. But, no one is going to avoid a game just because I'm in it. It's not like I'm going to sit down and immediately empty everyone's pockets. They might avoid a game if they saw only really good players playing in a game, but one player not matter how good they are isn't enough to have a big impact on someone else's bottom line.

Some bad news for online poker

In the past week or so online poker has taken another blow and this one has me more worried. About a week ago the two heads of Neteller (the leading third party that arranged transfers from banks to online poker sites) were arrested and charged with money laundering. A day or two after, Neteller stopped transactions to and from all gambling websites. Shorty after, a few other businesses that did roughly the same thing also stopped serving U.S. customers.

There are still a few ways to get your money in and out, but most of them involve a long wait instead of the instant transfers. I've had the websites mail me regular checks in the past and it's as easy as pie, but I can't see too many people making deposits via western union or money order. I suspect that pretty soon the games will start to dry up as the casual players decide that it's not worth the hassle.

While it felt for a while that the law that passed would be generally neglected, it now seems that it has some teeth. If I had to put a time table on it, I would say that by the end of the year online poker may cease to exist as we know it.

But, I'm feeling strangely fine. I'm going to try to spend most of next month back at the Oaks club and see how much I can make. I don't know how sharp my limit cash game skills are, but I used to kick ass a few years ago when I wasn't nearly as good of a poker players as I am now. And I've heard the players are much worse now than they used to be so hopefully I'll dominate from the start.

The Biggest Carrot of All Time

After about a month of not blogging I'm back to give you the latest poker news. I always look forward to the start of a new year, because it means I can give my self a clean poker slate. It's much like a professional athlete starting a new season. And frankly 2006 was a year that I'd like to forget pokerwise. After winning almost $30,000 in the first two months of the year, I lost $11,000 in March and struggled for most of the rest of the year. Luckily 2005 was a banner year and I was smart enough to save most of what I made so not having a great year in 2006 was OK.

On January 1st pokerstars dangled a huge carrot on the end of a stick in order to entice it's supernova players to take the next step in increasing the volume of their play. In order to become a supernova player you need to earn 100,000 VIP Player Points (VPP's) in a calender year. You get 5 VPP's for every dollar in tournament juice that you pay. There are a bunch of financial benefits to being a supernova such as: entry into freerolls, faster accumulation of FPP's, special deposit bonuses and other VIP treatment. In 2006 someone made it to supernova status in just 2 weeks and by the time I made it in June there were about 120 other supernovas. By the end of the year there were close to 1,000.

Pokerstars realized that they needed something bigger and better. So they created a new level of status called Supernova Elite. In order to achieve Supernova Elite status you have to earn 1,000,000 VPP's in a calender year! This is an insane amount. Notice that in order to earn 1,000,000 VPP's you have to pay $200,000 in tournament fees which means you've bought into more than $2,000,000 worth of tournaments in one year. In 2006 I accumulated roughly 250,000 VPP's, but I spent a good deal of time playing in ways that don't generate many points (ie multitables and cash games) so the notion of 1,000,000 VPP's in a year isn't totally unthinkable.

So what they hell do they give you that would make it worth it to trade time with your friends and family for time at your computer? To start, they give you 5 FPP's for every VPP instead of the 3.5 per VPP that you earn as a regular supernova. Not too exciting, but worth mentioning. Secondly you'll get entry into some freerolls with fat prize pools. Ok, a little better. But most importantly they'll give you FREE entry into the 2008 WSOP Main event AND your choice of a pokerstars package (entry fee, hotel, airfare for 2 etc.) to the 2008 Pokerstars Caribbean adventure (a $7500 tournament in the Bahamas) or the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo (a $10,000 tournament). They'll also give you FREE entry into the $5,000 WCOOP main event online. That's over thirty grand of goodness! Talk about a big carrot!

Right now I give myself about a one percent chance of making it. But the good news is pokerstars has put in a few other bonuses along the way. When you get to 200,000 VPP's they'll give you $2,000 (there are a few hoops to jump through in terms of playing a given amount in a certain period of time, but for me it's effectively free money). At 300,000 it's another $3,000 and at 500,000 and 750,000 it's another $5,000 and $7500 respectively.

I'm certain that I'll make it to 300,000 and shouldn't have too much trouble making it to 500,000, but I think more that that is too much for me to handle. To make it to 1,000,000 I'd have to start playing $225 SNG's, and play 1,112 every month. That's 56 a day, 20 days a month. Doesn't sound too bad. The problem comes in when you consider that I'll be facing much stiffer competition, and if I have a bad day I could lose four or five grand. Also this would be a big step up for me. While I've played a few hundred $225's and 25+ tournaments with $1,000 buys-ins or more it's always been taking shots here and there. I knew I could always come back to my bread and butter. Playing 60 $225 SNG's a day every day is a big step up and I don't know if I could handle the stress.

My plan for now is to work as hard as I can and make as much money as possible. If I could knock out a few $10,000 months all of a sudden I'd be much more willing to take some chances. I could see my self doing something like setting aside $3,000 and playing $225's until it's gone. If I do well early and have a strong streak I could continue to play at that level until I could make some good estimates about my long term expectation. If I could break even that would pretty much be good enough since I'd be earning an insane number of FPP's which I could then turn into cash (if I played 1,112 a month I'd get about $4,500 worth of FPP's)

The biggest and best reason why I almost certainly won't make it is that Baby Huff Version 1.0 will be arriving on or around August 2nd. I suspect that come summer time I'll be taking on more of the household duties and if I'm up all night changing poopie diapers (and mailing them to Chris Delauder's house) I don't think I'll want to tangle with top notch competition.

To date I'm ahead about $3,000 for 2007 which is a little behind pace for how much I've been playing. I'll keep you posted on what happens for the rest of the year (if your lucky). Also if your interested in more Huff blog posts check out our baby blog at thehuffs.wordpress.com where you can learn something about babies (my wife has written most of the posts so far) and hear about non poker related Huff Stuff.

A Kick in the Ass on the Way Out the Door

I'll be in Maryland where I grew up for 11 days starting tomorrow. Thankfully our dear friend Liz loves cats and has graciously offered to keep an eye on the house and Gus and Rio, so don't report us to the SPCA. Thanks Liz!

Since I've been working pretty hard the past month or two I've been ready for a vacation. Also I'd worked every day for 15 days straight between December 2nd and December 16th. So after a few hours on the morning of the 16th I mentally checked out. We had a Christmas party at our house that night and I spent all day Sunday glued to the couch watching football. I'd planned to get back to work on Monday, but instead Jen and I spent the day shopping, eating out and at the movies.

After spending the morning screwing around writing e-mails and generally wasting time I had to do some work to clear a $1,500 bonus before I left town. Things started out nicely as I found myself ahead $300 after 45 minutes. The terrible strain of this herculean effort required me to take a 2 hour lunch break.

I manged to haul myself back to my office at which point I experienced the second worst run of tournament finishes in my online career. The worst run I ever had was over 2 years ago when I had 23 straight SNG's in which I finished out of the money. If you assume that at worst I'm a player who makes the money 40% of the time then I can expect a stretch like that once every 126,625 tournaments. Of course after about 12 or 15 bricks in a row no one is playing their best so the chances of 23 misses in a row are a little better than that. Today I had a stretch that wasn't quite as bad, but still sucked. I had 12 misses in a row, then a 3rd and then 5 more misses.

The worst one was the 10th one in that stretch. Playing 4 handed with blinds of 100/200 and a 25 chip ante I had about 2,200 chips and was first to act. The player in the big blind had about 2,000 and the other two players each had just over 4,500. I raised to 600 with AK of spades and got called by the big blind. The flop came down 8 9 Q with 2 spades. While I didn't have a pair I was still in pretty good shape with two overcards and a flush draw and I knew I wouldn't be folding. In fact, I thought to myself "I hope this guy bluffs into me with a hand like AJ, that would be perfect." Sure enough, my opponent bet 700, I put in the rest of my chips and he called me with A10. "Ah ha!" I thought. Unless he manages to hit a J or a 10, THAT ISN'T A SPADE, I win and even if he does I can still hit a spade to win for sure. As you might have guessed a 10 came on the turn, I failed to hit a spade, or a J or a K on the river and I lost the pot.

But, that is not the end of the story. I still had 135 chips left. I went all in on the next two pots and split them both. Then I won a few pots and all of a sudden I was up to 1500 and back in it. The blinds had gone up to 200/400 and I found myself in the big blind with A4 of hearts. The player on the button inexplicably just called 400 as did the small blind who only had about 1500 total. I moved all in and the first player folded. The player in the small blind who was the same one who nailed me with the A10 earlier and had squandered some of my chips called me with Q8. The flop came down 3 4 J with 2 hearts. "Ha ha!" I thought. "This is just like before when I had WAY the best hand AND a flush draw covering some of my opponents outs. There's no way I can get totally screwed AGAIN after LOSING 9 STRAIGHT TOURNAMENTS." When the off suit Q came on the river and I lost the pot and my 10th straight tournament I was not happy.

Perhaps even more remarkable was the journey of the green dry erase marker that I grabbed off my desk at that moment. While a lengthy stream of F-bombs and other profanities came spewing forth at high volume from my very core, I threw the marker into the middle of the room with all my might. It glanced off a piece of furniture which cracked the marker and removed the cap. The now capless, split marker then managed to fly at a direct 90 degree angle to the direction in which I threw it where it came upon the intersection of a dresser and the wall. The dresser and the wall are also at 90 degrees to each other mind you. Yet somehow this single marker managed to make THREE concentric arcs of dots of ink on the dresser each at least 2 feet long AND a solid line of ink that was also in an arc shape on the wall. Talk about a magic marker!

Anyway I managed to lose about $600 on the day which wasn't how I wanted to go out on my last work day before my vacation, but I've certainly had worse days. I don't expect to write any posts while I'm in MD, but I have grandiose plans to work myself until I'm totally dead in January so that should lead to some interesting posts. Until then, have a merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

A brief comment answer

As I've said before I love comments (it makes me feel like people are actually reading my blog). In a recent comment Timm said "I'm no poker genius, and really not a computer genius either. have you thought about throwing a second video card in your computer so you could hook up a second monitor for dual desktops?"

This is something that I gave a fair amount of thought to when Jen and I moved into our current house in January. In the past I did all my playing on my laptop and was faced with VERY limited screen space so once we got a little more room I knew it was time to buy a desktop. I considered getting somewhat normal monitors and running them both off of one computer, but I instead opted to go for the 30 inch big ass monitor. I suppose, eventually I might want to get another one, but even though it's tax deductible I'm not ready to shell out another two grand for another one. Maybe when prices go down I'll reconsider. Another downside of adding an additional monitor is I need to be aware of what's going on in all of my games at all times and when you bring another monitor into the mix it means that instead of moving my eyes every half second I'll have to start moving my head as well.

If history has taught me anything it's that my super sweet $2,000 monitor will probably be gathering dust in the garage in 5 years rendered worthless by the new technology.

Who says 10 is too many?

Pokerstars is running a promotion until the end of the year where VIP players can turn their FPP's directly into cash instead of the normal merchandise or tournament entries. You get a better conversion rate if you have higher VIP status, but you have to exchange in bigger blocks. For example, if you are a silverstar VIP you can get $285 in cash for 25,000 FPP's, but if you're a supernova (like me) you can get $1,500 for 100,000 points. One small downside of this promotion is not only do you have to spend your FPP's, but you have to earn a certain number of additional points in a given time period to actually get the money, just like a deposit bonus. But, since I'm going to be playing anyway, who cares.

In an effort to get as many $1,500 blocks as I can, I've been trying to play a little more than usual lately. A few days ago, I decided to increase my points per hour generation and jump into a few bigish SNG's. After playing mostly $55's for the past month or so, I've started to lose a little bit of my tolerance for big losses.

As it is, I am probably the most risk averse professional gambler that you'll ever meet. You'd think that after playing 25+ tournaments with buys in's over $1,000 including one with a $5,000 price tag and another with a $10,000 one, I'd be totally desensitized. But I'm not. While this caution makes it difficult for me to take full advantage of a few opportunities, it's also kept me out of trouble. If you talk to many poker pros, including many of the worlds best players, they'll tell you that they were frequently broke during the first few years of their career. I've never been within shouting distance of broke, and it's hard to imagine a scenario where I even get close. With that said, I wish I wasn't such a big pussy sometimes when it comes to playing for big dollars.

While it wasn't exactly big dollars, I did feel a little nervous the other day when I jumped into three $225 SNG's and two $114's. If I blanked on all of them I'd be out just over $900 in the span of about 45 minutes. I got off to a shaky start when I went broke early in one of the 100's with JJ vs AK. Then I went down the toilet in a $225 when I lost AA to 55. YUCK! I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when I went down in 4th place in another $225. Sneaking through with a third in the remaining $100 and another dud in the remaining $225, I found myself stuck $714 for the set and close to $1,000 for the day (I'd lost a little over $250 over the course of about twenty five 55's earlier in the day).

While I was playing, I looked up every player in the $225's on sharkscope (there were a few players in more than one so it really wasn't that many unique players) and found a few players with really interesting stats. Surprisingly there were a bunch of BIG losers. There were 3 guys who had lost more than $50,000 (one of whom had an average buy in of $957 per SNG!) and quite a few more who were in the negative $10,000+ range.

Also, I was surprised by the lack of really strong players. There was one fellow who had an average buy in of $250 and was winning $20 a tournament, but most of the other players seemed pretty average or poor. But, the most shocking of all, was a player who had played 70 tournaments, had an average profit of $1 per tournament and an average buy in of $7! What made this guy decide to play in a $225 tournament? His total profit was only $70 and if you add up all the buy ins of all his previous experience it would only be enough for two buys ins at the $225 level.

Since I saw how shitty everyone's stats were, I decided to not give up and got back in the ring. I jumped into two $114's, two $225's and a $335. If I blanked, I'd be staring at a -$2,000 day and probably kick myself for being impatient and risking too much. On the other hand if I did well I could pick up some quick cash. After all winning the $335 alone would net me almost $1,100.

Happily, I doubled up early in one tournament of each buy in. I started to feel better about my chances of having a small losing day instead of a big one and thought that getting back to even was a possibility. We got down to 4 handed very quickly in the $335 and I told myself to stay patient and play it just how I normally do. After what seemed like an eternity we had a chance for someone to go broke when two players went all in before the flop. One had 4,000 chips and AK and the other had 2,000 chips and 10 10. I crossed my fingers and after an A and a K showed up on the flop I was a 10 to 1 favorite to make the money. A 6 on the turn made it 20 to 1 and...WHAT a 10 on the river! I told myself it didn't really matter and I still had a good chance to make the money. Meanwhile I'd gone broke in one $114 and one $225, but I'd managed to make the money and was still playing in the other two. I thought about how cool it would be to make the money in a $100, a $200 and a $300 SNG at the same time.

Play continued in the $335 and no one seemed to be getting any cards worth going all in with. Even though I was kicking ass in the other two, I really wanted to make the money in the $335 and that was where I directed my focus. I took 1st in the $114 when my 33 beat KQ and then I took 1st in the $225 when I beat AK with KJ (very lucky). Now all I needed was the almost $600 I would get for 3rd in the $335 to get even for the day and anything else would be gravy.

I was starting to get a little short on chips when the following hand came up. I had about 2,000 left (there were 13,500 chips in play) and found myself in the big blind with A4 and blinds of 100/200 with a 25 chip ante. The two other players folded to the small blind (he also had about 2,000 chips) who just called. This guy was a total nut job. He was raising a ton, so by just calling he was telling me he didn't like his hand very much. I decided to put him to the test and moved all in. He thought for a long time and then called me with K3. K3? You dumb shit! What are you doing calling me with K3 for all of your chips 4 handed in a $335 tournament? I was 60% to win, but I was thinking more about the 40% chance I had of losing. After a 3 came on the flop and no help materialized on the turn or river I was out in 4th and left thinking back on the earlier hand where the 10 killed my chances on the river and the dumbass who knocked me out.

Today I took a different approach to generating points quickly when I jumped into 10 $55's at the same time! Gasp! I'd never played more than 9 games at once before and the problem wasn't really managing the games, but rather getting them to all fit on my screen AND be big enough so I could easily read the text. Also, it's not exactly easy to resize and reposition 10 windows while playing in 10 games. Once I got it set up, everything worked pretty well. After dropping two duds, I had a little external drama when my wife blew a fuse while vacuuming and disabled our router thus disabling our internet access. Luckily, I was able to get back on after about 90 seconds. Maybe this interruption was good luck because I went on to make the money in 6 of the remaining 8 SNG's with FOUR 1sts and two 2nds.

Overall I ended up winning what felt like an easy $1,000 today in limited action. I still have to play about 300 SNG's in the next week to earn the points I need to buy another $1,500 FPP block so I'm sure I'll be ready for a vacation when I leave for Maryland next Wednesday.

Happy Holidays!

Sharkscope and 100 SNG's

I've come across an interesting service for online poker players. It's called Sharkscope. Basically Sharkscope is a database of all SNG results for the major poker sites. You can search for a player by username and it will give you some data about their past results.

You just type in their name, click on search and about 5 seconds later it will tell you how many SNG's the player has played, their win/loss per tournament (in dollars), their average buy in, and their average return on investment (a percentage). I'm not sure how they get the data and from what I can tell in comparing my (and Jen's) records to their data about us, it's not 100% accurate. But, it's pretty close. The service costs $15 a month for 150 searches a day, but you can do 5 a day for free.

After a few days of doing 5 free searches I put out the big bucks and paid for a month of searches. I've noticed a few interesting things. According to the Sharkscope FAQ section about 2/3 of SNG players are losing players. I thought it would be MUCH higher than that. Also from my searches it seems that about 75% of the players at the $100 level are winning players at some level. While there are a few winning players with average buys ins in the $100-$125 range (and higher) most of the players seem to be winning at smaller stakes and playing a few $100 tournaments here and there.

On the other hand I would expect that at the lower levels you'll find boat loads of losing players. For the most part, the money flows uphill. When I'm winning money at the $100 level it's mostly coming from people who are winning $55 players. These players are winning most of their money from $33 players who have won at lower limits and are trying to move up as well and so on down the line. At the bottom it's all losers pumping money into the system. It's like nature, where the lizards eat the flies and the lizard eaters eat the lizards and the coyotes eat the lizard eaters and the pumas eat the coyotes and giraffes eat the pumas and then we have giraffe steaks on Thursday nights. It's just like the picture of the food chain that all of you who went to California Public schools (except the one my wife went to of course) saw on the wall of your class room. It was right next to the periodic table of elements from 1895 and just above the world map where the U.S. was referred to as "The New World." Mmmmm giraffe steak.

Of course there are plenty of losers who would lose at any level and just want to play for an amount of money that's interesting to them. I was playing 5 handed in one game with a player who'd lost $36,000 over 2,000 tournaments with an average buy in of $145 and another who'd lost $76,000 over about 1,000 tournaments and had an average buy in of $430! It's costing the second guy about $75 every time he plays a tournament. He must REALLY enjoy playing.

So far I'm not sure how much the information I'm getting is going to help my bottom line. I noticed the first day that I was spending too much time looking people up and not enough paying attention to what they were actually doing. But, every time I look someone up I make a note on them with their info (the websites have a function where you can make notes on other players and every time you face them in the future their note is right there for you to look at). That way I never have to look anyone up twice and eventually I'll have notes on a good chunk of the players.

What I've found most helpful is finding a player who is playing way over their head. Anyone who has an average buy in of $20 or less and is playing in a $100 tournament is going to be nervous and really sweating the money. It's easy to push these players around. It's also nice when I notice that they're using tactics that are common to the lower limits, but don't work in the bigger games. The most drastic case of this was someone who had an average buy in of $7 and was losing at that level playing in a $100 SNG with me.

A few times when faced with a big decision I've stopped in the middle of a hand to look someone up. This has been pretty helpful since the same raise will mean two very different things coming from an experienced winning player or a big loser. While it's helped me win a few nice pots that I might not have, I've also screwed myself by calling when I would have folded if I didn't have any data about my opponent. The long term benefits are still up in the air.

On another note I finally managed to play 100 SNG's in a day yesterday. The key was getting my face smashed (repeatedly) by a big, grey, vibrating cat at 7:30 in the morning. I was able to get started at about 8:15 and managed to play 64 SNG's before I took my standard 2 p.m. lunch break. I'd gone back to playing 100's for the past week or two, but I decided to go with the 55's since I knew I wouldn't be at my sharpest towards the end.

When I got to about 85 I really started struggling with mental fatigue, but my results were great. In the 6 tournaments from 86 to 91 (inclusive) I got a 3rd, two 2nds and three 1sts which, while profitable, also meant that I was playing short handed in a ton of tournaments at the same time. To play the remaining 9 felt like it took about 4 hours, but I made it.

I won just over $800 which is right on pace with the $8 per tournament that I managed during my executive week challenge. Over the course of these tournaments I paid $6,000 in tournament buy-ins (the tournaments are actually $55+5), paid $500 in juice, earned 8,750 FPP's (worth $139.55), and played approximately 5,000 hands. If you were to play 5,000 hands in a casino it would take you 143 hours, which is six days straight around the clock without missing a single hand or three and a half weeks working full time. Isn't the internet great?

A Thanksgiving Miracle (not really)

This past Tuesday Jen and I made the 7 hour drive down to her parent's house in Orange County for Thanksgiving. Our pit stop at the halfway point gave me a chance to eat Taco Bell for the second time in four days (I've clearly been watching my figure), but, believe it or not, this was not the highlight of the holiday!

Shortly after we arrived Jen's Dad told us that we'd be eating something a little unusual for Thanksgiving dinner. I immediately thought (in my best British cockney accent) "what's all this then" as I considered what the hell we might be eating instead of turkey. On a side note, I'd like to mention that in my opinion the turkey is bar none the ugliest bird I have ever seen and while I consider myself an animal lover I am pretty sure I'd feel no remorse whatsoever about personally decapitating an entire rafter of Turkeys. Yes, a group of turkeys is known as a rafter. I'd also like to say that I suspect that I'd feel no remorse about killing the person or people who came up with the name "rafter" for a group of turkeys. Is this the best they could come up with? How about a hoard or a pile or a mess (How many turkeys you got? Oh, we got a whole mess a turkeys). If it was a group of people who came up with the term rafter, I think that group of people should be known as a "dumbass" of animal group namers.

Now that you've had plenty of time to wonder about what we were having for Thanksgiving, I'll give you the rest of the story. I'd mentioned to my father in law Gerry around Christmas time last year that I'd always wanted to eat a goose. Seriously, have you looked at a goose lately? Those things look delicious, but I hear they are a little fatty. Armed with the knowledge that I'd be up for something unusual, but still wanting to keep with tradition, Gerry ordered a turducken! When I heard this news I said "WOW, Awesome" and put my hand up waiting for a high five from my wife...which never came. She was too in shock from the good news to even muster a high five...either that or she was trying to wean me off of my 10 high five a day habit.

For those of you who don't know what a turducken is, it's a turkey that's stuffed with a duck which is stuffed with a chicken and has a layer of stuffing between each bird. John Madden the football announcer is a big fan of these meaty assemblies and has mentioned the turducken on many a broadcast. My friends and I, who are a bunch of ravenous carnivores, have talked on many occasions about how awesome the notion of stuffing meat into other kinds of meat is and how the creator or the turducken must have been a genius. No doubt a fat genius who most likely died before the age of 40 from a massive heart attack, but a genius none the less. Of course, I was pretty excited to actually get a chance to eat one of these babies after several years of mentioning it periodically.

The turducken did not disappoint. After a few miscues with the oven it came out about 2 hours after the initial ETA, but there was plenty of wine and football to fill time. All three birds were tasty and delicious, but I still managed to cram in a mountain of cheesy potatoes and pumpkin bread in addition to the trio of fowl.

I did managed to squeeze a little poker into the long weekend. On Wednesday, Jen and I went to Best Buy and bought a new and improved wireless router for her parents so everyone would be able to use the internet on their laptops in the living room. I played a few heads up tournaments as well as about a dozen SNG's, but my real success came on Saturday morning in the supernova freeroll. After about 4 hours I finished 5th out of 368 and picked up what felt like a very easy $1,040. Some of you may recall that this is the exact place and payout that Jen managed in the same tournament last week. Hopefully I can keep up the steady wins for the next three weeks, because I've got 11 days off in a row scheduled at end the year.

He Called You With What?

This Saturday I made a brief expedition into live tournament land when I played a $330 NL Hold 'em tournament at the Oaks Club. This event was the Oaks Club annual "Turkey Shoot." I personally don't have a clue what poker has to do with shooting turkeys. There isn't anything unusual about the tournament format and it just seems like any other tournament to me. Except for the fact that the cards have turkeys on them...and so do the chips...and they use special tables shaped like various parts of the turkey...and the winner gets dunked in a huge vat of gravy...and the first person eliminated gets their head chopped off and their carcass thrown in the oven for 6 hours at 425 degrees. Other than that it's just like any other poker tournament.

I'd planned to have breakfast at The International House of Pancakes (how luxurious), but a line out the door forced me to go to plan B. Like most plan B's, this one was GREATLY inferior to plan A. Instead, I ate at The International House of Intestinal Rebellion which you may know as Taco Bell. After washing down a few burritos with a $5 coffee from the Starbucks next door, I was ready for action.

The tournament drew almost 200 entrants with a few dozen players getting turned away because of limited space (people around here must love killing turkeys). We started with 4,000 chips, 25 minute limits and 20/40 blinds so the tournament promised to offer plenty of play.

On the first hand of the tournament I was dealt pocket queens. Of course, this was a great hand, but I had that feeling like I was going to go broke in the first 30 seconds of the tournament. I raised, and another player who had his whole stack of chips sitting on his hole cards (even though you start with 4,000 chips most of them are large denominations so it's not hard to pick them all up with one hand) picked up all of his chips. I thought "shit, I'm going to have to risk it all on this first hand." But then he flicked his cards into the muck and put down his chips.

I played a few hands here and there, made a bluff or two and after three hours we'd lost half of the field. I had my stack up to about 5,000 and while I wasn't in great shape things were moving slowly so I wasn't in bad shape either.

In round 7 with the blinds at 200/400 and a 40 chip ante, I ran into an unusual situation. I was in the small blind and the big blind only had about 2,500 chips. Including the antes there were 1,000 chips in the pot and I decided well ahead of time that I would put the big blind all in if everyone folded to me no matter what I had. The player in the big blind seemed like a very nice guy, but he was clearly inexperienced and wasn't playing many hands. I figured that unless he picked up something really solid I'd win an easy 1,000 chips and even if I got called AND lost I'd still have 2,500 left. So when everyone folded to me I moved all in without even looking at my cards.

I've done this kind of thing a dozen or so times in the past, and usually I'll make it look like I'm checking my cards, when if fact I'm not looking at all. This time I didn't even bother, because I was sure this guy wasn't paying enough attention to notice. What's the advantage to not looking at your cards you ask? THERE ISN'T ANY! But, I find that it makes it a little more exciting and if you've decided it makes sense to move with any two cards, you don't want to look at 72 and talk yourself out of it. Once I was in a spot where I was short stacked in late position and after looking at one card, which was an ace, I moved all in. When I got called I said "I only looked at one." When I flipped up the other one it was also an ace!

Getting back to the story at hand, I moved all in without looking and expected a quick fold. Instead I got an INSTANT call. At this point I said out loud "Uh Oh. I haven't looked yet, but I don't like my hand." When I turned over my cards I saw that I had 5 3. YUCK! I was mostly worried about being up against a pair and I was shocked to see my opponent show 10 5! WHAT! A three was the first card off the deck which gave me some hope, but the second card was a ten and I said good bye to half of my chips.

I couldn't believe this call. There are certain situations where you have half or a third of your chips in the big blind and it makes sense for you to call with almost anything. This was NOT one of those situations. In my opinion about 1 in 500 players at most would make this call. The only situation in which it would make sense was if he saw my cards, but that wasn't possible since I hadn't even seen them! One of the players across the table asked my opponent "did you see that he (meaning me) hadn't looked at his cards before you called?" My opponent said he hadn't noticed, but even if he knew for a fact that I hadn't looked, 10 5 is in the bottom 25% of all hands so the call still wouldn't make sense. It's not like this guy was nuts and was in every hand. He'd been folding almost everything for 3 hours! I think he just gave up. He was probably tired of playing and had an impulse to just throw the rest of his chips in there and go home.

I was in pretty bad shape after losing that hand, but not out of it. 3 or 4 hands later I made a somewhat questionable move and ran into another weird situation. With blinds still at 200/400 the first player to act just called the big blind. For some reason this guy seemed to like just calling in early position with lots of hands, but I'd seen him fold to a raise every time. So when I looked down at K 7 I decided to take a shot. I had 2,200 left and I thought there was a fair chance that I could win the 1,400 in the pot without a confrontation. And even if I got called I'd still have a chance to make the best hand and win. I moved all in and the fellow who was in the small blind thought for a minute and then said "I should really call you." To which I replied with a smile "go ahead, I'm not afraid." He thought some more and said again "I should call you." After a little more thought he said "ok, I call" and put in another 2,000 chips. The big blind and the original caller both folded and I said "I looked this time, but I still don't like my hand." The whole table chimed in and agreed that I "at least had an ace if not a pair," which should give you and idea of my table image. My opponent said "I like your hand" and I thought "if you like my hand, then why did you call, you dunce?" I turned over my lowly K7 expecting the see a hand like A5 or a small pair. Instead my opponent showed me 4 5! WHAT! This call made maybe even less sense than the call with the 10 5 and again I'd have to say only about 1 in 500 players at most would make this call. Sadly my foolish opponent managed to make a straight and I was left walking to my car wondering how I could end up losing to that group of mooks.

I never ceases to amaze me how many people can totally ignore any logic or common sense and just act totally on impulse. While it should make them easier to beat, sometimes it can drive you nuts. Instead of feeling upset at this result, I felt more confused than anything.

Jen and I are off to Southern California for about a week so it will be a while before my next post. Have a happy thanksgiving!