Mixing it up!

Aye, it has been a while. I've been mostly sick lately, and nothing really exciting happens when you spend most of your day half-awake (or half-asleep, if that suits you better). I did write a few articles, but quite frankly, you wouldn't want to read them. They're just plain boring, and it takes too many words to say what I was trying to express. Oh well, I guess I'll blame it on the hallucinations resulting from a prolonged fever.

I wasn't feeling all that well, so I didn't feel like gambling much and starting a new Project. I decided to start learning other forms of poker instead. Yep, No Limit Texas Hold'em is not the only way to play. There are many other forms of poker that require skill, and here are a few that I enjoy these days.

Omaha8
Complete name: Limit Omaha Hold'em Hi/Low Split Eight-or-better
Description: Each player is dealt four cards, face down, and there is a first round of betting. The game is then played like Texas Hold'em, with the flop, turn, and river. At the end, the pot is split between the highest hand, and the lowest hand (if there is one.) A low hand is a hand with five cards 8-or-below, with the Ace counting as the lowest. However, you can't take just one card from your hand, or all four. You must use two cards from your hand, and three from the board. You can use different cards for your high hand and your low hand, as long as you always use two from your hand and three from the board.
Structure: Small Blind (1), Big blind (2), preflop and on the flop, the bet is a big blind (2), and on the turn and the river, the big bet is twice the big blind (4).
Best starting hand: AA23 double suited
Worst starting hand: 2222


Stud8
Complete name: Limit Seven Card Stud Hi/Low Split Eight-or-Better
Description: Each player is dealt two cards face down, and one card face up. There is a first round of betting. Each player is then dealt another card face up, followed by another round of betting. Repeat the process twice, so each player has four up-cards. Then, a final card is dealt to each player, face down, and there is a final round of betting. The pot is then split between the highest and lowest eight-or-better hand, and obviously you can play different hands for both.
Structure: Each player antes up (10) . The player with the lowest up card puts in a bring-in bet (15). On the first two rounds of betting, small bets are used (25), and on the last three rounds, a larger bet is used (50). On every street but the first, the player with the highest board talks first.
Best starting hand: AAA or A23 suited
Worst starting hand: Any hand without a pair, an ace or a draw (4-9-K offsuit)

Triple Draw
Complete name: Limit Triple Draw Lowball Deuce-to-Seven (or Ace-to-Five)
Description: Each player is dealt five cards face down, and there is a first round of betting. Each player can discard and draw up to five cards, and there is a second round of betting. There is a second draw, followed by another round of betting. As the name suggests, there is a third and final draw, with a last round of betting. The hands are then revealed, and the player with the lowest hand wins.
Structure: Small blind(1), Big blind(2), small bet(2), big bet(4). A small bet is used on the first two betting rounds, and the last two rounds use big bets.
Best hand: The Wheel (2-3-4-5-7 in 2-to-7 or A-2-3-4-5 in A-to-5)
Worst hand: Any hand without a wheel card should be mucked as fast as you can.
Note: In deuce-to-seven, flushes and straights play against you for low. While the best low hand is A-2-3-4-5 in Omaha8, Stud8 and Ace-to-Five, the Ace can only play high in Deuce-to-Seven, and 2-3-4-5-6 is a straight, thus it loses to 2-3-4-5-7. Interestingly, since the A can only play for high in 2-to-7, A-2-3-4-5 is not a straight, and it would beat any other ace-high hand.

That's it for today. If you want to mix it up in your home games, or on the net, those are some nice games you probably want to try!

Beer (Random)

Wow, I was a wii bit too drunk yesterday.

I met an old friend I used to challenge to drinking contests all the time, and this was no exception. If I remember correctly, which is unlikely, I beat him 6 times out of 6; a pretty good track record by any given standard.

What's not so good is that 6 beers in my tiny little frame, on top of the 8 I drank out of any contest, makes me way drunk, while he could just laugh them off. Thankfully I had a lift from a good friend, who's most likely old enough to be my father, and whose pair of aces suited would be quite profitable on any given flop.

So, right when I got here after, most likely, annoying him the whole way back home with my random chat, I fell down the stairs. And by that, I mean that I easily skipped 5 or 6 steps and I landed with my kneecap on the railing, for guaranteed pain.

I was thus left with my laptop to chat with poker buddies and try to crawl my way back up in a realm of agony. And I use the term 'poker buddies' generously, because their first reflex at the sight of my drunken-state was to try to get me in a real money poker game. It's true that a sliver of hope at beating me does not come across all that often, so I guess they're not to blame.

I don't remember the details, but it seems like I found my way back up, because I woke up in the middle of the night in my bed, with my laptop playing Shook Me All Night Long by ACDC still on a pillow on my chest, almost as drunk, but not drunk enough to not feel the dire pain in my kneecap, which was comparable to a kick in the balls, in the way that it cripples you and fricking hurts at the same time.

I guess there's a moral to this story. Something that everyone should remember. But I don't know exactly what it would be, so I'll do like every good textbook in school does: Finding the moral is left as an easy exercise to the reader.

Pretending (Random)

Sometimes I'm lying in the hammock, or daydreaming in some random place, and I'm thinking about some event that could possibly occur. It is usually a fantasy existing only as a fragment of my imagination, but I often end up thinking about what my post would be like if that indeed happened.

I make up whole paragraphs, with introductory lines and conclusions, and I review them. I re-read them in my head, making them better with each and every iteration. And then, I fall asleep, or get distracted, I slowly lose my line of thinking until the would-be post is nothing more than a faded memory.

I've had another of these moments recently. I won't tell you exactly what it was about, but I'm certain an accute reader could figure it out. Of course, as my imagination is overly optimistic, such a fantasy is usually about a very good move on my part, or a lucky break, resulting in a sudden increase in my overall happiness if such an event would really happen.

These are not the only writings I think of that never make it to my trusty iBook though. The more I think about it, the more examples I can dig out of the depth of my soul. I realize that my brain manages a lot of information on its own, at a mostly subconscious level. I'm like a boss walking out of the office, and coming back to gaze in awe and amazement at the work that was accomplished. Like everything one does, it's still mostly garbage. However, among these there's certainly a lot of damn good stuff.

I think that being in the zone refers to taping on that line of thinking, and simply letting it guide your actions. It's no wonder that whatever you are forced to do usually results in a subpar accomplishment. When you want to do something, when you feel like doing it, then your consciousness is not alone to work on the problem you are facing. It rallies a whole army of subconscious processes that can help you achieve much more than would otherwise be possible. When you sleep on it, these allies keep working, sorting, organizing all of it for you, until it is finally extracted and arranged for you to consciously examine.

I'm pretty sure that everyone has such moments, and anyone can put these thoughts to good use. I'm also quite certain that you can actually train yourself to be more in touch with these other entities existing inside your head. Why do some people achieve great things, one after the other, and some people just sit on their cheetos-fattened butts watching crappy TV programs all day?

It might be genetics. But that's the easy excuse. I'm much more inclined to think that such potential exists inside any and all of us, and all it takes is a little help to awaken it. You just need to stop and think about what you could be doing, what great deeds you could be accomplishing. Because we're all guilty of the good we never did.

Abort

It looks like luck did decide to poke me in the eyes repeatedly for this project. I cleared a bonus on Party Poker and all went well, finishing +179$ with the bonus in three hours. I then went back to The Project, for what would most likely be an amazing comeback, but alas, it turned out to be another kick in the nuts.

Needless to say, this is my worst month in 2006, and my only profits come from bonuses, which is also a first (I'm actually down $47 from my play alone).

I'll declare this first Project over for now. I'll tweak the details a little bit, and give it another shot though. I've watched a few high stakes online games, and frankly, I wasn't impressed by the level of play. I've got to find a way to get there, and this is pretty much the best way to do it I could come up with.

Meanwhile, anyone's up for a cold one?

Level up! - Or not

After about 5 hours of play, I hit $1000 playing NL$100. After a lenghty and well deserved break I'm using to write this post, I'll be moving up to NL$200 ($1/$2 blinds).

I didn't expect the first level to be this quick to clear. I did get my fair share of luck, but it wasn't extreme. According to Poker Tracker, I'm at 16BB/100 hands (32$/100 hands). With careful table selection and good focus, this is pretty much in the norm.

Hopefully, NL$200 will follow the same pattern, and in about 10 hours I'll be able to report that I'm moving up to NL$400!

=================================

Wow.... That's all I can say. I got the unluckiest beats of the week right when I started NL$200. Losing as a 9:1 favorite after moving all-in sure didn't help. I guess that KK vs AA at a 6-handed table can't really be avoided either (someone will have AA once out of 42 times you have KK against 5 opponents).

Time for a little break, and then I'll have to start all over again at NL$100. Thankfully, it's the start of the week-end. Many players who normally don't play poker will be there. They are not just regular fishes though. Nooo... Something far more sinister. They are just normal human beings during the week. But late at night, something takes over them. They might not even be conscious, but they will stand up, and do horrible things. Slowplaying aces, betting minimum, chasing awful draws without proper odds... We call these cursed beings werefishes. Cures do exist, but for it to be effective, the person must first acknowledge his condition, which very few are capable of!

=======================

The deck keeps hitting me in the face. I've had another KK vs AA, and a set-over-set, putting me down another buy-in at No Limit 100$. This is now the worst downswing I've ever had, even bigger than my biggest upswing. I'll need some time to recover from this one, as my style is now completly screwed. It's a tough time to go through, but I guess I'll survive.

It has begun

I officially started The Project(tm) tonight. I only played two solid hours, but I played very well. I was focused, relaxed, aggressive and smiling. The net result is +230$, which puts me at 830$. If I can always play like this, I'll hit my objective in no time.

Obviously, it's not going to be this easy. Too much luck can ruin a style even faster than bad luck. Moreover, I don't expect players at higher level to be this bad. I had a few good tables tonight, and, frankly, it wasn't even a challenge. One of my table, in particular, consisted of a very nice bunch of fellows.

The first guy I noticed had a severe case of Fancy Play Syndrome. FPS happens when you want to be too clever for your own good, and you end up never making the correct move. For example, on the first hand, it was folded to him on the button, and he decided to limp with Aces. I raised from the big blind, and he just called. Two errors already. On the flop, he got in a raising war with a short stack, so I got the hell out of there. He did win the hand, but with my 99, I would have busted him if I hit. He took some money from me when his QT hit a fullhouse when my KK hit a straight, but I ended up busting him when he slowplayed some other hand later on.

Another guy was apparently coming from the good ol' Counter-Strike days. You've seen this kind of guy before. He never makes a full sentence, he thinks he is cool by writing stuff like "lol, ur mom" or "tell her I say hi", and more importantly, he sucks at poker. He apparently thought I was bluffing when I raised 5x from the small blind, but unfortunately for him, I had Aces, and I busted his sorry ass.

One other fellow had a weird strategy. He was buying in only for 20x every time. I always buy-in for the max at a table, which is usually 100x, because this allows me to use my whole arsenal of deadly tools. My shovel is always sharp and ready, but from time to time I like to pull the trigger or set a bear trap. But that guy, he comes in with only one weapon: moving all-in. I busted him thrice. He fell in my bear trap once, called when I pulled the trigger, and had his zygoma fissured by a quick shovel jab.

The guy to my right was very docile and predictable. Whenever he checked, I'd bet and he'd fold. When he bet, he would always underbet. With a draw, I'd call and try to bust him, and with a good hand, I could call and wouldn't lose much if he did have me beat. Apparently the other players at the table were asleep at the switch, as they tried to bluff this guy after he bet. He got from his initial 50x to about 200x. It then becomes almost impossible to bust a guy like this. I sheared the poor little lamb as much as I could, but the others had made him too fat for only one man.

The guy sitting in front of me was playing some good poker. He was up a buy-in at this table, and played pretty much by the book. I usually don't like having a good player with me at a 6-handed table, but as he was sitting right in front of me, we rarely played against each others. Moreover, the meal was big enough for both of us at this table. Raw fish, tuna, donkey and lamb. You had it all. I feasted for a while, picking the best parts. Half of my profits came from this buffet, but once we had cleared the seafood, I elected to not be greedy and left.

I guess it was a pretty good first night overall. I like when a project starts on a good note. I know I can do this if I keep playing this good. I've made a few changes to my habits, and I'm giving myself as big an edge as I can. If luck doesn't poke me in the eyes constantly with sharp objects, I should be able to do this.

The Project

I'm still clearing some bonus, and still getting some stupid beats, so I'm basically breaking even. I'm starting to hate Poker Rewards (and the whole Prima network). The software just isn't on par with most rooms, and it has a lot of little details that make for quite an annoying experience. I can't wait to get out of here and start the Project.

Basically, I'll be taking 600$ out of my bankroll, and play it as aggressively as I can. I'll play the highest shorthanded NL game for which I'll have five buy-ins, and I'll stay there unless I fall below three buy-ins for that limit. With 600$ as a starting bankroll, I'll be playing NL100$, just as a warm up. As soon as I hit 1000$, it will be time for NL200$. I've already played at this level and I was doing quite well, so I'd expect to hit 2000$ relatively fast, at which point I'll go up to NL400. This is as high as I've ever been, but I should be able to adapt and play a good, aggressive game. My goal is to get up to NL1000$ (blinds of 5/10$) doing this, and then stay at that level for a while.

This should be quite an interesting ride. I'd like it to be as smooth as possible, with my new bankroll steadily going up, but that's just not how No Limit works. It can take 1000 hands to win one buy-in, and then only one hand to lose it. Swings of two or three buy-ins are quite common. You could win 300 big blinds in 50 hands, but 30 big blinds per 100 hands seem to be the highest sustainable average. I've been able to hold a steady 25 big blinds per 100 hands at two tables, so I'll most likely be playing around 2000 hands at the first level or two, and then I'd expect 3000-4000 hands to do the trick.

I'll keep this updated as often as I can, most probably starting next week. Any comment would be greatly appreciated, as, to be quite honest, I don't really know what I'm getting into. All I know is that I'm most probably the world's #1 procrastinator, and any trick to force me to play is likely to be good for me in the long run.

Hopefully, I'll end up filthy rich, and then I'll throw a huge party. Everyone reading this will obviously be invited, and we'll be celebrating my new found wealth under the sun with a cold and malty beverage. I'll then proceed to get a few good chokage stories. Otherwise, I'll drink my misery away with a cold and malty beverage, and then get a few good chokage stories.

In any case, expect beer and chokage in the weeks to come!

It had to end

I was on quite a winning streak, winning in my last 10 sessions, until my good hands finally stopped holding. It did take Quads over my fullhouse, a rivered fullhouse above my fullhouse and a flush-over-flush to put me down. My play wasn't that good, but I only lost a bit more than 100$ anyway, and that's the bonus I was clearing.

I still have about 2000 more hands to play to clear some bonuses, then I'll be back to tournaments and regular play. I'll try a new formula that should help me go up in limits and play a bit more. I'll explain it in a few days, and I hope you'll like it. Stay tuned!