I got back from Vegas last weekend. It was a lot of fun, but anti-climactic. I did five tournaments, but didn't get into the money in any of them. Stutefish came with me, so we spend the rest of the time playing $2/$4. He's still learning, so we stayed at low stakes, and he managed to go from small loser to break even during the trip. He's learning a tight aggressive style, so just needed some experience to tune it. I made a small profit from those games, but was down for the week from the to...

Sweet. My wife brought home around $4,000 from her trip. Not a bad haul for someone that hasn't played poker seriously in months. She was killing the no-limit tables at the Stratosphere. Ended up playing against a bunch of drunk guys from different wedding parties, so the tables were nearly all fish. She's got such a great system that I'm totally unable to emulate. She likes to sit down and immediately start playing like a maniac. Makes big pre-flop raises, over bets the pot post-flop, pus...

My wife did the ladies WSOP event, but got knocked out during the 2nd hour. She had been getting a run of really crappy cards, but got aggressive and was stealing like crazy. She said playing weak cards was easier, since she could always get aggressive with them without ever feeling committed to the pot. She had a decent stack when she finally picked up a real hand: AA. Called another player's all-in with it before the flop. That player had QQ, but caught a Q on the flop to make a set. Knocke...

Getting ready for Vegas, so bought a bunch of traveling gear. Have you ever seen the Scottevest ? They're these neat jackets with a ton of hidden pockets and they let you string wires (like headphones) through the lining of the jacket. I got one years ago, but it's old, ratty, and the zipper broke. So I went back to their site to pick up some new stuff for my trip. I found this awesome hoodie there. It can get pretty cold in the casinos (and it my native San Francisco), so I like to wear ...

Only a few more weeks before I head off to Vegas for the WSOP! I'm really excited about it... and nervous. Next weekend, my wife is flying out to do the women's event. I get to stay home from work and take care of the baby, so that should be fun. Man, he's getting huge . He's 6 months old, but we've had to put him in 2 year old sized clothes. My wife made some awesome baby clothes (black, pirate skulls, etc), but he only got to wear them for a couple of weeks. I hope she does well. Sh...

Huh. My referrer logs show that a couple people hit my previous post by searching for heads-up starting hand requirements. That's probably not the best way to think about heads up play. Pretty much any two cards are "playable" in heads up no-limit hold'em. A majority of the time no one will hit the board, so competing for pots becomes a game of chicken. On the flip side, when you do hit the board it's sometimes better to be holding weak cards. When weak cards hit, the board tends to look p...

Heads up, no-limit hold'em tournaments are just two people, playing head to head, until one player has all of the chips. I usually get into a session on my lunch hour and they can last anywhere from one to thirty minutes (depending on my opponent's skill). They're a lot of fun and easily my biggest money maker per hour. But it takes a lot of concentration to pull off, since you're playing every hand. Against weaker opponents, I've found a pretty nice standard strategy that works out well...

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I'm still playing poker here & there, but I've been having a hard time coming up with something to write about. Heh, I think the more hands you play, the less important any individual hand starts to seem. I have a hard time getting too excited about any individual hands or sessions. I'm still stuck at some pretty low stakes. I count my online bankroll separate from my cash bankroll now, and I don't have all that much online at the moment. So I've j...

I read this story by Doyle Brunson, where he was talking about a guy he was playing with who started raising nearly every hand. By the time the rest of the players adjusted to him, he tightened back up and got his good hands paid off. Once they adjusted to how tight he was playing, he loosened up again and started bluffing down big pots. It made it very difficult for the sharks at the table. Afterwards, the player apologized to Doyle about how bad he was playing. Apparently, he had gotten int...

As I said in my last post, my new favorite game is HORSE. It's a mixed game, so switches between a different form of poker every ten hands. I'm earning over 5/BB hour (that's five big bets an hour) pretty consistently. I'm sure a lot of that is due to getting lucky; I haven't had a losing session all month. But most of it is surely from the extremely poor play of the competition. I'm currently hanging out at FullTilt, on the $1/$2 tables, and it really is a gold mine if you've got a good gras...

It's been a long time since I posted, sorry for the break. With the new baby, I haven't had time for pretty much anything that doesn't involve milk or poop. I did get to play some poker here & there and learned a couple of valuable lessons the hard way. 1. I can't play poker when my baby cries. Seriously, it puts me on insta-tilt. I could probably ignore any other baby, but when it's my baby, it puts me into fight or flight mode. Which usually translates into fight mode, which means p...

I've seen some pretty hefty swings in the last few weeks (by my standards, at least). But I suppose that's to be expected, now that I'm playing no-limit almost exclusively. I had worked my $650 at Ultimate Bet up to over $1k, making about $100 a day for a few days a week. Then I lost nearly all that profit in less than 15 minutes! I had the second best set twice in a row... for example, the flop came K3J. I had 33, but my opponent had KK and stacked me when all the money went in. The very ...

Work hooked me up with a new cell phone. It's pretty swanky, it's the Treo 650. Huge beautiful screen, nice keyboard, camera, email, web browser, etc. I've been using it as a kind of portable computer. When looking for some poker software to put on there, I found out that Ultimate Bet has a version of their software that let's you play online, from your phone, for real money! Bonus Whores showed that UB had a 100% deposit bonus, up to $650, so I transfered some cash from Full Contact int...

Thanks for the concern, but I'm not dead yet. Just lazy about updating the blog. I haven't really had much to write about, but, as was pointed out, that has never stopped me before I've pretty much just settled into a routine of doing $50 SnG's most nights. I've been winning enough to show a profit there, but not really getting any big scores. And because of the new human expanding my wife's belly, I haven't had a chance to make it out to San Pablo much. I was able to go a couple of week...

So I've pretty much settled into a daily routine. I play the $50 buy-in no limit game on Party Poker and earn between $25 & $50. Then I play the $22 tournament and lose it. I keep getting close, but it's so freakin' hard. Even if I manage to only get all-in when I have an 80% advantage, I'm still going to go out once every five times. I've been getting better at taking some early chances to grow a big stack, though. But the pattern usually is that I'll be the table chip leader, someone with a...