Some stuff.....about poker obviously

Ok, been falling behind again. Just a lot going on in my life outside of poker. But lets get too it.

First off, BIG thanks to PartyPoker. They ran a twitter contest the other day, and I was one of 10 winners. It was only for a PartyPoker sticker patch, but that saves me having to buy one at the upcoming Red Hot Poker Tour Tournament Of Champions 24 on Sept 15th. They have more contests coming up, so if you are on Twitter and don't follow @PartyPoker I suggest you do to win some great PP gear.

RHPT ToC 24

Like I mentioned this is coming up in the next 2.5 weeks, and sadly this is my final East Region ToC for the Red Hot Poker Tour. This will be my 5th ToC and I am hoping to improve on last years 52nd place finish and ultimately finish higher than my best finish of 39th I got in my first ToC. It will be sad but as I am moving out west to Alberta, I hope to play in the RHPT out there.

Poker is a Skill Game

You heard me right, and if you don't agree your quite crazy, or a Republican.....This week a federal judge ruled that poker is more of a skill game than luck. (Article Here) I could not agree MORE. So of course the interwebs have been a flutter with analysis and blogs about the ruling. The one I agree with the most is this one by attorney Maurice VerStandig. As soon as I read the ruling everyone of these thoughts entered my head. So I won't repeat it. Just read please. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Moving.....

So yes, I am picking up my poker roots (actually I am moving out west for better work and money. Ontario sucks). That means better Casino's and games. Calgary has a slew of Casino's with poker games ranging from $1/$2-$25/$50 NLH to $5/$10 PLO in the Casino, so I can brush up on my games, build a bank roll slowly and maybe make it to the WSOP in the next couple years. If not maybe I'll hound PartyPoker to sponsor me in a couple small events.....lol

That's it for now. Gonna grind away tonight at Molly Blooms in Kitchener at RHPT to get more points and hopefully get a better table at ToC.

Back in the game

Well well well, if it isn't my old poker blog. Time to get this sucker back up and running.

Welcome Back Folks!!

Been a while since I have blogged and have decided to start this back up again. Season 24 at Red Hot Poker Tour has started up again. Last night I collected my first win of the season in Live play. I also have 2 online final tables (will update Final Table List once they are posted online tmo on the leader board).

Not much to say right now about last nights game. I had a really good heads-up against on of the newer players in the league. I had the rights reads at the right time, and got lucky and hit a few times when all hope looked bleak.

Last night was my first time playing live in two weeks, and the rest seemed to do me some good.

As most people know the WSOP (World Series Of Poker) has started up again and they are 22-23 events in already I believe. Some good showings by big name pro's and of the course return of the great Phil Ivey. Biggiest WSOP news so far is Phil Hellmuth has won his 12th WSOP bracelets (Read Full details here). It is his first NON Hold'Em bracelet winning it in the $2500 Razz 7. Congrats to Phil and a continued good WSOP to ALL competitors.

Speaking of competitors in the WSOP. A BIG congrats to my friend and fellow Red Hot player Greg Van Norman for winning our online Championship and winning a seat in WSOP Event #56 $1500 No Limit Hold'Em this year. Good luck to him and the Red Hot players in the other regions that are going.

In The Winners Circle!

So I had a great day on the felt on saturday. Not only did I grind my way to a win at Red Hot Poker Tour (7th of the season). I also won a fundraising tournament for the Wilmot Wild Lacrosse team.

The tournament was small (for what I'm used to) but it was a good turn out, and a very hard field. The format was No-Limit Hold'em, $40 buy-in with unlimited $20 re-buys for the first hour. The final 4 guys left were John, Bruno (the teams GM), myself, and the New Hamburg legend Smelly Doug. Wow did he ever live up to his name. I was lucky to have a cold and not have to smell him. The final 4 of us went 90mins and after a few close calls, bad beats and a couple hero calls Bruno went out in 4th. After reclaiming a bunch of chips that I had lost to Smelly Doug i was able to eliminate him from the tournament for good (i had also caused him to re-buy twice in the first hour), and then we were down to just me and John. After about 35 back and forth hands, I had a slight chip lead, and then finally we both shipped all the chips in the middle and I was able to come up with the win.

I look forward to the next one in May. The tournament is held at Bellzy's Sports Grill every 4th Saturday of the month in New Hamburg, ON. If you can make it out it is a lot of fun. Plus i have a title to defend.

Updates and stuff

Ok, so it's been awhile since I have taken fingers to keys and wrote out about what I need to in the poker world. But A LOT has happened. If you pay attention to the news you know what i am talking about.

First I wanna go over a couple personal and close to home poker things.

First, my buddy Matt (theplat) had a good night at a cash game at a friends place last weekend. He only saw pockets 3 times, but flopped a set each time, and had a boat by the river each time, and at the end of the night came out ahead in money! GG Matt.

Second, I have had some pretty good results lately on the Red Hot Poker Tour. I have two win recently (including last night) and am surely guarenteed ToC now. i have 13235 in CQ points and currently sit 54th in the league and 4th in the region with 2 weeks to go. ToC 20 is May 14th, and I plan on going deep.

Ok, lets get to the biggest poker news since Duhamel winning the WSOP.

The US Dept Of Justice had shutdown and laid down indictments against a couple major poker sites. Full Tilt, Poker Stars being the biggest. Now, as someone who plays very little online poker such as myself (i also live in Canada where we can still play), I see this as everyone else does. A VERY BAD THING. There is NOTHING good about this outcome. Mid-level pros, and online-pros are gonna be hurt the hardest. The first big winfall out of this aside from the actual shutting down is that cash accounts in the US are suspended and players (whether your name is Tom Dwan or Joe blow next door) can not get their money out. Last I had heard is that players will be ble to access their money soon and that is a positive at least.

Now, as someone that knows a thing or two about computers I can surely say If I was a pro in the US I would be looking for ways around it ASAP, which of course there are a couple ways. The cheap way, and the expensive way. The expensive way is move to a country that allows it. The cheap way being downloading software from a europeon based site, like fulltilt.co.uk or everest poker and play ont their software using a VPN from the US giving you a eurpeon or other countrys IP so it looks like your not playing in the US. Now I am not sure if logging into someone computer via "The Cloud" overseas would work. But i don't see why it wouldn't.

Now, I follow several pro's and a couple of the big poker sites on twitter, and have seen some re-tweets pointing to other articles and pro's personal opinons. There are many theories as to what kind of backlash/endgame this cause and there are some interesting ones for sure.

A have read several times that many feel this will hurt the WSOP and are predicting a drop to pre-2004 numbers. This would actually shock me if this happened. Such a prostegious tournament like this I don't see this hurting much more than the number of people that win their seats free online. I think if anything this will up attendance at satelitte qualifiers at casinos with people trying to win more spots that way.

Another major thing I read is mid-level pro's losing sponsorships from the big guys based on the fact that the sites won't have as much money to pay for the sponsorships. Unfortunately I see this as a true outcome. Hopefully with europeon sites becoming bigger while all the US players not being able to play online in the US, a few sites make more money to sponsor some of these up and comers.

So, there you have it. Now to steal from Jerry Springer, here is my final thought on the matter. I believe the DOJ did this on behalf of other goverenment parties that want online poker to be more regulated and want to collect more tax money from the billion dollar industry online poker has become. I just don't understand why the US government couldn't work nicely with pro's and the site the ways the pro's have been suggesting for a while. All in all, it is a sad time for online poker and poker in general. There will be some significant results coming out of this is the coming weeks and months and I am going to keep on top of it the best I can.

Until next time keep the cards in the air.

Tweeting Live Tourney's

Ok, this may seem like more of a rant, than a blog, but I have to get this off my chest.

Full Tilt Poker's twitter feed PISSED me off this weekend. I follow all 3 (ub, you don't count) Major poker sites twitter feeds, because a couple of them have exclusive tourney's for their followers and such. FTP being one of them.

Now I am all for Pro's, and the sites tweeting hands that are sick, and when their pro's update their blogs and such. But Tweeting LIVE tourney result that will be Airing on TV soon NEEDS to stop.

This past weekend was NBC's National Heads-Up Championship, and had a exciting field of 64 players. Except Tony G was excluded, and was upset about it. Read about that here. Continuing, FTP started tweeting pics of the players at the read carpet, and taking seats and that was good stuff. They even were tweeting some big hands. But then they started tweeting the results. This person is out, this person is moving on and so on and so forth. Right until the end of the tourny last night.

This was not done at any other tourny this year, by FTP, PP or PS at anytime, and it needs to stay that way. I enjoy watching some of these tourny's on TV without knowing the results before hand. WSOP 2010 was a great example of that. Before ESPN broadcasted the Main Event and the 50k Players Championship, TOC, and the Nov Nine. I had very little info to go on. Cause nothing was tweeted and I ignored the WSOP site.

I do realize "Social Media" has changed the way we do things. But you need to be responsible about it. Stuff like this makes me angry.

/end rant

Now, congrats to who Won the NBC National Heads-Up Championship. You deserve it. I will not reveal who it was, cause that's not my style.

Takin a slight break from the felt this week. Might play on PartyPoker tonight and at Red Hot Poker Tour on wed. But real life has got in the way a bit this week.

Another Win, and Online Final Table

Just a quick post, had a good run at the beginning of the week last week. Made the final table on PartyPoker Big Game satellite, then followed it up the next night with another Double Points win at Red Hot Poker Tour.

One hand to talk about in my win at Red Hot. Blinds are at 100/200. I had 88 UTG. I open for 600. UTG +1 Goes over the Top to 1200, bunch of folds, then Button re-pops it again to 2400. SB and BB fold. There is 4500 in the pot. I decide to call the 1800 more to me getting just about 2.5 to 1. UTG+1 also calls. Flop comes Q84 rainbow. I hit my set so I check. UTG +1 checks. Button pushes. I take a couple minutes to call based on I know that button likes to play QQ so I am slightly worried that she has a bigger set. I have her covered so I decide to make the call UTG+1 folds. Cards get turned over and she has AA. Board comes blank-blank. I winner. She's angry. Due to me eliminating her online the night before with an open ended straight draw that I hit the straight on the river. She had QQ I believe, and had flopped a set.

-Geesus

Cooler Victim

Just a small post this morning. I was the victim of a MEGA cooler (as my friend Plat said) last night.

I had just lost a big pot and was down to 4300 in chips. I was UTG. I look at my cards and I have KK. Blinds are at 100/200. I make a raise to 800. A few folds. Cutoff re-raises to 2000. Button shoves for 7200. I decided to shave as well for all of my 4300, cutoff calls the 5200 more from the button shove. I show my KK. Both CO and B show AA. That's right. The hand is now KK v AA v AA. I was a little happy cause now I have outs. Then the board comes 898 9 9. So not only do I lose and go home and they chop the pot. But the board is a boat. I can't even to begin looking at the odds of getting a 3 way hand of KK v AA v AA. Let alone the board showing a boat.

Wasn't upset, cause sometimes that's the way the cards fall. Taking the weekend off from both the live and virtual felt.

See everyone Monday!

The Poker Funny

Ok, small update to the blog tonight. I need to inform everyone of a hand at one of my tables tonight at Red Hot Poker Tour.

So there was 2 people in the hand after the flop, both people at this point had straight draws, turn was nothing big, and then the river hit and both hit their straights. So at this point one checked the other pushed and the other called at which point they both show the 9 high straight.

Here is the funny. So guy 1 shows 94 offsuit, and then guy 2 shows A9 and says I also have the straight but I also have an Ace kicker!!! WoW!! He was serious and thought at first his Ace should of played.

Thats it for tonight. I ended up not making final table and went out 12th. But thats ok.

Thats it for this post, but I'll have one later in the week.

Double Points Day

Today is double points day at Red Hot Poker Tour. I think I shall bring out my inner donkey today. Updates later!

Winner!

Had another good night on the felt today! Won again tonight at Red Hot Poker Tour. The win also gets me double points and moved me into 1st place in the league.