Poker Rants

I was watching War Inc last night (a movie about corporations running the world) and saw an ad for Pokerpalace.com. I thought that was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. Just wanted to pass that along.

Well I tried to log on to Duplicate Poker today and discovered that as of yesterday, October 5th, the company is no longer in business. I requested my bankroll, all $13 of it, and should be getting a check soon. Thankfully it was all free money. I’m saddened by this loss as I was just starting to enjoy the site. Guess I should have spent more time on it, then again every site I play on where I start with free cash seems to go down at one point. I had won $200 free money (as in I didn’t risk anything, they just gave me some cash to play with and I made something with it) over at USA Poker but unfortunately they closed down to US players. Ironic huh considering the name. Anyway, I know that isn’t a lot of cash to have in one’s pocket but keep in mind it was all FREE money. I didn’t risk a dime to get it and it sure beats playing for play chips.

OK, so I wrote a review of Duplicate Poker a couple weeks ago saying I was unsure of whether or not I liked the place. Well, now I like them. I think thats why they give you a couple dollars for free when you first sign up. The playing style over there is completely unique, having another player with the same cards at a different table. You are against him but you are also against your table. I learned, and this is why I like it now, to ignore my counterpart at the other table. Duplicate Poker will tell you how you are doing vs him for the first couple hands. In the beginning I was obsessed with that thing, trying to always play better than him. That was screwing me up. I ignore him now. I just play my way and now I’m winning tournaments. Amazing concept. Anyway great site.

Well I’ve now played in quite a few home tournament games again and have learned I need to work on my heads up skills as well as a few other points. I’ve racked up 4 2nd place finishes out of 9 games, 0 firsts and then a lot of other random outs. For the past 2 weeks I’ve placed 2nd in the first game then been knocked out quickly in the second game. Blinds go up after each person goes out so perhaps I’m getting used to playing with the larger blinds from the first game and can’t adjust accordingly for the second game. Or perhaps I’m just burned out on playing by the time the second game comes around. I’m still working on that. My reads have been going out as of late as well, I’m more focused on my own damn hand then what everyone else has at the table. I know this is a major problem with me as of late, especially considering that I’m playing against the exact same people almost every week. I seem to do better playing blind, as in not looking at my own hand. If I’m playing off my opponents checks and bets I do better but hey thats how you’re really supposed to play, off the opponent. The cards don’t matter. So I need to find the proper balance.

As for those 4 2nd place finishes 3 of them I had the chip lead going into them. I seem to crack against extremely aggressive players. This used to not be a problem for me. Then again I may just be warming up again. I’ve turned into a lets see the flop type player then I fold to bets. I need to adjust that as well. Any pointers from any of my readers would be greatly appreciated. I seem to be focusing in on a lot of well if I raise big no one will call me with garbage or if I call their big raise and hit with garbage they won’t be expecting it. I think this is a big hole I picked up from trying to play like Gus Hansen a few years back. Blindly wildly aggressive used to be my style. I’ve tightened up quite a bit now that I don’t booze while I play. I guess I just need to readjust and change around my style to less of a numbers game and more of a read game. I’ll keep you updated as to the increase / decrease in my ability and once I have my game back down pat I’ll be putting out a revised version of From Goldfish to Piranha which will more than likely be called The Poker Struggle.

This has to be the most interesting site I’ve ever played on. Right now they are giving people $3 of real money just for signing up. The way the game works is kinda odd but interesting at the same time. If you sign up for say a sit n go with 8 players its 2 tables of 4 players. You have a twin at the other table who receives the same exact cards as you. After a certain number of hands either you or your twin move on to the next round based on who has more chips. So not only are you playing against the players at your table but you are also playing against your twin who has the exact same cards as you. How you play the cards is up to you. This does bring in some interesting angles to how you play being that you don’t want to play poorly but at the same time you are dealing with 3 different personality types at the table as your twin. You may be able to steal pots at your table but he can’t. Or vice versa. It makes it kinda hard to win. I don’t know if I want to recommend this place or not at this point. I’ve played a couple tournaments and haven’t made it to the final round yet. Quite a few losses right before the money. The thing I don’t like about this is being forced to play hands I typically wouldn’t because I’m concerned with what my twin is doing at the other table. Then again I may just need to play more in this style of poker to become comfortable with it. I don’t know, I’ll come up with an answer for you guys later.

If any of you have picked up From Goldfish To Piranha (its available for free on the left side of this page) you’ve noticed I have a section set up on how to start your own poker home game. The advice was good when I wrote it for the area I wrote it in but now that I’ve moved counties I’m finding it harder to start a home game. Playing with people I know from work is easy and (believe it or not) when I did a search of my city plus poker I wound up finding a guy on myspace who just so happened to have a game the next night (which I missed because I’m currently working nights) but using things like meetup isn’t working as well as I had hoped. There are games nearby just not nearby enough for me. I’m on the meetup groups up in Beaverton and Portland, OR but I haven’t lived there in over a year. Depending on the area in which you live meetup may be useful. I started a group over at facebook as well, so far no luck. We’ll see what happens.

Well I’m now one of those guys who plays poker at facebook. Kinda interesting if you ask me, even though its not for real money. Then again I used to spend a lot of time playing good ole 2-4 limit yahoo poker. Anyway drop me a line over at facebook if you have a chance, we’ll play some fake money poker over there. I should shortly have a review up of how the freeroll tournaments go at a new online poker site I just downloaded. I’ll have the name and how the tourney is soon. USA Poker used to have the best freerolls (won $200 for free) but they don’t allow US players anymore.

I watched this just to prove I’ll watch anything poker related. For some reason Pokerstars sponsored it. OK here goes. The annoying girl from Alpha Dog (the one who was pissed that the 15 year old kid was kidnapped) is the star. Her dad, Mike Madsen from Reservoir Dogs, taught her how to play cards. Then he drove off a cliff and died. So the annoying girl, named Ace, is in med school. She meets up with some local poker players. They go to the ALL IN CASINO and she plays cards. At one point she has pocket aces, some other guy has (I believe) kings, another guy jacks, then someone else Q10. The board is A K J. They all move all in. She winds up winning the hand with a boat. I can’t shake this feeling that one of the other players actually had quads and they ignored the fact, I’ll have to watch it again. You can tell this is another one of those “let’s cash in on the poker craze” movies as elements of it don’t make sense. For instance, Ace knocks out some player in the qualifying tourney for the ALL IN Poker Tournament at the ALL IN Casino put on by ,who else, Pokerstars then the guy she knocks out winds up at the final table even though only the top 2 players qualified for the final table. Guess they’ll attach their name to anything. Basically Ace whines at everyone about the difference between right and wrong the whole movie just like she does in Alpha Dog. Those kinds of people really bug me for some reason.

This is not a good poker movie. Hell, its not a good movie at all. I walked out to smoke cigarettes several times. Then again if you’re like me and you have to see every poker movie or every Michael Madsen movie (I even have the first film he was ever in where he stuggles as an alcoholic or something, I bought it for $1) then you’ll have to pick this up.

Wow, a real poker movie for a change, not just some movie Hollywood put out with a few poker players in it that’s really about some coming of age or love story. You know the movies I’m talking about. If you don’t I’ll get you the names of them later. The coming of age story is about some punk kid who is supposedly good at poker then blows the rent money on roulette. The love story has Drew Barrymore in it. Enough ranting though, back to Rounders.

Rounders stars Matt Damon as poker player Michael McDermott. At the start of the movie Mike goes to play poker in a Russian poker club in New York ran by Teddy KGB (John Malkovich.) Mike throws down 30K and winds up losing it all in a single hand to Teddy. Mike then retires from poker at the urging of his nagging girlfriend and turns to law school and driving a truck at night. Mike’s girlfriend is very suspicious of him going to play poker all the time. Mike winds up running into his professor while his professor is playing cards with the local judges. Mike says he can read everyone’s hand blind for a summer clerkship. Mike reads the hands and impresses the judges. Mike’s girlfriend gets mad at him and rants about how he’s a “hustler” and poker has never gotten him anywhere. He borrows her car and picks up his old poker buddy Worm, played by Edward Norton, from prison. Mike and Worm go off to play cards. And thus the poker movie really begins.

This is actually a poker movie, not just a movie that has poker in it but is really a love story. Johnny Chan does appear in Rounders for a brief cameo. The thing I love about this movie is they actually refer to playing poker as a skill, not as a game of luck. They have players picking up tells on each other and playing good poker. Granted they go a little overboard with a tell but hey they have to make the movie appear to non poker players as well. The fact that the writer actually took the time to make a believable poker movie impressed me. Matt Damon actually entered the WSOP because of this movie. He didn’t do very well, but hey who cares, he played. I can’t say enough good about this film as a poker film. It’s kinda like Poolhall Junkies for pool players, a believable pool playing movie, its not just some character who plays pool, the guys actually play pool.

The point I’m trying to drive home here is if you like poker you will appreciate this film. I know there are a lot of films out there where they pretend the film is about poker but its not. This is not one of those. This is a real poker movie. A great add for anyone’s collection.

Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, Ace Frehley of KISS, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Sully Erna of Godsmack, Vinnie Paul of Pantera, plus 2 amateur online players from UltimateBetTV and a representative for a Vegas Casino (sorry forgot the guy’s name) all took part in VH1 Classic’s Celebrity Rock Poker Tournament hosted by Phil Hellmuth. Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak “The Unibomber” made special guest appearances to give coaching lessons before the game and to help out with interviews after players were knocked out.

The tourney started with Ace picking up a lucky pot from Scott Ian when he picked up trip 4’s on the river. I started flipping back and forth on the remote after I saw that happen. Sully Erna was announced as the longest lasting celebrity at the ’06 WSOP, no mention of his ’07 run. The info button on the TV told me it was from ’07 so I’m assuming early ’07. VH1 Classic was added to my TV package 2 days ago so it was new for me.

Basically think of the old Celebrity Poker Showdown show from (I believe) Bravo that was on back in ’05 combined with the Ultimate Bet poker show that used to be on Fox Sports Net. For some reason the VH1 Classic logo had to cover the third flop card and the turn card leaving only the suits visible which made the hands kinda hard to follow if you weren’t paying complete attention to the show, which a lot of the time I wasn’t.

Vinnie Paul went out first, followed up by one of the amateurs, then (I believe) Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, who not only lost the hand but his keychain to Sully. Next was another amateur. Sully knocked out both Ace and the Vegas casino guy with pocket rockets leaving the game heads up between Sully and Scott. Sully had something like 65,000 chips to Scott’s 15k. Sully’s basically a pro, Scott has barely played poker.

Scott calls away all his chips and catches a flush on the river to double up. Next hand Scott doubles up again because Sully can’t read newbies. Even Phil and the other announcer guy called Scott a newbie. Long story short Sully tries to make a move on Scott who keeps picking up ace something and the new champ is Scott Ian of Anthrax.

Every player that winds up eliminated gets to play for a trip to Alaska on a cruise in a head’s up tourney in the back. They show the knock out hand for each head’s up game. The Vegas guy winds up going against Sully for the title. Sully wins. In a side note Vinnie Paul of Pantera knocked out the first two opponents in the head’s up challenge. Each player had a check donated to charity.

The big winner of the night winds up being Sully since he wins the Alaska trip. I feel bad for Sully, I really do, as we all know that I cannot stand playing against new players. There is no rhyme or reason to how they play and Sully tried to play against Scott as though Scott had some idea of what he was doing, which against newbies is always wrong. So the outcome of the tourney wound up being something like the way it usually went on Celebrity Poker Showdown with the “pro” Hollywood player almost winning but then losing in the end.

I know that Scott Ian knows that he got lucky against Sully during this tourney. He knew that Sully was the huge favorite to win the whole thing. Then again maybe winning this tourney will get Scott Ian playing a lot more poker and he may grow into a great player. On a side note I saw Scott Ian at a Stone Sour concert in Hollywood back in ’02. He was in the upstairs bar section of the House of Blues.