Transitioning to live poker: Topping up your stack

As a player who mostly studied the game online, I've had to adapt a lot to playing live: stop being a tell-box, dealing with distractions, wearing presentable clothes, counting and learning how to handle chips, etc.

Today I'm sharing another adaptation that most live players don't do: automatically topping up.  Failing to do this as a winning player is costing you money.

When you play online, the software has an option to automatically rebuy back to whatever level you want immediately after you lose money.  It's smooth, seamless, and it maximizes your EV compared to topping up only when you get felted. Those extra big blinds matter when you double up through someone who has you covered.

But how would you do this live? Playing in a brick and mortar establishment, refilling means getting out cash and bothering either the dealer or the cage to get more chips. This is okay-ish for $100+, but it would be a real bother for a small amount of chips, and doing it means you slow down the dealer or miss a hand going to the cage.

Solution? I buy extra chips beforehand and stuff them in my pocket. If I drop below the max buy-in, I just flip some out to my stack.  Voila! Automatic (okay, analog, shut up) topping up in live poker. 

I take all credit if you win more, but no responsibility if you lose extra money doing this fancy maneuver.

Atlantic City 2015- A Dying Land

The landscape has changed.

I haven't played much over the last few years except my annual Atlantic City trip with friends, and this year was drastically different.

Not only did 1/3 of the casinos close down in the last year, but so have four other poker rooms within casinos. 

Sadly that includes my favorite at Trump Taj Mahal. RIP! You will be missed as my 2/5 launch pad.

Tropicana, Bally's, and Caesar's also closed their poker rooms, but Bally's renovated and opened a new one in the Wild Wild West casino.  It's actually really nice. They provide free Wifi (ask for the password), and it meets WSOP standards so they can hold circuit events.  

Then again, both Caesars and Bally's were included in a January bankruptcy filing by Caesars Entertainment Corp. Damnit. 

In 2016, will the city even be worth visiting anymore?  More casino closings are all but certain. Crime and unemployment are sure to go with them. Borgata may one day be the only poker option left.

Enter Omaha Poker, the pinnacle of action

NLHE is still my main game (and what I'm most skilled at/ where most players are), but I've reached the point of no return for my poker addiction.  Sometimes, I just need more... action.

Enter Omaha. It's very similar to Hold-Em with the flop, turn, and river, but I'm dealt twice as many cards to start, giving me SIX two-card hands instead of one. Do you know how many more hands I can play with that?

Harry Potter has cravings, too.

But it's not enough to satisfy my cravings. Oh no. I need even more action. PLO is just my gateway game.

And that's why I sat down at a game that shoots action directly into my veins to explode out my eye-sockets: Pot-Limit Omaha, Eights or better (PLO8). Not only do you have 6 two-card hands to play, you ALSO play for two separate pots, the "Hi" and the "Lo" (there's too much action in PLO8 to care about good spelling, trust me).

This means it's a good investment. Trust me.

There is always a Hi pot, following regular Omaha rules, and the Lo pot only happens whenever a player has a Lo-qualifying hand, a 5-card, unpaired hand of 8 and below using exactly two of your hole cards and three on the board. Low pots follow Razz scoring: straights and flushes don't count against you, whoever has the "worst" poker hand wins, and hands are ranked from corresponding high and low cards. Here's how you rank, say, 34568 vs. A2378. Their 5th highest card is the same, so we go to the 4th highest. 34567 beats A2378 because 6 is lower than the 7. Oh, and the Hi and the Lo are each half the pot, with any odd numbers going to the Hi pot. Also, the Hi and the Lo can each be split multiple ways in the case of a tie.

All this is to say, nobody knows what the hell they're doing in this game. The session I played, I didn't even know what hands I held some of the time. It's so complicated that there are probably very, very few people who are any good at the game. How can I say that? Well, as a beginner, I promptly won two buy-ins over an hour at Seals with Clubs just based off of general poker knowledge, a spirit of gambool, and a brief primer from my copy of Super/System II on the fixed-limit version of O8 (and a healthy dose of sheer luck) .

There's nothing like drawing to 21+ outs or rooting against it for your opponent, and in two different pots in the same hand.

I just may try my hand at Maryland Live's PLO8 tables next time I go. I remember seeing they actually spread the game there. Wish me luck!

Spend it like Big Government! The Great Money Hole of 2013

I cannibalized my poker roll (plus most of my savings).

It may not have done any favors towards
furthering my poker goals, but it was a massively +EV life decision.

A lot's happened since my last post, and I haven't played too much poker in the interim. What I DID do was buy my first house, my first car, and get promoted at work to my first supervisory position. Then I went on a spending spree and dropped a ton of money on clothes so I could literally look like a boss.

In other words, I'm recovering from a massive spending binge.

Asian babies are clearly the cutest.

Oh, and little Thorn arrived! Though I should mention that he carries a hefty price tag himself. Our thankfully, surprisingly good maternity coverage paid for all but $75 of his delivery (average expenditure is over $1,000 WITH insurance, for a routine birth), but formula, diapers, and clothing adds a significant amount to baby-raising costs.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: Daycare costs $370 per week. Yes, that is not a typo. Per month, that's a whopping $1603.33. It's actually on the cheaper side for my area, but that still runs more than college tuition PLUS room and board... and I couldn't take out any fancy loans for it.

Now I know why Americans don't have many kids on average.

I'm slowly building a poker roll back up on Seals. More poker updates to come, including a few trips I made to the newish Maryland Live! casino, a horrible poker mistake that's cost me $2,000, and forays into the crazy game of Pot-Limit Omaha.

Stay tuned this weekend!

Atlantic City Poker! +EV Blackjack too!

 Trip Total: $900.00 in poker profit over 5 sessions, $95 in Blackjack profit over 1 hand

The 2/5 table I had at Trump Taj Mahal was probably the tightest table I've ever encountered live. I'm glad I developed a good LAG game in the last year because it served me very well here. I burned about $300 here because I forgot people, including relatively tight players, actually limp behind with AK in late position live (an exploitable read of mine from being an online player that the villain took full advantage of), and I didn't read her for the straight that came down against my set.


I played at Tropicana because it was conveniently next to where I stayed at the Atlantic Club, but their games don't often run higher than $1/2 for NLHE. I also stopped in at Borgata for $2/5, which has easily the biggest poker room and the most action there. I got the impression that the good players at Borgata were better than the ones I've met elsewhere, and the bad players were pretty much as bad as can be. Very good action, but if you go there, be aware you can and should change tables if you  get seated at a tough one.

Finally, who says that poker's the only way to get advantage gambling?  I'm talking about Blackjack, baby! And I didn't even have to learn how to count cards! I played exactly one hand because Taj Mahal gave me a $50 free matchplay based off my play the last couple years. This meant that with a 43.31% chance of winning the hand, I risked $50 to win $100 ($95 because I planned on tipping the dealer $5 if I won). There's also an 8.8% chance of tying (no gain/loss), and a 47.89% chance of losing (-$50).

My EV for the hand was +$17.1995, which isn't bad for the 2 minutes it took. Even better, I hit it and ran above EV, so I walked off with an extra $95 to the cheers of the table. Hah, I'm running good! I hope they give me another matchplay next year!

Seals with Clubs Poker Room Review

I love Seals with Clubs. It's exactly the site that beleaguered Maryland players like me need since our only "mainstream" poker network option is the disaster of the Revolution network (aka Lock "takes over 100 days to cashout" Poker, Intertops "charge you $50 for a check" Poker, etc.), and it's practically tailor made to what I was looking for.

Here are the reasons I play there as a recreational cash gamer.

1) Steady action up to the equivalent of NL50
2) No mass multitablers and no HUDs = no professionals on the site
3) Possibly tied to #2, the games are very, very beatable
4) Very low rake (2.5%, with 50% "table starter" rakeback for playing at 2-3 handed at 6max or full ring tables). On top of that, you can get rakeback if you play there long enough, and there's no losing rakeback levels (it's cumulative and eternal).
5) Very generous promotions/freerolls. There's a high hand bonus that you don't have to use both cards for, just get quads or better. There's a free roll every hour where the winner gets the quivalentof $1. Their twitter account sends out codes for free chips every few days, and they also run special monthly promotions for freerolls or extra rakeback and the like.
6) Site uses Bitcoins. This means that it doesn't violate UIGEA sinc bitcoins aren't a legal currency. Also, cashing in and out is easy and quick (12 hours max) since they don't have to dodge regulators. Converting to USD via exchanges is only a 1% fee each way (some charge more).
7) Seals also uses a system that I think helps people to play better poker, helping disassociate the chips on the table and their real money value. You play with Seals chips (1000 seals chips = 1 BTC).

Cons:

1) Software is not amazing. The main chat can get annoying since you can't really mute people, just replace what they type with a "*".
2) You have to get the currency (Bitcoins) through a third party. Seals has some resources and FAQs about Bitcoins themselves, it's pretty easy to pick up, but it is a minor inconvenience.
3) Low traffic. It's been picking up as the site gets more notice, but there isn't a wealth of tables at each stake. Currently, I play at their highest regular game at 10/20 (in seals chips), and it's not uncommon for a game to fizzle and die (just this morning I had everyone sit out or leave on two tables after about an hour of play) and not have another one running.
4) Collusion is a possible concern if they play higher/get more traffic. It's not a concern for cash games (most colluders end up being easy money despite collusion), but I'd be concerned if I played tournaments on the site.
5) Few tables run and no HUDs, so if you're used to that, you won't get it here.
6) Nothing runs higher than the equivalent of NL50 with regularity on the site.

All in all, it's a great site for micros players to have fun in and get better or practice for live play. This is really what I'm doing; I'm looking more towards playing live, and this 1-2 tabling at SWC is really good practice. I have an Atlantic City trip in four days where I'm planning on hitting 2/5 at the Borgata... so wish me luck!

Bitcoin Poker

I'm definitely back, and oddly enough, I'm now a cash gamer.

Current bankroll: 28 bitcoins ($574.56 at today's market rate) That's right, my bankroll is being held not in dollars, but in bitcoins.

What's a bitcoin, you ask? Well, it's pretty much the best currency for online poker in the US since Black Friday happened. Bitcoins are a digital crypto-currency made up in 2008 by some group of possibly Japanese programmers.

Here are the important parts: It's as good as cash, it operates in a legal grey area because it is not a legal tender, and it can't be frozen by any government or law enforcement agency. This means that all those laws under UIGEA that shut down poker and gambling web sites for illegal money transfers don't apply, cashouts are blazingly quick from bitcoin poker sites compared to USD poker operators like Merge and Revolution, and most importantly, there's no chance of funds being frozen like on Black Friday!

At the site I play at (Seals with Clubs), it takes 12 hours maximum for a cashout. Compare that to waiting half a month to four months for a check from the dollar-denominated gambling sites, as well as ruling out another Black Friday, and you have a site that dominates the competition. Bitcoin poker is here to stay, and I'm very glad for it!

I'll do a more in-depth write-up of Seals soon.

It's been a while...

It took me a year and a half, but I've finally rebounded enough from the shock of Black Friday to venture out into the poker world again. It's a strange new world, and the live/online poker worlds seem to have been completely switched up for me. Before, the nearest live casino was 5 hours away in Atlantic City while online poker was available just a few clicks away.

Since then, not only did Black Friday kill PokerStars and Full Tilt, but Bodog changed its name to Bovada and pulled out of my super anti-online poker state of Maryland. Casino construction projects in Baltimore and next door in Prince George's County were approved. Hollywood Casino (formerly Charlestown Races & Slots) in West Virginia got a poker room, this one just 2 hours away. I've tested the online waters recently, but no site seems to want to touch Maryland after its part in seizing the bodog.com domain name. The money-grubbers opening casinos must want all the action to themselves, but the casinos are probably years away from being built and opening. There's a big void for Maryland players... so I've started turning to home games, found on 2+2.

I sent an email to a game of likeminded young professionals (According to the ad, the average player age is just 23! At 25 I might actually be one of the older people in the group.). Aside from the blogger crew (wonderful as you are), I haven't had any live bodies to really talk poker to. It'll be nice to make some live friends who actually share a passion for my favorite hobby, to talk difficult hands through with after, etc. Also, I was surprised to learn that I still have some followers despite disappearing for so long! Thanks Josie, Mojo, and Lou for sticking around :) Look for more updates in the near future! I'll be able to find some poker action somewhere...

Full Tilt: Tips for Salvaging What You Can

The poker shutdown's Black Friday came and screwed up my day, and my favorite hobby, but I'm doing what I can to make the best of it and have done something new and exciting that I've never done before: Redeemed my Full Tilt points for merchandise!

I've always held out since it cuts into your rakeback, but seeing as I won't be playing for a while, and might not be able to do anything on Full Tilt ever again, I decided to give it a shot.

Yes, my order went through, but it's exciting how I really have no idea whether or not they'll be able to honor it. We will see! Here are the steps necessary to do this yourself:

1. Download the software update from to access the FTP client again
2. Open client
3. Redeem FT points at the FT store!

I ordered the 60" umbrella, the velour bathrobe, the Logitech z313 Multimedia speaker system, and a teddy bear for the wife.

Wish me luck; I hope I get it!

Riding the Rollercoaster

Today was a little crazy. I went up and down a couple hundred dollars, tried new games, had a PokerTracker3 malfunction, scored my biggest online tourney win to date, and finished the day $50 down.

First came the bad. I decided to stick my head back into cash games for the Take 2 Promotion on Full Tilt, where if you play 2 or more cash tables (or just RUSH) every day, there's some stupid prize at the end of a week. Just the carrot to lure a cash fish like me to open up EIGHT six-max tables. 30 minutes later, $61.44 down the drain. Hmmm how about heads up games? No luck there either, another $12.00 down the drain over the course of 2 hours.

WTF cash games! I hate you. I'm quitting you, for real this time! So I mosey on over and pull up the STTs again. I play two sets and lose about $20. Still, I don't feel bad about it. Unlike with the cash games, I actually understand the STTs inside and out and can pretty much assure myself I just ran really, really bad.

That means I need a change! MTT land it is! 45-mans and the Daily Double. Gotta dream big! Except I donk out of the first 8 45-mans, including one painful bubble and one near-bubble, and both Daily Doubles. I've lost over $200!!! That's worse than my RUSH downswing debacle.

I had one left and had just made the final table... and then my HUD stopped working. Right at the MOST IMPORTANT PART! AGH! And then I win it all to take back $171. SCREW YOU PokerTracker3! I don't need no stinkin' HUD to win it all! And now I'm drained. So this is what it's like to grind MTTs. Made me feel like this guy.

I think I'll do it again some time.

Exercising for life (and poker)

Exercise is good for your life, both physically and mentally, for my muscles and my poker. It keeps you sharp. I know this, but I've been a slacker. Since doing 80 days of the p90x program to get in shape for my October wedding, I haven't done anything but lose all my progress, enjoying the lazy married life and throwing sticks of butter into my cooking (the wife makes me do it, I swear!).

Waffles has been doing some really inspiring exercise programs lately. I mean, if this pushup program whipped an ol' mess like him into shape, it's gotta work for everybody!

Just the type of exercise program I need, actually. It holds your hand, tells you what to do, and sets your schedule FOR you. Perfect for a guy like me.

I'm in. And I think I'll throw in the situps program too, on the pushup rest days.

Cashing the Dank!

I decided to play in the final Survivor Dank.

I came in third, finishing behind 23Warsaw and Shabazz Jenkins when my AQo failed to hold against Shabazz's KJo all in pre.

So it's been forever since I last cashed in the Dank. It was actually still called the Mookie back then. And I definitely can't complain about losing to KJo because it took a hell of a lot of sucking out for me to get that far!

I pretty much couldn't lose the tourney until the bubble burst, cracking DDionysus multiple times, including his AA with QQ all in pre, taking down Josie's top pair with 3 outs after getting it in on the flop, and conquering Numbono's AK vs. my A3, also all in pre.

It was fun, but I'm tiiiiired. Goodnight!

If you want to join in the fun, look for The Dank on Wednesday nights at 10:00pm, and visit to hear a live webcast from the organizer! Password is vegas1.

March wrap-up: Impressions of the STT scene

Current Bankroll: $1,135.94

Since my switch to tournaments from RUSH poker, I've had a very good run of luck at the STTs. I call it luck because I've only played 119 of them, and my ROI is at 37.34% (thinly veiled brag) which is ridiculously far above what is supposed to be sustainable: 15% for the best of the best.

After a really rough February, I'm loving poker again. I've learned another poker skill, too! The ability to really multi-table. I'm up to 8 at a time!

Observations on Multi-tabling:

1. Full Tilt has an "auto-tile" function if you are playing multiple tables. So long as your monitor resolution is high enough, if you select a table and push CTRL+9, it will arrange them all in a nice little series of boxes net to one another so that you can see all the tables at once, like so. This is me pretending I'm good enough to 9-table NL 5/10.

2. Eight tables is definitely my limit, and even then it gets a little crazy if I end up surviving late in 6 or more of them. I tried playing 9 once, and had the good fortune of cashing in 7. That was a little ridiculous.

3. Above the $11 level, it looks like the STTs on Full Tilt really don't run too often. While they fill and go every 45-60 seconds at the $11s, the $22s looked incredibly slow by comparison. I guess that's a price that's too high for your average Full Tilt donkey. Definitely not my friend if I want to move up and multi-table them. If my success continues, I very well might put a part of my roll on Poker Stars again because their games actually do run fairly often at the $22 level.

4. I'm seriously considering getting TableNinja to help me multitable better in the future. What it does is use AHK scripts so I can fold, raise, bet, or open a new tournament with the click of a button. A whole lot less mouse clicking, but a whole lot easier for me to mistype and screw things up. Also, on their website, it explicitly says their software doesn't work with PokerTracker 3, which is what I use. That would be a problem since I would need to buy Hold Em Manager, but I've seen posts on forums, etc. that it actually DOES work with PT3. Not to mention, I can always just try the free trial first.

Does anyone out there use TableNinja (hopefully with PT3)? Thoughts? Anything I should know before TableNinja is my undoing?

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

DAMMIT! I'm done with you, RUSH poker cash games! I've injected you into my veins one too many times, enduring your hellish swings and illusions of riches. GET OUT, I SAY!!!

I'm sorry, honey. It isn't you. It's me. And it's tough for me to say that.

I'll remember you fondly for teaching me better preflop and postflop skills, the ability to mass multi-table, for bringing me out of being a losing player at NL5 and NL10, and for building up my roll.

I'm not sure you're going to want to hear this next part. There's... another game. I've been playing you both, baby, and I want you to know the truth. That's right, I'm going back to my first love: the tournaments. They know how to treat a man right. And it's partly about the money.

Cliff Notes: Lost more at RUSH cash games, bringing me down to ~$650. Tourneys brought me all the way back to $994. So long, cash games!

Thorn's Big Mistakes: Tilting Down

February brought a rude awakening: I'm still a tilt-monkey. Shortly after my last, glorious post about a storybook January, I hit another 10-buyin downswing at NL25 Rush over about 3000 hands, just before I hit my oh-so-close bankroll goal of $1500. At least three buy-ins were lit on fire due to tilt.

But wait, my tilt problem got even worse. I somehow convinced myself that I was close enough to my $1500 goal, and following my beat down, not only did I fail to cut my losses and quit, I MOVED UP to NL50 Rush.

"I crushed NL25 over 50k hands, right? Screw those last 3k hands and ten buy-ins, I can win it all back with just 5 buy-ins at NL50, DUH!!!" And that's how my bankroll dropped to $850, cutting off all of January's profit aside from $100 (all of which comes from rakeback, so my graph is actually negative again).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you light over 40% of your bankroll on fire. Thank you, thank you. But there's good news! Coming next time (hopefully): a thrilling tale of recovery! I'm a man of faith... plus I'm still up $141 for the year, so even though I feel like a huge moron, it's hard to be too disappointed when my bankroll has gone up almost 20% in a month and a half.

Current bankroll = $891.

Staying Positive,

Thorn

January 2011 Results and Lessons!

January was awesome! With rakeback, I took in a little over $700. I'm just 3000 hands shy of my fairly ambitious hand goal and about 1.3 buy-ins short of being rolled for NL50. I should get there by the end of the week (yay rakeback!), unless another downswing hits me.

I learned a few useful tips this month. Allow me to share :). First, I found out how incredibly swingy the game gets from NL25 and up. People really don't give NL25 and NL50 enough credit because they're still "micros." There's a 10-buy-in downswing there in my graph. I also had a super hot 8 buy-in upswing just a few days ago. This game is CRAZY!!!

Also, more importantly, I found out that I am much, much better 3-tabling Rush than I am 4-tabling. I tend to lose track of the action with 4, and way too many times this month I ended up folding premiums preflop because I couldn't get to the screen in time. AA, KK, QQ, AK... you name it, I folded it. It's pretty horrible when you click the raise button and think you just got it in time... but you didn't. Because you were an idiot and played too many tables. IDIOT!!! That may or may not have had a lot to do with my downswing.

So I got smart, cut down to the number of tables I could handle, and things took off with a bang. It also doesn't hurt that I luckboxed a couple buy-ins to end the month today :). And that's how you double a bankroll, folks. Can I keep my success up in February, and at NL50? Is it THAT much harder than NL25? Was this all just a 50,000 hand pipe dream and I'll wake up as my true fishy self in February? Stay tuned.

Folding Kings Preflop

Here's an interesting hand where I ended up folding the second best hand in poker pre-flop. I'm pretty sure this is the only time I've ever done that. I think it turned out alright.

Full Tilt Poker $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
UTG+1: $48.59

UTG+2: $98.60

MP1: $60.71

Hero (MP2): $26.48

CO: $21.15

BTN: $47.45

SB: $17.10

BB: $29.90

UTG: $67.26



Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP2 with K K




UTG calls $0.25, 2 folds, MP1 raises to $0.75, Hero raises to $2.25

TIME TO POUNCE!!!



4 folds, UTG raises to $14, MP1 raises to $30

UTG limp, 4-bet, 5-bet?!?

Hero folds


I smell aces...

UTG requests TIME, UTG raises to $67.26 all in, MP1 calls $30.71 all in



Flop: ($124.02) 7 J 6 (2 players - 2 are all in)



Turn: ($124.02) 4 (2 players - 2 are all in)



River: ($124.02) Q (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $124.02

MP1 shows A A (a pair of Aces)

UTG shows A A (a pair of Aces)

UTG wins $60.51

MP1 wins $60.51

(Rake: $3.00)




Third best with kings preflop. What's the world coming to?

So remember, folks. A word to the wise. The UTG limp, re-raise, re-re-raise is ALWAYS aces. Maybe even double aces. You heard it here first.