Party Poker Blog

"The exhilaration of this form of economic existence is beyond my power to describe."
Nick the Greek Dandalos, who died broke on Christmas Day of 1966.

Nick the Greek is the same guy who said, "The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing," a sentiment I personally do not concur with.

Allrighty then, I'm back and as verbose as ever. A full week sabbatical with not one poker hand played nor discussed. There aren't any gamblers in my family (although I certainly don't consider what I do to be gambling) and surely such a conversational topic would arch eyebrows. Theory of Poker did help me to fall asleep on several nights, however.

Don't get me wrong - the Theory of Poker is the Torah to me. I only wish David Sklansky would spend six months playing online and publish a revised version entitled, "The Theory of Party Poker." There simply wasn't much in TOP that was applicable to me right now. I need to go re-read Gary Carson's book and cleanse my online poker palate.

That being said, I jumped on Party Poker tonite, full of cold medication (thank you Minnesota!) and got thumped for -$50 in 3.6. Then I pissed away $10 on a satellite for the $200 NL tourney on Party Poker tomorrow. For the love of God, it was a limit tournament, which I retardedly didn't realize until the second orbit. Oh the humanity. So I'm irked and holding Sklansky personally responsible for my $60 loss this evening.

I haven't had time to catch up on online poker going-on's yet, but while I'm bashing on S&M, I did find this response to a newbie low-limit online poker player who was asking about Sklansky and Malmuth's Advanced Hold Em Poker For Advanced Players book:

--
You say you're reading HEPFAP - If you're playing at low limits (and
as you're just learning hold'em I'll assume you are), I wouldn't even
bother with most of the plays in it. The most useful tool in it, in my
experience is check-raising the field from EP (and this is hardly a
unique invention of S&M, although Sklansky might claim credit for it),
as it is the most effective way of destroying people's odds to draw.
In a game where around 5 people see a flop, someone will almost always
bet the flop in LP, even if the table is passive, because they see
checking as weakness and either they think their bottom pair is good,
or they are trying to bluff (yes, they're trying to push their loose
passive opponents off a hand). So you can usually be sure of a
checkraise. Anyway, as I'm sure you already know, playing good solid
starting hands (don't bother with that group 4 KTs stuff, it just
bleeds chips) and playing sensibly post flop.
--

Also, an interesting post from the venerable blog Love and Casino War, about Phil Helmuth and the merits of playing blind.

It's telling how something like playing blind for a hand or two can make such a big impression on your opponents in a home game, yet will never be a factor in online play. Online poker doesn't remove the 'human factor' from poker, it just sterilizes it.

Geezus, this post has gone on too long. Time to wrap this up and get back to Party Poker.

Congrats to my man, Royal, on the birth of his first child, Anna Louise. You can start teaching her about pot odds in a few years. :)

Link of the day:
Soldiers Need Something to Mount
Matt Taibbi explains why our hostile takeover of Iraq is having staffing issues: "If you want to recruit killers for foreign conquest, you need to be able to offer them the three basics: treasure, murder and pussy. There is no pussy in Iraq, absolutely none."