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Allrighty, hit the bonus so after three days of play, I ended up + $138. Not too shabby for sitting and folding for a few hours.

I wish I had access to my hand histories right now. Funny hand last nite: I had j7d on the BB. Flop comes with 8d and 9d. Flop and turn are capped but I chase and hit the straight flush on the river. Oh the humanity.

I 3 bet him on the river, typing in "I have Jd" so he caps me. He shows his A2d and I scoop a nice pot. "You forgot to mention that 7d," someone said amidst all the damn "nh's".

Once in a lifetime.

Was able to combine my Party and Empire notes. That's HUGE!!!! I'm ready to start tackling the bigger limits with a gusto.

Weekend plans: Buddy from Madison, Wisc. is coming down this weekend to hang out. He's having a kid in a month or two so this is an opportunity for him to get out and have a little fun before the kid ruins his life. Anyway, there is a large (125 person) no-limit tourney this Saturday evening in Lexington. We shall be traveling down with Dann, I think. All three of us are experienced online no-limit players so it will be interesting to see who lasts longest.

First of all - say GOODBYE RUSH! I'm estatic that he lost his job and now Drudge is reporting on his drug use. This is akin to finding out Bill Bennet was a degenerate slot machine player in Vegas. A whale, as it were. I am having immense fun with my right-wing buddies today. :)

In other news, there's a nice write-up in today's Usa Today about the explosion of poker:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-01-poker1_x.htm

Same old kinda article with a few salient points ignored. Still is all good and I still feel like I'm in the right place at the right time regarding poker.

Ugh, speaking of that, I lost $60 last nite. Went nearly 80 hands without winning a pot at one point. Not much you can do there but suck it up and wait for the worm to turn.

I'm about 20 hands short of my bonus requirement. So regardless, it's been a free $100.

Oh yeah, almost forgot - big update on Party/Empire. You can search for certain criteria and also, they added the little sticky note thingy to designate that you have notes on players. Woooohoooo! People are also claiming they have fixed the lag in the single table tourneys but I'll have to see it to believe it.

Spent too much time on the phone last nite while playing. Damnit. Arguably, that's a big leak in my online game. It's far too easy to multi-task....I end up chatting on MIRC or Yahoo, emailing, surfing or making phone calls while playing. That's prolly cost me a lot of money. But on the other hand, I make it a point to play LL when I'm not paying attention. That way I can play ABC poker and not worry too much about any tricky, aggressive players. Once you delve into 5.10 limits, that's when you really need to be aware of who plays how....

Been playing a lot of Omaha Hi-Lo with my Turbo Software. Been devouring SuperSystem and voraciously reading all the strategy columns I can find on it as well. Very good stuff - I'll be tackling the LL Omaha games very soon...I enjoyed Stud hi/lo a TON on Party....

Random poker thought: I used to call a poker game called Wiffleball back in our home game (pre-hold em days) that was based on Baseball but I'll be damned if I can remember what the rules were.

Online Poker

Weeee. Played 1.2 for nearly two hours last evening on Party Poker. Was up about $50 or $60 early but slowly gave it back. There isn't much you can do in no-fold em....if you don't hit any flops, you're resigned to cutting your losses. I'm not a chaser and I know better than to attempt any bluffs or muscling at these limits so I just take the swings as they come.

I've got 350 outta 500 hands played for my bonus and I'm still up $60. Tack on the hundred and I'll be very pleased with my initial foray into Empire (skin of Party Poker).

Here's an interesting snippet I pulled off the RGP newsgroup. Written by Gary Carson:

--

If your win rate is $1 per hour and you played 5 hours and lost $2 in the first
two hours then your expected win for the session is $1, not $5.

You can expect to earn your average in the future, but once you've lost money
then you've lost money, it isn't made up in future sessions.

You do not earn your historical average rate for every hour you play in the
future. That's a good estimate for what you will end up with, but it's not an
hourly earn.

A little bit of background may be in order. I'm 37, married for nine years now, currently back in the Midwest, after a drunken stint in Las Vegas and assorted cities out West. I've always worked in the wacky world of advertising, currently at a kickass B2B ad agency.

I started playing online poker over five years ago. This was after bolstering my poker library with every tome I could get my hands on - sometime soon I'll make a list of my poker books - and equipping myself with several versions of the Wilson software.

I started playing on Paradise Poker. I started off well, working my way through the 3.6 and 5.10 games before flaming out and losing it all. I *wanted* to blame the dreaded cashout curse for my woes but I knew I simply didn't play well. There's a bunch more issues there but that's not what this blog is for.

Let's just say I went into sherpa study mode. Focused on B&M & home games and kept devouring all the best poker content I could find.

Anyway, ended up winning a bunch of money on Pokerstars when they were in beta (free money!) so that became my next mainstay. I always did very well on PokerStars, mostly playing the $50 or $25 pot-limit ring games. From there, I've had accounts on just about every other site you can name.

I was focusing on single table tourneys on Party Poker in late '02. Placing in the money over 52% (+ 400 tourneys) made this very profitable. But then came the fish with the World Poker Tour.
Oh the humanity.

I immediately tackled the low-limit games and have been doing so since May of this year. I've had several 1k cashouts while mostly playing 50.1, 1.2 - 3.6. Sure, I've taken stabs at the 10.20 and everything below, but 90% of my 25,000 hands have been low-limit. I use Pokertracker for my stats. I tag the fish from there and enter them into my Party Poker Buddy list. I prolly have about 50 fish currently listed, who I enjoy chasing around.

ANYWAY - I sat 3.6 last weekend and got creamed in classic Party Poker fashion. I won't bore you with the sordid details, but suffice to say, my next cashout plan was disrupted.

So last night I made the plunge and bought in to Empire. New screenname (woohoo! I always play as a female). It's a 20% bonus on deposit ($100 max) so I did the maximum and deposited $500 and fired up the new software. The blue of Empire is much more soothing than the garish orange of Party. My buddy list didn't transfer across but I can still fire up Party to check the Fish radar.

Anyway, I sat 50.1 at first and won about $20. Then sat 1.2 and lost about $22 before catching a nut flush and scooping a $70 pot - woohoo!

So I managed 146 hands last nite and won about $40 overall. My wife is teaching horse lessons tonite so I have a free shot at playing and drinking. I'm thinking a 6 pack of Warsteinner and some more 3.6 action.

Free Poker Blog

Well, well, well. Figured I might as well start trying to document some of my experiences with God's nectar, Guinness, and the online Phenomena of Poker. I've been playing poker online for about six years. Drinking seriously for about twenty.

I'm trying to discern more about standard deviation.

Case in point--there's a guy who came up with a method of measuring "luck"--basically you count pots with one stack and blinds paid with another stack (subtly, of course). The optimum ratio is different for everyone--mine is 0.8 pots per blind paid--at this ratio, if the game is good, I can make a decent profit. You can also use this to measure the game--if you are up at, say, 1.1 and still stuck, the game is bad and you should leave. Whereas if you're ahead but only at 0.7, the game is great, and you should stay because your luck should improve.

Does that make sense to you? I tend to look at numbers through Poker Tracker - I have hard cold numbers in front of me and I can't make excuses - the results are right there in black and white, no fudging allowed. I know the above guy wasn't talking about standard deviation but it's still good brain food. Just not sure if I should swallow it.

I've never played Strip Poker in my life.