Party Poker Blog

Evelyn Ng & Howard Lederer Poker Blogs

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
Captain Renault, Casablanca

Oh joy! SuperBowl Sunday!
For the record, this year's TV ads sucked. But the game was fantastic.

I truly enjoyed my first ever World Poker Tour broadcast today on NBC. Unfortunately, no Party Poker ads, but the poker exposure is a great thing. Because of the tournament of champions format, I thought the tournament itself lacked drama and significance. And there was nary a scrap of table talk. But I enjoyed the play and rooted for my favorite vegan, Howard Lederer.

Vegans are immoral people, though. Don't you think that a cow or a pig or a chicken would eat YOU if he had the chance? You bet your ass he would!

Also, I didn't know about the 60 second clock. That's an interesting addition for the TV poker format. Have they always had the clock on the World Poker Tour? I'm not sure I like it -- this is poker, not basketball....

By the way, does anyone have any advice for a friend who is trying to learn hold em without losing money? He is currently playing on Yahoo and I think we can all guess how that's going. Anyway, I know nothing about the play money scene (although I did beta-test Pokerstars back in the day, when I was using StatKing and playing 5.10 on Paradise) so if anyone could offer any advice for him, lemme know.

My personal opinion: you will NEVER learn on play money tables. You'd be better off playing the tiniest micro money stakes you could find, before spinning your wheels in play money. There's nothing to learn there.

Mister Decker followed up with some reading on the pattern mapping madness that went on at 2+2. Thought I'd provide one long thread in case you wanted to take a peek.
Can Party Poker 4th and 5th street cards be predicted?

I'll tell ya, with the rabid regulars at 2+2, it's tough to ever want to be part of the "community" over there. It's freaking skull and bones. Or worse, you can have netkooks follow you around and attack your posts, like Felicia's situation.

Speaking of which, a big thank-you to the ever-popular Felicia for linking up several blogs in her email digest! I'm happy I finally got a link, although this is by far the weirdest thing anyone has ever said about my blog, hands down. Icky pooh? Damn Felicia, what kind of poker player are you? ;)

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Iggy, gotta love him, even if he is a beer drinker (icky pooh).
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Hrm, allow me to post some of my favorite drinking quotes here on the most massive beer day of all, SuperBowl Sunday:

"I feel bad for those people who don't drink, because when you wake up in the morning that's as good as you're going to feel all day long."
Frank Sinatra

"Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
Winston Churchill

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
Benjamin Franklin

"He was a wise man who invented beer."
Plato

"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools."
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

"Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure."
Ambrose Bierce

How dare you insult my beloved beer. Go back to Russia! ;)

I found Felicia's take on tournament poker versus ring games fascinating from a psychological standpoint. For her, ring games feel like practice. Tournaments feel like the real thing. I feel the complete opposite, but that doesn't mean we aren't both correct from our unique perspectives. It depends on the mentality of a player. That's part of the allure of poker - there are so many different games/formats to play and/or master. It's up to you to figure out what style and game fits your personality.

But tournaments (for me) are much more about luck. That being said, if Felicia were to grace us with her presence in the much anticipated blogger tourney, I'd list her as the favorite, hands down. Too bad she doesn't play online.

Grubby has something up his sleeve regarding our tourney, too. Between he and I, we should have a firm date soon.

I recently read about poker pro, Mike Laing, making the final table of a WPT event and not being allowed to drink. LOL, apparently there have been some issues there. Anyway, that reminded me of the fantastic NPR show, This American Life, featuring Mike in their segment about poker. If you are at work, take the time to listen to this fine show:

Meet the Pros
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Act Two. Know When to Walk Away, Know When to Run. Host Ira Glass travels to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, gets hooked on poker, and tries to figure out what it would mean if he'd ditch his job in radio to become a professional cardplayer. What he learns: a professional gambler can suffer two heartbreaking losses back to back, costing over $100,000, yet moments later, at the casino bar, calculate the million-to-one odds of his unlikely losses... in his head. (26 minutes).
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Hdouble had a great pre-WPT and SuperBowl post, running thru the blogging of the last few days. And on the difficulty of grinding while maintaining an active poker blog. I feel his pain and may take a week or two off just to focus on playing. Or maybe I'll stop posting news articles to save time. My playing time has been severely cut into.

Well, I'm listening to Marv Albert and Boomer Esiason call the SuperBowl on radio rather than watching the second half. After two hours of TV poker, I hit my tolerance of sitting in front of the television.

Do you know the difference between Sharon Stone and Marv Albert?
Marv Albert wears panties.

/rimshot

Party Poker reflection: two months ago, they were at 22,000 players. Weee, has there ever been a better time in history to be a poker player?

I'm remembering a comment from the Poker Penguin:
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I mean a central part of the Penguin wisdom is to sit down with fishies.
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Exactly. And the biggest pond on Earth right now is Party Poker. I know guys who WANT to play with great poker players. Not me. I've paid my dues and am more than happy to take advantage of the influx of new players at the low/mid limits.

Slow and steady says the Grinder.

Obligatory poker news links. Some interesting stuff here - we may be hitting saturation, the apex of poker media coverage.

Poker gone wild
So, it's a spectator sport? Stake your ratings on it

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Fox Sports plans a Saturday Night Poker League, hoping to make it the next "Monday Night Football."
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A full house cited at park poker game
Jackson Sun

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But Garner said television news accounts of the incident have been blown out of proportion.

"It was just a bunch of guys getting together to play a quarter to a dollar poker," Garner said. "They didn't arrest us or carry us to jail. They wrote us a ticket, and we went home."

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Feature article in the Toronto Star.
Nice photo of Evelyn Ng and praise for TV poker from this TV critic.

Player flushed with success
Toronto-born Evelyn Ng, who learned when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em

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"Playing poker is not the same as trying to play blackjack for a living. You're not playing against the casino. The casino will always have an edge. In poker, you're playing against other players. And if you're the best player at the table, over the long run, you are gonna make money," says Evelyn Ng.
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Humorous perspective on the enigma that is TV poker. Go read.
A super deal - televised poker

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Once upon a time it was the "Battle of the Network Stars," before it was "Home Run Derby," "Celebrity Boxing" and the XFL. Now it's poker, the latest pseudo sport taking various dimly lit clusters of your satellite uplink by storm.

Then again, it might surprise us. Televised poker has a powerful, if difficult to explain, appeal, the kind of out-of-left-field hook that had us tuning in to watch Gabe Kaplan run the 200-yard dash, and Tonya Harding throw right uppercuts.

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From the Sunday edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, an article quoting Mason Malmuth. Did Mason hire a PR guy?
TV poker a gamble that is paying off big

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"The demand from people looking to hone their skills has been tremendous," says Malmuth. "There was a time last year when six of the top 100 books sold by Amazon.com were poker books, and we had three of them."

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Alrighty then.

Wow, what a tremendous football game. It's so enjoyable to see the sheer joy on the winner's faces.

Sadly, I put it in poker context and while watching Patriots coach and quarterback hug, I thought of Chris Moneymaker beating Sam Farha in the final hand of the WSOP and heading over to bear hug his father, ala Tiger Woods/Earl Woods in Tiger's first Master's victory.

Still, I'm not as bad as Grubby. I'm not thinking about it while driving, contemplating a check-raise of the BMW in the high-speed lane....

Thanks for reading.

Link of the day:
Everquest Daily Grind
These are real postings from a message board where people can talk about their troubles with their partners who play EQ.
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I have had it. After reading and hearing many stories about how partners of some Everquest players are left handling most of the daily life chores while their partners are lazy arse-sitting wannebe-escapists dreaming of a better life.
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