Party Poker Blog

"Putting green dye into Corona doesn't make it IRISH, you fokkin' bastards. Hoist a pint of Guinness, or get the hell out of my bar."
Wil Wheaton

Damn, Wil is eminently quotable. I hope everyone guzzled lots o' Guinness yesterday! I did my fair share, not even realizing it was St. Paddy's Day.

Be sure to hit Wil's site, as he has another poker post up. This time, a shout-out to Grubette who sent Wil an informative and hilarious breakdown of poker players as Star Trek aliens written by the Poker Pundit, Andy Glazer.
Star Trek Character Amalgam Makes Practically Perfect Poker Player

Amalgam. I learned a new word today.

The big news of the day is that fellow poker blogger, Paul Phillips, won the WPT event shown on the Travel Channel last evening. Apparently, Paul played some top-notch poker. From Grubette: "Dewey must've gone all-in 6-7 times in a row (with a condescending flick of a finger) and Paul stayed even and level-headed."

Speaking of the World Poker Tour, PRGod brought this interesting nugget of info to me at work today. From MediaWeek:

World Poker Tour to Launch Radio Show
The World Poker Tour, which airs weekly on the Travel Channel, is developing a national radio show to launch sometime this spring or summer. To develop, produce and market the new programming, WPT has retained network radio veteran Dan Forth, the former president and CEO of Sony Worldwide Networks. In addition to a live, weekly talk program, WPT is working on a daily, 60-second feature focusing on everything from betting strategy to the latest tournament news.

I'll keep you posted on any futher details.

Here's a couple random notes about Empire offering WSOP seats and Party's guaranteed One Million Tournament:

3 guaranteed seats to the WSOP March 17, 2004
This Sunday (21st March) at 9pm EST, Empire Poker are running a qualifying tournament to the WSOP final in Las Vegas and are guaranteeing three places. The buy in to the Saturday main event is $150 + $12 and qualifiers for the main event are running on Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week. Entries to these satellites is either $27 + $2 (one seat for every 6 players) or $18 + $2 (one seat for every 9 players).

Party Poker Guaranteed $1 million online tournament March 14, 2004
Party Poker have announced a guaranteed $1 million tournament on the 17th April at 4:30 PM ET. Direct buyin for the tournament is $600 + $40 and there are a number of single table and multi table qualifiers starting at $10 + $1. Winners of the "Million Dollar Qualifiers" will be registered automatically for the Million Dollar Guaranteed Tournament on April 17th. Players can win multiple entries to the Million Dollar Guaranteed $600 +$40 Tournament. Players who have played more that 3000 raked hands between 0:00 hrs ET March 12th and 23:59 hrs ET April 16th will start with 300 extra chips.

Note to self: play some damn qualifiers!! Actually, I'll probably pony up the $150 into the main Empire event if I have the free time.

For the existing Party Poker players who would like to take advantage of the bonuses! and second identity on Empire, or perhaps just to play in the Empire WSOP tourneys, here's two workarounds for you. Please consider using bonus code IGGY1 at Empire. :)

Use two computers, with two different IP's.

OR:
Go to another computer, different IP address...a neighbor..if you're on cable, use dial up and AOL, the library, Kinko's, your work, etc.
Download the client using a different email address from the email you normally use...MSN, Hotmail, Excite, Yahoo...these are free to set up
Use a different screen name from Party...
Hopefully you'll use my bonus code and get a 20% sign up bonus...
Once you've registered...Empire will send you an email confirmation for the new account at the new email you used....verify the account.
Once you're in a verified...you can then go to your home computer....use the Empire client with the verified user name and password that was set up on the other computer.

Shazam! This worked for a friend of mine, so I thought I'd pass it along.

Last nite was a fine one for me on Party - I table-hopped like a madman until I discovered a particularly vociferous 3.6 table. A player named BadBeats was suffering his namesake, left and right, and continually screeching at his offenders. Outstanding stuff, especially once I was situated at the table and offered to buy him Poker for Dummies, if he would send me his address.

I know, I know, Rule #1, Must Not Tap On The Aquarium Glass....but this feller was already worked into a lather, I only helped nudge him off the ledge. He tilted out approximately $200 before he left, much to the chagrin to the rest of the table.

Suffice to say, yet another fish tagged and released.

Damnit. I promised to write about loose games, so I'll offer a few drunken perspectives, and then finish this post up.

Per position: if there are only a couple of maniacs in the game (as opposed to a table full of them), you are typically better off having them on your left than your right. Some conventional wisdom says to keep the maniacs on your right in order to isolate them, but in the damn LOOSE games on Party, you're simply not going to be able to isolate. You are better off having the maniac on your left so you can check-raise your strong hands and your strong draws. Being able to check-raise strong draws is a big advantage, something I'll discuss later.

Per preflop: I'm pretty discerning in my starting hand selection, but there is one thing to consider - there is a world of difference between loose, passive games where you can see the flop for one bet and loose, aggressive games where you'll usually have to pay three bets. If it's a passive game with many callers, you can see more flops for a single bet and loosen up a tad. But if it's aggressive, you probably should play tighter. Some mitigating factors here - being suited is a large advantage in these games. Flushes and sets are king in loose games, so pocket pairs, even baby ones, go up in value. It's a commonly held myth that big offsuit cards go down in value in these games. They still go up in value (any good hand goes up in value) but they go up in value less than the soooted cards do. Offsuit cards are playable, but you want them to be top-tier, not crappy ace rag offsuit, mid offsuit 1 gappers, et al.

With your strong hands, you want to do a lot of raising yourself. A common misconception is that you shouldn't raise preflop because everyone has odds to chase anyway. So what? Think about raising for value, not to thin the field, in these games. Raising before the flop or three betting preflop, and then folding when you miss the flop, should be a routine part of your repertiore. JQs is a fine hand against several loose players and you can often raise before the flop, but when the flop comes somewhat coordinated with low cards and none of your suit - you missed it; it's time to fold. Basic fit or fold, ABC poker.

The wonderful Party Poker mix of players is often a bunch of weak-tight players and two or three pure loonies. The weak-tight players play bad poker by not going after these loosey-gooseys. This creates poker heaven for conscious, sensibly aggressive players. The loosey-gooseys are out there playing 54o each hand, and the tighties are mucking KJo on the button. In a 40% game, you can have three players playing around 85% of the hands and the rest playing 18%. Poker doesn't get much better than this.

Or you can play somewhere else, where the players seeing the flop pct is less than 30%. But why? Damnit, trust me and try Party.

That's enough of the Guinness-fueled rambling. Sorry for the awful generalizations and generic advice.

So, anyway, let's see what I have for my humble readers tonight....First in the queue is the new issue of Cardplayer. Always worth a read.

For the new players (Dude!), there is a perfect column by Lou Kreiger written just for you, called:
Pot Odds Made Easy

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Figuring pot odds is a necessary part of any poker player's game. Without it, we don't have any way of knowing whether the odds against making our hand are offset by this fundamental relationship: How much will it cost to keep playing this hand and how much money am I likely to win if I catch the card I need? By understanding the relationship between the odds against making our hand and the money we figure to win if we get lucky, we can play skillful high-percentage poker instead of treating the game like some form of gambling.

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Here's a business wire documentating the dramatic growth of the WPT and poker, in general.
World Poker Tour Events Continue Dramatic Growth; The PartyPoker Million Hosted by PartyPoker.com Sets Records for Number of Entries, Prize Money and First Place Payout.

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The increase in players catapults the total prize money to $3,847,000, including the $25,000 WPT contributed to the prize pool. With this large prize pool for the tournament, players down to 90th place will go home with a nice payday, and the winner will capture a top prize of $1,000,000, including a seat in the season finale WPT Championship in April at Bellagio, Las Vegas. Last year's champion, Howard Lederer from Las Vegas, NV, walked away with $263,850 when the prize pool totaled $1,013,800. The prize pool is determined by the number of players "buying in" to the tournament - in this case the entry fee is $7,000 per person.

"We at the WPT can't believe the increase in players for the PartyPoker Million. The fact that last year there were 177 players in this tournament is a testament to PartyPoker.com and its dedication to growing the event ," said CEO of the World Poker Tour, Steve Lipscomb.

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This famous brother and sister poker professional duo are up and running fine poker sites:
Howard Lederer

Annie Duke looks to have some thought-provoking O8 articles in her site, so if you play Omaha, go check it out now.

Here's a tease of a site (Coming soon!) featuring many heavyweight poker pro's. Wonder what they'll be selling? PokerMafia T-shirts?
FullTiltPoker

I didn't get time to properly surf the kickass poker blogs tonite, but here are a few notes. First off, where is Royal, damnit? Get in touch, please!

Here's an awesome quote from online pro, Jason, at PokerOdyssey
Zen of Jason
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Tough day, down about 50 BB's. I'm not going to complain about the beats, because bad beats are an illusion...the games were very good and the beats I took were only proof of that.

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Perfectly put, and the exact attitude you should have.

It's interesting, I've been mentioned here and there in other poker blogs, but I really chuckled at this snippet:

"If guinnessandpoker isnt the first blog you hit every day, you're on crack."

Now that's a testimonial, damnit.

Somehow I discovered yet another new poker blog, this one by the oddly named Nether_Spirit.

He is young and a very new player, so I won't pick on him for this statement per the LL tables.

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There are gangs of players that that roam the tables looking for loners (such as myself) and gang up on him/her to take his money. I say this because many times it seems that everytime I raised someone would call with a bad hand and get lucky. Or when I tried to bluff someone would call with bottom or medium pair. This leads me to believe that they are trying to keep me honest. Either that or they are retards.

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Yes. They are indeed, profoundly retarded. I play with them every night.

Felicia is truly hooking us up for the Planet Poker WPBT III. Stay tuned to her site for details. Also, her uber-intelligent husband, Glenn, grew so weary of hearing me talk about PartyPoker that he gritted his teeth and signed on. Suffice to say, after one evening of play there, I have his permission to state: Party Poker: ENDORSED BY GLENN! So go sign up now.

I always enjoy Daniel Negreanu's columns. Go read:
Learn ... or Lose

Alrighty then, I suppose this qualifies as another drunken uber post. Thanks to anyone who stops by this humble poker blog, and don't forget - bonus code IGGY for a 20% deposit bonus at Party Poker! I hope these posts provide some poker value for your time, or perhaps some quality surfing at work. Either way, thanks again for reading.

Improv Comedy Sucks
Quote: "Improv is the Special Olympics of comedy. People don't attend expecting to see a great performance, they attend expecting to see a friend or family member do their best in the face of a serious deficit in ability."