Party Poker Blog

"A fool and his money are soon parted.
I would pay anyone a lot of money to explain that to me."
Homer Simpson

Damnit, this post is brought to you by the following.

Bonus Code IGGY on Party Poker

Please consider supporting this humble poker blog. I do this for free, after all.

I wanted to do an uber-post but Matty from Snailtrax shall be here shortly and we're off to rape and pillage at the boat tonite. From there, it's off to the insanity that is GVegas poker. This is gonna be crazy. And I'm already sleep-deprived, damnit.

So allow me give you another quick tale from the boat from last week.
$400 buyin NL table. $2/5 blinds.

I've built up to about $1100 when it happens.

An ancient, willowy (81 years old) elderly fella walks up to the empty seat, two to my left. He's carrying a Coors Light. Wears thick glasses.

Reaches into his pants and dumps ten grand on the table, all in hundreds, of course. Demands 10k in chips.

Weee!

The floor comes over and explains the buyin and such.

Old feller moves allin on his first hand without even looking at his cards.

Suddenly everyone is sitting upright in their chairs.
To say they were licking their chops wouldn't be an understatement.
There were literally rivulets of drool.

He lost that first hand. Rebought.

In my big blind, I look down and find AK.
The Anna Kournikova. Called that because it looks great, but never wins.

Old Man moves Allin for $400 again, in the dark.
Short stacked guy in middle calls with mebbe $180.

I call.

We flip em over.
Old Man: 46h
Short stack AJ

I flop my ace but Old Man hits a flush on the river.

Game on!!

I must say I was stoked. We started getting a pretty large contingent of railbirds, including much of the staff.

Old Man bought drinks for the entire table and I got a chance to chat with him since he was only two seats away. Super nice man, retired attorney. Told me he loved to make a splash at whatever game he played, and at his age, wanted to be the center of attention.

We laughed and said he was succeeding at that.

I slowly rebuilt my stack while watching this maestro put the entire table on tilt. He broke several stacks, with one guy asking the old feller "Where the hell did you park?" while rebuying. I'm pretty sure he was only half-joking.

He destroyed the table with sheer aggression. Was fun as hell to watch.

I've seen this type of behavior in online poker many times. Hell, I've seen my share of 'throwing parties' in live poker, too. I've been known to throw em myself, after all, especially when drinking heavily.

But this was special.

After an hour, The old man had an obscene amount of chips in front of him. He refused to stack them - they just sat in a giant mound in front of him. Whenever he bet or raised, he'd just grab a handful and throw em in, and we'd wait for the dealer to count em out. Nobody complained.

I'm pretty damn unflappable in poker. I just don't care about immediate results - I care about making the right decisions, damnit. I remember thinking and telling Dann after this hand that I couldn't remember the last time I felt hardcore TILT.

And the worst part was I won the hand. Prolly around a $2200 pot.
I freaking tilted on a hand I won. Geezus.

Why? Because the dealer called the clock on me. Pretty stupid of me, eh? I was just flabbergasted after all those hours I've played there to have that done. Twas a first. It was more surprise at first, which morphed into adrenaline, which morphed into tilt. Weird how it can creep up on you like that. More retarded, than wierd, I fully admit, considering I still had more time than you do in online poker.

Anyway, here was my decision on the flop for all my chips.
Four handed.

Ad Ks 2d

Old Man moved allin from the big blind, as he nearly always did.
The two others folded.

I'm on the button with KJd.

I had approximately $900 in front of me. He had me covered.
Range of hands? Forget about it.

Of course, I called, correctly deciding he didn't have an ace and had outs if he did, even though I wasn't getting the right price on a flush draw. Gambool!

He didn't show his cards and I took a walk after stacking up. It felt so strange to be angry and tilty. I decided to rack up whenever the old feller did, which happened 15 minutes later, thankfully.

So strange and now I'm sitting here wondering why, why the visceral reaction to something as petty as having the clock called on me. For that matter, why am I even recounting this hand, something I rarely do? I wish I had time to flesh out my thinking here.

Random Photo of the Day.

It might be because I finally picked up Barry Greenstein's book, Ace on the River, and I'm pondering heavily upon what he writes. It has plenty of philosophical underpinnings in it - I think someone (Felicia?) called it more of a psychology book than a typical strategy poker book and I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.

It's clear to me that he didn't write this book to make money. It was a labor of love, of sorts, and I really admire that. I feel the same way about this silly blog.

Lord, I'm rambling now, hoping to get this post done before I leave.
Let's just post a few links and save the rest for an impending uber post, shall we?

New CardPlayer is out.
Mike Sexton reflects on the WSOP.

Phil Hellmuth reflects on, of course, Phil Hellmuth.

Here's a thread from Slashdot about online gambling legality, Google and Australia.
Search Engines Break AU Online Gambling Ban?

An anonymous reader writes "According to a ZDNet report, authorities in Australia are investigating Google and a few other search engines for possible breach of the country's online gambling laws. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits advertising of gambling services on Web sites where 'it is likely that the majority of that site's users are physically present in Australia'. Banned services include online casino-style gaming services such as roulette, poker, craps, online poker machines and blackjack. Breaching the Act carries a maximum penalty of AU$220,000 ($168,000) per day for individuals and AU$1.1 million ($843,000) per day for corporations."

RGP had many threads (too many) about the Ultimate Bet poker game featuring Phil Helmuth, Mike Matasow and Prahlad Friedman the other evening. Here's a taste:

Prahlad ask Phil to play till 'death'

Last night on UB, Prahlad Friedman (mahatma) is having this hilarious argument with Matusow and Health. Apparently, Matusow and Phil made some unkind comments about Prahlad, steaming from a 20k score by Phil H. against Prahlad.

It went something like "Hey Mikey I turned the 20k from you into 44k last night" Mike replies "Nice, off of Mahatma im sure"? "yea hes not very good" says Phil. "i know" replies mike....Then out of the dark Mahatma shows up, he has been reading the chat as an observer, and he is pissed off.

"Dill (Matusow) don't ever talk to me again" "were not boys" "im not your friend anymore" lots of comments like that along with Dill your a piece of shit, and i dint trust you. Mike then is laughing at him, and says "you get some money and now your a
tough guy, doesn't take long for you to forget who bailed you out when you were broke" Prahlad still cusses him and says "dint talk to me ever again".

Then Mike says "after you snick up on DOG after all he did for you (apparently played Erik L. heads up and didn't tell him who he was)....then Prahlad moves to cussing Phil...calls him a horrible poker player, etc....Then the fun starts, He says "lets play heads up Phil for life, loser dies"...Phil and mike laugh, and he says "im serious phil come on if your the man, then play me for life."

Phil and mike are laughing at the guy and its making him even more angry as Phil and mike are obviously friends...After the whole table is ragging Phil for buying in over and over for the minimum (2k) he says hey Mikey lets play 300-600 Omaha 8/o. Mike says not right now, and Phil says come on "that's your game son", so off they went. Twenty minutes or so later Mike is stuck 20k to Phil, and Phil says G, gets up and leaves. Mike then proceeds to cuss Phil for a few hours and it was hilarious..

"like sands through the hour glass, and so are the days of our lives" it was like a soap opera and it was damn funny

---------

Assuming this is true and it's Phil Hellmuth, not Phil Ivey, I find it very hard to believe that Phil ever beat Prahlad for 20k. Phil always buys in for a low amount (relatively speaking) and rarely stays long. Why? Because he almost always gets his ass handed to him.

Even if Phil did win 20k overall off of Prahlad, it's really not that much for the swings he goes through. I've seen Prahlad go through 40-50k in two hours and think nothing of it. I've also seen him top 100k. His style of play dictates a lot of swings, especially short handed, which in the end makes him rich.

Of course Prahlad would be mad at Jail bait Mike insulting him. Mike is always talking to him, kissing his ass, and never plays him heads up. It's also not surprising Phil would just laugh at Prahlad when he's challenged until one of them goes broke and dies. Phil knows he would get his ass handed to him.

I don't know Prahlad (I've seen him a few times), but it's absurd to suggest he's not a good player or not one of the best players on the internet. Just look at how many people sit out when they are going to face him heads up, waiting for other players to come.

Damn, I don't even know what to say after that.
Wait, yes I do.

May I have your attention:

This is the Stupid Police.

And you are all under arrest.

Matty just called and he's an hour out of town. Time to prepare for some sickness at the NL tables tonight with SnailTrax holding court.

And then we're off to GVegas to see assorted bloggers and hipsters.
Oh. The. Humanity.

Want to see what you're missing this weekend?
Watch this video.

Thanks for reading. I should be back in a few days, liver willing.

Link of the Day:
Masturbation Horror Stories
The best thing about a well-told masturbation-gone-wrong story is the ending. "... and it took me two weeks to get all the wax out of me."