How Jordon Cost me 2K and other assoted things
I guess we will start with Jordon. The bastard. He convinces me to go onto Titan. To play some PLO with him. So I login and see a free $50 waiting for me! Woo hoo! So I am freerolling. However now that I have this free money I sort of do not want to play PLO. I am ok at it but I can never decide when I should fold. So a few hands in I flop a K high flush and well.. lets just say someone had the Ace. Ug! I am not sure if it is bad to get stacked in PLO with the K high flush or not? However since Jordon convinced me to play it is his fault. Shut up Felicia! Ok. I am willing to take responsibility for my unknown play.. I do not even know if it was a bad play. The dissapointing thing is that $50 on Titan is like an passkey to thousands of dollars. I mean the players are that bad.
So next thing on the list was the DADI. I was doing good until after the break when I let Falstaad catch his 14% worth of outs on the turn. I could not decide if I was ahead or behind on the flop when he came out firing so I called.. The seven on the turn did not SEEM to help anyone and by then I decided if he has AK/AQ he is going to stack me, so I pushed and he gleefully chuckled when he called with his set of sevens. Oh well. If I had decided sooner I am sure he would have folded the flop.
I read Felicia's recent post on Personal Responsibility and Poker (Redux). Some pretty good stuff in there. I really feel like I am letting Poker be a game and if I lose then I lose.. so be it. I think it is one of the biggest ways I have changed this year. Hope it continues. I do feel a couple of things are off.
That is why big tournaments with huge payouts are so attractive to most poker players. They want the lottery to take all of their troubles away. They don't want to have to "work" anymore.
I really think playing in tourneyments is fine. I enjoy them and yes it does give you a shot at winning huge for a very small risk to your bankroll. What is wrong with that? Is it any less poker? I know alot of people who I respect who only play MTTs. It is what they like to do. I do not think you necessarily work any less hard or are a weaker player because you either specialize in or enjoy playing MTTs. Felicia also spent MANY years playing MTTs.. I am sure nobody would say she was only out for a quick score.
I think people who play LHE or NLHE cash games can be just as lazy and wanting a quick buck as any MTT player.. It is all in the person. I do however agree that nothing comes easy especially in Poker and it takes alot of hours and hard work which I personally put into the game. Generalizations are nice as it makes little buckets to put people into but nothing is ever totally black and white.
I also do not think moving up and taking shots is necessarily a bad thing. Obviously if your putting your whole bankroll on one shot it is not such a great move. How are you going to learn to play better people if you never take a shot? I guess it is a thin line but at some point I think it is important to see what your going to face.
I think Veneno has poisoned me as I have been playing HU on Full Tilt. I had five bucks left on tilt and it is now over $120+. Mostly from HU play. Is everyone that bad? I swear the typical game is me limping into EVERY POT UNRAISED and flopping some monster hand and having the guy with TPTK give me all his chips because, well, he is stupid. I sometimes get a good game but mostly it is just taking money from babies. The fact that it is quick is kind of addicitive. I usually dispatch my player by the time the blinds his 30$ so I can get a game in under fifteen minutes easy. I am not sure if I want to continue down the HU path because I hate HU but it has been fun for now..
posted by SirFWALGMan at
10:46 PM
13 Comments:
I'm a wuss. I read Felicia's post too and the first thing that jumped out at me was her referring to the large MTT arena as a lottery.
Then talk to the likes of JohnnyBax or Rizen or legggggggy or sheets.
Hell, ask Hoyazo. He's busted his ass to refine his game to a point where he has a huge advantage within every tournament he enters.
And I don't think that he is looking for his lottery numbers to be drawn, but rather apply his hard work to get a positive end result.
I was impressed by Felicia's post, but felt distanced by her comment regarding MTT's.....I'm just glad you brought it up.
Good post. Thank you......
12:06 AM
I'm no PLO expert, but I do know that a K high flush is no good given the limpers in PLO. Someone will always have the ace. I've been nailed by that a number of times. PLO, especially PLO Hilow, is really a luck game. Play it for fun, not for profit. Re: Titan. The players there are even worse than me, so I stopped playing there. Way too loose for my liking. And the software blows. Too bad you missed getting my chips last night - out way early.
6:30 AM
Nooooo, sorry that I didn't make it more clear. I am absolutely, 100% for tourneys. Not only is it a great way to get your feet wet, but it is a fantastic, addictive, fun form of poker. I used to play almost all tourneys until just months ago! I'm not putting them down in any way, shape or form.
I was talking in extremes there. The extreme of a person who is out for one big score versus a person who is out for a long, slow lifetime of poker.
Almost everyone I love and respect in the poker world is a tourney player. In absolutely no way whatsoever am I knocking tourneys or that lifestyle. Those are my heroes. Remember last year when Charlie died, what they did at the WSOP? Those are my true heroes, guys. If I had the right stuff, I would be a tourney player only.
Tournaments are fantastic.
6:44 AM
I wish I had time to thank every one of the bloggers I played against in the DADI last night. Again, it was a total blast playing (read: donking it up) against some of my favorite poker players/writers. Thank God A's and Mr. Speaker weren't around as I never would have come close to the FT. After busting out change100 (sorry change, honestly), I think I became a target. That, and the fact that I admitted I don't blog. Ooops. Well, I got some good advice, tried to play "tricky" at times and make some moves, and got lucky a majority of the time. I got dealt the hammer a ton of times and only got paid off once, which I got to show. (After getting told I need more experience playing it for it to pay off.) That tilted some people I hope. Stupid hammer. I think it was Mundo who tried to drop it on me at the FT and I took a bunch of chips away when I made a "great call." Thanks railbirds. Just kidding. Sorry if I infuriated anyone, but I was just having fun and hoping no one took my sarcasm (or horrible play) seriously. (I even got a heckle from Duggle, my 2nd favorite blogger.) Garth's incessant PF raising had me physically shaken, but I survived that somehow, although I unfortunately never got to play against the poison. Damn. It even seemed I had somone r00ting for me, but I still think they were being sarcastic. Mookie and Mundo took it easy on me at the FT and I thank them for it. Well, thanks again to everyone. I presume there were just bloggers at the FT so I am now comfortable referring to myself as the 6th greatest non-blogging poker player in the world. (as of May 29th, 2006)
slb159
6:59 AM
I think Felicia's point is that the majority of people who play poker lose money, as do the majority of people who play MTTs. The common thread is that they want to make money but want it to happen quickly, immediately, so they keep blowing bankrolls and playing limits over their heads and taking shots at extremely high variance endeavors like MTTs.
If you look at pros that specialize in MTTs (either online or offline), I'd wager that the vast majority are/were successful cash game players, which put them in the position to specialize in MTTs. They've put in the work and developed a winning game and adequate bankroll, which they then apply to MTTs. They save and protect their pennies so they can afford the horse that pulls the nice, shiny cart they hope to someday own and ride around in.
The problem is when people reverse the above, thinking that if they just hit that big MTT score they'd be set, and have the bankroll necessary to wield their mad poker skillz with impunity, and really start cleaning up. They spend their pennies for a lottery ticket to win a nice, shiny cart but ignore the horse. Of, if they hit the lotto, they buy a horse, too, but don't feed it and it quickly starves to death.
6:59 AM
Never bust with the second nuts in PLO.
If raised on the river without the nuts, fold, unless you are 100% sure on a read.
7:45 AM
Wow, Felicia actually reads my blog.. lol. Or did one of her peeps rat me out? heh.
Anyway.. Sorry if I misunderstood.. it seemed like you were saying most people who played MTTs were out to just make a quick score.. Thank you for clarifying.
8:09 AM
Alright waffles, if we are going to start to toss out blame, I'll add how you busted me at the Bay 101 tourniment I played in last week, and you weren't even there.
4 to a nut flush, 2 players go all in, I have both well covered, do I call. NO, some guy at the WWnd:not just slammed the door on my flush draw with, was it 3 and 7 was it? Gun shy, I fold, would of hit the flush and been rich. Now, I'm just still poor and stupid.
Actually, I'll take the blame, if I figured my pot odds during either of those events, I would have folded to you, and called the morons, but I skipped that step and made 2 wrong decisions.
Anyway, just thought you would get a laugh how your play affected me 2 days and 2,000 miles away in a live tourniment. I wonder if I have learned this lesson yet?
11:32 AM
Wait one second! Now, I'm no PLO8 specialist, but I don't think that in and of itself there is something wrong with loses a K-high flush to an A-high flush. Now, if there are some solid indicators that you are facing an Ace-high flush, then sure, fold. But on Titan, that guy is just as likely (in fact, very much moreso) to have a baby flush or a J-high flush, or two pair, or the nut low.
So, losing K-high flush to A-high flush does suck, but it's a part of PLO8, the same as losing set over set in NLHE. It sucks, and if you can see it coming then you screwed yourself, but it doesn't mean you should be scared of monsters under the bed, if ya know what I mean.
11:36 AM
Nice post, Sir Waffles.
It was a really clearly stated, rational defense of tourney play as a process/destination - although it turns out a defense wasn't needed since no offense was intended.
I liked Felicia's post, and think that even if the examples she used can be taken in a negative light, the overall complaint is sound. There are a lot of people out there who don't realize they are their own worst enemy.
11:43 AM
Glad I could help Bone Daddy.. lol. It is nice to see that I am not the only person who has ever had problems letting go of a beat..
12:23 PM
As someone who focuses almost esclusively on MTTs myself, I thought Felicia's comments were still more or less right on. Any suggestion that MTT players generally are somehow wrong or bad players or something I would completely disagree with, but it sounds like Felicia's not saying that at all. And either way, even in MTT land, people all over the place always want to blame others for their poker problems. That's kind of a universal truth about the game we all know and love. And it's not just poker, either. Think back to high school, when report card time would come.
"I got an A."
"He gave me a C."
See how that happened? The "A" was all you. But the C, that was all the teacher. Yeah right.
2:18 PM
Yep, a good bet on the flop and I fold my pair of 7s. And yep, I giggled a little when the 7 came on the turn. Good playing with you, Waffles.
8:07 AM
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