Rounders Radio

If you haven`t heard of it yet you should check out Rounders Radio, I`ve just added a couple of links on my sidebar or you can use the ones in this post. The guys Ace Jones, ALakeOfFire, D.C and Jer Bear have a great mix of poker strategy and music. They also have some freerolls going, with passwords given out on air.

Rounders Radio also has a forum with a unique (as far as I know) concept, there are no poker site linking banners in it. Instead they encourage you to use the links at your favourite forum.

An Evening of Poker

I`ve played poker for most of the evening with hardly a break. All-in-all it`s been a good session, if not the most profitable.

The first event was The Online Forum Challenge freeroll. I`m not really a fan of big field freerolls (1271 runners), even less so of late but I enjoyed playing this one. For a start none of the tables I was at had any real maniacs at them, and I was playing pretty well. I maintained an above average stack for a good long time before a card drought hit me and I ended up going out in 191st. I had the best of it after the rag flop with my pocket jacks but I was up against a large stack and he chose to call my all-in with AQ. He spiked a Q on the turn, and to add insult to injury another on the river. What really made the game fun was listening to Hold `Em Radio who were broadasting the event live. During the first break I signed into the chat room using my usual DangerMouse tag and the guys at the radio station played "my" theme tune for me lol.

By the time I was out of the OFC game the K9 Poker Tour International event had started over at PKR. It`s a great looking site but I just don`t get on with it that well. Plus I had the weekly buy-in for 5th Street starting at the same time. I`m not a fan of multi-tabling so I decided that I`d take a few risks and either accumulate chips quickly or bust out early. From UTG I flat called 150 with J-10S, a few other callers, then a raise to 450 from the SB. I called and the flop brought a 10 x x flop. The SB pushed all-in and I called. At the showdown I was ahead against AQ but again the turn betrayed me and I was out.

That left me to concentrate on the 5th Street game. I`ve been doing consistently well in these. In the last three I`ve had a 1st and a 3rd. Well todays was a blast! At the final table I had the highly aggressive PocketAcesAreGood on my right. Now he likes to play very aggressively and doesn`t hesitate to push all-in. With chips he`s very dangerous and as he was chip leader he was pushing a lot. I`d had no decent hands for some time and was happy to see pocket tens until of course Aces pushed all-in. I decided to be cautious and folded them. It paid off in the long run because a little later when he pushed again I called with JJ and found him with 66. My jacks held up and I`d doubled up. Well this starts off some friendly "smack" talk between us and he says he`s going to have to set a mouse-trap to get me. Well lets say things didn`t quite work out the way he wanted. The only person setting mouse-traps was me. The funny thing was I told him I was going to double up off him again if he kept pushing all-in to steal my BB. That`s when this little beauty popped up



My second royal flush, just hearts and spades needed to complete the set now lol. Actually when the king dropped I didn`t immediately realise I`d hit the royal, I just saw the flush and knew I`d won the hand. I finished off my opponent a while later when he repeated his mistake pushing all-in from the SB with 55 only to find me with AA.

The final three were myself Wade79 and Sniggle. Wade took out Sniggle to gain a small advantage in chips and we played a tough heads-up. He managed to gain an edge and never let me back into the game. I almost managed to drag myself back into the game with a major suck-out and a little later a beautifully slowplayed (if I say so myself) AK from the SB. I flat called and he raised, I came right back over the top all-in and he called revealing A-5. In the end though he took it down to win his first 5th Street game. A very deserved win too WTG Wade.

Ok last game of the evening and the end of what was supposed to be a short post. Funny how that happens, I sometimes don`t really feel like posting but once I start typing it just flows, anyway I digress. The last game was a K9 Poker Tour buy-in at Vegas Poker 24/7. I needed a good result at this and I had to finish ahead of Coconeely and 1JugHead to pull some points back on the monthly leaderboard. Well I suceeded in that, although I only beat Jug by two places. I finished on the bubble A-10 vs BigMoody`s QJ. A very frustrating result, I needed the prize money at that site and although I was only slightly ahead it`s still annoying to lose with the best hand pre-flop. I may have brought it on myself. I had a couple of hands I could have called with against the runaway chip leader Larrykiller, but I chose to fold them. Still, there`s no way to tell, I could have lost with those too. On the bright side I`m pretty sure I`m in a strong 2nd place on the leaderboard. The money tour is so competitive and I want a monthly win really badly. Not to mention the end of month heads-up for the winner vs Shaggy has rolled over and is worth $300.

Gone Fishing . . .

I don`t play ring games too often. I`m not a big fan of Limit HE, and I don`t enjoy NLHE in a ring game. However, on Thursday Poker.com released version 4.0 with all the new games and I thought that as I`d had a little while to practise them during the Beta testing I`d give them a go.

On Thursday I played a little Badugi and 5 card draw but there was never anyone playing the game I wanted to try my hand at. Friday morning I thought long and hard before sitting down to play some 7 card stud hi/lo. In pretty short order I lost my buy-in and quit the table. Then in the afternoon, finally some people were sat at the Triple Draw A-5 Lowball table playing 0.10/0.20 limit. Amongst them was one of Poker.com`s resident NLHE sharks - pepeman. Now normally he plays anything from $1/$2 to $3/$6 but as, by his own admission, he knew nothing about the game, he was messing around on the micro limits. This was an opportunity I couldn`t miss.

Well I sat down at 1.42pm with $5 and I left at 4.30 with $21.51. I`m no expert on these things but almost 30 big bets per hour seems a pretty good return to me. It`s certainly a lot better than I`d make playing LHE. I said during the testing that I loved this game and although I realise that the competition will get tougher as time goes on I`m looking forward to playing this game a lot more. A few more sessions of that nature and I can look to move up a level in stakes. The only problem at present is that the new games aren`t giving out comp points. This needs sorting. The tables charge rake at standard rates so players should get the usual rewards. According to one of the staff who posted in the forum this will be reviewed in the next few weeks.

I wish I could find some reading material on the game but the the only piece on it seems to be the section in SSII by Daniel Negreanu. I`ve developed a basic strategy that seems to be working pretty well and I may write it up and send it over to Chris Fargis and see what he reckons and if he will add anything to it. I found Chris`s blog whilst I was looking for reading material on Triple Draw. He plays the game for pretty high stakes and although he seems to prefer the 2-7 variation I`m sure he could tell me how far off the mark I am.

That`s it for now other than to say don`t forget to check out the Poker Pub for coverage of the Aussie Millions by the BPT`s very own Beer Guy.

WooHoo!!!

Please forgive the rather undignified title of this post but it kind of sums up how I feel right now. A while ago I was invited to attend a conference in London on behalf of K9 Poker Tour. It`s going to be a pretty big event as far as I can tell and I`ll have the pleasure of meeting Shaggy, one of the owners of K9 whilst I`m there.

That`s not why I`m posting though. You see apart from the conference there is going to be a tournament. ASOP have held a few freerolls online with seats at the tournament as prizes. Well I`ve just finished playing one and I`ve managed to secure myself a seat at this prestigious game. There is a $10,000 prize pool and to the winner a gold bracelet with 140 diamonds in it. It will only be the second live tournament I`ve played and to say I`m excited is a massive understatement.







It was down to five players and the eventual bubble and I had virtually identical chipstacks, just a couple of hundred chips seperating us. I was in the BB and dealt K9, an omen if ever there was one. I really wasn`t sure if I wanted to push but fortunately the SB decided to flat call. I checked and there it was on the flop, a beautiful king and no ace. He checked, I pushed and he folded. It was all over a few hands later and I had my seat.(WAYLANDER420)

Huge thanks to Shaggy for giving me the opportunity to play and for staying around till the end of the tourney to cheer me on. I swear he was just as excited as I was, maybe more lol.

I Just Can`t Decide . . .

I just can`t decide wether I made a monumental error or wether I made the right play and was a little unlucky. On Friday night the first of this months K9 Money Tour events was played at PitBull Poker. Early on I had good cards with bad flops and it looked like I was on for an early exit.

Fortunately I was able to hit hands at just the right times and although I was down to 400 or so chips on three occasions I managed to claw my way through the field. I had some real luck doing so, all-in with AQ vs KK my opponent made a set on the flop only to have me draw a straight on the river, then my pocket nines cracked pocket jacks when I flopped a set.

So down to four players - top 3 get paid -, 31,500 total chips in the tourney, chip leader has around 21k I have approx 6k, 3rd place has 3.5k and the final player has around 800.The blinds are at 200/400 with a 50 ante. I`m in the BB dealt 4-6os, UTG, the chip leader flat calls and the other 2 players fold. The flop comes As 4d 4s, giving me a lovely set of fours. The chip leader has been playing very tight but stealing (at least I presume they were steals) when the smaller stacks have shown weakness, so I decide to go for the check-raise. Sure enough he bets 1k, and I slam all-in over the top, intending to take the pot there and then. I thought if he had the ace I would get a call and if not I win a nice chunk of change.

So there`s 2k in the pot and after calling his bet it`s a raise of 4 - 4.5k. He calls and turns over Ks 7s and makes his flush on the river sending me out on the bubble. I was pretty surprised he called given his hand and the way he`d been playing. He just wasn`t taking those kind of risks and my all-in check raise surely denoted huge strength. Ok I`d been lucky on a few occasions but all the hands I turned over were decent.

So back to the title of this post. I just can`t decide wether firstly I played the hand correctly . . . could I have gotten away from it? And should I have erred on the side of caution until the bubble burst?

Part of me says I played it well and I did the right thing going for a chance to win the whole game. The other part is saying "you dumbass, you would have made the money for sure if you`d hung on for a circuit or two more"

Comments welcome.