Sensei’s Poker Dojo

But you probably already knew that. As of this afternoon I’m 0-4 in tournaments, and haven’t even made a dinner break yet. I played really well in the 5k PLO before getting it in with top set and losing a 67:33 against an overpair and weak flush draw. I played well in the 2500 2-7 tripledraw as well, but just ran consistently bad. I never made a 7 while my opponents turned over wheel after wheel. It was especially frustrating because I had really high hopes going into that event. It was probably my best shot at a bracelet too (not that I really care about winning a bracelet any more than winning lots of $$$).

Today I played the 5k 6max NLHE, and built my stack up a little in the first few levels with some well-timed aggression. Level 3 was cruel to me though, as I made a few second best hands to lose close to half of my chips before losing it all in a stupid cooler spot. I was BB with like 11k at 100/200. The SB opened to 650 and I called with 87cc. The flop was 775hhd, he bet 800 or something and I raised to 2k, which he called. The turn was the ace of hearts and he led into me for 1650 or some such amount. I was pretty confident that he would have just shipped the flop with a flush draw given stack sizes, and there was enough money in the pot that I wanted to protect it against whatever kind of draws he might have, so I just shipped my last 8k and change, and he super-snapcalled and flipped AA. I failed to spike my one-outer and that was the end of another frustrating tournament.

So I’m down to the main event now.¹ I assume I’ll probably make it to day 3 before busting on the bubble or something, but I guess there’s a chance that I’ll have a good run of it. It is the softest tournament of the year, after all. But before that I’m headed up to Seattle to play at Potlatch, one of the greatest ultimate tournaments ever. An excellent way to spend a few days before the main event.

1. If ever there was a tournament to save my rungood for! [↩]

A few years ago, Jay (Krantz) and myself began working with an aspiring director and poker player (Ryan Firpo) to produce a documentary film about online poker professionals. Our budget was modest by most film standards, but large enough to shoot the film professionally, in high definition, and in a few different locations (Vegas, San Francisco, Madison WI). It took us much longer than expected to finish the film, and it went through a number of changes in style, but it is finally complete! You can view it here. Let me know what you think!

Originally our intention was to produce a more general film, featuring a number of online players, but once we realized how interesting Greg’s (Captain Zeebo) story was, we decided to focus the effort on him in particular, and to hopefully produce a series of short films about other players in the future. Our grand scheme is to raise funds for a full-length feature doc that we can release to the general public, perhaps earning some gold as well as showing the uninformed public what the real deal with online poker is. Worst case scenario, we’ve put together a pretty cool little film and had some fun doing it!

I flew in early on Monday, went straight to the Rio and played the $2500 NLHE 6max event. My table draw wasn’t that great, the only real fish busted pretty quickly to another player and we were left with 4 dudes who seemed like internet pros, one Men the Master, and one non-terrible amateur (on my left). I picked up a few strong hands but didn’t win much with them, and my stack dwindled to short by the first break. Somewhat early in the 3rd level (75/150) I was down to 2300 or something and stuck the rest in with AT and ran into Men’s AK. Meh. I went over to the Amazon room and played some cash games, winning about half of my buyin back in a nice soft 5/10 PLO game. WiltOnTilt came and picked me up and we rolled back to the house. Its a pretty nice place, though a bit far away. The pool is sweet and theres a big grill out there, so I expect plenty of grillin and chillin!

Tuesday I spent most of the day playing cash games at the Rio, mostly 25-25-50 PLO. My first session varied between a juiced up gamble-game and a nittier one, depending on whether or not Devilfish was in the game. I went and ate at naked fish with my friend Jordan (24offsuit) and watched the end of game 3 (go Magic!) and headed back to the Rio to get back to work. I ended up in a few of the worst games ever, which basically consisted of a who’s who of online 25-50+ PLO regulars (Eric Liu, applsgirl, Harrington25, Rollover2k, colson10, and several others who I didn’t know but who were obviously young pros) waiting to get into the main game. Eventually the game broke because a few people left and the rest didn’t want to play against each other anymore. I got into the main game later, but it wasn’t really as great as I had hoped, so I didn’t play too much longer. I ran pretty bad, too, hardly dragging any significantly large pots all day. So it goes.

Today I ended up going back to the Rio and getting into a 10/25 NL game which proved to be much softer than the 25-25-50 PLO, and booked a decent win. I played a few sick hands:

With a straddle on the button, I limped 53cc UTG. CO, a super-LAG middle-aged dude wearing sunglasses and playing basically just with a stack of bills, raised to $125 (curiously small, especially in a straddle pot. Maybe he didn’t realize there was a straddle.) The button called and I called as well. The flop was 984ccx, and I donked out $300. CO called, indicating that he didn’t have much of a hand, and the button folded. The turn was an offsuit 2, giving me the sweet backdoor OESD, and I decided to check. He quickly bet out $800 in bills and I thought for a while before calling, deciding that my implied odds were pretty good and that I could find a fancy way to win the pot if needed. River paired the 8 and I tanked, playing with chips and pulling out my wad of bills before checking. He counted out $2200 and I placed a little stack of chips on top of my 5k bundle, raising to $6000. He snapfolded and I obviously tossed my hand face up on the pile of money that now belonged to me. The old dudes at the table proceeded to praise my ridiculously awesome play for a few orbits, while simultaneously needling the CO about how he would have won the pot with any two cards if he had just checked it down. Obviously the CO was the type of dude who was very prone to tilting after a pot like that, so the next orbit basically consisted of every pot being a raised pot between myself and him. Good times.

The next huge pot was between a young Finnish guy and myself; I opened UTG to $100 with 75ss, and he 3bet me from the BB to $375. We were both very deep, almost 15k effective, so of course I called. The flop was 875 with a club draw. He bet out $450, I raised to $1250, and he 3bet me to $3250. At this point I decided that I was pretty much going to go with it, barring a bad turn card, because he was Finnish and it would require a pretty sick cooler for him to have a better hand on this board. So I called, and the turn was an offsuit Q (a fine card for me). He bet out $4000, and I tanked a little while before announcing all in for another $6950. Once he also tanked, I knew my hand was good (unless he had exactly 87 and was thinking about it). He asked me where I was from, to which I responded “America”, getting a laugh from the rest of the table, and eventually he called it off. He informed me that I was ahead once he knew my hand, but we ran it twice since it was a massive pot and I knew he had outs. The first river was an ace and the second was a 9, and his AQo chopped the pot with me. A long run for a short slide. Would have been nice to win a 29k pot as a 4:1 favorite, but at least I didn’t lose it!

I’ll probably not be playing any events over the next few days as none of them appeal to me that much, but hopefully I’ll grind more cash games and win many gold pieces!

Its that time of year again, when every poker player’s dreams turn to Vegas. Fish as far as the eye can see, big piles of cash, and chips stacked so high you can hardly see over them. I am getting excited myself, on account of the first event¹ starting today and my own trip coming up soon. I’ve got a house with WiltonTilt and jk3a and a few other folks from June 8 to July 8, so I’ll probably be spending much of June down there.

The tournaments I’m likely to play include:

• Event 19: 2500 NLHE 6max, June 8
• Event 30: 2500 PLO, June 14
• Event 35: 5000 PLO, June 17
• Event 40: 10k PLO championship, June 20
• Event 55: 2500 TripleDrawLowball, June 29
• Event 56: 5000 NLHE 6max, June 30
• Event 57: 10k NLHE main event, July 3

I’ll be posting updates and whatnot as they come, of course.

1. The 40k high rollers NLHE. I’m not playing it, of course, but I’ve got some friends who are and I’m rooting for them from my computer [↩]

Yo, I know its been a while since I rapped at ya, but I’ve been putting in some pretty solid hours at work on my new DC series, aptly titled ‘Ringmaster‘. Its a movin-on-up style series about midstakes full ring NL. Most players these days hear ‘full ring’ and are immediately averse to it, but there are actually some pretty nice benefits of playing FR games that stand in stark contrast to PLO: The variance is much lower, perhaps among the lowest of any popular form of poker. Of course, the maximum winrates attainable are lower as well (or are they?!?) but its somewhat made up for by the fact that you can play many tables at once. I normally don’t play more than 6 tables of most games, but I’ve been playing 9-12 fullring games comfortably. Partially due to the challenge I’ve laid out for myself in the series, and partially because I’ve found it reasonbly easy to do so, I’ve been putting in some pretty solid sessions the last month or so. Multi-hour, several-thousand hand sessions, the likes of which I haven’t played in a long time!

I won’t spoil the results of my progress, on account of it featuring in the series itself, but I’ll post a few entertaining hands I’ve encountered so far along the way:

Party Poker $400.00 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter
MP2: $400.00
Hero (CO): $623.20
BTN: $841.50
SB: $776.20
BB: $413.10
UTG: $400.00
UTG+1: $124.00
MP1: $727.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is CO with T T
2 folds, MP1 calls $4, MP2 raises to $16, Hero calls $16, 3 folds, MP1 calls $12

Flop: ($54.00) K 6 T (3 players)
MP1 checks, MP2 bets $40.00, Hero calls $40, MP1 raises to $140, MP2 calls $100, Hero raises to $340, MP1 raises to $711, MP2 calls $244 all in, Hero calls $267.20 all in

Turn: ($1652.40) 6 (3 players – 2 are all in)

River: ($1652.40) 4 (3 players – 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $1652.40

MP1 shows 6 6
MP2 mucks KK
MP1 wins $342.60
MP1 wins $1203.00

Party Poker $400.00 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter
Hero (BTN): $413.60
SB: $414.00
BB: $412.00
UTG: $233.00
UTG+1: $755.40
MP1: $183.10
MP2: $297.05
CO: $603.90

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BTN with 4 6
5 folds, Hero raises to $12, 1 fold, BB raises to $42, Hero calls $30

Flop: ($86.00) 2 T 3 (2 players)
BB bets $50.00, Hero calls $50

Turn: ($186.00) 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $140.00, BB raises to $320, Hero calls $180

River: ($826.00) T (2 players)

Final Pot: $826.00
BB shows 9 7
BB wins $823.00

First, this hand happened:

Pokerstars $600.00 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $67.65

SB: $639.75

Hero (BB): $600.00

UTG: $234.00

UTG+1: $363.00

MP1: $627.00

MP2: $271.00

CO: $227.75

Pre Flop: ($9.00) Hero is BB with T 9

4 folds, CO raises to $18, 2 folds, Hero calls $12

Flop: ($39.00) 7 8 J (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets $48.00, Hero calls $48

Turn: ($135.00) 3 (2 players)

Hero checks, CO bets $161.75, Hero calls $161.75

River: ($458.50) 6 (2 players)

Final Pot: $458.50

Hero shows T 9

(CO mucks AcJc)

Hero wins $455.50

Then my vanquished opponent proceeded to berate me thusly:

MetzGaleer: why do people call 18 dollars with caca caca suited
MetzGaleer: why
DJ Sensei: its my lucky hand!
MetzGaleer: why are online players such ******s !
FordKnocks: to take down the monsters
MetzGaleer: im done with online gambling
DJ Sensei:

MetzGaleer: too many idiots
MetzGaleer: AJ suited losing to 89
MetzGaleer: ridiculous
FordKnocks: dude u didn’t raise that much…and AJ is crap…to raise..
MetzGaleer: AJ suited is not a crap hand,….89 suited is
MetzGaleer: preflop probaly 80 20
DJ Sensei: 82/18¹
MetzGaleer: there you go
MetzGaleer: ******s

And then he wandered off to whatever home game/casino he crawled out of. Ahhh, the joys of online poker!

1. this was my favorite part, heh [↩]

So I was watching ‘The Departed‘ today on cable TV. The first time I saw it, I wasn’t a huge fan, due to the frequent occurrence of dudes shooting other dudes in the head at point-blank range. I like violent movies as much as the next young American male, but for some reason that particular kind of violence just rubs me the wrong way. The storyline is pretty awesome and the cast is very good though, so if they were to just take out all of the short-range headshots it would be a great movie. Anyhow, part of the reason I turned it on today was curiousity about how they’d censor it for cable.

The censors did a pretty average job of turning all of the ‘fuck’s and ’shit’s into milder oaths, which was to be expected. However, it appears that they left almost all of the visual violence intact. The vast majority of this involved gunshots clearly impacting people and blood spraying realistically from the wounds. Additionally, they allowed the uncensored use of the word ‘faggot’.

I find these adjustments to be completely absurd. Presumably, the reasoning behind censoring R-rated movies for TV is to prevent kids from seeing and hearing things that are inappropriate for them. But how in the world is it reasonable to show terrible violence and specifically hateful expletives, but censor out the classic curse words which really aren’t all that harmful or offensive? If I had kids, I’d rather hear them drop a hundred aimless F bombs than a single hateful epithet. And to an even greater extent, the last thing I’d want them to see on television would be such blatant and terrible violence.

So yea, that got me all riled up. Like many such things, I wish there was a way that I could fix it, but I doubt theres anything I can do. Oh well. That reminds me, if you also are offended by this sort of censorship, you should watch “This Film Is Not Yet Rated“, a documentary about how stupid and powerful the MPAA is. Its good.

So last night around 7 something I was thinking about what I was going to do for dinner when my friend Matt called to inform me that he was in the city and hungry. How convenient! He made his way over and we decided to hit up Domo, which has delicious sushi and the convenience of being very close to my apartment. We put our names on the list with a phone number and came back to my living room to chill out and wait for the call.

– Relevant aside: When I was home for Christmas I picked out a bunch of things that I wanted to be shipped out to me, mainly video games and books. These things included my collection of old NES games, since my roommate has an NES console here. It still works, too! Recently, that package arrived (with some Easter candy, mmmm.) –

I challenged him to a game of Bases Loaded 2, which I would contend is the best baseball video game ever made. It was, as expected, a slaughter, and I won the game on the mercy rule after 5 innings (and pitched several immaculate innings in the process).¹ The timing worked out well, and we headed over for our fish feast.

We destroyed an array of sushi that would probably have fed a small village (and a bottle of sake which proabably wouldn’t have done much for that village but which was pretty awesome for the two of us) before returning to the couch for some more classic NES games. Our next task was the Legend of Zelda, by all measures one of the greatest video games of all time. We loaded it up and alternated turns for a while, gradually progressing through the game and rediscovering all of the old secrets from my youth. Eventually we happened upon a dead end.

Inside the cave we were delighted to discover a nice gentleman who offered us a chance to make some easy money.

We certainly were not going to refuse that offer, and so we chose a rupee. Success! We were rewarded with a 50 rupee profit for our correct choice. My immediate realization was that the game was massively +EV, as the two losing spots only penalized -10 and the winning spot rewarded +50. So we kept gambling with the dude, racking up profits. Soon we went in for another round and discovered that the set of outcomes had changed; now there was a -40 in addition to the +50 and a -10. But it was still neutral EV, so we kept at it. Shortly thereafter we played a round where the set of outcomes was {-10, -40, +20} and I became concerned. Was the video game attempting to ingrain in us an aversion to gambling by setting us up to lose all of our rupees? We were determined not to allow it. So we kept gambling. Eventually the outcomes returned to the original set of {-10, -10, +50} and so on, so it appeared that the game was randomizing the set of outcomes as well as the result.²

Unsurprisingly, we eventually went busto after a terrible run of -40s. With only 7 rupees to our name, we set out to kill more monsters and earn enough scrilla to return to the gambling spot and get back in the action. While wandering around the screen chasing after peahats, Matt stumbled upon a secret area hidden along the top wall of rocks. We entered a menacing looking cave to find a gentleman who offered us a secret. 100 rupees!!! We were back in business! We headed immediately back to the spot to try and run it up some more, and again ended up busting it all. But we persisted in our goal of maximum rupees. A brief and murderous romp around Hyrule led to building up our roll to about 40 rupees, which we decided was enough to work with. We finally ran hot again, and built up our stack to 255 rupees, which we discovered is the maximum allowed. At last we had a reason to quit, so we took our fat stacks over to the swap meet and bought a blue ring for 250. Totally worth it.

1. They seem to come way more often in video games than in real baseball. [↩]
2. It seems that the game randomly chooses between {-10, -10, +50}, {-10, -40, +50}, {-10, -40, +20} and {-10, -10, +20} which I guess means its overall neutral EV. [↩]

So I haven’t played too much lately. I’ve been coaching a ton and also working a good deal on some DC stuff (like my current awesome video series PLO Dojo). But I did play a few long sessions last week and got absolutely crushed. My won $ at showdown was about 40% over several thousand hands, which will never lead to things ending well when you’re playing PLO (especially cap PLO where such a high % of pots end in capping). So that sucked.

But then on the plus side, I bought action from a few friends who were playing the SCOOP tournaments (since I couldn’t/didn’t want to play them myself) and both made deep runs to win me monies! I had 25% of Clayton (cnew27) in the PLO rebuy event where he finished 6th, earning me about 6k or so, and then 25% of Derric (actionDJ) in a few events including the main event. He ended up making a deep run and final tabling, earning me about 35k in profits the easy way when he finished 7th¹. As it turns out, watching a horse of mine play is generally much more fun than playing myself, especially in these deep tournament situations where I am guaranteed to win more and more money as time goes on.

1. Had he won the last big coinflip he would have had an excellent shot at many more gold. First prize was close to a million. Sigh. [↩]

Early in my PLO career, after learning about the nature of the game and the merits (or lack thereof) of blockers, I decided that if I were ever dealt quad tens (by all normal measures a terrible PLO hand, since it has zero room for improvement beyond a pair of tens¹ ) that I was going to play it and hope that the board had a straight possible (involving a ten, of course), then bluff the hell out of it knowing that nobody else could have that straight. Once everyone folded, as they naturally would do, I would gloriously show my hand and chat about how my quads were so good. The reason for choosing tens as my quads of choice is that every straight requires either a 5 or a T, and obviously the straights with the T are the best kind.

Today I finally got my chance!

Full Tilt Poker $25/$50 $2000 Cap Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 5 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $6418.00
Browndog19 (UTG): $5656.75
Boosted J (CO): $16896.50
20 Buck Spin (BTN): $12159.25
FinnishNightmre (SB): $6931.50

Pre Flop: ($75.00) Hero is BB with T T T T
4 folds

Final Pot: $50.00
Hero wins $50.00

Sigh… I guess I’m on pace for my next chance about 11 months from now. ²

1. Well I guess it can make a full house on a board with trips, which is occasionally useful [↩]
2. Side note: It seems like I get dealt quad deuces way more often than any other kind. I’m pretty sure quad deuces are the consensus worst hand in PLO, but I probably wouldn’t play them for laughs unless it was at low stakes, or in a live game. [↩]