Sensei’s Poker Dojo

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. [↩]

Well, I never thought this day would come. I thought that I was immune from the sort of massive debilitating tilt that plagues so many poker players, but apparently that is no longer the case.

It began when I went down to Lucky Chances on Friday and discovered that they were spreading a 50/100 game for some rich dude who was in town and wanted to gamble. He was wearing a ridiculous watch on both wrists and had some serious gold chains on. He was one of the worst players I’ve ever seen, and he ran hotter than the sun against me. I got 15k in preflop with KK within the first hour, and his A9o binked trip 9’s. I rebought for every dollar I had in cash, and built it up slowly for a few hours before this hand: the monster fish limped with about 30k behind, I covered with 34k and iso-raised J9ss to $400. The BB called and the fish overcalled, of course. The flop came out Ts8c3c, they both checked and I bet $1000. The BB called and the fish overcalled. The turn was a beautiful 7s, the BB checked, and the fish donked out $5000. I hollywooded a bit before raising to $15000, and he insta-shipped. I snapcalled and flipped my hand, which I wouldn’t ordinarily do but this was a monster pot. He was unfazed, and when the river was a 7h he casually turned over 73o as if he expected it the entire time.

I managed to regain my composure after a short walk around the casino, and resolved to do what I could with my remaining stack. Instead of beginning an epic comeback, I had the luxury of watching the fish dump his entire stack off to a few old nits in some equally terrible pots, then get up and leave about as pleasantly as anyone could after such a downswing. The rest of my stack went in with AK and failed to outflip pocket 4’s. I returned home in a dark cloud, my thoughts muddled and racing at a speed I’m unaccustomed to. When I arrived home I immediately signed on to FullTilt and Stars and looked for seats in the biggest PLO games available. The rest of the night was shrouded in a terrible haze.

I awoke on Saturday with a pounding headache and little recollection of the events of the prior evening, though they immediately became clear when I realized that my 30″ monitor had been augmented by a mostly-empty whiskey bottle through its center. The Lucky Chances game was the next thing to flash through my memory. I grimly opened my laptop to assess the damage. My account balances had both been decimated, unsurpisingly. How could I let something like this happen? I still don’t know, but even thinking about it leads me into a terrible depressive state.

So now what? Well, I’ve got about enough money in the bank to pay my taxes and maybe a few months rent. I might have a little money in some other poker accounts that managed to avoid the catastrophe, but I’m pretty much cleaned out. I guess I should start looking for stakes, or something. Maybe I should get a real job and just give up on the whole poker thing. Sigh. Don’t let this happen to you!

On the plus side, at least its April now!