Bonus? or Bogus?

I'm debating. Is it worth it? I haven't played on Stars in quite a while, so I'm not sure what the play is like there now. And I will probably have to earn a trillion points to get the bonus bucks, but it is free money!

Any advice?

Aaahoo, werewolves of London

What is the relevance of this first picture? It is the clothes hamper in my hallway. I'll tell you why I posted it in a minute.

I played several tourneys Friday night and it was a +Bankroll night for me. But I didn't make any major scores. 70/1290 in 28K guarantee, 7 of 549 in $3 KO, and 6 of 18 in a Tier 1 SNG. I managed to cash in 3 of the 6 tournaments I played in. All fun, but again, no major score.

I'm trying to make a lucko or an LJ type score. Maybe soon. Take a look at lucko's blog to get some good tips on MTT play. And check out Vinnay. I kept thinking of his "blind play" when I was playing. No. Not playing from the blinds, rather playing without looking at your cards. I didn't do it, but I tried to imagine how I would play the hand regardless of my cards. As he said: it "reminds you of the importance of image, and really makes you pay attention to what the rest of the table is doing". See his post here for more. I know it is online and there are no physical tells, but you can still read your opponents somewhat.

So here is why I posted that first picture. Just before going to bed, we always check on the babes to make sure everyone is still in their bed, needs to be covered, is sleeping, etc. Panic set in quickly when we couldn't find my 3 year old, and just before I was going to start searching outside of my house: my wife found him here-------->










In this picture, he was still sound asleep. He woke up briefly when we were getting him out and said he was hiding from the monsters in his room. He had a blanket, pillow and a book with him. How can you get mad at him for that?

Thanks to my iphone to always have a decent camera on me.

Stay patient...

$3 tourney Friday night.

549 players and I get my first KO in hand 3 and my 2nd with 34 players left

I get 2 more right away then hit a big one with KJ vs K9. I am in 3rd of 28 right now.

Won AQ vs 44 on river. I had 5 x the chips preflop. 4/18 now

Lost a big hand when I tried to but a pot with 57hearts and got killed by KK

Doubled up with 77 vs A10 then hit AA and bought pot to put me at 1/16

I bought a pot with A3 and was 3/10

Final table, I have 1 and 2 behind me which is perfect. I am 2 of 9.

I eff up when I play 66 And chip leader catches up on turn with an A7. I go home 7th and get 40something for $3 buy in. so close, yet so far away
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Where I found my 3 year old this morning.

I guess candy on the top shelf doesn't really matter.

Possible replies to 7 year old's comments (see previous post):



-Didn't you hear? The tooth fairy's server crashed. She can't mapquest our house without it. Microsoft is working hard to get her back working though.



-I'm sorry honey, we didn't want to tell you this way. The tooth fairy was mugged and killed last Friday night. All the robber got away with was $87 in quarters, dimes and nickles. The tragedy.



-Actually, the tooth fairy is real. Mom and Dad just have to place an order whenever you lose a tooth. We didn't know to email her the request.



-OK, you got us. There is no tooth fairy. Santa Clause needs to do something in the off-season and he pretends to be the tooth fairy. So really it is Santa Clause's fault. He forgot you.

-Did you add the tooth fairy to your myspace friends. The tooth fairy no longer delivers to anyone not in her "extended network".

OK, that's enough sillyness from me. Hope your having fun.


You got one????

Conversation with a 7 year old

This morning after I had left for work, my wife was still in bed asleep. My 7 year old "Boo" woke her up with this conversation:

Boo: "Mom! I have proof that you and dad are really the tooth fairy."
Mom: "What?" (still groggy, and unsure where this is going)
Boo: "Remember when we couldn't find my tooth that fell out. Well, I found it and put it under my pillow for the last two nights and the tooth fairy never came."
Mom: "Boo. Go get ready for school"

No one can tell me that I'm doing wrong today

"whenever I see you smile at me" .. James Taylor

I'm finding the token frenzy's and Tier 1 SNG's where you get a $26 token to be quite easy on FTP. Hoy recently wrote a great post advocating playing the tournaments where payouts go to the top 30% and then using those payouts for buy-ins to bigger and/or better tournaments. I agree.

I also like the 45 player 26$ buy in SNG's. So I'm essentially getting into them for a discounted amount. How much of a discount?. Let's assume that I play 25 $8.70 SNG's and 12 $6.60 (some are $6.50 but we will round up). That's a total of $296.70 spent and I win 15 tokens which equals $390. That means I am actually spending $19.78 per $26 tournament I enter (296.70/15). That's a discount of 24%. Not too bad I'd say. My goal would be to win 1 out of every 2 tournaments I play which would be a discount of around 40%. That's extremely aggressive, but still a goal I will shoot for. See results below from officialpokerrankings.com


Of course, what really matters is what I do with those 15 tokens.

Breaking the numbers down even further, I find that I am only hitting a token 1 in 2.77 tries at the $8.70 buy-in. That is almost getting into -EV. 1 in 3 wins would be -EV by 10cents every 3 tries or a .4% loss. Of course I have won 3 out of the last 4 $8.70 SNG's, so I will assume I am getting better rather than hitting a good streak of variance (awfully vain of me, eh?). I need to break down the results in turbos versus non-turbos, but I'll save that for later.

And at the $6.50 buyin level, I am hitting a token 1 out of every 2 times I play. 4 of the 6 tokens won were in the 9:45CST frenzy's with 100+ players. Those are full of tons of loose players, so TAG play is rewarded. I can't play those any 'ol time like I can the 18 player SNG's, but they sure are nice. Wouldn't you like to cash almost 60% of the time you play? HA HA HA.

I've cashed in 2 of the 10 $26 buy ins I have played. I've played a few different sized tournaments but the 2 I cashed in were 45 player SNG's (1st and 4th) paying out $518 for $197 invested. 160% profit is pretty nice.

So that's a synopsis of what I'm doing right now and what is keeping my bankroll moving upwards (like the 30 year mortgage rates or the real estate values in Toronto -ok maybe not that much). You get the idea. Let me know what's working for you.

In the meantime check out this "may the felt fold bald texan" and this "presto is gold".

Stay patient....

Up, Up and Away.....

This would be a "happy-chart" if it were tracking my poker winnings. Unfortunately, it is tracking the 10 year treasury which closely parallels 30 year mortgage rates. Monday, the par rates for a 30 year mortgage were about 5.5% and now it is 6.25%. I don't really expect the rates to continue rising at this rate, however, it does illustrate the volatility we are seeing in the mortgage rates. A rise of 3/4 point should take a few weeks or a month or more, not 4 days.

Hopefully, they will settle back down next week.

If you haven't seen it, there is a great post here discussing semi-bluffing. Definitely check it out.

I hit 4th in a 45 player SNG last night. I sucked out twice to make it that far. Once, my AJ all in steal was called by AK. Jack on the flop and I stay alive with around 20 players left. I don't remember the other one, but it illustrates the fact that you have to get lucky once in a while to make it deep. You CAN do it without sucking out I suppose, but that would require you win all your races and you make perfect reads to never get your cards in behind. That seems to be just as lucky as sucking out, IMO.

Hope you kill the tables this weekend.

Stay patient.....

Ain't no draft no more, son. There was one?

Tonight lost with :
66 vs K5off
A10 vs A8
A8 vs A5
These were all in preflop. Sucks to get in ahead and lose!

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My latest toy

Iphone. You got one yet? It is amazing. I can't say enough about how much I love it. Webpages at my fingertips. Googlereader, weather, sports updates, the ability to blog: all in my pocket everywhere I go. What's that? YOU have the internet on your phone too? Well not like the Iphone. I can open word docs, pdf's, excel, it goes on and on. Blowberry phones got nothin' on the Iphone. Oh yeah! And then there is my renewed love affair with Triumph, Rush, Shooting Star, and all my other favorite bands from when I was in high school. I can actually buy 1 song at a time. Amazing technology. . . Now if only I could download FTP onto my Iphone....

That's what I got to say today.... Sucked it up in poker last night, but I got it in good, so that's all that matters, right? We will be trying again tonight. Congrats to Skidoo for taking down the MATH last night.

Stay patient...

Happy birthday Bennett

Well, this is a start. It is my son's third birthday. He throws one hell of a party! You should have been at his first birthday party.



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If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool

Yayyyyyyy! It's Friday! What a week. My second week in management and I was TOLD to fire someone. "Welcome to my new branch. Your Fired!" That was fun. It was inevitable, so I did it right away and got it over with. Welcome to management.

Friday means "Friday night poker at FTP". Last Friday night was very good to me when I hit a 2nd place 90 player $3 KO and a 1st place 45 player $26 SNG. Let's hope I can repeat. I have been trying to stockpile tokens this week and now have 6 $26 tokens. I'll probably play at least 2 45 player SNG's and maybe a big MTT with those tonight.

Check out this freaky graph (from sharkscope). The 1st place 45 player SNG really skewed my winnings. In a good way of course. My bankroll is now up 150% since I reloaded in February. This graph doesn't show some of my other MTT winnings that are not SNG's.
Now here is one I don't understand completely (from www.officialpokerrankings.com). I was sitting at a 65percentile forever and then within the last week I jumped to the 90's. I was thinking I would slowly move upwards as I progressed and since I just made a huge jump, it makes me think this site really means nothing. I don't know. Any thoughts???

And lastly, here is my 2cents on the whole "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM" issue. A couple of people (and probably more) have complained that only "ass-clowns" type "BOOOM" into the chat box and that you could never do that in a live game. Well NO SHIT!!!! I don't want to do it in a live game. I don't have buddydank playing in my ear during a live game. I don't know most of the players in a 70+person MTT live game. If I play a live game, I take it way more seriously than online low buy in MTT's.

I play in the blogger games for a specific reason. Because of familiarity. Getting to know people with similar interests (sicknesses) as me. And I want to give them SHIT and I want to scream at them and I want to congratulate them and I want to joke around with them. It's a freakin' $10 or $26 buy in game. It's just for the fun of it; for the competition of it; and for the entertainment of it. One of the most fun evenings I had playing was a night where Chad was drunk (by his admission) and we typed back and forth a hundred insults of aidsizzzzzisms. Who cares what is in the chat??? If you don't like it TURN IT OFF!

I think it is hilarious when people rail for each other AND against each other. Bring it on! Make it fun. If it is too offensive the FTP police will get you. Until then: BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!

Stay patient...

Bloggers unite

It's fun to be playing and have someone say "what's up?" or whatever. Unfortunately Cayne didn't make it in this one, but damn! I would have done anything I could to help him, if I could have.

It's the New Style. Four and Three and Two and One...

I've been trying something new and it seems to be working. I found the 18 player $8.80 Tier One SNG's to be extremely easy. It's like the nightly Token Frenzy's but much quicker. Top 30% get paid (5 tokens and $14 to 6th). I mean really? How often can you get in the top 30%. You can almost fold your way there. I actually won a token in one that I saw 4 flops. FOUR!

Then, there are several $26 buyin tournaments that play just like the $3 KO's. The 45 player SNG's and the 90 player KO's. And of course there are plenty of guarantee tournaments and the most exciting and challenging of them all: THE MATH.

So you can see from sharkscope that I am hitting some of the $8.80 SNG's and then I took first in a 45 player $26 buy in SNG. It's nice to play in one of those for $8.80 and win $400+. I also hit another $3 90 player KO for 2nd place. Those are fun! For great tips on how to kill those, check out Matt's Blog.

Hope the tables are treating you right. I am excited to keep trying my new plan to build up my bankroll. Work will be kicking my ass for awhile. I opened my new branch on April 1st with 5 new employees. I have to hire 4 more in the next 2 months. Busy, busy, busy. I'll be trying to hit the BBT3 games when I can, hopefully Mondays and Wednesdays.

In the next couple of months I hope to get a new laptop and start posting specific hand histories again. I have to wait a couple of months because Hawkette just got me a new IPHONE. HELL YEAH! I love it! It is so freakin' Cool. I have wanted one for a year (or since they came out) and now I have it. It is awesome! Now if I can just download FTP onto my Iphone, I would be set...

Stay Patient.....