i have been lazy lately, and haven't had many good results, so i haven't updated this in a while. been mostly bubbling final tables which has been pretty frustrating. hence the title "doesn't variance suck?"

i havent played live since the wsop last summer, but i am playing some live tournaments in the next few months which is an excuse to travel. in april i am playing an ECPT tournament outside salzburg, austria. in may i am going to calgary for the canadian poker open, and then in june i am going to be in vegas playing several wsop preliminary events at the rio and probably a bunch of DS tournaments at the venetian (assuming they have it again). i have a nice house in vegas with 5 random ppl from cardrunners for all of june, so that should be a good time.

here is one of the worst plays i have seen in awhile:

Full Tilt Poker Game #10078096180: $27,500 Guarantee (76348394), Table 30 400/800 Ante 100 - No Limit Hold'em
Seat 1: Micha2213 (13,905)
Seat 2: webgem5 (29,689)
Seat 3: japatti (29,500)
Seat 4: serbie (27,726)
Seat 5: rufflife (7,474)
Seat 6: FUDOSPB (40,288)
Seat 7: ech66 (8,742)
Seat 8: sbuehrer (43,184)
Seat 9: butch76 (11,570)
butch76 posts the small blind of 400
Micha2213 posts the big blind of 800
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to serbie [Qs Jc]
webgem5 folds
japatti folds
serbie raises to 1,999
rufflife raises to 3,198
FUDOSPB folds
ech66 folds
sbuehrer folds
butch76 folds
Micha2213 folds
serbie raises to 27,626, and is all in
rufflife has 15 seconds left to act
rufflife has requested TIME
rufflife folds
Uncalled bet of 24,428 returned to serbie
serbie mucks
serbie wins the pot (8,496)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 8,496 | Rake 0

so the guy had 7474 chips. an M of less than 4. he minreraised me to 3198, which is about 43% of his stack. then folded to my shove. you might think his minreraise was a misclick, but he had been minreraising people a lot at the table. it was about 40 spots out of the money in a $24+2 donkament on FTP. terrible. i am probably going to end up like phil hellmuth and just berate people for how bad they play.

Seat 1: Daponk (39,104)
Seat 2: outoni (43,657)
Seat 3: serbie (83,943)
Seat 4: Highcheck (273,928)
Seat 5: BUBBALUCH 8 (48,332)
Seat 6: rostinology (71,433)
Seat 7: 1BroadStBully (84,568)
Seat 8: Gossu (73,918)
Seat 9: instinkt poker (177,543)
outoni posts the small blind of 1,500
serbie posts the big blind of 3,000
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to serbie [Ad Kh]
Highcheck folds
BUBBALUCH 8 folds
rostinology folds
1BroadStBully raises to 7,768
Gossu folds
instinkt poker folds
Daponk folds
outoni folds
serbie raises to 83,543, and is all in
1BroadStBully calls 75,775
serbie shows [Ad Kh]
1BroadStBully shows [Ac 4d]
*** FLOP *** [4s Td 5h]
*** TURN *** [4s Td 5h] [Jh]
*** RIVER *** [4s Td 5h Jh] [Kd]
serbie shows a pair of Kings
1BroadStBully shows a pair of Fours
serbie wins the pot (172,186) with a pair of Kings

this was in a $10 cubed tournament, down to the final two tables. i think this call with the A4o is so horrible. this is why poker tournaments will always be profitable. i dont know how he called this: was he hero calling my possible KQ? unfortunately i didnt end up taking it down, but i got a 3rd place finish which is always the 3rd best scenario.

anyway, i noticed another terrible play over and over again in the past week. i call it the "slowplay trap", although they are actually trapping with a pretty mediocre hand. a lot of people limp in early position or middle position with hands like KJo, A8s, etc, and they instashove if someone raises behind them. they are always behind when they get snap called, because they do this with a stack of like 8 - 15 BBs. it seems pretty stupid to me. why not just openshove instead of waiting for someone to show strength and then shove when you have no fold equity against their hand that is obviously ahead?
although i am against the AA or KK early position limp, at least that play has some merit to it.

i have been playing a lot of smaller tournaments lately ($20-100 freezeouts and $10-30 rebuys). this is to cut down on the swings, as i dont like 10-15k swings with my bankroll. rather than investing 1k-1500 on an average day, i now spend about $500-1k on buy-ins. the exception is sundays, where i usually invest around 1500 to 2k. too many sunday majors = too many bad players that need to be exploited.
the skill level in these tournys is also pretty poor compared to tournaments like the $100 rebuy or the 1k tournys, which are stacked with thinking players.

i was gonna post some hands from titan poker, where the play is more weak than any other site. i couldnt narrow my choice down to a few hands, so i'll just say that everyone should play on titan because poker doesn't get any easier than titan poker. at a final table this past week in a $50 freezeout, i had 18k on the button. the blinds were 1.5k/3k, so i raised to 7.5k with AA after it folded to me. the BB with about 25k chips shoves all in on me with K4o. the reason i made a small raise here (with obviously no fold equity to the blinds), was so they would shove on me, which unsurprisingly the BB decided to do. i can't imagine any thought process being used here by this guy. obv he hit trip 4s and i busted out, but this is how easy titan is. titan is a pretty garbage site overall, but i continue to play on it because of all the bad players. of course there are a lot of skilled players on the site as well, but it's definitely a site worth playing on.

i just remembered an interesting hand that happened in the friday $100 rebuy event on titan:
Table Friday $150,000 Guaranteed R/A, 246648831, -2135344615 (Tournament: Friday $150,000 Guaranteed R/A Buy-In: $100+$9)
Seat 1: Pershad ($62,186.50 in chips)
Seat 2: Tini56 ($7,700.00 in chips) DEALER
Seat 3: dudulll ($27,790.00 in chips)
Seat 4: couderle ($11,415.04 in chips)
Seat 5: shotlybridgefox ($62,913.28 in chips)
Seat 6: citlec1 ($60,182.50 in chips)
Seat 7: Darknezz ($51,723.70 in chips)
Seat 8: PLAYCOM1 ($11,240.00 in chips)
Seat 9: asdewqr3 ($39,528.02 in chips)
Seat 10: pokerking133 ($12,117.25 in chips)
dudulll: Post SB $1,200.00
couderle: Post BB $2,400.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Pershad [Ah Kc]
shotlybridgefox: Fold
citlec1: Raise (NF) $7,200.00
Darknezz: Fold
PLAYCOM1: Fold
asdewqr3: Fold
pokerking133: Fold
Pershad: Call $7,200.00
Tini56: Fold
dudulll: Raise (NF) $27,790.00
couderle: Fold
citlec1: Raise (NF) $48,380.00
Pershad: Allin $54,986.50
citlec1: Allin $11,802.50
*** FLOP *** [3c 4c 8h]
*** TURN *** [7d]
*** RIVER *** [5c]
*** SUMMARY ***
dudulll: Shows [As Qs]
citlec1: Shows [10c 10s]
Total pot $152,559.00 Rake $0.00
citlec1: wins $150,555.00

there was like 70-some people left (the top 80 paid). i think i was in 4th, and citlec was in 5th. i should've reraised him preflop, instead of letting him be the aggressor. i think i could have laid down the hand and still had a top 10 stack to work with, but i put him on a hand like TT or JJ and decided with the money already in the pot that i could flip. the winner would get a monster chip lead stack, and since i only wanted the 34k for 1st place i elected to call. a nice isolation 4bet by him, and a standard(?) call by me. 54k call to win 96k with AK. there are no antes on titan, so thats why i gave some consideration to folding as i still had a lot of time left to pick my spots, but whatever. go big or go home.

so i decided to start a poker blog this year to get more involved in the online poker community. you can listen to me bitch about variance when i lose and listen to me praise my skills when i win tournys or have big cashes. i'll post some interesting hands and other things poker-related too throughout.

so my poker history: although i have been playing poker for a few years, i only started getting into online tournys last march (of 2008) and pretty much had immediate success, which was followed by long stretches of losing with the occassional good days. last weekend i took down a triple crown (3 tournys on 3 different sites) worth like 13k.

my poker goals for 2009 is to make at least 100k in profit, preferably much more. in 2008 i made probably somewhere between 60k to 80k? i dont keep records so that is just an educated guess. i plan on playing a lot more poker this year tho so hopefully it will be a pretty profitable year. i also plan on playing more live events (last year the only live events i played were a bunch of prelims at the wsop). i am also pretty set on taking down a sunday major sometime this year (i came close twice before with 2nd and 5th place finsihes in the Titan 250k GTD and the FullTilt 750K GTD). that is pretty much my poker tournament history.

i'll probably update this once or twice a week with some poker results, some thoughts on hands, etc.

gl at the tables everyone.