Poker Articles

I was sitting in my Cultural Diversity class today and looked around and noticed 30 white middle class students—is that ironic to anyone else? Our professor also passed around her Green Card, which was pink. What is going on in this world? Anyway, about half way through the lecture on microcultures, my mind began wandering, and I started thinking of some good blog topics.

I had gotten a message last night from my good friend Paul Nobles, A.K.A. Beanie, who started hassling me about only having one blog. He and I mess with each other a lot, but having him give me a hard time about this reminded me of another time he got on my case—the time I got second place in the OWNS tournament on UltimateBet. For those who don’t know, the OWNS is a semi-private winner-take-all rebuy tournament that takes place every Tuesday night at 11:15, with a buy in of $50. I strongly recommend checking out this tournament sometime, at least to observe.

Anyway, OWNING is one of the greatest accomplishments anyone can have in online poker, especially for bragging rights. Jsup OWNED last Tuesday, and I have to recommend to him that he now retire from poker, because lets face it, it's not getting any better than OWNING. That's something to tell the grandkids about.

The first time I played the OWNS, I was not even invited, and Scott Fischman decided to remind me about this on more than one occasion at the table. I have since been convinced by people that Scott is a great guy and was just hassling me, and I can live with that.

A few weeks ago it was my birthday, and I was snowed in at home over winter break. Chicago weather sucks. Since I couldn't go anywhere, I decided to play the OWNS tourney, which I’d been absent from for a while. It was pretty big that week, with about 30 entrants. I sent a message to Beanie at the break, when he was chip leader, and he told me to leave him alone as he was in the process of OWNING. I decided to make it my goal that night simply to outlast Beanie.

During the second hour everything went right, and I began to chip up nicely. I ran into a key pot when the blinds were medium sized. I picked up A9 in the BB, with a total of 5 people in the pot. The flop came ace high, with one spade and two diamonds. I wasn't thrilled, with 4 other people in the hand, so I checked, as did the other players in the hand. The turn brought a low spade, which gave me top pair with a nut flush draw. By this point, I was pretty confident I had the best hand, so I led out pretty strong. It folded around to the player on the button, who made a hefty raise. I decided I wanted to see a river here, and I really didn't want to go broke with this hand, so I just called. The river brought another blank. Uh oh. I came to the conclusion, however, that the button may also have been drawing, which would mean I still had the best hand. I decided to check, hoping he would make a weak bluff on the river. Well, so much for a weak bluff after my check; he fired out a huge bet, and I was now going to have to risk 3/4 of my stack to make this call, so I went into the tank. I decided he had either spiked a set on the turn with that blank, which would crush me, OR that he had also picked up a spade draw on the turn and thought I had been making a play at the pot when I had led out. I also decided that he would have made a value bet on the river with a set, because he really couldn't put me on a hand strong enough to pay off a set for that much, after I had only called his raise on the turn. I decided my pair of aces was good and made the call, and he showed me JT, jack high.

After that pot, I cruised into the final table (and well past the busted out Beanie, nice OWNAGE, Bean). I was playing pretty well; I lost half my stack by misplaying a hand but was able to double it back up on the next hand so I was sitting OK.

When the game got down to 4 handed, the blinds were raising pretty quickly, and I was lucky enough to double up a few times and get down to heads up with h0ldempr0, who had a massive stack. The OWNS is a winner take all tourney, but fortunately for me, pr0 was nice enough to cut me a deal. Thanks again for that, pr0.

After the tourney, Beanie didn't fail to mention how sweet it would have been if I had owned on my birthday, and how it is just like in my life—I will always be second best. Sweet buzzkill, Beanie.

This has been kind of long and basically pointless so far, but hopefully a little entertaining at least. Let me get serious for a minute, though. Poker is full of disappointment, and we rarely get the wins we want. I think Eric Seidel once said that in poker, we’re disappointed 99 times for every 1 great win. The key is being able to stay afloat to get that 1 great win. My dad told me over break when I was home that I needed to be happier with smaller wins. This couldn't be more true.

We poker players cannot get down when we aren't hitting that big win we want every week. The disappointments obviously suck, but if we are making enough to survive, we can't get too frustrated, because that big win will come. Staying patient and not getting frustrated is the key; the less frustrated we get, the quicker that big win will come to us. Players need to enjoy the game itself and remember that a win is a win. Be happy with it and bank it. Don't get down when you think about what might have been. There is some hippy song that I love, with the line, "The roller coaster has to go to the bottom before you're gonna ride to the top again." This is so true in poker; good things are coming, just stay upbeat.


Dave Rogowski (A.K.A. Denny Lemieux) is a sophomore, majoring in Education, at Saint Louis University.  Poker is his primary source of income, and he can be found playing at Pokerstars as JesusQntana, at Paradise playing as JesusQntana, at PartyPoker as TheLopper, and at UltimateBet playing as TheLopper or Denny Lemieux.  You can reach him by emailing rogowski@slu.edu