Why Do People Hate Short Stackers So Much?
December 31, 2009
One of my favourite blogs is located here, the two contributors are Travis “The Dirrty” Rose and Lorin Yelle. The reason I enjoy this blog so much is because it’s fantastically well written and offers some very thought provoking ideas in digestible chunks, I promise a look back through this blogs archive will be a few hours well spent.
Lorin and Travis blog gets tons of comments, primarily abusive as both players are professional shot stack grinder’s and this seem to engender a level of vitriol that is normally only reserved for child abusers and Ashley Cole. A cursory flick through the comments section and you will see what I mean.
Now I’ve heard all the arguments about short stacker’s (SS) killing the games etc, which if they where all playing solid SS strategy, which when employed perfectly is pretty much un-exploitable then yes they probable would be harming the games, but lets be honest in the main SS are like all other poker players, a mixed bunch at best.
There are the tough SS like Lorin and Travis but there quite easy to spot and it’s just the age old issue of game selection, if I find myself at a table with one or two good SS, then I just pick the fuck up, same as I would facing a couple of good full stackers.
So where does the anger come from? I really don’t know to be honest. I know what I find it annoying, and that’s Rakeback sites that have been training and employing farms of short stackers in Eastern Europe. But that’s not a personal dislike, its just an abuse of poker I resent and I’m quite happy that I-Poker at least are making moves to make this unprofitable with changes in the distribution of rake to players and how they pay skins.
I could never hate someone just because the way they play a game, it all seems very odd to me, maybe though I might feel differently if I was playing 10 tables for 8 hours day.
Sign of the Times?
December 30, 2009
I’m not sure if this is anything or just a sign of the changing times in poker we have seen over the past few years with the death of the weak/passive players that used to frequent online and live poker. This morning I decided to play a little bit of heads-up cash NLHE on a €.50/€1 Euro table playing on the Black Belt Poker Skin on the I-Poker network.
I picked a table where an opponent was already seated, I selected this particular table because although he was only half stacked, my opponent was sitting with an odd amount €49.70 or so. I like to look for these guy’s because it’s often there full roll and there on mega tilt trying to get back losses after a bad run at the micro’s.
After a half a dozen hands or so my opponent moves about 10 euro’s up on me and its playing like almost any other game. Then a hand comes up that requires me to check/call to the river on a scary board with my top pair no kicker being not much more than a bluff catcher, my opponent has a missed draw and we find ourselves level.
I mentioned this hand because it seemed to be the catalyst for some very strange poker, I raise the next pot, my opponent folds, my opponent then fold there small blind. And this continues to be the pattern for the next 20 or 30 hands as my opponent blinds down to €20, A little strange but nothing a really, really shitty run of cards wouldn’t explain.
Once my opponent dipped below €20 they started to auto rebuy to the minimum buy-in of €20 but they continued to fold to every raise, one change is that they are now limping the occasional small blind and then folding to my flop bets. They re-bought exactly 10 times and then continued to play in this extremely passive manner until they reached €6 where they opened €3 with K10 and called my shove with 99 and I won the flip. I typed in GG, no response but they wouldn’t leave the seat, I asked them to reload or move on, no response, I called them a world class fish, no response.
As mentioned I have a feeling this was a malfunctioning bot with my check call with top pair acting triggering some kind of glitch, but maybe I only think this because I haven’t played a weak passive like this in a long, long time. Maybe I really did manage to find the last player in online poker who hasn’t developed an aggressive stance. Either way I’ll be watching for there name online and jumping on a table with them every opportunity I get!
Ivey’s Xmas
December 30, 2009
So what do you get a man for Christmas who has everything ………. A Divorce?
Seriously though, who gives a fig? But as other sites seem to be reporting on Phil Ivey’s marriage break up, I suppose we can use this news in the gossip section 
What is more interesting to me is that Luciaetta and Phil Ivey filed for divorce on the 22nd December and it was finalized yesterday (29th December)!! One week over a Christmas Holiday! My Divorce took 4 months FFS maybe America does lead the way in some fields. Marriage and divorce possible in a week … wow!
So yet again the similarity between the poker legend and the Golf legend Tiger Woods runs on a par, but there is one thing that makes Phil Ivey a proper God, he can travel through time.
Have a look at this Video 18 seconds in and see the time lord singing along with Bob Marley in 1979 to the rather aptly named tune of No Woman No Cry
At least he can get on with the serious business of playing some poker now, and learn how to multi table properly for when Isildur builds his roll back up
NumberWang
December 29, 2009
I really like the BBC2 sketch show ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look’, a particular favourite skit is ‘Number Wang’ where contestants take part in a quiz show with totally impenetrable rules and where the quiz master just keeps throwing numbers at them.
This reminds me when I first started playing poker and people would just throw numbers at me, “your 8.5-1 to flop a set” or “you shouldn’t call there with the flush draw because you’re a 34% underdog against any set” etc etc. That was all along time ago and during my early day’s playing poker I learned most of the key numbers by heart, just recently though I realised I didn’t have a clue anymore.
I couldn’t be arse to relearn them all and the truth is after a while you really shouldn’t need to know the chance of making your hand to three decimal places anyway. I think the set making stat is interesting, we know it’s about 8.5 to one but should be fold if we are only getting 7-1?
This would have to be very player dependant decision; personally I can’t see how it can be incorrect to call when getting less than 8.5-1 if you know your opponent is an absolute calling station. Surely as our opponent’s ability goes down our implied odd’s go up and there can’t be many players at the lower stakes that can fold top pair type hands against what is after all the silent assassin of poker, the set.
Instead of relearning all the key numbers periodically, you just need to know if your getting value because at the end of the day if you really want to play the game bad enough you can manipulate most hand’s so your always getting the right price to call with any draw!
Dangerous Habits
December 28, 2009
Habits are like warm beds, easy to fall into and bloody hard to get out of, especially when you have to get up to go to work(Sorry, back to the office tomorrow and its on my mind!). I have recently been struggling a bit with my game, a lot of this brought about by my some habits I have picked up whilst bank roll building on a new site.
I have been concentrating on two relatively new formats that are solely available online, the ‘Super Turbo Head-Up’ and the ‘Double Up’ sit and go formats. The truth is that poker rooms have spread both of these formats for two very specific, yet totally different reasons.
Super Turbo’s are there for the gamblers pure and simple, the only reason it’s possible to make a profit playing them at all is the quality of the players these games attract is lower than normal and more importantly most poker players are very poor at playing with small effective stacks in heads-up situations.
The Double up games have been invented to keep players in action longer thus raking more for the online rooms, there actually very good for solid players with experience of satellite bubbles and are a good way to build a bank roll, they are primarily profitable because there is almost always a couple of nutters playing for the win.
And as much as playing high volumes of these game formats can be good for the hourly return, they are actually very simple forms of poker and will not stretch a good player very much. You will primarily be learning how to better exploit players who don’t understand how to play the format and will do much less for your all round poker playing ability than playing the same volume at a 1Cent/2Cent cash table.
To avoid your game becoming staid yet still exploiting these profitable formats I would recommend;
Playing quality opponents will allow creative thinking and gives you that extra edge over your regular opponents over time, so maybe try joining a site like Black Belt Poker who hold regular low buy-ins against quality opposition.
Although volume is essential for exploring the sheer number of hands and situations that can develop and is also important for your hourly or monthly income from poker, be aware that certain formats have deeper levels than others.
Find the right balance for you when your multi tabling and make sure you challenge yourself occasionally to avoid becoming too robotic in your play.
Dedicate time a significant part of your poker playing time into studying your own and your opponent’s game, this is just as important as putting in the hands.
Thanks to all the guy’s at Black Belt Poker that shared there thoughts on this interesting topic and for Nik Persuads original article here, that inspired the debate.
20/20 With Bells
December 27, 2009
After the Monte Carlo Event and side events taking up the third weekend in December, the 20/20 event at DTD started today with the second event tomorrow (Bank Holiday Monday). Just to remind you all what the 20/20 weekend is all about; It is a £100 one day event 10,000 chips and a 30 minute clock that is mirrored on the following day.
This months seems to be more popular as people have been deprived of poker for the last 3 days in the East Midlands. The event is capped at 270 and this afternoon saw 14 alternates being lucky enough to get in making the total 284 players. This means the top prize is over 85 x the entry money!!
Tomorrow sees the poker prodigy Squirmy hitting the Nottingham Poker Mecca, and I am predicting that a final table at the very least for one of pokers good guys. To be eligible to play this you need to get down there ASAP as the demand for this game is ridiculous, it kicks off at 2pm, and will probably be full at 1.30. All the best to those that play and I will see you there (if I haven’t been sacked )
Moorman fourth in OPOY rankings
December 27, 2009
After our recent report on Chris ‘Moorman1′ Moorman’s recent continued run of form, it appears that Cardplayer have recognised this UK star’s achievements and currently have him in fourth place in their Online Player Of the Year rankings.
After a great year which saw the young Brit taken on as the fourth member of DoylesRooms’s ten stable pros, his reported on-line wins of $955,781 this year have seen him rocket up the on-line rankings and rightfully take his place amongst the online elite players.
His earnings have come from a mixture of numerous first place and final tables in various top end MTT’s and we just hope that this outstanding player can take the step from online to live next year and further enhance the strengthening reputation of UK poker in the major live events overseas.
Based on the performances of the fearless, young and improving stars such as Moorman and the Hit Squad, the next decade looks like UK poker may well be in for some cracking results; let’s hope that these fellas do us proud and we wish them all the best.
Have a good new year everyone!!!
Poker Related Gifts
December 27, 2009
Come on then ….. who’s got what?
MP3 players, Chip Guards, Sunglasses (in winter), iPod’s/iphones, Chip Sets, Tables, Apparel ……. what was in your stocking?
Review your gifts in the comment box in the bottom, personally I had nothing (thank you, I have a life now) but I do own an iphone and my son had an ipod touch for one of his pressies off Santa, which leads me to applications.
Not content with just sitting at a live venue receiving cards from a live dealer and playing live players, I can also use my iphone to play virtual poker in between hands. The 2 Poker Applications I use for this are Zynga (facebook) Poker (free to $89!!! lol) and WSOP ($2.99)
Zynga Poker is a good platform to play other players on facebook but the play is dreadful, and there is a glitch in their software, if you have a decent hand always raise just under the lowest chip stack as more often than not, they will move all-in (even if they have 1 point more than you it reopens the betting). This is all about proving to your poker friends that you are better than them, what it is actually about is proving to your poker friends that you are skint and need to play poker so play money will do (he says chirpilly as he is number one in his friends list at the mo).
WSOP is simply a game with virtual opponents that allows you to win Virtual Bracelets, although you do have the ability to play a person heads up via bluetooth. You can play one of 25 events and the live video is impressive but still has limited appeal. The advantage of this app is that you can still listen to your tunes (which is what it is meant for anyway lol).
As a TD I have experimented with Poker clocks and orchestrated home games using a number of apps some costing $11.99 and a few free ones, they all do the same job, don’t waste your money on these!!!
There are also Hand History Tools, Poker Notes, Poker Calculators, ICM Deal makers, how seriously can a poker player do without one of these gadgets?
Post Away!
Very Full On Tilt
December 26, 2009
It used to be that to experience safe online poker the only places that was assured was either PokerStars or Full Tilt as both their customer services were second to none.
It seems that now PokerStars are on their own in safe sites (although I am sure something will come to light in the future as it does seem that there are rules for one that differ from others, no matter where you play). The reason I am stating this is because Full Tilt have allowed something that has a very small penalty for their pro’s but an instant ban for us grinders. What am I referring too? ……. Brian Hastings and the $4 million that was hustled from the phenomenon of Isildur1 as he colluded with Cole South over the transfer of hand histories against the mystery man Isildur1. His punishment for this is a one months suspension of Red Pro Status ………… FOR FOUR MILLION BUCKS!!! Seems fair.
Hastings stated that; “Cole S and myself never colluded. Collusion is nearly impossible HU but there was always one person playing and never any ghosting occurring. In fact the only person to break the T&C of FullTilt Poker was myself. I had about 20k hands of play on Isildur and I acquired another 30k hands. This is against the T&C of FullTilt Poker and because of this violation I am going to have my red pro status suspended for one month.”
Joe Blogg’s gets a lifetime ban from the site for sharing information to win a $5 STT but for Mr Hastings who earned $646,908.64 per hour for 5 hours and gets paid by the site in question it is seen as trivial.
YOU CHEATED MR HASTINGS!!
Merry Christmas All
December 25, 2009
I would just like to take this opportunity to wish all ukpokerinfo’ers in fact everyone, a Very Merry Christmas. May all your dreams and wishes be fulfilled and that you degenerates can have at least one day off from poker.
Please spend time with all your family and friends, your poker buddiez will all be around on Boxing Day, in fact stop reading this straight away and give your Loved ones a hug!
If you are in the unfortunate position of not having anyone around you, you have my sympathies and here is a virtual hug ******** xXxHUGSxXx*********
There is somewhere to go if you are lonely or a degenerate poker player, don’t celebrate Christmas or bored after your Xmas dinner.
Bearwood will be hosting a deepstack freezeout at 6pm on Christmas day, and everyone is welcome, I believe it will be a £30 affair No Limit Hold’em.
Best Wishes and Take Care All
The Team
Wadey Wins “The Monte Carlo”
December 25, 2009
Local Guy Waheed Ashraf aka Wadey took down the £250,000 guaranteed tournament at Dusk Till Dawn at the weekend ( a competition that followed the structure of the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo). From what looked like a potential disaster for the premier poker club in the UK as the online overlay was higher than the last Grandslam at £35,000, it turned out to be a great success as 300 people eventually took to the beize to wage war.
Names included; Jeff Kimber, Paul Foltyn, Dave Colclough, Luke “FullFlush” Schwartz, Lucy Rokach, Jeff Buffenbarger, Stuart Rutter, Ian Woodley, Nik Persaud, Surinder Sunar, James Dempsey, Karl Mahrenholz and a whole host of GUKPT winners.
It looked like the victor was going to be between Wadey and The Mad Turk when four out, but a deal was done which reflected the chip counts and left them £18,000 to play for and the title. 3 hands later the two titans clashed and all the money went in pre flop. Wadey had AK and Yucel had a pair of queens, the flop came Ace, Ace, King to the delight of the supporters, nippers and % takers of Wadey as he took out “The Mad One”.
2nd Place went to the Canadian Paul Ratchford who had dominated the chip counts from the second level of day 1 as they carved the remaining £18k up after eliminating Ash Miah. Ratchford entered by winning an online league and came over for a holiday with his girlfriend …….. happy days!
1 Waheed Ashraf £93,113
2 Paul Ratchford £54,435
3 Ashique Miah £32,661
4 Yucel Eminoglu £22,920
5 Stephen Eames £17,190
6 Dean Pearson £12,893
7 Chris Saleh £10,028
8 Malcolm Muskett £7,163
9 Craig Mccorkell £5,730
10 David Burn £4,011
11 Jan Bjoersland £4,011
12 Derek Lawless £4,011
13 Yiannis Liperis £4,011
14 Toby Lewis £2,865
15 Neil Blatchly £2,865
16 Timothy Flanders £2,865
17 Paul Bowser £2,865
18 Gregory Hunt £2,865
19 Ben Vinson £1,500
20 Ewan Bekir £1,500
21 Steve Jelinek £1,500
22 Robert Soszka £1,500
23 Fraser Macintyre £1,500
24 Mitchell Johnson £1,500
25 Adam Collins £1,500
26 Daniel Morgan £1,500
27 Chris Sly £1,500
PokerStars Online Team Announced
December 24, 2009
Yesterday, PokerStars.Com the world’s largest online poker room announced the twenty men and three women who will make up the ‘online Team PokerStars Pro group’. It is believed over 2,000 applied to be included in the new group which is rumored to be a response to the ever growing list of Full Tilt Poker’s ‘Red Pro’s and the list includes some of the internets tops players.
Names you might already know include the controversial heads-up specialist Steve ‘Stevebets’ Jacobs who defeated Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier in the final of the 2008 WCOOP $25,000 heads-up event. Anders “Donald” Berg is another well known internet player and is also a fixture on the EPT, also included is Germany’s Thomas “Boku87″ Boekhoff who leaped to internet poker fame by turning $100 into $10,000 to win a prop bet and has recently turned his attention to running $500 upto $100,000.
Here’s the full list of the new Team PokerStars Online Pro’s:
1. Andres Alisievicz — lobojiji
2. Jorge Arias — JorgeArias
3. Boumaaza Bachir — Chiren80
4. Anders Berg — Donald
5. Alvaro Blanco — VARICO
6. Thomas Boekhoff — Boku87
7. Diego Brunelli — vgreen22
8. André Coimbra — acoimbra
9. Mathew Didlick — chipstar1
10. Ta-Chih Geeng — socutiesf
11. Andrew Goetsch — Kid Nebraska
12. Martha Gonzalez — marene
13. Keiran Harris — K_Man2307
14. Steve Jacobs — stevesbets
15. Randy Lew — nanonoko
16. Karlo Lopez — elmagopr
17. Alexey Makarov — LuckyGump
18. Kristian Martin — CharismA3
19. Grzegorz Mikielewicz — DaWarsaw
20. Nichoel Peppe — NicP
21. Grayson Physioc — spacegravy
22. Sebastien Sabic — Seb86
23. Amanda Thomas — ROXY24
PokerStars UK & Ireland Seasonal Treat
December 23, 2009
The world’s largest poker room, PokerStars.Com has a special treat in store over the festive period for all there UK & Ireland customers. Starting December 26th and running to the 28th the world most popular online room will be adding $3,000 to the prize pool of there specially selected added value UK & Ireland only tournaments.
PokerStars have made sure there is added value for those of all bankroll’s by adding the 3K to three tournaments with varied buy-ins, the 26th see’s a frugal $1.10 buy-in, the 27th a $5.50 buy-in and the 28th a $11 buy-in, all will start at 17:00 UK time so put down the turkey and get yourself some real value this Christmas.
To register, open the PokerStars lobby, click ‘Tourney’ & ‘Private’ (they don’t want any old riff raff entering)
Sunday Million FT for Moorman
December 23, 2009
Having been recently signed as a stable pro for the Doyle’s Room poker site, top UK Online poker player, Chris Moorman, had another impressive tournament result this week.
The UK Poker phenomenon final tabled in the Pokerstars Sunday Million having spent a majority of the tournament as the chip leader. As is common for players of Moorman’s style; he wasn’t content to sit on his chips and with the cards not co-operating with his style the FT resulted in Moorman doubling up a few of his competitors before busting out in eighth place for just short of $19k. Not a bad result for most of us mortals but it won’t make a huge impact on his reported career earnings of over $4 million.
It’s great to see this young UK player competing at the very top of the online poker pyramid and we hope that things continue to improve for this talented player.
Clarkatroid Knows What You’re Holding
December 22, 2009
Adam ‘Clarkatroid’ Clark writes a superb blog here; and I would recommend a read, especially now because he is currently recounting his path from online poker novice to top flight cash game regular and it’s been an excellent read thus far.
Whilst reading his blog the other day it reminded me of a conversation I had with Kev Bloor and Lucy Rokach in Killarney. Lucy has had an extremely successful career on the live poker circuit, winning more money than any other European female, yet she hates online poker and is very sceptical of the nature of the games and believes the style of play of so many of the online breed turn it into a total gamble.
Myself and Kev Bloor tried to convince Lucy that online poker is almost a totally different game to live poker and the main reason she and other successful live poker players struggle online is because they are giving up a huge edge as the online specialist players have a ton of information at there disposal that others do not.
Kev Bloor was using a recent conversation he had with ‘Clarkatroid’ where he had described when playing online he could use the statistics at his disposal to identify a players tendencies and then exploit them for profit. In trying to support our argument I recounted a recent training session I had undertaken with a good cash game pro, I’m pretty bad at cash and had been only too eager to enlist the help of a friend!
It was a bit of an eye opener to be honest and although I had been using tracking software for a while I was surprised at how poorly I had been utilising the data at my disposal. I quickly came to realise I had been completely underprepared for my occasional dips into the shark filled mid stakes cash game waters and I watched amazed at my trainer attacked opponents calling and betting ranges and slashed his way through the tables.
Afterwards I felt naked at the tables and I stopped playing mid stakes cash completely, because people like ‘Clarkatroid’ knew exactly what I was holding enough of the time that I was at a significant disadvantage. I tired to apply similar tactics at the lower stakes and learn the ropes but without constant supervision it proved to difficult so I decided to specialise in other forms of poker, because if you can’t beat em, avoid em.
Boylepoker.com Playing Santa
December 21, 2009
Boylepoker.com have announced today that they will be playing Santa over the holiday season with $6,000 being added to the prize pools of their ‘Daily Festive Freezeout’ tournaments which will run from December 23rd to January 3rd.
There will be two ‘Daily Festive Freezeout’ tournaments running at 7pm and 7.30pm for the duration with $250 added to each, players have a choice of the turbo structured $5 game or a $10 deepstack, so something for everyone (well as long as you like NLHE).
December 23rd will see the running of the Boylepoker.com Christmas Party, this $10 buy-in tournament see’s $1,000 added to the prize pool along with a number of $25 bounties on Boylepoker pros and friends and starts at 8pm.
And last but not least Boylepoker.com will be running a Christmas Charity Freeroll, this tournament will boast a guaranteed prize pool of $5,000 with a further $5,000 to charity. This event takes place at 4 p.m (so you might have to miss the Queens speech) and satellites are running daily starting from as little as 50 VIP.
A Brief History of Skins
December 21, 2009
Many years ago entrepreneurs from the four corners of the earth cast there eye’s across the internet poker scene and thought, “That’s money for old rope, I’ll have me some of that”.
Soon the internet was awash with poorly conceived and badly managed poker room’s and each had there very own platform built with varying degrees of competence. Unfortunately some quickly learnt the hard lesson that the surfaces of the internet’s super highways were not exactly paved with gold and they soon fell by the wayside. But still others grew and grew and as nature intended the strong preyed upon the weak and grew stronger still.
As technology advanced and start up costs spiralled ever upwards the concept of the white labelled poker room or ‘skin’ as they became known, was born. This of course dramatically reduced the overheads of launching a new online card room and on paper at least would allow the two parties to benefit from each other strengths, i.e. allow the poker network to concentrate on building a robust and slick infrastructure and the online room to focus on recruiting new players and offering a 1st rate customer service.
And for a while all seemed happy in the rose garden of shared poker infrastructure, and why wouldn’t it? After all white labelling is a model successfully used in many other industries, well actually here in lies the problem, poker isn’t like any other industry.
With numerous poker rooms of vastly different size and scale existing under the same roof, sharing the same player base soon many, many problems became apparent. The behemoth rooms on the network where spending vast sum’s of money to attract new players to the network which of course was good for everyone, but it soon became apparent it was actually much better for some than others.
Marketing people love graphs, they fucking love them, and one day a probably pony tailed ponce from one of the giant rooms that existed on the network was staring at a pie chart with lots of lovely colours when something occurred to him, there numbers where shit.
You see this pie chart was an extrapolation of the amount of money spent to recruit each depositing customer cross referenced with the amount each new depositing customer would be raking, and boy there was a lot of red ink on this chart.
So they had figured it out, they where spending $20 dollars per newly depositing customer recruited and on average these players where depositing on average $200 but they where only getting paid $15 in rake! A net loss of $5 per new customer recruited.
Initially of course they thought the other large rooms on the network must be doing something much better than them, but after some low key discussions it became clear the main opposition where seeing the same trend within there own numbers.
After some investigation it became obvious that the players they where recruiting just weren’t good enough and that the smaller skins on the network had done an outstanding job of recruiting all the best players by offering vastly superior under the counter rack back deals and in some cases training there players to be better. The small rooms had another advantage, most of there customer came through mail shot’s and direct contact so they could spend bugger all on advertising aimed at recruiting new players and instead concentrate all there efforts on bringing in high raking players.
So the big guys cried foul to the overlords of the shared poker network, who immediately banned rake back deals and tried to even the playing field by introducing fines to the smaller rooms for withdrawals from the network and not bringing in new depositors which the poorly disguised intention of driving them out of business.
And eventually all was good in the rose garden of shared poker infrastructure as the site was now divided up amongst the large networks all of an equal size with similar business models, and everybody won, apart from the little skins of course and their customers who got fucked out of money.
THE END.
So Long and Thanks For All The Chips!
December 20, 2009
Just been on the receiving end of a tirade, one day PokerStars will offer the opportunity to play music across the tables, when they do I’m recording and uploading this.
So long and thanks for all the chips,
So sad you paid off my flopped trips,
Please don’t cry your Donkey tears.
You may not share our intellect,
Which might explain the disrespect,
To all the players that surround you,
So long, So long, and thanks, for all the chips.
You act like your worlds been destroyed,
Theres no point getting all annoyed,
Next time maybe you can find a fold, but I doubt it.
Despite those abusive chat box words,
We thought your tilting although absurd,
Quite amusing, apart for the sexist abusing,
So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
(high voice) So long, So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
So long, So long, and thanks, for all the chips.
(Choir) So long and thanks for all the chips,
(Choir) So sad that it should come to this,
(Choir) Please don’t cry your Donkey tears, oh dear.
(Choir) Despite those abusive chat box words,
(Choir) We thought your tilting quite amusing,
(Choir) Apart for the racist and sexist abusing,
So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
(high voice) So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
So long, So long and thanks, for all the chips.
What’s The F@*%ng Hold-up?
December 19, 2009
When I used to watch my Dad play online it used to drive me mad, every time an opponent took more than a 5th of a second to act on there hand he would start typing ‘zzzzzz’ in the chat box.
It was so arbitrary, it didn’t matter if they had a decision to actually make or whether this was the first delay they had caused he was just so impatient, this coupled with the fact he called everything down to the river regardless of the board or his holding “just in case they where bluffing” made watching him play extremely painful.
So recently I was disappointed to find myself bashing the Z key frantically in much the same manner, I was playing Omaha cash games across fours tables I had to continually wait for half the table to act on all four!
The increasing number of player’s multi-tabling has seen a major slow down of online games and there are a number of players who clearly aren’t very good at it., Jesus if Islidur1 can multi-table highstakes games against Antonius, Durrrr and Ivey with no discernible delays then this .25/.50 should be able to manage it!
The long term affects of a continual slow down of the games might be extremely negative and online poker might become a much less attractive proposition to the causal gambler looking for a quick fix.
Another bug bear is PokerStars and there never closing bloody tournaments till the first break. Half the time you sit down and think I’ll play a quick tournie with only 100 or so registered and you find with the extended registration that after the first break there’s more than double the number you started with still in the game!
Is It Just Me Or Is Scotty Nguyen A Bit Of A Prick?
December 19, 2009
I used to think Scotty Nguyen was all right, maybe a bit odd with but generally ok and a bit of a character and probably overall good for the game of poker. But then there was that incident at the final table of the 50K HORSE (see Video) which was made all the more unpleasant by the fact the tournament had just been renamed to honour one of the all time great ambassadors of the games passing.
And all though you do wonder what the great Chip Reece had ever done to Scotty to have the tournament named for him so disrespected you had to pretty much think the person damaged the most by the whole unpleasant business was after all Scotty himself. This should have been the pinnacle of his career, the highlight of a lifetime playing poker, yet all anyone was ever going to remember is his drunken table antics, following his disgraceful performance Scotty made all the right noises and issues an apology so story over.
Well not quite;
Courtesy of Cardplayer.com:
Scotty Nguyen got in on the act, as well. Nguyen was being his usual boisterous self when he criticized a dealer over a small mistake. Dan O’Brien tried to calm the situation down, and Nguyen took offense to him chiming in with a defence of the dealer. Shortly after that, Nguyen decided to play a hand completely blind against O’Brien and ended up giving the young pro more than 100,000 in chips before finally taking a peek and mucking on the river.
Scotty Nguyen was clearly upset with O’Brien, but the barrage of F-bombs were unfortunately unloaded on the quiet and polite man sitting to his right. The action started with the unknown player, who raised to 24,000 in the cutoff. Nguyen reraised to roughly 50,000 on the button, and the cutoff then reraised to 150,000. Nguyen called, and the flop came KHeart 7Spade 3Heart.
The cutoff moved all in, and Nguyen called all in with 7Heart 4Heart for a pair and a flush draw. His opponent showed pocket aces, but they were cracked when the turn and river came 5Club and 7Club, giving Nguyen the winning hand with trips. Nguyen immediately slammed the felt when the river fell and began screaming obscenities toward the cutoff and the rest of the table, explaining that he was tired of people messing with him. The unknown player, clearly devastated by the hand and left with just a few big blinds, could only sit quietly as Nguyen scooped the huge pot. Despite immediately receiving a 10-minute penalty, Nguyen took his time stacking the million-plus pot, carefully manoeuvring each chip around his beer before taking his punishment.