PacDragon

Reply to Back from Vegas in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Heh, yeah A-rag is even more dangerous when you've been getting cold-decked. I've been trying to be a lot more Zen about it. You know, trying to accept that each hand is independent from any previous hand. Just because it's the best hand I've seen in an hour doesn't mean I should stop folding. But it's tough to keep that going when the deck's giving you frostbite. In one of the smaller events I was in, I was getting a terrible string of bad ca

Reply to Back from Vegas in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Heh, totally. I had a blast and it was well worth the trip. Just disappointing to not bring home any greasy wads of cash. I did learn quite a bit though and I feel pretty confident playing in big tournaments now; the fear & unease from last year is totally gone. I was actually pretty proud of myself for going out swinging and not letting the fear blind me out.

Back from Vegas in Gaming JoeUser Forums

I got back from Vegas last weekend. It was a lot of fun, but anti-climactic. I did five tournaments, but didn't get into the money in any of them. Stutefish came with me, so we spend the rest of the time playing $2/$4. He's still learning, so we stayed at low stakes, and he managed to go from small loser to break even during the trip. He's learning a tight aggressive

Reply to Good Hunting in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Totally. That's why I prefer the opposite route. I like to bet smallish (50% to 75% of the pot) with really good hands, until I show a few down. Then use my solid image to start stealing with those same small bets, especially in a tournament where the blinds keep rising. That way I don't have to rely on getting cards near the end. But man, when she does catch cards after a setup like that, she can pull down cash like no one's business. The t

Good Hunting in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Sweet. My wife brought home around $4,000 from her trip. Not a bad haul for someone that hasn't played poker seriously in months. She was killing the no-limit tables at the Stratosphere. Ended up playing against a bunch of drunk guys from different wedding parties, so the tables were nearly all fish. She's got such a great system that I'm totally unable to em

A Family Tradition in Gaming JoeUser Forums

My wife did the ladies WSOP event, but got knocked out during the 2nd hour. She had been getting a run of really crappy cards, but got aggressive and was stealing like crazy. She said playing weak cards was easier, since she could always get aggressive with them without ever feeling committed to the pot. She had a decent stack when she finally picked up a real hand: A

Gearing Up in Travel JoeUser Forums

Getting ready for Vegas, so bought a bunch of traveling gear. Have you ever seen the Scottevest ? They're these neat jackets with a ton of hidden pockets and they let you string wires (like headphones) through the lining of the jacket. I got one years ago, but it's old, ratty, and the zipper broke. So I went back to their site to

Reply to It's almost time! in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Thanks! I need all the luck I can get As for tells, have you ever seen Gus Hansen play? His face is a mess of emotion. He totally seems readable when you already know what his cards are, but in reality it's very difficult to get a tell off of him. He's just giving out too much information for you to process. I try to do the same thing, but no where near as well. I can't

It's almost time! in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Only a few more weeks before I head off to Vegas for the WSOP! I'm really excited about it... and nervous. Next weekend, my wife is flying out to do the women's event. I get to stay home from work and take care of the baby, so that should be fun. Man, he's getting huge . He's 6 months old, but we've had to put him in 2 year old sized clothes. My wife m

Update to playing heads up in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Huh. My referrer logs show that a couple people hit my previous post by searching for heads-up starting hand requirements. That's probably not the best way to think about heads up play. Pretty much any two cards are "playable" in heads up no-limit hold'em. A majority of the time no one will hit the board, so competing for pots becomes a game of chicken. On th

Reply to A Heads-Up Strategy in Gaming JoeUser Forums

I lost another heads up match and discovered another counter to my strategy. This guy would check, then call my flop bet. Check again, enjoying a free card while I checked the turn, then would bet the size of the pot on the river. It did put him in a precarious situation, since the pot would be large enough for me to cripple him if I ever made some hands. But I never got one. Just had to keep folding. (Well, I thought I had one at one point, w

Reply to A Heads-Up Strategy in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Ok, I have found one counter that makes this strategy difficult. I faced an opponent yesterday who would nearly always min-bet into me on the flop after I min-raised pre-flop. It threw me off pretty bad. It felt like he just kept taking my play away. What do I do? Raise him with nothing, committing extra chips when I just want to cheaply steal? Call the bet, letting us both draw cheaply? But then I'm pretty much forced to bluff at the turn (or get luck

A Heads-Up Strategy in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Heads up, no-limit hold'em tournaments are just two people, playing head to head, until one player has all of the chips. I usually get into a session on my lunch hour and they can last anywhere from one to thirty minutes (depending on my opponent's skill). They're a lot of fun and easily my biggest money maker per hour. But it takes a lot of concentration to pu

Small Update in Gaming JoeUser Forums

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I'm still playing poker here & there, but I've been having a hard time coming up with something to write about. Heh, I think the more hands you play, the less important any individual hand starts to seem. I have a hard time getting too excited about any individual hands or sessions. I'm still stuck at some pretty low

Changing Gears in Gaming JoeUser Forums

I read this story by Doyle Brunson, where he was talking about a guy he was playing with who started raising nearly every hand. By the time the rest of the players adjusted to him, he tightened back up and got his good hands paid off. Once they adjusted to how tight he was playing, he loosened up again and started bluffing down big pots. It made it very difficult for

HORSE in Gaming JoeUser Forums

As I said in my last post, my new favorite game is HORSE. It's a mixed game, so switches between a different form of poker every ten hands. I'm earning over 5/BB hour (that's five big bets an hour) pretty consistently. I'm sure a lot of that is due to getting lucky; I haven't had a losing session all month. But most of it is surely from the extremely poor play of the

Bankroll Mismanagement in Gaming JoeUser Forums

It's been a long time since I posted, sorry for the break. With the new baby, I haven't had time for pretty much anything that doesn't involve milk or poop. I did get to play some poker here & there and learned a couple of valuable lessons the hard way. 1. I can't play poker when my baby cries. Seriously, it puts me on insta-tilt. I could probabl

Up & Down in Gaming JoeUser Forums

I've seen some pretty hefty swings in the last few weeks (by my standards, at least). But I suppose that's to be expected, now that I'm playing no-limit almost exclusively. I had worked my $650 at Ultimate Bet up to over $1k, making about $100 a day for a few days a week. Then I lost nearly all that profit in less than 15 minutes! I had the second best set tw

Reply to What is God's Job Anyway? in Misc JoeUser Forums

I heard once that there are three things people believe about god, but logically only two of them can exist (creating three viewpoints): 1. God is all powerful 2. God is all good 3. Evil things just happen 1 & 2: If god is all powerful and all good, then evil things happen for a reason. 1 & 3: If god is all powerful, but evil things just happen, then god is not all good. 2 & 3: If god is all good, but evil things just

Reply to Submitted For Your Consideration, JU in Ethics JoeUser Forums

I agree with Stute. I believe that certain elements in life, such as morality, are universal concepts. Love, good, evil, sadism, authority, etc. are all constants that don't change over time. They are not subjective. For example, if there was a culture that believed that unprovoked murder was acceptable, the problem is not that we have different views on morality. The problem would be that they are wrong . Of course, some of these conc

Ultimate Bet Mobile in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Work hooked me up with a new cell phone. It's pretty swanky, it's the Treo 650. Huge beautiful screen, nice keyboard, camera, email, web browser, etc. I've been using it as a kind of portable computer. When looking for some poker software to put on there, I found out that Ultimate Bet has a version of their software that let's you play online, from your phone

2nd Place in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Thanks for the concern, but I'm not dead yet. Just lazy about updating the blog. I haven't really had much to write about, but, as was pointed out, that has never stopped me before ;) I've pretty much just settled into a routine of doing $50 SnG's most nights. I've been winning enough to show a profit there, but not really getting any big scores. And because

Finding the Big Payout in Gaming JoeUser Forums

So I've pretty much settled into a daily routine. I play the $50 buy-in no limit game on Party Poker and earn between $25 & $50. Then I play the $22 tournament and lose it. I keep getting close, but it's so freakin' hard. Even if I manage to only get all-in when I have an 80% advantage, I'm still going to go out once every five times. I've been getting better at takin

Reply to I Miss Vegas in Gaming JoeUser Forums

For those who are interested, this is the article that got me thinking about finance theory: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/current/mezick0706.html

I Miss Vegas in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Well, the buzz from my WSOP adventures is starting to wear off. Work can do that. I played some cash games for the rest of my stay, winning a decent amount in each game. Man, Vegas is great for low-stakes poker. Sooo many tourists sitting down to try the game out. My wife got pretty sick for the last half of the week, so we didn't do much besides hang out in