Friday’s Caption Competition

I’ve been kept heartily amused the past fortnight with Harry Redknapp’s tax evasion trial, especially with the revelation Harry names his offshore bank accounts after his pet dog Rosie. Woof!  Of course we wish him all the best in his tax evasion trial, where malevolent forces are surely picking on him because of his ethnicity.  And just to show our thoughts are with Dear Harry at this testing time the password for this week’s Freddie Mays Bounty tournament at 8pm tonight can be:

redknapp

Gawd bless the old wheeler dealer and probably future England manager. He probably got a bit befuddled with his sums.  Luckily, despite being “the most ungreedy man you ever met”, he is able to afford the finest legal advice in the land. And that advice appears to be, in a nutshell:

Pretend to be monumentally stupid

Claim everyone has got it in for him

Oh and wear some glasses.

I’m serious here.  Wearing glasses really is his part of his “get a not guilty” strategy.  That and showing massive indignation that he could possibly be lying after taking an oath on the bible. That should do the trick.

The thing is, it probably will.

So see if you can come up with a caption for this little pic I found of Harry:

Please submit your entry to @paddypowerpoker on Twitter for a chance to win two tokens to my bounty game, as there was no winner last week.

Poll of the Week

I heard a disturbing tale tonight. Well it disturbed me anyway.

I was having dinner with Aussie Steve, a bloke I’ve become good mates with lately. He’d invited this Swedish couple to join us and we were eating in a restaurant/bar which has a TAB inside (that’s the Aussie government owned bookie.)

I was explaining to the Swedish couple how the night before we had been eating in the same place and Aussie Steve had got this German lad playing a bit of keno.  I warned them he might lead them into some seriously bad value betting if they weren’t careful!  Then the Swedish girl told me the story which disturbed me…..

One of her friends bought and paid for two lottery scratch cards in Sweden. He gave one to the mate he was with and they both scratched away. The one who had actually bought and paid for the tickets didn’t win but his friend did get lucky….he won a million krone!

And how did they go about splitting the winnings?

How about in the ratio 100% – 0%?

That’s right – the low life scum bag didn’t offer a single penny to his friend who had given him the ticket. He kept the lot. Evil.

I should point out I’d never spoken to this couple before and I’d not been very talkative because I was pretty tired after a day walking round in the baking heat.   But I suddenly found my voice, getting very animated indeed. I think I told her that should I ever learn of the perpetrator being involved in a car crash I would be delighted. And that he could buy a really nice wheelchair with all that money.

The girl explained further that they were young at the time and it was probably the parents who had made the decision on their son’s behalf.

“Well then they’re a no good pair of dogs either!”, I raged. I was veritably seething at the injustice of it all.

Many centuries ago Atilla the Hun – or was it Genghis Khan – I don’t remember who it was – but whichever of them it was –when they were mortally offended by somebody, not only would he kill that person stone dead, he would annihilate their entire family as well. He would do it on the basis that they are probably all no good dogs as well.

I mean what chances does this little prick have in life when he has such utter dirt bags for parents? Imagine telling your kid that not sharing the money was right thing to do?

It would be nice if these things evened out but they never do. We need to make them even out.

And with that thought in mind, this week’s question is: someone stiffs you out of a lottery win. How do you react?

Answer this week’s poll and leave a comment with your Twitter username to be in with a chance of winning a token to my bounty game.

Congratulations to Claire Taylor (@delibobble on Twitter) – for winning last week’s poll for the second week in a row. From a sample of one professional tennis umpire, Andy Roddick was indeed deemed to be the biggest whinger on the men’s tour!

Hand of the Week – Week 27

I played this hand in my latest session at Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast on Saturday.

And this will be the last hand I play at that casino – in fact it’s probably my last session of live poker for quite some time. I’ve had it with poker right now – I am just sick fed up of losing to donkey plays all the time.

However this hand definitely wasn’t a donkey play so it’s worthy of a mention if only for novelty value. There have only been two occasions since I got Australia that I’ve genuinely thought to myself “that was really well played” and this is one of them…

But just to digress briefly, you’ll know if you read what I was saying recently that I’ve been advocating a tight (and not very adventurous game) as a means to beat the local ten handed cash games where the play is too loose preflop.

And I’ve been putting that into practice too. I went to the casino determined to play my patient game last Thursday, Friday and again on Saturday……. and I lost every session.  I didn’t lose that much – but I’m only winning two from seven sessions at Jupiter’s and that’s just shit if you had seen some of the play that I have.

So what’s been happening?

Well you know me – never one to moan about a bad beat!  Hehehe

OK – on Thursday, after getting dealt QQ I raised a middle aged Italian guy’s $10 bet to $40 preflop. He called with a mighty ace four offsuit. I led out on a J42 flop and he shoved all in. I call. The turn is an ace and so is the river.

…….cue groans from the rest of the table…….

I just couldn’t help myself from speaking – plus everyone was actively looking for me to say something. So I asked him as innocently as I could “So what did you think I had then?”

“I don’t give a shit what you got”, he answered (quite aggressively seeing as I’d asked politely and he had just crippled me).

Deep breath.

On Saturday I’d only been there 15 minutes when I got dealt KK. I reraised preflop to $35 because I didn’t want too many callers.  The three bet is a rare beast in these games so it’s a pretty transparent move but one player called me with Ah Jh. Well that’s fine – I want him to.  The flop is Jack high and we get it all in – again, just like I want him to. He rivers an ace. Well THAT wasn’t supposed to happen. (Luckily I had him covered, else I would have lost more.)

So straight away I was losing – but not at all upset because I played it fine and got unlucky. And I was still being disciplined – not limping in with junk from early position and the like. So I was happy I was sticking to the game plan.

My reward was to get KK again a couple of hours later.  This time I reraised it to $45. The initial raiser took a while and then he called me.

The flop was Q97 with two hearts.

I bet $80 and he shoved.

Although I called pretty quickly I had a horrible feeling.  My opponent – a young English bloke – did seem to be a good player, although I’d only got an hour’s worth of play against him. So that call preflop must have meant something.  But I’d come this far. I had about $170 behind and there was $430 in the pot. “Well I’ll just hit a King if I have to”, I thought, if he’s got lucky and made a set of queens.

“Want to show?” I asked. I absolutely need to know the bad news rather than have the show down after the river card.

“Yeah OK then” he said (probably a bad sign)

I showed my KK and of course he showed AA. Tucked up like a kipper.

Like I said before, it was a relative “pleasure” to have been outplayed like this compared to the sick beats everyone else has been putting on me. And every way I think about how the hand could have played out ends up with the same result – me stacking off.  I can’t get away from that hand, especially playing live where premium hands are just so hard to come by. Ho hum.

I left the casino – about $500 down on the session.

Down – and out

For now anyway.

Anyone for Tennis (Part II of II)

(Part two of my poker-tennis analogy)

Last time I explained how professional tennis is a game of “winners”:  whoever hits the most will usually take down the match. But the tennis that the rest of us play is a game of “losers”: just aim to keep the ball in play and whoever hits the fewest losers will tend to win the match.

Well playing defensive tennis can be like playing defensive poker.

A professional tennis player can be pretty sure that if he does A, B, C and D with his feet, body, arms and racket the ball will do E just about every time. But in poker all sorts of dangers lurk. You can make the right moves but your best efforts go awry due to your opponents’ skill, your opponents’ stupidity, or just downright bad luck.

For instance you reraise with pocket kings on the button because you don’t want those five limpers to all stick around for the flop.   You want to get one opponent and a flop with no ace.  But then the small blind calls with Q8s because he is a bit dim, the next player calls with his small pair hoping to hit a set and then all the others call too because the odds are so good.  You played it right but inevitably your kings get outdrawn due to circumstances…

Now it’s bad enough that we get this sort of unavoidable bad luck. But when we compound it with our own mistakes – well that’s just a killer. I’m talking about trying to hit too many “winners” here.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a hand where I completely stacked off with no pair, having 3-bet preflop, bluffed the flop and shoved the turn.  (Yeah well done – my opponent had the nuts.)

There were a couple of old blokes at that game, boring old farts with no balls who haven’t bluffed in the last 30 years – you know the type – and I bet you they will have been tut tutting to each other as I walked away after that hand.

But the thing is – if they were, then they would have had a point. I mean, why did I go and do that? What’s wrong with just waiting for a real hand and have somebody pay me off when I bet for value? Do I really need to be hitting winners all the time?

See what I mean?  Trying to hit winners, with all guns blazing from difficult angles around the court usually isn’t the best approach.  (It certainly wasn’t in this game – and in this example, you can think of “keeping the ball in the court” as meaning “refraining from pissing away your whole stack for no reason”)

If everyone at the table is playing loosely and calling too liberally you should tighten up. Let them play their J7s for a big raise – just make sure you’re always in there with a hand.   And there isn’t any need to start bluffing in this sort of game.  At a ten handed table where lots of players are seeing the flop even when the raises are 7 or 8 big blinds, patience is the key. When five players go to the flop someone usually hits it hard and you can’t really go steaming in with a bluff.

Critics of this strategy will point out that you can’t beat good players by “playing defensively”.  You need to get in there and mix it up – to be a little less predictable.

And I totally agree. Defensive play definitely won’t work in top level games. In a game full of good players, if you sit waiting for hands and then betting for value people will just fold. You can’t expect to beat a good set of players with this defensive approach in the long run.

However – and this is absolutely key – neither will you lose so heavily. (The other more obvious point from my perspective is that I’m not playing in top level games.)

This point is so important so it’s worth repeating – if you adopt a defensive strategy you will lose less in the bad times than if you play an aggressive game trying to hit winners.  Keep the ball in the court!

Now I hate to advocate this approach. It is so basic, so uninspiring, so boring. But if the game demands it then that is what you should do. So yes, I suppose what I’m saying is, against all my instincts, is to get in there and nit it up – wait for a hand and bet for value.

Jesus I can’t believe I just said that. What a dull bastard I am. I think I’ll go and kill myself for a bit of excitement.

Friday’s Caption Competition

It’s caption competition time again. But before that, here’s the password to the Freddie Mays tournament at 8pm tonight:

djokovic

Onto this week’s competition and keeping with the week’s tennis theme I found this pic. They say you know you’re getting older when policemen start looking younger. Well you could say the same about pervs.   What might he be saying/thinking?

Congratulations to Mick Kelly who won last week’s competition with the caption: “And the winner of the extreme strip poker championship is…..”

Anyone for Tennis? (Part I of II)

Take any poker player at the end of the month or the end of the year and ask him:  “would you rather have won more or lost less in that period?”

and you will very likely get the answer “I couldn’t care either way”.  After all, cash is cash and winning more or losing less equates to the same thing, doesn’t it?

But if you take this perfectly logical thinking and add another piece of accepted poker wisdom, we seem to arrive at a contradiction.  We are taught to play poker aggressively: be selective with your starting hands and play them strongly. Bet and raise with them rather than calling. Being aggressive (and not passive) is the staple theme of nearly all books on poker.

So we all want to maximise our wins and minimise our losses and we agree that an aggressive style is the best.  The trouble is you can’t simultaneously be going all out for profit and avoiding loss at the same time. So which is more important – trying to win money or stopping yourself losing it? Well which is it to be?

In this article I’m going to make the case for playing “defensively”.

To help explain this I’m going to borrow a tennis analogy that I recently read.  Now I know a lot of sporting analogies are a steaming pile of turd but I was so taken with this one that I just had to steal it.  This really does apply to poker, especially the sort of games I’ve been finding myself playing lately.

But I ought to clarify up front. Playing “defensively” is not the same thing as playing “passively” so we shouldn’t confuse the two.

Consider the tennis that you’ve been watching in the Australian Open the past couple of weeks.  This type of tennis is a “winner’s” game where the match goes to the player who is able to hit the most winners: fast paced, well placed shots that their opponent can’t return.

Now the professional tennis player is so good that he can make the shot he wants to hit virtually all the time: hard or soft, deep or short, left or right, flat or with spin. Professional players aren’t troubled by the sort of thing that makes the game difficult for amateurs: bad bounces, wind, speed, stamina, skill, or an opponent’s efforts to put the ball beyond reach. The pro can get to most shots that their opponent hits and do what they want with the ball once they get to it. In fact the pros can do this so consistently that that statisticians keep track of the rare exceptions they fail to do this under the heading “unforced errors”

But the tennis the rest of us play is a “loser’s” game, with the match going to the player who hits the fewest losers. The winner just keeps the ball in pay and waits for his opponent to hit it out of the court or into the net. In other words, points in amateur tennis aren’t won; they are lost.

Now I don’t know about you, but I recognise from this description the type of tennis game that I try to play…(to be continued on Monday)

Poll of the Week

Keeping in theme with Eoghan O’Dea’s tennis betting blogs I’ve got a tennis related poll of the week for you. While I was in Sydney I was introduced to a friend of a friend who told me that he was a tennis umpire when I asked him what he did. “What sort of games do you umpire” I asked him.  ”Wimbledon, the US Open,  that sort of thing” he casually replied. And I thought he was too young to be a proper umpire!  So right now he’s in Melbourne officiating the Aussie Open.

I just had to ask him which player was the most abusive and gives the umpires the hardest time these days. I couldn’t believe it when he told me that it is STILL John Mcenroe. Mac just can’t help abusing officials, even though he is 52 and only plays charity games (makes him a bit of a tit I suppose.)

But I wanted to know which of the modern players was the most unpleasant to officiate. So he told me. This week’s poll is a right or wrong answer. Pick from the following seven players to answer the question “Which male tennis player is the modern scourge of the Umpires?”

Answer this week’s poll and leave a comment with your Twitter username to be in with a chance of winning a token to my bounty game.

Congratulations to Claire Taylor (@delibobble on Twitter – for winning last week’s poll.)

Hand of the Week – Week 26

Last Thursday and yesterday I told you how a Canadian chap I met in Brazil told me that the best game of poker in the whole world (as in easiest to beat) took place at Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast in Australia.  Armed with this nugget of gold I made a point of finding this game when I came to Aus.

So you can imagine my disdain when having discovered this game and played three sessions in it I found myself a small loser. Harrumph!

This could suggest one of three things:

1 – The Canadian was bullshitting me

2 – The Canadian was telling the truth but the game has since changed

3 – I am not very good at poker

Right now any of the three explanations could be the correct one.  But read further on and I suspect you’ll probably lean towards number 3.  So onto this week’s hand, where I shall be brief for the following reasons:

1 – I hate the hand and don’t really want to dwell on it

2 – It’s getting late and I’m tired after a hard days frolicking at Wet n wild Theme park

3 – I only have 40 minutes battery left on my laptop. Plugging it in entails moving to the living room of the hostel, where some lairy bell end is drunkenly holding court and every word that leaves his mouth increasingly makes me want to punch him.

Seeing as this article is turning into “lists of three reasons” for whatever needs explaining, I may as well do likewise for the three reasons I am a donkey and label them “Pre – Flop”, “Flop” and “Turn”, where I bluff every time, each time with spectacularly less success. The game is $2-5 and I have about $375.

Preflop – the grizzly old guy who is a bit lively preflop raises to 20. He gets called by a Chinese player in middle position who seems to call most preflop raises. I have made precisely one three bet all night – with KK where everyone folded. This time I get Q-10 offsuit in the small blind and I decide to try and steal the $40 that’s out there. Older grizzly guy made an amazing lay down earlier so I suspect he will lay down again. I raise to $75. He does indeed fold but the Chinese player calls the $75. There’s $177 in the pot. Heads up to the flop we go.

Flop – the flop was 8-7-2 rainbow.” Well he can’t have any of that can he?” I reason and I fire off another $75. To my increasing inconvenience he calls. Well that wasn’t supposed to happen. There is $327 in the pot.

Turn –The turn card is a Jack and none of my bluffs have worked so far. So the obvious thing to do is try another bluff. Third time lucky perhaps? Well that’s what Baldrick would do. And I’ve got a gutshot straight draw now….. why not? Do it man!

I smash all in for my last $225

He calls. The river is an Ace for 8-7-2-J-A

“What have you got” says the cheeky sod.

At this point I hear Grizzly in the corner predicting to his mate “Kings or Aces for sure”

And I flip over my Q-10. Grizzly looks dumfounded.

Why oh why did I do that? I mean of course, why did I flip over my Q-10? I ought to have mucked them and walked away. It’s the the triumph of hope over experience I suppose. There’s no way I’m ever ahead there but against all possible odds I still hoped there was some tiny chance he missed his draw and that I was ahead.

But of course I’m not. The Chinese guy has….10c9c for the immortal nuts*.

And I just gave away all my money.

* hence he is a cheeky sod, asking me “what have you got” in a tone that suggested he urgently needed to know

Eoghan O Dea Blog – Aussie Open Week 2 Betting preview !

Ive been over in Australia for about 9 days now. I havent played a huge amount of poker really. I wanted to play a few tournaments before the main event but only got to play one which was the 1k rebuys. I was in for 4k which wasnt too bad considering how crazy it was and with it having a treble add on at the end. I ran pretty well until the last 3 tables where i passed a few hands that maybe i should of played and then ended getting my money in with jjs v’s Ak which possibly wasnt that necassary. If i won maybe it would of been necessary! Overall im winning a little as i won in the 3 cash games sessions that i have played. Im playing in the main event 2moro which im looking forward to. Its goin to be a big turnout as usual and has a juicy 2 million guaranteed 1st prize.

Ive been punting quite a lot on the tennis over here. I think im back to levels after a bad day today with Tipsarevic and Raonic both loosing. Im goin to get on the Gasquet band wagon for his next match vs ferrer. Im usually always laying gasquet but hes being v impressive so far and ferrer not as impressive this tournament. Its looking like were goin to get some v interesting quarter final matches where there will be no big favourites at that stage really which will be good.

Its like 2am now so gona see if i can to sleep early for a change. Ill do a bit of tweeting tomorrow during the tournament hopefully. No excuse with the free wireless at the crown casino!

I Think I Found “the” Game

Last Thursday I wrote that my challenge was simple – find the game – beat the game.

At that point in time I was still trying to find the game, wandering around Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast getting sunburned.  And it was not just any game I was trying to find either. It was “THE game”.  To hear tell of, this was the easiest game you could ever wish to play.

Well eventually I achieved half of my task – the wrong half though!

Let’s just say I haven’t beaten the game yet. I’ve only won one of my three sessions there, although I am only a tiny loser so far overall.  But at first I wasn’t even sure that I had even found the game. When I compared the evidence of my own eyes to what had been promised to me by that Canadian guy back in Brazil a year ago, I started to wonder “Have I been mis-sold THE game?”

The game that he told me about was the liveliest, loosest, easiest-to-win-at game of poker that you ever heard of. Full of fish! Galahs galore! Players literally giving their money away!

But that wasn’t the game that I came across.  With a couple of notable exceptions (of which more to come later), the players weren’t in the habit of giving all their money away to me or anyone else for that matter. So I wondered if I was at the wrong place and whether “THE” game was actually some other game.

Alas no. Having asked around and searched online, this pretty much has to be the game in question. One of the regulars who I have seen at Jupiter’s every time I’ve been there assured me there is nothing else going on along the Gold Coast and the next game is all the way up at Brizzy (Brisbane – an hour’s drive North).

So unless the Canadian was talking about some home game (which I find very unlikely) then yes, I have indeed found “the” game.  And having travelled 12000 miles to find the supposedly bestest game in the whole universe, I have to say I feel a bit let down.

The obvious candidate for “the game” was Jupiter’s Casino, which is part of a big hotel complex. And I wasn’t massively impressed with it. Although it claims to be a 5 star establishment, it doesn’t look like one. It is decent, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a patch on the Star City in Sydney, which you can really tell is a five star. This in turn means that the Jupiter probably isn’t a tenth as good as the Crown in Melbourne (where they play the Aussie Millions). I still haven’t been there but I’ve heard from untold sources that the Crown is the absolute nuts.

But who cares how good a casino is? It’s not like I go to a casino to play the table games: I only care for the poker.  The Jupiter poker room only has space for 10 tables and when I got there at 4pm on a Friday there were only two tables in action. There was a $1/2 game and a $2/4 game with a maximum $300 buy in (although a $2.50/5 game started at about 7pm with a $500 max).  In three visits I have not seen more than four tables open at once. Compare that to the Star where there were 20 tables in action at 2am on a Friday night/Saturday morning.

However, the Jupiter has its advantages. There is no table charge and the rake is 5% instead of 10%, although there is no cap so it can get as high as $50 on a $1000 pot (it is capped at $10 in the Star). I have to say the $10 per hour table charge they make you stump up at the Star is the single most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in a cash game so I’m at least grateful I don’t have to pay that at Jupiter’s.

The poker room itself is surrounded by noisy slot machines and banging loud music, something that annoys and amuses the players in equal measure.

“Can you ask them to turn up this banging music please?” joked one player to the dealer.

“Come on man, turn it up! Can’t you see the clientele want it louder?” he persisted, pointing to a geriatric old girl who was hunched over a fruit machine having a coughing fit.

Given the demographic of the slot playing clientele – they are all old ladies without exception – it is a particularly odd scenario to hear techno playing at that volume.

But I don’t so much mind the conditions so long as the game is good, namely that the people playing it are bad at poker.  So you can imagine my displeasure at this amazing fold I saw:

At the river the board was showing four hearts, thus:

Ah 10h 5h 3h 3c

The flop had been checked and there was a smidgeon of action on the turn. On the river there was about $200 in the pot and the guy from Melbourne who had about $2200 bet $110. His grizzly tight opponent thought for ages and then raised to $290.

“All in” said the bloke from Melbourne in a flash.

The grizzly bloke had less than $300 left. After some bitching and moaning he finally folded his hand face up – King Queen of hearts for the best flush. It was around $260 to win about $1150. And he folded!  Incredible stuff.

The guy from Melbourne showed his A3 for the full house. Say what you will about the fold and the pot odds and the fact it was a cash game, but at the end of the day the bloke folded the best possible flush and he saved just under $300! Now if this was really a good game the man would stack off in an instant there. Even some good players will call out of sheer frustration there!

And this is supposed to be a good game?

Hmmm. I think I’ve been mis-sold ”the game” here…..