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Jackrabbitslims Poker View profile

Update Time

Date: Tue, Feb 27, 2007

January and February are busy months for me so I have neglected the blog a little, but things are calming down now so I should be able to post more often. 2007 has been good to me so far, bringing 3 live final tables, finishing 2nd twice and 9th on the third occasion. I was happy with my play in all three tournies and feel really good about my live game at the moment. It still has so much room for improvement, but at least I’m moving in the right direction.

I also made the final 2 tables of a festival event with a much higher buy-in than I would normally play. I still felt like I had an edge on all the tables I played on and busted in 12th after loosing my only coinflip of the tournament.

Online poker has been good to me too, making 2 final tables at Full Tilt in the $3k guaranteed (2/380) and the $9k guaranteed (3/680) and my forays into $100 NL 6-max have been going well, starting to see more typical BB/100 rates with something that’s starting to resemble a decent sample size.

Hopefully I’ll now have more time to play and I’ll be back here making random observations about all things poker related.

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WPT Win For Hachem

Date: Wed, Dec 20, 2006

Well I said I was prepared to be proved wrong, and I was. Joe Hachem has become only the fourth person in history to win both a WSOP Main Event bracelet and a WPT title.

The Bellagio must have been absolutely electric. I do wonder if those same ‘AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE’ railbirds were there again.

It’s a shame these two didn’t meet heads up, for that would have surely made for some entertaining viewing. Negreanu busted in 3rd, a cash that saw him gain the title of biggest WPT all-time money winner.

Hachem overcame a small chip lead to take the title. For most people now surely he has proved that he has the talent and skill required to play at this level, unlike some others who may have not received much respect since WSOP Main Event wins…

This is a quote on the PokerStars website from one of the final 27 players due to play the final of the ‘Moneymaker Millionaire’ in the Bahamas this January:

[i]Leonard "malibu44" Lawrence

Quote: "Chris has just shown that anyone, no matter how much or little skill you have, can win a poker tournament. The reason it has been such a big success over the past few years, is because anyone, and I mean anyone can just walk into a poker tournament, go on a nice run of cards and walk away a millionaire."[/i]

What makes me laugh is that this got up on the website without anyone questioning what was said about someone they are clearly paying plenty of money to promote the site for them. This is on top of the fact that the actual tournament this guy is potentially going to take home a nice payday from is named after the player he’s giving such a generous opinion of.

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Joe Hachem makes WPT final table

Date: Tue, Dec 19, 2006

It seems Hachem isn’t another one hit WSOP Main event wonder. He’s at the final table of the 2006 Five Diamond World Poker Classic championship event. Daniel Negreanu has also made the cut. Not surprisingly in this age of ever more popular live events the final table is going to be televised. It should be a good show as these two and the other players battle it out for the a WPT title.

I always though that Hachem was a great player, but he’s also entertaining and throughly marketable. Pokerstars did a good job on getting hold of him. I think Negreanu has the slight edge here and if you add his stack I don't see how he doesn't take it down. I'm prepared to be proved wrong though.

Negreanu has a slight chip lead over Mads Anderson and has Hatchem outchipped nealry 2:1. I think there is destined to be plenty of action on this 6 handed final table, I’m just gutted I won’t get to see it live…

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Nothing Much To Report

Date: Sat, Nov 25, 2006

It has been quite quiet for me over the last few weeks. I have been short of time to play but have been playing lots of $100 NL 6-max in an attempt to hit goldstar for the first time. I'm pretty close with 5 days left so hopefully I'll scrape through.

I'm starting to get excited about the APAT even next weekend now. I can't wait to play some real poker even though I haven't played many tournies recently. Hopefully I should get some practice in this week before I fly up to Newcastle on Saturday.

It's starting to look like my Oz trip in March may not be happening. It was almost a certainty a couple of month ago but now it's about 50/50. The good news is that if I don't end up going I'll have enough holiday time left to go to Vegas in the summer! I honestly can't decide which one I want more...

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APAT

Date: Fri, Nov 10, 2006

At the weekend I managed to get myself a seat at the UK Amateur Poker Championship which is being held at The Aspers Casino in Newcastle at the start of December. It’s Part of the APAT (Amateur Poker Association & Tour) which has already staged one event so far this year in Birmingham.

The idea behind the APAT is to give amateur players the chance to play a deep stacked live tournament for a nominal buy-in, and bring players away from the shot stack rebuy tournaments which are typically offered in casinos. Most of the live games I play follow a structure of a 800 starting chip rebuy tournament where the blinds reach 200/400 after an hour and a half. It’s a brutal structure and the rebuy period is typically (for me anyway) an expensive one.

Other than that it’s just excuse to go on a night out in Newcastle, which I hear can be a gloriously messy affair, and meet a few players from ITH who are also attending the event. There is a WSOP package up for grabs for the two day event. A field of just 210 runners should make for some interesting and creative play and if I get knocked out early I have a few people to rail.

I’m really looking forward to it now. I hope this will be the first of many trips to live events outside of my normal haunts. Reports from the previous event in Birmingham suggest that there aren’t really any bad players and that the field is generally quite good. Hopefully it will give me some valuable experience of more structured live play, which will help if I ever decide to frequent the WSOP or any EPT events.

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Sometimes 90% isn’t enough

Date: Mon, Nov 6, 2006

Ironic after my odds based last post but unfortunately if you’re a 90% favourite to win a hand on the turn, it means you have to loose 10% of the time. I just wish it didn’t happen to me in the Million last night. We were down to just over 1500 runners from a stunning 6.6k entrants. If I had won the hand I would have had an above average stack and cruising towards the money. Who knows what could have been.

It’s fair enough to say that the odds will even out over time, but that situation might not present itself enough for it to ever even out. In a ring game, if you get stacked with AA you know that over the long term the money will be coming back to you. However if you loose HU on the FT of the Million for the difference between 180k and 95k it’s unlikely that even a very large amount of poker will ever make that back.

Also from tonight I’m thinking maybe I need to mix it up a little more and get myself to a stack where I can take a hit or two, leading to a more aggressive ‘bust early or go deep’ strategy. I do tend to play pretty much ABC tournament poker with a few other bits thrown in every now and again. I think the change would probably make me think a bit more about my game, so I’m going to look over my hand history from tonight and see where I could have mixed it up a little more and see if I can start to apply that elsewhere.

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Odds Are A Funny Thing

Date: Tue, Oct 17, 2006

Odds are a funny thing. I have never really thought about them other than in maths class before I started playing poker. The only other things I really dealt with that involved odds was the occasional bet on the Grand National, or a night at the track. Clearly in these situations no bookmaker is stupid enough to give you 6-1 on an event that has a 3-1 chance of happening and of course the odds aren't fixed like they are in poker.

Saturday night defied all odds for me. I went out for a friends birthday and quite randomly ended up in a casino at 6 am playing a £100 Pot Limit game. It was a very lively and social game. Most of the other players knew each other and had busted from a tournie that finished earlier that night. I was a) Drunk and b) Very tired. My friend and I had the first train to catch in about an hour so it seemed like a good idea to stay somewhere that was warm and still serving alcohol.

After being at the table for about 20 minutes a new player sat down. The guy on his right asked how he got on in a tournament on Monday night. It seems they were both at the same final table and one busted and left before the other. This is where the conversation got interesting:

' I won, Nice birthday present for me too'

'Really?'

'Yeah, well I did have a massive chip lead when you left'

'No I mean it was really your birthday? Same day as mine!'

'Yeah it was, well happy birthday for Monday'

At this point the guy on their left looks up at me and my friend, we are mid hand and I initially thought he was mocking their excitement, I was about to be shocked however…

'Are you guys shitting me? It's my birthday on the 9th too!'

Everyone laughs. It's all completely true, we're all waiting while the driving licenses come out when we add to the odds of the situation, all three of them are called Jamie. So here we have three guys, all sitting next to each other, all called Jamie and all born on the same dates in 1977, 1984 and 1985 and somehow got to the subject of birthdays all within about 2 minutes. A few of us take pictures of the three of them holding ID and T9o in their hands and agree to e-mail them.

'What are the odds of that happening' I hear a few people ask over the next few hands.

Another 10 mins in the guy to the left of the three Jamie's said something along the lines of 'I'll have to be a mind reader if I wan't to beat these 3 guys' If I wasn't tired and had somewhere else to go I would have definitely left the table after this happened:

He's dealing and off the back of his comment Says 'Ace Ace King' before he lays down the flop. I'm at the other end of the table and don't see the cards for all the people going crazy. I don't even need to guess what just happened.

Next hand he decides to try again, a little more random call: 'Jack Seven Five' I'm closer to the flop this time and absolutely amazed to see it fall in that order. He gets the flop wrong next hand but calls the 5d on the turn. Two players got up and left even though the player calling the cards wasn't involved in any of the hands.

'If he was cheating why would he do that?' Someone asks.

"I don't care' Says one of the departing players 'I just spent 2 hours building this stack to £400, I don't want to play at this table with someone who calls two flops, in order, two hands in a row. What are the odds of that happening?'

It's nearly 7am, nobody works it out. My question is: What are the odds of 3 people called Jamie all sitting on the same table next to each other AND having the same birthday AND the player to their right calling two flops in order, in a row?

My guess would be QUITE BIG. So next time someone next hits a miricale 1 outer on the river to stack me, I won't be surprised!

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Stars Is Here To Stay

Date: Thu, Oct 12, 2006

It looks like Pokerstars is here to stay. They have released a statement on their website saying that they don’t believe the changes in legislation have any effect on online poker and that it’s business as usual.

This is great news for nearly all poker players. They’ll have a fantastic option as far as which networks they play on and I can’t see how Stars doesn’t become the #1 poker site now in terms of traffic.

It should be interesting over the coming months to see what happens. Hopefully more traffic doesn’t have a negative effect on their industry leading customer support, and allows them to continue to develop new tournament ideas and extend their guaranteed tournaments.

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Party + Stars Million

Date: Sun, Oct 8, 2006

Nasty run for me today in the two big Sunday tournies. I busted just after the 1st break in the Party Million after pushing top 2 pair on the turn with a rainbow and uncoordinated board. It was a massive pot as 3 of us saw the flop after a I stuck in a healty raise. My opponent had top pair top kicker and rivered his second pair. If I won that hand I would have been up to about 2k above average stack, and in pretty good shape on a decent table.

Less than half an hour later I busted from the Stars Million. I was down to a fairly short stack and ended up all-in with AK. The SB flips AT and I smile all the way to the river where he hits his ten.

Not a great performance, but not much I could do with both of my KO hands. I got my chips in with the best hand both times, and both times were my first showdowns. I had a great table at Stars too so I feel like I could have made a good run in either tournie had I won one of those hands. But like they say:

That’s Poker!

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A Day In The Sats

Date: Fri, Oct 6, 2006

I spent most of today playing satellites to the Sunday Million on stars. I ended up with $645 in entries. I'll use $215 in Sunday and I paid just under $200 to get them so I'll have just over $200 spare which I'll probably use for my tournaments this week.

One Double Shootout win (standard these days) and two from the $11R which is a bit of a crapshoot, but has been the main source of qualification for me in the past.

To prove my point today I qualified with less than 10% of the BB! I was also due to post the BB next hand, so I probably would have collected $33, (a massive $2 profit, I was in for $31) instead of the $215 entry. I didn't even have enough chips to post two antes either.

A classic late stage scenario occurred too. In the final hand of the tournament I was UTG with AA. Someone was all-in on one of the other tables and the SB was all-in on mine. If both of those players lost the hands they were in I would qualify, if not I was all-in in the BB and given that I was the smallest stack, and that we were hand-for-hand (lowest stack gets the lowest position if two players get KO in the same hand), if I lost the hand I would have been out on the bubble. I time out and a big stack in MP pushes. Everyone else folds and MP flips JJ Vs the SB's random junk hand.

MP hit a J on the turn meaning I would have been out, and even though two other players also busted in the same hand, my stack when I busted would have cost me the seat.

So I'm in the Party and Stars Millions on Sunday. It's the first time I have played both at the same time so I hope I can concentrate AND keep an eye on IRC. I'm being staked half my Stars entry by ITH forum members so I hope I make them proud! I also have a stake in the other players playing in our massive chop so I'm sure at least a few of us will make the FT.

Should make the final table negotiations interesting!

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Legal Issues

Date: Fri, Oct 6, 2006

There has been extensive discussion in the last few days about how the possible changes in US laws will effect poker players in the US. I can fully relate to how terribly frustrating it must be to consider the fact that you may not be able to play poker online anymore. The majority of the people I play poker with and lots of the community at ITH are American, which means the game I love to play will probably be a completely different one if/when the sites I play at decide to start banning US players.

This has already happened at one of the sites I play at, but hasn't had any massive effect. I think it's possible there are less bonus chasers at William Hill now, so that's not necessarily a bad thing. However my main poker education is taking place at pokerstars at the moment, and although they haven't come out with a definitive statement either way at the moment, I think it's likely that they will have to go along the same lines as party and restrict US players. This would have a massive effect on the traffic the site experiences. I often play at times when there are upwards of 80,000 players online and if you assume 80% of the players are based in the US, you can expect that number to drop to around 16,000. You would also probably have to expect a further fallout of players due to their normal games not being available due to lack of players, or not being as profitable as games they may be able to find elsewhere. There are of course differences between Party and Stars, Stars is a private firm and has nearly always been a step ahead of the game. I don't expect that they'll give in as easily as Party have, but any company willing to release a statement that knocks a few Billion Dollars of it's share value doesn't do so lightly.

There is talk that they are cooperating for the time being because they may be trying to get on the good side of the law to enable them to take advantage of some long shot loophole at a later stage. I think this is certainly a possibility, I still find it so hard to believe that any company would simply roll over and say 'Well we can't do that anymore, never mind'. There is also speculation that they will be focusing their attentions on the Asian market as a replacement, but why not fight for the US players and double your profits?

Some of my main attractions to online poker will be taken away if all this comes into effect. I won't be able to play in a $3 rebuy tournament with a 30k prizepool. The possibility of them offering a guaranteed WSOP main event seat in a $33 tournament wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't be able to waste a week trying to qualify for the Sunday million, because they simply couldn't offer such a large guaranteed prizepool without loosing a serious amount of money.

But I can't really complain. At least I can play at all. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't play online. I'd probably try to play more live poker, but it's just not the same. Something evil inside me likes the feeling of winning $1000 in a tournie at 3 am while sitting in my living room in my underwear. I would probably only be able to play once a fortnight with less players, no game variety and of course driving 30 minutes to get busted in the first hand is much more frustrating when you can't just open another game.

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Double Shootout King

Date: Thu, Sep 28, 2006

I Honestly think I might have to start calling this the Double Shootout Blog. I think I have probably played about 6 or 7 DS in my short poker career, and I have won the seat in 4. I know that’s a small sample size but it’s harder than it looks to win 2 SNG’s back-to-back.

I have about 500 $10 and £10 SNG’s under my belt from back when I started playing. I had a decent ROI and built the bankroll to start playing Limit FR. Maybe it’s my familiarity with the quality of players at this buy-in level added to my more recent experience in higher limit tournaments that gives me an edge.

The one I won today was an $11 6-Max sat to a $280 tournament. Strangely the player HU on the 1st table was much better than the one on the second. At the start of the second table I was lucky to build up to 4.5k early as I took a brutal all-in beating 4 handed, when my AA was cracked by AK. I ran the stats through the ITH hand calculator and I’m a shade under 93% to win the hand! He had a 3.5k stack as second chip leader and put me down to 1000 chips at 50/100. Climbed back and eventually busted my AK friend to play HU with even stacks.

He was pretty poor Heads-Up. He folded in the SB more times then I care to remember, and was calling and min-raising the rest of the time, no match for my super aggressive donkified HU style.

So I’m in the $280 100 seats Guaranteed to the WCOOP Main event. The buy-in to the ME is $2600 so IF by some miracle I do mange to qualify I’ll have a bit of a bankroll dilemma. I made a decision a while ago to always play in tournaments I qualify for but to date my biggest buy-in has been $530. This is in a different league, I guess I’ll have to worry about it when I win the seat!

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Blind Stealing

Date: Wed, Sep 27, 2006

I am often surprised to find that players late on in tournaments are so reluctant to steal. In the later stages in a tournament players at my table I have marked as playing a solid game let their stacks whittle away by not stealing. This isn't to say they are trying to steal and not succeeding for whatever reason, they simply aren't trying. Too many times recently I have seen players in comfortable but low M situations who have worked hard to build their stack just sit there and fold hand after hand, presumably waiting for something good enough to either raise or push with.

The most important thing to remember about a blind steal is that you don't need a hand to do it. I often like to have something in at least the top 50% of hands, just in case I have to see the flop or play the hand down if called. Needless to say if I am re-raised it's an easy fold, you just want the blinds, and you'll rarely catch anything worth playing on the flop. If you miss the flop don't be afraid to make continuation bets. Look at it from your opponents point of view, you raised pre-flop, he had a hand he didn't want to re-raise you with and just called, then you bet out on the flop. He needs a decent hand here to justify staying in the pot, and the majority of the time he won't. Other players at the table may also take you for a real hand, and give your subsequent steal attempts more respect.

So if you're not looking for a hand, what are you looking for?

First and foremost what you need is an un-raised pot, any raise means that you have a good chance of being called by the initial raiser, and probably re-raised if he wasn't trying to steal himself. Attempting to steal with one or more limpers is also not an ideal situation, one of them may have a hand he can call you with and chances are he'll be well ahead if he does. Your raise amount in this situation will also need to be bigger, putting more of your stack at risk. It's always a good idea to use your reads at the table where limpers are concerned. Have they limped a lot? Have they raised the flop after limping? Have they called re-raises? All of these factors you need to take into account.

To pull off an effective steal you also need good position, you don't really want to raise in early position with the possibility of any of the players still to act calling or re-raising you. Usually I would recommend late position, but this of course does depend on a few other factors. If you are in MP and it's folded to you, you might have an ideal situation to steal the blinds if the players on your left are generally tight, short stacked, or a combination of the two.

Blind stealing is only really useful in the later stages of a tournament. Usually the arrival of the antes is a good time to start looking at opportunities. There's not much point trying to steal pots at 10/20 or 15/30 when you start with a 1500 or 2500 chip stack. Players are much more likely to call a small raise at this stage in the tournament, you won't steal as effectively and when you succeed you'll be picking up a minimal number of chips in comparison to your stack.

A successful steal effectively buys you an extra orbit and your called and re-raised steal attempts will be more than made up for by the number of times you steal successfully if done correctly. Raise amounts are central to this working correctly. Not only will they affect the amount of times you are called/win the pot but they will also affect the overall profit you make. Below is an example based on 10 steals, 7 of which are successful and 3 of which are not:

9 handed table – Blinds 200/400 Ante 50

Pot size T1050

Raise amount 2.5 x the BB (T1000)

Profit from steals = 7350

Loss from steals = 3000

Net gain = 4350

Based on a raise amount of 2.5 times the big blind, which should be sufficient at most tables, you gain 4350. If we say the player in this situation is working with an M of 10 (T10500), he is only risking just under 10% of his stack at each steal, meaning any re-raises or other situations where he doesn't win the hand don't cost him much of his stack.

If we change the raise amount to 4 times the big blind:

9 handed table – Blinds 200/400 Ante 50

Pot size T1050

Raise amount 3.5 x the BB (T1400)

Profit from steals = 7350

Loss from steals = 4200

Net gain = 3150

This doesn't take into account the fact that your blind steals may be more successful with a larger raise amount, but I honestly think that the two raise amounts would have pretty much the same effect at most tables. As you can see here the difference in the two raise amounts equates to an extra orbit This may be the difference between getting the hand you have been waiting for and an early exit.

Many people argue about how many times per orbit you should be looking to steal. I think this is generally dependant on your environment as supposed to having a rule of thumb. On a tight table you should be looking to steal more as your opponents are less likely to call. Clearly you need to be more careful when they do call, and especially when they re-raise. At looser tables you should scale down your steal attempts to maybe just one per orbit. At looser tables you are much more likely to get called so you need to really tighten up your requirements for stealing. Look for the best opportunities, smaller stacks in the blinds, tighter players still to act and the CO or button.

The bubble is a fantastic opportunity to increase your blind stealing. Recently I was playing a big Sunday tournament with a decent stack on the bubble and manage to add around 30% to it over 20 or so hands leading up the bubble. This gave me both an opportunity to cash deeper in the tournament almost by default, but also gave me a stack big enough to benefit from the all in fest that is inevitable after the bubble burst using Harrington's 10% stack theory.

Short handed tables give you even more reason to steal. If you are down to the final 2 or 3 tables of a tournament the tables will generally have a low average M. If you are floating around a M of 3-4 then pushing is best. It gives you the maximum folding equity and is probably the only raise that will get any real respect. If you make a 2.5 x BB raise with an M of 4 you won't have enough left to do anything with if you fold when raised, and you probably won't have much choice on the flop if you are called either. This is certainly a time when the 2.5 x BB raise goes out of the window, and you just have to hope nobody wakes up with a hand before you do!

Blind steals also do a good job of disguising your good hands. If you keep your standard raise amount consistent with both your blind steals and your standard raises, any players paying attention at your table will probably give you less credit for you hand. This means your continuation bets will probably have more standing on lower flops, and you are more likely to get paid off when you hit the flop.

It's also worth noting that both effective raise amounts and blind stealing in general add to your stack at any given point, meaning that if double up, you'll be doing so with more chips, adding even more to your stack.

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WCOOP Event #13 - $320 PLHE 6-Max

Date: Wed, Sep 27, 2006

Far from a riveting performance in WCOOP event 13. ($320 PL 6 max) I ended up busting just before the first break. The only one think I can take from the tournament is that I at least made a good laydown. I was up to about 2700 from a 2500 starting stack and was dealt QQ in the SB.

It’s 10/20 so I raise to 60, SB raises to 120 for what looks like a re-steal so I re-raise to 200. He calls and we both see a flop of 957. Two diamonds on board but I have an over pair so I bet out half the pot. He then raises to around 500, I’m worried about what he picked up in the BB at this point. Turn brings a 6, I check and he bets the pot. The bet pretty much puts me all in, he’s bet the whole way, maybe he has a bigger pocket pair, or a smaller one that hit the flop, or even two random cards for 2 pair. I fold and he flops 99 commending my laydown.

That put me down to about 1700, caught nothing for a while until a LP 77. I raise pre-flop and get one caller. The flop is a frustrating 98x and he bets a nominal amount, I re-raise and have to fold to his push.

That puts me down to a pretty small stack, one funny AQ vs AQ all in then end up all in with AK vs QQ, no help and I’m out.

Doubt I’ll be playing any of the events that are left so that’s it for me in the WCOOP this year. I didn’t end up playing as much as I wanted and the two events I did play I didn’t event manage to cash. Bring back the Sunday Million!

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