Mad Man Poker

Lately the swing is getting a bit too much!
These last few weeks I’ve been a bit less “into the game” than what people are used of me.
I have a small profit combining all my gambling activities, but that is mostly due to prop betting and non-poker games.
I have a big credit still open from one guy who wanted a game of Gin Rummy and ran into a 124 – 0 game on basic stakes that are about 10 times as much as the standard and double my normal amount, so that was a nice win. It’s still not paid off completely and I’m being pretty lenient on this guy, mainly because I don’t want to be the “gambling goon” going after my winnings too strong, also, I let him off the hook for a 100 – 0 game, waving the final 24 points.

A second huge success came in a prop bet about the NHL. When I was 9, the Pittsburgh Penguins had just won their second consecutive Stanley Cup, sporting a team with super heroes like Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux. I was a kid, unfamiliar with this highly spectaculair game and saw a piece of the ’91 – ’92 season in chunks and bits, and I had found my team.
Over the years, I lost track a bit, even though I usually around playoff time always checked where we were at, the first few years, but my hockey passion got a bit dormant when the team lost it’s place among the top contenders.
I had vaguely heard something about financial troubles early in the new millennium and that Lemieux had become the owner of the team now, but the Pens were still at the bottom of the league and I didn’t really made time to renew my passion for the game.
Then in 2005, the Pens struck gold. The league had just gone through its worst crisis with the 2004 – 2005 shut out where not a single game was played due to differences between the NHL and their players, and so the drafts that year were full of young talent. All of them however had to humbly bow their heads to a kid of 17 that literally could do anything with a stick and a puck. Sidney Crosby might be the best player to have ever hit the ice since Lemieux in ’84. In a team that managed to obtain Marc-André Fleury in 2003 (1st draft pick) and Evgeni Malkin in 2004 (2nd overall pick, behind only Alexander Ovechkin of the Washinton Capitals) this was the cherry on top. “Sid the kid” would start his career so succesfull that Lemieux announced on January 24 of 2006 that he would retire a second time as a player, having found his replacement. It didn’t stop him though to pick Jordan Staal (2nd overall pick) in 2006, making sure the Pens had now Crosby – Malkin –Staal to fill up the centre position on their first 3 lines.
Succes was bound to come and in 2008, Crosby led his men to the Stanley cup finals facing the Detroit Red Wings of Nicolas Lidstrom.
The NHL started a series of commercials to make the game more popular in the US. One theme was pictures of the game coming to live. The Crosby version showed the Pens mere minutes after their loss in game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals, having Sid say “I never want to be in this picture again”.
One year later, lightning did struck twice when the same 2 teams met up again to play for the title, and this time Pittsburgh had no intention of letting the cup go.

Now, I have this online buddy, currently living in Florida, US, but originally from about 15 km outside of Ottawa and he’s probably the heaviest Senators fan you can imagine, even to the extent of flying back and forth about 4 times every season to catch a few live games.

Imagine our reaction when the Penguins ended up 4th seed, leaving the Atlantic Division title to the New Jersey Devils for 2nd seed, meeting up with 5th seeded Ottawa in the first round of the post season.

In the last 4 years, this was the 3rd time the Sens and the Pens battled it out in the first round of the playoffs and the series were equally split 1 – 1 with Ottawa missing the road to Stanley in 2007 and the Pens being the reigning champion.
In the season both teams took down their 2 home games for a split in points there and we eventually settled on making the Crosby bunch a favourite, with Ottawa missing their star forward Alexei Kovalev.
We worked out a 21 to 18 deal with a clause to 25 to 18 should Daniel Alfredsson get injured in the first 2 games or 18 tot 18 mirror bet when Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin end up in the sick bay before going to Ottawa for games 3 and 4.
I had a very sickening experience when Ottawa fought their way to a 1 – 0 lead in the series by taking down game 1 on Penguins ice, but, the Pens are a post season team and took down the second match before sweeping the Ottawa trip for a 3 – 1 rush, forcing Afredsson and his guys to defend their chances on an away game. The Sens, however did just that in a game going into triple overtime, and we both realised that whoever took game 6 would probably take the series. After two periods Ottawa had a 3 – 1 lead and I was already giving up when of all people 4th liner Matt Cooke was the one keeping Pittsburgh in the game with a tying goal for 3 – 3 about 12,5 mintues into the 3rd period, Pascal Dupuis eventually ended up scoring the game winner and the Penguins go through to the Eastern Semi-finals, leaving me with a nicely won bet. I’m now currently rooting for the Boston Bruins and Monreal Canadiens to take their series against the Buffalo Sabres and first seeded Washinton Capitals, since this would result in a match up between the Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers, a team we do not like (oh no!) and which would once again mean prop action for me. I do however fear that Ovechkin will not let the Habs take his Capitals out, which means we’re most likely meeting the Bruins in the semi’s.

For as far as poker’s concerned, we picked our WSOP-teams on Saturday and I was aiming to catch Ivey for my team together with some young guns and consistent pros. I managed to get Ivey on my 10th pick. That one went perfectly. I tried to end up with the most points left to outbet everyone should I be able to pick up Ivey on my last spot. I did get the chance to put up Ivey in the auction on my last pick and only Michiel Maes had more points left, but with 3 spots left on his team he needed to keep some behind to fill up his roster, meaning Ivey was mine. The seasoned pros were no problem either, I easily got Elky, had only a little fight to pick off Deeb from Mickey, swept Alaei, and off course, already had Daniel Negreanu. I still stand behind my decision to lay a lot of faith on the young guns, unfortunately, I picked them a bit too young. Thomas Marchese, Sorel Mizzi, Yevgenuiy Timoshenko and Tyler Reiman are all legit in Vegas, but I went after Harrison Gimbel as well (considered him a “must have” even) only to realise that the PCA is not played on US soil and finding out that Gibler321 is only 19. We haven’t even started and I’m already handicapped! Maybe it’s the poker gods levelling the field since I do have both Negreanu and Ivey.

In cash games I’ve been playing horrifically lately. Spewy moves, bad calls, frustrated plays, I did them all, these last few sessions. My results were consequently very bad. For once, however, luck did end up on my side at the very end of the game, resulting in a 800 BB big pot between Michiel Maes and myself in a match up between his full house vs my quads. For a win of about 125 BB to end the night.

For now, I’m mainly looking forward to TPC X, where all ex-champs will be present with a bounty on their heads. I don’t know what effect this is going to have, but hey, who knows, I might run into a hot streak of cards and make myself a masacre all the way to the win.

Untill next time,
Take care

The Mad Man

Somewhere on the HSOP-table of yesterday, when the smoke cleared out there is an ape-corpse decaying.

You might have noticed that my cold run of the last few months (last year?) is seemingly coming to an end and I’m confident enough to go head to head with anyone directly around me again.

We played the first event of the HSOP 2010 yesterday and I started out a bit dissapointed.
Only 6 people bothered to register and only 5 showed up in the end.

HSOP still is an incredibly difficult format to play. What makes it different from, for example, a TPC is that it is a lot smaller, and therefore you have no chance to hide behind a weaker opening table to accumalate chips and strike later in the tournament. HSOP requires a game plan for hand 1 on forward.

Last year I ended up with the most cashes and 5 (out of 9) runner-up results, … but no titles. I got a bad beat in the seven stud, got tricked and outplayed in Razz, played aweful heads up Hold’em and Omaha and ended card dead in stud eight.
Needless to say I had a bit of knot in my stomache when I reported last night to play the 2-7 lowball event.

First of all, deuce to seven in somewhat of an exotic game. You might not say it, but almost nobody plays this. It doesn’t even come across in the big game (Bobby’s Room) far enough for what it’s worth.
The only decent time worldwide to test your lowball single draw skills is at the WSOP.
We however play it quite often. In an enviroment where a lot of people like to avoid limit games, any format that allows you to combine heavy betting and a lot of psychology and position play is golden in our eyes.

I started out with Mickey C on my left. Despite finishing last in 2009, Mickey needs to be taken on carefully in any position game, and besides Thomas Wouters (who seems to have made a sport out of it) I know not a single soul who can rightfully say he outclasses Mickey in single draw lowball.
Yesterday, that soul was Niels Blommaert. He hunted our C-man down like a puppy and the only times the 2009 player of the year was evolving in the right direction was when he obviously avoided Niels.

Niels is a bully, in any game. He’s not that obvious at it compared to myself or Michiel Maes in his agressive moments, but a bully in every aspect. Before the heads up, yesterday, he was the only one in the tournament who made trap plays and 3-bets.
I had however already noticed that Niels main tell in No Limit Hold’em can be just as easily be used in lowball and it took a few monstrously strong plays by Niels to keep me away from attacking his chip lead. In the end however, we were heads up and Niels had nowhere to go. I was already preparing myself for a bashing fest, planning on putting counterpressure on the expected attacks I was going to endure.
For some strange reason, however, Blommaert decided to go with a more carefull approach against me and realised himself he had now just opened the door for me to squeeze him to death. He outdrew a failed play and made a monster call on a queen low, but in the end, the first words out of his mouth right away were of realising he had given me the oppurtunity to agress him and that it had cost him the tournament.

Michiel Maes came in the next seat. Michiel seemed hardly interested at time and even unsettled at moments. This amazed me because, just like Mickey, Michiel is a position player and lowball is a position game. He went toe to toe with his namesake and came out losing in the game of positions. In his defence, Mickey did have a dead stack, courtesy of Thomas Vanbrabant to his left, while Michiel had a very alive Tom De Jonghe to deal with.

Tom is new to our group and started out extremely loose yesterday. Although he quickly saw the error of his way, he had already been batted down a few times and started out needing to rebuild. He all of a sudden became rock tight untill he nicely worked and waited his way right into three handed play and started to open up again.
Unfortunately he had the 2 agressors left then and saw no way to beat Niels and myself at what we do best, putting pressure.
Nice run though and I expect to see some amazing things from Tom.

There you have it. A few months after Mickey became the first to claim a title in TPC (the Omaha-side event) for the open tournaments and titles in the HSOP (HORSE, Razz and stud8) for the “specialist” category I am glad to join him in these ranks.

Next event is the HORSE and I really want to go deep (win, win, WIN) in this one.

The Mad Man

After my last post where I described how I yet again rebuilt some parts of my playing style (must be Mad Man, version 5 or 6 by now) I thought I’d owe it to you to let you know how it went in that first live game trying our “newly aquired” tricks.

First of all, in general it went excellent. It had been a while since I left the table on one of these nights as the “big winner”, but yesterday I stood up with my buy in stack almost tripled.

A lot of this is courtesy to 2 players playing a very agressive game and me being able to pick on it. Whether the fact that this was as succesfull as it was (one of them never saw a show down with me in the hand) was because I catched the cards at the right time (floating with 2 overcards to the flop on a board where my oponnent showed no real strenght, and I hit one of my cards on the river) or because being so familiar with being the agressor that I knew where to look for weaknesses (I made chasing any board virtually impossible for one guy), fact remains that I had fun again.

I started out very tight for the first few orbits, only to notice that people gradually started believing I had a big hand when I was in (wauw, so this is what the world looks like through the eyes of a rock) and started giving me walks.

I then loosened up. First of all, because by now I had the stack to do it, because people layed it down more easily when I came in and mainly because I don’t like waiting for a big hand when nobody is willing to play with me, and wanted the table to notice that the maniac might be tamed, but not gone.
When I’m playing somewhat tight, the least I can do is proclaim my image and get some people in not believing I’m carrying the goods.

In that same spirit I made sure I advertised no ABC-plays or monster hands if I didn’t have to. Dennis Van Hove offered me money to find out what i was playing with on a KQQ flop, but I denied him (and later told the table I had kings. They didn’t believe me (and are right not to) but boy, if they knew what was in my hand!) and reversely did advertise “frisky” plays. 

Also, my read is back. Or at least to some extent. When people accused me of slowplaying my pocket jacks against an all undercard flop with 2 harts, I actually wasn’t slowplaying, Niels was. I just sucked out on the turn when a jack came off. 
The people assuming my trickyness in that hand, obviously haven’t read this site too often, because on more than 1 occasion I already pointed out that 1 pair is no reason to go slowplaying.

Once more: slowplaying requires a monster in both hands (you and your oponnent) since you delay getting value to later streets and therefore need exponantially bigger bets on turn and river.
Playing agressive and slowplaying 1 pair to let the other guy ”catch up” is basically telling him you have a made monster and there is no need to start betting his rivered pair.  That’s what gave off Niels. People were so focussed on me they all forgot about the fact that Niels didn’t bet either.

The second thing I did was avoiding Maarten De Laere, which in itself must have looked strange since I had him to my immediate right, but Maarten is running godlike the last few weeks and I didn’t want to go toe to toe with him unless I had some hand to back it up. I let go of a reasonable pocket pair when a paired board with rag kicker came off and Maarten bet, just because these are the situations where Maarten sucks out on you lately.
I did however seized every opportunity to get in line with him when he didn’t push me out, ending up wit KTos in a hand where the flop came AQJ. Why? Because against Maarten I tend to get payed off large when marginal hands like this hit.
I must admit, Maarten took the beat really well and went on to river an 8 against Niels to more than save his night.

Well, there you have it.
I hope I can keep up with this winning, leaving a very dark period pokerwise behind us.

The Mad Man