But They're Suited!

I found a hole in my game. I fold 45o before the flop unless I'm getting in for free on the big blind.

My pocket pair of 9s got beat (made 2 pair, 5s and 9s) by the guy that stayed in TO A RAISE in middle position with 45o.

AAARRRGGHHH!!!!!

I've been playing a little limit hold'em on Stars today. The .05/.10 tables. Did I miss something in my poker reading, or is 7T suited a good starting hand in middle position (UTG +3)? I saw that same thing - 7T suited - played down to the river and either mucked (so it shows in hand history) or turned up several times in the 45 mins. or so I played. What is going on? Or am I the lost one?

I am starting a new feature on this blog - The Best Quote.

The inagural winner of The Best Quote, with a placement somewhere in the template (yet to be determined) until the next The Best Quote replaces it, is from Sir Al Can't Hang in this post:

What's the mating call of a lemur? "But I had odds to call you!"

There is no regular schedule on this. It's not weekly, monthy, or even yearly for that matter. The current The Best Quote reigns until I find a new The Best Quote.

Now go read the post.

I think it's time for me to go back to PokerStars for a bit. Too many bad beats with people that won't lay down hands have put me into the scared money category. I'm having to play a little over my bankroll at Poker.com in order to earn the comp points to get my bonus money. But I have until September to clear the bonus money, so I think I'll take a break.

My bankroll at Stars is a little bigger, so I can be a little more comfortable with my play there. Plus, I was having a fairly good tournament run at Stars before switching to Poker.com. I think I need to switch back for a bit just for my sanity.

So I finally got an account on one of the girly chat things. Yahoo messenger. If you want to add me, email me and I'll give you the info.

Yes, I hear the crickets chirping around here. I think I saw a tumbleweed go by the other day. It's been a while since I exposed more of my personal stupidity to the world. I made a comment over at Bloody P's blog and it made me realize how long it's been since I posted here.

Nothing of major importance to report on the poker front. Still plugging away at my bonus at Poker.com. Had a few ups and downs on the bankroll balance, but most of my plays have been good. A couple of donkey plays here and there, but when I get bored, WATCH OUT!

From the stating the obvious department: Playing at a fish tank like Poker.com has its good and bad sides. The stuff people call pot sized bets with TO THE RIVER just amazes me. Logically I know that I need to root on that behavior every chance I get, because in the long run it will make me money. But when you get a $30.00 pot (at the .10/.25 table) sucked out on you on the river because some lemur can't lay down bottom pair then hits his set, well that just sucks. Oh well. Overall my balance is everything I deposited originally plus 1/2 of the bonus money I'd earned so far, so I'm only down 1/2 my bonus money. This after being down so low on a couple of bad beats that I barely had the buy-in for the .10/.25 table. I know - if I'm playing that close to the edge I'm playing above my bankroll. But the .10/.25 table is the lowest that will still give me comp points that I need to earn my bonus. And I'm fine tuning my game hoping to catch that up before I'm done with bonus chasing there. At that point, it'll be back to Stars for a bit.

I really miss playing at Stars. It's still my favorite place to play. But right now the bonus is just too easy to earn at Poker.com to go back to playing for no bonus at Stars. But never fear all you Stars players - I'll be back donking off my chips in no time at all.

Oh, and it's time for an intervention on Bloody P. He thinks you can make beer out of wheat. Wheat is for BREAD! BARLEY is for BEER!

Oh, and a thanks goes out to G3Poker for signing up through me at PokerSavvy, then completing his play requirements at Poker.com. I got a few more savvy points for him doing that, so I really appreciate it. I'm gonna use my points for Amazon.com gift certificates and share them with my wife. That will score some brownie points in the poker department, for sure.

Oh, and if anyone can tip me off to where all the girly chat goes on among the poker bloggers, I'd appreciate it. I'd love to join in one of the blogger micro limit games on Stars that I'm always reading about. If I am worthy of even daring to think of joining. I think it'd be awesome to play with some of the authors I read on a daily basis. I've not gotten comfortable with risking a chunk of my roll on one of those tourneys yet, because I don't think there's hope of me finishing in the money in that kind of field, but I'd love to play some micro-limit sometime. If anyone feels like they can share the info with me, please let me know.

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll be doing some fishing (instead of feeding the fish) on Poker.com tonight.

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Play Poker. Get Free Stuff. And send a blogger to Vegas. Check out PokerSavvy

So I was watching some of the PPT (Professional Poker Tour) last night on the Travel chanel. At a side table there was a 3-way all-in. KK vs. TT (I think, hard to recall), vs. 33. Flop comes AK2. Turn comes 5. River comes 4. So the pocket 3's beat the set of Ks on the river.

LIVE POKER TOURNAMENTS ARE SO RIGGED!

Variance is a bitch. A total bitch. Beat me up some more please.

That is all.

I've now earned 5000+ comp points at Poker.com, which means I've played at over 1500 raked hands - even more counting those where everyone (but one) folded pre-flop. I've been playing the .10/.25 tables, and each raked hand earns 3 comp points. So I've played enough hands there to give it an overall review.

The software it uses requires you have the flash player version 8 installed. It will install it if you don't have it installed, so that is taken care of for you.

The play seems rather fishy, but beware - there are some educated sharks in those waters. At one table I sat at for over an hour one player literally limped in on every single hand. I am not exagerating. I had my QQ broken by him making a full boat of 9's over 4's on the river. Yes, he played 94o.

The software did have a tendency to make my laptop reboot sporadically. Sometimes it'd be an hour and a half into a session, other times it'd be 10 minutes in - though that happened after rebooting and logging back in. In the middle of a hand suddenly my laptop screen would go blank, then I'd get the "Starting Windows" progress meter on the screen. Fortunately most of the time I was out of the hand, but at least once I had people betting into me when I'd flopped a straight. Oh well.

On a positive note, it doesn't use the characters like Party Poker and others. It lets you have an icon along with your name similar to Stars. This works better for me as I tend to associate the picture with the player. They have a large variety of icons to choose from or you can upload your own.

Traffic is still somewhat of a problem, though. Whenever I logged in they had around 2500 players logged in. That makes for somewhat sparce table selection and when I was multi-tabling I managed to have some of the same players at each table I was playing.

They do have some interesting bonuses. First of all there is a bonus code to get a 100% match on your first deposit. It takes 200 comp points to earn back $1.00 in bonus money, and they'll pay it out to you in $10.00 increments. You also get an entry into a daily freeroll for those that have made their first deposit. The entry is good for a week, and you can use it every day for that week. You also get an entry into a satellite to their WSOP tourney whenever you earn 400 comp points in a 24 hour period. I also managed to earn an entry into a $4k freeroll for the amount of points I've earned, but I don't recall what the requirement was.

Edit: A couple of things I forgot in my first pass. First, when you fold in a heads up situation (that isn't an all-in - not sure why they do that), then you can check boxes to show only one card or both. I like that feature. Also, when you're folded to in a heads-up situation you can select the "rabbit" button which turns over your cards and plays out the board to see what would happen. That is kinda fun, too, in the right situation. (Props to g3poker for reminding me of that last bit.)

Overall I would rate it 2.5 out of 5. The majority of my experience is with PokerStars so everything is compared to it. Stars isn't perfect, so it only rates a 4.5 on the scale. Will I keep playing there? I might until I've earned my bonus money because it is fairly easy to earn. Will I stay there long term? Probably not.

If you want to try it out, go through PokerSavvy to sign up. You only need to earn 1000 comp points (approx. 333 raked hands at .10/.25, fewer hands at higher limits) and you get 750 Savvy points. 750 Savvy points = $75.00 in gift certificates at Amazon.com.

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Play Poker. Get Free Stuff. And send a blogger to Vegas. Check out PokerSavvy.