Showing Cards

I used to be a 7 card stud player for years. When NLHE became the choice of games a few years back I found the changeover from stud a bit of a tough one. The biggest change for me was trying not to become too predictable. You can play on the Internet everyday and you will always be playing different people from all over the globe. I play more live than I do electronically so I am constantly playing some of the same people over and over.

That means they can get a read on you if you do the same moves over and over. I have a reputation as a TAG. In other words if you tangle with me in a hand you better have the goods because I usually do if I am in a pot. I try to take down a pot as soon as a scary board hits. I always would rather win a small pot than lose a large one. In tournament play being too TAG usually means you will last awhile but unless the cards are flowing your way your chances of getting to the final table with sufficient chips can be tough. I was finding that if I did final table I was usually short stacked and basically committed to waiting to push and hoping to double. That's not a great way to play. You are committed to trying to win races and we all know that even going in as a favourite you are going to lose a lot. Playing too tight was not working.

I still try and cultivate that reputation as TAG and do so by showing cards occasionally when I have a great hand. I know that goes against a lot of expert opinion that you should never show your cards. That's a huge change for me as before I never showed unless I was called. This enables me to play less than great cards at times as I try in get in peoples minds that I am only playing good cards.

I remember about a month ago I was in a hand with a young guy who is a good player. This is someone who I have played with many times including once heads up at a tournament (which I won). Earlier in the night I had showed a couple winning hands but this time I had totally missed my hand but instead of betting big or checking I bet the minimum and he looked at the bet as if I had the nuts and folded. I even had another player comment that looked like a bet to get someone to contribute to the pot when I had a good hand. Yea well knowing how good a player he was that bet was to get him to think I had good cards as I never bet like that. I wouldn't try that with just anyone though or too often and of course if he had a great hand he would have raised or called. Just glad it worked that time.

To me HE is a constant learning curve. There are so many good players out there now that you constantly have to look at ways of improving. I love the AllVegas poker site as there is so much information there and if you ever need to someone's opinion on how to play a hand or how you should have played you will get lots of help.

The WPT event wrapped up yesterday and Yevgeniy Timoshenko (pictured above) won the first prize of 2.1 million. That's incredible money. Second place went to Ron Azor and he collected 1.4 million. Both will probably also get some sort of sponsorships from one of the poker sites. Looking through the list of people who cashed in this event you find the name Boris Becker. The same guy who entertained the tennis world and former Wimbledon winner. Its interesting to see some big names from the sports and entertainment world have latched on to the poker boom. People like Gabe Kaplan, Orel Hershiser,Don Cheadle to name a few. What they have that the average person doesn't have is the cash to enter these events. Its still great to see them there though and that's what makes poker special. Imagine sitting at poker tournament and having one of these guys next to you. It certainly would be fun.

Olympic Ski Jumping (not all poker)

In 9 months the Winter Olympics will be here in Vancouver and the IOC with its old boys club has decided to not allow women to ski jump here in Vancouver. They have always had men ski jumping at the Olympics but their reasoning is that there aren't enough women ski jumpers of good enough caliber. What a crock. These are the same guys who wouldn't let women run the marathon or races longer than 1500 metres for years. It is so good to see that the ladies have taken this to court here in B.C and I hope they win. The IOC likes to show their muscle and really need to be put in their place.

I played a live tournament last night with 55 entrants and I swore that when I started this blog I wouldn't tell bad beat stories and so let us just say that I went out in 20th place when someone made an extremely questionable call and then got one out of the 2 cards he needed on the turn and the other on the river. Okay so that's a bad beat story. Anyways I was looking great up until that point having won a huge pot early on. I hit pocket queens and raised it 3 x BB and got 2 callers. Flop came Q XX. Love that flop. Action was on me. Normally I would check here but I decided to bet the minimum which got a look from a lady at the table who wasn't involved in the hand. I could see she was wondering about that bet. Anyways it worked as one of the original callers made a huge raise, the other caller folded and I pushed with my trip queens. I had the raiser covered by a bit and this was like the 5th hand of the night so he thought a lot and finally called. He had 2 pair and my trips held up. Too bad the rest of the night wasn't so good.

Speaking of bad beats I see Jennifer Harmon went out in 11th place in the WPT World Championship. She was all in preflop with AA and got called by Yevgeniy Timoshenko with 10h2h???. Anyways he hit 2 pair on the turn and she was out in 11th. She got just over 81,000 for 11th. They are down to 10 as of this morning and Scotty Nguyen is the chip leader.

Table Bully

Last night I decided to play the Canada freeroll which I usually do on a Sunday Night. This Sunday I was multi tasking as the Canucks (they won) were on the tube at the same time. Anyways I was having a pretty good night winning my share of pots and playing pretty decent. I had pocket kings twice and magically both held up even when an Ace came on the flop the first time. I certainly wasn't in the top 10 in chip stacks but was sitting about average when I got moved and had the chip leader at my table. Okay so this guy (I won't name him but his handle was another card game) had an enormous stack. I had around 11,000 and was the 3rd chip stack at our table. He had 85000. Yep. So I figured wow he must be playing well. Nope. He had one method of play and that was all in on 2 out of 3 hands. The thing was as I watched the occasional call it wasn't even premium cards but he was lucking (or sucking out) out. I was just folding hand after hand realizing that there wasn't any point in even raising as he was going all in on most hands and unless I had a high pocket pair. A couple people started questioning why he was doing this including me. We didn't get a reasonable answer. Now I understand using your chip stack to bully but what he was doing (well certainly legal) was dumb poker. Anyways after a half hour of watching and getting bored I got A10c and decided to push. Of course this was the time he had AQ and I was eliminated. I guess I could have waited him out and hoped on a table move but it was becoming a waste of time. I have never understood why people play like that but it certainly seemed to be working for him as the time. I know eventually of course he is going to lose. You would think that once you get a stack like that you would play smart and build that way but obviously that wasn't how he played. I decided to check the results this morning and this guy ended up finishing 2nd so I guessed it worked for him.

They are heading into day 2 at the World Poker Championship event at the Bellagio. Big names that were eliminated yesterday were Clonie Gowan and Allen Cunningham. Other big names in the top 10 are Johnny Chan(2nd) and Shaun Deeb(4th). Incredible field of pros. I was looking at the seat assignments for today and Johnny Chan and Mike Matusow will be at the same table.

They televised the opening brackets of the NBC Headsup Championship yesterday which was filmed a few weeks back. Even though I know who won its always interesting watching the play. One of the feature matches had Annie Duke against actor Brad Garrett. He had me laughing. He was hilarious and he managed to beat Annie. She took it so well and a big thumbs up to her for being so classy.