ILX Poker Players Unite

[Scotty990] Hey SennaS
[SennaS] yeah
[Scotty990] is that ur last name?
[SennaS] nah its for A Senna I'm a big fan
[Scotty990] oh
*extended pause in conversation*
[SennaS] he's dead
[Scotty990] yeah
[SennaS] very
*extended pause in conversation*
[SennaS] i named my son after him... so he lives on...
[Scotty990] just dont let him take any sharp bends :)
[SennaS] it's ok... he's blind...

Update time y'all!

I have started playing mostly £50NL (roughly equivalent financially to $100NL, though I am pretty sure $100 is trickier) and am owning it so far, which is nice since my last experiment at moving up cost me a little over $800.

Since I moved sites at the start of September I have managed to make almost $2,000 which is EASILY my most successful period - it's probably taken me 12k or so hands to do it.

I am playing almost exclusively 6max cash games nowadays with the occasional SNG (and the very occasional MTT) thrown in for fun. I get in maybe 12-15 hours play a week 3- or 4-tabling.

If anyone is interested I have a poker blog on the excellent Flopturnriver.com. Say hi if you get a chance to read it.

If you go to PokerShark.com (or whatever that tourney-tracking site is) and search for 'sinnermann' on the PokerRoom network, you can bask in my awesomeness.

i played 3 $24+2 multi's in the last few days, came in 14th in one with 600+ and 12th in a 500+. won like a hundred in each - so annoyingly close to the real money (and in the second one i was in 1st w/25 to go). won $900 for fourth a couple weeks ago. used to be more into s&g's but i'm getting my multi game together now. which makes a lot of sense since i've actually won way more from multi's, even though i've played them less.

in the one i didn't cash i got wounded early (and knocked out soon after) when i limped w/aces from 1st position and one of the many callers caught a boat on the flop. of course then the chat window lights up with that's why you don't slow play aces - yeah - u suck - (various simple minded treatises on poker strategy follow) and i'm all because someone catches a boat every time? i try not to be annoyed at these dumbasses, but gdamn!

also those pokershark stats - totally not accurate. or maybe they just don't go back v far or something.

Yeah, I don't know how far back PokerShark goes, but my stats are pretty accurate (except for one or two rebuy MTTs - they only track the initial buyin). Of course, I've only been 'sinnermann' for a few months, so that's probably why.

Hey, I use Neteller, too! So that means that doing the bank-to-Neteller-to-site handjive is still legal?

Whatever you do, though, be CERTAIN to make sure you get rakeback before you sign up. Email me if you want to be shown how (Stars don't offer rakeback but Full Tilt and most of the other sites do).

Personally, I prefer playing at the sites which offer £ tables as I think they're better value, and Sun Poker (my current main site - I am Zerbombt there) has the lovely Cryptologic bonus structure that I used to praise at Interpoker, who changed their requirements, boo.

Oh - and £50NL means £0.25/£0.50 blinds, so pretty low level. it's roughly equivalent to $0.50/$1.

might play again soon though. um, and when i get my credit card back from the bank. although i still have a load of money in pokerroom.

xxxxpost haha i thought mark meant £50 bb too!!

My understanding is that Neteller is a good deal cheaper than firepay. Check their website for details.

The problem with using credit cards is that you have to withdraw onto the credit card, at least a certain proportion of your winnings. Of course this doesn't need to be a problem, it's up to you. Americans of course can't use their credit cards on poker sites because the card providers don't allow payments to gambling businesses.

Likewise, if you're using a Mac, you're pretty much limited to Full Tilt at this point, right?

But yeah, I'd def go with Full Tilt if I had a Mac - they're pretty much the no. 2 after Stars now, they have the most impressive celeb affiliations (good for attracting fish - why don't you like fish, btw?), and they're the fastest-growing site I believe.

fulltilt has my endorsement: 9 handed tables, good blind structures, nice feel, funny avatars. being a mac user i've only ever played @ pokerroom and pacific, which are both wicked retarded.

(not sure if you were actually taking to me)

I used to prefer 10-handed to 9-handed and I still do in SNGs - the way I see it (because I see myself as one of the better players at the table) is that the 10th man will be a net donator to my prize pool and therefore I want him in.

But in cash games I am pretty much totally converted to 6max. Same winrate - actually I'm running better at 6max - but 50% more hands - it's easy to see how much more profitable it is. Also, you actually play more poker, which is more fun and much more educational - it's not the nut-camping grind you get at 9- and 10-handed tables.

I had a couple of almost unbelievably bad beats on Pacific before the ban; the worst was losing with AA (and trips on the A-8-2 flop!) to 7-2 offsuit, when some genius decided to call my pre-flop raise and my post-flop raise with his pair of twos and got 7-2 on the turn and river. There's just no accounting for people like that.

I was off sick yesterday and played a little bit of poker and managed to fluke my best day ever! Up $440 or so in under 600 hands, thanks to an SNG win and some good times at $50 and £50NL 6max.

Highlight was hitting the nut straight on the turn and pushing all-in over a guy re-raising with a set - hello $280 pot! What might have been the highlight, but for a tremendous laydown on the villain's part, was my last hand - AA, hit a set on the turn (which also brought three to the flush), bet 3/4 of what was already a massive pot and a guy with a lower (flopped) set managed to find a fold. Considering we both had 3 x buyins at this point, I was looking at a $570 pot if he'd been a tiny bit braver/more foolhardy.

p.s. why does my firefox no longer recognise the poundsign? Do I have to start writing GBP from now on?

Lowlight: QQ against Bluffin' Grandma, a genuinely terrible player who's gone all-in with garbage twice in the past five minutes and donked away about $300 in a half-hour. I raised to $12 pre-flop, three callers, check-raise to $20 post-flop (7-4-2, two diamonds), and everybody folds but Grandma, who immediately goes all-in on the Kc turn. No way she's got that king - I'm thinking A7d at best - so I call her, scare card be damned. Turns out Grandma's been slow-playing aces, and I wave goodbye to a day's work.

I'll let David tell the story of how he got his kings cracked, which is one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen in a poker game.

The Rest Of The Story: after Daniel & I lick our wounds @ the buffet, we both decide to give it another go. This was around 6:30 - 7 PM. I cash in the remaining $200 I earmarked as Fun Money, & sit down @ another table. Dan & his buddy stop by a few hours later (where I hear about the QQ story), and I'm down another $100+, making my losses on the day a little more than $400. This included some shitwit chasing a flush & gutshot straight w/ (I think) A4 suited, despite me doing my best to bet him out. And said dude, of course, catches the STRAIGHT FLUSH on the river.

By the time I left (@ 5 AM), I was up $450. Doi. I actually blogged about it in a general-audience style (because what else am I gonna do after playing poker for 14 hours?), but the short of it: drunk Patriots fans that don't know when to bail out are the best guys to play against.

I believe I'm thinking of another bad KK beat (which doesn't seem totally out of the question, given how badly the first few hours at that table went for you). The guy you faced up (and I remember it being somebody else across the table sitting in the Raving Maniac seat, not her) was playing A6s with two spades on the flop and caught his ace on the turn and then his spade on the river, effectively beating you twice. No idea why he called your raise in the first place.

NB: I oughta point out that for every time I couldn't fold top two pair against a totally obvious flush draw or called a $30 raise to chase an eight-outer, there was the time I beat aforementioned maniac on a nut flush or rode AK to megabucks against some meathead; I only finished down $150 for the day, which isn't a huge amount of money by any means. I just wish we didn't have to leave so early to drive back, since by the sounds of it, it got as loose after the Pats game as I figured it would.

Nice comeback, though that dude's AQ story is the fishiest thing ever.

I'll see what I can do about the NYC game. We should definitely put together a bigger Foxwoods group next time.

Folks love them flush draws, especially if they have an A, regardless of how shit the kicker is. Folks just love playing hands, really - whether it has something to do w/ the mystique of the World Series & wanting to be the devil-may-care 37 maverick, or just wanting to gamble, it seems like a lot of folks just like throwing their shit around @ the lower stakes tables. I'd probably cry & piss myself if I sat down @ a high stakes table right now.

And, to be fair, DC, my streak happened around 2 AM, so it was well after the Pats game. Right after last call, I think. COINCIDENCE?

More tales like the above please! It makes online poker look like the glorified masturbation it really is.

But... it's glorified masturbation that's made me $10,000!! I did my sums the other night and worked out that between bonuses, rakeback and poker profits, Sunday night's play took me into 5 figure winnings. Man that felt good :)

I guess I owe Chris V half my winnings a hearty vote of thanks for getting me started - if he hadn't posted the opening post to this very thread I might never have given it a go :)

Seconding this request.

First thing you can do - register with Partypoker.com or pokerstars.com and start playing the play money games and reading the small tutorials if they'd be useful. The games'll be silly but you'll get a hang of the interface etc. If you sign up for Pokerstars (currently the biggest, most highly regarded site) and there's somewhere you can say that someone referred you, please tell them efil4elbmow sent you :)

If you can afford $50 or so, then deposit that and play the lowest buyin real money games - $0.01/$0.02 no-limit at Stars (double at Party), where it'd be hard to lose more than $10 even if you played blindfolded. It's a lot better than the play money tables because even when such tiny sums are at stake, people care about the outcome - when the chips are pretend, they could just push with every hand.

Anyway - AIM/MSN me when I'm next on and we can chat more. I have LOTS of stuff to tell you!

http://www.flopturnriver.com/US-Friendly-Poker-Rooms.php

It might be wise to cross-reference with this list, and also to consider that Full Tilt is basically the only solution for US Mac users at this point; Bodog stopped development of their Mac client last month, and Pokerroom no longer accepts US bets.