ILX Poker Players Unite

omgwtf.

why is the 7777T a winner when there was a straight flush? (oh he won some kind of sidepot?)

yeah sided pot

short stack went all in on flop w/less than half my chips so i called w/my over pair and big stack called behind me w/his quads

Sorry fella, I only noticed the quads - that is quite the hand, my god.

are you ready for friday mark? (and monday)

i've decided that if i make any decent amount of money out of any of these two outings i'll use the money to book a flight to vegas.

(but i fear my luck won't stretch again this time)

Ken, I am ready! Just waiting for confirmation about Monday but I've never had a problem before.

You're in the enviable position where even if everything goes as bad as possible for you YOU'LL STILL BE UP £750. Which must be nice.

Ken - what games are you playing online these days? How often do you get to play?

Online I only ever play catty $5+1 10ppl SNGs. and not very very often - it's hard to concentrate at home with the telly and other internet stuff going on (e.g. scrabulous) that i drift off a lot and don't pay attention to how people play and that.

i also have a habit of playing way too loose when there's 4 people left when i should try and hang on a bit more to be in the money.

perhaps i need to raise the stakes a bit so i'll actually pay more attention.. it feels like a play money game when you spend an hour on a game that makes you a tenner at best..

If you're paying a dollar in rake you might as well play the $10+$1 games - they're pretty soft, and you'll probably pay more attention.

I also like the turbos on Stars - the pace is right for me, they're between $6.50 and $16, so even less rake, and the software's decent.

oh it's probably $5+0.5 actually - this is how little attention i pay!!!

i still need to do some fun things involving rakeback i think.

i only ever play on PKR.com these days too.. haha that's actually probably why i never pay attention (too busy making chicken noises at people)

just won a ticket to fulltilt's ftops $200 + $16 pl holdem tourney. and then realized i will be camping on 8/10. i think i can use it on any $200 tourney tho.

ken you should go up to at least $10. 5s are really just too chaotic to be enjoyable or learn anything from or really to make any sense at all. i mean some might say the same for 10s but they are like 1mx better than 5s. and if that still doesnt hold yr attention, play 2 at once.

Yeah, you should be able to sell it or reassign it, I think, though I don't play on FT since my initial attempt there at $100NL went completely tits up.

I think playing the $5s is okay if a) you want cheapness, b) you're okay with the most bizarre fishy play sucking out on you and c) you can face being a disciplined nit. At the $10s it's just that bit easier to play solid poker with a bit of flair - the players aren't so bad but they're seldom much good either, so you can run over them a lot, especially since you know you're not going to have 7 limpers in every pot.

I tend to play 3-4 tables at once, and the $16s are probably about my limit where I can expect to win long term - at the $22s I'd probably break even, maybe eke out a few bucks but I'd be that much more anxious and nitty and it's less fun then.

Ken, will I see you there tonight?

yeah man. shall we meet up somehwere beforehand or just turn up there?

I think we'd better meet there tbh as I have a 6pm meeting and am not exactly sure when it'll end, and whether I'll have to rush straight to the do. Though if I am out early I might give you a call, see where you are!

ok doood i'll prolly go there and drink whiskey and look hard or something.

Does this mean anything?

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Juror8/Todaywe.jpg

I mean, if I can manage a win like that, does that mean that I'm any good and should play more poker? Or can you fluke something like that?

you just have to keep playing and see

William Hill said the same thing about betting on horses to me around 1999.

It means that you have the discipline to play a whole MTT without losing focus. It doesn't mean a lot else, as luck plays too big a part in individual games to be able to assign undeniable talent, but it does mean that you're obviously good enough to make the right moves against the poor players who make up a $5.50 tournament.

So you can't fluke something like this; but it's certainly possible that the key hands you played were decided more by luck than judgement. However, it's a truism that anyone winning an MTT HAS to have luck in spades on their side because there are simply too many occasions on which they'll be in tight spots and sometimes, the cards just have to fall your way.

The other thing is that even at $5.50, the final table players are usually competent and aggressive, which means you need good cards or good luck to win - skill isn't as big a factor because stacks are so small compared to blinds. The tourney where I cam third, I managed to get A7 and JJ during the last 50 or 60 hands and nothing else even half decent, and I just couldn't make enough successful bluffs to do anything against players who were taking every chance to play hard.

I'd be pretty fucking pleased, though. I've got a 3rd a 4th and a 5th in 100+ field tournaments, but despite being the chip leader at the FT twice, the win has never seemed close.

Put it this way Mark: say I want to settle down, stretch myself beyond Sklansky and a brief flick through "SuperSystem 2", and actually test myself playing online tournament poker: what type of tournaments should I be entering, how often, etc.

oh fine ask mark who has never won a multi *huff*

He was first to respond!

Put it this way Markjhoshea: say I want to settle down, stretch myself beyond Sklansky and a brief flick through "SuperSystem 2", and actually test myself playing online tournament poker: what type of tournaments should I be entering, how often, etc.

what was the jureor8 hand?????

-e

So you want to take it seriously in a money-making capacity, or you want to see how far you can go?

I don't think I have an answer, mainly because MTTs are my least-experienced area of the game. You should certainly read more - the 3 Harrington on Hold'em books are the sine qua non of tournament play, so they're a no-brainer, but there are other decent ones which might explore more complex strategies. You want to develop a knowledge of ICM if you don't understand it already - and you want to make sure that you know instinctively all the basics of tourney play, how to play at each stage during the tourney, bubble play, FT play, playing for the win rather than to scrape into the money, that kind of thing.

Or, you could look into making a career of playing satellites - some do, as they tend to have a lower quality of opponent (poor players who want a cheap shot at a big prize) and a strategy peculiar to themselves, i.e. you need to adapt how you play when the aim is to come within the top 10 or 25 or whatever rather than aiming to come 1st, as you would in a normal tourney. If you have these skills, you'll have a big advantage; and if you play at sites like Stars, where you can simply convert the tickets you win into T$ (money that you have to spend on entering tournaments of any kind) rather than having to play whatever you satellite into.

Obviously, the more MTTs you play, the better you'll get and the more your earning potential will rise. Only you know the level you're at - maybe even you don't, if you haven't played many. You could stick at the $5 level for now, and see how that goes; you could try a $10, see if you find it much trickier. I'd suggest you sign up to Stars and play the 180-man SNGs they have there - they are at $4.40, $11 and $22 levels, they start every few minutes, and they last about 3-4 hours, and the standard is relatively low. But they're easily the most versatile, and you have the advantage of knowing how many players you'll be up against - it really sucks signing up for a tourney at 10pm and then realising that with 1,000 players you won't be done till 3am at the earliest if you do well.

You can practice also with single table and multi-table SNGs - both Stars and Party have 2-table, 3-table and 5-table SNGs (I won one of the latter, still my only multi-table win of note) - which will give you a good grasp of middle and end-game strategy.

You'll probably need to multi-table if you're going to take it seriously. You're also going to have to be able to commit considerable amounts of time - I guess there were 4-500 people in the one you won, and it took 5 hours or more? This is the main reason I don't play many, I just can't find evening where I can blank out 6 hours.

Hope this helps.

(xxxxx-post obv - and no, I've never won one, but I'm an avid reader and know a little bit about stuff and stuff :))

single table sit n goes are probably the best way to learn. obv the strategy is different from a multis, but not so differnt that the experience isnt applicable. and itll really help you later when yr short handed at a final table.

also small mutlis like the 45 handed sit n goes on full tilt are are good too. they lack the utter chaos of larger multis and will shorten yr cold streaks. i'd start @ $10. as i mentioned before the play on $5s is just too ludicrous to really help you develop.

stay away from rebuys at least at first - those shits are crazy.

and def read dan harrington's tourney books.

and dont go all in much.

I had about 30% of the chips with five hands to go, all-ined with a pair of sixes, won that, then five hands later called his AT all-in with a pair of sixes and won that. Like Doyle Brunson's T2, only much less impressive.

xxp

jh - Ken and I are playing a live $60 rebuy on Monday and a $100 freezeout tonight, and I ain't that good - any advice?

well i would say as someone who used to play a lot on sit n goes and made the transition to multis - dont be afraid to take some risks early to build yr stack (especially since a lot of live multis are basically crazy turbo.) once you do that shift gears and bide your time. trapping tactics are def more valuable in multis. once antes start its time to steal blinds. final table is often crazy loose and aggressive till 4 or five left then gets conservative - play accordingly.

and dont go all much.

avoid playing on the same table as me

xpost

fightin words

Dude he won the $60 rebuy last time, he walks the walk.

aww now this is making me want to play a live tourney. all the poker clubs in nyc have the most retarded structures and fees ;_; still fun tho

Well, both tonight and Monday are outside my usual comfort zone, but tonight is at least a) Friday, so more people will be drinking and having a laugh (including me) and b) spending is capped at $110 (though I will no doubt bust out early, then lost another $200 in subsequent cash games).

oh god that's no attitude. youve gotta have confidence dude!

here's what you do: when yr at home before the tournament, take a nice warm shower, then stand naked before a full length mirror repeating "rickey's the best" for like 10 minutes.

Ken and I both made the money! I picked up $200 for 4th and that little fucker only won AGAIN to the tune of $1200.

AWESOME DUDEZ I TOLD U THE NAKED MIRROR AFFIRMATIONS WOULD WORK !!!

also ken c is clearly good at poker so why is he losing online at $5s?

OMG I can't believe I won again fucking hell.

haha I totally lucked on the river though on the hand that knocked out Mark C!

I really don't know what the difference is, but I seem to do be doing a lot better at real life games than online.. maybe it just feels more natural to hold the chips and have a physical sense of what's going on. or maybe i have a really imposing demeanor that only shines through in person!

Ken I think you had something like 14 outs on that river, so it was hardly a suckout. It's my fault anyway for pushing with 74s.

we're doing it again, tonight!

i think i might retire from poker if i win again.

gl gg nh gf nc

ty!!

stfu ><)))'>

/bringiton

Ken?

I didn't manage the hat trick :((

BUT I CAME THIRD AND TOOK HOME £580! Woo hoo!

I want to say this was due to my obvious poker talent, but fuck, I didn't deserve to get anything last night.

i still remember the hand i called someone's all in with my K 10 offsuit vs someone's A 10.

I caught 4 spades and knocked that guy out. Something inside me died with shame when i collected the chips.

so yeah, off the back of these wins i'm using the money for a trip to las vegas...

is there good poker fun to be had? if so where? also.. recommendation for good hotels? it looks like tropicana at the moment (the best sounding £30 a nighter on the strip)