A lot to look forward to

It's sort of a dead time of year for the poker world, with not much going on. But once that calendar changes to 2005, there will be a lot to look forward to, including the biggest heads-up match ever.

Who is it, you ask? Doyle Brunson vs. Phil Hellmuth? Gus Hansen vs. Daniel Negreanu? Howard Lederer vs. Annie Duke? Nope. This is bigger than any of those. It's ... WSOP vs. WPT.

Following the success of the WPT, the WSOP is kicking off the WSOP Circuit this year, stretching what had been one tournament into six. That will correct one of the significant advantages the WPT has held over the WSOP, which is the ability to have a lot more fresh content, since there are so many more event.

And the battle gets started in a big way. The WSOP Circuit's first event, to be held at Harrah's Atlantic City, is scheduled to take place at pretty much the same time as the Jack Binion World Poker Open, a WPT event, at the Horseshoe in Tunica. Common sense says that the big names cannot play both at the same time. Thankfully, the WSOP event will end nearly a week before the beginning of the main event in Tunica, so the pros will have the opportunity to play both. But I think it's a given that the preliminary events in Tunica will suffer from a lack of big names. That's a shame, because I really enjoy following the action of the prelims. The same thing happens in March, when WSOP Circuit at the Rio is scheduled for the same time as the World Poker Challenge at the Reno Hilton. Again, the WSOP ends prior to the beginning of the main event in Reno.

I hope this is not a sign of Harrah's strategy with the WSOP. I hope they are not deliberately trying to sabotage the WPT by scheduling events at the same time. There's reason to think they are not, because the calendar is only so big and the events are so large that there is probably no way to avoid some overlap. But I think poker is big enough to accommodate two tours, so I hope that in the future there is more of an effort made to avoid such conflicts.

Another thing that has me concerned is how ESPN will adjust its coverage with the emergence of the circuit. I thought the addition of the preliminary events this past year was fantastic. I really enjoyed the opportunity to watch seven card stud, Omaha and razz. But with the circuit this year, will they go back to showing just the main events? I certainly hope not.

Yet another tour?

OK, I said above that there is room in the poker world for two tours, but what about three? Got an interesting press release today about a "Poker Tour International." At first glance, I wasn't too impressed, just figuring it was someone else trying to cash in on the poker phenomenon. But upon closer inspection, there are certainly some big names attached to this enterprise. Party Poker is involved, so there could be some new tournament qualifers appearing soon. At any rate, it doesn't look to be a challenge to the WPT or WSOP, since the events are all in Central and South America. Here's the details:

Poker Tour International ''PTI'' Announces 2005 First Quarter Tournaments

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 28, 2004--Poker Tour International (PTI), announces the first quarter Texas Hold'em Poker tournaments for 2005. Dates are as follows: February 7-13, 2005 -- Isle of Capri Casino, Grand Bahama Island, Bahamas; March 12-16, 2005 -- Circa's Hispanola Resort and Casino, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and April 13-18, 2005 -- Norwegian Cruise Caribbean Spirit Ship. Rates for the trips, including buy-ins, travel, and accommodations, run $2,999. Re-buys are available at $500. Winnings include $250,000-$500,000 (depending on number of participants), seats to other PTI tournaments, and seats to the Semi Annual Multi Million Dollar Classic Finals.
PTI production team includes Pro Players Lee Watkinson, who has won $1,453,573 from final tables this year alone and rated #1 in the World by Bluff Magazine; Ted Lawson, winner of this year's Las Vegas Omaha World Poker Series; "Unabomber" Phil Laak, winner of the WPT Invitation 2004; Humberto Brenes, known as "godfather of Costa Rican Players"; regular at final tables Steve Kates, partner of Royal Oasis Casino; and Tournament Organizer Burt Kravette. Together, the PTI team has set plans in motion for a series of multimedia poker events in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America sponsored in part by PartyPoker.com.
"PTI is a mid-range tournament series specifically designed for the guy next door to win big next to pro players," says Kates. Satellite tournaments for winners to win all expense paid trips will be held on PartyPoker.com.
To participate, contact PTI at 1-866-79-POKER, 1-877-38-POKER, or 305-933-5256.
Upcoming tournaments in the Poker Tour International are scheduled for Puerto Rico and St. Kitts.

I'm not dead

Just a quick note to let folks know I've not dropped off the face of the earth. The holidays have been tremendously busy, with the short work weeks, the visits to relatives, and all the rest. Truth is, I've just been too dang busy to form a thought, much less commit it to the blogosphere. But the real tragedy is that I haven't had the chance to play cards for a week!

I did happen to pick up a copy of the new All In Magazine during my travels over the past week. I haven't had the chance to delve too deeply into it, but I must say I've neither been overly impressed or disappointed. It is aggravating to see several typos in what little I have read so far, but the pictures of Shana Hiatt make up for it.

Special thanks to Iggy for giving me a mention in his blog this week. Several folks have made their way to this humble page as a result, and I'm just miffed at myself for not having any new content over the last few days. Plus, several more have found their way here now that Yahoo! and Google have finally spidered me. I guess now that a few live human eyes are actually perusing my page, I better get on the ball and give them something worthwhile to look at.

Dear Santa,

Please bring me a new bankroll. I tried to be a good boy all year with the one I had. I even grew it quite well. But family life being synonymous with unexpected bills, most of that roll got cashed out to pay for things like car repairs, toys and home appliances. And then I got a little naughty and played badly. As a result, I lost what I didn't spend.

I've learned my lesson. If you bring me a new roll, I promise to treat it with care and respect.

If not, I understand. But in that case, would you mind playing a little heads-up under the tree Christmas Eve?

evilbilly

Merry Christmas

With the The Big Shakedown impending, I will likely be incommunicado for a few days. Here's wishing my imaginary readers a wonderful holiday. I hope Santa filled your stocking with everything you wanted.

BIRE update: Oops, the comeback will have to wait. Omaha has not been treating me kindly since I tried to move up. After my first $32 win at the quarter tables, I gave that money back the next night. Then last night, I gave away another $25. Time to migrate back to the penny tables, I thought, and so I did, but my previous good results did not return, and I ended up losing another $6. Down to $22, I decided to sit in a NLHE penny game. This was the first HE game I've played online in weeks, except for the occasional freeroll. And what do you know, I actually did pretty well. I ran my $2 buy-in to $14, not enough to make up for my losses on the day, but certainly much better than I've played hold'em over the past month.

The Omaha quarter game was just too much for me. The people on there actually know how to play the game, whereas I don't. I can do well in the penny game, because those people just throw money at the pot, hoping some of it lands on them. But since I have only half a clue as to what I'm doing in that game, I just can't do well playing against who know a fair amount about it. Someday, when I have a bankroll to speak of once again, I'll probably try Omaha again, because the game is just too fun. Maybe I'll even enter the penny game on occasion. But hold'em is my specialty, and it is long past time I started playing it seriously again.

Now this is BIG ...

It's happened. Harrah's tinkered around with the formula for the WSOP so much that someone finally stepped up to challenge poker's signature event. For the 2004 WSOP, Harrah's pretty much left things alone, but in 2005, they've moved the early rounds out to the Rio (on the strip) and have pushed the dates back a month. Now, along comes the Plaza, announcing that it will fill the empty dates on the calendar now that the WSOP has moved.

The Plaza plans to hold the "Plaza World Poker Classic" from April 18 to May 17. This brings a large tournament back to downtown Vegas at the time of year the WSOP would normally be held. However, there is one big difference. The buy-in to the WPC will be $50,000, a hefty leap from the WSOP's $10,000.

This could be interesting, especially if they are able to attract a significant number of players. They only need 600 to eclipse the prize pool offered during the 2004 WSOP. Just imagine if they were able to attract 1,000 or more. Of course, that might be a problem. Last year's WSOP field was greatly swollen by the flood of players who qualified online, but the WPC is new, so no one is offering a way to qualify online at this point, and there isn't much time left for the sites to put something together. Plus the buy-in alone should thin the herd quite a bit.

Gaming Today has the full story here.

I've graduated

An update on the Bankroll Implosion Recovery Experiment:

As I've written previously, my bankroll disappeared a couple of weeks ago due to a week of bad beats and bad decisions. Rather than do what most people would do, namely deposit additional money, I decided to see what I could do with a stray $1.79 I found in my account at Ultimate Bet, where I hadn't played in several months. To do so, I felt like I needed a change to keep me fresh, so I decided to shy away from hold'em, which had been very, very bad to me of late, and instead play only pot-limit Omaha 8/b. Of course, with only $1.79, I was relegated to the penny tables.

I am happy to report that stage one of my comeback is complete. I had decided that if I could turn my $1.79 into $50, I would move up to the next higher stakes game, the .10/.25 PLO8. That occurred Saturday, with a $10 win Friday and an $8 win Saturday at the penny tables. Though I was anxious to get into the higher limit games right away, but I decided to call it a day and get a night's sleep with the satisfaction that I had accomplished one of my goals in this little experiment.

Sunday was graduation day, and I fired up UB and jumped into the quarter game. I have to say, I was very surprised at how much the competition improved from one limit to the next. I had figured the quarter game players would pretty much be on par with the penny maniacs, but I was wrong. I had to make quite a few adjustments, because these guys would actually fold preflop. I had become accustomed to the payoff possible when eight people see the flop and at least four would call all the way down. That just wasn't the case most of the time in the quarter game I played. It very often became a matter of only three people seeing the flop and only two showing down, which meant many hands were break-even affairs when the final two split the high and low. Or, since the quarter game is raked, it could very well turn out that both would actually lose a few cents. This situation had me in trouble at first, and my variance was wild, but after adjusting I was able to end the evening up another $32.

So, to recap, after 13 days, my $1.79 has grown to $82, an increase of 4,581 percent. (Damn, that sounds a lot more impressive when I put it that way.)

It's over

Daniel won, but he had to survive a hard-charging Humberto Brenes to get there. Humberto entered the day as the short stack, but he pulled to within roughly $2 million of Daniel, before they both flopped a pair of 7s and Humberto was outkicked.

I have to say, seeing Humberto doing so well today leaves me with mixed emotions. He has quickly become one of my favorite players, but I'm tired of watching him end up as the bridesmaid. He is by far the most overdue player on the WPT circuit, especially now that Daniel has won.

But congratulations to Daniel, who clearly has been the best player not only this year, but over the past couple. With his win today, Daniel became the all-time money winner on the WPT, proving that his victory and his POTY award were well deserved.

Please ... no ...

If you've been following Matt Savage's transcript of the final table tonight, you've probably already read about WPT's planned "Young Guns of Poker." If not, just know that WPT is planning yet another special tournament, this time featuring David Williams, Scott Fischman, Peter Lawson and Joe Cassidy, and I suppose a couple more, although the transcript only lists those four.

Can we please end this unrelenting fixation with the younger players? Please, WPT, throw us a bone and schedule an "Old Farts of Poker." I would much rather see Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, T.J. Cloutier and the like. OK, I know Slim has got what I will politely refer to as image problems, but he's still one of the legends of the game. These are the guys I would like to see wage an all-out battle against each other. The whole "Young Punks of Poker" has been done to death.

Five Diamond Classic final table

The final table of the Five Diamond Classic should be getting underway right about ... oh ... now. Anyone wanting to keep up with this can go to Matt Savage's beta website, where he will be posting a live transcript. Click here to visit the website.

Congratulations to Daniel Negreanu

Thanks to his outstanding showing so far in the Five Diamond Classic at the Bellagio, going on as I type this, Daniel Negreanu has officially claimed enough points to win the Cardplayer Player of the Year award.

The latest update I've got has the field down to seven players. With 10.5 million chips in play, Daniel has 5 million, so it looks like he's well on his way. Of course, that's by no means a lock on the win, but if he were to go out next, he's still earned enough points to officially win POTY.

Not that he'll likely ever see this, but congratulations, Daniel, on a well-deserved win.

They are continuing play as I write, waiting until one more person gets knocked out. The final six WPT table will be played tomorrow. In addition to Daniel, the remaining six still playing are, in no particular order, Vinny Landrom, Humberto Brenes, Jennifer Harman, Hasan Habib, Nam Lee and Steve Rassi. The bad news is that Johnny Chan was knocked out in eighth, so we won't be seeing him at the WPT final table. Still, I do hope we will see Jennifer Harman and Humberto Brenes, with Humberto being my sentimental favorite to win.

Daniel's POTY win was earned with a little more drama than I imagine he'd like. After leading the race virtually all year, John Juanda became Mr. November to seriously challenge, and the two spent a few weeks neck-and-neck, with Daniel maintaining the lead. Then, just this week, David "The Dragon" Pham took over the lead, after winning a $3,000 NLHE tourney just prior to the main event. That must have lit a fire under Daniel, who has blazed a trail through this tournament field.

To follow the tournament, you can check out Daniel's website, www.fullcontactpoker.com. It took me awhile to find the live updates, so here's a direct link: http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-forum/viewtopic.php?t=737.

You can also view previous events and previous days of the main event at either Cardplayer or Poker Pages.

UPDATE, 8:43 p.m. EST: Jennifer Harman just doubled up at the expense of Humberto Brenes. She now stands at $800K. Jennifer had 55 to Humberto's 66, but Jennifer caught a set on the flop.

UPDATE, 12:02 a.m. EST: Sorry for the late update. Got caught up in watching a movie. The TV table is set, with Hasan Habib going out in seventh. He was knocked out by, who else, Daniel Negreanu. The hand was 10-10 for Daniel, AQ for Hasan, and Daniel now sits with nearly $7 million.

How evilbilly got his groove back

I'm baaa-aaack ...

That's the way I feel this morning, anyway. Played a live game last night, which is pretty much the only hold'em I've played since last week. And while I didn't do great -- in fact, things were pretty awful for most of the night -- I did well enough to walk out with a little more than I went in with, which is a vast improvement over the last little bit.

Same cast of characters as last week, with one addition. Heath and Sheldon, my two poker buds, and a fellow by the name of Shannon, who knows nothing about the game but quickly became my nemesis last week with his ability to get lucky at my expense, were the returning players. Heath's dad, Rod, also showed up.

Like I said last week, Heath and Sheldon are both good card players, but their styles differ from mine and from each other. I have been able to be the most consistent winner of our group, but these two finish ahead about every other time they play. Thinking about it over the past week, I guess you could characterize Heath's style as somewhat like Gus Hansen's, in that he is very aggressive and will start with almost anything. Of course, I tend to think that style is more of an all-or-nothing style, in which he will either win big or lose big each time he plays. Sheldon, on the other hand, is more like a Layne Flack. He changes gears quite frequently, so it can be tricky trying to figure out how he's playing at any given moment. He also tries to play the player more than his cards. If he smells weakness, he'll pounce on it.

Shannon, in the two times I've played against him, has been the real loose cannon. I try to be patient with him, since he is just learning the game, but I have to admit he frustrates me to no end. And unfamiliarity with the game causes him to do some truly bizarre things, such as raising a $3 bet another 50 cents (we've given up trying to teach him proper betting) or folding when he could check (we've also given up trying to teach him otherwise). I'll give you an example in just a moment.

But Rod was the new ingredient in the mix, and he truthfully had me confounded most of the evening. I can't really describe his style, because he really seems to have none. And it is impossible to pick up a read from him, because I don't think he views cards the same way as most people do. I think he literally believes any two cards can win, sort of like he's playing the lottery, and he just has to wait and see if his numbers come up. Plus, his most consistent strategy is to keep firing bets into the pot to see if he can make everyone else fold, and he's not shy about showing his bluffs after he's made you fold. That got to everybody at the table last night, myself included, and we all made poor decisions by folding winning hands and calling him down with weak hands only to find out he wasn't bluffing that time.

When I first got there, things were slow going until I picked up AJs on the button. Now while AJ isn't really a premium hand, I felt it was as good as gold at this table. Our blinds are a quarter and 50 cents, but you might as well say it's a dollar minimum, because Rod always raised it preflop. When the action got to me, I raised it to $3 and Rod raised me another $2. Calling his reraise would have meant I would only have $2.25 left, so I just moved all-in. Shannon, meanwhile, called all of this. The flop came all rags. Shannon bet $4, Rod raised another $4 and Shannon called. The turn brought another rag that put two of my suit on the board and Shannon, first to act after having put $15 in the pot on the flop and preflop, folded instead of checking, so Rod won the side pot. The river completed my flush to give me the main pot. Rod had been holding pocket 8s. Shannon then revealed that he had been holding pocket Qs and had folded them without so much as an overcard on the board.

That hand built my stack quite nicely, but I lost quite a bit of it a few hands later when my straight draw became two pair, only to lose to Rod's flopped straight. He actually said out loud that he had a straight when the flop came, but he'd been saying stuff like that all night without it being true, so I refused to believe him. Then, a few hands later, I found myself in a miraculously unraised BB with Q3 and saw a flop of 9-10-J. I decided to bet my open-ender, sensing weakness at the table, and fired out $2. Shannon raised it another 50 cents (eyes rolling). I had nothing except a draw, but his raise was so ridiculous that I had to call. The turn brought a 2. I checked, ready to fold to anything but a minimum bet. Shannon checked. This honestly surprised me. When the river brought another 2, I decided that Shannon very well could have been raising with a draw of his own, so I decided to try to take down the pot. I looked at Shannon's stack and saw it was quite a bit smaller than mine, so I asked him, "How much you got left?" He looks up and says, "Is it my turn?" So I told him, "No. I just want to know how much you have left because that's what I'm betting." He replies with, "Then I'm going all-in." I just sat there disgusted, knowing I was very well beat, but I had already said that I was betting him all-in. I don't think he quite understood that, though, because he pushed his chips in like he was reraising me after I had bet him all-in. I honestly think if it had just been the two of us, I could have told him that I was folding and kept my chips, and he wouldn't have known any better. But I don't play like that. So I was short-stacked once again.

Lesson that I have thus far refused to learn: DO NOT TRY TO BLUFF A PLAYER WHO HAS ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE.

Well, I lost my original $10 buy-in a few hands later. Then I lost my next $10. I looked in my wallet and found only $2 more, so I bought in with that, only to lose that as well. I should have taken more money with me, but I honestly felt like I wouldn't need any more than my original $10. I sat there a few hands when Heath offered to give me $5 in chips I could repay if I won. I gladly accepted the offer, but felt like a fool a few hands later when I was sitting with only $1.50 in front of me. Luckily, I picked up an AQ a few hands later, threw it in and won. I looked over and saw that Shannon was quickly losing all the chips he'd won from me, so I decided to set aside my bloodthirsty thoughts of revenge and quit concentrating on him. It was clear that Rod was the true threat at the table, because his stack just kept growing through bluffs and other people's ill-timed decisions to call him down. Heath took the worst of it from Rod. I think playing his father really affected Heath's game for the worse, and he ended up busting out later (but not before Shannon).

Finally, it was just Rod, Sheldon and I, and I started doing very well. This was a result of making a decision to play a style which is completely unlike I usually play, but is the result of some observations about pot odds and such. First, I gave up any effort to bluff pots. I also stopped waiting for premium hands. With the game three-handed, I would limp to see as many flops as possible and give them up if they missed me. I figured that by playing to get lucky on the flop, I would lose a little on a lot of hands, but would make a lot more on the hands I won, because neither Rod nor Sheldon were playing flop-or-drop. Rod would continue trying to buy pots with bigger and bigger bets each round of betting, so while I'd lose $1 on hands I would have to fold, I would usually pick up $10 or $15 pots when I won.

By the end of the night, I made back the $22 I had brought with me, the $5 Heath had loaned me, and made $13 on top of it. I don't know how much Rod bought in, but he had over $100 when he left, while everyone else ended up with zero.

All in all, I think I ended up pretty well, especially since it seemed early on like I would lose everything. But the small amount of money I was able to win was nothing compared to the sense of accomplishment I felt by finally being able to adjust my game to the circumstances I faced. It took a while and quite a few dollars, but, for me anyway, this was a tough game to crack. By the last hour, however, I had figured out how to approach each individual player and make moves against them to maximize my profits. I've developed a great read on Heath, so that I usually know what he has. For both Rod and Shannon, I just needed to wait for extremely strong hands and either bet strongly into Shannon, knowing he probably wouldn't fold, or just call Rod's bets to avoid tipping him off to the strength of my hand. Beating Sheldon, though, requires a little bit of acting, but I was able to take extra money from him by feigning weakness so that he would try to steal the pot on a few hands.

Last night was good for me. I now feel like I am once again seeing a lot of the subtleties of the game that had disappeared from my field of vision for awhile. Hopefully once we get past The Big Shakedown (aka Christmas), I will be able to get back to playing seriously again, and hopefully heading down the right track on my five-year plan.

I must be coming up in the world

Wow. I've only been blogging a couple of weeks, and didn't think I had anybody who was intentionally coming to visit my page, when all of a sudden I get a press release from some poker site I've never heard of before.

Normally, I'd just toss this one in the trash bin. But what the hell, this is the first sign that somebody actually knows I'm doing this. That's a little bit of a pick-me-up, so I might as well repay them for that.

Be advised, I have no knowledge of this site's reputation and am not endorsing it in any way. But it's a pretty cool idea, nonetheless.

2005 Swish Poker Tour -- the First Online Poker Tour

SwishPoker.com is proud to announce the completely new and unique Swish Poker Tour! The tour will be the first ever online Texas Hold'em poker event with an ongoing point system allowing for continuous ranking of players. Say goodbye to local poker games constrained by time and available players. Modeled after the enormously popular televised poker events such as the infamous World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour, the Swish Poker Tour will have cash prizes every week, along with hundreds of other prizes. Sam Hardy, a student at Arizona State University , remarks, “It's about time somebody let us online poker players show our stuff on a tour, just like on TV!”

Have a computer? Have internet access? Then you can participate in the Swish Poker Tour. Available worldwide, the Swish Poker Tour hopes to attract players from all geographical areas. Beginning January 2005, the player rankings will be set at zero and the tour will begin. From then on, every Sunday evening at 11PM est ( 8PM pst ) a Swish Poker Tour event will be held via the SwishPoker.com software, recently voted the best online poker software! All events will be classic No Limit Texas Hold'em with a $20 buy-in. Each tour season will comprise of four events each and every month. Like typical multi-table tournaments, all events will have a huge payout for the top players, along with points awarded to all players depending on their finishing place. After the four events each month, the top ranked players in the tour for that season will be paid out additional prize money/awards. Then, the next month the tour starts all over again!

The online poker world has already grown into a huge industry in itself with over a hundred thousand players competing at online casinos each day. Long overdue is the first TOUR with ongoing rankings to reward the top players in the long run, rather than the typical one-tournament victories. PokerNews.info website owner and industry expert has no doubts about the potential success of the Swish Poker Tour, “The online poker industry is desperately in need for something that follows the structure of the television events seen every day. It'll be a huge hit!”

The primary goal of the 2005 Swish Poker Tour is to establish a strong following of 1,000 players playing consistently each Sunday night in the tour events.

For more information, visit the Home of the 2005 Swish Poker Tour :: SwishPoker.com

Penny Omaha update

Just a quick blurb to update folks on the Bankroll Implosion Recovery Experiment. Last night was another two bucks back on the roll. That brings the tally up to $32, up from $1.79 nine days ago.

A real loser

Oh, the occasional nuggets you find while reading RGP ...

(For the uninitiated, RGP is shorthand for rec.gambling.poker, which is a newsgroup full of ads for online poker sites, scams and bad beat stories. Oh, and it sometimes has some worthwhile content.)

Anyway, last week someone found this auction on eBay. You can see it for yourself, but for those of you too busy to explore it, it's this guy who says he lost a bunch of money playing poker online trying to sell his copy of Super System (suggested retail price, $29.95) for $250. Of course, he blames the book for the fact that he maxed out his credit cards (he claims for more than $20,000), instead of his own poor choices. But, in addition to the autograph and loss revelation, he's also throwing in a shirt and pair of shoes, so the winner can say he took the shirt off his back and shoes off his feet, as well as a couple of old Nintendo games.

Naturally, someone saw the auction and posted it on RGP for the rest of us to find. What followed was everybody thoroughly raking this guy over the coals. Then someone tipped him off, and he actually joined the conversation. Funny stuff. You'll find the RGP thread here.

Well, there's only about a day left on the auction, and the guy actually got a bid! I'm hoping whoever wins the auction shares how much this guy lost.

Where have all the Rounders gone?

Pointless question of the day ... Is it just me, or has there been a dearth of online players with usernames inspired by the movie Rounders? I couldn't begin to tell you the last time I sat down at a table to play a TeddyKGB_986 or a Knish45. Used to be I couldn't sit at a table that didn't have at least one TeddyKGB. Now, I can't find any. I wonder if they all busted out and quit? Then again, I don't play at the tables I used to. Before my big crash and burn, I was playing 5/10. Afterwards, I started playing Omaha. Maybe they just don't frequent those tables.

On a very tenuously related note, Poker Room has updated their graphics to a more realistic look. How is this related even remotely, you ask? Well, with the old graphics, I always felt that several were inspired by Rounders characters. The guy in the top left corner, for example, bore a striking resemblance to Teddy KGB. Another at the top right-of-center always reminded me of Worm. Now they're gone. The Teddy KGB avatar now looks like a salesman who blew out of work to hit the casino. The Worm avatar is now black. And I'm sure that quite a few players are disappointed that the woman at top right appears to have undergone breast reduction surgery. Not me. The boob jokes in the chat box were extremely tiresome.

Hmmm ... you see, this is what happens when I don't play enough. I start getting all these weird, pointless thoughts.

Speaking of playing, I've really scaled back lately. Of course, this is mostly due to the great bankroll implosion. But I have continued my penny Omaha experiment. Since the last time I've posted, I have now run my $1.79 to over $30. And I'm starting to pick up the game. For instance, I can now recognize when I've made a completely boneheaded call. I'm not quite to the point where I've stopped making the boneheaded calls, but at least I can recognize them afterwards.

But while the penny Omaha has been fun, I'm now beginning to look ahead. (Probably the surest way for me to lose my bankroll again.) I'm figure, though, that I'm pretty much getting all the mileage I can out of the penny game. I still don't have enough to play a little higher, but I figure I can step up to the quarter game once I get to $50. Playing for pennies, that could take me a week or two. But I can't get ahead of myself. I think I can now recognize the over-confidence that gets me into trouble. As long as I can see that coming and head it off, I should be able to continue doing well. I hope.

Looking for games? Me too

MT. STERLING - Weekly "U" Buy tournament and cash games.

I've had this site for a few months, and first just allowed it to sit and gather dust just because I wanted to reserve my favorite poker alias as a domain name. Then, a couple of weeks ago, after mulling it over for quite some time, I decided to jump into the fad of poker blogging. Don't ask me why. It isn't like I really have anything to say, especially after the implosion of my bankroll. But maybe someday I will.

But that isn't all I would like to do with this site. I'm not exactly sure what else I want to do, but I certainly don't want it to just be another blog.

One idea did come to mind tonight. I got to searching www.homepokergames.com to see if I could find any games within an hour's drive, but since I live in a very rural area, the search was fruitless. There are quite a few games listed for Kentucky, but most of them are at least a two-hour drive from me. That isn't bad on occasion, but it's not something I want to do regularly.

But, I also know that folks in my area do play cards. I just never seem to know where or when. I used to play in a very nice game. It was in a good location and we had been playing long enough to have gained a decent stable of regulars, as well as a growing list of people who would come in to play on occasion. But, all that came to an end when we lost our access to the place where we held the game. We have attempted to start another game or find another one, but it's been slow going.

Anyway, I am more than willing to let this site serve as a listing for games in my immediate region, Eastern Kentucky. There are plenty of other places to go find games in Lexington and Louisville, so i want to restrict the listings to games in the eastern third of the state, or pretty much everything east of I-75.

If you have a game and you'd like to find some players, drop me a line and I'll get your info in my next post, plus I'll create a new page of the site just to list all of the games, so folks can find them without having to scroll back through the entire blog. Just drop me a line at evilbilly@evilbilly.com with all the info.

Some of the things you will definitely want to include are:
• Location - City or county will do, maybe both if your game is at some wide spot in the road nobody's ever heard of. You can post the specific location if you like, but I cannot be held responsible if you have 200 people show up at your next game and you only have seats for 10. Unless you're confident you can handle anything that comes your way, you better be general and let folks contact you to get more info.
• Day - I prefer you submit games which occur with some regularity -- weekly, monthly, daily. I will post one-time events in the blog, but there's really no sense in putting them in the permanent list.
• Time - You'll want to list both the time you start and the time you end or stop accepting new players.
• Game - Hold'em, Omaha, five card draw, seven card stud, etc. Also, be sure to specify if it's a high-low split.
• Structure - Ring game, tournament or both.
• Limits - Let everyone know if you're playing penny poker, a quarter game or $20/$40. Or if it's a tournament, tell us the buy-in. Also, let us know if it's limit, pot-limit or no-limit.
• Contact info - This could be an email address or a phone number. I will include other means, such as pager numbers or AIM, ICQ or Messenger info, but you should know that you'll get more response from email or phone.
• Rules of etiquette - Unless you want half of your guests pissed off, you better let us know your rules about smoking and drinking. Personally, I'll play under any conditions if the game is right, but others aren't so tolerant.
• Anything else you want to add.

Hope to hear from you soon.

An unbeatable game

What a night.

Last night, a good friend and fellow media compatriot decided to host a friendly game at his house, and I have never seen such horrible play be so richly rewarded. Obviously, I took a bath.

But first, a quick update on the penny Omaha saga. I didn't play any last night, due to the aforementioned live game, but I did the night before. At first, things didn't go so well. I lost my first $2 buy-in with a flush, to a rivered boat, and lost the second one pretty much the same way. Staights, flushes, everything I held was getting beat, usually with the river card. Sets were falling to higher sets, and flopped boats were getting sunk by bigger river boats. To top it off, I split nearly every low hand I won. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Finally, I decided the night required drastic action. I popped the cap on some Michelob Amber Bock, fired up three tables at once and went to work. Playing three tables at once actually helped my game, I think. Omaha hands are god-awfully slow, thanks to the fact that practically everyone sees the flop and about half of them makes it to the river, drawing to a variety of hands for high and low pot. Plus, in the penny game, most of the folks who are actually trying to play well are converted hold'em players usused to the four-card pocket or the restriction of playing exactly two of them, so it takes them a while to calculate all the permutations. Needless to say, it can get a tad boring waiting for a hand to finish up after you've already folded, and when the next one comes up, it's easy to talk yourself into playing a mediocre hand, just to have something to do. Playing three tables, however, allowed me to pare down my starting hands considerably. Quite a few times, I threw away fair-to-middling starting hands I probably would have played normally, just because I was involved in a bigger hand on another table, and that allowed me to save quite a few bets.

It was a little difficult to keep track of how much I was up or down, however. Despite Kenny Rogers' advice, I do count my money all the time, and I think anyone who wants to be a good player should. Money is, after all, how we keep score in this game, and if you don't know where you stand, how can you judge how you're playing? Anyway, it would get to the point where I was up considerably at one table, up a little at another and cut in half at the third, and I struggled to keep track of whether I was up or down overall. At one point, I ended up making back all but a $1 of the $4 I had lost earlier, but then the cards started running cold, and I got down even further. I finally busted out of one table, so I just kept playing two. And then I ran into a stretch of three hands that put me up for good on the night. The first was when I flopped quad deuces. Naturally, I just checked and allowed everyone else at the table to do all the work. By the time the river came around, four people were all-in and only one other remained. Just so he wouldn't feel left out, I bet enough to put him all-in as well, but regretfully he declined the invitation. Next hand, I flop a set of Qs. Flopping sets in Omaha is such a horrible thing. They're well disguised, so people do not run from them, and if you pull in a pot, it's usually a big one. Because it feels like such a strong hand, especially to a converted hold'em player, it's easy to get married to it, but it is so easily cracked and often is. My trip Qs were endangered when a guy made a straight on the turn, but the board paired on the river, giving me a boat and the pot. After that hand, he types in a sarcastic "nice catch," but I didn't feel guilty. I figured I was due to do the sucking out. "Do unto others as they have been doing to you all damn night." A nearly identical situation developed on the next hand, when my trip As became a boat when Qs paired on the river. I led out with a pot-sized bet and everybody folded. The great thing about those three hands was that there was no qualifying low hand to share the pot with, and I ended up $5 on the night.

But back to the live game. There were four of us -- two fellows I play with quite often who are both pretty good and who usually play different styles from me or each other, so it's a good mix. Of the three of us, I have been the most consistent winner, but they are good enough to win about half the time they play and when they do, it's usually for large amounts. The other guy was a fellow who had never played the game before. Guess who ended up with all of my money? The newbie, the guy who never saw two cards he didn't like, the guy who even after three hours of play still could not quite grasp the concept of the blinds, the guy who didn't know what a flush was. I mean, this guy pulled some stupid moves, which isn't an insult against him, since the game was completely foreign to him. We all did stupid things when we first began playing. But the pots he lucked into always seemed to be the ones that cost me a bunch of money. To make matters worse, my two friends, whose play I normally respect, responded by playing just like him. The game became a crapshoot, and i crapped out.

I did win one big pot that allowed me to play until my 1:30 a.m. cutoff time, but that was the highlight. That hand I had A8 of spades. I was already frustrated by this point, and figured I was going to bet any ace strong for the rest of the night, so i bet $2. (I forgot to mention, we play a no-limit game with .25/.50 blinds, and the normal buy-in is $10. Despite being a quarter game, we've had plenty of nights where several people have gone into their pockets several times, so it's not hard to walk out up or down $50 or $60.) One guy calls. The flop brings an ace and two spades. I move all-in and he quickly calls. I figure I'm beat, but he turns over the 3-5 of spades for his own flush draw. Well, I'm way ahead at this point, but there's a two on the board, and if one of the next two cards is a 4 and no more spades fall, I'm finished. The new guy was dealing at this point and he tosses down the Ks on the turn to give me the flush. I'm about to start scooping the pot, when he realizes he didn't burn a card first. We talk about what to do for a few minutes. My friend Heath, who was the other guy in the pot, was ready to just let it go, but I insisted on removing it from the board. I was ahead either way, but I wouldn't have felt right taking what was to that point the biggest pot of the night with such a huge question mark hanging over it, so I insisted on burning the Ks and playing the rest of the cards as they would have fallen. And this way, he still has a chance to win and the question mark is gone. Well, the turn is a third A, which helps, but I figure it's just setting me up for the inevitable 4 on the river, the way my luck has run all night. However, the river turns out to be the fourth A. Hooray for me!

Still, that only slowed the bleeding. My other friend Sheldon cracked my pocket kings twice, and no, not with Ax. The first was a 35 (two pair on the flop). The second was with a J4 (third 4 on the turn). And it get worse from there, but I don't really want to rehash the misery. All the way home, I was extremely pissed, depressed and confused. I just couldn't understand how I have gone from consistently winning money (I hadn't walked out a loser in a single home game since May) to not being able to do anything at the table. It wouldn't be so bad if it had been an isolated session, but I'm still smarting from my recent crash and burn online. The whole drive, I was pretty much convinced to just give up playing cards completely. It wasn't fun anymore, which I think is part of the problem, and all my experiences with the game lately have been losing ones. It's easy to see how I would be discouraged.

But a strange thing happened this morning. I woke up and, for the first time in weeks, I actually felt like playing poker. For some reason, I felt like a huge weight, the one holding down my game, had been lifted. I can't really quite explain it, and it's still very possible that I'll lose the next time I play. But for some reason, I just don't feel like that's the case. The only way I can describe it is to say that the past few weeks it has felt like I've been in a tunnel, the Tunnel of Losing, if you will, but today it felt like I had finally emerged from the other side. There's no real reason for me to feel that way, since nothing has happened to make me think I can win again. But right now, I feel like I could get back in the game and do well. I still think poker is a highly psychological game, and perhaps I have been in some mental funk which has prevented me from winning, or at least from only losing small. Maybe, just maybe, I have been beating myself because of this funk.

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But I suddenly don't want to quit playing anymore. I am actually looking forward to the next time I get a chance to play. I don't quite know when that will be, and I think taking a break from the game would probably do me some good. But the itch to play is back. The feeling of "having to play" in order to make money is gone, replaced by a sincere desire to play the game, even have fun playing it.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh, the humanity ...

It's been months since I've played at Ultimate Bet. I think I quit playing there after getting trounced for a couple weeks straight and deciding that I just couldn't beat the games there. Now that I've gone back, I've noticed that the stupidity at the microlimits is astounding.

To refresh, I just blew my entire poker bankroll during a week of bad choices and bad beats. I stumbled back into UB the other night during a quest to see if I'd left any money at any of my old accounts and found $1.79 there. That night, I quickly ventured into the pot limit Omaha 8/b penny games to either make a little or lose it all, not really caring which, only to end up $2.25.

Okay, I tell myself, that was probably a fluke. I mean, it's not that often that I've been able to double up when I sit down at a game, although I generally tend to leave with more than I came in with (last week's results notwithstanding). Playing at higher limits, it usually takes a week or more for me to double up. And given the variance of a penny game, particularly a high-low split penny game, I was certain that my doubling was mostly a factor of luck, rather than skill.

So last night, I take my hard-earned $4.04 back to the penny O8 games. This time, there is only one table with any openings, and it's almost full, so I don't have the luxury of trying to find a good table. Right after I sat down, I knew I was in for it. There was not one, but two, maniacs at the table, combined with half a dozen calling stations. The maniacs had a strict policy of making pot-sized raises EACH AND EVERY FRIGGING TIME it was up to them to act. They never thought, they never folded, they never called, checked or raised anything except the pot. And since you could only bring a maximum of $2 to the table, they were for all intents and purposes putting everybody at the table all-in preflop every hand. It was working for one of them, since he was over $6 when I sat down.

To do anything at this table would be difficult. I knew that any hand I played would pretty much be a decision to go all in, and since I really am not that familiar Omaha, I wasn't exactly sure what hands were worth going all in with. Finally, I was dealt a double-suited 4578. I liked the straight and flush possibilities, so I called and, sure enough, I ended up all-in preflop. Strangely enough, I won the main pot and maybe several side pots with both the high and low, and I suddenly found myself with over $6. Meanwhile, the big stack maniac pulled in a side pot for about a dollar and still ended up down $2 on that hand, but proceeded to congratulate himself in the chat box for making such a brilliant play and pulling in another pot. Yes, he was that stupid.

To make a long story short, once I had built up that cushion, I was more comfortable gambling at some other pots, and I ended up leaving the table with something north of $11 and a total bankroll over $13. This truly is hilarious, but I'm going to keep tackling the penny games to see if I can build up enough to start taking on the nickel or quarter games again. Who knows, maybe it is possible to turn my $1.79 into something a little more substantial. Probably not, but this is turning out to be a fun little experiment.

One thing is for sure, though. The penny games do offer a good prospect to make big profits (relatively speaking, of course). Maybe if I can get over $20, I'll start playing multiple penny tables and see if I can win enough to take the family to McDonald's.

Poker movie news

If there's one thing I love as much as poker, it's movies. Seriously, if I'm watching TV, it's either poker or something on one of the countless movie channels I get with my Dish Network "every damn channel they make" package. I try to be picky about the movies I watch (I am proud to say that to this day, I still I have not seen Footloose), but if I find my self watching a real stinker, I still have to watch it until the end. Just something about me that wants to see how it all winds up.

Anyway, the best of both worlds is the poker movie. The only problem is that there just aren't very many of them. I absolutely loved Rounders, and I'm ashamed to say I still haven't seen The Cincinnati Kid. I've also caught Shade, which doesn't really have much to do with poker, in my opinion, and what little it has is very unrealistic, and The Big Blind, which was made by a poker player with his poker winnings (it's a decent, albeit amateurish film about the world surrounding poker, but it could have been much better if it had incorporated more of the drama that comes with the turn of the cards). Still, for all its flaws, Rounders is the best in my book, but there is one movie which could rival it. High Roller (formerly titled Stuey) is a biopic about the legendary Stu Ungar that has made it to a few film festivals but has been otherwise unseen. But word came this week that it is finally going to get the wide audience it deserves.

High Roller will premiere on the Starz channel on Jan. 30, and I am so glad I get that channel. I have been very impatiently waiting to see this film, mostly because I really want to know more about Stu Ungar. If you don't get Starz, you can still get your chance to see it when it is released on DVD March 15.

For more info, you can see the story about the Starz airing, there's a story at Poker Gazette. You can find it by clicking here.

You can also read the New Line Cinema press release about the DVD here.

Deep, dark depression, unending misery

Sorry to have been away a couple of days. There was really nothing about my game I felt like writing about.

Yup, that's right ... I'm busted! I guess this is one of those learning experiences you often hear about. Someday, I'll look back on it and find it beneficial. Right now, though, I'd really like to be making a few extra hundred a week to help out with The Big Shakedown, aka Christmas.

So, how did it happen? There was no one single session that did me in, this time. But I'm sure I got a little too cocky. And I think I'm finally convinced that I was playing above my bankroll. You see, I've always felt like $500 was a risky bare minimum to have to tackle $5/10, and $1,000 was more than enough. Yet both times I've managed to climb from the quarter tables and accumulate a couple thousand, it has been my play at the $5/10 which set in motion my eventual demise.

For this most recent episode, the event was foreshadowed by an encounter with Erick Lindgren at a $5/10 table on Full Tilt one night. I've only recently started playing at Full Tilt, and I've only had the chance to bump up against some pros a couple of times. The first was with Lindgren, and it was the most profitable, mainly because we had a real maniac sitting at the table. I was sitting at the table with a scared stack and playing the absolute tightest game possible. The maniac, on the other hand, was raising or reraising preflop every single hand, and most every round of every hand. Still, I must have built up a rock-like image, because I found that even the maniac would fold to my raises and reraises, and I was able to successfully use this image to bluff a couple of pots. All the while, I never managed to actually bump up against Erick until I was about ready to leave. Dealt AQ, I raised preflop and Erick and the maniac called. The flop brings AQx, so I naturally bet it. Only Erick called. The turn brought a 10, and this time Erick led out betting. I couldn't see him drawing to a straight with JK, but I figured him for perhaps A10. I decided just to call him and (hopefully) cap it on the river. Anyway, the river is another blank, but this time Erick checks. I bet, he calls, and turns over Q10. I was happy to scoop the pot from a pro, but even happier that I had correctly surmised that he'd been holding a lower two pair, even if I was off a little. I let the blinds work their way to me and left.

Anyway, there was a point before I got off on my "the time I won a pot from Erick Lindgren" tangent. Usually, when I am fortunate enough to play against someone of that stature, I figure it would be disrespectful to act like all the groupies who flock to the room to ask, "Hey Erick, how big is your house?" or "Hey Phil, why are you such an ass?" As is my usual custom at any table online, I don't say much of anything, usually nothing unless I'm asked a direct question. I even find it a waste of the time to reply "ty" to the countless "nh" comments. Secretly, when I'm playing against a pro, I'm hoping to do something that makes them take notice of a good move I made, or even to point out a mistake I made. Plus, I really am a closet fanboy, and although I don't ask the questions, I eagerly await the answers to the dumbass "Hey Howard, do you like marshmallows?" queries.

Anyway, someone asked Erick that night what limits he started playing at when he "turned pro" and what sort of bankroll he had. He said something to the effect that he was playing $4/8 and $5/10 with a $10,000 bankroll. That was an eye-opener for me. My own bankroll was quite pathetic by comparison, and yet I was playing at the same limits.

Well, that night was quite profitable for me, but about a week later I started taking a severe hit at the $5/10 tables at both Full Tilt and Poker Room. Then I stepped down to the $3/6 tables, and kept getting hit just as hard. I ended up losing my roll at Full Tilt by stepping back up to the $5/10 with $200 of my last $250, after I saw that Perry Friedman was playing. I played tight but was taking the worst of it, and then I got into a hand that should have been a healthy boost for my ailing bankroll but instead cleaned me out. I had flopped the nut flush, slowplayed it on the flop by calling one bet on the flop, and capped it on the turn. Then the board paired 6s on the river. The one guy was I left facing bet and I called my last $10, knowing full well the idiot had made his full house. He had. With a K6.

I decided not to lose my last $50 at Full Tilt that night, and instead went to Poker Room and actually won back everything I had lost earlier at Full Tilt. That felt good, plus I felt like I had a much better bankroll to tackle the $5/10 tables with. But the next night, I ended up in a series of rooms I knew were bad for me, but I was foolish enough to play anyway. I was getting a less than stellar run of cards, but usually I can make up for that by taking down a few pots with some bluffs. These guys would not fold, though. There was one guy in particular who really pissed me off. I had been playing one table for a couple of hours and had seen this guy raise preflop only three times, and all three times he had been dealt AK. In addition, all three times he completely missed the board, called someone else's bets and raises and lost huge sums because he just couldn't fold AK, even though he never paired once. The I find myself with AJ and he raises in front of me. I guess the smart move would have been to fold, since I absolutely knew he had AK. Still, I figured he might have finally learned his lesson from the previous three hands I'd seen him lose, and I decided to hang in hoping for a J or a board that would completely miss AK again. I got my wish when the board came all rags. He led out betting and I raised him. He called. I bet the turn and river, both of which made the possibility of a flush or low straight more and more possible, and still he called. Of course, this time he won. I guess that's what I get for thinking that these fish learn from their mistakes.

So after that evening, I'm down again and have about half of my original bankroll left. I decide (a) fate is against me that night or (b) I'm not on top of my game, so I decide to take my lumps and save my comeback for another day. Well, the week of play that followed produced no comebacks, and had me truly perplexed at how I could have completely lost my ability to play hold'em. Finally, I was down to my last $100 -- $50 at Full Tilt and $50 at Poker Room -- when I decided to try a different game. Okay, I'm sure that sounds like a terrible move, moving from a game I know well but am losing at to a game I known much less about, but I did have a rationale. You see, I've found myself to go through phases. I'll go through a few weeks or months where I play tournaments much better than ring games. Other times I'll play limit better than no-limit. Other times I'll play shorthanded tables well, but utterly stink at 10-tops. And the reverse of all of those is also true. So, when I find myself struggling, I'll usually change it up and find myself back on the winning side of things again. But during this recent dry stretch, I stunk at everything I tried. I got to wondering not only why I couldn't find a game I was good at now, but also why I went through these phases. I concluded that the problem could be boredom. I'd play one certain style for awhile, then get bored with it and lose my edge, or perhaps start toeing the line of acceptable play in order to add some excitement. But by changing the type of game I played -- i.e., from tourney to cash game, from limit to NL -- the game would be different enough again to keep my interest better, and I would play it better.

Finally, it dawned on me that perhaps I had just grown bored with hold'em. So, I log in to Full Tilt and go check the new razz ring games. Oh, I absolutely loved it! At first, I lost about half of my buy-in because I wasn't familiar enough with the game to make smart moves, but after awhile I was able to adjust and actually tripled my buy-in. The next night, though, I went back and did nothing buy lose my buy-in. So instead of rebuying, I decided to go play in the Omaha high/low games. Once again, after an adjustment period, I ran exceptionally well. Once again, the next night, I crapped out at Omaha. I went to razz and crapped out again. I finally went back to hold'em and crapped completely out. Losing my last dime at Full Tilt. On to Poker Room, where I lost everything else the next day to bring my bankroll to a nice round figure -- zero.

But perhaps there is hope. After taking a few days off, last night I started downloading the software of some sites where I used to play, just to see if I had left any money anywhere. Sure enough, I found a whopping $1.79 at Ultimate Bet. I headed immediately to the O8 penny games, fully intent on losing everything there, but a strange thing happened. I actually ran my UB bankroll to over $4! Yippee! It's not much, but it's a start. How cool would it be to someday tell people that I took my last $1.79 and ran it to $10,000?

Okay, that's a stretch. Sure enough, though, I'll end up losing it all later on tonight. If so, I think I will take a break from the game for several weeks, maybe devote myself to reading some of the many poker books I've bought but haven't finished and studying up on the game before taking another stab at it.

The Truth Is Out There

OK, this is a little silly, but it's worth a look. Here is the long-awaited proof so many have been waiting for:

Bill's Blog: Proof That Online Poker Is Rigged!

Gloom, despair and agony on me

If you've spent any time at all around online poker, you've undoubtedly run across such conspiracies as the cashout curse and action flops. Heck, maybe you even believe in them. I don't.

But now I am about to propose a new conspiracy that I've discovered. I call it the braggart's curse. It works like this: You start playing well, you pull in some good money and you're feeling good. You keep winning and then you just have to let somebody, a friend or family member, know about how you're a damn good poker player, how you've made x-number of dollars and you're on your way to hitting the big time. As soon as you utter those words, you may as well cash out, because the next time you sit at a table, you're taking a nosedive.

I've experienced this from time to time, and especially now. When I won that multi back in May, I was on top of the world and had to let everybody know. Then I crashed and burned. There have been other times, as well: When I made my first good chuck of change, when I ran $40 to $1,600 over the course of two months, and now recently, when I started this blog.

Of course, I don't really think the online poker gurus are monitoring my conversations and saying to themselves, "OK, this one looks like he's getting a little too full of himself. Time to take him down a peg." But like most of the conspiracy theories out there, I think it's purely a psychological phenomenon and for pretty much the same reason.

Take the cashout curse. I think this is a direct result of getting overconfident in your play. You play, you do well, you make some money, you cash out a bunch and return to the tables. You're thinking you're the next big thing and you just get hammered. The problem is, you are expecting to win far more often than you actually will. You have have fallen under the mistaken notion that your success is because the cards just always fall in your favor, rather than your ability to fold far more often than you play. You're playing too many hands and staying in them too long, and before you know it you're busted.

I think the same goes for the braggart's curse. You think too much of yourself and you play like you're always going to win, rather than playing the game the way it's supposed to be played. Result: Bye-bye bankroll.

This is the life I've been living the past week. It started this past weekend, driving to the in-laws' house, when I mentioned to my wife that I was thinking of heading over the Lexington later that night to play in a tournament. The next thing you know, I'm telling her how I feel really good going into the tournament, how I used to be nervous going there, but now I feel like I'm one of the best players in the room, and how this would very likely be the source of a bunch of extra Christmas money. So what happens? Of course I lose, and in spectacular fashion.

Add to that this blog. I start talking about how I've done pretty damn well in the past and hope to do even better in the future. Presto-chango ... money gone. Yes, dear imaginary reader, these are the days of the insufficient bankroll. My five-year goal now feels hopelessly unrealistic, even if I were to push it back to 50 years.

One thing's for sure, though. I am not feeling overconfident right now.