Recently I played a tournament and a player got eliminated after making a really poor play by pricing his opponent into the pot and allowing him to see another card. Sure enough the guy hits his straight draw and the loser gets sent to the rail with his Pocket Aces.

For the next hour all I see is comment after comment about how could he have played Jack Ten against a raise of $90 pre-flop. I found this rather amusing considering the blinds were $30/$15 and it was a small stakes tournament. You are not going to push many people out of the pot with that kind of raise holding Pocket Aces. The rail birds rant went from four letter words to wishing his parents died in a car crash. At that point I turned my chat off so I didn’t have to see the non-sense anymore. Honestly, some of the people that play this game are like third graders and do not understand the concept of variance or percentages.

I also believe that some of the players are mentally disturbed as the only way they can express themselves is through violent rants and four letter words towards a person they have never seen a day in their lives. That in-and-of-itself is rather disturbing. We have all be on the end of a rail birds tirade at one time or another and it’s annoying as hell.

“Win with Grace and lose with Dignity”

This weekend was a lot of fun with the usual ups and downs that come with playing tournament poker. I had intended to be playing more cash games moving forward but I simply did not have the time necessary to really get into it the way I wanted. Anyhow, I am still amazed at how us poker players continue to play this cruel game. There are times when the cards just do not fall your way and no matter what you play you are destined to lose. On the other hand, there are moments of absolute bliss when even Deuce Seven off-suite plays like Pocket Aces and you can’t lose.

Poker can be a cruel and unforgiving game at times and only those that are passionate about it can survive the unpredictable variance that is sure to hit you one way or the other. You gotta love the game of poker to continue to put yourself through this kind of abuse on a regular basis.

I LOVE THIS GAME!

I know this can be a touchy situation with some but it is something we all need to address. You must pay your gambling taxes whether you play online or live. Why? Because it is the law! You never want to get caught up in a situation with the IRS because you failed to file your winnings. So here are a couple of sources of information to help you out with your gambling taxes.

Tax Help for Gamblers: Poker & Other Casino Games by Jean Scott (Author), Marissa Chien (Author)

The Gambler’s Guide To Taxes: How to Keep More of What You Win (Paperback)
by Walter Lewis (Author)

Each of these books can be found at Amazon or ordered at your local book store.

Playing Ace King is already a difficult task from the get go. Playing Ace King from early position can be extremely challenging. By playing this hand in position it gives you a considerable edge in being able to act last in the hand. Acting last allows you to control the pot size and get away from the hand if things get to heated. You don’t have such an advantage when you are the first to act.

So how do you play Ace King in EP?

Clearly I am going to raise the pot and I may raise the pot just a little more than normal if I had big pocket pair. Why? Because I don’t want and hangers-on in the pot. I also want to make it so that if I get re-raised big I can easily get away from the hand. I do not subscribe to calling huge pre-flop raises with Ace King especially early in a tournament. It usually means you are beat. Once the money is in the middle I am going to proceed to bet out after the flop to see where i am at no matter what hits the board. About 60 percent of the time I can end the hand with the post flop bet right there. If I meet some resistance and miss the flop I can easily get away from the hand. If I get a smooth call I am going to proceed with caution on the turn and flop.

To put it simply you need to be careful when playing Ace King from early position. Remember, Ace King is not a made hand.

I had another good weekend at the poker tables. There were two tournaments that I played particularly well in but I got railed when I lost to a larger set deep in both tournaments. Not much I could do about that. On the other hand the proliferation of All-In pushes pre-flop was bizarre to say the least. I mean any time a player had pocket Aces or Kings he would simply re-raise All-In. I saw this move in $20 tournaments as well. Most times players would fold but every now and then someone would call with Ace King or a medium pair. I still have no idea of where the value is in making this play when a healthy re-raise will accomplish the intended task of keeping your opponent in the hand. Why would I want to push my opponent out of the pot pre-flop with Aces or Kings?

Apparently I am one of the few players that thinks this way because it was very prevalent.

I did make the Final Table in the 180 player tournament and took down 5th place. It was a great lesson in short stack play as I picked my spots and continued to survive until I could pick up a few hands to get a few chips. I even surprised myself by making that Final Table. With 17 players left I took a beat and only had $83 dollars left in my stack. After consecutive All-Ins I managed to build it all the way back up to over 22K with a LOT OF LUCK. I just refused to give up and I hit some cards at just the right time several times in a row. Once I built back up to 5K I picked up Aces and tripled up.

After 5517 hands Patrick Antonious has taken the lead in the Dwan challenge and is up $107k. Again, at the nose bleed levels that these guys play at this is simply a small blip on the radar. I don’t suspect either player to seriously crush the other in the long run but winning by $1 dollar will be enough to win the bet and there is a significant amount of money on the line for Tom Dwan in particular.

Also, if one of these players is able to stretch out the lead to say $600K+ you will likely see the other player become even more aggressive in attempts to either even the score or settle the bet depending on how many hands are left to play. It’s still far too early to make any predictions though.

I had to stay home due to illness today. So I sat in front of my computer and played a little poker this evening. I made one Final Table and went deep into a 2000 player tournament only to get my Aces cracked by Tens pre-flop for a 56k pot! It was tough beat to take but it is what it is. No bitterness on my part but I sure would have like to have won that hand. I finished up 237th in that tournament with a small cash.

It was nice to get back to playing tournaments. I have been so focused on cash games lately that I really felt fresh again after a few hands. I am trying to play enough tournaments to stay tuned up for the Heartland Poker Tour when it comes to Indiana in April. I am also working on a new web site too. Do or Die Poker is not going anywhere. However, I do have a few ideas for another poker related site that I am working through. I hope to reveal the site over the summer.

Sometimes you just cannot avoid peeking at the chip leader in your tournament. You may get a little envious as you find yourself with an average stack but he already has quadrupled up after the first fifteen minutes. Curiosity is a natural thing for most people. However, do not allow yourself to be overly concerned about the chip leader when you are only an hour or so into the tournament. People get hot and they hit cards and sometimes that combination leads to a monster stack early. However, having a monster stack early usually does not guarantee you will make the Final Table. As a matter of fact most players that have that monster stack early rarely go on to win the tournament.

Play your tournament at your own pace and build your stack as you move through the tournament. In the end you will be just fine and have plenty of chips to compete for a shot at the Final Table.

Tom Dwan and Patrick Antonious have finally reached the 5000 hand mark. This challenge is dragging more than molasses and it might take them until the end of the year to complete if they do it at all. As it stands Tom “Durrrr” Dwan is up a whopping $52k. A mere pittance by both of these players standards.

I will continue to monitor this scenario but I gotta admit it’s not much fun at all.

Doyle Brunson is kinda life E.F. Hutton. When Doyle talks everybody listens. In this case regarding the comments made in a post from his blog he has indicated that the young players would have very little chance against the old players he used to play with. Whether you agree with Doyle his statement about the lack of skill of online players certainly will ruffle some feathers. Doyle has always been somewhat of a purist when it comes to the game of poker. He believes, as do many others, that the game of poker is played in a live face-to-face table when all elements of the game are in effect.

Obviously, playing poker on the Internet takes away a key element of the game by not being able to see your opponent. You can read more about Doyle’s comments at High Stakes News. Whether you agree or disagree with Doyle’s statement you gotta respect it either way. Doyle pretty much defined what aggressive play was back in the seventies and laid the blue print for the aggressive style that most successful internet players use today.

This weekend was a lot of fun. Not just because I took down $150 dollars but because I discovered a bit of a watering hole. I spent some time at Binions in Hammond, Indiana playing at the electronic tables. A friend had told me about the loose and wild play so I finally stopped by to check it out for myself. Talk about a perfect description!

These players refused to lay down top pair in any scenario and would pay off bets almost every single time anyone picked up a hand. I am convinced had I stayed longer I would have left with at least $500. It was that crazy. On the other hand the smoking was really annoying and I could only take so much after a while. The poker room is located adjacent to the electronic tables. Of course there is no smoking in the poker room so they all smoke at the PokerPro tables.

Crap!!!!!

After a two hours of the smoke I had to get outta there. I won’t necessarily play here every weekend as cash games still bore me to tears but this spot is definitely on my to do list when I get the urge.

I just got back from playing at my local casino and boy am I happy! I played the .50 / $1 No Limit table and made an absolute killing. I was unable to play in my typical $2/$1 NL game because a tournament was running and they only had two tables spread at this limit. The waiting list was a mile long. The electronic table made the game move fast and the players were mediocre with the exception of one lady sitting at the opposite end of the table from me and another player to her right. We basically took every dime at the table for an entire two hours.

I flopped a full-house in the big blind but there was a straight draw and the guy hit the straight on the turn. He pushed all his chips in thinking it was a chop and dropped his head when I showed him the boat. None of the players ever gave any thought to how the betting went or what their opponents may have had. The bad players would simply continue to bet until they were beat at showdown. I am not sure it gets much better than this in a cash game. I will be stopping by tomorrow for more action. Hopefully the same crowd will be around again and dump another $200 in my lap.

Recently I spoke with Do or Die Poker player Mariano L. Mariano is not new to the game of poker and plays regularly in his home game. Last week Mariano, with a little urging from yours truly, jumped back into the online arena at Pokerstars with a small twenty dollar deposit and has been on a tear every since. He has turned that twenty dollar deposit into $80+ within a matter of days playing .10/.20 cash games and small tournaments.

“I just started playing and everything is falling into place. I am getting good cards and my hands are holding up so far” Mariano said after being asked how he did it.

I am not surprised at all at Mariano’s success as I have watched him play and make two Final Tables already from start to finish. Good luck to you Mariano and keep us up to date with your progress!

Recently I posted an article asking if you were playing enough hands. This article could be considered a bit of an addendum to that post. Adjustments at a poker table go hand in hand with surviving and thriving in the game. Cash games and poker tournaments alike require you to make adjustments. Usually within the first fifteen minutes or so you will have a fairly good idea of how your table is playing and whom the aggressive players are. As time goes on, provided no one gets moved to another table, you will be able to fine tune your adjustments even further. Answers to questions like “Who can I be aggressive against?” “Who do I need to be leery of?” will be answered in short order if you are paying attention to the game and studying your opponents even in an online cash game where betting patterns are key.

One of the things I have noticed in my cash game is that the play appeared to be tight initially. Usually the largest stack is around $70 dollars or so. The maximum buy-in at the .25/.50 game is $50 dollars. If you are new to the micro-limit cash games like me it tends to give you a false sense of what the tables image truly is. As I have been playing this game regularly now for a week I have changed my mind about how tight the play is. I also have opened up my game a bit more to counter some of the non-aggressive raises that tend to be made regularly by particular players. Lastly, I have been taking more notes than I normally do in my natural tournament habitat. They help tremendously!

Only time will tell just how well these adjustments i am making will work. So far I am down $50 dollars thanks to a tough beat but that happens. I am much more interested in where I will be four weeks from now having completely settled into the cash game mentality. Table adjustments are on-going in a cash game and in particular online. There are many more seat changes than in a normal game from what I can see and each player brings a different variable to the game that must be accounted for. So don’t be afraid to switch it up and mix it up when it makes sense. You’d be surprised at how many pots you take down when you least expected it.

You might think that it’s silly but your poker mindset is extremely important. Last year I watched an interview with Mike Matusow and he revealed that he had changed his poker mindset and was focusing on positive thoughts. Well, for Mike Matusow and those of us that enjoy watching him it was a major epiphany. Over the years you always heard the same old lines from Mike. “I run baaaaaaad…” “I always get drawn out on…” “I never win races…” Repeatedly Mike was resigning himself to losing the hand before it had even played out even if he was ahead in the hand. I would just sit there and shake my head wondering why anyone would be so negative about themselves. You might as well not play at all.

The first rule of being a competitor is believing that you can win. If those are not the kinds of thoughts that are going through your head then you are not prepared to play the game of poker. It’s hard enough as it is to play this game with positive thoughts. So why anyone would burden themselves with negative thoughts to make it ten times as hard is beyond my understanding.

This weekend I took some horrendous beats in my cash game and in a tournament. Not much I can do about that and it honestly doesn’t bother me. My job is to get my money in the middle with the best hand. There is nothing I can do about what happens after that. Despite the bad beats I am encouraged and excited about getting my money in good the next time. Why? Because I am going to win those hands a lot more often than I will lose them. Sure, I am human too and there are times when those negative thoughts creep in. When they do I recuse myself from the table and return when my head is clear. That may be a few minutes, a few days or in some cases a few weeks. Every situation is a little different so keep your poker thoughts positive at all times.