High On Poker

Hi all. I am Jordan, and I am a forget-aholic. More accurately, I have piss-poor recall with names, events, hell everything!

So, I plea to all you new bloggers or those who are considering starting a blog or those who have a blog but are considering opening a Yahoo IM account or a new online poker account:

PLEASE, keep it simple and uniform. There is a reason why I refer to myself as Jordan from HighOnPoker when I leave comments on other people’s blogs. There is a reason that my Yahoo IM is highonpokr and most of my screen names online are highonpoker or highonpokr.

Simply put, I can never remember who is who. DP is fluxer. I got that after a few weeks. Kaellin is MattOnPoker. Cool. That’s in my mental checklist now too. But no more, damnit! I can’t seem to connect names to blogs anymore. And Yahoo IM sometimes uses people’s real names on the buddylist, but screenname in chat windows and I don’t know what’s going on.

Now, I’m not singling out Flux or Matt. I just use them as examples. But right off the bat, I usually have problems getting associations like that in my head. I mean no offense if I ever have to ask who someone is or what blog they are affiliated with.

So, help a brother out. Keep it simple.

Last night, I had the pleasure of watching the WWDN tournament on PokerStars, a weekly $10+1 event hosted by Will Wheaton. I look forward to joining the game in the future, but last night I was about an hour too late, so instead I went about following TripJax from table to table. To spice things up, I offered a $5 Bounty on his head. I thought it might give him some action, but more importantly, it was fun putting a price on Trip’s head. I eventually announced that the bounty was off if Trip made the final table because, at that point, I didn’t want to do anything but cheer him on. And besides, once the players made $20+ at the final table, my $5 wouldn’t matter much to them (and still would matter a lot to me).

I have to say, when I railbird, especially under the influence of namesake, I can sometimes be a bit chatty. Unfortunately, a lot of my comments come out terribly wrong in type. That is why I must apologize to G-Rob. His pic was of his daughter, but in my addled state, I thought it was Jon Benet Ramsey. I mean, she was a blond girl with a white cowboy hat. We don’t see people like that in NYC, and I never thought of G-Rob as a family man, per se, so I thought it was just a little inappropriate irreverence on his part. Boy did I look like the horse’s ass.

I did it again too. Much later, I look at the tourney and G-Rob is slaughering the competition. I type, “Damn that girl can play pokah!” referring to the pic again. I can’t help but think when I see a pic on Stars that the person playing IS the pic. I mean, its obviously not true, but there it is, a little kid with 30K in chips, when the nearest competition has 8K. G-Rob and someone asked responded by asking who I meant, and whether I meant G-Rob. At that point nothing I said would sound right. Clearly, typing takes out a lot of the vocal cues in stupid comments, and all you are left with is, well, a stupid comment. I kept my mouth shut.

In a seperate chat window, Trip said, “That’ s hysterical. You did it twice!” He was reacting to my comment to him about how I just put my foot in my mouth agian. I responded, “Yeah. I didn’t mean to insult G-Rob or his daughter in any way. I mean, at first I just thought he was a sick fuck using Jon Benet’s pic. Now I realize that I’m the sick fuck.”

So, um, sorry G-Rob.

I also may have made an ass of myself by pimping this here blog. I mentioned the DADIII event at the final table because a couple of people, including kaellin (aka MattOnPoker), Trip, Sir Waffle, and some other players hadn’t signed up yet (DoubleAs and Surflexus have, though. What star power!). One person asked what DADIII was, and I tried to explain. Finally I ended it with my and Trip’s URLs, since this way they could get the back story. After, I realized that I sounded like a shill for my own site. Of cource, Waffle was there to point that out to me. Thanks, Waffle, ya prick!

On that note, congrats to Waffle for a first place finish! You can say a lot of things about Waffle, but one thing is for sure: the proof is in the puddin’. He is great at MTTs and I’d suggest even greater in blogger MTTs. I don’t know if it makes him play better, or people play worse against him if they know who he is (or he knows who they are), but either way, he continues to place high in these blogger events. For that, he has my admiration.

A big congratulations to MattOnPoker for placing in 3rd. Matt is a low limit player, so I’m sure he is ecstatic about the shot to the bankroll.

Another congratulations to TripJax, who placed in 4th. Yep. 3 out of 4 of the top spots went to these fine individuals. They all played well, and I commend them for their efforts.

But I’m no slouch. Last night I played in three turbo SNGs on Stars, placing 1st, 2nd and 7th. The two ITM finishes were in $6 games, and (go figure) the loss was in a $16 game, but overall, I won last night. My play was solid until that final game, when I was willing to commit most of my chips pre-flop to 99. Foolish boy! I ran into a higher pair and the rest, as they say, is stupidity. In the earlier games, I played tight, moving from 1500 to 2000 or so early on when decent hands hit. I never let them go to showdown because, frankly, each new card is another chance to be sucked out on. Early, I want to slowly chip up without exposing myself too much (or make them pay big bucks to draw out on me). When the blinds get to 50/100 or so, I start stealing blinds from the button, SB and CO. No one thinks I’m stealing because thus far I don’t. Early in the game, I don’t need to steal the 60 BB, but I’ll take the 100 BB because usually by then, I can use the chips. I push hard when I have a solid hand and eventually get aggressive when we are down to 5 players or so. All the while, I keep in mind that I do not want to be all-in, because one error all-in and its over. Of course, I still follow the Rule of 10 (less than 10x the BB and I either go all-in or fold unless I can check in the BB). Sometimes, if a lot of the stacks are short in a turbo, I’ll skip the Rule of 10 though, because a min raise will do the same thing.

I’m looking forward to Lost tonight and some more pokery action. See you at the tables. I’ll be the guy at the Turbo SNGs.

I’m running around a lot today. I have a client in the office with one of my experts. I have some documents that just came in that need to be coordinated with three other people/entities. I have so many documents to draft/reserach/follow-up on. And then this happens….

My client who is in the office provided me with some documents. I thought I was supposed to keep them, but as he was leaving after 6 hours with the expert, he asked about the documents. I’m walking briskly to the file, and I hear my boss call me into his office.

Okay, I’m game. I’ll do whatever needs to be done and get to my client.

In his office is one of the other head partners and a co-worker in the same position as me. They’ve been in the room for an hour at least. I don’t know what they are discussing, but it is likely case evaluations or strategy.

I walk in and my boss has a big grin. Before I’m entirely through the door he asks, “Jordan, who is the best poker player you know?” I immediately think of Brunson, but I’m not sure what my boss is asking. “Know personally or generally?” I ask. “Personally.” A fraction of a second later, I reply in deadpan, “Me.”

They all laugh. The boss says, “I told you he so,” to the other partner and coworker. I have a big grin on. I don’t know what they were asking for, but it wasn’t a negative. I could read that from the room. I finished, “If you don’t think you are the best at poker, you shouldn’t be playing.” It’s a little riff on my general theory that to be successful, you cannot sit down expecting to lose and/or expecting that you are playing against superior players.

Confidence goes a long way. It will serve you at the table and when your boss calls you in to ask about the best poker player you know. This, I’d bet on!

I have to send out a hearty thank you to all of the readers/bloggers who commented on my last post about whether there exists software that effectively lets you “see” your opponent’s cards as though they were face-up when playing online poker. I will direct my good pal Roose to the site and comments. He was the one that brought up the software to me, at which point he decided never to play online again. I’m sure he has since played online, but hopefully your comments can assuage his concerns better than my broad strokes of logic that lacked any factual underpinnings.

The second thing I need to do is give a hearty thanks to all of the comments from people who usually don’t comment on this here blog. Last night, I lost my $12 that I had on Titan poker at a .10/.20 NLHE table when my two pair ran into a set of threes and my top pair, top kicker ran into a set of threes. I then came in 2nd in a 6-person Turbo SNG ($10 buyin, $8 profit) and lost another 6-person Turbo SNG. Overall, my losses amounted to about $16.

I bring this up because I have been more or less steadily losing for weeks, if not months. I don’t want to go into the details about my play or luck or variance or whatever, but I do want to say that losing consistently over time has gotten me, how should I put it, turned off from blogging. My output in this blog has been good, but when you are losing constantly, it’s natural to doubt yourself, and in this way I began doubting the utility of this blog.

The blog was started as a pet project and remains one. You can tell how much I care about it from the fact that I often post twice in a day. I try my best to post every weekday, because when I read a blog, I like to know that I can always go back daily for new content. It’s always a shame when I want to see what’s going down with Blogger X only to find that he has taken an un-announced week long hiatus. Like a HS girl dating a College guy, I can’t help but keep checking in, hoping that I get a response to my call. For this reason, I have made it my goal to consistently post daily.

But what happens when you consistently lose daily and consistently post daily? You essentially post about what a loser you are. Now, I’m no loser. My goal is still ahead of me. I want to make this poker thing work, and I think I have the base intelligence, dedication and skills to get me there over time. But in the immediate world, I have to force myself to post on here daily about topics that amount to me sucking.

My blog has had some modest successes that keep me going. When I first met Dr. Pauly at a homegame in NY (he got me invited to Lady Falcon Poker‘s homegame once…and I’m still waiting for my invitation back, Ms. Falcon…), I had a spike in readers. When I created the Limit Challenge between DNasty and I, I found a way to connect with other bloggers and fashion, in a sense, something worth following in this blog. When the SNG Challenge was started with 6 different bloggers, the community widened. The Heads Up Challenge had 8 bloggers, and the HUCII had 16. Meanwhile, my hits continued to grow until the Donkeys Always Draw Invitational was created as a way to play with a bunch of bloggers all at once in a tourney I could actually attend. I expected 20 blogger/readers, but had 62. The Omaha DADI game had an outstanding turnout as well. And now we have the DADIII HUC, and I can’t be more excited (click banner on right for more details).

My point is, even with these things, what’s the point if my hits are people popping in, seeing that I’m writing crap and popping out. Or, if they are just bloggers, in a self-canibalizing, incestuous diary group (of course, I still encourage them to read).

When I get comments from people like dazza, Butch, and Peter, sharing their knowledge with me and the blogosphere, I am all too flattered. I thank you, because you help me realize that this pet project is worthwhile.

Now, workplace productivity is calling my name, so I’m cutting this off. But I do encourage people to sign up for VPP and PSO. I need 2 PSO referrals (which could be one person who does and completes two promos through PSO) to get enough points for the $100 Party Poker gift certificate. In fact, if you do 2 promos, you can get a gift certificate also (just sign up for the PSO points as your promo item). And to make it easier for you, I will also let you know that if you sign up for Party Poker, Absolute Poker, PokerRoom, bodog, or Titan Poker from PSO, you can get a bonus of 9000 PSO points total by choosing 6000 points and entering the promotional code NEWYEAR when filling out the necessary online forms on PSO.

If you like this blog, you’ll help a brother out, right? Because flattery will get you everywhere, but referrals will get you everywhere and a sense of charity and goodwill.

I need your help on this one folks. There are a lot of you out there who know more than me, so put in your two cents.

Roose sent me an email a week or two ago. It had a link to a site that sold software that you could use to see your opponent’s cards when playing online poker. I wish I still had the link, but I looked at the site for about 9 seconds before I closed it.

I dismissed it immediately as bullshit. It may have been possible at some point, but nowadays, aren’t these big poker sites able to fix bugs that allow programs like that to work? And if you buy the program and it doesn’t work, do you think that the cheating software customer service is going to give you a discount? If you want to sue them, because they are probably out of the country.

As I said to Roose, If you think that the program truly works, then buy it! You’d be a fool not to! But I don’t believe that such programs are possible. And if they are, god help us all!

Opinions? Has anyone heard of this stuff?

Well, last night was a gambling debacle. My congratulations to the Steelers and SteelerJosh. I hate to say you told me so, but you did.

I lost almost every single bet possible yesterday. $6 on the cointoss…lost. $20 in boxes….lost. $40 on the Seahawks getting points….lost. $40 on two $20 NL tournaments….lost. $10 on bounties…lost. If it wasn’t for betting $10 on the under (47 pts) and winning my 3rd HU SNG against Veneno in our best to 3 HU tourney (for a poker prize as yet undisclosed), it would have been a day of pure losing badness. I suppose coming in 2nd out of 5 to win back my buy-in in the $15 last chance tournament should count a bit too.

It was ridiculous, but I’m not too perturbed overall. I have $70 coming from bro-in-law Marc for all of the sports bets I placed for him online. This is nice because it is effectively withdrawing poker money, which I can place as a win on my ledger. For the year, I’m down about $150, so any help is good. With that in mind, I only need two more referrals on PSO to use my PSO points for a $100 gift certificate to Party Poker. Be a kind gent and hook that up for me, will ya?

Another saving grace was that yesterday was awesome. I had a great time with the crew of guys (and only guys, thankfully) that came over for poker and the game. There was a ton of beer, most of which was drank, catered food (okay, a long party sub, but that’s catering, isn’t it?), and a fun gambling crowd.

Mikey Aps went out first in the first tournament, followed by Robbie Hole. The game took forever, due mostly to small stacks consistently doubling up. I thought I played rather well, but ran into some trouble from Ilan. This would be the theme of the evening. An example from the second tournament, which was short-handed by this point. Ilan is directly on my left. I have 89o, but decide to limp in the SB. The flop is T high. I bet. He calls. The flop is a blank. I check. He checks. The river is an 8, the second highest card on the board. I bet, he calls with KT. His passive play there blew my mind. But he was right all along. In another big hand, I raised fairly largely preflop with 34c. Ilan called out of position. The flop was A34. Checked to me. I bet small. He calls. The turn is a 2. I bet small. He raises. I re-raise large. He calls. The river is an 8. He checks, I bet huge, he goes into the tank. There is a straight draw, and a possible flush. He decides to call. He has A2. Fucking turn!

But, overall, I played well. Someone even said so, although I don’t remember who. That’s the breaks, I guess. At least I placed in the last chance tourney.

Meanwhile, I had a great time hanging out, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

While I’m recounting my losses, I’ll add this. In the final plays, if the Seahawks made their touchdown/extra-point, I would’ve won my Seahawks +4.5 (but lost Seahawks +4) bet. But there was turnover. Suddenly, I realize that if the Steelers make a touchdown, I’d win the boxes pool. Nope, that didn’t happen either. Cue the wacky horn noise.

That’s it for now. I don’t know if the Donkeys Always Draw Invitational III (aka DADIII) Heads Up Championship had been created yet at Stars, but go take a look for yourselves. It’s on 2/17 (Friday) at 9PM EST, and for $10+1, you can play heads-up with the best online poker group you can find! Light it up!

I know that the name, “The Super Bowl of Poker” was actually used by (I believe) Amarillo Slim for a tournament he used to run, but I’m adopting (read: stealing) it for my upcoming Super Bowl party.

The Super Bowl seemed to creep up on me. It felt like just two weeks ago I was winning bets on Pittsburgh and Seattle. On second thought, that was two weeks ago.

The point is, I’ve been so busy with other things that the Super Bowl, while being on my mind, has not been a real focus.

This year, for the first time ever, I am holding a Super Bowl party. It all started about a week ago when I realized that I had no plans, per se. I had bet $30 on Seattle, recieving 4 points (let the barrage of Steelers comments begin) because, quite frankly, I’m not genius at football. Even so, I think I made the right decision. The Steelers have been playing great, and they do have a psuedo home field advantage, but the Seahawks are no slouchers, and I expect it to be a close game. In Amarillo Slim’s autobiography, he said this about sports betting (paraphrased): If you don’t know anything, bet on the underdog. Most betters bet on the favorite because they want to feel like a winner, and the favorite seems like the way to go. For this reason, handicappers/bookies actually favor the underdogs with their spreads.

Add to that gem of wisdom the fact that I believed, from watching the AFC and NFC Championships, that the Seahawks played better, and viola, I made my pick on speculation alone. Bro in Law Marc piggy backed off me for about $35, rolling over his winnings from the AFC and NFC Championships (which he also piggy backed from me).

Loving to gamble, I also put $10 on the under 47. Both teams have good defense, and, as my good bud Jefe (sports enthusiast and brain trust) told me last night, to my relief, rarely do the Super Bowl games crack that number, save for a blowout. And this, hopefully, won’t be a blowout.

With my bets set, I didn’t expect what happened a short two days later. Marc called me up and asked me to place another $50 on the Seahawks. I was surprised, but apparently one of Marc’s friends wanted in on the action. I guess this guy didn’t know much about football either and decided to piggy back. I’m guessing this because everyone and their sister besides me seems to think that the Steelers are taking it down. $25 of the bet was for Marc’s friend, and Marc, loving the action, decided to match his friend’s bet. I couldn’t help myself when I saw the spread had moved to +4.5, so I bet another $10.

That’s where my sports bet stand. About $30 on Seattle with 4 points, $10 on Seattle with 4.5 points, and $10 on Under 47. I’d ask you to wish me luck, but I’m sure more than a few of you (SteelerJosh) are wishing me that other kind of luck.

With the Super Bowl approaching, I spoke to Dave Roose to see if he would want to watch the game on my new big screen TV (paid for with $450 in Bestbuy Gift Cards that I earned through PSO and VPP, and you can too!). Roose immediately asked, “and poker?” And that’s how it came to be. Roose, Hole, Ilan, Platinum, Mikey Aps (aka Duesche Boyd), his buddy Vinny, and I are going to be playing some ole fashioned pokah before the superbowl. The plan is to play a tourney, probably for $25 buy-in, followed by a second tourney or a cash game. This will all start at 2PM, so I’ll miss any ROW v. USA SNG online. Sorry boys.

I can’t friggin’ wait. The poker is actually taking a back seat to my interest in the game, but I guess it helps that I have money on it. ‘Cause I likee me some gamble.

Work is whooping my ass, and if I’m smart, I’ll be here tomorrow (Saturday) morning. Then I’m off to Connecticut with wifey Kim to hang out with her fast-track-to-suburban-life friends. We have dinner plans at Ruth Chris, so I can’t complain.

You all have a good time this weekend. When you are rooting for the Steelers, do me a favor and don’t root too hard. If they win by 3, you can still rejoice, and I get mine!

Go Steelers (by 3, only)!

Oh, it’s here. So, to avoid discussing my two $10 SNG losses and $25 Razz loss (which, might I add, were due to bad luck rather than bad play), I present you with:

As always, password for the tourney is BlogsAreGay.

If it hasn’t been set up yet on PokerStars, it will be by Monday. Spread the word, copy the pic or the side banner, and let’s do this!

The game is on a Friday to accomodate a long night of poker action. It’s at 9PM so West Coasters have no excuse besides their own cowardice (and, I suppose, a social life). Trip and I get nothing for throwing these. It’s all about getting a bunch of fellow bloggers and readers together for a little bit of poker and a whole lotta smack talk. The HU structure should be interesting. It’s a single elimination event. You play HU. If you win, you move onto the next round. If you lose, we all laugh at you. I wish I knew more, but Trip’s got the connection with Stars, so he’ll be setting the thing up.

Excited? I know you are!

My bankroll is still under $300, as far as I can tell. I desperately need to do an accounting and figure it all out. Consolidating would be good too. I can’t help but feel down on myself and my game when I hear good news from blogger pals like GCox who recently brought his bankroll from life support to $600. It’s a stupid thing, and I wish GCox and all other bloggers the best. It’s just hard not to compare and wonder what I’m doing wrong.

Sadly, I know what I’m doing wrong. I just have trouble not doing it. My errors are as follows: (1) Playing in a rush, (2) Playing when I’m distracted, (3) Playing under the influence, (4) Playing on tilt after I lose, etc. Yep, etc. Because there are probably 8 more variations I can add.

But enough of the self-loathing. Let’s look on the bright side. Last night I sat down for a Full Tilt $10 full table SNG and took 3rd. I was the chipleader with more than 1/2 of all chips when it was down to 3, but some bad hands caught up with me. I also wasn’t paying as much attention as I should’ve when we got down to three. But at least it’s a win. I think I may be best off playing one SNG a night. If I win, then maybe I can play another. The key is to limit myself so that each game is more important. By the way, this won’t happen. It’s easier to find the problem than it is to actually solve it. I guess that’s why I’m a gambler.

I did pay attention at the beginning of the tournament, and thanks to that, I was able to make some good reads. I was in the BB with Q8d and UTG limped. He had limped in most hands and had been playing fairly loosely. A player in MP/LP minimum raised, and I called along with the UTG. I knew full-well that he’d call. The flop was 2Q7, rainbow. I checked. UTG bet. MP/LP raised. I pushed all-in. This was early in the tourney, but I felt I had the best hand and I wanted to get my chips. When UTG called, I was not even worried. The other guy folded. UTG showed AKs, so I was ahead and remained ahead. Part of me felt like this was quite the gamble, but I have to remember that I must change my play for each player. Tight is right if I’m not paying attention to the players, but if I am, I have to trust my reads and instinct.

Going back to my self-loathing, I need to make an agreement with myself. It’s probably not an agreement you all would make or condone, but you don’t get a vote. I agree not to care about my online bankroll. As long as it maintains, I’m happy. Online poker is just not a profit center for me. It may become one, but it is mostly an entertainment venue. When I play live, it’s a whole different animal. But for me, something about online poker will always be videogame-ish. Maybe I’m rationalizing, but it’ll do for now.

Good news for all VPP members. If you haven’t signed up for VPP, you don’t like free money and gifts. Turns out that VPP is offering two freerolls coming up. One if on Mon, Feb 6th and the other is on Thurs, Feb 9th. One is $750 and the other is $500. I hope to play both. VPP also openned up a forum, and if you make 25 posts by the end of February, you get entered into another freeroll with $350 in cash, and gifts like an ipod Nano and such. In addition, there are bounties on the administrators, including VPP Dave, who often posts here under the moniker “Dave”. Dave played in the Donkeys Always Draw Invitational Special Omalympics, so I look forward to playing with him again. If you are looking to build a bankroll, please consider VPP. You can easily earn the Poker Time or Royal Vegas promos in a matter of days rather than weeks, earning yourself some free swag like poker books/movies, chips, and gift certificates. Meanwhile, you can enter these freerolls and play with yours truly. I know I’ve been pimping VPP a lot lately, but that is because I am very behind the site and what they can do for players. Its a great service. Check out Poker Source Online too. It’s the same concept, mostly, but to me VPP is simpler and easier to earn.

I also look forward to the next DADI event, which will be announced in the next day or two. Rumor has it you should keep your heads up.

That’s all for right now. Best of luck to all of you. I’ll try to be on tonight to play an SNG (or 2…damn my lack of self control!) Look me up on Yahoo IM if you want to join me. Brodybanky.