The Irish Thug

Halfway through the alphabet, so why not take this time to have one off post before continuing on.
As a disclaimer, this doesn’t have anything to do with Rounders and only touches on the Suburban aspect. But it was that or I call it Throckmortan, and that would have just been weird.

SuburbanRounders

Evan: Ok, now that we ordered the food let’s get this game started.
Will: Aren’t we gonna wait for Max or Paul?
Patrick: I talked to Paul, he can’t make it. John said he might be late, but would bring people if he showed up. And Max wasn’t online.
Will: Did you call him?
Patrick: I don’t have his number. But you can call him.
Will: … I don’t have his number either.
Evan: Why do I hang out with you guys? Ok, let’s just play a quick freeze out and see if John shows up.

Will: Must be the Chinese. That was fucking fast. But then again it doesn’t take that long to cook cat.
[Will opens door] Will: Umm, did you come to the door and forget to bring the food? Nice play squinty eyes.
Men Nguyen: What? I’m here for the poker tournament. The buy-in is $300, right?
Evan: Well, we were thinking more like $10. Wait, what the hell are you doing at my house?
Men Nguyen: Someone told me that I could get CardPlayer Player of the Year point for playing here.
Patrick: Can you get some other people to come?
Men Nguyen: Are you kidding? Who in their right mind would drive to a random New Jersey suburb for a small buy-in poker tournament.

—

Will: Raise.
Patrick: This isn’t Limit dumass, you have to say how much you are raising.
Will: Fine, I raise to …
Patrick: I fold.
Will: Ass.

—

Patrick: Call.
Will: Call.
Evan: Raise to 200.
Men Nguyen: Call.
Patrick: Well, I probably shouldn’t have limped, but what the hell.
[Flop comes 5h 9c Jh] Patrick: Check.
Will: Check.
Evan: Pot.
Men Nguyen: Fold.
Patrick: Fold.
Will: Call.
[Turn comes 7c] Will: Check.
Evan: All in.
Patrick: JOEY!
Will: I don’t know. On the one hand, I’m not getting close to the right odds. But on the other hand sucking out would be +EV. I call.
[Evan shows 9h 8h. Will shows 8d 3s and has 3 outs to a chop.] Patrick: I had a 6.
Will: Awesome!
…
[River comes 6s] Men Nguyen: Owned.
Evan: Why are you still here?

—

Patrick: Raise it up to 200.
Will: Fold.
Men Nguyen: Fold.
Evan: Call.
[Flop comes Qh 5d 6s] Evan: 400.
[Patrick thinks.] Patrick: Add a thousand.
Evan: Another thousand.
Patrick: All-in.
[Evan thinks.] Evan: I call. I have King, Queen
[Patrick looks blankly at the cards.] Will: Queen, Jack! Queen, Jack! YES!!
Patrick: I hate you guys. I’m going home.
Will: Can I get a ride home?

I finally freed up a little cash off of the other sites I play to give WPEX a shot.

The Facts:
Still a baby, but growing. In the last thirty days, the count on cash players has increased by 25%. (Source: Poker Site Scout, additional info on Source to follow.)
Tonight at 9(EST) there where 2 full 100NL and 3 full 50NL tables and then one of each playing short handed. 1/2 and 2/4 both had 5 full tables.

The Look:
Setup is slightly different than the standard. Your cards are shown next to your action buttons (tiny versions also appear on the table). When you fold you cards are shadowed, but still visible for the entire hand. Now you have to notice you would have caught that straight. I altered the table graphics right away. I copied the “Waffle Cards” (here) that I use on Party and Stars. Everything else I have can be found here. The everything else page does a lot of good things. Your stack get a different graphic than the rest of the table and the active player is highlighted.

The Software:
This is where they still have a few issues to work out. I have read they are taking steps in the right direction.

• Table Response is a little slow. A tick or two will drop of the clock between your click and the action.
• Tables steal focus even if you have to act at another table.
• The slider is as unreliable as Party, so entering bets are tricky. I think I could be able to pull of an AutoHotKey script for the betting, no grantees now.
• No short handed tables for NL yet. I have been told they are on the way. At present, short handed is 5 players. 6 is kind of the standard, but WPEX is not the only site to run 5 handed tables.
• Password restrictions force you to use only letters and digits and only 8 characters (pretty weak considering certain places force you to do longer elaborate passwords.
• The biggest issue is that hand histories are not saved to the hard drive. You have to request they get sent to you. Puts a good delay on getting stats.

The Stats:
High Stakes Poker was on tonight, so I only played 200 hands. On the first night I won a little. (Rigged?) Over this tiny bit of data, I have payed (and will receive back) $3.86 per hundred hands playing 50NL. If I played only on WPEX for thirty days that would be over $200 that I get returned. And that is if I don’t go back to 100NL (which hopefully I do soon).

Overall:
A decent list of things that need to happen before WPEX can be the real deal and gain popularity. Rafe free is a great selling point and I think that it will do good things for online poker when people start to look at it. The site still needs new players and we’ll have to wait and see if only veterans stay at a rake free site or will novices show up and stay. I give WPEX a C+ based on the action so far and have listed a few things that would bring it up to a solid B or higher.

—

Poker Site Scout
A nice little site that is very useful. On the outside, it appears to just be a ranking of poker sites, but it does deeper. These figures are just cash players. Party and Stars are still 1 and 2, but for those that only play cash, this is what you want to see. Active players and Active tables. Sites are ranked by a 24 hour high-water-point on active players.

As you look deeper you find that each site has it’s own page with a in depth breakdown by level and type of table. There is a search feature that will bring up all the totals for different site based on your selected level or table type. Also, hidden back in the far corner, is a Pro-Finder. A list of Pro’s, their Aliases, where they play and if they are playing now.

I’ve been reading Harrington on Hold’em Vol 2. I really like it, even though it’s tournament strategy. I think what sets HoH apart is the examples. Theory of Poker has an insane amount of content, but is a tough read. My theory is that the example hands in HoH are what make it easier to read. For those that haven’t read either volume, there are a lot of problems used as examples. If you haven’t read the books, think of a number of how many example hands there are in a chapter.
That number is not big enough. The first chapter in Vol 2 is Making Moves. It is about 110 pages. Half of that is the “Problems” section where Harrington goes through example hands. There is also a hand or two within the main text of the chapter.

Now on to the title of this entry. In these examples, Dan gives the results of the hand after he explains what move you should make. (The player doesn’t always follow Harrington’s advice, which he uses to prove points.) The thing with showing the results is that they usually look like this:
Your Hand: Ts3c
Action to you: You are the SB. Players A through E fold. The pot is $240 (BB is all-in).
Action: You call, the BB shows 7d6s. The board comes KcQdTdTh6h.
Now you didn’t need to improve, but yet you end up with trips and completely dominate the BB who happens to pair his bottom card after he was already drawing dead. There are hands where it works out so Harrington can say, “Well, it doesn’t always work out, but you know you made the right play.” But that’s like 1 out of every 10 hands.

Another one of my favorite things is when he does this:
Situation: Towards the end of a one-table satellite. Players B and E are aggressive. Player C is supper-aggressive.
Your hand: AhTd
Action to you: Player A folds. Player B raises to $120. Players C,D and E all fold. The pot is now $210.
Thanks Dan, for the great reads on players C and E, cause they have so much effect on what I do in this hand.

In closing, very good book. I need to re-read some sections.

It’s been raining in Boston a lot recently. This was the case last night and the one previous to that. That being said, can some one explain why my school was still watering the lawns during said rain?

When the table pops up and its my big blind and I check, why don’t I say “Hey, I’m gonna act again real soon. Maybe I shouldn’t go and start looking at some webpage.”

Evan and I made a bet on the present WPT event. They are in the order they were picked (I went not second). Just remember to cheer against the people on the right.

Updated:11pm EST