Sunday, March 19, 2006

The Man


If Chuck Norris played NLHE, he'd have only 1 hole card. - and win... forever.
www.chucknorrisfacts.com this site is f'ing hilarious!!!

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Are We Safe?

'Sir, may I have your name please?'

After waiting for 45 minutes, you sit down with the max buy at the airport casino 50/100 NL ring. You know you got what it takes to reel in chips, win big pots with monsters, using well timed bluffs and accurate reads... You see a couple of familiar faces at the other tables but none atyour table. You are alone... with 9 strangers who also want to take people's money. You sit tight andwait for that hand. (No not wired As) Something like AK or AQ comes your way, so you raise, you play your odds, position and everything else well but it seems like the action is too loose and too fishy for you. (and the chance you don't hit the flop)You back down not only once but twice...

4 hours have past and you are down to 1/4 your buy-in, you decide to call it a night. So you stand up and cash out your remaining chips, grab a cup of coffee and head home. You are a tight player, so while driving home you recall some of the hands you played a while ago and figure out why you din't get paid. You felt like it was just one of those days were the cards weren't going your way, a losing day in short. You take a deep breath and swallow the loss and play again the next day.

The next day, you see that you're sitting again with the same group of players. Now you've got that sly grin on your face because you know it's payback.You sit tight again, wait, wait and wait for the right time. You win a couple of small pots, then you get a small beat. After a couple of hours, you look down at your stack and see you're down again. The action is still the same very loose and very fishy. You get Aces, you raise big, get 4 callers. The flop comes out very rough, but you push and get two callers. One having a flush draw, the other holding a f'ing two-pair. The guy with the draw takes down the huge pot. You go to the bar, (fuck the coffee) get a scotch neat, you down it and head home. While driving home, you recall and replay again the things that happened at the table, now you have profiles about the players at the table, you are so keen and sharp that you even remember the conversations at the table, the tells even the hands they played. Then you slam on your horn and curse all the way home, you grab your rear-view mirror and point it at your faceand you stare long and hard at yourself...you see a sucker... because for all this time you've been cheated.
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I just got a call from a 'friend' of mine. He's asking if there's any game tonight, so I tell him he could go down to the airport to play some rings. He tells me 'I don't want to because the people cheat there, they use sign language.' I take it lightly, and tell him well, there's a game at the libis area, you should check it out. I put down the phone, continue watching tv (rayban celeb poker) hehe... then it struck me. I have some violent reactions to cheaters because in poker - Cheaters can win by collusion, if they do it right.

Collusion is a very very serious matter in my opinion. For every serious poker player this is a mortal and deadly act. I would pop a cap in those motherfuckers heads if a group of players cheated their way to my money. It's stealing, more like a planned robbery. They better not try fucking any Danny Ocean shit at my table. Anyways, it is inevitable that we can encounter cheaters at everything, especially at poker becauseyou can play with absolutely random people all the time. As for me, I play online and the chances of me sitting with a player whom I've played with before are very very slim.

It would take a very sly and ingenius team to form a system to use at the table, an effective collusion plan that would make them profit. It's like the MIT group that brought the house down playing blackjack, there plan worked and they were famous for it. It's also like the ESPN series Tilt, where the matador uses collusion to get thousands of cash at the high stakes cash game. (For home games, the most effective way of cheating, is manipulating the deck, as seen on the movie Rounders were Edward Norton would deal Matt Damon, wired pairs at 7 card stud.) It is possible guys, and most probably there's already an Ocean's 4 or 5, roaming around the casino floors...

Online playing is no excuse, I think cheating is more rampant online that it is live. (I even have circumstances where a friend would ask me 'is it safe to play online?') This is done through multiple accounts & using messengers. The most recent controversy of cheating was done by the supposedly ZJ and JJprodigy, they would enter MTT's using 5-6 accounts. It's like playing a tournament with 6 lives. Total disadvantage to the other players. Luckily, there was a keen online player that observed the game so much that he reported it to the security department of the site. True enough, it was cheating. The plan was foiled, cracked, busted. Almost $200k+ was taken from the multiple accounts, and the criminals were banned from playing at that online poker room.

It's a shame that people resort to collusion to get money. It's not having an edge, it is cheating and it can be done by anyone. Here in the Philippines, people are trying so hard to put poker into the mainstream but then if it is only going to resort to cheating then that beats the purpose, poker would become a cheater's game. I guess history does repeat itself. (A little trivia, poker before was played at steamboats because gambling was illegal during that time at towns. So players would play cards or play poker - which is considered the 'cheater's game' - and the way the game is played is they would invite a rich sucker to join their 4 player game. Then these guys would play for hours and hours, cheating their way to wealth. At the end of the night the sucker would be down right bankrupt not knowing he was cheated ex. The movie Maverick)

My two cents, I would advice that serious players beware and be conscious. If you feel something going down at the table just stand up, try to report it to the authorities. Signs of collusion would be fishy all-ins, sandwhiching, chip dumping, sign language etc... there are a lot! I also would want the airport casino security to treat this as a very serious matter and they should take care of theirplayers because the future of the game is at stake...

Let skill trample over luck and cheaters.

I would be pleased, if you guys would share your reactions... because we ALL can be victims of collusion.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Some Stuff

I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my blog, I can't view it for some reason.

Anyway, I've got so much stuff in my head, mostly poker related. I played at the airport last night, the table was okay, no loose gamboolers, sad to say I din't profit...

Let's get to the topic at hand. Like what I said I've been thinking (deeply) and also reflecting on what poker is to me and what its impact is in my life. Let's weigh the pros and cons...

Why? because I'm planning to put more hours/games in order to increase my roll hence moving up in limits. My roll has been stagnant for the past 3 weeks (which sucks) I don't think I can play more games in a day since I'm only allowed one table per game, 1 table would take 45m-70mins. I want to put 25-30 games in 2 days so that's like 15 games/day = 15 hrs (give or take a 2-3 hrs) Damn, how the hell am I going to do that??? Pros: Increase in volume may increase profit Con: Increase variance, it's going to be tiring and more focus is needed. ...so many games, so little time...

Next, there's school, we're down to the last 3 weeks and the load is piling up. Papers and more papers, and of course, exams. And yeah, I'm taking summer classes. I've got to get my school shit straight...But my priorities are f'd up, poker is my distraction.

These are just a few things that I've been thinking about and how I can manage to perform optimally on both fields.

How? When? Why?

It's all about seeing the big picture. Do you guys have any suggestions?