One thing I watch out for at the medium stakes limit tables are the all-in limit players. On the surface, the all-in limit player appears to be a suitably tight aggressive player, but if you observe how he plays his hands, you realize he’s actually playing some form of donkey no limit. He makes a single decision with a hand like AK: play it strongly all the way to the showdown. When confronted with a raise on the flop, he is likely to 3-bet to take back the initiative. When confronted with a raise on the turn, he may give up the initiative, but still goes to showdown for another two big bets. He’s decided this hand is going to cost him 4-5BB, and damn it, he’s gonna pay to see your “garbage” hand. These are the players that make hands like top pair weak kicker or middle pair somewhat profitable. Their raising range makes it relatively easy to put them on hands, and in the absence of any scare cards, you can bet the river for value against his high card hand.

Party released a new client yesterday featuring the Party Monster, a new series of weekly and monthly freeroll tournaments seeded with $5 million from Party, and funded by a percentage of the prize pool from qualifiers and the Bad Beat Jackpot. Part of this upgrade adds new no limit and pot limit jackpot tables to the mix and lists jackpot tables alongside normal tables. The effect on the jackpot has been huge. It went from $90k Monday night to $200k Tuesday night to $275k this morning. This can only be good news. Large jackpot pools bring out the gamble, and that means more money for solid players. Check it out.