The Cards Speak: Poker Blog: Fighting the school of fish: Morton’s Theorem

Interesting.

Andy Morton’s original post is located here and gets a bit more technical (i.e., there’s math). It’s well worth reading if you’ve ever been “schooled.”

PokerGrub is running a promotion on his site where if you sign up for Empire through his affiliate link and place in the top 20 in the Vegas Dreams freeroll, you get $1048. Now, I like Grubby as much as the next poker blogger, but there is no way in hell I would even qualify for this contest. You need to be a VIP member to play in the freeroll, and that requires collecting 5000 EPoints. In raked hands, that requires playing 25 million raked hands. The fastest way to collect EPoints would be to play as many expensive multi-table tournaments a day as possible. For every dollar you pay in fees, you get an EPoint. EPoints are also awarded by squaring the number of multi-table tournaments ($9 buy-in or more) you play in a day.

For example, if you play one multi-table tournament with a $20 fee, you get 21 EPoints. If you play two of these tournaments, you get 44 EPoints. For three, you get 69 Epoints, and for four, you get 96. Even at the rate of four of these a day, you’d have to play for 53 days to get to 5000. And that still doesn’t get you in the freeroll.

It’s just not worth it unless you know you stand a good chance of winning in those tournaments.

So far I’ve netted -$30 this week. A far cry from the +$65 of last week and +$128 of the week before. That said, there are two more days to this week. And I think there have only been a few instances where I should have changed my play or I gave up a pot to some idiot with nothing. I’m seeing very few flops, and winning a majority of showdowns. Now if I’d only get some cards, I can increase both those numbers.

Better make my Friday count.

Mr. Boy Genius has linked to this blog. I don’t think I’ve had any worthwhile posts in a while, so I’m not sure what y’all are going to read here while visiting.

On the poker front, I lost $50 or so yesterday playing no limit and limit. Wasn’t getting cards to play, and couldn’t get them to connect at all. I haven’t had a day like that in a while. Pretty disheartening, especially since I had just recently moved into the black. I still haven’t paid myself back for my poker bankroll, since that would only leave me with $10 of other people’s money (OPM).

Today I wasn’t able to take advantage of the WPT-fueled fish due to academic commitments. I still managed to get in a late night session and made a few bucks, averaging about 22BB per 100. That was a little more like it. One table was pretty amazing. I caught a run of good cards, and even several of the hands I folded pre-flop turned out to be winners. The table was still as loose and aggressive as it had been when I decided to quit, but when a few orbits go by and your cards don’t catch, sometimes you figure you’re ahead and that’s good enough for an early Thursday morning.

Actually, now that I think back on it, I think I realized that I had just been lucky and had to get out of there fast. On one hand, my KQ and someone else’s KK sucked out the winning straight on the river, much to the dismay (I’m sure) of the guy who had rockets. I had paired the queen and then stayed for the straight, convinced that the other guys were full of it. Lucky me. On one of my first hands I had pocket queens that sucked out a set on the river after my oppponent flopped two pair with big slick. I had raised pre-flop in the big blind and bet first in after the flop put both overcards on the board. Then, instead of folding to his raise, I called. After the turn gave me a flush draw, I decided to play pot odds instead of folding to his bet and fished for the flush. Lucky again. One time in the BB, I had J4o and flopped two pair. Damn lucky.

Of course, on one hand with cowboys, I decided to fold to a guy representing three queens. He had, of course, nothing at all. And that probably had a lot to do with my quitting a half hour later. It was really way too late for me to stick around for a chance to slap that guy around with a big pair.

I was bored of the .50/1 games and decided to try my hand at the $25 NL tables. Wow, I got killed. I lost $21 in an hour and twenty minutes. I folded cowboys to a boat on the board and queens to a flush. That was tough.

The one hand I won I flopped a flush with big slick. Everyone checked on the flop, including me. When the king appeared on the turn, I bet a buck and a half, hoping to get some kind of money out of the game. Two people called and two folded. With the river pairing the board, I bet $3. One person folded, one called. He had big slick suited, but it was the wrong suit.

And that was it. With $4 left I decided to cut my losses.