Barcelona or bust

I'm trying to get back into the blogging habit, so here goes...

My current mini-obsession is Ongame's Poker Classic event, a $5 million guaranteed pot tournament with a live final in Barcelona (a town in which, experience tells me, it is impossible to have either an unmemorable or a bad time). Its unusual qualifying structure involves several rounds of either scheduled or sit'n'go tourneys, each taking you to the next level, and then an online final which continues until there are 45 players remaining, at which point play is suspended, to be resumed live at a casino in Barcelona.

I've played quite a few of the $9+1 Round 1 sit'n'go tourneys, and made the second level, the $68+5 event, three times so far. As in Round 1, only two places pay, and only the winner walks away with a ticket to the next round; second spot earns you another ticket for the same level you just played, plus a small cash payout. So anything other than first or second really sucks.

My last appearance at the 68+5 level saw me bubble holding pocket kings - I paid the price for not making it sufficiently expensive when my opponent hit a lucky straight, so I feel like the game sort of owes me a break or two... we'll see.

I'd go into more detail about a few more hands, but unfortunately Mac Poker Pro, my tracking software, doesn't support the Ongame qualifier sit'n'gos.

Show 43 is on the way

After our loooooong break from the show, I'm happy to say that Zog and I have been recording again, and it won't be too long now until Show 43 hits the airwaves.

Some people mailed in to nag/encourage us, most of them expressing concern and hoping that nothing bad had happened to either of us. It was nice to see how much people cared about the show and about the pair of us.

If you already subscribe to the show via iTunes or another feed, our latest offering should be dropping into your computer in the next few days. Hope you like it...

Battle of the Kings

I guess you get to see every possibility playing internet poker in the end and I've heard worse bad beat stories, but they are usually about hands you should have won. Not this time.

Ten away from the tickets in a small MTT, seven at the table, blinds 50-100 and a lot of successful small steals going on. On the button I'm dealt KK. UTG+1 puts in 300, leaving himself 1000 or so. I have him outchipped by 50. The money's going in. He doesn't hesitate (understandably) and flips over the other two Kings.

A few LOLs in the chat from the other players - then a few more salty comments as four hearts come on the board to give him the flush.

Boo, poor me. Take a guess on the chances of that and then highlight the missing text chances4.3% overall - half that each back there.

Writely or wrongly

I'm hoping to post this direct to the blog, which I've been a little slack in updating recently, using the public beta of Writely. If this one succeeds I'll put in a proper post whinging about my most recent bad beat.

Slow turbo

So despite telling Zog, in a recent podcast that got screwed up by some gremlins, how much I disapproved of turbo games (usual reasons - discourages good post-flop play in favour of pre-flop gambling, no chance really to recover from a bad call or a bad beat) I have found myself playing the odd game during the week - just not really having time to play a proper game but wanting a little poker action to spice up my dog-dull day.

On three or four consecutive evenings I sat down to a little turbo SNG, either $5 or $10, hoping for some quick action. The clue is in the name. Now, I don't know whether someone somewhere has written something odd about turbo strategy, or whether it's some kind of bizarre online poker meme, or whether I was just unlucky, but in each of the games there were players consistently waiting until the last moment to fold, and the overall speed of action was so slow that the blinds were rising after every other hand. In one game they went up for the fifth time just before the ninth hand.

We aren't talking about a lot of money, so it's not some kind of scam. I think it's widely accepted that although there are some good winning strategies for playing turbo games, the element of luck is higher than in slower games. And by collectively reducing further the number of hands at each level, it's increasing the role played by chance.

Is this a technique being promoted by those who prefer to gamble?

I've been breaking even, so it's not sour grapes...

Return of the blog...

Welcome back to the unofficial but official blog for PokerDiagram.

This blog has been hijacked, blacklisted, deleted, the domain taken over by another user and finally reinstated, thanks to the fact that someone at Blogger listened to me moaning about it on the podcast.

If you are looking for the podcast, go to www.pokerdiagram.com.

If you are looking for specific links prior to June 2006, sorry, that stuff has all been removed beyond recovery.

And if you are looking for the guy who briefly held this subdomain, sorry, can't help you.