Fear & Loathing in Lindenhurst

I accidentally played a game of Omaha Hi/Lo on Stars the other night. I thought it was interesting, and a nice little break from NLTHE. It's basically Hold 'Em with two variations. First, you get 4 hole cards, of which you must use two in your hand. Second, the low hand splits, as long as there are 5 cards below 8 (flushes and straights don't count against low hands).

I thought, hey, why not break it up, and for the first time in the history of the MPT, why don't we make the second tourney an Omaha tourney. So I threw it by MPT elders Musky Boy and Regulator.

You know the saying, "we fear what we don't understand?" Besides winning regulation tournaments on the MPT in 2005, both of the elders don't understand Omaha. Musky Boy thought it would take 45 minutes to explain the rules, and Regulator just says "Omaha Sucks."

So based on their whiny-ass attitudes, we won't be playing Omaha Hi/Lo on 8/13.

August 13

Our next game is August 13th, at the Musky Boy named "Khyle's Garage o' Magic Casino and Smoke-a-torium." Half-man, Half-crappy is already talking trash. Last month's rookie, and splash maker, Merrill, may or may not be too scared to come. His mentor, and sponsor, Half-crappy is hedging as to whether or not he will make a return trip. Hopefully Numb Nuts harmless screaming doesn't scare him off.

Just based on his play, and his look, I have doled out a nickname for him. Unfortunatley, he appears unfazed by it. I take this as a sign that it's not deragatory enough, but I think I'll have to stick with it anyway. It's Beeker.




Just so you know, this pic was provided by Half-Crappy, so blame him. What will August bring? I'm guessing that Merril will follow the path that Ken went down (earning his Beginner's Luck Nickname).

I know you're all dying for MPT POY standings updates. And hopefully I will have it in the next week or so.

What could be more fun?

Than economists dissecting poker...

Pokernomics

Smokin'

As some of you may have noticed, my beautiful wife posted a comment re: Smoking & SK's un-victory. While the Mrs.' sentiment is touching...."Sausage King is suuuuch a nice guy. He was probably just doing it to be nice." Rules are rules. We can't re-write history just to make people feel better. A chop is a chop, and I'm sure SK understands that...right?

The good news is that the Mrs. made a strategic error. She first said "OK, you can smoke." Then after a moment of thought, she attemtped to retract the statement and threw in the caviat, "If SK gets his victory." Thankfully, in my household, this clearly falls under the "We can only take your first answer" rule.

Ergo, smoking will be allowed - nay - encouraged come the August tourney.

A touch of Surreality

Thanks to Doc who sat on a 9 hour train from 2 hours away to get back and clean out his garage and host. And thanks for bringing back all the supplies to my house on Sunday...although I notice that the beer wasn't brought back...that's ok.

Saturday night started out a bit bizzarre, when the Milk Man, Sara Lee Salesman extraodinaire not only showed up, but played. To further confuse the issue, he wasn't among the first couple out. He actually horded a ton of chips, including all of mine. The Milk Man had transformed into a tricky SOB, slow playing AA to my top pair with a 4 flush on 4rth St. A long way from the guy who mucked the winning hand on Pepe Lopez night. However, everything ended up being ok with the world, and he placed out of the money.

The first table I was at in Game 1 started as a race for Greg's money, and quickly turned into a race for Squeaky's money. Sadly, I didn't get enough of either. Somehow, doe-eyed Tim made it to second (or was it first?) chip position in the first game. As I was pissing away my money in a side game, the last two guys made a deal.

Officially, we had no winners, as the final two each time chopped. I'm sure the Sausage King will bitch and moan, and that's fine. But chopping just to get home early costs you an official victory. Half-man Half-crappy brought his brother in law, who performed pretty well.

Merril's dynamic, highly combustible personality got him into trouble as he continually bullied around Numb Nuts. NN was continually heard muttering "I know you don't have anything, but I fold." Eventually, NN took out his nemesis, yelling "Hell yeah, push those chips over here, those are MINE." If Merrill comes back, he probably deserves a nickname. I'm formulating something, but it's still brewing. All I can say right now is that it will probably involve a Muppet.

Other notable happenings:

• LuckyPP apparently has gone limp. No more domination.
• Doc failed to 4 peat, even with the South Side rooting section.
• Musky Boy finished in Musky Boy position in game 2 after dominating the early part of the game.
• Squeaky....wow, that was awful. Had to do the walk of shame to regain composure after a bad performance in the first game.
• Sausage King. It was my luck to run into his JJ when I was all in with 77 in Toruney 2. He took my money and made the most of it, even though he didn't officially win.
• Regulator: His nickname is close to becoming a verb. As in "That guy just got sucked out by a two-outer, he was Regulatored." Then he got bored in Game 2 and donated his chips to Squeaky who didn't put them to good use.

Next month is at the House of Magic. I know there was some good-natured ribbing of Doc re: the spread. Just so expecations are set correctly... August is BYOE month. That means 'bring your own everythig.' I'll have ice and a couple coolers, plus the facility, poker chips, etc. Outside of that, you're on your own. No tic-tacs. No popcorn. Hell, no Plums or cold or hot pizza either.

Oh, and I'm currently in negotiations on the smoking status for next month. Apparently, the boss of the Magic household is concerned about smoke smelling up the baby's room. Even though the baby's room isn't above the garage, and we'd only be dealing with one can of Febreeze to de-odorize the guest room, I'm not confident that I will win this argument. So the odds at press time are strong that August will be smoke free.

What's up Doc?

Hey, Doc you out there? Where oh where are you? Hello, we will be invading your house this weekend!!! I hope you plan on attending!!!!

Bar tourney

Musky, Magic and Squeaky as well as LuckyPP and Numb Nuts played in a free 80 man tourney in cheeseland last night. It was pretty well run, and a lot like the MPT (lots of bad players). In order to keep it short, I'll paraphrase the night for each player.

Musky: Folded every hand until he was all in with J7 1x BB.
Squeaky: Apparently won a couple hands, and outlasted Musky.
NumbNuts: Was eliminated twice (yes twice) before getting back in a 3rd time.
LuckyPP: Lasted till probably 20 or so people left when he was all in as the SB.
Magic: Eliminated just before PP. Blinds were 500/1000. There was a short stack all in ahead of him, and one call. In an effort to force out the caller, and increase his odds at the main pot, he pushed all in (pot was 6k, he raised another 4.5k). And I lost.

My aggressive play had nothing to do with either a strong desire for sleep or my feeling bad for Squeaky and Musky who had been picking their respective noses for about an hour by the time the hand came up.

One other note. I look down to AA on the 10th or so hand of the night. I am contemplating my raise, when I hear "I only have one card." Misdeal. CRAP.

New Blind Structure

Musky and I were discussing the expected number of players for Saturday (14). Based on past experience, with our current blind structure, it would take till about 2-2:30am to finish up. The real drag comes when we get down to about 5 or 6 players.

So in an effort to still get two in, and not finish up that late, we're gonna speed up the blinds once it gets to 6 players left. Seeing as we're getting more hands/round as more players are eliminated, I don't think this is a big deal.

When we get to 6, blinds will go up every time a player is eliminated. Here, then, is the new and improved blind structure. The last column is total blinds/total chips assuming 14 people. So by level 12, we will have 15% of all the chips in play each hand, minimum.

1	25	50	0.2%
2	50	100	0.4%
3	100	200	0.7%
4	200	400	1.4%
5	300	600	2.1%
6	400	800	2.9%
7	500	1000	3.6%
9	800	1600	5.7%
10	1000	2000	7.1%
11	1500	3000	10.7%
12	2000	4000	14.3%

Funny

In scanning through some poker blogs this morning, I found these on Bill Rini's blog. Funny.

Hellmuth 404 page.
Sklansky 404 Page.

There are others here.


On a side note, Musky Boy and I are heading into the vast emptiness that is cheeseland to play in a live MTT. It's my first Live MTT ever. Numb Nuts and Lucky PP are supposed to be there, so surely the MPT will show well. Squeaky was called and invited, but apparently was asleep at 9pm due to his exhausting work schedule.

I myself am apprehensive. I'm not nervous about the MTT itself. However, I've played 3 45 man free-roll tourneys at Stars over the last week, and I've won all three. Yeah, I know, big deal. The problem is that I've had 4 - count 'em - 4 quads , including 3 in one tourney, over that span. That's LuckyPP-ian luck. I just hope my luck doesn't run out before Saturday.

After seeing the omen last week, I was considering bringing our good friend Pepe back for a return visit to the MPT. After considering the circumstances of the last Pepe Lopez night, I think I'm going to have to pass. Yes, yes, I won, but it must have been a fluke. As you can see from the chart below, clearly my victory was pure luck. The more alcohol Doc has, the better he is; so I dare not bring any liquor to increase his chances. And he's clearly the class of the MPT (just ask him).




To Pepe or not to Pepe, that is the question. 


The mechanic is coming, but truthfully, alcohol does not affect his skill level.

And to appease my sensitive friend Doc, I would like to clear a couple things up. I'm not hating on Doc (although as a white guy I think if I use a phrase like that, it's automatically soo five minutes ago). Anyway, he did have an amazing accomplishment last time. 3 victories, even in non-sanctioned events, is a great feat. However, he did have the luck of winning a couple coin flips, getting good cards against strong second hands, and the complete brain fart of Squeaky.

So no one is trying to minimize your accomplishments my friend. You're a stellar poker player. So relax.

Blog Oddities

Not that you should care about this, but I wanted to be official. I added little text ads for the blog. I'm donating all proceeds to a future event kitty. It occured to me that based on their rhetoric, we should just throw the money in between LuckyPP and Doc and let them have a private pissing match over who's better. But then I decided we should play out the game even though they obviously outmatch everyone else.

I'm sure you will be happy to know that we have accrued $.24. We're just $99.76 short of a check! Woo hoo! Doc - do tell, what are you planning to do with your money?

Also, in looking through our traffic logs, I saw that we're getting a lot of hits on Musky's post about Reg's rank at Party Poker. Turns out someone is searching for Poker Prophecy. It reminded me that of all ranked players, he was last. So I checked again, and his ranking has changed. Instead of 250,000 players that were better than him, there are now 450,000. Relax Reg, you only played one tourney - I'm sure it's just variance.

I also saw a referal from Alta Vista, a search engine. Someone searched Poker Nicknames....and we were fifth. As a google whore (big fan of Gmail, Blogger, Google search) I feel validated that we show up NOWHERE in the google results for Poker Nicknames. Alta Vista sucks ass apparently.

Proof that doom is coming for Nurse Paulie (formerly known as Doc)