I recently withdrew from Lock by Western Union. 1 free per month with a max of 2k. I recieved it in roughly 2 weeks and it went smooth.

did you collect cash at a WU, or did they send you a check, or.. what's goin on with that?

Or you can also sell it on the market place here, I think the discount is anywhere between 2~10 percent. I don't do as well online as I do live, b/c I take shots when ever I get a roll there, get knocked down, and start all over again, or drunk black jack play no idea why I play that, if I have not turned 10 bucks into 2k a few times I would ban my self from it.

I thought western union was instant?I must be thinking of something else...

Unfortunately nothing is instant in terms of online payouts anymore I requested 2k on 9/3 and received emails on 9/21 confirming it was processed. The confirmation number appeared in my cashier info and I picked up 2k cash at a local Kroger. This was my 1st and only time using Western Union so I don't know if this is how it always works.

Trades are also very common but the vig is currently closer to 15-20%.

i dont think it's been mentioned before , but i can confirm my last name does start with an R. if we share the same first name we are long lost fb bros!

cool that you get cash, tho. taking a shot at the big game at motor city tonight?

just cashed a check the other day for $2490 from Merge. it took two weeks

^ merge and lock are no longer the same network. Lock, even in other countries is having a hard time paying out players in an appropriate time frame. Merge is our only real option unfortunately.

Johnny, when are you going? I am actually thinking a short trip and go playing event #1 on Thursday or Friday, but come back on Saturday.

Not planning to make day 2?

Saturday evening, that's. Don't know how long day 2 last though. If I get lucky and go deep, yes, will stay overnight too.

This post is going to be way too long for very little worth but I REALLY want some opinions on this since I've talked about it to exhaustion with my only poker buddy and we can’t come to an agreement (although he wasn’t witnessing the dynamic).

I was at MCC this morning and there was a seat with $1,200+ in front of it with three missed BB buttons. Everyone is licking their chops waiting for this guy to come back because he apparently is really crazy and does most of his actions blind.

Well he comes back, first hand blind bets to $15, two callers. I can’t remember the flop but he ends up putting a guy all-in blind, the guy calls with a king high flush draw, bricks, and the first card the whale turns over is an ace to scoop the $300 pot. He’s also been making big river bets into $30 pots with pair/blocker type hands and never folds to a re-shove. On one occasion he called a $100 all-in with 3-2 off and said it was a “gift”. However, once someone takes the lead in a hand he becomes a calling station. He does, however, fold to three barrels, usually on the third bullet.

He has no history on me because I’ve became card dead since he sat down (literally nothing to even see a flop with).

So the whale is UTG ($1,000+) and straddles $4, this younger guy who says he plays 2/5 is UTG +1 re-straddles to $6. (with $250 stack). One fold and I look down at aces. I think for a few seconds and limp, reason being is on the two other occasions he straddled UTG, he has reraised to $15 when it was called around to him. Also, with the first double-straddle of the session I thought that with his propensity to gamble and inability to be bullied around he’d undoubtedly have to make this pot more interesting. I have about $305 at the start of this hand.

Big blind calls the $4, whale CALLS the $2 and double-straddler checks. ****. Operation isolate the whale begins. Flop comes 9-5-4 two spades. Out of nowhere the old guy in the BB goes all-in for $80 into a $24 pot. This isn’t too weird because he made the same move into the whale the orbit before with 55 on an J74 flop and was called by K7. As expected the whale thinks for a minute, starts carving out a raise but decides to flat the $80. At this point, I’m going to raise to try and get more money in with the belief that although I’m convinced the whale will call a shove, I can almost guarantee he’ll shove on a min-raise given the annoyance of getting squeezed and his resiliency (?!?).

My plan went astray when double-straddler re-shoves his $250 stack. Some info on him is that he’s been playing pretty tight nursing a short stack and mentioning how he keeps folding the best hand preflop because he doesn’t want to gamble in spots where he’s uncertain. He folded an ace when the whale went all in blind the first hand, folded king-queen to the whales $50 3-bet (which is standard but he was vocal at how nitty he was playing) but then shoved his $125 stack after the whale opened to $20 with A10 of clubs which held to the whales 93 off. So he’s not necessarily looking for spots to gamble with leading me to believe that he’s really strong in this spot and probably not trying to play for stacks with a flush draw since we all know the whale is calling everything. I also think that he’s more inclined to flat a weaker 9x type hand since he has position on the whale and would likely peel to see how threatening the turn is.

I bitch and moan and say how terrible I am and fold given that as many times as I tried to rework the math, there still would be no real side pot between the whale and me. Whale calls the all in with K4, young guy flopped top and bottom and improved to a boat on the river and the older guy never showed.

This may be the first and last time I ever limp aces again in my life. All things considered how awful is flatting pre? I think if I 4-bet pre to $20 the BB & double-straddler fold and I possibly could have extracted a few streets of value from whale if we were heads up. But my goal was to annoy him pre and get him to commit more money. If I do raise to $20 and he calls, what’s your sizing on the flop/turn/river to play for stacks? He has to know that I’m a rock up to this point and is not going to be fooled by pot, pot, shove or any three barrel because he wants to gambol and give himself the biggest sweat possible with the most amount of cards to come.

Sorry this is so long, you guys know I can’t make a one paragraph post! I may lose sleep over losing $6 and possibly $300 in value.

The world continues to get smaller!

JP, good fold obv, but I'm never flatting pre in this situation. You can even raise more than usual because of double straddle and still get action from the whale.

The only time I even consider playing aces or kings tricky pre flop is in a tournament setting, where I want short stacks and reshove attacks to commit stacks.

JP, folding is fine there. Calling is probably not a HUGE mistake since the whale is probably drawing dead so there's a lot of equity to chop there.

In that spot I think you want to raise, hope to get a call from someone, and a raise/shove from the whale. I don't limp unless the whale is on my immediate left.

anyone know of some good tournaments (good structure, decent field size) to play at in or around the detroit area?

electric stick tournies are the best within 30 miles of westland. the best they have are the friday night (200+ runners, $35 buyin), 4 pm Sunday ($55 buyin, 60 or so runners), their monthly $100 buyin (Saturday afternoon, i forget when the next one is at 2 pm - free buffet dinner), monthly $250 buyin, some saturday, 2 pm start....

the other fellas in here will tell you of the better tournies to the north...

damnit, i'm free tomorrow from like noon on, i don't see any tournies i want to play in... suggestions?

JP what was your stack? I'm assuming you have at least 400 but it wasn't clear. I'd only consider limping here if i had less than 300 otherwise i think opening is clearly the best way to get stacks in.

I think snooker's has a noon heads up $125 but call them to be sure.

$305. My plan was to 5-bet between $50-75 if he opted to make $15-25 but no one would have been surprised if he slid 20 red birds out there which was his signature bet regardless of stack size. I guess K4o is not in his spaz range whereas 23o and 93o were strong enough to move in prior. After the hand he asked for a $250 flip to anyone at he table

why try to play a meta game with someone in a $1/2 nlhe LIVE GAME?