I doubt it. If CDC says someone is "a very strong player," he likely is.

Oh, my bad. I misread, which player was the weak one.

As far as the A9 hand goes, what do you guys think about these thoughts...

On the river, I think the bb thinks he has the best hand. UTG seems like he has a big pp obv. JJ,QQ or KK. When hero checks the river it looks like he has 97 or some gutshot. Though i doubt he'd lead w/ a gutshot in this spot. So 97 seems more likely. So i think BB thinks he has best hand.

I would think that UTG puts hero on a draw and isn't worried about him anymore or maybe even a weak A that he would fold instead of overcalling w/. Obviously if hero bet and BB called, then UTG would muck. But i'm not sure what he puts BB on. He can't have both of them beat. So it's probably a pretty bad call by him.

As far as hero goes, i would think BB hit his draw or has air and utg has a big pp, so if i check this river it's w/ the intent to call. I'm not worried about it being an overcall because i have the utg beat a very large % of the time.

I also don't play at that high of a limit online so i may be out of my league here.

Nice thread. Great read so far. I'm like a mini or broke version of you. I haven't worked in 3 years and up until about 8 or 9 months ago, when I started my "early retirement", I used to spend too much time (and monies) in the pit. I found myself having more fun playing blackjack, Pai Gow and Craps, than I did playing poker. But after a while, I got sick of all of it. So I took to the sports book. I did pretty good overall, but it wasn't as fun as scoring in blackjack or gettin a small run on the dice table.

My point is though that I shouldn't really be in the pits at all. I'm an ex-dealer ffs! But maybe that's why I'm weak towards the pit games?? I wonder what got you started playing in the pit. You sound like you played poker before you started gambling in the pits.

What are your origins in gambling? Where did it all start? With me, my father was a casino dealer (for over 50 years). I used to drive him to the Horseshoe to play Roulette right after I got my permit. Those were some fun times! Anyways, when I turned 22 I started dealing BJ at the 'Shoe. My dad talked to Jack Binion for 5 minutes and I had my first dealing job. Shorty after that I was introduced to poker (many different variations) in the dealer's room. It was a great way to get my gamble on and make a little extra money. I dealt cards for 12 years and 3 years ago I quit (well I got fired and never went back so I say I quit) and started playing poker for a living (if you want to call it that).

Again, nice thread and great stories! I have quite a few myself.

I don't play that high, but I do have a question. Would it be an error for bb to fold pf in the A9s hand? What if there were one less cold caller?

doctor, fewer. not less.

I stand corrected.

Any comment on the hand?

take it fwiw. i'm not exactly a long term winner in post legislation online games. my 50/100 sample on ftp is only 13k hands, with a +1.41BB/100 though. you ask if he should call with one fewer cc. i'm more inclined to play it HU or 3 way than 4 or 5 way. hard to find ranges against an utg raise where you have even moderately decent equity in a 4+ way pot. even with a discount you have to be a perfect hand reader to overcome your oop rio.

Udoh is more a power forward, and not really a complete one (see Ronnie Turiaf). Monroe is a great passer to play a high post game getting Randolph the ball down low on post up and lobs etc.

I figure it means they plan on trading Randolph, which is funny cause he is going to crush somewhere else. Weird to be planning to make trades of your best players while the team is for sale. I mean dead weight like Ellis with a big contract makes sense to move, but their best guy on a rookie contract?

F'ing Warriors......

A9 - I don't like BB's river bet at all, but I think you are still ahead enough on the river to bet (you can probably fold to a raise there read depending).

AQ is a tough spot, I'm not really sure between any of the options. I don't even think checking the river is out of the mix. I guess b/f river tho.

I think it looks like you have AQ, QJ or JT or Ax (and some irrelevant diamonds that you could bluff with), b4 u bet the river and that makes every option have some merit (even c/r/f).

i may have leveled myself into making too big a fold in that case hehe... i had 87s... i felt the hand played out kinds weird since i was expecting 8sup to call the turn 3bet a pretty high % of the time, in which case i figured you might cap somewhat wider and i'd just call down. but when he folded for some reason i 100% convinced myself that you'd always go for a river cr w the nuts, hence i insta/spite/tilt folded the river...

what you would get back for monta and his contract is really unlikely to make the team better. plus you're handcuffed by only going after players who work in nellyball. the gm has no leverage.

Of course you can't really get anything for Monta - you trade him not to make the team better in that specific deal, but make it so that it is possible your team might actually be good in the future (see Maggette trade - which was a good move despite only saving 1 year of his contract).

Management is so bad, they have 4 power forwards, 1 center, 2 Pgs and a bunch of D-league players - in the NBA which is pretty much a SG, SF league right now (PG too, but while Curry is a nice piece, you don't want him to have to put up the kind of numbers he was putting up in the second half of last season).

obv I can't deny that it's bad. but it's not as if they were all healthy and played in the east they couldn't win 40 games. the whole have 3 guys play 45 minutes every night thing is just bad business though. it's unique in that they all seems to love that part of it.

Eh, the health stuff is just a red herring. All their guys are basically all interchangeable. IMO if they didnt have a single injury last year they would have had the same record. They can win 25 games just from NBA fatigue of other teams with their system. No team wants to run around that much to play defense versus them, but they know they can score at will, so they just run up the score on both ends until the end of the game and then start trying. Occasionally the Dubs can squeek out the win or are up a ton already.

The conference doesn't matter either, they would stink equally in the east. They were 11-19 last year versus the East. The worst part is they have some good young players. If they brought in Avery Johnson as coach and let him start with Curry, Randolph, Monroe and Bierdins (who actually could theoretically play defense before he realized that his coach didnt care) with Morrow as a bench shooter they could get something going pretty quick and be one player away from a playoff team. Nelson has permanently destroyed any chance Ellis had of being a useful player on a good team.

Right now they have Ellis, Gadzuric, Radmanovic, Bell, Claxton, Bell and Azubuike taking up $41M !!!! in cap space. That is amazing to assemble that list of fairly useless players. Not one of those guys should really be in anyones rotation (Ellis would make a fine microwave type guy, but he won't ever be happy in that role). That is some GM'ing of Isaiah type proportions (sadly my fav team). With any kind of management they could have had a shot at Carmelo next year - would result in a pretty sweet core of Melo, Curry and Randolph.

Anyway, wtf, this is nothing that isnt complained about every day by basically all GS fans (at least the non-delusional ones).