i'm traveling a bunch over the next few weeks. i will be at the oaks next friday (10/30) and might be at commerce the sunday after that.

i'm going to try to play once or twice down here before i go to oaks. if i run good, i'm going to take a shot at the oaks 15 game. let us gogogogogogogogo.

He is probably between 55-65 years old, on the heavier side. I seem to recall him wearing hawaiian shirts on occasion. Says he sometimes plays the 20, but when i've been there he has been at the 8/16. It was all I could do to not berate him about his discussion of "the Clarkmeister." He must of repeated himself 3-4 times about how this play actually had a name.

Interestingly, I bet out on a rivered 4th of a suit, and said something like, "so is this a clarkmeister-thing?" He then had to correct me as he mucked, saying no it wasn't because we weren't heads up!

This guy didn't make any lewd remarks, but it really pissed him off when someone asked for a new set up. So much so that he actually called the floor to complain.

Nope, didn't see any tats, and wasn't acting like post-back surgery. More like post-layoff and looking for a job in finance.

lmk - let me know

imo

Thanks!

Of course I am! Who else would use that lame avatar?

I have a blackjack question for you two gurus: is the game actually beatable without Bringing Down the House type shenanigans?

My understanding is the house is a substantial favorite even when you play as optimally as possible, but cally has referenced building a poker bankroll off of blackjack. Is this something you could replicate every single time, or with reasonable success over a long, sustained period? I'm guessing not, or else you'd be doing it full time, but "building a roll" also implies you're a winner at the game.

I MIGHT have 130 hours in lifetime. When does my rungood start?

Ah, so I should just stay at home and never play poker. Glad you're not dictator.

LOL! Unfortunately, I have avatars turned off universally, so I didn't notice.

You might appreciate this: possibly the last blackjack hand I'll ever play in Vegas.

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5706/photo0080.jpg

Basically, blackjack is beatable in the same way that 3/6 LHE with 9 super-LAGs is beatable. You'll win money, but not much, and the variance is huge. Typical EV is +0.01 on a unit bet and SD is 2.5-3 units per hand - if you play a $5 unit, you're looking at $5 +/- $125 in one hour, $20 +/- $250 over four hours. You'll generally need a few hundred hours of play to be a guaranteed winner. Blackjack bankrolls tend to be much larger than poker bankrolls, and to win any real money you need to move up to the $25-$100 units with six-figure bankrolls.

I didn't "build" my poker bankroll per se. My friends and I started playing poker on one of our blackjack trips, and the next year poker got huge and we played it to be cool. The next few years I got better at poker and realized there was a lot less variance than at blackjack. The big blackjack buff of the group chose a woman over us in 2007; by this time I was winning enough at poker that I figured why take all of these swings at blackjack (I pushed "all in" more than once!) when I was slaughtering the 4/8 games for three times the win rate. I took a massive upswing in blackjack in 2008, used half of my bankroll as a present for my wife, and the other half became my poker bankroll.

Based on my calculations, my lifetime blackjack play is approximately 4.4% of the hands I'd need to reach the h0 (# of hands to be sure of being a winner). My ROR on my bankroll was well over 50% when I started, probably 20-30% by the time I ended.

This is part of hand reading but really NC - 6/12 game and I am BB. Passive game. Player LP is a solid player, woman is MP that is very bad. She will raise preflop with JT and bets any folp. Plays strange. Wins lots, loses it all, rebuys, wins lots, loses it all and around and around we go.

Preflop there are 3 limpers , LP raises, I call as do the others. 5 to the flop.

flop (9sb) 9 4 2 (5 players)

Checked to the raiser who bets, I check/raise, folded to MP who calls and it gets capped 5 bets and MP JUST CALLED. All the action is LP and me.

Turn (12 bb) 6 (3 players)

I bet, MP calls, LP calls.

River (15 bb) 2 (3 players)

I bet, MP calls, LP raises, I 3-bet, MP calls, LP calls.

I am sure that I have LP beat since he would have raised the turn with 99 so I think I am golden.

Hero has 44

Think for a minute and see if you can guess the hands.

You shoulda donked the flop instead of check/raising it, IMO. This way we get to bet/3bet and trap all the limpers between us and the preflop raiser in a raising war with a monster hand. Why would we want to risk the flop checking thru with our monster hand, plus face the limpers with two cold and possibly blow them outta the pot by check/raising the LP preflop raiser?

/content

I'm pretty sure that coldcalling a raise (first in?) from a passive is a mistake too, even with three limpers. If the blinds call you've got a potential 6-way, and on top of that you need 2 more BB and a 100% win percentage with a set to break even. If anyone 3-bets behind you, limpers and blinds may not call and then you're up poo poo creek without a paddle.

Playing blackjack solo is definitely possible, but it gives you ulcer. It will make you a cynic! You will need skills, you never thought you needed (like flirting with the PB). Oh yeah, being a woman helps enormously!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/35...0-post-149007/

I think we're BB, so this is a pretty easy call for me since we'll probably be getting 9:1 in what should end up to be a 5 way pot. Plus, since we're in the blinds and raiser is in LP, we've got great relative position (which, unfortunately, we didn't take advantage of with our flop play).

umm he is the BB

stuff like this is why you are losing.

I never read Bringing Down the House, so I don't know about the shenanigans.
The house will have an advantage of roughly 0.5% if you play perfect basic strategy. There are times, however, when the cards remaining to be dealt will generally favor the player. The easiest way to know when this occurs is by counting cards.
The second one. As calli mentioned, there is definitely variance involved.
The main problem is that the casino will sooner or later recognize that you're playing at an advantage. When that happens they will likely invite you not to play any more blackjack. That makes it hard to get the hours in.

Convincing people you're drunk when you're not.

It had not. It was published the year that Moneymaker won the WSOP (2003); one of the reasons we got more interested in poker was because we figured the blackjack gig was up when BDTH was published and thought we'd need another non-alcohol-related degen activity for Vegas.

A few people even took to poker really quickly and realized that, um, "team play" was pretty profitable in poker (both online and live) as well.

wat

I started with a $500 bankroll!

[ ] reading comprehension

Good we found a leak. Please explain how I played this wrong.

I need to donk the flop? Fold my BB?

Maybe I am worse than I thought b/c I like the way I played this hand.

correction - memory problems - I asked my wife who was at the table sitting next to MP and she said that I bet the flop, MP called LP raised and it went 5 bets on the flop.

The point was that the girl just called all the way and I found that to be interesting.

B/3B >>>> c/r
do you know why?

Folding PF from the BB would be insane.

Folding the BTN would show a dislike of $.

I tried to edit out the dumb comment about folding ... as you can see I am a dummy - I had to ask my wife if she remembered the hand and we discussed it. She says I bet the flop which sounds good to me.

So, I should lead from the Big Blind when I hit a set on this type of a flop.

1) I do not want it checked around with a flush draw out there.
2) LP might take a free card with AK
3) If LP has JJ+ he will raise and I can go 3 bets thus making the players in the middle play more (he had AA and we went 5).
4) If I lead I put in the last raise per Tommy A.