i got lucky today and won a small field tournament. it seems every time you win a tournament there are always a few key hands that you had to hit a card or get lucky on a coin flip hand. today was no different.
my two hands that got me to the end was hitting my kicker to win on the river in one of them. and the other was hitting a set on the flop when i was against a bigger pair all in.
then of course i played perfectly and managed to win. :-)

You must be on cloud nine. I am sure that you played very tight and skillfully to get to that place in a tournament. This calls for a celebration, the next time we see each other I will buy you an ice cream sandwich! Good job and congratulations again.

well it has finally gotten to about where it can be plus ev to play. imagine that.
with federal and state taxes taken out at the highest level then the high probability of splits brings teh final prize down so much its hard to ever want to play it. its just under 300 million to one to hit the full prize and it costs two bucks to play so 600 million before you get false odds to play.
you can win smaller prizes so that may add another 20 plus % for an edge if you let it grow.

overall its fun to play and watch everyone dream what they would do with an amount that few can even conceive of.

played two aces today in front and limped in. so what happened is all the rest of the table just called me. the flop blanked out and i did manage to get it headup on the flop and break a guy who was short stacked. whew.

most times as we know when this happens, too often someone gets broke and it is usually the guy with the aces.

it is very important not to be easily readable. or your opponents will find they get to play almost perfectly against you. there is no chance of winning if your opposition knows close to what you have.

thats why you see so often a terrible player win a bunch as he is so tough to figure out and you make big mistakes against him if trying to get his money before he blows it off.
you do need to get in with him as you have the best of it but many times not as much as people seem to think.

it will be interesting to see the outcome of the bundy occupation in oregon. no way will they get their goal of the govt. giving up its refuge to the cattlemen so sooner or later they will have to give up and leave. and at that time they will be arrested or soon after they split up. depending on what the feds decide to do.
since felonies have been committed and they will certainly be charged, even if they dont go to prison they lose their right to own firearms. and that is part of their whole purpose is the 2nd amendment.
at this point in time i dont think it is wise to go in and have a gunfight but pressure is building to rid the reserve of them.

Ray, I read with great interest about you, Tuna and Clone being the first to work video poker progressives. I've always been interested in the history of advantage video poker. Could you tell me what year you guys first got started?

there were always ways to beat the slots ever since they put them in. especially the manual slots. some cheated, some played honestly and some skirted the rules. like using the rhythm method to pull the handle on the old machines.
on the video slot it was in the early 1980's i guess people actually were coming up with ideas to win at. no one was really first, but a few seemed to pass their ideas around and try playing. soon it became obvious to many that the machines had overlays. those with some money to weather the swings and initiative did fine.

there were a bunch of vegas players mostly single players that were out and about.
it was in reno that the best plays were most of the time and the least competition for machines and weaker management from the casinos.

i still enjoy playing poker after all these years. it is a game you can keep up with and play at tables you can win at well into old age. as we get older we lose some edge but we can realize it and pick our spots better and use it against players that may mis-perceive us.

what you do lose is the desire to make more money.

I'd agree you lose the impulse to make more money, providing you have enough to live the lifestyle you prefer.

But it might be different if you were living hand to mouth - probably have more interest in chasing money at the table.

yea in that case you would be more inclined to want to make money but you lose the desire to push hard for it.
and remember older people get health care paid and social security payments, so have something to take care of immediate costs.
plus if you were a winning player you wouldnt be broke later in life, unless you were incapable of managing your money.

I've been around a long time like you and I've known plenty who were good players, couldn't (or didn't) manage their money, and ended up on the rail lookin for stakes. Probably you knew a lot of the same guys

an awful amount of players end up on the rail. most werent winning players or those that only won because they played in a particular situation that worked for them and lost when that changed.

its too bad to see that but only a few really have their sh--t together in life and those come out okay.

I've known a handful of guys who I considered to be winning players, but had too many life leaks. Horses, drugs, alcohol, women. They'd run over expectation for a good period of time, then they'd start running normally and lose it -- they'd be unprepared. It wasn't that they managed money badly, it was that they just didn't see the need for money management at all. Either from an extended period of run-good, or from a wife with a job who finally wised up.

What I never understood was why they'd lose their game. They'd start playing bad to catch up, or they'd become extremely risk adverse, but guys I knew could play correctly could never seem to get it back once they lost it.

They say that poker is a game of incomplete information, but there is really nothing that is all that hidden a poker table if you sit there long enough and pay attention. It all ends up being out in the open. I'd say that 90 to 95% of the players that get described to me as winners by some really smart people -- really aren't. They just ran good for an extended period of time.

so true mack, that is exactly the case. it is easy to run good and easy to accidentally find a game your style happens to work in.

the real players are the ones that win in more types of games and can maintain their play throughout all the difficulties that arise.

good to hear from you ol boy.

I agree with you guys - it's usually more a matter of multiple life leaks than just poor BRM (though that is a life leak itself).

The guys I'm thinking of knew how to play well (at least in the formats I saw them playing), just seemed to lose it over time like Mack suggests.

Ray, I read a novel not long ago called The Queen of Chance. The author's name is Jackie Shirley, a former Las Vegas poker dealer. The novel is about a woman who was a rhythm player on the slots in the eighties. The author described rhythn play in great detail. I knew he had to have been a rhythm player himself. I contacted him and asked a few questions. He told me that the casinos and Gaming never caught up with the rhythm players. The only thing that put them out of business was the machines became obsolete.

yep the machines changed but the casino knew about them as they would tell you to leave or just pull the handle and let go, if you wanted to play.

I think we are talking about two different kinds of rhythm players. According to Jackie Shirley, he and his cohorts weren't manipulating the handle. They were timing the variator to control the speed of the second reel to get a certain symbol to land on the line. This increased the odds of certain pays. It turned a low nineties, percentagewise, machine into a 110% machine.

The variator was developed to thwart players from manipulating the handle to control the speeds of the reels. Basically the variator sent the reels spinning at 5 to 7 different speeds. The speed changed every couple of seconds. They could tell what the next speed would be by the speed of the current spin. There was no manipulation of the handle. And as Jackie explained to me, they never got caught because of it.

got down to the last nine in a tourny today they paid 7. but anyway i had decent chips and came in with a good raise with ace king. got a call behind me from what i could be pretty sure was ace queen or a middle pair. knew his play well enough.
so flop came king xx. he is aggressive and i was sure a slow check would get him to move on me. it worked and we got all in. he had nines and hit one right off and broke me. i would have been a big chip leader.

this is why i am not as fond of tourneys as one hand destroys your nights work. but the payday is multiplied.

Its a game, sometimes you win and sometimes you don't. I've been on a major losing streak but did win a good one last Monday. It was interesting because I ended up with quad 8's and busted my opponent out with a straight.

last two tournaments ive played i got to the last table or last ten. mostly luck to get there but i have made some good moves as well. getting over the hump from there is usually some luck by getting a good hand early or winning a showdown. both times i lost the race.

some times you get lucky and have a table that gives you lots of hands. then it is easy to advance.

i must have a boat fetish or something. i just bought another fishing/ocean capable boat.
i have so many boats i cant count them on my fingers.
i do use some of them often, but most hardly ever. so this spring i plan on making a concerted effort to get rid of at least five of my smaller ones.

we will see how successful i am. first will be my oldest boat. an old town canoe i got in 1973. which i used all over the northwest fishing and going down rivers. i even rigged it up with a sailing rig. that didnt work out too well as when i went over, it was impossible to get it righted.

had a great poker day today. seems i won almost every hand i played. also got so many good hands most heads were spinning.
had aces in the hole in the holdem at least 5 times and won them all and twice beat kings in the hole from the same guy.
in omaha made the nuts a few times and never got out drawn.
every once in awhile a day goes like this and you want to remember it so when the opposite happens you dont think you arent getting both sides of the luck factor.