December 17. Christmas game, 1 PM start. Mark it down and be there! Easily the best game of the year and the tournament is super lower pressure and a lot of fun. Breich is also going to be in town for the event.

Of course you schedule it during one of the weekends where I have a tournament for the WSOP series PokERstyle and I are running. Sheesh!

Ours starts up a week from Saturday, and we're giving out a package for a $1500 event at next year's WSOP as well as a couple of Cherokee WSOP-C seats.

Sadly, poker's taken somewhat of a backset for me at this point as karate is eating up a lot of my attention (hence the lack of me being around here recently).

Do it soon! I'm moving to Iowa in March.

Played my first pink-chip game last night, $2.50/$5 dealer's choice circus games. What a blast. There's nothing like a good limit game.

Major highlight of the night for me was catching lifetime royal flush #5 in 6-card drawmaha (TsJs in the hole vs QsKsAs on the board, freerolled someone who had a bare straight). Also played "super SOHE" (SOHE with 4 card / 3 card split, 3-card hand plays according to super hold'em rules) and "Route 66" (Drawmaha played with 6 hole cards and a board that runs out 3-2-1 instead of the usual 3-1-1) for the first time. We played several orbits of both, and they were great action games.

I played for a total of 13 hours 35 minutes before I had to call it a night, and there was still a full table when I left. Good stuff.

Sounds like a fun time. It's fun at times to get back to the roots of home poker with a classic dealer's choice game.

The first tournament of the new series I organized was this past Saturday. I managed to pull out the win after having to grind back a couple of times (fairly early lost most of my stack to a flowed baby set vs my over pair--amusingly to the guy who I ended up heads up with--and chasing a combo draw laster in the tournament).

On the final hand, I pulled a Hachem. 5/7 in my hand, and the flop was 6/4/3 rainbow. I checked, he shoved, and I snap called (he had top pair).

It's good to start out the series with the first win since I've now made back my initial investment and only have to worry about the buy-ins for the monthly tournaments themselves now.

There were a couple of people at this one with whom I'd not really played before as well as a couple of friends with whom I hadn't gotten to play for a while. I'm looking forward to the next one as we'll be playing at PokERstyle's new place on his new table. Poor guy missed the memo on why racetracks were bad, though. ;-)

There is a 2+2 wide beginner/new player game of Werewolf being held in the POG sub forum. Very fun forum based strategy/deception game that is not time consuming and can be played at your own pace.

Check out the signup thread for rules/instructions and to signup if interested.

Hey guys, just checking in after a while. Playing regular 4/8 THORSE and 10/20 HO. Added on to the custom set so now I've got a full ten racks of $5s that get in play at the 10/20 game.

What's going on around home pokers land?

Not much on my end. Outside of a six tournament series PokERstyle and I have been running, I've been playing very little. It's to the point I'm giving serious consideration to selling my table and chips. However, I also acknowledge part of that is due to run bad and frustration over the past few months. So I'm likely going to restart my cash game in April and see how that goes.

The charity tournament group I used to deal for (they went from cash on hand payment for the dealers to W-2 and trying to legitimize something that's grey market at best in Georgia, so I bowed out since I have Federal Security clearances for my real job) moved to running their Sunday tournaments about 5 minutes from my house. So I've been going out to play Satellites and have started rebuilding my BR from those.

In the tournament series, we're down to the last tournament. We're giving away a $1500 WSOP seat and a $1000 WSOP seat to the top two finishers. Right now, the top 6 places are 25 points. So the final tournament is going to be *very* interesting with a lot of meta-factors influencing play.

My FiL decided he wanted his kids, their spouses/SOs, and the grandkids to all come out to Vegas over Spring Break. So he's flying everyone out and covering everything in April. It's only four days for us, but it's the first time I've been out since I went out for the WSOP in 2011. I'm trying to decide where I want to play while I'm out there, although that's going to depend on what the FiL has planned.

I've been playing a pretty awesome amount of home poker lately (on top of the fact that I now have a public poker room within 10 minutes walking distance). Got a weekly game on Wednesdays that has a rather strange structure. It's $0.50/$1 NLHE, but initial max buy-in/rebuy is only $20. Max increases to $40 when there's a $100 stack, and $60 when there's a $200 stack.

I originally thought I would hate playing in such a short-stacked game, but the players are a lot of fun, and it forces me to adjust in ways that aren't necessary in my usual preferred games of 100+ BB. Later in the night, stacks get more reasonably deep, so there's actually a nice variety of play. The host at that game has also gotten me into other games that are a lot of fun and good poker.

Finally, I wrote and published my own book about SOHE. I tried to make a thread here, but it got deleted, so I went to Books and Publications and posted properly within the rules there.

Lack of a Kindle version makes Baby Jebus cry.

;-)

Kindle version will be coming. My background is in print publishing, so I put it together as a print product with the intention of building the ebook from that.

No worries. I just tend to buy most things on kindle now just for ease of carrying them around.

I did share the link to the book with my home poker group since we tend to play SOHE more than occasionally.

Awesome, thank you.

This Kindle version is going to be tougher to make than I thought. Apparently the ebook format doesn't want to respect my suit symbols or much of my formatting, line breaks, page breaks, etc. I'll have to go through and make a whole new file.

I don't post on the forum very much but I figured I'd try to more often.
The first half of 2016 was very kind to my poker bankroll but the second half did not roll with the momentum. I've been a consistent winner in my weekly cash game where we play either $1/1 or $1/2. The problem began with a Vegas trip in June in which I did not play my best and got hit with some bad run of cards. Also didn't do very well in my occasional trips to Harrah's Cherokee. Very inconsistent due to my inability to stay disciplined during casino trips. I'm trying to learn from that and I hope this April's Cherokee run for the WSOP-C goes better.

As for 2017, I essentially restarted my bankroll for the first time in over 6 years of playing. Super frustrating to have to dip into the bank account for a buy in but, again, I'll learn from it. I had five straight winning sessions in my weekly game before having two bad sessions in the last two weeks. I'm sure I'll get back on track this week.

I'm co-hosting the WSOP tournament series that MariettaBull created. Like he said, this last tournament is going to be nuts. I'm currently in first but the top 6 players have a chance, which makes it much more fun. I've won 2 of the 5 tourneys with early exits in 2 others due to three and two outers getting there. Didn't play or run very well last month when I finished 5th or 6th. I do have plans to visit Vegas this year, with out without winning the series. I hope to do better this time around when I hit up the cash games. Oh and MariettaBull, definitely make sure to hit up Aria for poker. Best room I visited in my two previous trips to Vegas.


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I've noticed a general downswing in participation here in the last year or so, so it's not just you.

And the Aria is on my list of places to check out. I'm also very tempted to go out to the Orleans simply for the spread of games they have. It'll likely be my only option for playing Omaha at a level that won't make my BR cringe.

So, MariettaBull and I just wrapped up our WSOP series a short while ago and I'm still on a high from it. I ended up finishing first overall and MariettaBull finished 2nd overall to lock up the Vegas WSOP prizes. We agreed to split the Buy in amounts so that we can both play the same Event and travel/room together.
Right now, we're eyeing the $1500 Monster Stack(Event #47) towards the end of June. This would be my first bracelet event at the WSOP and I'm pumped. I won't have unrealistic expectations because of the nature and high variance of tournaments BUT I do plan on shipping the whole thing for >$1 million just kidding.
I went into this last SnG thinking I was going to play super snug so that I can lock up the top spot. That was the case until I busted a guy with 99 on a A109 board when he had AK. Once I built up a stack, I became my usual aggressive self and managed to keep building. My only thorn in my side tonight was MariettaBull himself. I told him that it was easily the best I've ever seen him play, hands down. He completely owned me, it seemed like every time we got involved in a hand. I give him credit and he deserved to win tonight(I finished 3rd). It was a great series that he put together and I'm looking forward to Vegas.

Now it's time to get some sleep so I can take the little one to see Beauty & the Beast in the morning .


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As PokERstyle said, we finished up last night with me booking a win to lock up 2nd place overall (5 points behind him). As I noted before with things being wide open going into it, we actually realized when we got three handed that if I went out 3rd and the other guy finished first, he and I would have to play a head's up SNG as a tie breaker as we'd have the same number of points, both have one win, and that was the only option we could come up with for the tie breaker.

And since PokERstyle didn't mention, I will. He put one of the cruelest bad beats on someone last night that I'd seen in a while. We were down to effectively four handed (the 5th hand was someone who paid their BI hoping they could make it before their stack blinded away), and ER raised pre-flop with 10/4, getting called by A/K. The Flop was K/6/7 (2 spades). He shoved on the shorter stack who called after about a 10s tank. The other player was also dealing, so he burned and turned, putting a 3 on the corner and giving ER a gut shot.

Now, this other player is famous in our games for taking the worst beats. If there is a way for him to get it in good and someone to suck out on him, it happens--usually on the river. Before dealing the river, he actually paused as a number of us were looking at the board realizing what he was about to do himself. After the pause, he dealt the murderous 5 to give PokERstyle the straight.

Let's also note that this was after earlier in the night he'd flopped middle set against Top and Bottom pair and ended up losing boat over boat on the river.

It was a fun series and pretty much everyone was enthusiastic to another one at a later date. If we do, we'll likely look at making some small changes. We'll likely make a rule saying empty stakes get pulled after the 2nd break regardless going forward. We'll also look at solidifying the tie breakers so we don't have to make something up on the fly again.

So here's to PokERstyle and me running well in the Monster Stack, chopping heads up, and playing for the bracelet.

Been seeing a lot of strat threads ITF lately. I think they'd really go better in the LLSNL forum, unless the fact that they took place in a home game really changes the strategy considerations a lot (non-standard rules, or some such).

Out of curiosity, are any of the Home Poker crew making the pilgrimage out for the WSOP this year?

I'll be out there for the $1500 Monster Stack along with PokERstyle.

Not this year. Talking of a possible return in 2018.

Going for the main event. 1st timer

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Standing in the Pavilion Room waiting for my 1B start in the Monster Stack.

Decent enough trip out. I busted the Monster Stack four hands before bagging on day one. I made the final table of the Big O tournament at the Nugget. Won a solid session of PLO at Harrah's and busted close to the money in yesterday's 2 PM deep stack.

Lesson learned? I need to focus more on Omaha because I tend to weather the suck outs more in it than I do in NLHE.

So the trip to Vegas was a success, for the most part.

I played #47 Monster Stack with MariettaBull and loved the whole experience. The structure was great. The atmosphere was amazing(first WSOP event). The staff was top notch. I ended up playing and running well enough to finish into Day 3 and bust 183/6717 for a decent $6202 payday. Not bad considering I freerolled the buy in.

The last two levels of Day 2 saw my stack go from its peak of 455k down to 289k to end the night. Combination of being card dead and bad timing when trying to steal blinds/antes. That put me in the bottom third of the Day 3 returning 234 players.

On Day 3 my initial table broke after five hands and got moved to the big stack table. Tournament chip leader(at the time) Scott Baumstein was directly to my right and Joe Mckeehen was two to my left. No one else had less than 500k at that table so I was obviously just picking my spot to jam it in. That spot was out of the small blind when the button raised and I jammed K10o. He called and flips over Q10o. Standard play by both of us IMO. Great spot to double up until the Q came on the flop and another Q on the turn to seal it. Still had a blast and don't regret many plays that I made. Look forward to making it out to an event next year.

After playing 12 hours two straight days and two hours into Day 3, I was exhausted and tired of NLHE. MariettaBull and I found a $1/1 PLO cash game running at Harrah's. As he mentioned, he did very well there while I finished barely up after about two hours of play.

We did mention that we wanted to check out the Wynn so we headed over there. Wynn was super nice and elegant but the $1/3 game I sat in was boring and full of nits. I played out two hours when I played 99 on a 229Q5 board. All the money went all in on the river and the preflop raiser had 22 for flopped quads . Dusted off my $300 buy in and went back to Harrah's for more PLO. That game broke and I saw the Flamingo next door was running the same game so I played until the morning and ended up making most of my Wynn losses back.

The last night there, Wed, we played the 2pm Daily Deepstack, in which I busted shortly after break. Hated that structure after playing #47. Played some $1/3 NLHE at the Rio while Clint finished up the DeepStack. Ate dinner and I went back to the Flamingo for some more PLO action. Ran the roller coaster there until I got hot later in the session where I almost doubled my buy ins(two bullets).

Again, great first WSOP experience and I hope I'm able to play an event next year. Maybe I'll get lucky enough to win another entry through MariettaBull's series.


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anybody in newyork city area have live poker games? PM me