You guys are both right, now shake or chest-bump it out or whatever.

i would like to post a hand here but keep forgetting the particulars about hands while playing live.

how you do you all keep track of live hands to accurately post them in the forums ??

so mike l. tells me that even though i do ok at 100/200 shorthanded live limit that id get annilihated at 10/20 6-max online (which is where i was planning to start off online). Is this really true?

That's nice of him.

Online lhe is pretty soft till 30/60. Its harder on stars than tilt which is harder than other sites. That's my experience. I don't really know how you (spinoli) play but if you put a gun to my head id bet your were a solid winner at 10/20...

Chain Reaction

Usually it's me who is the unfortunate victim of the chain reaction. Some fish goes on tilt from a previous pot, then he decides to steam raise the next hand and go bonkers against whoever is around -- and it's me -- and somehow get there and suck out. This makes him feel better, and I'm the one with the fewest chips as the dust settles.

Yesterday at Commerce somehow I was the one to make the fish steam, and the poor bastard to my right paid the ultimate price. This was one of the funnier chain reactions I've seen, too.

It started out innocently enough. A bad player limped in, and villain -- who is a not-terrible Asian LAG but prone to steaming -- raised from the button. The SB cold-called, and I called from the BB with 54s. The flop came K53r. Checked to villain who c-bet, and the SB folded. I elected to c/r and get it HU with a guy who sure didn't seem like he had anything. The limper folded. Then the button took his shuffling chips off his cards and I thought he was going to muck. But oops -- he 3-bet.

I called and sighed. The turn was an ace, which gave me just enough outs to make an ambitious but profitable c/c to see if I could hit a 2 or a 5. The 4 was potentially an out as well, though the stutter-step villain made when he bet the turn made me think he was Hollywooding with AK. Unfortunately the river paired the K. I checked, intending to quickly muck if he breathed on the pot, but he checked behind. I had to turn my hand face up. He laughed and shook his head. Then threw his hand away.

The very next hand, there's an early position raiser. Someone cold-calls in the hijack, and villain 3-bets the cutoff. The button cold-caps it. I look down at ATo in the SB and fold to watch the trainwreck that's about to happen. BB calls the cap cold. They take the flop 5 ways for 20 bets.

Flop comes K65r. BB donks out. EP calls, villain calls, and button raises. All three call.

Turn 7. Checked to button who bets, BB calls, villain calls.

River 4. BB checks, villain wakes up and bets, button laughs and calls, BB folds. Villain shows the T8o, and the poor bastard on the button tosses his KK face up into the muck.

As he's stacking the enormous pot, villain looks at me and says "thank you!" He goes on to talk about how steamed he was from misplaying his pocket pair against me (meaning he had to have had 22 or 44 in that hand) that he decided to just gamble on this one. Button was not amused.

i have no idea about the particular question, but i disagree that online 10/20 is soft. if you put in effort game selecting you could find tables where 2 of the six players are bad, but even this "bad" is not like a live fish bad. in general you are trying to exploit TAGs of the too-staightforward variety or LAGs of the make-too-many-bad-bluffs variety. in either case, people who, despite their mistakes, still basically know how to play.

If 10/20 6max is "soft," you are one of the best players around.

This I agree with.

A table or 2 can be soft if you table select well, but if you say you are going to 6 table it 6 hours a day, it would take an exceptional player to be a winner before rakeback.

soft is an overstatement probably and i haven't played that limit seriously in a year so i don't really know what i am talking about... i guess i should have said reasonably beatable or something and yea i would think spinoli could beat it for some normalish/nontrivial amount.

fwiw i think 6+ tabling lhe is ******ed at any limit unless you are a very shallow thinker with excellent mouse/AHK skills so you aren't giving up much as you add the last couple tables.

Apparently I run good at charity. The event I went to on Saturday, raising money for Japanese earthquake relief efforts, had 11 separate raffles for all-expense paid dinner dates with 11 beautiful women. They sold somewhere around 300 tickets, of which I held 15. I won three separate dates, one with someone I've already been seeing off and on for a year.

Sick brag!

Playing too much poker? Saw this license plate on the way in to work:

IJJKJK

and my first thought was, "Yeah, you've got a full house, what's not to love"

2/4 games much touger than 20 live....

Probably the BBJ hand they hit to buy the car.

I crush 100 live, I beat the games bigger than that in the small samples I have. ZERO chance I can beat 10 online.

She's also Armenian, so she greatly appreciated being the longshot scoop.

I'm pretty sure I don't even get this joke and it made me laugh.

Gentlemen, start your write-offs

http://www.lvrj.com/business/profess...117971244.html

i need some help regarding tipping. this year so far, i am making $43/hr playing live. I just read an article by mike caro where he said that you could tip the dealer when they start their shift (~$3). If I did that, it would be about 14% of my hourly. Is that too much ?? too little ?? (14% seems a lot to me) I have no idea what is right.

I would appreciate any insight from you all since you all make your living playing and know way more about the above than I do.

Thanks

I've never done it, but giving a dealer $1 per down seems fine to me. It's not standard, though.

what exactly is "per down" ?

A "down" is the dealer's shift in the box at your table.

Some dealers work 30-minute downs, some 40-minute downs. Then they move to another table.

I think if you tipped $3 per down, you'd be overtipping. For a 30-minute down, that would mean you'd tip $6/hr. If you tip $1/pot (which I do), that means you expect to win at least 6 pots/hr. I don't run that good.

tyvm. so, do you tip larger if the pot is large ??

i used poker journal to record my live session last night for the 1st time and was sickened by how much of my profit i left at the casino in tips, food and drinks.

No, I don't. But do whatever you want. There shouldn't be a standard for tipping; it's personal preference. I know people who never tip, people who sometimes tip, and people who tip a whole bunch. Go with your heart.

If you feel bad not tipping but you can't afford the expense of it, then playing poker might not be for you. But if you're making $43/hr playing live, and that's taking tips into account, it seems like you're just fine.

The last thing you need to worry about is how your own tipping policy looks to other people.