Tuesday, November 29, 2005

natural habitat...

It's been a long time since i've played poker in a casino. Almost forgot what it felt like. Well, this past saturday I found myself in a casino, playing tournament poker, no less! wow. How things have progressed.

61 players entered the Casino Filipino Tagaytay tourney. Nice casino, btw...

20K + 3K buy, 1.2 million guaranteed. Biggest pot on Philippine Shores for a Hold 'Em shindig. Could it get any better?

Yep.

We were joined by a lot of familiar faces: Big W., Dirty Ice Cream, the Siberian Express, the Piranha, to name just a few. Believe me, the regular crew was well represented.

We were also joined by a batch o' poker playin' dudes from round the world, including Mr. Isaac Galazan, winner of WSOP 2005's Event #6 (Short-handed NLHE). Yup, we had a monster flashin' the WSOP bling for all to see.

Frickin' rough field.

As expected, I busted.

But Barb, the sole contributor to my family's coffers, managed a fourth place finish (only woman at the final table) and took home 122K!!!!

And...doc butch, mr. "I play every game", showed us all how it was done by grinding out a 2nd place finish and 250+K.

Congrats to all the ITMers and especially to Robert Karian, who took down the win and 300K. All the way from Germany.

Daddy might just get that new pair of shoes.

GJ, CF Tagaytay, Great job to the finishers.

And on a final, unrelated note, this last line is a shoutout to the homies who took one for the crew...you know what i'm talkin 'bout...


Peace...

Thursday, November 24, 2005


Dear Teacher

Please excuse nick for not having blogged for the last 983945342 days. Someone (probably drunk at the time) decided that he'd do well as a poker analyst for the Ray Ban Celebrity Poker Challenge, shot over the last few days at the Airport Casino Filipino. Here's proof. hahahhaha

Sincerely,

nick's mom Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Educatin' the Fish...

To be euphemistic, the advent of poker's brought a buncha new faces - and fresh bankrolls - to our game. Many are truly new (say,less than 500 money hands and mostly in home games with buddies at that. What does that mean? Fresh, eager money available to some of you sharky bastards out there - and you know who you are. The particularities of Manila trendsetting and trend-getting assure as that we'll often be faced with moneyed, virtually clueless players crossing over from other, more mature forms of gambling, such as baccarat, pusoy, etc.

What tends to happen? Rip-roarin' games with little regard for the realities of poker, and, often, very little regard for money.

Easy money for you right? Well - sure, in the long run. But y'all know what tends to happen. We get schooled. We sit and play and get sucked out on by the 8th guy in the hand. And it'll happen over and over till things cool, down.

What i tend to see is the truly well-meaning, knowledgeable type start helping those they perceive to be in need of assistance. "No, you don't wanna call with that...", "Why didn't you raise that KK"?

Or the truly pissed off: "What! You called me with that shit!?!?!"

Education's the sole responsibility of the player. And y'all know as well as I that there's no shortage of learning opportunities in print, the Internet, coaches, friends. I say don't educate for free. If the guy on your left insists on drawing to that 2 outer, let him. Be silent. Find out where he plays regularly and get a seat in that game.

If you wanna teach, get paid a consulting fee.

If you're not gettin' paid a fee, take 'em to school at the felt.

Get paid either way.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Decisions on auto-pilot...

There are many factors influencing our long-term success (or failure) at this game. Alertness/fatigue, stakes/limits vis-a-vis bankroll, starting hand selection, table image/playing style, game selection, etc. But at the end of the day, for me anyway, the bedrock of our destiny is the way in which we make decisions, hand after hand.

Whether you're rockin' a ring game our toughin' out the early levels of a multi-table tourney, you are forever put to the decision-making test. I know this sounds like yet another blatant statement about the blatantly obvious by nickg, but lets dig a little here.

I watch a lot of people auto-pilot their decisions. Do I raise here, call here, bet here, bet aggressively at such-and-such a board? Taken individually, they look like disparate actions born of decisions unrelated to the previous decision. Taken in totality, and this requires many hours playing and observing an opponent, you'll see patterns emerge. Some will always bet a checked flush board. Some will always call with a 9-outer even without the correct pot odds to do so. When we bang up against those folks, we can rest assured that we can, over time, not only profit from those on auto-pilot but also force them to take certain actions.

I know of a fine player who has espoused a personal theory about starting hand selection in Hold 'Em. It kinda' goes like this: if the previous 3 or 4 boards or flops contained premium cards, giving a premium hand a win, he will play garbage, sometimes aggressively, on a succeeding hand based on the belief that the board is likely to deliver rags. That's a decision-making tool that may work for him, but it ain't based on math. The shuffle, shuffle, strip, shuffle, cut the dealer engages in before every hand tells us that every card has the same probability of emerging as any other card (this by the way is why it is a pure waste of time to keep a sequence sheet in baccarat). Thus this theory might be a little closer to superstition than science. Faced with such a player, it might be profitable to call down to fifth street with ace-high when you see him firing at the 6th big-card flop in a row.

I'm not saying never play your 5-2o, do so by all means. But it might not be that great an idea to play it based on the theory described above.

Yes, there are pat decisions, such as raising rockets UTG, that will be sure money makers over time. But there are so damn many situations in a hand, a game, a week, a month, a lifetime that require attention in that moment and in that moment only.

So what's the point (I love the fact that I'm my own editor and can ramble and still get published lol)? The point is, the hard work of poker is being able to make decisions in the moment more than basing decisions on a playbook. This is how i understand the term, "mixing up your game". Auto-pilot may get you there, but you'll be going at the same speed and altitude the entire way. There won't be much long-term variety in your game and your opponents will suss you out.

In other words, mix it up, deliberately, and on full alert.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

JG Poker Tourney Announcement

The first-ever JG Poker Tour Dead Money Bounty
Tournament

Date: November 19, 2005

Venue: Penthouse. Legrand Condominium. Valero St.,
Makati City.

Game: No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em - No Rebuys

Maximum Players: 70

Registration time: 230pm

First Deal: 330pm

Places Paid: no. of tables plus two

Payouts: Guaranteed 45% of the pot for the 1st, 20%
for the 2nd, all other places to be announced during
the tourney

Buy-in: 1,200 + 300 + 100 (If you're wondering what
the 50 is for, we'll explain later).

Finally, a tournament hosted by the members of the
sole poker group that is proud to admit that all its
members are dead money. In an embarrassing display of
pure bravado, JG poker tour is inviting the best
players in town to pit their skills against their own
somewhat mediocre poker-playing abilities.

In this amazingly lopsided tournament that can
possibly seat 70 contenders, manila’s greatest poker
players will play against themselves (and JG Poker
Tour’s somewhat confident beginners) where people will
eliminated one by one until only a sole survivor
remains to claim victory.


Bounty Hunter Twist

Two players will be chosen randomly and he/she will
have a bounty on his/her head.
The bounty hunters who take the two players out will
half the total bounty..
BUT... if the person with a bounty is able to make it
to the final 2 tables, he/she gets the winnings to
herself.

Pre-register today and avoid the pains of a waitlist.
Contact Jardine at 0918-9072729 or check out our
friendster site by searching user:
jgpokertour@yahoo.com

Monday, November 07, 2005

Poker a la carte...

Just took stock of the local poker sked going to the end of this banner year. Enough to make one's head spin. To give you a dose:

1. Halo tourneys...twice a month
2. Tagaytay Casino Filipino P1.2 million guaranteed (shootout) Nov. 26 (buy-in 20,000+3000)
3. JG tourney scheduled for Nov. 19
4. A55 (planned) satellite to tagaytay tourney Nov. 20 (announcement soon)
5. Airport Casino Filipino 150-seater Dec. 17

I've heard rumblings of a bar tour, celeb tourneys, and of course, the Friday 500.

Oohhweee...

Anyway, regarding the Tagaytay tourney. It'll be held at Casino Filipino Tagaytay on the 26th. The buy-in's a little steep, so we as a community ought to commit to holding satellites into that one. It's a shootout, max 100 players, 500K guaranteed 1st prize.

We're planning a satellite for Sunday the 20th, and hope to ship 3 lucky schmucks to that tourney. Announcement within 24hrs. My good friend John S. is running a satellite at his home on the 11th. Jump in guys, let's send some friends to the big game.

Of course, the 17th at the Airport Casino is gonna be managed by yours truly and crew, so no excuses for not playing that one heheh.

Get in touch with me if you need details on any of these.

Fapa Represented

GG and thanks to the guys from FAPA, the Boys in Blue. They bested the crew from A55 in the first (I think) heads-up pokuh rumble. Structure, Heads-Up Limit Tourney, race to 5 victories. Things got pretty heated early when the first two matches produced a quick tie. Barb from A55 bested Nik T. of FAPA, while Kix beat Skip. 1-1.

Next matches: Neil, "Dirty Ice Cream" A. took out Ricky B...Ace of A55 lost to JP, "The Pope of El Pueblo". 2-2.

So woweee..here we go...Nickg stunned the bookies by actually winning against Joel of FAPA, while the Pitboss and Denis the "barbecue pimp" played a marathon match, with big Denis emerging victorious. 3-3.

JJ The Duke of A55 and Carlo, "shorty" P. went at it for match point.

FAPA win.

Kix faced Ace in the deciding match. A helluva fine pressure game from FAPA's closer gave them the win. 5-3.

GREAT WIN GUYS.

Oh...and manang's barbecue rocks...

Rematch?

Thursday, November 03, 2005

The Man in the Mirror

I recently reviewed my performance at the felt after a run of losses i had to book this past month. Was I breaking down in certain places? Playing the wrong folks? Playing tired? Stakes problems? Too much sanmig light? I set off to find out...

So i started with the old spreadsheet. From early July on, live play has dominated my life. Haven't played online in ages. So spreadsheet says: total ROI is at 15% (well, 14 and change) from a lofty 56 or so percent a few months ago. Not too shabby - and it in fact takes me down to where I sat prior to playing regularly on these here shores. So not too bad there yet...

I've played pretty well nightly, with a ring session to tourney ratio of about 5-1 in the last few months. ring game performance has outstripped single and multi performance as expected, but ring and tourney performance have dived deeply in the last 45 days. With an almost-daily game schedule, both of these nosediving precipitously in a period long enough to matter is cause for concern.

So I started reviewing some key hands that stick in my memory (and often my craw) from that last period. Because I'm great a being dishonest to myself, I swore up and down that I played each hand correctly, under those particular circumstances.

Then I paused and thought about some of those hands again. Then it dawned on me that I've been playing like a weakling in many circumstances. Backing off pots that were likely mine when some player who had me read decided to move on me. Or completely ignoring various possibilities open to me based on my position and table image. Yes, girls and boys, I had to admit to myself that my decision-making and creative faculties of late have deteriorated.

And I looked up my bar tabs in that time period. Ahem, the beer aint' helpin' either.

So what did i do? sat last night at a small stakes 20/40 NLHE ring. Drank 1 beer every hour as opposed to 1 every 20 minutes - haha, still can't buck the temptation; sanmig light is just that good. Stayed alert. Assumed i had to work for every chip i accumulated. I had forgotten that poker is labor and demands full attention. I had been treating it like a pastime.

And I stopped backing off to some of those nasty "I know how to pick nick off here" playuhs.

Booked a win. A single, small win, but a win nonetheless, and win under circumstances in which my mind was working full time, and i was more acutely aware of the table environment then in the recent past. It'll be a while before the old confidence is back, but the next time you see me with a rack, you'll know i'm not on auto-pilot. I'll be workin' baby.