Kitchen Games Poker

Two nights ago, I got a chance to go to a kitchen game poker night that a coworker was putting on. The whole idea for the night was to play dealer's choice poker from the set of crazy games that people have come up with over the years. We weren't allowed to choose the casino standbys of hold'em, omaha, or 7 card stud. Instead, we played a series of games like Chicago, 727, Midnight Baseball, Mexican Sweat, etc. It's been a long time since I've played games like this. I've been playing Texas Hold'em pretty seriously for a couple of years, so it's kind of interesting to revisit some of these silly games to see if there is anything of interest. We played quite a few games, actually, that I'd like to note down for future reference because they were all quite fun. So here's the rules for some fun kitchen games that have a little depth to them.

• 727: Players get two cards down, and one up. The aim of the game is to be the closest to the total of 7 or 27. Face cards count either ten points or half a point. An ace counts either 1 point or eleven. On each round, players are asked one at a time if they want one more card added face up to their hand, followed by a round of betting. If all players pass on a card, then the game is over, but otherwise another round is dealt. The game can last quite a few rounds! After the last round, players then simultaneously indicate whether they are attempting to win by being closest to 7, by being closest to 27, or to both. Half the pot is awarded to the closest to 7 (who indicated they were trying to win that side), and half is awarded to the the closest to 27 (who indicated they were trying to win that side). To win both, the players who indicated so have to be closest on both sides.
• Auction: Each player is dealt two down cards. Then a card is turned up in the middle of the table for each player in the hand. Players then make a blind bid. The person who bids the most chooses the card they want. The next highest bid chooses the next card and so on. When all the cards are gone, another set of cards is dealt in the middle. This is repeated until all the players have 7 cards each. A round of betting happens after that. The person with the best high hand takes half the pot and the person with the best low hand takes the other half.
• Ten Card Regrets: There are 5 rounds to this game. The object of the game is to partition 10 cards into two 5 card poker hands: one that is a low hand and one that is a high hand. On each round, players get two cards and must decide whether to put them on the left side to be part of the low hand, or on the right side to be part of the high hand. At the end, the person with the best high hand takes half the pot and the person with the best low hand takes half the pot.
• Tic-Tac-Toe Hold'em/Omaha: Players are dealt two or four cards depending if they are playing the hold'em or omaha variant of the game. The key difference is the community cards are dealt in a 3x3 grid of cards. First, the flop is the four cards that form the sides of the grid. The turn is the four corner cards, and the river is the middle card of the grid. Players then make the best poker hand they can from the cards in their hand and any of 8 sets of three cards from the board. These sets are the three horizontal lines, three vertical lines, and the two diagonals. You can play Hold'em, Omaha High, or Omaha High Low.

These were my favourites from the night. Do you have any fun kitchen games I can deal next time?

Heraldk

Dublin Poker Report

I recently got back from Dublin for a job interview. For a full trip report visit minoragenda.com ... but this post will summarize my experience at a Dublin casino for some poker. On Saturday night, Aaron and Darse were thinking about going to play some poker so Diane graciously let me join them instead of returning to the hotel right away to sleep. So we ventured to the Dublin Sporting Emporium to play some 1/2 Pot Limit Hold'em.

The first stage in the process was to get a membership to the club which involved filling out a form and paying a 20 euro membership fee. To sweeten the deal a little (and encourage you to get some money into play), they gave each of us a 10 euro action chip to use at the tables. Once the process was over, we were admitted into the place. It had quite a classy feel, which was pretty cool. My experience at most casinos has been a feeling of cheap thrills, so it was pretty welcome to be in a place that didn't make me feel that way. Maybe it was the whole membership process that helped it out, or maybe that casinos in Europe are just classier places?

Anyways, Darse and I had our play chips to attempt to convert into real money. So we went to the roulette table and each put a bet on a colour. I won my bet and let the action chip ride another two spins before losing it. So between us, Darse and I broke even at converting the action chips to real money. Woohoo!

The three of us went up a floor to the poker room where there was one 1/2 pot limit hold'em game going. Only two seats were open, so we played odds and evens to see who would get the first two seats. Darse was the odd man out, so Aaron and I bought in and sat down at two adjacent seats at the table. I started with 100 euros, but would later top up my chips for another 50 euros before I started to win.

Early on I didn't get any hands which left me some time to watch how other players were doing. I've never really played pot limit before, although it's not all that different from how I want to play no limit anyways. I picked out that most of the players really didn't know how to play very well, although their play varied a little bit.

Apart from limping every so often or calling small raises with good pot odds from the button or the blinds, I didn't play very many hands for the first several orbits. After a little while, Darse joined in with us and sat next to Aaron so there were three of us sitting in a row with Aaron on my left, and Darse on his left. Not long after that, I got my first hand: pocket twos! I made a raise and got three callers and flopped a set! Unfortunately, no one called my flop bet but it was good to win a pot.

The very next hand I picked up pocket eights and made an UTG raise once again getting many callers. The flop came A22. I made a continuation bet and got just one caller: a woman that seemed to be pretty solid. I checked the turn and folded to her pot sized bet. Well, I'm one for two now.

I continued to play pretty tight, although that was more of a function of the cards I was getting. A few hands later though I picked up aces and once again put in a raise. I got called by just a couple players. This time though I got some action from the guy to Darse's left. He called my flop bet, but folded to my turn bet.

An orbit or two passes and I pick up aces again. Again I raise preflop, and the same guy who gave me action last time calls along with a few other players. The flop was all undercards to my aces and not particularly connected. I bet the flop, but this time I get raised by the same guy. At this point that wasn't much more to me so I put the rest of my chips in - a raise of only 40 euro more into a pot totalling over 200 euros. He tanks for awhile before deciding to fold. Chalk it up to aces. I like aces.

We played on for a little while longer, and it seemed to me this guy was starting to take a dislike to me. There was a couple times where he squeezed me out of the pot - I would've liked to play against him, but I didn't really feel like trying to do battle with my KJ-suited to his squeeze raise. A little more I think and I would've been able to play.

My next big hand was AK - and again my preflop raise was called by the same guy. I flopped top pair of kings on a KQx board. This time the guy raises me allin - so I call and after showing down my AK, he mucks his cards. I probably took close to 200 euro just from that guy alone!

I had one last big hand where I had QQ and got some action. I don't remember the details, but I distinctly remember tossing three 25 euro black chips into the pot and getting folds. That was a pretty good sized pot to take down.

All told, I ended up over 240 euros to the good, which is officially my first winning session in any casino session I've ever played in (poker or otherwise) that wasn't a tournament. Admittedly, I've only ever played cash poker games in the casino twice before. Once at foxwoods when I went to Boston and New York a couple years ago, and once when my friend Mike stopped by and we played at the casino closest to my house. So really, I haven't had many data points - but if felt good to be up and up a good amount! It's pretty intimidating to play live even though I know a lot about poker these days after playing so much online. So it's good to get a victory under my belt.

All told, I think the trip to Dublin turned out to make me money instead of cost anything. The company paid for the flights and the hotel and most of the meals, and we'll soon be settling up the cab fares. So aside from some small expenses, I didn't really spend any money, but made a decent profit at the casino. Sweet deal!

I hope to hear back from pocket kings about the interview within the next week. I'll let people know what the result is as soon as I know!

Heraldk

A Note on Gambling

I find it quite interesting noting the reactions of various people to gambling. As you probably know by now, I play a "little bit" of online poker, and have once in awhile been known to throw away some money playing blackjack or craps at a casino. I guess part of it is that my Dad's side of the family (which happens to be Chinese) is a group that loves to gamble. The other part of it is my love for any sort of game that involves some thought. There definitely is a bit of a thrill when you win at a gambling game. The more money at stake, the bigger the thrill when you win. I experienced this particular phenomena when I managed to get in on Mansion's $1000 free bet on the Pittsburgh Steelers at the start of last year's NFL football season. My friend Mike and I sat in front of the TV glued to it until the last play of the game and we were cheering like crazy throughout the game. When there's a fair amount of money on the line, it's exciting and fun.

So it's pretty easy to see how the gambling thing can be a problem. Fortunately for me, I know enough about the math behind the games that I know who has the edge most of the time. I would never slap down a $1K bet without first making sure that I was a) sure that my edge was there, and b) sure that I was okay with losing that money if worst came to worse.

So I don't really truly gamble in the same way that so many people get themselves in trouble do. I mostly play poker where I have definitely shown that I have an edge for the limits that I play. The couple of times I've done other gambling, I've either known I had an edge (like that $1K free bet at mansion where the edge was huge since it was free), or I've been willing to throw away $60 playing blackjack or craps for a couple hours.

Playing poker so much though has changed my outlook on a lot of things. One thing that is definitely different is my outlook on money is a little different. Once you've played poker for awhile, the face value of the currency you're playing with changes. It kind of loses its meaning in the sense that $100 is just a stack of chips you could lose or win at any given moment. It's kind of weird, but being able to sit down for a few hours and win a couple hundred dollars playing $100NL with .5/1 blinds makes it possible for me to add to my yearly revenue by a significant amount. It's only really bounded by the amount of time I have to play (which these days isn't that much, but I still get in a few sessions most weeks).

I kind of think that that effect of poker on my life has been a bit negative. It's hard to regain a respect for how much money is worth and how hard it is for most people to earn it after you've played online poker seriously for as long as I have (and I haven't really been playing that long really). The other negative aspect that is less severe for me is a bit of a crisis of conscience when you realize that the money you're winning is being taken from the wallets of people who may not have the self control to realize that they've lost next month's rent cheque. I deal with that thought with the following argument: "Will those players stop playing if I don't play? No. Well then I'm not changing anything by playing and being the one to take that money from them". Think that's faulty reasoning? Let me know. I'm curious about this issue. Without a doubt, it is a parasitic action, but I'm not sure what I can do about the other person's problem - particularly if they are an unknown person I'm facing through online poker (which is how I play the bulk of the time).

So there's some negative effects of playing poker, but there's a lot of reasons that I continue to play. The financial results certainly don't hurt, but it's not just that. I enjoy the competition. Playing these games lets me battle wits with other players and it can keep me sharp. When I'm playing my best, I'm seeing a lot of things happen in front of me and I can tell you a lot of what's going on.

Playing good poker also teaches patience and handling of tough times. The variance in poker is sky-high, and that means that to play well you have to be able to take the tough luck hands without letting them get to you or you'll start playing poorly (on tilt as it were). You need to be able to objectively back away from a particular situation and assess whether you indeed made the appropriate decisions regardless of the outcomes. This is a skill that helps a lot with life.

Poker contains a lot of mathematics, some of it simple, some of it quite a bit more complex. There is a lot you can do with math (despite people who will tell you that poker is primarily a psychological game), and learning to apply math to specific situations in poker is an essential skill to getting good at the game. Likewise, mathematics helps you with situations in life too. To tell you a quick story, my mom was telling me about some advice she heard some people were giving in a "learn what to do before retiring" seminar. The advice was that you should replace all your appliances a year before retiring, with the idea being that these appliances would then not likely need replacing throughout retirement saving a lot of stress. This advice struck me as pretty wrong considering that there was no part of this advice that took into consideration how old the existing appliances were. You might be replacing an appliance that is still working great and has an expected lifetime of 5 or 10 more years - effectively throwing away part of your existing investment in the appliances you currently own. And who's to say the appliances you buy aren't going to fail during your retirement? The proper solution here is to replace appliances that need replacing, and wait until your other appliances require replacing. Meanwhile, the money you didn't spend on new appliances gains interest. I fail to see why this is a worse solution.

My life has been affected drastically because of my time spent playing poker. For the most part, I think it has been for the better. I feel like I am able to keep myself sharper and more able to analyze situations objectively, and the monetary considerations certainly don't hurt.

Heraldk

Vancouver Day 1

I'm in Vancouver! Today is day 1 of several, and I'll be trying to keep up with the blogging over the next few days. We'll have to see how well that works ... My day started really early. I couldn't sleep for some reason so I spent some time working on the man-machine website starting at 5:00 in the morning. My parents came to get me around 7:00 and they dropped me off at the airport with plenty of time to get through security and wait for my flight to board. En route, I picked up a copy of the new harry potter book at the airport bookstore. No lineup!

The flight was pretty painless -- I was on a flight with Maria, Duane, and Neil which was cool. We ended up hanging out for most of the morning and afternoon. For lunch we stopped at a place called the "Bellagio Cafe" ... which I thought was fitting since the Bellagio is only a huge casino in Vegas, and we were here to compete in a poker match!

After lunch we went to go visit the Planetarium, which was pretty neat. I was a little disappointed with most of the displays, but it was a good way to kill some time that's for sure. There was one of the motion simulators though which was pretty fun. We also went to two shows in the planetarium dome itself. Both weren't that great and I found myself drifting off to sleep which wasn't very good. That might have had something to do with my being awake at 5:00! We also attended two live demos. They were pretty neat, but the second was particularly fun because the second potentially good omen was that the presenter gave particular emphasis to the north star ... Polaris. Which just happens to be the name of our bot.

We ran into Nolan, Mike, Josh, and Andrew at the planetarium which was cool. We separated early though since we had been there for a few hours already and we needed to get back (I needed to meetup with Darse whom I am sharing a condo apartment with).

It took a little while to get organized, but finally we confirmed that we'd be going out to dinner with Ali. It was pretty cool -- Ali seems like a pretty smart guy. Phil should have arrived by now, but I haven't had a chance to meet him yet. Dinner was a pretty fancy restaurant called Cin Cin. It was pretty good, but certainly more expensive than I'd eat on a regular basis. I mean, $11.50 for dessert? COME ON! (Arrested Development anyone?)

Tomorrow there will be a press conference with both Ali and Phil. I'll try and get some photos during that to post to the website. Afterwords there'll be a players meeting where we confirm all the rules ... and we get to test all our equipment (again) to make sure everything runs smoothly. The match runs on Monday!!!! That's just 2 sleeps!

Hope everyone is doing well. I'm having fun! Heraldk

Card Dead

Well this has been a busy weekend so I haven't had a chance to talk about my CPT experience yesterday. In a word ... frustrating. The level of play was definitely stronger than at the satellite, which was to be expected. That being said, I didn't feel all that uncomfortable. The trouble was, I just couldn't catch any cards. Fairly early in the tourney, I played KQo in early position, got a single caller from the player to my left. Flop is ten high and pretty dry. I continuation bet and get called. Turn is a queen giving me top pair. I make a pot sized bet and get called. River is a blank, but I'm not too happy with the call so I check intending to call a small bet. He checks behind and shows me ... KK?? Huh. He missed a value bet.

After winning a couple small pots (a raise collects the blinds and a walk in the big blind... weee!), I get dealt 85o in the big blind. There's a min-raise, followed by a couple callers so I call in the big blind getting 7 to 1 immediate pot odds. I flop 88Q. I check, to the aggressive player on my left who bets a small amount. The other players fold and I smooth call. I check the turn (a ten, if I remember correctly) intending to check raise (this was a mistake I think). He checks behind. The river is a deuce, finishing a 3-flush on the board. I make a pot size bet and get raised ... uhoh. I think for awhile, but call and he shows me ... 22. Hrm. I think I may have played that hand badly ...

The dinner break was almost upon us so I limped my way into dinner with 6600 in chips (after starting with 10K). The blinds after the break were going to be 150/300 with 25 antes. Not something to immediately be concerned about, but certainly getting significant for my stack. When I got back from dinner I just couldn't get any hands. The couple of times I picked up hands I didn't like the situation I was in - a raiser from early position seemed to be the rule when I looked at the couple decent hands I saw (and by decent, I mean KQo and QTo). Finally, with my chip stack dwindling to 5500 or so, I got moved from my initial table and got seated at another just in time to get the big blind again (now at 400 chips). A few hands later, I see an open limper, and folds around to me in the cutoff. I decided to push with A9s, hoping to just pick the pot up because I needed to try and reverse my downward trend. I didn't like being so tight as I'd been playing so far, but I didn't really want a lot of action with my shortstack. Anyways, I get called by the open limper who has JJ and I whiff on the flop. *sigh*.

So my day was pretty frustrating. The best hands I saw all day were: 44, ATs, and KQo (twice). Other than that, I certainly remember seeing Q2o, 93o, and 94o a lot more than I cared to. Sometimes, variance sucks.

Still, it was good to be back in the casino playing a big tournament. That was my 3rd big CPT event. Those of you who know me might recall that I finished 6th in the first $500 CPT event I played in. I entirely realize that that first time was a lot of luck combined with a little insight that Darse helped me with. But mostly the whole ride was a huge upswing in variance which is the only reason why I made it so far. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't put in a repeat performance this time. It would've been nice, the top prize at this tourney was $51K. Oh well - there'll be a next time I'm sure!

Heraldk

CPT Satellite

My friend Curtis and I played in a $105+$10 satellite tournament at the Yellowhead casino last night. The satellite was for a $1000+$50 tournament that will run on Saturday, also at the Yellowhead. The tournament started at 4:00, and it didn't take long for the action to go wild. 2 people were knocked out at my table on the very first hand of the tournament when KK and A2s lost to QQ when a queen + flush draw landed on the flop. A few hands later, I managed to double up when my turned nut flush beat the second nut flush. w00t! I managed to get myself into a little trouble after the dinner break. The guy to my left was rather clueless, but got really lucky so he built himself a huge stack. He was willing to call down in pots with 2nd pair ... and I had little respect for him being a good player. However, because he had position on me for most of the time I didn't really feel very good making raises and having him call me. When the table got broken up, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I got to my new table shortstacked... so I needed to make some moves quick. Luckily, I hit a decent selection of face-card quality hands and was able to steal some blinds (the blind structure was super fast, as I kind of expected). I lost one hand against a shortstack who pushed on me with TT when I had AT. Nevertheless, I managed to steal some more blinds with a few all-in bets and then doubled up with AJ over TT when I spiked an ace on the flop.

At this point, everyone was shortstacked, but people continued their tight play style so I was able to make more from blind steals than I paid myself. The 2nd table I was at broke up in a little while and I got moved to a 3rd table. At this point there was less than 40 people left with the top 19 places being seats in the Saturday tourney. I felt rather comfortable at this point - my stack was above average and I continued being able to add to my stack slowly, but surely.

I got moved again, this time to table 1. I think, after thinking about this a bit, that this table was rather an unfair table for a number of reasons. This table never got broken up. The only time people left was when they got knocked out. So chips never left that table. *shrug* - maybe it isn't incredibly unfair, but I'm wondering whether it makes a difference or not.

Anyways, I get to that table as a mid-sized stack. A couple of my pf-raises get called and I'm starting to hurt a little. Then I get these hands: In 2nd position, I pick up AKo. Raise and pick up the sizable blinds. UTG I pick up TT - raise and pick up the blinds again. Then, I'm in the big blind. Guy in 2nd position min-raises and everyone folds to me. I look down at AA (sweet set of 3 hands in a row huh?). I re-raise about half my stack. They guy pushes and I call. Turns out I've got him covered and my AA holds up over his AQo.

At this point, I'm golden. I held almost 90K in chips with the blinds just entering 4K/8K. There was about 23-24 people left in the tournament which meant that a few knockouts at the other tables (where there was a lot of shortstacks) gave me a seat. So I played ultra-conservatively from that point on (I don't think I actually played another hand) and waited out the last few knockouts. So I get to play in the upcoming tourney on Saturday! Woohoo!

My friend Curtis also placed so we'll both be playing for a pretty decently sized pot on Saturday. Hopefully we can repeat our performance from last night and place somewhere deep in the money!

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Info

I've created a new page (accessible from the top right menu, or here) that summarizes how my poker and online casino bonuses have gone over the last couple of years of playing. It is starting to look like a fairly impressive set of numbers, if I do say so myself! The particularly cool thing about these numbers is that my win rate at poker has skyrocketed in the last couple of months since I started playing no limit. No limit has totally been good to me - and I'm very happy to have made the switch (and so is my bottom line!).

Heraldk

Poker, Poker, Poker.

I know, it seems like all I talk about is poker. However, it has once again captured my attention now that I've gotten into no limit. Here's how I did after the quad party poker bonuses: $800 in bonus money. $231 from an above average run at 2/4 shorthanded. $68 from a grind of 1/2 shorthanded. $818 from 50NL! Throw in a couple of bonus prizes and about $50 from a surprise party casino bonus, and I made almost $2000 over the past week and a half or so. Sweeeet. So my cashout hit neteller late Friday night and I had one thing on my mind. You see, I've gotten a little annoyed that my current 19" LCD monitors can't display multiple poker windows without overlap. So, in part because one of my friends was talking to me about buying an LCD, I looked around and saw that dell was selling their 24" monitors at a really good price. Having just made a large profit playing poker, I decided to splurge and buy myself a pair of those beauties. They'll be shipped in the next week or so and I'll have them in my hot little hands really soon! I'm really excited, can you tell?

Since cashing out of party, I've returned to UB to play some poker. It has been a long time since I last played there, but I figured that given my new interest in playing 50NL, and the fact that I still had more than $300 of bonus money sitting there AND that I have rakeback there through PSO, I figured it was high time to try out their NL games.

So far I'm up almost $150. Hope that trend continues!

Herald

Poker Bankroll Building - Casinos!

So for the final catchup post in my poker bankroll building line of posts, this post will summarize my winnings for all my non-poker related bonuses. These numbers are going to look fairly impressive ... and they are, but remember that you can only do deposit bonuses at site once and then that promo is over. Very few of these have reload bonuses as good as their deposit bonuses. I started my casino bonuses at starluck casino, and busted the $100 deposit. That turned me away from online casinos for a while even though I knew they were +EV. Finally, I did the golden palace promo and made a decent amount there. Here's the list of the sites and my various profits:

Starluck casino: deposit $100, withdraw $0 Golden Palace casino: deposit $100, withdraw $290 Planetluck casino: deposit $100, withdraw $200 Intercasino (deposit bonus): deposit $100, withdraw $250 Bet 365 casino: deposit $100, withdraw $306 Victor Chandler casino: deposit $100, withdraw $0 Red Lounge: deposit $94.80, withdraw $274.48 Littlewoods casino: deposit $47.55, withdraw $0 SIA casino: deposit $100, withdraw $0 32 Vegas: deposit $200, withdraw $207 Casino on net: deposit $200, withdraw $655 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $425 21.com: deposit $200, withdraw $200 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $150 Party Gammon bonus: deposit $500, withdraw $600 Best poker casino: deposit $130.38, withdraw $127.57 Mansion sportsbook free bet: deposit $1100, withdraw $2100 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $0 Intercasino (monthly reload): deposit $100, withdraw $275

All told, my profits are: $2387.42 USD

So if I add that to my current poker profits, I'm looking at over $8500 USD worth of profits and prizes plus a couple tournament buyins, one of which I won $3490 CDN!

The best part is I still enjoy doing it, though at the moment my play time has been cut due to playing WoW. Still, its fun and that's where I mean to leave it - in the fun section of my day.

Heraldk

Poker Bankroll Building Part 3

This post is going to be quite a bit more choppy than the previous ones since this is when I stopped getting physical documents and really started utilizing Neteller for maximum bonus clearing power. This is going to be a complete rundown of my bankroll building up to the present day, so it might be a little long. After this, I plan on giving an update every couple of months so that I don't fall behind like this again! So this update will be a little different than the last. I will be talking about just my poker bankroll building leaving the casino bonuses to the next post. I'm going to separate each session based on poker room rather than by dates because otherwise this will be supremely confusing to follow!

Noble Poker

PSO launched an exciting new room with a gigantic bonus (at the time) of 100% match of $500. This room was called Noble poker, and I just happened to have close to that amount in my neteller account so I deposited in April 2005. I would play there over the course of several months. I did very well very early and was able to cash out my initial desposit on June 14, and continue playing there until I had cleared my entire bonus. In the end, I made $897 plus my $60 in PSO points.

Net: $897 + $60 PSO points

Paradise Poker

During my time at Noble I also started the paradise poker promo through PSO. From my $200 deposit, I made another $80 cashing out only a week later. In addition, PSO paid me $60 in PSO points. I rather liked my experience at Paradise, so much later I would attempt a reload bonus there in November 2005. This time, however I would lose $195 ... perhaps because I had grown accustomed to having poker tracker stats of players!

Net: -$115 + $60 PSO points

Party Poker

Party Poker figures into a lot of short play segments partially because they had one of the fastest cashouts available. As a result, I would deposit there for a bonus and then withdraw via cheque to actually aquire my funds. Since then, I have been using neteller cheque withdraws since they are fast and only cost $2. This way, all my cashouts happen from the same place and are logged. The early times caused some confusion in recreating my play history!

Anyways, I played several sessions at party poker having mixed results: June 23/05: $87 profit Oct 6/05: $4 profit Apr 12/06: $150 profit (Party gave free money and I went on a nice run) Jul 13/06: $8 profit (Received a gc for a casino bonus, this was the poker play part)

Net: $249 profit

Poker Rewards

Another PSO promo with a healthy deposit bonus, I deposited $400 in Jun 2005, and cashed out $654 just a couple weeks later with yet another $60 in PSO points. Much later, I would deposit for another deposit bonus in April 2006 to qualify for a PSO freeroll. I didn't do too well on that deposit losing my bonus and $21.72 on top of that. Thankfully, the freeroll was both underpopulated and I finished in the top 20 which paid my $200.

Net: $832.28 + $60 PSO points

Ultimate Bet

This is my rakeback room, so I would play here many times, but not for very long segments since I jumped around to do new PSO promotions as they popped up. This is a very confusing thing to track as well because I deposited several times in order to rack up deposit bonuses that don't expire. I still have a lot of bonus money to clear there! I made deposits in Jun/05, Dec/05, Feb/06, and Apr/06, and to this day still have money in that account. I did not play well there though, and frustratingly saw net losses at several points. Thankfully, that seems to have turned around the last time I was there plus all the rakeback I've received.

June/05: -$32.90 losses Dec/05-Feb/06: -$67.76 losses Apr/06-present: $130 profit PSO Rakeback: $147 in PSO points

Net: $29.34 + $147 in PSO points + 1 poker book from player points

Aztec Poker

This is another rakeback room that I started because I was I wanted some variety for my rakeback rooms. I didn't play there much because I ended up not liking the room very much, and ended with slight losses Net: -$16.05 losses + neglible PSO points

Full Tilt Poker

Probably one of my favourite online poker rooms so far, I have played for many months at Full Tilt enjoying fairly decent success. It is the room where I moved up to 2/4 limit eventually and started winning regularly there. I probably still make many errors, but between the deposit bonuses and my small winning rate I turned a neat profit. I'm disappointed that I don't have rakeback there, or I would play there more often. Even now, I still like to go back there. I played there enough that I saved enough player points for a very snazzy micro-suede full tilt jacket.

Jul/05-Nov/05: $607 profit + $60 in PSO points Jan/06-Feb/06: $201 profit Apr/06-Jun/06: $250.35 profit Jun/06-Aug/06: $425.45 profit

Net: $1483.80 profit + $60 PSO points + 1 micro-suede jacket

Titan Poker

After my success with Noble Poker, I was enthused about having another shot at it when it was rebranded Titan poker and re-available as a PSO promotion in Sep/05. This time, however, I did not enjoy the same success and ended up losing $72 on the deal. Fortunately, the PSO bonus was $90 in PSO points, so I barely gained on the promo.

Net: -$72 losses + $90 PSO points

Sun Poker

Another PSO promo I attempted in Oct/05, this one I eeked out a profit on even though I didn't like the site due to the lack of tables to play at. It did however get me my very first and so far only royal flush!

Net: $24 + $60 PSO points

Absolute Poker

I returned to Absolute to play in the PSO league that happened earlier this year. I did well in the first league event, but after that played rather poorly and stopped playing after it became clear I wasn't going to be able to compete for the big prizes. In ring game play I also did rather poorly, so I cashed out with a $70 loss.

Net: -$70 losses

Pokerroom

Pokerroom was the very first room I got a start with way back when, but I never deposited any money there. I learned from PSO that if I had them close my account, I could open a new one through PSO 6 months later and take advantage of the PSO bonus. In Apr/06 this period had passed so I deposited and made a decent $198 profit plus my PSO bonus

Net: $198 + $90 PSO points

Pokershare

Pokershare was the newest PSO promo in Jun/06 and it is by far the worst I've done on any promo. Unfortunately, there was almost no limit action there so I was either forced to play 2/4 shorthanded or no limit both of which were not comfortable games for me at the time (and still at the moment). I managed to get through the promo losing $138 which was countered with the $90 PSO bonus.

Net: -$138 losses + $90 PSO bonus

Dream Poker

Dream poker is currently the newest PSO bonus room, and I finally took advantage of this promo in Aug/06. I deposited for the full deposit bonus, but today I cashed out having only received 1/4 of it. Being a prima poker room, I didn't like the lack of games in the evenings (since the majority of the players who play there are european). However, I made a decent profit playing 1/2 shorthanded and cashed out $124 profit plus my PSO bonus.

Net: $124 + $60 PSO bonus

PSO Referrals and Other points

My referrals kept rolling in at a regular but slow pace and I made a startling $250 in referrals since the last post. In addition, there was a forum contest that netted me another $25 in PSO points.

Net: $275 in PSO points

Totals!

Net this post: $3496.37 profit + $1052 PSO points + 1 small poker book + 1 microsueded jacket

Net Poker Winnings to date: $4582.37 USD + $3490 CAD + $1442.50 PSO points + 1000 chips + 1 poker book + 1 microsuede jacket

It isn't enough to make a living off of, but I think I've proven that I can make money at poker online. I've had some rocky patches, but that's how it goes! Thanks to WoW, I haven't been playing much online poker lately, but I intend on returning to it and learning how to play no limit well.

There will be one more post in this series that summarizes my online casino bonus gathering. I've been pretty successful at that too, so I look forward to showing how profitable that can be!

Heraldk

Building Computers

Well apparently I've gotten in a habit of building computers for people. Odd. I built a computer a couple weeks ago for Diane, and yesterday I put together a new one for my Dad. It is amazing to me the amount that the cost of computers has dropped over the last few years. The fact that I can easily put a value system together for $500 impresses me to no end. Anyways, once again I need to make more of a push on my thesis. Lots of work to do, and I want to get it out of the way so I can do other stuff. I'm getting to the point where I need to start filling in details, and that is gonna be harder to do than the basic exposition that I've been doing for the most part so far.

Lots of bonuses in casino/poker land. I'm working on the new PSO promo room DreamPoker, plus one of boogster's promotions for play65 (backgammon). That and I did a couple of casinos last week but broke even on both of them. *sigh*.

Time for me to go in to school. Take care everyone!

Heraldk

Foxwoods Casino

Mike and I met in the lobby on Friday morning all set to take a bus to Foxwoods casino. This was to be my first live poker ring game experience, and I was pretty excited. The bus ride was about 2 hours long from Boston, and we arrived at Foxwoods sometime in the early afternoon. Foxwoods is an amazing sight - it is absolutely *huge*, with three buildings of hotel rooms, slot machines, poker tables, and other casino table games. Instead of heading to our hotel right away, Mike and I checked our bags and headed straight for the poker room. I sat down at a 2/4 limit table, and Mike joined a 1/2 no limit game. My first impression? These players were *terrible*. I got frustrated though because I couldn't get cards to take advantage of it! After about 4 hours of play, I was down about $60 or so.

Mike was really hungry, and I my stomach was fast to agree, so we left to get some food at the Hard Rock Cafe. We seriously had the best service at a restaurant so far this trip there, which was pretty cool so we left a pretty good tip. It helped that Mike was up almost $200 at that point!

Before returning to the poker room, we wandered around for a few minutes to take in some of the atmosphere. Really, it felt like any other casino I've ever been in ... just that it was ginormous. We stopped at a craps table and played a few rounds where I won about $25 ... not too shabby. Craps is one of the only casino games that I find fascinating because at a full table, there's so much going on. People placing bets like crazy, and yelling and cheering as the dice are rolled - there really isn't a game more fun that craps in a casino environment. Plus its a low house edge game if you know how to bet, so that's another advantage!

Anyways, after our brief break we returned to the poker room. This time, I got a rush of cards and pulled up about $50 at one point ... only to hit 3 bad hands for me in a row including twice running into pocket aces with a big pair of my own. I swung up and down quite a bit, but ended up only down $30 when Mike and I decided to head back around 3 in the morning.

We caught a cab back to our hotel which was just a few minutes away, and checked in. I got to sleep a little after 4:30 in the morning which is officially the latest I've been up all trip. I woke up around 10:20 to the alarm clock so we could catch the shuttle in after a bit of breakfast. The hotel had free breakfast before 11am, including these awesome belgian waffle makers that were all set up for the perfect one every time. So I rather enjoyed breakfast!

Mike and I caught the 11am shuttle back to the casino. We had about an hour and a half to kill before we caught the bus (so we thought) ... so we returned to the poker room for a little bit of play. I started up fast - with 3 hands in a row which I raised preflop (ATs, JJ and JJ again). I won the first two and lost the third, but was up for a decent amount of time. Not too much later though, I had a terrible beat. I had A6 of hearts and limped in. The guy in the blinds raised so 4 players and I all called. I flopped a flush draw with a Jh 4h 2s, so I check and called with lots of odds. The turn was a 2c, which looked a lot like a blank. Again I check and called with one lady also staying in. The river was the queen of hearts giving me the nut flush. Unfortunately, the preflop raiser had just made queens full. Ouch!

So I took another $25 hit, but all in all I don't think I played terribly. I should probably have laid down my Jacks to the Aces last night, but besides that, I felt really comfortable and the amount I lost was totally within reasonable statistical variance. Still, it would've been nice to come out of foxwoods ahead!

Mike is up about $100, which is nice for him. It pretty much pays for the sidetrip to foxwoods for him with a little on the side. Apparently I should've been playing no limit.

I typed up this post when I was waiting for the bus to show up at the bus terminal. Turns out that the bus was almost a full two hours late! So we waited for a long time for the bus to arrive and then were late arriving in new york to meet up with Mike and Nolan.

Up next? Adventures in New York! Our first visit is apparently the Museum of Natural History.

Heraldk

Ready, Set, Go!

Well tonight (technically tomorrow morning), I leave for Boston where I'll be attending AAAI - one of the biggest conferences on artificial intelligence research. Once the conference is over on the 20th, a couple of my friends and I are going to spend a week in new york with a short stopover at Foxwoods casino. I'm pretty excited. It is pretty fun to travel, and it is also interesting to attend a conference where we can see what sort of research people are doing in other universities around the world. Plus I can't wait to see what sort of pictures I can get as we checkout the various attractions we see.

I will try and keep my blog updated while I'm gone, but that will depend on both time constraints and availability of internet.

Hope everyone has a good couple of weeks while I'm gone!

Heraldk

Poker Rush

Well I'm glad I decided to play some poker tonight. I got home a little late from school since it was raining really hard and I didn't really want to get poured on on the way home. When I finally got home, I threw some laundry in and decided to fire up full tilt and play a little 2/4. I ended up over $300 in the space of maybe an hour and a half! (two tables). This was a big relief - I have been having a pretty poor couple of weeks at the tables, so it was nice to hit some cards again. My profit in online gambling has been coming from online casino promos. I cashed out over $700 from casino-on-net on only a $200 deposit (yeah, that's $300 on top of the $200 bonus!), and got a nice win at Intercasino as well on a nice reload bonus. It is this money that will be funding me when I go to Foxwoods in a little over a week! Oh yes! I think I mentioned previously that I will be going to Boston and New York this month. I leave on Saturday morning (at 1:00 am so essentially Friday night). AAAI is being held in Boston and we have a paper there to present. Then a few of my friends and I are going to go to New York with two of us stopping at Foxwoods on the way there for a night. I'm looking forward to giving some live poker a try. I haven't played any real live ring game poker before this, though I do have my half a dozen or so live tournaments I've played in. It's pretty exciting! Then we'll spend a week in New York returning on the 27th.

In other news, my thesis is starting to take shape in my head if not on paper. I have an outline that I think will help organize my thesis a little better. In other research news, the paper Darse and I submitted to the ICGA special issue on poker has been accepted! The reviewer was pretty positive about the paper and his suggestions were all helpful in helping make the paper a little stronger. Yay! Soon DIVAT will take over the poker world! (We think its powerful enough to anyways).

Do pay attention to my photoblog. I plan on adding a flurry of photos in the next week to pre-emptively make up for missing a couple weeks of updates while I'm gone. Enjoy! I'm pretty happy with the set I'm going to upload ... soon!

Heraldk

Why so busy?

Why do I feel so busy? This weekend wasn't all that incredibly busy. I mean, I was at a couple of parties, and spent a day with my mom on her birthday on Sunday, but that's not all that busy. And even though I've got a lot on my plate for school, I still come home and don't do much on school. I'll keep working on the various poker and casino promos that have made me a tidy profit over the course of the last year and a bit. What inevitably happens though is I'll sit down and play poker for a bit and then I'll realize that its getting late, and I end up going to bed later than I really should have. I'm still getting between 6 and 7 hours of sleep a night usually, but I still feel like I really need to catch up on sleep. So what am I doing tonight? Blogging before bed. And I'm going to the gym tomorrow for 8am. Here we go again! Still, a number of exciting things are happening.

The Oilers took down game 6 last night and boy was I happy. So were many boisterous fans who took to Whyte ave last night. I'm told it was quite an experience to walk down Whyte ... crazy people everywhere! The Oilers played a so-so to downright terrible game right up to the third period. That was where they promptly woke up and slaughtered the redwings in dramatic fashion. Nope ... the Oilers don't do things the easy way.

I finished off another casino promo the other day. This one was at intercasino for a value of $150 profit. Hoorah! I am now up $340 in casino promos. I've also been playing 2/4 limit at full tilt clearing another deposit bonus. I'm over 2/3 of the way to getting a full tilt microsuede jacket with full tilt points! I like free stuff! Not only that, I made over $160 on one night of play last week. I had a couple of smaller losing sessions this week and then made another $60 tonight. There's a lot of variance, but I feel like I'm playing pretty well and I'm certainly profiting. I've cleared about $70 of my $300 deposit bonus there so far.

Heraldk

Housekeeping

Not much of a post here tonight. I just wanted to mention a couple of bits of the current news. The Italy trip is looking like a go ahead for sure. Ryan was looking into plane tickets for us today. Hoorah! Its gonna be a good 16 hour flight to Turin at least. Gotta bring my laptop so I can get some stuff done :)

Next, one of the 2 papers I've been working on of late was officially accepted to AAAI - one of the top notch AI conferences around. So that's pretty exciting! I dunno if I'll be going to Boston for the conference, but it would be cool to do that too.

Next, I did another casino promo, this time at Starluck casino. This time, I was up money almost the whole way through and came out with a $100 profit. Hoorah! I'm gonna wait for my cashouts to clear before I do any other promos. My next plan of action is to do a Party Poker reload followed by a Full Tilt reload. Lots of poker to play in the next couple months!

I am quite enjoying the long weekend. Ryan took us out for lunch today after the hex meeting to the new asian village, which was really cool and nice. I then played a bunch of poker this afternoon and finished up about $60 or so on the day. All in all, the weekend is off to a good start. Sunday I have dinner at Diane's parent's place, and then Monday is dinner with my family. Yay Easter food!

Heraldk

+EV blackjack!

Well, this weekend was interesting on the gambling front. First of all, a guy on the PSO forums noticed that PokerNow has closed down permanently and offered players to transfer the remaining money that they had at PokerNow to an existing party poker account. The great part of this was that he and several people were transfering totals of less than a dollar to party poker and getting $25 and $50 bonuses! So I decided to try this to see if I had any money left in that account. I had $0.01, and transfered it. I got a $50 bonus! I've got to play 500 hands to clear it which shouldn't take long. I've already made $20 playing the super loose .5/1 games.

Second, I decided to try a second casino promotion. For those who don't know, these promotions can be positive EV if you get a large enough deposit bonus and the requirements don't require you to play too long. My first promotion didn't go so well ... I lost my $100 deposit ... and +EV or not, these promotions still have risk because the variance in a lot of these games are huge. I was still intrigued by the idea of +EV casino games, so this weekend I tried Golden Palace's 300% deposit bonus. This time, after a few hours of blackjack, my account reached $290 from my $100 deposit!

So I'm up $90 in casino promotions. It was pretty fun, and a nice break from poker. I really think I needed a break from poker since the past little while has been a tad frustrating.

Heraldk

Poker-esque

Like the rest of the world, I've been sucked in. The game of poker is taking the world by storm and there is an amazing array of people who have become interested this intriguing game of strategy and gambling. Why is it so interesting to me? I have to admit that I find gambling fun. The problem is that I hate losing - and any money gambled at a casino is not money you can expect to have very long. Poker represents to me a chance to gamble with money, but also to have the potential to win money in the long run.

I started playing poker for money in November when I heard about the poker promotions offered at Poker Source Online. For those unfamiliar with the site, its an affiliate site with many online poker rooms that offers free gifts for signing up with them. They have the best customer support I have ever dealt with and bend over backwards to try and make sure that you get the gifts you are promised (as long as you follow the instructions). To date, I have received several hundred dollars worth of free stuff from them. If you want to play online poker, there is no reason to not sign up through these guys! I will post later about the PSO promotions and the details on what they offer later so stay tuned if you are interested.

Anyways, I started playing for real money due to this online promotion through PSO and since then I have never looked back. Most players who start making money at poker go through an early learning transition phase where they lose some money before learning the mistakes they made. My transition phase was not very long - I lost about $30 in the first PSO promotion I did, and then broke even on the second PSO promotion. From there, I started making money playing poker online! To date, I'm up roughly $1300 US since November of 2004. Not too shabby for someone who just started playing poker at these low limits!

That monetary figure does not include an amazing run that I had in January. PSO sponsered me and several other people here in Edmonton for the Canadian Poker Tour. I had only been playing poker for money for a couple months at that point, but due to a good run of cards, some good coaching from a local expert, a little skill (I hope), and a lot of luck, I made the finals and finished in 6th place for a prize of $3490 canadian. It was an incredible rush, and I really want to be able to do it again - but unfortunately, even though PSO sponsered me in the followup even in Calgary, I was unable to repeat my performance. Maybe I'll get another chance at it later!

So poker has been awesome for me so far. I'm really quite enjoying myself and the best part is that I can gamble with my money but win money in the long run - which beats blackjack or roulette anyday!

Heraldk