I hadn’t played in a real, in person cash game in a long time but tonight I broke that streak. I also played with $30 for a few hours before losing it all. Giving myself an honest assessment, I was a very undisciplined player worthy of losing my money.
I played with the same players for awhile and there weren’t too many dimensions in anybody’s game. It was such a mundane table. The quiet players that played solid won a good amount of money. There was one guy who was tired but managed to play long …read more

You know as much as I love the competition, I wouldn’t mind finding a bird game.  And by bird game I mean easy as hell.  Who knows, maybe the one I play at currently is an easy game and I’m just not that good.
On second thought, no it’s not that easy.  The people I played against in Vegas were birds.  There was one guy that took out his debit card so much we started calling him ATM.  Don’t get me wrong, there were some sharks or at least wanna be sharks at the tables I sat down at.  Usually the …read more

You can feel the tension in this hand as Phil Ivey flops the perfect monster full house against the trip aces of Antonius.  Ivey did something here that I think we can all add into our game – he milked the time.  He was able to do this because he was at a table full of elite professionals and he has a hardass reputation on the felt, but it was still a great move on his part.  The extended delay got Antonius wondering what he really did have.  Why was Ivey thinking for so long?  Was he bluffing?  If he …read more

For cash game junkies, the new broadcasts continue….
Maybe we don’t need High Stakes Poker as bad as I thought?

Another televised cash game is now making the rounds, a table that was held during the 2008 Aussie Millions, featuring play with Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Gus Hansen, and some other poker weirdos.
More popular tournaments like this should feature cash game side games, like a WSOP cash game? That would be brutal, I think.

This hand for Antonio is about how my poker luck has been going for the past year consistently.
Took a four month break trying to break it. Can’t really get past.
Maybe I’ll wait a little longer or until I have money to lose before I get back into it for real.

I’ve been thinking a bit about trying to fix leaks in a bankroll. I’ve been playing excellently lately for the most part and still can’t see to more than break even, mostly due to a series of crappy beats. Though I’ve been paying more attention to hands that make me lose money. Or hands that I see other players lose money with.
The type of hand that seems to be the culprit for most money needlessly lost is Ace-X suited. People, including sometimes myself, tend to play these hands for a raise, even against tight players with no other calls. Though …read more

So, at my most visited local game, there’s one particular player, who I’ll call DAVE, who no matter what I do I can’t seem to take down.
In the past 3 weeks, there have been 5 different big hands where we got it all in with me as a huge favorite, and DAVE drawing to 2-4 outs each time. And each time, like a magic charm, DAVE hit one of those outs and killed huge pots.
DAVE and I are cool. Most every time it’s been a matter of big hand vs big hand and most any of the other players we …read more

At my last session of a local $1/$2 game, I went on a pretty big rollercoaster ride, running my initial $100 buyin up to $200, down to $50, back up to $150, back down to $60, and so on. I’d gotten a little punchy at this point as I couldn’t seem to make more than one hand every other hour, and all my big starting hands went to crap quickly.
One hand stood out as strange for the evening. A tight player (female, who’d hardly been playing anything but the nuts) raised to $12 a few positions ahead of me. I …read more

Here’s a slightly different variation on the bad beat story: the author is the one PUTTING the bad beat on. In this particular instance, the recipient of the two beats in the story is none other than myself.
So from the mouth of Durden (who owns rights to the hand 3-5 off at our local game) here is his story:
We had been playing for like two hours and I had already been sucking out on people. (thats what I do) Then these to hands happen less then five minutes apart.
Im in seventh position I look down and see my favorite hand …read more