HugePoker

For your entertainment and amusement…

There have been a few interesting or funny poker videos that I keep meaning to post on the blog, and then I just played a hand that I thought would make a fun little video clip, so I’ll throw them all together. Most are short and don’t require too much poker knowledge to enjoy:

A hand I played a few minutes ago

My old friend Dmitri is still hung up on the “stretcher” hand too! Warning: much of what he says (about me and otherwise) in this video is not true.

A cool documentary about an online poker player that Rachel says I shouldn’t tell everyone to watch … I can’t imagine why not. Warning: this one’s about a half hour long, but it’s worth it, in spite of what my wife says.

And ending it all with some comic relief from “Joe the Pro” (he has several youtube videos, but I think the first one is still the best … the one about Hitler is sort of funny too, ’cause what’s funnier than Hitler playing poker?).

Right after announcing in my last post that I would be “swinging for the fences” more, I made good on my word and played in three of the “Sunday Majors” – the big-buyin, big-guaranteed-prize-pool tournaments on all the major poker sites. I had a good run in the FullTilt “Sunday Mulligan” – I don’t play golf but I’m pretty sure “Mulligan” is some sort of do-over in golf, and the Mulligan happens later in the afternoon than the biggest Sunday tournament on FullTilt, so if you blow yourself up quickly in the $750k guaranteed you can dust yourself off and play in the $200k Mulligan. Of course all the real poker studs just play both whether they’ve busted out of the first one or not, along with the Sunday Brawl on FullTilt, the PokerStars Sunday Warmup and Sunday Million and 2nd Chance, the Ultimatebet $200k, $100k and $50k events, and maybe the bodog $100k if they’re feeling adventurous. Total buyins for all the Sunday Majors are in excess of $2700, and that’s if you’re an American player and don’t have access to the old Party Poker site and other non-U.S.-friendly poker sites. So I’m sure some European wunderkinds routinely blow $5,000 or more on Sunday buyins, playing 10 tables at once on their laptops. I managed 3 of the majors, and put in a good performance in one.

FullTilt Sunday Mulligan, $216 buyin, $200,000 guaranteed prize pool, 1291 players, 117 places paid, $56,000 for first place. I started off miserably, dropping from 3,000 starting chips to 651 in the first 20 minutes in a truly awful combination of spewy play on my part, a bad beat and a couple of lost coinflips. Later when I was doing well in the tournament I thought “if I win this it will be really embarrassing to have anyone look at my hand history”. I had already played badly in the bodog Sunday event and was not feeling strong in my attempt to transition to big-money-big-field tournaments, but then I found a couple of good spots in the Mulligan, got my money in good, doubled up a few times, and got back on the bike.

During my (brief) time playing on bodog, and then again in the FullTilt Mulligan, I got involved in funny chat exchanges that got a little heated. I think you’ll like these even if you’re not a poker player. Please to enjoy…

The first chat dialogue started after two hands in which (1) I sucked out with A7s against KK by calling a bet on the 7-high flop and then spiking another seven on the turn, checkraising cfred1298 and stacking him. On the next hand (2) he got KK again and doubled his puny stack through cuda21, who typed “must be nice” as if cfred1298 should be celebrating…

For the second chat incident (on FullTilt) I’ll copy the hand history for you and post the chat exchange afterwards. I love it that he calls me a “b itch” for *NOT* taking all his chips…

Full Tilt, NL Hold’em Tournament, 50/100 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: 7,475
BB: 4,465
UTG: 10,060
UTG+1: 7,770
UTG+2: 1,461
Hero (MP1): 4,351
MP2: 4,030
CO: 1,927
BTN: 4,848

Pre-Flop: (150) 7 7 dealt to Hero (MP1)
3 folds, Hero raises to 244, 4 folds, BB calls 144

Flop: (538) 7 6 3 (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets 277, BB raises to 1,000, Hero calls 723

Turn: (2,538) 4 (2 Players)
BB bets 1,500, Hero calls 1,500

River: (5,538) 8 (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets 500, BB calls 500

Results: 6,538 Pot
BB mucked T T and LOST (-3,144 NET)
Hero showed 7 7 and WON 6,538 (+3,294 NET)

imontilt247: how is that possible?

hugertilt: crazy

imontilt247: why do u play it like a b itch?

hugertilt: why do you breathe?

imontilt247: u can get all my chips on the flop
imontilt247: u walk on water, and u still #$!% up

hugertilt: oops

I actually don’t think that I played the hand badly at all, but I do think that I played some hands like a “b itch” earlier in the day, and in particular, as I wrote to my poker buddies at the time, “like a spewy b itch”, which led me to realize that the next time I sign up for an online poker account and they ask me to choose a screen name, it should be “Spewy B Itch”.

For more fun poker chat experiences from my distant past, CLICK HERE.

So back to the tournament itself … the name-caller busted out on the next hand and in spite of my alleged b itchiness my stack continued to grow. I was pretty short-stacked when we got to the bubble and had a real nail-biter when, with 119 players left and 117 getting paid, I got all-in preflop with AK against two wealthier opponents. The board came with no help to me, and my opponents just checked it down on every street hoping to knock me out. In the end the flop missed everyone and my unimproved AK tripled me up to give me some breathing room through the bubble. I could never really get anything going, but I nursed a small stack all the way from the bubble (117 players) to the final two tables. By then I was very short, and had to shove JT, got called by JJ and AK and had very little hope. Busted in 15th for $1,700, for only another single.

If you can read and listen to something at the same time, open THIS LINK in a new browser window while you read the next paragraph…

There’s a group forming among PokerXFactor subscribers calling itself “The Poker Syndicate”. The intention is to form a sort of “study group” where we will share hand histories, talk about general concepts, watch each other play and try to help each other improve. The group has just formed in the past couple of weeks and by virtue of my recent string of good results I’ve attracted some notice there. Today was our first conference-call/podcast and the organizer/moderator spoke to me quite a bit about my recent success and my thoughts on various poker topics. Sometimes the call was kind of chaotic and random, but there was some good stuff talked about and there are people in the group who know a lot about poker already and are dedicated to learning more, so I’m hopeful about the group’s prospects. They published the audio from the call (we were using Skype, so there was audio but also typed chat), and I went to the link to make sure I sounded OK on the “radio”, and listened to myself being introduced and complimented and got all ready to hear myself holding court with all my eloquent poker wisdom to be shared with the masses, and then … (if you didn’t open the link yet, CLICK IT NOW)

I played three tournaments today and bubbled all three of them. What a spewy Seattle idiot b itch.

-huge