The PPT Resumes

Next Wednesday the players of the PPT will reconvene for another season of grinding it out at the table. Unfortunately some of the players will not be participating as a result of life changes (moved from the area, spouse takes a job that creates conflicts, and the list goes on) but it appears there are plenty of others ready to pull up a chair and buy in to the action. I personally am looking forward to it as playing poker online is fun and the profits are pretty good but live action is a blast and adds the personal dimension to the game. So to those of you reading this who will soon be sitting across the table from me, good luck and thanks in advance for your donations to the early 2007 Vegas trip fund.

Younger THE GREAT

As predicted I am proud to confirm that I am the 1st Annual Trifecta Champion. The prospects of taking the crown did not look so good after the first event which was the Poker event. After Event #1 the standings were Deldog – 1, Pipshow – 2, Edgedog – 3 and Younger – 4 (Lowest score wins). Even with starting out in last place I knew I had a fighting chance as the next event was my strongest event, fishing. Event #2 standings were Younger – 1, Edgedog – 2, Deldog – 3 and Pipshow – 4. So going into the final event of Golf the overall looked like this: Deldog – 4, Younger – 5, Edgedog – 5 and Pipshow – 6. After grinding it out on the course the final event results were Younger – 1.5, Pipshow – 1.5, Deldog – 3 and Edgedog – 4.

Final Results
Younger – 6.5
Deldog – 7
Pipshow – 7.5
Edgedog – 9

Trifecta Countdown

In less than 48 hours the kickoff to the 1st Annual Trifecta will commence. No this has nothing to do with horse racing. This is an event came about from the twisted yet intriguing mind of Edgedog. The event will be carried out over two days with the first day being nothing but gambling (mostly poker I am sure). Some of us will head over to PPT Headquarters early Thursday morning for an online poker fest. Thursday evening 4 of us will head to the casino where the competition scoring really begins. The objective of the first leg of the Trifecta is to be the person who walks out of the casino with the most money made at the tables. Friday morning we will load up the boat and head out to the lake where the goal is to have the most weight in fish. The culmination event will be a round of golf Friday afternoon, for you non-golfers, lowest score wins. Each participant will receive points with respect to where they place in each event. What does the winner get? A feast fit for a king prepared in their honor by the peasants. They get the trophy to prominently place on the mantle and display for all to see the evidence of their complete and total domination over the other inept participants. They will also be honored and extolled for 12 months as being the greatest and will be addressed as such by those less fortunate. So come Friday night you can all start to refer to me as Younger “The Great”.

The Measure of Success

I am no stranger to the world of playing poker as this was a main means of acquiring spending money while in college, which for me was before the introduction of online poker so it was all live games with my buddies (and some stupid crazy games at that). We were in college and none of us had a great deal of money but I recall one game that got way out of hand. On this particular night one of the guys playing was on the school’s golf team. The game was a “guts” game with no cap on the size of the pot. For those who may be reading this and not know what a “guts” game is, since you don’t see this at the WSOP on ESPN, it is a game in which you are dealt cards and you make a decision all at the same time if you are going to continue in the hand or not. If you choose to stay and loose then you match the pot. Anyway the pot had climbed to hundreds of dollars to which most of us did not have on hand, but hey, there were checks still in the checkbook so all was fine. So we’ve been on this game for quite a while, the pot is huge and everyone is gun shy to mix it up in fear of loosing more money than anyone has. So golfer guy and Duggar stay on a hand and Duggar takes it down. Golfer guy gets up from the table and goes out to his car and comes back in with a brand new set of golf clubs and puts them up as his payment for the lost pot. He also proceeds to loose them. If I remember right the story was the clubs were stolen from his car.

So where is this going…Oh right…At that point in time and until recently for me, poker success was measured by how much money you walked away from the table with and really wasn’t something that I tracked from night to night. I have been reading several poker blogs (this one in particular) and forums and have come to the conclusion, at least for myself that true success in poker is measured over a fairly long stretch and with the technology available today, like Poker Tracker, in conjunction with the online poker sites tracking is quite easy. Now I haven’t been playing online poker for very long and I haven’t really made the effort that a lot of people have/do to make this the sole or primary means of income for me and my family. I do it to have fun and make a little extra on the side. I am by no means the best poker player around and have a considerable amount to learn but I have been able to hold onto a respectable 3.25BB/100 track mostly at the $1/$2 and $2/4 tables with very limited forays into the $3/$6 arenas. From what I have read if I can carry that across an increased number of total hands played I could do quite well however at this point in time with a family to support and not neglect, I play when I can. Over time my play might increase as well as the limits that I play and this could become a great source of additional income, until then I’ll continue to trudge along as have been and sharpen my skills for when that day comes, provided online poker is still available when that day comes, but that is another story altogether. I do have to admit that reading and hearing about the money that some of these people are making in the short amount of time that they do really makes me want to jump in with both feet. I will however not do that if it has adverse impacts on my family. Heck some of these people are playing 20,000+ hands a month.

Small Stakes

As with the other contributors on this blog I too started out my online poker play bouncing from site to site collecting deposit bonuses (and still do on occasion) and with not a whole lot of money in the bankroll, about $100 to be exact. Over time that bankroll has increased quite a bit, not as fast or as large as some online players, but I’m OK with that…for now. Starting out with only $100 meant playing a pretty tight/aggressive game and playing small stakes which makes for a hard road when trying to clear points for bonuses at several sites. Nonetheless I was able to manage my play and my bankroll in a manner in which I did not have to re-load any more of my own cash to keep it going and now play pretty much the $2/$4 tables with some $3/$6 sprinkled in.

I currently have an account which had only about $160 dollars in it so I moved all the way back down to the $0.25/$0.50 limits (which is right where I should be given my account balance using the often quoted 300BB bankroll requirement). Why am I doing it really…because I can, I’m just having fun, this is not my means of supporting my family (yet). I also have another challenge/quest for myself which can be read about here, which has not really gotten off the ground yet. I know there is some poor play at the $2/$4 and $3/$6 tables but at the $0.25/$0.50 limit it is ridonkulous. I’ve been multi-table as many full tables that this site has available (4 or 5 most times) for a couple of days. For those couple of days my BB/100 is running somewhere around 25-30BB/100 (I’ll know for sure when I look at it before I start playing again tonight. Oh to be able to build the bankroll and carrying that average to the $2/$4 and $3/$6 tables. It’s like stealing candy from a baby with those players. You only have to watch once or twice around the table to find the easy mark(s) that bet and or call down raise after raise just to fold on the river or be hanging on to a small or middle pair against a board that has 3 to 4 cards to Broadway or a flush. Or better get a BB or SB special because they limp with, I don’t know, say AQs and the board comes AT5 and you are sitting there with say T5o where you might have let the hand go but they didn’t bet out pre-flop. Crazy easy money. Which if you are reading this and contemplating jumping into the world of online poker I suggest clicking the link over on the right for Party Poker. They have tons of tables and players and the bonus is really easy to clear which means free money for you (and me). OK, enough pimping Party Poker for now.

All Poker Sites are not created equal

Hello pudd wackers this is EDGEDOG. O.k. let me start off by saying that I am in no way shape or form a poker guru, expert, professional or arrogant enough to think I have the golden fleece of advice that will instantly make all readers the next poker god….I mean I’m close, but that’s beside the point.

I've been playing online for about 6 months and have been having reasonable success moving from the .25-.50 tables up to the $2-$4 tables...To date my BB/100 is around 3.20 overall and at the $2-$4. I started up playing to save enough for a free trip to Vegas. But, after turning $200 to $2500 I have realized there is much more potential here then I thought. My style of play is pretty solid (well at least according to Poker Tracker and my winnings), however I still have some room for improvement.

Anyway, on with the post...I have played at approximately 10 sites so far and the style of play at the various poker sites are very different. In looking at two sites, Pacific and InterPoker these are about the two most oppposite sites I have seen.

If you really like to bluff and are looking for a site that has a tight game, InterPoker is a good site with a great monthly $100 bonus.

If you play tight poker and are looking for that loose game with people throwing money around Pacific Poker is the place for you. The downside is I have been a little disappointed with their support and the bonus takes awhile to clear unless you are playing multiple $2/$4 tables or higher. Playing mostly three $2/$4 tables it took me just over 10 hours to clear 250 points (wagering $2,500) which got me $120 bonus. Also you have to buy an add-on to Poker Tracker to get your hand histories into poker tracker. The Pacific $2/$4 tables are some of the loosest tables I have played. It is very common to have 5 to 6 to a flop and very common to have 4+ people to a raised flop. This makes it relatively easy to sit back and wait for the big hands and cash in. I have been on a decent run up $350 at the site in poker in the last two weeks. You have to put up with some bad beats but your good hands usually get paid off well.

I just thought it is interesting the difference in player styles from two sites like these two. I'd recommend going to a site like InterPoker first which conditions you to be tighter and then move to a site like Pacific and let your tight game go to work.

Feel free to weigh in...

Welcome to the PPT

Shuffle up and deal out the latest happenings in the world of the Players of the Pipho Poker Tour (PPT). This will be a collaborative blog with several regular members of the PPT. Maybe we will have a Hand of the Day or Week or Month which all depends on how often people in the group wish to post. There will be talk of “Bonus Whoring”, poker site reviews, poker room reviews, poker software/tools talk and of course just how ridonkulous some of the players are that we run into online or in live games. And of course we will give props to those players with mad poker skills. It will be chair kicking fun.