Whoops

You know what happens when you make a blog post about how you're running good, and feel like you're playing well?

That's right, you know.

Current online poker bankroll: $1577.36

I figured I'd hit a correction soon. I was running lucky before and starting to play a bit more on autopilot, probably reinforcing bad habits. Just as well, I will pull back and review, reread my books, and get ready for live poker in Vegas from Saturday.

I watched The Cincinnati Kid again over the weekend. The story is a lot more interesting now than it was when I first saw it when getting into poker 1.5 years ago.

Also rereading The Theory of Poker again, too. Also a lot of items are making more sense. Many of the examples from Stud and Razz I had skipped over the first time or two, but now that I am a bit more familiar with the games now, I am reading them closely and making sure I follow what he is saying. Not sure if it has affected my game yet, but it shouldn't hurt.

Cardrunners

It must have been the mixed games on Friday night - today I felt like playing some cards, but not really so much holdem. I'm not cut out to be a professional poker player - many times I don't feel much like playing, and if I play anyhow (for lack of anything better to do, or to work towards clearing a bonus, etc.) I play very poorly and lose money doing stupid shit I know enough not to do.

So I have my goal to earn enough for a new laptop, but while I'd love to get it quickly, I'm not going to hurry myself. The longer it takes, the cheaper the thing will get, anyhow.

So I fired up Full Tilt and tried one of the new Mixed Game cash tables. Lowest limit was .25/.50, which was perfect. I just wanted to have a good time and get my fix. Played for about an hour and made $2. I had a ball. I just wish I had more opportunities to play Razz live.

I mentioned Cardrunners before - I signed up with them about a month ago. I felt my game was stale and not going anywhere. I decided I needed to try something different to give myself a kick in the ass. Cardrunners sounded interesting - I figured that I had enough books, but some people would learn better from videos, and I might be one of those people. So I gave it a try.

It has been a real eye-opener. So many books I have read have emphasized the importance of position. "Position, position, position." "No other factor in NL Holdem is as important as position." That kind of thing. I must have read similar statements in a dozen different places, and I thought I understood it.

I hadn't.

Granted, the players in the videos tend towards the Loose Agressive type of player, but I was still shocked at some of the hands they played in position, and how easily they managed it. It didn't always work out for them, but the vast majority of their hands they were in full control of the action.

So I have been trying to apply what I've been seeing, and so far it has worked out very well. I've only played about 2500 hands or so since I signed up, but I'm showing a win rate of about 10 big bets per 100 hands, which is pretty reasonable. More importantly, my decisions come so much easier. If I'm in there with a marginal hand, I have position on my opponents 95% of the time. If I'm out of position, I usually have a strong hand to begin with and don't have to worry as much about where I stand.

And it is fun to play as a LAG, after playing so long as a somewhat weak-tight TAG. It's been a kick in the pants, all right, and I'm looking at the game a lot differently now. In this respect, Cardrunners has been worth every penny. And if I can earn enough for a new notebook from it, even better.

Missing it?

I logged into Party this evening, to make sure I still could, and to see what it looks like now.

It's not a dessicated, crusty shell of its former self, if that's what you were thinking. From here, it looks pretty much the same. The Monster promo is gone. They have a link to a partypoker.tv web site that doesn't work, but will supposedly carry poker tv shows.

There are still a lot of players at tables. I couldn't really tell if there were fewer than normal. Still, I joined a table for a few orbits and it was a bit weird to see that everyone else was from Germany (mostly), the UK, and Hong Kong.

Don't ask me if all the fish are gone. I'm still there, aren't I?

The biggest site you never heard of

I posted a long while back about Everest Poker, a poker site that took aim directly at poker players globally, providing native-language client software in something like 20 different languages, including most of the Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, and a bunch more I forget. I also liked that they mapped common chat phrases ("Nice hand", "Thank you", "Good game", etc) to function keys that would display in the language of the client software. So a Japanese player will see the comment in Japanese, and his response to the Frenchman who sent it will appear to him in French. Great idea. (Too bad their client software is unpleasant to look at and difficult to follow the action.)

With the World Poker Tour set to start airing in "Asia" (Singapore and Macau), hopefully we'll start to see Chinese players get interested in the game. This could be huge - I hope Everest is ready to go after that market, as I'm sure there will be some Chinese companies that fire up online poker rooms if it takes off.

I get emails from Everest to their players in Japan, letting everyone know about upcoming tournaments, Japan-only games, and freerolls for their Japanese customers. I haven't logged in in ages, so last week I reinstalled the software and fired it up to join the Wednesday night Japan-only tourney.

It was six players. Including me.

Okay, so Japan hasn't exactly bought into the whole poker boom thing.

I was distracted and played like shit, too, so was knocked out in fourth from our little Japanese STT. So I browsed the cash game tables. I was surprised to see quite a lot of games running, mostly filled with European players, with a smattering of asians, South Americans, and Africans. Nice. Everest seems to be doing well enough.

I checked on PokerSiteScout and found Everest listed in 8th place for number of cash game players, right between UltimateBet and Bodog. Not bad at all.

Then I saw the note:

Special Note: Everest Poker does not accept customers from the United States

That's right! I hadn't seen a single US player in my browsing. These guys are based in Canada and seem to be going along with US law as best they can by not accepting US players. And they still have more poker players than Bodog.

Much as I hate the idea, if the US does kill off online poker for their citizens, the game will survive. The rest of the world will still keep playing, even without the yankee masses. We'll miss you guys, but we'll get by.