A few notes

A couple more quick thoughts about the JPC 2006.

It was actually Jan Fisher who gave me some quick coaching on box shuffling, not Linda Johnson. My bad. She's damn good at it, too. Mary doesn't box, she... strips, I think it's called, so she called over Jan as the boxing expert. Because I was pathetic at stripping, or whatever it was called.

Another note in Jan's favor (after my snarky comments in the last post), is that she noted in her talks how great it was to play with the Japanese players because everyone seems to be having fun and enjoying the game. It's true. The Ueno games (and the Duke games, too) are always a good time because everyone is there because they love the game. No one is making any money off these games. More importantly, no one is losing any money on these games, so we're there just because we enjoy playing and are trying to learn and improve. In this respect, it's probably a good thing that we can't gamble for money. Once folks start losing thousands of yen during the games, we'll probably see the nasty comments, dark faces, and card flinging that other "real" games see.

I see in Bluejay's blog that Linda and Jan have already headed back home, but Mark, the new JPC Champ, is sticking around until Sunday. (Mary too, I assume.) He's going to be attending the Everest Cup game on Friday night, and they're considering going out for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) afterwards. His blog post title is "Poker while flower viewing?", which is an interesting mental picture.

If you're not familiar with hanami, it's very common in Japan when the cherry blossoms bloom for groups of friends or coworkers to go find an open stretch of ground someplace under a blooming tree (which is a challenge in itself sometimes) and bring food and drinks and admire the blossoms. Actually, what it usually turns into is a lot of Japanese salarymen getting totally wasted on beer and rice wine and getting loud an boisterous and maybe even remembering to look up at the tree once in a while. And I don't mean that in a bad way -- it can be great fun. Many of the parks in Tokyo with big stretches of cherry trees get absolutely packed during the bloom times. Some offices will send out their junior workers early in the day with tarps to stake out claims to good spots, then the rest of the office will show up in the evening to booze it up and enjoy themselves. It can be quite a party. Almost every time I have gone, there's usually at least one very plastered businessman who gets really boisterous and in a springtime mood and does a striptease for the merriment of his coworkers. Almost every time. And we're talking going all the way, using just his necktie as an impromptu loin cloth or a plastic drinking cup to hide the naughty bits.

Actually, considering this and the things I have seen under the cherry trees so far, a bunch of Japanese guys drinking and playing poker under the trees and forgetting to look up is not such an interesting mental image after all.

For those of you who can read Japanese, I found that someone has set up an RSS monitor page of most of the Japanese poker blogs, here. There are a lot of them. I read Japanese slowly and with some difficulty so I usually glance over there, but there are some interesting ones in there.

One which I found particularly interesting is ネカフェに出勤　ポーカーライフ ("Working at the Net Cafe - Poker Life"). It's written by a Japanese guy who had been working various parttime kind of jobs and then found his interest in poker could make him a similar wage. He quit his part time jobs and has been making his money from online poker. Not uncommon in the States but it's not common here that I know of! It's funny because he says he's renting a cheap apartment here in Tokyo for 50,000yen or so a month, but he has no internet access there. So instead he spends his days at internet cafes, playing online poker there! Which is not a bad environment, since most cafes have free soft drinks, books and comics, music, playstations and other games, and some even have showers and other living amenities for those stuck out after last-train-time and killing time until morning.

None of this comes for free, though, so he notes that he often spends more on his net cafe time charges than he does on his rent! That's impressive. He's still making enough to pay his living expenses, and is actually looking at moving to New Zealand for a while to do the same there. Hell, he's got the right idea - you can do this anywhere, so why stay in Tokyo? Go see the world!

Okay, yeah, maybe I am a bit envious.

The Night Before

Friday night I met up with Tokyo's newest (white boy) poker blogger, Mike, to introduce him to the Japan Poker Player's Association poker room in the Ueno area, often referred to as simply "the Ueno Room" by local poker players.

Considering that there aren't any other poker rooms in town, they could probably just call it "The Room" and we would know what they meant.

The only other game in town that I know of is at Duke, a bar in the Nihonbashi area that I have described before. I think of it as "the Poker Bar". My friend J.P. will ask me "Room or Bar?" when I tell him I'm going out to play poker. Hopefully someday he'll have to ask me something a lot more complicated, but for now, that's it.

So anyhow, it was cool to meet up with Mike, who's out here for the Living In Japan adventure. I did the same thing, long time ago, and it made me smile. Somewhere along the line the adventure just became normal life, so it's nice to be reminded of what it was like to wrap things up in your home country, move halfway across the world to someplace bizarrely different in many ways, set up shop in a dingy rat-hole of a temporary apartment, and begin to struggle with the language and finding a place for yourself in a brand new society. Ah, those were the days.

Though several times over the course of the evening, I had to break out the old stand-by, "You know, back when I was a kid..."

as in...

"You know, back when I was a kid, gaijin houses didn't have internet access! I had to buy a converter RJ-11 jack to the headset of my borrowed PHS phone so I could use my laptop's mobile with dialup! Reception at my place was horrible, so I had to set my laptop on my bed and hold the mobile phone up to the window to get a signal, and had to type one-handed until the modem dropped out."

Damn kids today...

Ahem, where was it?

Anyhow, I showed Mike to the Ueno room and explained a bit about the weekly games they run there. It was already getting pretty busy as quite a few folks had shown up for the talks, and Linda and Jan showed up soon and started greeting the players they had met from previous years. I chatted a bit with Mark G's wife Mary, who works as a dealer and was quite friendly and outgoing. Jan also announced to everyone that the doctor who had treated her when she got very ill during last year's JPC, Dr. Yamaguchi, was there that evening and she gave her thanks for saving her life last year.

Bluejay showed up with another foreigner guest, but who was not introduced and who didn't really speak to anyone. I did a double-take - holy smokes, is that Jennifer Harman?! A second later I doubted it - she looked different than J.H. does on tv. I looked closer and started to get uncertain again. How many petite blondes with 1980s Meg Ryan hairstyles are likely to show up with Bluejay to visit his poker room? But no one said anything, no one freaked out, no one introduced themselves to her, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for the talks to start.

The talks by the Card Player guests were very short. They were actually just a few minutes of off-the-cuff remarks, followed by a few questions from the Japanese audience. Linda Johnson did mention in the "Poker and Television" segment that they were starting a International Poker Tour tv show, with a set roster of 60 players visiting various locations worldwide for televised poker tournaments. Apparently Linda, Jan, Mark, and Hiroshi (Bluejay) are four of the players who will be in each of these events.

I whispered to Mike, "You think the tv audience can take another televised poker tour?" When I was back in the States over Christmas holidays, every time I turned on the tv I would find a poker tournament going on. It was pretty cool at first, but I got kind of sick of it after a while.

Mark and Mary spoke about being poker professionals, he as a player and she as a dealer (and player too, of course), which was interesting. Mary noted that she had done some of the dealing for the High Stakes Poker show, so I'll be sure to keep an eye out for her in future eps. Doyle-san asked a question at the end about how well the high-rollers in that game tipped the dealers. She made a non-committal reply, so I interjected another question, "Who got better tips, the dealers or those women you see walking back and forth in the background sometimes?" She laughed and replied, "Oh, those ladies did, by far! Doyle tipped them very well."

Something to consider if you are a hot lady in a slinky dress considering the life of a poker dealer.

Bluejay skipped his talk about "Japanese Players and Overseas Tournaments". Meg-Ryan-Haircut hung out in the back quietly and left soon afterwards.

So the talks ended pretty quickly and they switched to the dealer training portion of the evening. Linda and Mary each took one of the poker tables that were set up, and began going through all the processes of dealing poker, from the scrambles, shuffles, boxing, cutting, dealing, prompting players for their action, counting chips, figuring all-ins and multiple pots, and any other question about dealing that someone had. Quite a few of the players there act as dealers in the games, and some of them are quite good, but others seemed interested in all the techniques of a pro dealer, as if they planned to become dealers themselves. There are dealers schools in Japan, I know, but I am not sure how well attended they are since there's not a lot of demand for dealers here.

Bluejay was handling the translation at Linda's table, I believe, but there wasn't anyone handling Mary's table. Most of the Japanese can follow English to some extent, but not perfectly, so I sucked it up and tried my best as a translator. Everybody followed along, so that much worked out well.

After Mary went through it all, she encouraged some of those interested in dealing to give it a try. One of our regular amateur dealers gave it a go and managed it all pretty smoothly. One of the guys who looked like he was considering becoming a dealer also tried it out, did a reasonable job, and got some good tips from the professional. Then she suggested I give it a try. Uh... I had asked a question earlier on about how difficult it was nowadays to get work as a dealer, but I really had no intention of becoming a dealer myself! She might have got the wrong idea from my question, but I gave it a try anyhow.

Damn, the first time is not easy! The basic shuffle didn't give me problems, but I had never tried boxing and was hopeless at it. Linda came over with some expert coaching, and I improved somewhat, but would still need a huge amount of practice. I flung cards with too much arm movement, which Mary assured me would exhaust me in 30 minutes of real dealing. I got lost trying to follow whose action it was, and when two or three folks went all in and I had to figure the main and side pots, I felt dizzy and my brain was creaking.

It felt a bit like the first time I found myself in a HORSE game and had to learn all these new games quickly and shift from one to the other. My brain felt STRETCHED and my thinking slowed. Nowadays it gives me no problems, so I assume the dealing will eventually go a lot smoother as well.

So we played some loose and silly holdem for an hour or two to give people practice playing and dealing, then finished up and headed home at 11pm. The Card Player folks were still a bit jet-lagged, and everyone wanted to be well rested for the JPC tourney the next day.

Not much real poker for Mike, but maybe next time. Besides, he has internet at his gaijin house, so he can play online. Kids today are spoiled rotten.

JPC2006 -- Not

After all that build-up, I did not attend the 2006 Japan Poker Championship.

My girlfriend got pretty sick on Friday, with a fever and cough, I discovered when I got home. She had gone to bed early, so I climbed in with her and in the morning asked how she was doing. She still felt pretty awful, obviously, so I decided to skip the tournament and stay home with her.

The decision was pretty easy. I figured myself as dead money in the tournament anyhow, so attending would have left me 10,000yen poorer. It would have been interesting to play with Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, and Mark Gregovich, but would it have been worth 10,000yen? Not really. (Not to diss the Card Player folks that came out from the States, but sick girlfriend comes first. This is how it should be.)

I checked the JPPA web site, and it looks like Mark Gregovich took first. Linda, Jan, and Mary all placed pretty well, but that foreign devil Mark won it. I have to grind my teeth - I really wanted a Japanese to win it and show that there are some damn good poker players here. One or two comments that Jan made on Friday night kind of stuck in my craw, about how the foreigners couldn't compete in the JPC last year because of her illness, so a Japanese won. But they were back this year to win it. It was spoken mostly in jest, but it still smacked of an arrogance I would have been happy to see thwarted.

It didn't happen, obviously, so maybe they were justified in that confidence. Still... woulda been nice.

I was very surprised to see that the first player out was "kugatsu", a very strong, solid player here who inspires a good deal of fear and respect from the other players at the JPPA. Wish I had around to see what happened - it must have been something like Kings versus Aces in the early hands and it didn't turn out well for him.

Anyhow, my begruding congratulations to Mark G for his victory. I hope they come back next year, 'cause I'll be gunning for them!

SNG

I did manage to get in a Sit And Go last night, as a bit of practice. I took a $5 SNG on Stars, since I didn't find any $5 games I liked on FTP. (The low limit ones seem to be mostly Turbo games, which is fine some days but not what I am after now.)

The SNG was great fun, and not just because I took first and stroked my fragile ego. Stars SNGs just feel better. Deeper stacks and better players. More interesting situations and real decision making. It feels more like real poker than the crazy push-fests you find on some sites. Kind of like playing in a blogger tourney - it's a tougher game, but it's more fun because people have a better idea what they are doing.

In one of the books I read (I think it was Zen and the Art of Poker), I found something that has been extremely helpful in learning how to observe online players, especially in SNGs. Unfortunately I am too dependent on PokerTracker to do this for me online, and when it comes to live play, I am pretty clueless. The tip is, verbally narrate the game as you play it, as if you're the tv or radio announcer for the game, describing the action to the viewers. This really works for me, although I only do this when I am playing tournaments right after work but before my GF gets home. If she routinely finds me talking, talking, talking to myself while alone in my computer room playing online poker, she might have me committed.

Anyhow, I think I played well in the SNG, encouraging me that I may have a reasonable chance in the JPC game tomorrow. The table was pretty passive at the start, and I found I could limp in with speculative hands and then bet aggressively after the flop and often take the pot regardless of my cards. A couple of players were eliminated, and chip leaders status was passed back and forth many times.

At one point I had taken a substantial chip lead, so I raised 3BB from the CO with 10-3 of diamonds to put some pressure on the blinds. Just the small blind called, with a bit less than half my stack. The flop came J-A-A, two diamonds. SB checked, and I made a half-pot bet to try to see if he had an ace or jack or would give it up immediately. In retrospect, probably a mistake -- should have just taken my free card to try to make my flush. But I felt that if I checked there, he'd bet strongly on the turn and I'd half to fold my hand in fear of either an ace or jack.

So I bet 350, and he immediately raises to 1750, all-in. Whoops. Guess he has an ace or jack.

I was going to fold it, but then stopped to look at my pot odds. Since it was an all-in, I could call and get two more cards to try to complete my flush. I hit the time bank button and grabbed my calculator and odds sheet. There was about 3100 chips in the pot, and I had to call 1400, so I was getting a bit more than 2 to 1 odds. My odds chart showed me with about 1.86 to 1 odds to make my flush with two cards to come, so I was getting the odds. As well, I had the chance to eliminate another player, and I would still have a reasonable stack if I lost, so I made the call.

He flipped over A-8, confirming what I already knew, and I crossed my fingers.

Turn was 5 of hearts. I took a deep breath.

River was 8 of diamonds! Yes!

Oh wait. No. He took the pot with his full house.

So I still need to learn to account for such things. The eight of diamonds was not an actual out for me, so I only had 8 outs instead of 9. According to PT, I checked later, I still had the odds with 8 outs, so I'm still content with my decision.

I hung in there, and it came down to four players, all of us fairly evenly stacked. It went back and forth many times, bet-fold or bet-raise-fold. I was enjoying it - this was good patience training for me, though one of the players, who I had tagged in my mind as a frat boy by his icon for a college sports team and general demeanor, started to complain about how this was boring him.

jrayuofl said, "no battles"
jrayuofl said, "all of u guys have had the same stacks for a while"
jrayuofl said, "bet raise fold"

jrayuofl said, "fk it this blows"

JONROBBY42 said, "you keep folding too pudd"
JONROBBY42 said, "you aint called a hand cause your short and on the bubble"
jrayuofl said, "im not raiseing then folding"

I ignored it and kept playing the same. I wasn't going to do something stupid and get knocked out now. It wasn't that I was on the bubble, it was that losing patience and making a bad move, something I knew in my gut was the wrong play, is a mistake I frequently make that knocks me out of the game right when it starts to look like I could make a decent showing.

JamesAt15 said, "everybody get comfortable"
JamesAt15: folds

JamesAt15 said, "we're gonna be here a while"

Finally, several hands later, I am dealt pocket Jacks on the button. UTG (not frat boy) goes all-in, and I have him barely covered, so I call. The other players stand clear, and he turns over Td-4d. There are two fives on the flop, and I catch a third Jack on the turn for a totally unneccessary full house to break the bubble.

jrayuofl said, "tokyo my ***"
jrayuofl said, "i will destroy u"

Guess he saw my location and doesn't believe where I live.

The next hand, the other non-frat-boy player goes all-in, and I find As-Ks. I call, and he shows A-8 offsuit. I pair my King and send him home too. I am heads up with Frat Boy.

jrayuofl said, "wanted u all night"

This is either somewhat flattering or fairly disturbing. Or both.

Actually I think he had been getting upset by my fairly aggressive play so far, and had sworn revenge. The smack talk began.

jrayuofl said, "lol good try wise guy"

jrayuofl said, "i own you"

jrayuofl said, "you noit"

jrayuofl said, "tilt"

jrayuofl said, "2nd aint bad man"
jrayuofl said, "pays 13 50"

During this time we went back and forth but didn't get into any major pots or hurt each other much, though he was starting to catch up with my stack. I was actually starting to get a bit paranoid, since I was being dealt some pretty good cards while in the big blind but never got any action, as he would fold immediately. J-K. Then pocket queens. Then pocket Kings! Come on, man, call me!

Shit, is my machine hacked? Can he see my cards? I open up Task Manager to look for unfamiliar processes. All looks normal. Behind the Task Manager window I see I have another hand. A-10 of clubs. I call, and Frat Boy jumps all-in. A-10 is not bad headsup, I figure, so I call. He has A-6 offsuit. A ten comes on the flop, and an Ace on the River, and I take first place.

It felt good. I should do this more often.

Traffic

It's a little disheartening to see that most traffic to my blog comes from random people clicking the "Next Blog" or "Recent Updates" buttons on blogger.com. If only I were more interesting...

Maybe I should just start regularly posting pics of cute Japanese girls.

Tonight!

I'm off to the JPPA tonight for the Night-Before-The-2006-Japan-Poker-Championship party! I'll also be meeting up with Tokyo's newest poker blogger, since it seems like a good opportunity to introduce him to the thriving (THRIVING!) poker culture here.

Tonight the Card Player guests will give several talks. Linda Johnson and Jan Fisher will be speaking on "Poker and Television", Mark Gregovich will be speaking on "Poker Players", and Bluejay will be speaking with an unnamed foreigner guest on "Japanese players and overseas poker tournaments".

That last one certainly piques my interest. Bluejay seems to know quite a few name poker pros, and has said that some of them have expressed interest in coming to visit Japan. I won't get my hopes up too high, but I am very curious who the secret guest could be.

I told Mike that "a poker game might even break out" after the talks, but I'm not sure how likely that really is. Sounds like we'll have a busy evening already, and Bluejay may have plans to go out with the foreigner guests afterwards. We'll see. I have already warned my GF that I'll be out late, so if plans at the poker room dry up, Roppongi beckons. If Mike hasn't been, someone's gotta take him. It's a moral imperative. He's a foreigner guy in Tokyo... he's gotta go to Roppongi! It's in The Code!

Taxes.

I was hoping to play a bunch of SNGs and small tourneys this week, but it didn't work out that way. Work and taxes have kept me busy.

Taxes turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought they would be. Up until now my company has done the tax return for me, which sounds like it is very common here in Japan. But since I bought an apartment this year, our company accountant said I'd have to do it myself.

Naturally I put it off... and put it off... and put it off. I dread taxes in general, and particular dread trying to work out how to do the taxes in Japanese. And I dreaded having to call my realtor or the tax offices and struggle with my lacking Japanese to try to find out what I needed and how to get it. And I am a procrastinator to begin with, so the chances of my taking the initiative and getting these done were about the same as Ichiro deciding to give up baseball in favor of coaching the Japanese Olympic women's curling team.

My GF reminded me several times over the last few weeks. I kept saying, "yeah, okay, I will do it," and then putting it off again. Finally, the March 15 deadline loomed up and she turned on Nag Mode. I resented it, of course, but it's what I needed. That's me, Mr. Passive-Aggressive.

We were planning to go to the tax office on the 15th (the deadline day!) and work through it with their tax planners, but the web site showed that they were expecting huge crowds that day. (Imagine that!) My GF called them and they actually said it was okay to come in a few days later. Damn nice of them! So we did.

I was near stunned at how easy it was. We went in to the tax office the day afterwards and went to the Tax Guidance area, and were quickly shown to a table with the relevent documents all spread out and an employee quickly sat down with us to work through it. We had brought the tax documents we thought we needed, but quickly found that we needed more documentation about the apartment purchase. The tax official gave us the list of documents we needed, and maps to the office where I could pick them up. He also went through the statement and worked out all the figures for us, pencilling them in. "All right, now, all you have to do is bring back those two forms, turn this in, and you're done."

This is what I had been dreading?

I had to wait a few more days to get another free morning to hit the real estate registration office, also straightforward. Back to the tax office, where another official quickly checked though all the paperwork, confirmed the figures were all correct, told me to write over them in pen, and then sent me on to turn them in. Took all of 20 minutes. According to the official, I should get my refund (deposited directly into my bank account) in less than a month.

Color me impressed, and very sheepish. I could have done this two months ago, easy.

2006 JPC -- Next weekend!

My god, the 2006 JPC is this Saturday!

As I wrote before, several writers from Card Player Magazine, all friends of Bluejay, are coming out this week to play in the JPC and give talks and answer questions. Linda Johnson and Jan Fisher, who have come for JPC before, are returning, and this time around Mark Gregorich is attending as well.

Yesterday I logged onto the JPPA web page and registered to play. I won one of the Everest Cup tourneys a few months back (the iPod nano I received for first place almost never leaves my side), so I have the right to play. But the tournament fee is 10,000 yen, or around $85, which is the largest tourney buy-in I'll have ever put up. And I feel very much like dead money. But ah well, maybe I'll get lucky!

All this week I will be re-reading my Harrington volume 1 (and volume 2 if I get to it), and playing SNGs and small tourneys in the evening to try to prepare. I don't think it will make much difference, but it will be better than going in cold.

Friday night the Card Player guys will be doing some talks and Q&A, so I will try to make that session as well. The JPC starts at noon on Saturday, and will probably take most of the day. First place receives the custom 2006 JPC bracelet, and travel coupons worth 50,000yen. (Enough to put a decent dent into your next trip to Vegas.) Second through fifth pay out with travel coupons, down to 10,000yen for fifth. Me, I will be happy if I can outlast half the field.

Dipping my toe into the no-limit waters

After my last upbeat posting about my new experiences on Full Tilt, I got beaten back down severely. Only the deposit bonus I am working off there is keeping me at about even, and even that is a bittersweet pill because PokerTracker ignores that and still shows my losses. The only way to get rid of those red numbers is to actually win by good play. Sigh.

Frustrated, I have been testing the No-Limit waters again. When I started playing online, I struggled for a couple months with Limit holdem, never really getting a handle on it. Then I tried No-Limit, and enjoyed good success, watching the graph of my bankroll take a sharp turn upward. After several weeks of upward growth, things got a little unclear. I don't remember exactly what happened - I think I started playing more SnGs and tournaments, as well as trying to learn the basics of Omaha and Stud games, and generally lost my focus and let things dissipate.

I'm still struggling with Limit, so maybe it is time to ease back into No Limit for a while again and see if I can still make money at it. Frankly, I don't remember a whole lot about what I was doing the first time around that seemed to be working well for me. I think I was playing very cautiously, giving up hands quickly I was not sure about and then waiting to double up with the nuts. It sounds pretty weak-tight to me now, but hell, it made me a thousand bucks pretty quickly. The thing is, I have a sneaking suspicion now that I might have just got lucky.

This time around I have read Harrington On Holdem, and hopefully have a better idea of how to play. I'm dabbling in the $.05/$.10 tables on Full Tilt now, scraping out a couple bucks profit at a time while I try to decide if I really can play this game again or not. It shouldn't be so different than playing no limit SnGs or tournaments, but somehow it feels different and I am being extremely cautious.

I still have my goals of reaching the 300BB profit level in $1/$2 Limit and $1/$2 Limit 6-Max, but I'm going to put them on the back burner for a few weeks while I give this another try. I can only bang my head against the same wall for so long before I have to go try another wall for comparison.

FTP going well

I've been playing more on Full Tilt Poker lately, after Party rolled out their new software and I figured I would stay away for a while until they work the bugs out.

I was worried that there would not be enough players, since my normal playing times here end up being about 3-5am Eastern, and there aren't many players logged in at that time.

This has turned out to be true, but hasn't been as bad as I expected. There's usually one or two tables open at $1/$2, where I am playing now, and often there are weak players and not too many Tight Aggressives, so they're fine to play on. Actually, maybe the lower volume of players is helping me because I probably have notes on the players from my data mining, and they don't have other tables they can switch to if they are running badly.

I am actually up about $80 from my $200 deposit, and am also earning a bit of bonus and rakeback money now, too. All praise the poker gods! (Do not smite me, please!)

The sad part is that I can't really use the Mac client, despite my main desktop being a Mac, since I want to use PokerTracker and PokerAce HUD. But I am scheming - maybe I can come up with something.

Still hoping

I found a reference to this article (on a Chinese news site, oddly enough) about Japan again looking at legalizing casino gambling.

Japan to legalize casino to promote tourism

TOKYO, Feb. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Japanese ruling Liberal Democratic Party is to formulate a basic policy around June to legalize casinos in the country with the aim of attracting more foreign tourists, local reports said on Saturday.

A member of a subcommittee on casinos launched under the LDP's special committee on tourism said the party should expedite discussions as Japan should lift its ban on gambling parlors after Singapore did so in April last year and as Thailand is studying to follow suit, Kyodo News said.

According to the subcommittee member, facts prove that casinos are big attractions for foreign tourists in many countries that have legalized them and help to boost the economy and international competition.

Sources disclosed that the subcommittee plans to work out an interim report in late April after discussing what gambling houses should be like if they are to be legalized and what measures should be taken about the Penal Code banning casinos.

Opponents, however, worry about public order in communities hosting such facilities and possible negative influence on young people.

I haven't checked Japanese news sites for the original information yet, but I'll see if it can find it.

I hope they work something out, although from the tone of the article I suspect they may not allow casinos in Tokyo but in some controlled location. As long as I can take a train there, fine with me. Hell, come to think of it, outlying regions might fight for the right to open a casino in their area in order to bring in tourist and tax dollars.

If they start opening casinos here, I'll be on one of the first trains out to visit them. And I'll bet they'll have some nice ones - Japanese can have a lot of spending money for such things if they put their minds to it. Harrah's, Wynn, everyone, get in on this quick!

Update: I found this article on the Goo news page, which says largely the same thing. Feel free to Babelfish it, but as usual for Japanese to English machine translations, it won't make a lot of sense unless you already pretty much know what it is saying.

So the LDP has set a target of this summer for their general plan of rescinding the anti-gambling laws. They have a committee that will meet weekly to discuss the issues and concerns associated with the plan, and they will deliver a report of the findings at the end of April. Although some areas of Japan have been outspoken in calling for a removal of the ban (including Tokyo metropolitan area, Osaka, and Miyazaki prefecture), there are concerns about the idea, particularly with its effect on crime.

The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, was apparently pushing hard for a casino area in the Odaiba area of Tokyo, then being built up into what was hoped to become a new business, leisure, and entertainment center of Tokyo. Ishihara, you may recall, was the one who wrote "The Japan That Can Say No," and is not afraid to speak his mind, so I'm glad he's on our side for this one.

Geek time - Phone U Want

(Damn, now I have a Devo song going through my head...)

Let's talk about something non-poker for once, shall we?

Recently I have begun craving a new mobile phone. This is nothing new - I crave a new mobile phone about every six months, and usually treat myself to one about once a year. This is not as crazy as it sounds. Growing up a homebuilt PC geek, I have had an almost overwhelming desire to toss my PC and build a new one every year for most of my adult life. But by converting this upgrade desire to my mobile phone, I save myself money by only spending about $100 a year for a new phone instead of $500-$1000 a year for upgrading my PC.

It's cheaper this way, trust me. Stop looking at me like that.

I've had my current phone for a long time now... gosh, maybe two years! It's ancient! I want a new one, of course, and recently the Mobile Suica campaign has hooked me.

The Suica card was a cool idea to begin with. JR, the Japanese National Railroad system, runs a lot of the trains throughout the nation, commuter trains in the cities and long distance and bullet trains between cities and regions. Probably half of Tokyo rides on a JR train during some point of their morning commute.

When I was first here in Japan as a student, many many years ago, most train lines ran on tickets. You went to the coin-op machine to buy a ticket based on the distance you'd be travelling to your destination. At the turnstyle, a JR attendent, a live human being, would take your ticket and punch it to show you had entered. During morning rush hours, hundreds, thousands of morning commuters flowed through those ticket gates. Those JR staff had MAD ticket-punching skillz! They could field tickets from commuters on either side of them, punch them instantly, and hand them back to the commuter almost as fast as people could push their way through.

When you reached your destination and left, the attendant at the exit gate would take your ticket, check where you got on the train and how much you paid. If the fare you paid didn't cover your distance, they'd stop you and make you pay the difference. Again, these guys were frigging incredible at checking tickets that hurried commuters would toss down in front of them and instantly calculating if they had been shortchanged and forcing the guy to stop and pay more. I remember seeing a tv show once about them, and how they learned to spot tell-tale signs that someone was trying to cheat and pay too little by their eyes and how they walked, so the attendant could spot a likely cheat even before seeing the ticket. How'd you like someone like that at your poker table?

Anyhow, this was not the most efficient of systems. Eventually they replaced it with automatic ticket gates and tickets with magnetic backings that you ran through the machine and it would do the check automatically. This was eventually augmented by a prepaid card system, so you could buy 10,000yen of credit in a card and your train fares were deducted from that as you used it.

Then, a few years ago, they upgraded again to the Suica card. Instead of a prepaid card you had to remove from your wallet or passcase and run through the ticket gate machine, the new cards had an IC chip and used and RFID reader on the gate, so you just had to tap the card on top of the reader and it would recognize it and let you through, deducting the proper amount from your credit. It even worked through your passcase, so you didn't have to pull your card out of the case. Hell, my girlfriend keeps hers in the side pocket of her purse, and can just wave her purse over the reader to get it to process and let her through.

You could also recharge your credit on the card, which was new. Previous cards were for fixed amounts and when they ran out, you had to buy a new card. Now you could dump another 5,000 or 10,000 yen onto the card and keep using it. Even better, many shops and restaurants in or near the stations set up suica readers so you could charge your purchase to your suica card! So if you stop into the convenience store to buy a magazine or soda or pack of gum, just put your card over the reader, BEEP!, and off you go. This was the most useful electronic money rollout I have seen so far.

Okay, fine and good. What's Mobile Suica?

Mobile Suica (so glad you asked), is integrating your Suica card with your mobile phone. They've put the same RFID chips into new models of mobile phones, so you can now use your phone as your train pass! You can also wave your mobile phone over the readers in the convenience stores and buy your miscellany without even pulling out your wallet.

Even better, I believe you can add credit to your Suica account on the phone itself. You can add another 10,000 yen to your Suica just using the Suica application on your phone, and then that 10,000 yen is added to your phone bill at the end of the month.

This is cool stuff. The first few mobile phones from KDDI, my mobile service provider, weren't all that impressive, but the new models are out and there are some nice-looking ones. I'm leaning towards the Casio W41CA, which is slim, nicely designed, big screen, bilingual (i.e. has English menus as well as Japanese), an included 2 megapixel camera, and various other goodies. The new au phones are big on portable music playing as well, so this one has the USB cable to rip your cds to memory, or download songs for playback. I have my iPod nano so I don't really need it, though.

I think I can upgrade to this phone for about 14,000yen. (Maybe $120?) Upgrade prices here depend on how long you have had your current phone. Brand new subscriptions have the handset price heavily subsidized so the prices are kept low. But if you are upgrading from an older phone, you pay more if you haven't had your current handset for long. I think I'm in the 17-24 months category, so I should get a reasonable discount. Unsubsidized I think this phone will run me 30,000-40,000 yen.

Still cheaper than upgrading a PC. And I've been such a good boy lately!

Speaking of Tinian...

Just saw this post over at the Poker Gazette.

Shinichi is new champion in TDHC's poker tourney

For Yoshimi Shinichi, it was third time's the charm after he bested 52 other players to bring home a solid $7,080 in the Texas Hold 'Em "Island Style" Poker Tournament at the Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino Sunday night.

The youthful-looking Japanese national emerged as the grand champion after a grueling two-day competition that saw players from Japan, Tinian, Saipan and Guam falling by the wayside one by one, eliminated by their counterparts in a ruthless game of poker one-upmanship.

It was no walk in the park either for Shinichi. Second-place winner Chang du Young of Tinian and third-place winner Yuki Tagawa, the only female finalist, made Shinichi earn his win, giving him no inch in the climb toward Texas Hold 'Em glory.

...

The other players who also made it to the top rankings were Gen Watanabe, who placed fourth, and Terry Fan, who rounded up the final five. Watanabe got $1,770 for his efforts, while Fan recouped and made a tidy profit on his $300 entrance fee (plus $50 commission) by taking home $885.

...

Kiri Jackson, TDHC's casino marketing and promotions assistant, said that, at 53 entrants, this was the biggest Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament they've hosted since they introduced the game in February 2005. She said it was Casino Pit Manager and Poker Tournament Director Tony Jackson who introduced the game at the Dynasty Casino.

"This was our first tournament in 2006 and we will be holding two more like it in the months to come," she said.

This is pretty cool. I guess I can safely assume they have a poker room in Tinian and they have regular players there if they're holding poker tournaments.

I think I must know some of these winners, too - the problem is that I know most players at JPPA by their handle, not their real names. (And I'm pretty poor just remembering the handles!) But I definitely know Gen-san, from fourth place, who also goes by "Poker Samurai". Yuki Tagawa in third place I suspect might be "Celica", since she is a strong player and has mentioned Tinian before. But the "youthful-looking" Yoshimi Shinichi... man, that could be any of a lot of guys there! Otonn, maybe? I'll have to check the JPPA web page when I get home and see if they've posted updates, and congratulate them the next time I seen them.

Saipan

My girlfriend and I are planning another quick vacation. She and I both have a lot of vacation days this year, but she often has problems taking more than a day or two off at a time. This is pretty common in Japanese offices - most Japanese will take at most one week of vacation at a time. The American two-week vacation is very rare here outside of foreign companies. Someone who took two weeks off in a row would be looked on with some mixture of awe, envy, suspicion, and distrust.

We were thinking of some of the resort areas in Thailand, which seem to have bounced back nicely from the tsunami. But lacking time and funds, we decided to give Saipan a try instead. It's a nice beach resort island, a couple hours by plane from Tokyo, and probably overrun with Japanese tourists looking for a closer beach than Thailand or Hawaii. The photos look nice, though, and I'll be happy just to lie out in the sun on the sand for 4 days and do a bit of snorkeling.

Oh, and did I mention Tinian?

One of the other nearby islands, Tinian, has a large casino resort hotel. It's the closest spot to Japan for legal casino-style gaming, and the name seems well known among the players at the Ueno room. I think they have a poker room but I am not sure.

Of course I am going to go check it out! I mean, the sun goes down and I can't lie out on the beach anymore, can I?

Apparently there are flights from Saipan to Tinian, and also a ferry that takes about 50 minutes. I'm not sure which is the better way to go - it will depend on the schedules for both. Looking on the web, the ferry schedules were cut back to 1 or 2 per day for a while, but may have been increased again. I'm not keen on getting stuck on a different island if I miss the ferry, so I'll have to work it out.

We won't be going until early April, though, so I have time to work it out. I have no idea if they have a poker room there, and no idea of they have any poker players there even if they have one. But I'll be happy with slots, craps, and blackjack even if there is no poker. I guess I am more of a gambler than I like to admit!

Live play

I haven't been playing live recently. The last time was several weeks ago when I went to Duke on a Friday night since I had not been there in a long time. I wrote a fair bit about that night in the long post that got disappeared.

So, let me explain... no, there is no time. Let me sum up.

I played two tourneys that night, taking first place and second place respectively. Felt pretty damn good, particularly since I busted out J.O., the owner and probably best player in the joint, in both games. I played pretty well and admittedly got lucky many times. J.O. even complimented me on improvements in my game recently, which stroked my ego, too.

Since we can't gamble for money in Japan, I won from both games about 16 tokens, each of which can be redeemed for 500yen of food and drinks at the bar. So about $70 worth of winnings. Not bad at all! I still have 6000yen worth at home, and I have this Friday free, so will be heading back for another shot at the poker game and to spend some of these tokens.

I haven't been to the Ueno poker room recently, but the 2006 Japan Poker Championship is coming up in a few weeks. I found that my previous win of one of the Everest Cup games (the one that netted me my iPod nano) qualifies me to play, so what the hell, I will go and give it a shot. The 10,000yen buyin is pretty steep, especially considering that my chances of winning are pretty damn low. But Linda Johnson and two other writers and players from Card Player are coming out to participate, so it's worth it just for the experience.

Where have I been?

I haven't been doing much worth blogging about recently. And it was disheartening to have my last big entry deleted because of some blogspot weirdness, so I haven't jumped back into the blogging fray.

Online poker blather: progress towards my goal of beating the $1/$2 limit game for 300BB is going... Well, let me make up a word that is the opposite of "swimmingly". That word is "drowningly".

I am rereading Small Stakes Holdem now, hoping I will find new understanding to help me improve my limit game. Some of the points are making more sense to me now and I am trying to use them to improve. It must just be that I have more experience now - SSHE the first time around confused me and may have hurt more than it helped. Now I am seeing more opportunities for improving even when I can tell I am not holding the best hand.

I just signed up for a rakeback program and switched my Full Tilt account to it, hoping to get some bit of money back for my play. The release of the Mac client for FTP won them a lot of points in my book. And when I only recently realized that PokerTracker can datamine observed tables on FTP, whoa...

The problem is that FTP has a smaller number of players, and I think most of those players are in the States. So when I get home from work and log on to play, it's 2-5am in North America and there are maybe 2 full ring tables on FTP at my limit. Ugh. Although among some of the chatter on 2+2 recently about the Party Poker changes, someone pointed out that fewer players on some of the sites he was playing meant he got to know the regular players and could build a good read on them. That's a nice way to look at it.

Oh for the love of...!!

Not sure what caused it, but when I went to create a new post, it wasn't listing my previous two posts, although they were displayed on my blog page. The next time I published my blog index... POOF! Gone! Two posts gone! One was a fairly long update about my online and live play, which I am really not going to be able to type up again.

Annoyed.

It can be done.

Following my last post, I decided to try a smaller tourney. I settled on a 45 player SNG (NL Holdem) on Stars.

Sure enough, I was able to keep my focus up for most of the tourney, taking 4th place before losing my chips with A-4 versus the other guy's A-9. I made the final table, I made the money, and that was good enough for me.

I still need to work on my tournament stamina. After an hour and a half or two hours, I get restless and a bit bored and do stupid things that eventually get me knocked out. Unfortunately, the way to work on this would seem to be to play more tournaments with larger and larger fields until I can play a consistently good game for 3, 4, 5 hours or more.

I dread this. I really do. I'm going to have to do this one step at a time, slowly increasing the size of the fields and the buyin so I can try playing for longer periods of time for possible payoffs that are large enough to actually keep my attention for that time. If I have to play serious poker for 5 hours to make $80, well, it's just not going to appeal to me.

I'm not going to the WSOP anytime soon, so I'll just build up slowly.

Heh.

Reading Harrington On Holdem, Volume II to try to work a bit on my NL tournament skills, and came across this bit in one of the problems:

Hand 9-26
(Nine players are at the table, with stacks ranging from $50 to $2210)

Blinds: $50/$100
Pot: $150

Situation: An hour into a single-table satellite tournament.

Whoa, where the heck in Harrington playing? An hour into a single table tourney and only one player has been knocked out, and the blinds are only at $50/$100? Damn, every SNG I play in is over in an hour!

I tried one of the $2 tournaments on Party when I got home from work yesterday. 876 people entered, and the top 90 spots paid. I busted out after 90 minutes or so in 171st. This was better than I was expecting, actually, but it did highlight one of my problems with tournaments - patience. After an hour and a half I got restless and impatient and made a stupid call and got knocked out. Maybe if I am going to work on tournament play I should stick to 3-table MTTs or SNGs - those will be about the size of the live tournaments I normally play here in Tokyo.

Back to my Harrington study.

2006 Japan Poker Championship

The JPPA Web Site has information up about the upcoming 2006 Japan Poker Championship ("JPC"). I guess the Japan Series of Poker just wasn't enough.

Coming up on March 25, the buy-in is an unprecedented 10,000 yen! (Let's call it around a hundred bucks... I always just lop off the last couple zeroes to make things easy.) Even the buyin for the last JSOP main event game was only something like 5,000 yen, so this is serious money! (Relatively speaking.)

What's more, if I am reading this right then entry will be restricted to players who have either:

Won one of the JPPA tournaments since March 11, 2005

Made it to the final table of the 2005 JPC

Let's see... that rules me out! Although I did win an Everest Cup (and my beloved iPod nano) that one time, I've never got close to winning one of the JPPA's regular "Hops", "Steps", or "Jumps" games.

But there is still hope for wannabes like me. On March 22, there will be a Super Satellite for the JPC! I'm not sure, but I think this is a first for the JPPA. I've seen some of the photos of the last couple of JPC events, and it looked like the Ueno room was packed full of players. There's been a pretty reasonable growth in the number of local players this year, so the new restriction is probably a practical one since there will not be enough room for everyone to play!

This is pretty cool.

There will also be several special overseas guests participating in the JPC. Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, and Mark Gregorich, all from Card Player Magazine, will be attending. I'm sure they'll be trying to wrest the JPC title from the locals, but Bluejay and the others will not make it easy for them!

Prizes for the winner are not specified, other than a specially crafted gold bracelet for the event. It's not certain yet, but Inside Poker may also film the event for later broadcast in the states, too.

Damn. Guess it is time to work on my NL tournament skills so I have a shot at playing in this. 10,000 yen is, in one sense, not a huge amount of money for me, but the most I've paid for a tournament entry so far is about 3000yen, or around $20 online. First I would have to win a seat in the satellite, though, and that is far from certain. But it'll be fun to try! Time to finish reading Harrington, then play, then reread, then play some more. Those 2006 goals for my limit play may have to wait a while.

No Such Luck

Well, I didn't win on Friday, if that's what you were wondering.

I busted out early, 17th of 26 entrants. It was my own fault - I raised in EP with AJ suited, got one caller on the button. The flop came A-A-8 or so. I made a continuation bet, he called again. By now both our stacks were hurting; the turn was a rag, I checked, he pushed his remaining, and I called. He had the A-Q and it held up. What was I thinking? Did I really think he had A-10 or worse? I gotta stop doing that.

On the positive side, the younger guy who beat me, who I believe goes by the handle "Genki", went on to win the thing. I am reminded of that bit from "High Fidelity", where Rob finds out that his first girlfriend went on to marry and live happily ever after with the guy she dumped him for.

You get it? That's fate. That's got nothing to do with me, that is beyond my control, beyond my fault...

After 10 or so people busted, they started up the second chance tournament; this time was Omaha Hi-Lo. The Everest Cup games are free, but the other tournaments have entry fees - this one was 1200 yen (a bit over $10). I balked at paying $10 to join a tourney for a game I have mostly only played at $.01/$.02 stakes online. Stupid. I should have given it a spin and saw how it went. I've done well enough at those micro-micro-stakes online games, but I was concerned that the JPPA players would actually know how to play the game, instead of everyone limping in to see the flop and then starting to bet big if it actually hit them.

Instead I gravitated to the live game table, where a 500 yen (about $5) buyin gets you a rack of 100 chips for whatever game they choose that week, this time 2/4 NL Holdem. These games tend to start out with everyone playing tightly, then get looser and crazier as everyone relaxes and realizes it's play money. Towards the end of the evening the minimum raise becomes one stack of 20, and those chips are flying back and forth. Players can rebuy at any time, 500yen for another 100 chips, so after an hour or two there's quite a bit in play. At the end of the evening, every 200 chips you have gets you a coupon good for 1000yen towards later tournament fees.

I rebought once, so invested 1000yen into the game, but got lucky with a couple of all-ins in the last two hands and finished above two racks and got my money back in the form of a coupon. Not too bad.

Yesterday I was still kicking myself about not giving the Omaha hi-lo game a try, so I sat down for a $5 Omaha hi-lo SNG, which would have been about the same as the game I skipped on Friday night. Except I failed to notice that the SNG was limit Omaha Hi-lo.

I'd never played an Omaha SNG before, and never played limit Omaha before, but I took third place and won $10. Nice. Most of the lessons from Holdem worked well in Omaha. I folded crap-looking hands instead of calling, as most were doing. I raised good-looking potential hands to build the pot. When I got a big stack, I bullied small stacks with raises that would put all their chips at risk, depleting them and getting them knocked out more quickly. I even successfully check-raised a few times with the nuts, and everyone called. It felt good.

I really shoulda played that Omaha tourney on Friday. Damn.

Poker Tonight

It's Friday the 13th and the moon is nearly full -- 99% Full, Waxing Gibbous, I am assured. If I were superstitious, I might decide not to play poker tonight. But I'm not, so I will.

It will be my first trip back to the JPPA card room since I got back from my holidays. I've been playing almost exclusively limit poker (and playing poorly, to boot), so I don't have high hopes for tonight's no limit holdem tournament. But hell, it's another Everest Cup, sponsored by Everest Poker, which means I can play for free. And if I get amazingly lucky and manage to win, I'll have to choose between another iPod nano, or a Sony PSP.

Oddly enough, I think I would go for another iPod nano. My girlfriend seems to like mine, so I think she'd appreciate one of her own. A PSP would be nice to play with the mobile video features, but... I live about 10 minutes walk to work, and would never really use them. Six months ago when I rode the trains 45 minutes to work every day, no contest, though.

Who knows, maybe Friday the 13th is my lucky day?

Read A Book

I don't remember exactly what brought me to the Girls of Bodog calendar page, but the entry for January really stuck out in my mind.

I'm not just a pretty face, you know. My favorite book is:
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. Geisha girls are pretty sexy. I mean, the kind of life they lead is pretty sexy.

Let's see, it's been a while since I read Memoirs of a Geisha. As I recall, the main character was sold off into slavery as a young girl, and never saw her parents again. She was separated from her sister, who was sold to become a common prostitute, while she was taken in as a servant who might someday become a geisha. Most of whom are basically slaves, owned by the brothel and rarely if ever able to pay off the debt they owe. Having no other means of escape, she trains and manages to learn the traditional geisha arts, and eventually becomes popular enough that she can sell off the rights to take her virginity away to the highest bidder for such a price that she might be able to buy her freedom. She falls in love with some guy, but must come to grips with the fact that she's going to have to search for a patron who will pay her lavishly for her company regardless of what she thinks of him. But eventually the absolutely improbable happens and the guy becomes her patron and keeps her happily as his indefinite paid mistress until the end of their days.

If Miss January finds this kind of life "sexy", then she must be some self-loathing bondage submissive type, hoping to use her sexuality to snag some meal ticket who takes care of her needs but whom she secretly despises. Or maybe she just didn't really read the book.

Vegas Poker Rooms

I was hoping to visit a number of poker rooms in Vegas this time that I had not been to before. I only played at two new rooms, though - the Mirage and the MGM Grand.

An online friend had recommended the Mirage as his favorite poker room, and I had read that it was basically the home of high stakes poker in Vegas until the Bellagio opened. So I went to check it out. I already described my one session there in my earlier entry about hitting quad aces.

It's a nice room. I didn't pay too much attention to the tables and chairs, but the decor was nice, the dealers competent, and the action was quick. It was crowded and lively, which is nice if that's what your in the mood for.

But I really liked the MGM room. In contrast, the room felt large and open to the rest of the casino. The tables were spaced well apart so you never felt like people were walking back and forth behind you, and the ceilings were high and lofty. There seem to be a lot of mediocre players there (myself included!) so it's probably very profitable if you're a good player.

The brushes use the PA to make flippant comments to each other, which contributes to the fun feel of the room. I was there when they called a player to his new tournament table as he was hurriedly finishing up at his ring game table, playing the last hand, racking his chips, gathering his stuff up. "This is the third call for Rob G, your tournament spot is open.." came over the PA, and the guy shouted "I'M COMING!!!".

This got a few chuckles on its own, then the announcement came over the PA, "Um, I think we need a wet cleanup on table 12..."

I stopped by the new Caesars poker room, since it had just opened. I went by on the evening of the 21st, which I think was the first day it was operating. It looks nice, but after the MGM all I noticed was the rectangular walls and low ceiling. Unlike the MGM, which only ran holdem games from what I saw, they were running stud and omaha games, but the limits on all games were high, much higher than I could consider. I heard they had some 3/6 holdem there the first night, but all I saw was 10/20 and up. Whew! No thanks.

I poked into the Excalibur room a couple of times to see if I could get lucky and spot Dr. Pauly there spinning the wheel, since he was in town at the same time. I looked around for Phish baseball caps several times but never found him. Ah well. Maybe next time.

Bad Week

Blather.

My first week working towards my goal of earning 300BB at the 1/2 tables went poorly - I never seemed to get things going, and fell back into the red. I think it's both a string of bad cards, and bad play on my part. I'm hitting the books and reviewing PT to try to find out what I am doing wrong.

It's depressing and humbling. I thought I had got a handle on playing limit, and had reached a point where if I played patiently and waited for reasonable cards, avoided talking myself into playing bad starting hands out of boredom or excitement, and then bet aggressively when I was likely to have the best hand, I would slowly and steadily build a profit. I've tried to do that, but it's not going according to plan. Good cards seem few and far between, and aren't holding up for me.

Poker is not a simple game, though. I know I am the type of person who would like to find a simple formula that I can follow over and over to grind out a profit in the long run. The obsessive-compulsive in me couples with the boring uncreative tendencies to seek out the big red button I can push over and over that will pop out food pellets at regular intervals from here to eternity. Unfortunately it's not going to work like that, is it?

The games seem harder than they used to. It's only $1/$2 on Party, but I have difficulty finding games with VP$IP greater than 22%, and it seems like every table I get onto has 3-6 players marked as "Good Player - Tight Aggressive Solid". I still hope that it's largely because I am typically logging in at 4am ET because of the time differences and only the hardcore players are up and working, but maybe I just suck.

Feeling a bit down, I dropped onto a $.50/$1 table last night to play a bit without racking up more red in 1/2. Suddenly it was like I remembered Party being. Lots of idiots calling with absolute crap, chasing to the river with nothing to show for it. I can handle that. I think I will drop back to the lower level for a while, try to erase my red figures for that category in PT and then come back to 1/2 when I feel a bit more confident. I know that I will have to aggressively search out flaws in my game, consider new strategies, and play my opponents if I want to beat this game. But did I mention that I am lazy, too? It's not going to be easy for me.

Trip Thoughts

As I get back to my regular work-a-day schedule, I am losing track of what I wanted to say about my Vegas and Colorado trip. I should have been a good blogger and posted regularly as I went along, but I guess I'm just not that good. Let's see, what else did I want to say?

Several times I flipped on the tv and channel surfed a bit, and came across poker shows, mostly the ESPN episodes of the WSOP. It was... weird. Flip on the tv and there's poker! Folks in the states probably take it for granted, but here I have to search poker tv shows out, downloading for hours with Bit Torrent. It felt a bit like... being a big fan of the Dirty Harry movies and having watched them all dozens of times, and then moving to San Francisco and suddenly looking around and all the scenes you've seen in the movies are real places, right there in front of you, as blandly tangible as you please.

Speaking of tv, what the hell is with all the drug commercials?! It seemed like every commercial break there was some commercial hyping a new drug that you should check with your doctor about, including a 30-second long disclaimer about the possible side effects spoken in soothing tones. The one that stood out the most was one for Restless Leg Syndrome. Yes, if you have restless legs, which want to get up and move around when you're trying to relax or sleep, there are now new drugs for you to ask your doctor about. You may experience sleepiness, dizziness, unsteady gait, fatigue and eye twitching, but that's a small price to pay for relief from this crippling disease.

Let us in!

Getting into the United States is getting harder and harder.  I guess that's what they want, but it is annoying for those of us who just want to get to the city of sin and gamble.

When my GF and I went 7 months ago, they had started photographing and fingerprinting all foreigners entering the US, regardless of visa status or the relations with the US.  We had to go through the process when we flew into San Francisco airport, and it was a nightmare.  There were only about 5 agents for two planefuls of arriving passengers from Asia, and it took what seemed like hours.  They set up a couple lines for US citizens and breezed us through, but then didn't reassign those lines for foreigners, so the agents stood by idle while the huge lines at the other agents slowly processed.  I waited patiently for the GF to process, which finally finished up about 45 minutes later.  We rushed to pick up our luggage from baggage claim, and submit it to the new inspection station.  There was a huge line of bags to process and the worker there didn't seem to be in any hurry.  We ran, really ran, to catch our connecting flight to Vegas, since we'd been delayed so long by homeland security, and barely made it.  Maybe I should have seen it coming, but our bags didn't make it onto our flight.  When we called from the Venetian to check on them, no one knew where they were.  We ended up taking a cab out to Walmart to pick up toiletries and a change of clothes and got stuck out there as it got dark because the cab companies we called said they were coming out to pick us up, but never showed.  Our bags arrived at the hotel about 2am the next morning with no explanation.

The processing center in SF airport is huge now - there must have been about 30 lines of agents and most of them were occupied and chugging through incoming visitors at a steady pace.  They still had separate lines for citizens and visitors, but both were well staffed and I though we'd be fine.  Nope.  I got through quickly and waited for my GF to finish up, since she had reached her agent just as I cleared.  He started to ask her a number of questions about why she was visiting and where she was staying and she seemed to be having difficulty answering, so I started to walk over.  He noticed immediately and called out in a firm voice, "Sir!  Stay back, please!"

I stopped and waited by the wall near the exit area, where I could watch and hopefully hear if there were any problems.  The agent would have none of it.  He stood up and nearly shouted, "Sir, you must proceed through the exit area!", pointing.  Other security guards were starting to stare at me, and I reminded myself of the new United States and air marshals and guys off their medication getting bullets in the head.  If a homeland security agent tells you to move along, you better fucking move along.

I passed through the exit gate and tried to hang out in a position where I could see the agent and my girlfriend.  After another minute, he sent her down to the other end of the processing hall, where I could not see what was going on.

That was the last I saw of her for about 45 minutes.

I was starting to freak out.  I asked the other agents what was going on, and they would not answer.  "Just wait for them to finish, please."  I had visions of back rooms and invasive searches, of "finding" items on her or in her bags that incriminated her.  I worried that we'd miss our flight, despite the extra time we'd given ourselves this time around.  I worried about getting stuck in SF for days trying to get this worked out.  I worried about her getting refused entry into the country and sent back to Japan.  I had almost even started to worry about her being held for three years as an enemy combatant, uncharged of a crime and without contact and legal representation.

She finally showed up, looking flustered and irritated.  "What happened, what were they doing to you?!" I blurted out.  "Nothing," she snorted.  "They sent me over to the end of the hall for someone else to ask me questions, and it took him 40 minutes to show up!  Then he asked me a few of the same stupid questions about where I was heading and where I'd be staying, and he let me go four minutes later!"

Who needs visions of facists when simple imcompetence will do?

We made our connecting flight and got to our hotel, the Monte Carlo, only slightly delayed.  There we found that they had no record of our reservation, the one I had made on the web via Vegas.com, with confirmation printouts and emails and credit card records.  We spent another two hours on the phone with Vegas.com customer service, waiting for them to work out what happened to our reservation.  We couldn't check in because the Monte Carlo was completely booked.  Eventually Vegas.com gave up and got us a new reservation at Treasure Island.  I doubt I will be using Vegas.com ever again.  On the other hand, one of the customer service agents at Monte Carlo, Angela, was extremely helpful in trying to work out our problem and really put us at ease.  I hadn't even had a chance to tip her on the sly and push for a room upgrade!  Next time I go back, if I stay at the MC I will ask for Angela and be sure to bribe.. er... tip her very generously.

Not Yet

The timing is right - just as I clear out my debt from playing $1/$2 and was planning to move back up to $2/$4, they bring up (almost in passing) the question about when you should consider moving up in limits on Card Club. Sean directed listeners to go check the 2+2 forums for discussion and ideas on this issue, so I did so.

I found a very interesting thread there about the merits of playing $.50/$1, 1/2 full, and 1/2 6-max, which gave me some food for thought. They also mentioned the figure of making around 300BB at a given limit before considering moving up - it sounds like the 300BB figure is a round figure that most can live with.

I'm not keen on dropping down to .50/1 again, but it does seem to be a good idea to be certain I can really make a profit at these limits in the long run before moving up to a higher limit. So in the spirit of making new year goals, I'll go along with it.

So this year, 2006, I will:

Clear a profit of 300BB at 1/2 Full

Clear a profit of 300BB at 1/2 6-Max

Move my regular play to 2/4.

This actually doesn't seem like a very aggressive goal set to me. But I usually play about 10 hours a week - if I assume I can profit 1 BB per hour, then I'll need 30 weeks of play to clear each of the 1/2 levels! Looks like it might be a long year of grinding for me.

Inside Poker

I found an entry on Bluejay's blog after getting back into Tokyo, that Inside Poker came to the JPPA on the 31st to film a segment to be shown on TV in the US. Damn, I would have liked to be there for that, to be the token white guy if nothing else.

But the 31st was the day we flew back into Tokyo, and I didn't even get back home until 6pm and was in no shape to go out afterwards. Damn. I guess I'll have to watch the web site to see if they put up the video sometime.

I found that the JPPA also put up a copy of the Japanese newspaper interview with Tony G from when he visited. And in the photo with the article... there I was! Sitting to Tony's left! It must have been taken a few minutes before I made the ill-advised call to his all-in with A-T against his A-J. I'm also hunched over and with a goofy look on my face. Which is probably pretty representative for me, come to think of it.

Maybe I better hold off on further media appearances.

Green! Super Green!

I woke up at 3:30am this morning, after someone called at 3:00am and didn't wait for me to get to the phone, and then I couldn't get back to sleep because of jet lag. I don't know who called, but suspect it was my mom, who I don't think has ever got a firm grasp on how to figure out what time it is in Japan.

So I found a promising-looking table on Party, played for an hour or so, and eventually made some good hands and cleared about a $45 profit. This pushed me just slightly over into the green zone in my PokerTracker results for $1/$2 tables! Finally! It feels good!

A Tale of Two Aces

Actually, I guess it would be four aces. Or maybe, lessee, seven aces.

I played for several hours at the Mirage this trip at a $3/$6 table. I had never played there before and a friend said the Mirage was his favorite poker room, so I tried it out. I thought this limit might be too high for me, but a couple hours at a $2/$4 table at the MGM the previous day drove home how much slower live play is than online, and that if I played tightly I could last at the table a long time even if I never won a pot.

My table was a mixture of player types. Two or three retirees, quietly frustrated guy, a couple young student types (not obnoxious ones), and two off-duty Mirage dealers. One was on break or standby or something, and simply had a coat zipped up over her uniform. The other was in plain clothes, apparently on his day off.

Most of the players were pretty passive pre-flop, limping in, then would start throwing the chips around after the flop, even with some pretty marginal hands from what I saw at showdowns. After playing tightly for 30-40 minutes, I looked down in MP to see pocket aces. There were several limpers before me, including the day-off dealer on my right, so I raised it up. About 7 players called.

The flop came A-8-T with two spades. The players in front of me checked, so I tried for a check-raise to try to drive some players out. One of the late-position players bet, so I happily raised. There had been no check raises so far, and several players went "Oooo, a check-raise!" and dropped out. But one late-position player called, as did the dealer to my right.

A third spade fell on the turn, and the dealer to my right raised.

He knew what I had. I was sure of it. And he knew I knew he knew. And here he was raising me. Shit. I called, and the other guy dropped. A King came on the river, he bet, I called. "I didn't have the spades," he commented as he flipped over Q-J offsuit for the straight. Dammit.

"Ouch, that had to hurt," someone commented. Ayup.

About three hands later, I'm still off balance, trying to work out how that happened. Now under the gun, I look down and find... pocket aces. Oh joy, here we go again.

This time I just limped with them, and again about 7-8 players limp in to see the flop. It came A-5-J of mixed suits. Checked to me, so I hesitate slightly and bet. Quietly-Frustrated guy raises and about 3 other players call. Thankfully dealer-to-my-right folds out. I consider for a second and then call.

The turn comes an Ace. Like, the last one. I've just made quad aces and all I can think is, Thank god, at least I'm not going to lose this one. I stare at the ace for a second and then deliberately bet. Quietly-Frustrated calls, along with one other player. The river comes a small card and I bet again, and only Q-F calls. I flip over my aces and the tables makes appropriate, "Oooo, four aces!" noises. Q-F's hand hesitates, whether pondering to show what he was playing or unwilling to believe that he is beaten, then he mucks in disgust.

WHEW!

This brought me back up into the black, but it did not last. I got KK cracked a bit later, and played K-J offsuit offsuit a couple of times, but got nothing else worth playing for the rest of the evening. I watched several other players bust out, including Quietly-Frustrated, who just grimaced, smiled tiredly to the dealer and made his way out. They broke up our table after we dropped to 5 players -- I was stuck for $100 but not feeling too bad.

I looked around to see where the chips had all gone. Players had busted, and the ones that were left had dwindling stacks. All the chips had found their way to the two dealer-players - the lady dealer had migrated to a starting tourney with two racks of white and red. Dealer-to-my-right had been making "I better head home" noises for about an hour but kept on winning pots and so stuck around until his rush wore off.

Gotta watch out for them dealers.

And Happy New Year!

明けましておめでとうございます！
Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Although nowadays many younger Japanese will abbreviate this new year's greeting to "Ake Ome!", whenever I try it I feel like I'm not young and hip enough to use it.

Aside: a while back, I was walking with my girlfriend though a park area between two of the office buildings by our station. It was a pleasant evening and already dark out, and many young couples were hanging out in the park chatting (one assumes) in the darkness. I muttered to my GF, "It's only couples here..." and she laughed at me. I had used the word アベック abekku for "couple" - the word comes from the French word "avec" and used to be reasonably hip. My GF knew the word but suggested that no one used it in the last 20 years. Nowadays they use カップル kappuru from the English "couple".

All I could retort with was that it couldn't be 20 years ago... when I learned it as a student here, a mere 17 years ago, it was in common use. I couldn't see in the darkness if she rolled her eyes, but if she didn't, she should have.

We got back into Tokyo early yesterday evening, the last day of the year. It was a long, tiring trip, so I'm glad to be back in my own home. Jet lag sent us to bed at 9pm, but also woke us up at 4am, so we were easily able to see the first dawn of the new year, a Japanese tradition. Too bad it was too overcast to actually see the sun.

I didn't blog during my trip, so I'll try to write up some bits of my Vegas trip and general America impressions over the next few days.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season and spends time with the people they care about.

I'll write up some things about my time in Vegas soon, but today I'll be spending with my family.

America vs. Rest Of The World

No, this is not a political post. I've just been seeing on Tony G's and Bluejay's blogs that they're both competing in a $5000 buy-in shootout tournament, with an American team and a Rest Of The World team. Tony reports that he was named the captain of the World Team, and that it should be broadcast on Fox Sports. (Maybe I'll find it on Bit Torrent sometime, but unlikely.)

I guess it starts/started on Thursday the 15th, so it will be over before I get into town. Too bad, I would have liked to be there to support the World players.

Okay, here's the politics - when listening to the Card Player Magazine audio of the WSOP final table, I was annoyed to hear them start the game by having everyone sing the (United States) national anthem. Sorry, but I think poker now qualifies as a sport of the World, not just the United States, and making everyone sit through a song about how great the U.S. is (even after recently invading and overthrowing a foreign government for trumped up reasons) is inappropriate.

Play the goddamn game, leave the nationalistic jingles out.

Vegas, Baby!

Blathering.

Cleared my Party Bonus with several days to spare. At one point I was within $1.50 of breaking into the black for the total of my $1/$2 play, but I have slipped down to about $40 in the red again.

Going for a bonus makes me play faster, more tables, and sloppier. When I get back from Vegas, I will concentrate on finding a good loose table and playing my best game. Gotta close out this category.

Unexpectedly, I've already cleared out the $2/$4 category. Several nights ago I noticed that the PartyPoker Bad Beat Jackpot was up around $370,000, which is pretty high. I've never played on those tables, so I decided to play one orbit and see what it was like. I grabbed a $2/$4 table with a spot open at random and sat down.

Maybe I just got lucky with my table draw, but it was amazing. 7 players in on every flop, very few raises pre-flop. Everyone seemed to want to be in the hand if they had that shot at the jackpot. I got TPTK on my first hand and bet to the river, with two players calling me the whole way there, then mucked with essentially nothing. Made $60-some my first hand. Lost the next hand so sat out one or two, then after confirming how loose passive the game was, limped in with A7s. No one raised, I made my flush on the turn and still had callers to the river.

I finished up my orbit about $70 ahead and left the table with my mouth still slack in astonishment. Maybe I should have kept playing, but it was already late and I was tired and not going to be playing my best.

Somebody must have hit the jackpot overnight, since it was done to $75,000 the next day and play didn't look quite so crazy from my quick check. I'll wait for it to get up to donkey-inducing levels again and happily go back.

When I next checked my stats, my results for $2/$4 were now exactly at $0.00. Even steven. My jackpot-table winning exactly cancelled out my previous losses. That was a nice surprise.

A couple more hours of work and I'm outta here! Leave tomorrow for a week in Las Vegas. A week is a long time, but I still feel like it's not going to be enough. We'll see!

Feeling Good

Warning - more blathering.

I played a good deal of $1/$2 on Party yesterday - my girlfriend was out to go to a friend's wedding, so I had the house to myself and could poker geek-out. I played for a couple hours in the morning, tore myself away and went to the gym, came back and played a few more hours before I felt myself tiring and told myself to stop.

Sunday morning and afternoon is a very nice time play, since it's Saturday evening in the states and there are a lot more crazies (hopefully who have had a beer or four) on and doing silly things. I wonder if I can schedule my work time a bit differently so I can get some time for poker playing in N.A. prime time hours?

I did something borderline stupid on Saturday - I finished up my last deposit bonus on Stars and had no new ones, so signed up for a bonus on Party. This is borderline stupid because I usually play more stupidly when trying to clear a timed bonus (Stars' aren't, thankfully) - playing too many tables, and not paying enough attention to each. So now I have 800 raked hands to clear by next Saturday, which coincidentally is when we fly out to Vegas.

My play on Sunday cleared half of these already, even netting me a reasonable profit. Nice! If I can make another $34 at this level, my stats in PokerTracker will emerge from the red. It's nagged at me that I was basically a losing player at limit holdem, and only started making a profit when I switched to no-limit. If I can make another $40, I can declare victory. I think what I have learned is the obvious lesson that all poker players must learn - discipline is paramount. Discipline to fold your marginal hands instead of talking yourself into playing, to bet the best hand when you fear the monster under the bed, to quit when you are tired or not playing your best.

I still have losses on $.50/$1 and $2/$4 to overcome, but they're smaller amounts and if I can profit at 1/2, I am sure I can clear those other levels as well. It feels good.

nano In Hand

Just a quick note - my poker winnings iPod nano finally reached me on Friday evening. I was beginning to think it would never work out.

It's tiny. Really, really tiny. My first impression is that it's nice but I won't be getting rid of my 20 gig third-gen iPod yet. Still, 4gigs holds all my regular listening (podcasts) and a good chunk of other stuff that can cover most of my idle listening needs or sudden desires to hear such and such a song. Maybe I don't need 20gigs after all.

Then again, those new ultra-slim iPods with video are pretty damn sexy. Even my girlfriend wants one now.

nano Tonight -- maybe...

I went out to the Thursday night live game at the JPPA last night, for two reasons.

Get a little more live poker practice before I show up in Vegas in a bit over a week.

Pick up my iPod nano, won from my Everest Cup victory weeks ago.

I showed up around 5:45pm, with the game scheduled to start at 6:00. Doyle and one other player (I think he goes by Dr_K2? Note to self - maybe I need a better handle for my play at JPPA. Then again, maybe I'm too late to change it.)

The first words out of Doyle-san's mouth were, "So, did your iPod arrive?"

Me: "... Isn't it here?"

Doyle: "... No, we shipped it to your address a few days ago!"

Sure enough, when I got home I found a notice in my mailbox that the delivery service had come by at 10am to try to deliver it, but naturally, no one was home. If I hadn't been in such a degenerate gambler's rush to get to my PC and play some quick poker over lunchtime, I would have checked my mailbox and seen the notice, and rescheduled the delivery for that evening. I.e. I would have had my damn nano here today!

Irony. Let me just sit and consider the concept a moment.

Anyhow, I scheduled the redelivery for tonight, so I should get it when I get home and can play with it over the weekend. It may come in handy for my trip to the States, too.

My bad luck continued during the Live Game play last night. This month is limit holdem month for the live games, I found, which was perfect considering that's the game I'm trying to work on now. But I played for 3 hours and got shit-all for cards, bleeding away three racks of chips before calling it a night. I got AA very early on, when there were still just three of us playing, and it bumped my stack up, but after that the only playable hand I got was pocket 5s. Called, the flop missed me, and I folded to K2's bet. Late in the game, I called into a family pot (we'd grown to 10 players by that point as more folks drifted in after work) with J2s. The flop was a rainbow 10-K-Q, and K2 bet at it again and everyone called (about 7 players) including me. Ace of the fourth suit fell, so I made my straight. I got into a betting war with two other players, capping it on the turn. Of course I figured them for the other Jacks, but I was willing to split it and if they didn't have it, I was going to make them pay. Another 10 fell on the river - bet, raise, I called, Taipa-san called. I showed my Jack, Taipa-showed his Jack, and the last player showed his K-10 for the full house. Boom. I flushed my few remaining chips on the next hand and bailed to go home and grumble about my lack of iPod nano.

The game didn't bother me - it was a good reminder of several things. Live games are slower than the online games, so a streak of bad hands will last longer. If I'm going to play tight, I have to take into account that it's going to be slower going and discipline to stay tight and not start playing crap hands after 2 hours of nothing better than 55 will be important.

Also, sometimes bad luck just happens. I can't expect to have winning sessions all the time. If I have a bad session in Vegas, I'm going to have deal with it, leave the table, go do something else and HAVE FUN. I will not let a bad game ruin my vacation. My JPPA game was a cheap reminder of this - I'm glad it happened.

Only a week until my Vegas trip! Sucks that I will miss the bloggers descending on Sin City this weekend, but I guess that's just how it goes. It sounds like Dr. Pauly might be in town next weekend, after the Bellagio tourney's finish up. I'll be keeping my eyes open for him!

Warning Signs

Yesterday, during my lunch hour I rode by bike back to my apartment since I live close by, ate my lunch at home and played for 30 minutes on PartyPoker. Found a loose, gambling table and made $25 profit from my $50 buyin, which is quite reasonable, I'd say.

By my own standards, this is teetering on the edge of degenerate gambling. Mixing poker playing into the middle of your work day is asking for trouble.

The trouble is that lunchtime here is prime time evening hours in North America, and the tables on Party are just full of folks gambling it up. When I get home from work, it's late night and the fish have called it a night and the hard core types are still at it. Mostly I see rocks, neutral aggressives, and tight aggressives around during my local evening hours.

I'm not going to do this often, but once in a while I'll treat myself to lunch at the fish tank. I deserve a treat now and then.

Japanese Tourney at Aladdin

Bluejay reports that they held a tournament at the Aladdin for Japanese players yesterday! That would have been cool to see, or even attend. (I think they would have let me in as an honorary Japanese player.) Photos are here.

Apparently only 11 players attended, though. (Wonder if they squeezed them all into one table?) Still, there were 8 rebuys!

JPPA regular Jumbo took the top spot. Congrats!

Will Everest Survive?

I like the international focus that Everest Poker is going for, as I have commented on before. I used their client in Japanese for a while to check it out, then reinstalled into English to make things a little easier for me.

Their actual game interface has never appealed to me much, though, so I haven't played there much. I played a few of their freeroll SNGs and won enough of them to boost my bankroll by 10 or 20 cents, but at this stage of my life that counts as a four-star waste of my time.

Lately I loaded it up again to have someplace to play while PokerTracker was compressing databases and dumping out player information to notes files, which can take a long time. I've gone looking for $1/$2 limit tables and found nothing. It's not that there are no open tables, there's no one playing those limits. The only limit players I saw were on the $.02/$.04 table. Yes, one table.

This does not look like a good sign.

Hammer Dropped

I realize that there are a lot of poker blogs out there nowadays, with lots of people blathering about the same old stuff that I am. I'm going to continue my blathering about the basics of learning to play, but I will try to make it clear at a glance if my post is the normal blathering, or actual poker-in-Japan comment and insight. Skip over all the crap, that's fine.

I had a very good online session last night, giving me hope for my goal of beating the limit game. Sunday was bad for me - I played for several hours (my girlfriend was off in Saitama so I could geek/poker out) and just didn't catch any cards. I reviewed with PokerTracker afterwards and found a lot of small-loss hands, and only four or five winning hands. I didn't find any glaring mistakes, so I'm chalking it up to a bad day.

Last night was heartwarming, though. My table was perfect - lots of loose players jamming the pot pre-flop with any two suited cards, who would turn passive and call any bet after the flop hoping to hit their flush or straight on the turn or river. I waited for good cards, caught top-pair-top-kickers, and bet them to the river and was paid off many, many times. Doesn't it feel good when it works out?

I turned my $60 buyin into about $125 in 30 minutes. I could feel a bit of tilt coming on, that tilt you get when you're running good, feeling flush with success and tell yourself, Okay, these are pretty marginal cards, but hey, I'm way up! Lemme have a little fun, I can afford it! Dangerous.

Then... I got dealt the Hammer. Good old 2-7 offsuit. They say you're not a poker blogger until you habitually play this hand like a winner. If I'm going to tilt and play crap, might as well play the Hammer! One limper to me, and I raised it up. The blinds folded, and the raiser... re-raised! Uh oh... I'm screwed!

A true poker blogger would have re-re-raised. I just called.

The flop was something like Q-2-10 rainbow. Woo, I had a pair. The other guy bet. I decided to call to the river just to play out the hand, take my loss, give myself a little object lesson in losing money by tilting when running good, and finish up still well ahead.

The turn was a low card of the fourth suit. At least I could rule out flushes beating my puny pair of 2s! He bet, I called.

The river... was a 7. Two pair. He bet. I called.

Yes, I called! I can only wish I had the balls to reraise at the end!

He flipped over... pocket aces. Rockets.

I cracked his aces with the Hammer. Maybe someday that will make me feel like a masterful player, heir to the high standards set by the likes of Iggy, Dr. Pauly, and Bobby Bracelet. Instead I was shocked and horrified, and apologized to the guy.

God, I am such a wuss.

Everest Produces!

I should point something out - my iPod nano is apparently waiting patiently at the JPPA card club for me to come pick it up! I just got notice of this yesterday - I hadn't planned on going there this weekend, but I might now.

Hats off to Everest Poker for encouraging Japanese poker players! I can't wait for my new toy. Every day it will remind me that even a poor player can get lucky now and then.

Starting Over

Trying to improve my limit game feels very much like starting completely over. I started with limit and played for a long time and never got to a point where I could turn a profit in the long run - instead I tried no-limit and found I made a lot of money by playing relatively tight and waiting for some idiot to do something stupid for all his chips when I held the nuts. On lower levels on Party Poker this happened a lot, enough to decide that maybe limit was just not my game and no-limit was more my style.

Recently I start to think I missed out on something by not figuring out what I was doing wrong in limit play and correcting it before moving on to no-limit. Even if I can make a profit at NL, I want to keep plugging away at limit until I get a handle on it, and then I can leave it for NL with a clear conscience, if that's what I choose.

So I am playing a lot of limit right now, trying to follow WLLH as closely as I can. I still screw up, but I seem to be doing better. I'm having winning and losing tables, but winning slightly more than I am losing so it feels like progress. Checking PokerTracker afterwards to look for stupid plays that seemed to make sense at the time and try to see the bigger picture.

Plus, there are a lot of helpful souls out there who are all too happy to give valuable play advice when they see you make a questionable decision.

One off of the button with As Jd, I open with a raise. Button and SB fold, BB re-raises. I call.

The flop comes Th 7c 8h, so all I have is an inside straight draw. BB bets, and I call.

The turn is Qc, which gives me another inside straight draw, though now there are two hearts and two clubs out there. BB bets and I call.

The river is 9s, so I make my straight. No flushes out there, so when the BB raises I re-raise. We cap it, and he turns over Ah Jh, so we both have the same straight and chop the pot.

DaStoneKILLA said, "what did u have"

DaStoneKILLA said, "on the flop"

I'm not quite sure what he's asking at this point. Was his attention diverted and he didn't notice that I also had A-J and we split the pot, when he thought he must have had it won? I give him a few seconds to scroll back and check.

DaStoneKILLA said, "frkin cant"

DaStoneKILLA said, " believe the play"

DaStoneKILLA said, "understand english"

I get the feeling he wants me to respond, despite the lack of a question mark to indicate it.

JamesAt15 said, "is that a question?"

DaStoneKILLA said, "its a ? ahole"

Ah, so his question mark key does work. That's a relief.

JamesAt15 said, "well, I had AJ on the flop, same as you"

DaStoneKILLA said, "i had a flush draw"

DaStoneKILLA said, "u had a longshot"

Hmm, he's right! He was betting both a straight and flush draw, and I was calling with just a straight draw with two hearts on the board. And two clubs after the turn, too. So I had considerably fewer outs than I was thinking.

JamesAt15 said, "yep"

DaStoneKILLA said, "we both got there"

DaStoneKILLA said, "where were ur pot odds"
DaStoneKILLA said, ">"

That must be another attempt at a question mark, although he missed it and hit the key next to it. His consideration for my desire for proper punctuation is touching - he doesn't seem to be in the habit of using it and is making a special effort for my benefit. I remind myself that many people don't use computers as much as I do and may have difficulty finding their way around a keyboard.

What's more, my benefactor seems distressed at my blunder. I try to put his concerns at ease. He should look on the bright side - my poor play actually made him money, according to Sklansky!

JamesAt15 said, "why are you asking? you should be happy if I call without proper odds"

DaStoneKILLA said, "u had nothing"

DaStoneKILLA said, "get u nxt time"

Helpful to the end, he reminds me that even though my play didn't lose me money this time around, in the long run this is -EV. I nod and remind myself of the dangers of results-oriented thinking.