Hugo's Blogspotting: 20 December

200/400 Drunk PLO, 2008 WSOP, Ben Grundy's review of the year, Patrik Antonius keeps it under control, Sammy Farha gets photoshopped, TJ Cloutier remembers Jack Strauss and Everett Goulsby

By Hugo Martin 20 December 2007



One Player Per Hand?

With all the recent hoopla and controversy surrounding the prevalence of multi-accounting and “ghosting” in online poker, here’s some footage from Nat Arem’s blog which confirms what many suspect is what really goes on.


You may recall your attention being drawn to thepokerfilm before and here is a bonus clip which inexplicably didn’t make the final cut. Maybe the director or producer (Nat himself I believe) felt it would give online poker a bad “image”. Rowdy drunk twenty-something guys screaming, “Fuckin’ pussy!” at the screen every time one of their opponents fold? Surely not.

Even though they are all drunk they are all still “professional” enough to discuss what the right move is during the play of the hands. Unsurprisingly they all have differing ideas of what to do in certain situations, so maybe four drunk guys per hand (albeit four strong winning players when sober) would actually be –EV.

The point is that when you are sitting at home playing at your favourite online poker room you will never know who or what you are up against. Maybe you’re playing some 10 year old kid who has worked out his old man’s password. Or maybe some guy is pals with a top player who is now sitting next to him and giving advice. Or maybe someone has gotten totally drunk and is just tilting off their chips. You just will never know.

Online poker now resembles live poker from many years ago in that you could find yourself in some one horse town looking for a game. As you sit down an old guy pulls you aside and warns you that at least two players are cheating. You now ask him why he’s playing and he of course replies that it’s the only game in town.

All this reminds me of an anecdote I read somewhere once about some underground game where the guy who ran the game was playing draw with a couple of the regular producers. After the draw he completes a royal flush and the first donator bets and the second one raises. The host of the game is about to put in another raise when he realises that he will end up ironing out two of his best punters plus the fact that he’s made a royal flush might look a bit shady. In the interest of placating his punters and ensuring that business keeps ticking over our host quietly passes his hand in the muck.

I’m not really sure of the point of that story, but it’s Christmas and the blogs aren’t much cop this week so you’ll have to allow me to ramble.

2008 WSOP

The schedule for the 2008 WSOP is up on the net and Michael Craig has already worked out which events he wants to play and how much it will cost him.

“My first-draft schedule…comes out to $23,000, plus the Main Event. Sick as that sounds – I never played more than one event in a World Series of Poker until 2006 and never cashed in an event until 2007 – I’m pretty proud of my restraint and discrimination.”

If you think that’s a lot to spend on tournaments Craig has provided other amounts:

“If you play every event and rebuy an average number of times (I put this at a total of $26,000 in rebuys), the World Series of Poker will cost $257,500, plus your tab in the Poker Kitchen. If you never rebuy and are NOT a senior female casino employee, it costs you just $229,000.”

Jeez, no wonder so many players are trying to get sponsorship. And just in case you’re currently running bad, think about the fact that there will be a lot of players next year who will spend that amount and not even cash in one event.

P & L

 

Seeing as it’s Christmas time and a new year is beckoning many players are tallying up their year end totals. Did you win? Or did you conveniently lose your records when you moved flats in the summer? One player who isn’t scared to put numbers up on his blog is Ben Grundy.

“Between January and June I definitely got close to going busto. I had losing day after losing day, and I never thought it was possible to run so bad, for so long. Of course alot of it was my fault. Playing games that were too big when out of form. Poor game selection, and lots and lots of tilt. I think at one point in April I was about $400,000 down for the year… yikes.”

Yikes indeed. That quote is probably a pretty good representation of what happens to 99% of poker players in the world (different money amounts of course). Playing games that are too big must be one of the most common leaks don’t you think?

Grundy got out of it, but I’m not sure he’s listening or reading himself too well. A bit later in the same entry he writes that one of his goals in 2008 is to,

“Play some high stakes cash games in Bobby’s room at the Bellagio.”

I shouldn’t scoff really as Ben Grundy could well end up crushing them in Bobby’s room, who knows?

Antonius keeps it under Control

One player who not so long ago was playing for modest stakes who has ended up a regular in Bobby’s Room is Patrik Antonius.

“Last week I played the biggest poker game I have ever played. It is hard to imagine that five years ago I was playing $1-2 PLO at Casino Helsinki and a few nights ago I was playing 2k-4k PLO against “Mr Omaha” himself. We played with a $200k cap, which was probably a little too small, but we were trying to keep things a little under control.”

“We were trying to keep things a little under control” – LOL.

Photoshop Funnies

I’m assuming that “Mr Omaha” is Sammy Farha who has recently written a book about pot limit Omaha. There’s a thread on 2p2 (look for it around thread no.280, page 28) which features a pretty funny photoshop comic strip which features all the big game players, the gist of which is that Sammy is a donator to the big cash games so to keep him sweet all the pros are pretending that they think he’s a great player and so on.

Strauss vs Goulsby

Not that the top players would have to really do that as I believe that every poker player on the planet thinks they are different class anyway. I can’t even imagine Sammy Farha having any self doubt about his poker game. Anyway a good illustration of the way we kid ourselves about our abilities can be found in TJ Cloutier’s latest blog.

TJ is continuing his stories about the old days and he tells a story about Jack Strauss (WSOP Champ back in ’82) and a character named Everett Goulsby.

“We used to say, "If Everett's lips are moving, he's lying." I went to him one time and asked, "How many times have you played Straus head-up?"
"I've played him three times and I beat him all three times," he said. About a month later, I asked Jack the same question.
"I broke Everett all three times," he answered.”

Whoever said poker players had big, fragile egos and are all compulsive liars?

Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

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20/12/07

Jack Strauss