Bmore's Brawl # 2: River Rats!

Last night was another successful Bmore's Brawl. We had 23 entrants come out and battle for the crown. A special thanks goes out to BadNewsKennel, blowpar68, coleman410, MikeB82, mind27 and saveparmk72 for making their first appearances last night. We hope to see you back next week...

The "beats of the night" award goes to pokerwilly. We saw a lot of crazy suck outs this week, but you've got to feel for this guy. In the first hand here, the money goes all in on the flop, and pokerwilly gets crushed with top-top for most of his chips:

Now, here's why I nominate these beats. Just five hands later (look at the top right) pokerwilly gets his money in with a pair and an open-ender, only to run into the same guy with rockets again:

Come on guys...that's sick...

Here's one of my favorites from last night. Here's AltronIV shoving it in on the flop with about five outs:

Come on Crooked Random Number Generator....

Yahtzee!

The hand of the night came at the final table when xojones and surfinRRT got it all in on the turn. Being the two big stacks, the river would award the winner about 26,000 and a MASSIVE chip lead:

Baaaaaam! Gotta love those four outers for all the cheese and crackers!

MikeB82 gets crowned BubbleBoy for the week after this beat my jmlabrie18:

Nothing too special there, but those hurt when you're on the money bubble. MikeB82, for your wonderful display of skill navigating through 19 guys and two hours of battle poker, your receive...Nada!


Mochagotsauce took down 3rd place, becoming the first brawler with two cashes in the series. Heads-Up came down to xojones and jmlabrie18, and this final hand with the money all in preflop:

Riverrrrrrrr!

And with that, here are the final results from Bmore's Brawl #2:

Congrats to jmlabrie18 for taking it down and thanks to everyone for coming out. We'll do it again next, and every Wednesday, at 9pm on Full Tilt.

Stay tuned to my blog as I'll be positing Money Leaders, KO Leaders and more later this week...


Damn Donkeys,
Bmore

Poker Goals for 2008

Okay, I know...I suggested this to AltronIV and he posted it, and it took me a week to get mine up. My apologies, but this exercise drove me crazy! I had about twenty items on the original list, but I decided to cut it down to ten reasonably attainable poker goals for 2008. If I could accomplish all ten of these items I think that I would be really taking my game to the next level. Accomplishing this entire list will require discipline, consistency and a little help from the poker gods along the way. I'm also going to mark on the calendar a date to quarterly review how close I am getting towards these goals. At any rate, here they are:

1. Correct That Ugly Shark Scope Graph- AHHHH! I can't stand this thing. This graph is documented proof of how, every so often, thebmorekid decides that he wants to play with the big boys before his bankroll allows it. It's ridiculous! I grind it out for 250 games and all of the sudden just jump up four or five levels and "see what happens." The goal for 2008 is a steady incline (with normal variance) back to at least even. Without further adieu, here is the ugly chart:


Blah...moving on...

2. Be green on every level of Poker Tracker- This is by far my most ridiculous goal of 2008, simply because it is counter productive to optimum profitable play. I'm basically saying, "If I suck at level X, spend precious time trying to get that level into the green..." Oh well, too bad. I want to do it so it's a goal. I'm starting off with 20 of 35 levels in the red. There is a group of about five that should be easy to repair, so hopefully this goal will have a good update the first go round.


3. Win at least two more Bmore's Brawl events- The original goal was to win "an" event, but since I'm a superstar and won the first one, I had to refine this goal. Two more will be tough, but it's something to shoot for.

4. Finish in the top five of the Bmore's Brawl Leaderboards- This will be another tough goal, as I respect a lot of the players competing in this, but making the top five on the Money and KO Leaderboards is a must, and I'm off to a good start, as I'm in the top five for both after one event.

5. Add another $10k to my PokerDB stats- Hopefully, this one won't be too bad. I've been on this pace for the past three years, and it only takes a couple of final tables to get this done.

6. Beat AltronIV in our prop bet- period. I'm not going to talk about this one. I'm just going to do it. Losing this prop would send me into a downward spiral of depression that I don't want to think about it. Failure is not an option. Bring it!

7. Blog at least 15 times a month- I can't stand it when I really get into a blogger's posts and then they decide to stop blogging for a month. I hope to find no excuses to "break" from consistent posting all year.

8. Document EVERY session in my master journal- I've been pretty good about records in the past, but this year I hope to step it up by keeping a master journal that will have every session online, live, casino, etc. So far so good...

9. Win a 2008 OMWSOP trophy- This is going to be real tough. You can only win a trophy by winning an event or finishing at the top of the POY race. Now, of course, I happened to do BOTH last year:

Baaaaaaam! What a lovely picture...

In reality, navigating through the fields might be the hardest goal of 2008. Nonetheless, I've got to make it a goal, and try to achieve it.

10. Get three cashes is the Card Player Database- I don't care how much the cashes are for, I just want to get some more data in that system. This will require attending as many "counted" events as possible, and a lot of help from the poker gods.


So that's it. I took out some of the harder-to-reach goals, as I thought I was just setting myself up for failure. As I look across these goals, I see a couple that might not get accomplished due to things out of my control. However, having these goals in the back of my mind when playing the OMWSOP, Bmore's Brawl, big MTTs, land based casino events, will give me better focus and hopefully a better shot at meeting these objectives. I guess we will check back at the end of March and see how I'm doing...

Damn Donkeys,
Bmore

Online Poker Must be Rigged!

Tonight marked the first Bmore's Brawl Private Knockout Tourney on Full Tilt. The weekly event will be played at 9pm on Wednesday nights with a 3,000 chip stack and bounties on everyone. 23 people came out for this first event, and we didn't wait long to get the first bad beat out. Here's out first guy out, purplerain05, saying hello to a three outer on the river courtesy of nycboss:

Yeah, that stings...


Keeping in fashion with the bad beat theme, here's yours truly shoving my stack in against the rockets preflop:

How dare you call me with Aces? Tough beat chadmasterc...

Our KO leader was hslaw06 by a landslide. With two other guys tied for 2nd in KOs with three tonight, hslaw06 secured his top spot on the KO leader board by managing to knockout eight guys! Wow. Here's hslaw06 in action taking out two opponents on the money bubble:

Well, if my KJ cracking aces didn't prove that online poker is rigged, here's the host catching a pretty five-outer on the river to gain the chip lead when we were down to three:

In my defense, we shoved this preflop. Hats off to hslaw06 for a very impressive showing the first week. He finished up third place good for $26.80 (plus another $16 in KOs)

After that, I went heads up with mochagotsauce. He's having a decent run, as he got heads up in the tourney our group played last week as well. The final hand was pretty straight-forward. One of us raised preflop and got a call. I remember seeing the turn for either free or pretty cheap. At that point, the cards pretty much dictated the action. He's got top pair and an open-ended straight flush draw and I'm sitting with a pair plus the open-ended. When the river gives him two pair he shoves and I call with the K high straight. Ugly river for mochagotsauce. Lovely one for me...

And that's that. Winning my own tournament should be great for marketing purposes. Now I'll have everyone commenting that I rigged this thing all week. In all seriousness though, I'm very happy to lock up a win in the tournament so early on, as it takes the pressure off to take one down. Here are the final results:

All in all, I think everyone had a great time, and I'm looking forward to next week, as we've got another batch of guys who will be playing for the first time because they had conflicts this week. Until then, I'm going to enjoy this win and make sure I brag about it as much as I can for the next 168 hours...

Damn Donkeys,

Bmore

Who can find the biggest fish?

I guess it's not even really much of a competition. First, I provide to you exhibit A from yours truly... Here I face Koops77 in a .10/25 game. Facing a pot size bet from the hero, our fish elects to shove it all in with the 7 high draw:

Just a slight sting from that one...

But exhibit B takes the cake, as jmlabrie18 took the day off from his budding poker career to track down some big fish three miles into the Atlantic:

Case closed! He claims that these weren't even the biggest. At any rate, he is kind enough to be sharing some of the treasure, and if they taste half as good as they look, I'm in for a treat.

Looks like I'll be taking a loss tonight. 0 for 6 on MTTs tonight. I'm too tired to do the math but the cashing percentage tonight, at a quick glance, is nothing to write home about. Cash games were keeping me a float, but I've taken a hit or two and am probably going to end up with a small loss there too. But you know, if there wasn't luck in poker, I'd win them all...

Damn Donkeys,

Bmore

Set Mining, Floating and Comanche Moon

I wasn't able to get a lot of poker in today with the NFL games, a nap, and real work as distractions. I did manage to lock up a win in my cash game session, and I finished up in MTT/SNGs as well. Nothing spectacular, but upticks nonetheless...

While this isn't a strategy blog, I figured that I'd touch on two of my favorite concepts in NL that I feel people do not take enough advantage of. Each concept deserves an entry all by itself, but instead of me babbling on about them, I figured that I would just bring them up and maybe go into more detail on a later date with some examples.

First- set mining...this concept is in my head because of a discussion with AltronIV. Essentially, set mining is pretty basic. It's the concept that ANY pair has strength much beyond standard pot odds, that they can be played virtually 100% of the time. The implied odds that you have assuming you flop a set, typically outweigh any justification for folding. There are some extreme examples when folding is correct. However, I hear people say, "Yeah the guy raised 6x the blind and I knew he had AA or KK, so I folded my 77 without hesitation.

Well, guess what? If both of you had 42x the blinds in your stack, I think that was a ridiculous play. Rather than going into why, here's an article from way back that discusses the concept. But hey, if you want to keep folding, go right ahead. It makes my night much easier...

Floating is another concept that I hear people describe but I don't think they fully understand. For example, I hear people discuss that because there are two flush cards on a flop, a floater would be calling a bet, and then bluffing when the third flush card comes. The purpose of the float is to convince the bettor that you've already made your hand on the flop. While the betting patterns may seem the same, a float has more to do with:

1. determining that the person leading out is c-betting;
2. being able to scare bettor with a smooth call;
3. being able to convince the bettor on 4th or 5th that you are made

I guess my point is that an artistic float is one that is made when a scare card doesn't come. And that's the beauty of a float. Bluffing when a scare card comes is a play, but floating is a little more advanced. Here's the first article I came across when I googled floating. I read over it pretty quickly, but it does grasp the artistic concept that I'm trying to describe. I should also mention that floating typically goes a couple levels deep, and it's impossible to pull off against someone who isn't playing one or two levels up.

And lastly, Comanche Moon kicks off in about five minutes. It's a prequel to Lonesome Dove, one of the best miniseries I've ever watched. I'm assuming that it will be a let down, but I'm going to give it a chance. Lonesome Dove was magical, and with attaching the name to it, I'm just hoping that they attempted to do the same with this one.

Damn Donkeys,
Bmore

Ptrack Stats and Bmore's Brawl

KO'd in the KO Tourney in 20th place. Nothing exciting. It was time to push and BB woke up with JJ. Here is the dramatic conclusion to Bmore's Friday night Poker Extravaganza:

I had a couple of MTT cashes tonight but nothing over 3x buy-in, so tourneys were pretty uneventful. Crushing a cash game was what gave me a good night. It always helps to have a good cash session while navigating the variance of MTTs...

I reached a milestone tonight. For the first time in months, I'm positive on PTrack for my career. A cash session of about +$115 brought my out of the red for the 70,000 hands I have on Ptrack. I can't remember when I actually purchased the software, but I do know that it's been months since my overall number has been green.

So yeah, I'm happy... I think it's a shame to be happy with a net of +$26 bucks or so over 70,000 hands, but hey I'm happy...

It's no secret to anyone that knows me that the bulk of my poker profit has come from tournaments, 80% of what I've done with poker in the past has been tourneys. However, I've got a burning desire to excel in the ring games in 2008. I think getting out of the red so early in the year is great. I'm sure I will bounce back and forth for a bit, but once I get over the even hump, red (overall) should be a thing of the past. I need to get rid of two bad habits and I will be fine.

Bmore's Brawl will kickoff on FTP this upcoming Wednesday. It's a weekly invite only tourney I'm hosting, and a password is required. The purpose in hosting this event is to unite the OM Rounders crew, new and old, every week to come together and have some fun playing cards. Some crew members participating in this event are spread out across the US at this point. We've got original rounders in NY, Cali, Vegas and even Kansas City. It will be nice to get everyone back together, and it will also give them a chance to meet the new guys. Below is the lobby for the first event:

Pretty cool stuff...

That's about it for now. I opted out of a trip (very unlike thebmorekid) to AC today. There were a couple of reasons not to go, and I think it will work out in the long run. For example, I'm already feeling more excited about the Borgata Open at the end of the month...

Damn Donkeys,

Bmore

Winna Winna!

It's happened before...

I'd love to say that this was the first time, but it wasn't. And you know, I can specifically recall a silent pledge to myself the last time that this happened, that it would never happen again.

But it did...

So is it worth writing about? Is it worth this therapeutic exercise of exposing my weaknesses to the millions of viewers of this site, in a feeble attempt to correct my past errors?

No...but I'm bored, and apparently you don't have anything to do either so let's talk about it...

Heads up in a 45 man SNG about 15 minutes ago. Donkey has 45k, and I have 25k. After a brilliant advanced bluff that only a semi-professional like myself could pull off, I even up the chips. Checking KQs in the big blind, I set Donkey up perfectly to bluff at the 10 10 Q rainbow flop. He does, I call and he bricks out...

"Winna Winna," I yell to the top of the mountains. "Winna Winna," I type in to the IMs of those faithful fans in IM world. I've already spent my 1st place winnings in my mind. A $4 box of chicken and a bootleg copy (top-quality) of the new season of the Wire is in my future...

But wait, cards have been dealt again. Ahhh, he had me covered by 4k. No problem. With blinds at 2k/4k, the donkey is toast, even after he doubles to 8k.

And then 16k.

And then 32k.

And then I push with K7o and Donkey calls me with AKs. "One tiiiiiiiiiiime," I yell to the mountain tops. But alas, our hero bricks out. What good can rise from these ashes of chicken-box-less fury? I leave you with a quote I came up with tonight. Feel free to plagiarize it in the future if you can't think of anything creative on your own:

"You never count your money, when it's sitting at the table. There will be time to enough to count it, when the dealings done..."

Damn Donkeys,
Bmore