Tag: poker

Ready To Quit

Nick Momrik9 Comments

I’m seriously ready to quit. That’s how bad it’s going. If I wasn’t witness to the string of bad beats I’m going through I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. Seriously…it’s that bad. I’ve bled off 1/3 of my bankroll in a week. No lie. My opponents gut shot straight draws are hitting much more often than my flush draws. Go figure. I really hate complaining, but I’m going to lose my mind. I’ve checked my stats with Poker Tracker and I’m still playing tight. I’m betting my big hands. It’s not like it’s rocket science at these low limits.

I’m not even going to go into details by posting any hand histories, because it would turn into a novel. Besides, who wants to read them anyways. It just goes to prove…the fish aren’t just playing at Party Poker. They are in full force at UB (sign up with “mtdewvirus” as your referrer) and they are sucking out on me in record fashion.

Maybe I should come up with a new hobby. But what hobby out there allows you to make money. Or lose it I should say. 1/3 of the bankroll in a week. Think about that. That’s over 200 BB at $2/4. I wish I could have a week where I came out ahead that much. I’ll need a couple of those just to recover.

What really hurts is the fact that it’s not only the bad beats that are killing my bankroll. I can’t hit a huge draw to save my life. Flush draws are out the window. The same with open-ended straight draws. What about FD + OESD? Yeah right. Or FD + gut shot straight draw? Do I even need to answer?

Does anyone know any prayers to the poker gods? Maybe a rain dance?

Is It Rigged?

Nick Momrik66 Comments

I haven’t posted since Tuesday, so I thought I’d give a quick update of how it has been going at the tables. In one word…shitty! The bad beats are coming in from all directions. I flop 2 pair and someone calls me down going runner runner for a bigger two pair. I flop the nut straight and someone hits a 3 outter on the river for a bigger straight. I flop a full house with the hammer and someone spikes an ace on the river with his A7 for a bigger full house. I flop trips and someone calls me down hitting a 2 outter on the river for a full house. These are just a couple of examples. The other day in a span of 10 minutes I got beat on the turn or river 5 times by someone with 5 outs or less.

It’s simply impossible to come out ahead when the other players are pulling cards out of their ass like this. It’s at times like this when it really makes you wonder if online poker is rigged. I know it’s now, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the thoughts enter my head once in awhile. I can’t complain about the horrible players I guess, but it would be nice if my monsters would hold up to those drawing dead (2-4 outs) once in awhile. It’s extremely hard to recover from losing a 20 BB pot that you were the clear favorite in. Especially when it happens more than once.

Sorry about the bad beat whining, but I needed to get it out of my system somehow. Screaming at my monitor hasn’t seemed to help at all.

Say NO to Tourneys

Nick Momrik1 Comment

That’s my new slogan. At least for the next two months. Tournaments are definitely -EV for me at this point. If I’m going to reach my goal, I can’t keep giving my money away in tournaments. I was “suckered” into another one last night. A $30+3 on UB with $5,000 guaranteed. As I logged into my account and looked over the tables I noticed this tournament had 109 people and only 5 minutes left to register. Top 20 places were paying and unless 167 people entered, UB was going to be adding a decent amount of cash to the prize pool to reach that five grand. For some reason I thought UB cut off registration 5 minutes before the start of a tournament so I signed up. Well, 71 other people must have been thinking the same thing. When the tournament started there were 181 people and UB didn’t have to put up any dough. What at first looked like a 1 out of 5 people win money deal turned out to be no deal.

For the first three levels I saw exactly 0 hands out of the blinds. All I could find were unsuited low cards or marginal cards out of position. I think I managed to win one hand when I made what I thought was a great move with my big slick after the flop only to be called by another big slick and split the pot. As always seems the case, I ended up going in on a draw and lost. Out in 81st place. When will I get it through my head not to put all of my chips on the line for a draw? I do it over and over and over again in tournaments and it just doesn’t pay off. I always bluff at the wrong times too. I guess a draw is a semi-bluff, so no difference there. So the tournament set me back $33 or about 8 BB at my regular $2/4 game. Nothing huge, but it slowly eats away at the bankroll.

That’s it though. No more. I’m vowing to not play another online tournament (except WPBT events of course) until after the goal period is over and I can study some tournament strategy. I like tourneys and no-limit, but I suck at it. I know I suck, but I’m still playing and giving my money away.

I also played some of the $2/4 6-max games last night and lost about 30 BB. It’s always the same thing when I lose. I don’t want to show fear, so I call down a raiser or a check-raiser with my 2nd best hand and lose precious bets. Call it the “I don’t want to be bluffed syndrome.” Sometimes I feel like an incompetent plumber. I know the faucet is leaking and I know how to fix it, but I just sit there with my ass crack hanging out. Drip…drip…drip…

Root of all Evil

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I drove back to Saginaw today and just pulled in about an hour ago. I don’t remember seeing so much fog in an afternoon and I had it the whole trip. At least I didn’t hit any animals like I did on the trip up north. I hit a porcupine (pictures) and will have to get my frong bumper ever “rigged up” or replaced. Just what I needed less than 2 months before the lease is up on the vehicle. So we’re talking at least $300. Nothing I can do about it, so it doesn’t pay to go on tilt.

I didn’t think I’d get in any online poker over the weekend, but I got bored and installed Empire Poker on Mom’s computer so that I could work on the 1050 raked hands I needed to clear for their recent bonus. Playing $1/2 6-max it took me 1,600 hands to clear the $150 bonus. In addition to clearing the bonus, I came out 40 BB ahead for an average of 2.5 BB/100 hands. It was a good weekend for the bankroll. If not for a couple of 2-out suckouts in a row, it would have been much much nicer though. That’s poker.

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Back at Empire

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I logged into Empire Poker today just for kicks and voila! They’re having a redeposit bonus of 25% up to $150. So much for sticking at UB. I just can’t pass up the bonus whoring. Since I’ve been loving the short-handed table and the Party skins don’t have $2/4 6-max, I jumped around some of the $1/2 6-maxers. After stopping by four tables I finished up a total of 28 BB and cleared over 150 of my 1050 raked hands for the bonus.

Tomorrow after work I’ll be heading to my parents for the weekend in order to get my taxes done and visit the dentist, so I won’t get in any online play. We might make a trip to St. Ignace for some casino play, but it’s more likely that we’ll just play some home games. I haven’t done that in quite some time, so it should be fun.

Update: Played another 50 minutes while waiting for laundry and took down another 11 BB. Take advantage of the Empire bonus while you can!

Let the Cream Rise to the Top

Nick Momrik6 Comments

As many of you may know, back in September, I launched pokerchiptricks.com, a site dedicated to tutorials on doing poker chip tricks. The site has been very successful and has opened a few doors for me. One thing that bothers me though, is that the site is still not listed near the top of the Google results when searching for “poker chip tricks” so I think there are many people missing out if they don’t search through the three or four pages of results before finding the site.

I hate to do this, but I’m going to ask for some help on this one. As many of you know, the more links, the higher a site ranks with the search engines. Some of you already link to the site and I THANK YOU! For those of you that don’t currently link to it, do me a favor and check out the site. If you like what you see, throw a link up on your site with the words “Poker Chip Tricks” as the text of the link. If you’d prefer to use an image and link to the site, I have a few different sized images that you can use. If you link up, feel free to leave a link to your own site over at that post.

Thanks for your time on this!

HAMMERth Place

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I went out in 72nd place in tonights WPBT event. A total of 151 players entered for the biggest event so far. I would up at my first table with Dr. Pauly and definitely had the most hammer showings in history. Before I was moved the hammer was shown for about a 6-6 record. The Dr. had the most notable when he picked up the hammer on the button. The cutoff had AA and the big blind had KK. They were all-in pre-flop. The flop came down with two 7s and the hammer took out the two best hands at the same time. He even ended up with a full house on the end.

I didn’t get any real exciting hands that I need to recap. I had quite a few pocket pair, but either didn’t get any play back or didn’t hit anything. CJ from Up4Poker took me out when I tried to pick off his steal from the button. I had Ah5h in the small blind. He raised it up to 3x the BB and I then doubled it. He called and the flop came down with two clubs and a queen. I was pot committed at this point so I pushed with an inside straight draw and my ace as outs or hoping he would fold. He made an easy call with qctc. When I think about it, I should have pushed all-in pre-flop instead of just doubling his bet. I may have gotten him to fold, but I think it was a pretty easy call for him to make calling what I did bet. At least I lost to a blogger.

I have to say that the list of people now on the rail shows a lot of familiar names I recognize from blogs, so I’d bet there is a very strong showing by the readers. I just hope they don’t take the crown and finally win won of these things. GO BLOGGERS!

I played well and had a good time. That’s all I could hope for…besides a showing in the money of course.

It turns out that a blogger did win the tournament. Congrats to on_thg! Go read his recap.