Last Post of 2009

I think therefore I BLOG or is it I BLOG therefore I think. I don’t remember which is the correct statement, maybe they both are. It’s snowing and the roads are crappy here on the East Coast. Everyone have a safe and happy new year. Have a drink for me but don’t overdo it. Thanks for reading my BLOG in 2009. Happy New Year! Tony

Some New Year's Goals

As the year is winding down I am thinking of some new things to do in 2010. In Poker I intend to push myself to cash in the Yearly Tournament Leader Board on Poker Stars. This will be a hard task to achieve being I play in very low MTTs. As for Blogging I plan on trying to do a post every day, providing my numbers continue to go up. In other words if people come here and read it I will write it! Also am considering starting up a Stock Picking BLOG too. I have been an amateur Stock investor for 20 years. Have been doing well with my common sense, conservative approach. So in the next week or so look for a link to this new BLOG, if you are interested. Also on a personal note I plan to try to get our house and possessions more in order in the New Year. I need to think up some more goals for the New Year. Should post them tomorrow or Friday. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Tournament Leader Board

Yesterday I went MTT crazy on Poker Stars. I have an outside chance of cashing in the top 200 on their Monthly Tournament Leader Board. I decided to go for it after I figured out that the winner of that crazy Donkament(Guinness Record MTT) would get enough points to be close to the winner of the Monthly TLB. I ran it through their point calculator and if the tournament ended up with 300K players than the winner would get over 6000 TLB points! The leader for the month has 8000 right now so 19 other small cashes would be enough to take the lead for the month. Not too shabby being the leader wins 3K and a ticket into a 20K freeroll. Also those points are good for the weekly and yearly boards. I have a respectable score for both the monthly and yearly boards for December and 2009 as a whole. I think next year I will start early so I can have a shot for a cash on the yearly leader board. It really motivates me to shoot for a cash in these promotions. Plus it gives me a way to measure my MTT skills against the rest of the world. I like the way Stars makes it more of a skill test being they only take a certain number of cashes for each board. In other words for the weekly they take your best 10, monthly best 20, and yearly best 100. At Full Tilt it’s all about whoever can put in the sickest amount of volume will win their leader boards. I guess if you play for a living you would prefer Full’s method. So I am declaring this a goal for 2010, want to cash on the yearly leader board on Stars. Being I play very low limit MTTs this will be a hard goal to accomplish. The way they calculate the scores is by the buy in, number of players, and finish. You get points for finishing in the top 15%. Wish my luck, will update how I am doing maybe once a month. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Stars Guinness World Record MTT

I am playing in Stars World Record MTT right now. 149146 players/donks turned out for this 300K guarentee Donkament. This means we got over 150K overlay added in by Stars, not too shabby. Person who wins this one will really be the biggest lucksack of all time. Can't tell you how many times Ace-rag has sucked out on Jacks, Queens, or Kings! Actually today have seen some of the worst play Online ever. It truelly is a Donkday today. Walk around the mines very carefully today. Happy Donkday! Tony

King of Freerolls

9000 players
Target Tournament #223752280
72 tickets to the target tournament

Tournament started 2009/12/26 10:02:00 ET


Dear AVIGANOLA,

You finished the tournament in 14th place.

This qualifies you for a seat in Tournament #223752280. A ticket to this tournament was issued in your name. You can use this ticket to register. See Tournament #223752280 Lobby for further details.

You earned 100.90 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/


Please contact "PokerStars Support" if you have any questions.

Christmas Eve

They let us out early from work today! Starting off the Christmas season well. Gave me time to run some last minute errands. Now I am able to play a few hours of Online Poker before we go out. My wife did the last of the Christmas shopping last night. Macy's was open 24 hours a day this week. Can you believe the place was packed at 1am this morning? It's crazy how people seem to wait later and later to shop these days. Happy Holidays everyone. Tony

Busy Holiday

This is a slow time, at least for me, for playing Online Poker. Just have so many things to get done around this time of the year. Yesterday I took the dog to the Vet for a follow up visit for a tumor that finally came off from the side of her head. The Vet did an old fashion procedure of tying it off tighter and tighter every 2 weeks until it shrunk and fell off. This was a better solution than having it surgically removed. Our dog hated going to the Vet every 2 weeks but she survived the ordeal. I still have things to buy for family members for Christmas, usually am done weeks before this but it’s been a tough year. I did play a little Poker last night. Only played 1 Sit-N-Go being I am running bad so have lost the urge to play them lately. Just the normal thing I raise 4X over a limper who calls with his 8-9 off against my pocket Kings. The flop comes 8 high and I c-bet for half the pot, he calls. An 8 falls on the turn and I bet half the pot again and he shoves. It was only 300 more chips, felt I was beat but called getting like 8-1. No help for me and I am crippled. I get knocked out a few hands later with Ace rag vs. 7-8 off. Nothing really exciting just the same old Sit-N-Go bs. Thankfully I have a 7% ROI long term in Sit-N-Gos so it’s all good. Full ring HORSE went very well for me. I won around 8BBs in an hour of play. I need to really grind it out to earn FPPs to clear a large bonus I have at Stars. Probably this weekend will be a good time for me to earn 1K points. Happy holiday shopping. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Small MTT Score.

PokerStars Tournament #239010386, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00 USD
1778 players
Total Prize Pool: $17780.00 USD
Tournament started 2009/12/19 12:00:00 ET


Dear AVIGANOLA,

You finished the tournament in 49th place. A USD 40.89 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 121.12 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/


Congratulations!

Thank you for participating.

I don't know if this score was worth it. Played for 8 and 1/2 hours so you do the math! Happy snow shoveling. Tony

More Online Grinding

Last night I did some multi-tabling on my new PC. What a joy, no more freezing up while checking the lobby on Poker Stars. No more out of virtual memory errors when watching U-tube clips. What was I waiting for all these years? This was the best $600 investment I have ever made. It will pay for itself pretty quickly being I am a winning player. I now can play more tables and get my earn rate up to a higher level. Did some more HORSE grinding on Poker Stars last night. Had a decent winning session, up around 10BBs in an hour. Tonight I will focus on some low limit MTTs on Stars and Full Tilt. Also will be playing a bunch of low limit No Limit on Cake Poker being the games there are real soft. Happy Holiday Shopping to all. Remember to get out there and spend, our economy needs all the help it can get. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

New Computer

I bought myself a new PC for Christmas and installed it yesterday. What a huge improvement over my almost 7 year old machine running Windows XP. Now instead of waiting almost 10 minutes to get on the internet my new machine can be there in less than a minute. In other words it can be turned on and all booted up in less than 1 minute! Also actually taking advantage of my high speed cable modem connection can finally be achieved. My old machine was taking like 10 seconds to go from page to page. Now it’s almost instant to load a web page. For the amount of time I spend Online the investment was clearly worth it. I connected my 26 inch monitor to it so I can easily 12 table with no overlap or eye strain. This weekend I will start the process of moving over all my documents, pictures, music, and movies from my older machine. As for Poker I played about an hour of break even HORSE play on Poker Stars last night. Tonight I should have some more time to play some Sit-N-Gos and a few hours of live play. Happy Holidays. Tony

Cash Game Grinding

This week I have been playing in cash games only, mainly 8-max HORSE on Poker Stars. Have a huge re-load bonus to clear by Feb. 3rd so got a lot of grinding to do in the cash games. This week has gone very well for me; booking wins every night so far. The week is early so things can still turn sour for me. I wish I went to Vegas for the Blogger gathering, sounds like a great time. We will probably go to Vegas in June for a week to play in some WSOP events. Last year was a really bad trip so I am looking forward to righting the ship, that is going deep in a WSOP event. I was so disappointing taking 27th in RAZZ 2 years ago! After day one I was in 5th chip position, not very far from the leader. At the start of day 2 I got coolered twice to push me down to an average stack. Limit tournaments are structured to really not give you much play. I guess if it wasn’t that way they would go on for too long. Sort of like that crazy WSOP RAZZ event from 2005, I believe. That is the one that was like 16 hours on day one, 14 hours on day 2, and like over 8 hours at the final table. That is enough RAZZ to drive anyone crazy. Happy holiday shopping to everyone. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Another Micro-limit MTT Cash

PokerStars Tournament #239010691, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $2.50/$0.25 USD
6428 players
Total Prize Pool: $16070.00 USD
Tournament started 2009/12/14 17:00:00 ET


Dear AVIGANOLA,

You finished the tournament in 755th place. A USD 4.33 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 42 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/


Congratulations!

Thank you for participating.

If I could play 100 of these a day could retire early, NOT. Good luck at the tables. Tony

Micro-limit MTTs

PokerStars Tournament #219294654, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $0.10 USD
4688 players
$50.00 USD added to the prize pool by PokerStars
Total Prize Pool: $518.80 USD
Tournament started 2009/12/13 10:00:00 ET


Dear AVIGANOLA,

You finished the tournament in 53rd place. A USD 0.83 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 51.17 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/


Congratulations!

Thank you for participating.

I am the king of freerolls and micro-MTTs. Happy Donkday. Tony

DonkDay

Today is definitely a Donkday! People are playing so bad it's just sick. A guy shoves into me for 40 Big Blinds in level 2 of an MTT with J-8 off. I want to fold my A-K sooted so bad but I know how bad people are playing. Of course he flops both of his cards and rivers a full house for good measure. Funny thing is I am up a lot today already. It's just that the variance today is sky high! Remember to get it in behind sometimes today and you will be rewarded! Happy Donkday. Tony

Yet More Online Grinding

Last night was just another in a long list of nights of Online Poker grinding. First off I was in a bad mood after sitting in an hour of traffic coming home from work; this was really bad being I live 15 minutes from work. Some non-thinking idiot decides to approve road construction in December when the area is already swarming with people doing Christmas shopping. Why would they approve closing of the road in front of Sears in December! Nothing puts me in a worse mood then traffic. Enough ranting about that but being on life tilt is not a good way to start off an online session. Of course my results reflected this being I was down 20BBs at HORSE in no time at all. The whole night didn’t go well for me but I made a small comeback. Lately low limit HORSE has been easy money for me. I only played in one Sit-N-Go but got so frustrated by a bad beat that I couldn’t fire another one up. I played super tight when an under-the-gun player limped. I was under-the-gun +1 and shoved over the top with A-K. The limper snap calls for 90% of my stack with K-9 off, WTF? He four straights me and I get knocked out a few hands later. They play so bad and get rewarded for it. This hand put me on Sit-N-Go tilt so decided no more for me last night. Happy holiday shopping. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Online Grinding

Haven't been grinding many Sit-N-Gos this week. Instead I have been playing full ring HORSE all week on Poker Stars. I have been winning all week and most importantly clearing a large bonus I have on Stars. Have less than 2 months to clear my bonus so will be grinding for awhile. Low limit No limit hasn't been going too well for me this week on Cake or Full Tilt. I seem to be losing way more than my fair share of races. I know things will turn around soon. Not much else going on this week. Should be playing in a bunch of MTTs this weekend. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

MTT Score Recap

I have gone back to my old MTT style and it’s working much better for me. Play a super tight/super aggressive style until we break the money bubble. Then I play my short stack very aggressive, shoving at least once an orbit. It worked well for me yesterday when I finished in 276 out of over 7200 players in a 20K guarantee on Poker Stars. I kept shoving my Ace-rag and suited connector hands over limpers or I would open shove even lighter as first man in. My timing yesterday was just awesome. In one hand I had Q-K of diamonds and was about to shove from the button when for some reason I had this feeling it would be the end of my tournament if I did. There was a middle position limper and it just felt wrong for me to play the hand. The small blind shoved and the middle position limper snap called. Small blind had pocket Tens and limper had A-K. I would have been drawing really thin and this would have knocked me out in 400th place. I built up a nice stack when I shoved from late position with A-2 sooted and the Big Blind woke up with pocket Queens. I rivered an Ace to suck out for once. At that point my M was finally up to 10 so I had some breathing room. Really felt the over $4K first prize was in my grasp. The hand that did me in was I shoved over a limper from the button with A-5 and the limper snap called me with pocket Kings. No suck out this time, oh well there is always next time. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Another Small MTT Score for me

PokerStars Tournament #234010427, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $5.00/$0.50 USD
7560 players
Total Prize Pool: $37800.00 USD
Tournament started 2009/12/06 13:00:00 ET


Dear AVIGANOLA,

You finished the tournament in 276th place. A USD 30.24 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 90.03 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/


Congratulations!

Thank you for participating.

PokerStars Freerolls

Yesterday I played in a bunch of PokerStars Freerolls. Not because I am a broke dick but just because I like free money, lol. Good thing about them is you start to become numb to bad beats. This is showdown Poker at it's finest. Plus you can experiment with hands and get some free practice in. You will start to realize just how small your percentage edge is against multiple players. You will realize that Kings are not holding up ofter against 3 or more players at showdown! Things that intuatively you should know so you get positive reinforcement on your knowledge. Today I will be at it again. Beware of the Donks today! Happy Donkday. Tony

Sit-N-Go Grind

I had a good night at Sit-N-Gos yesterday. I played in three and cashed in all of them. One of them really stung being I got heads up and had the villain down to 40 chips and still had to settle for 2nd! With his 40 chips he went on to win 5 all ins in a row. I was ahead in 3 and behind in 2 but only a 40-60 behind. Lately I have plugged a ton of my heads up leaks and have had great heads up success. Been winning around 65% of my heads up play and I usually was getting heads up with a chip deficit. As long as I focus am usually able to zig and zag to a win. I believe the trick is to figure out your opponent’s style and take him out of his comfort zone. If they are folding to re-raises I will start over pushing their button raises. Then when I sense they are getting frustrated I won’t do it until I have a big hand. With other opponents I will stab at every flop providing they are folding too often heads up. You see this more at the lower level Sit-N-Gos. Sometimes you play against a maniac who raises or shoves every hand. This type is the hardest for me to play against but I just try to trap them. The whole trick is to figure out their style and counter it. I will be at the Sit-N-Gos again tonight, stop by and say hello if you see me on Stars. Will also try my luck at some MTTs this weekend. Will hopefully have something good to post about on Sunday or Monday. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

PPA Email

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the leading poker grassroots advocacy group with more than one million members nationwide, today applauded the six month delay of the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) regulations. The Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury today extended the deadline for UIGEA enforcement until June 1, 2010, which is the result of a petition filed by the PPA, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the American Greyhound Track Operators Association. The groups filed the petition for an extension in order to give lawmakers and financial institutions more time to clarify definitions contained in UIGEA, as well as develop policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the law.

"The PPA is extremely pleased with the decision by the Federal Reserve and Treasury to grant the six month extension. This is a great victory for poker, but an even greater victory for advocates of good and fair public policy," said PPA Chairman and former Senator Alfonse D'Amato. "These additional months are critical to provide legislators time to clarify UIGEA and pass legislation to license and regulate poker early next year. It is our hope that another extension would be granted should the deadline approach before these pieces of legislation can be passed."

Concerns about the vague language contained in UIGEA, and the resulting challenge of enforcing the law, have been raised by the banking and gambling communities since the law was passed in 2006. PPA members have been, and continue to be, contacting their members of Congress via phone, email and visits to urge clarification of the UIGEA regulations. In fact, over 300,000 letters alone have been sent to members of Congress by PPA members.

Given the significant struggles of banks over the past few years, deputizing them to enforce a poorly written and overly vague law would add to their already heavy burden. To this end, several leading banks and financial services groups also expressed their support of a delay with the Federal Reserve and Department of Treasury.

Delaying implementation of the UIGEA regulations, which were pushed through by the previous Administration at the eleventh hour, will give Congress time to clarify the law to give clearer direction to the banks and those impacted by UIGEA.

While pleased with the delay, the PPA remains committed to passing legislation to license and regulate online poker. UIGEA does not provide protections for underage and compulsive gamblers - the licensing and regulation proposed in legislation such as Chairman Barney Frank's H.R. 2267 and Senator Robert Menendez's S. 1597 would protect these vulnerable communities. A hearing will be held December 3rd in the House Financial Services Committee on Chairman Frank's bill.

"PPA is continuing its efforts to urge members of Congress to implement thoughtful and effective regulation of the online poker as opposed to outright prohibitions, which history has shown do not work," said D'Amato. "We are thankful to our co-petitioners the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the American Greyhound Track Operators Association and for the dozens of members of Congress who voiced their support for this petition through letters to Secretary Geithner and Chairman Bernanke. The PPA looks forward to working with regulators and legislators to pass legislation that protects consumers and the great game of poker."

This article was sent to me via email from the PPA. I sounds like progress is being made on our behalf, Online Poker Players. I would love to hear my readers opinions on this news. Please leave a comment to this post. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Poker Trend

Last night my Poker trends continued. I run bad at Ring games and great at Sit-N-Gos. Actually I didn’t run that bad in the Ring games. I won at Horse but lost an equal amount at Hi/Lo Stud. The Sit-N-Gos have been going great for me. Really seem to have found my grove these days. I am playing much more aggressive when down to 5 or less players. Also playing much tighter in the beginning of these. I don’t even consider playing Ace-Jackass until we are at 100-200 or down to 5 or less players. Big shoutout to Hoy over at the Hammer Player BLOG. He had a really nice score the other day taking down 5K in a FullTilt $30 rebuy tournament, I’m not worthy. Need to post about my own big score but these days I am running so bad in MTTs. Have cut down on the number of them I play per week to preserve the roll. This weekend I may try to Satellite in to a $215 MTT or 2 on Poker Stars. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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