The Poker Nerd

I spent a few days learning enough python to write a hand evaluator. Python’s seamless use of extremely large numbers makes some neat tricks involving prime numbers that would be tricky in languages limited to 64-bit integers extremely easy.  (more…)

2008 was a very fallow year for me and poker. I can’t speak for the pros, but I think this happens to just about every amateur out there from time to time.I’ve been playing poker seriously in one form or another for more than fifteen years now—Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Indian casinos, tiny card rooms, underground card rooms, home games, and online. Conservatively, I’ve logged 12,000 hours over that time, which is roughly the same as six years of a full-time job. I’ve written a prototype for an online poker server and cobbled together a few klocs of other, less ready-for-prime-time code. Last year, it just all seemed to grind to a halt. (more…)

Normally the message I got in my e-mail just now wouldn’t be cause for comment:

PokerStars Tournament #60481274, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00
1077 players
Total Prize Pool: $10770.00
Tournament started - 2007/09/13 - 21:15:00 (ET)

Dear ThatJekke,

You finished the tournament in 72nd place.
A $21.54 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 77.77 tournament leader points in this tournament.

But, it’s been three weeks since I placed in a NLTHE tournament (roughly a run of 0-25.) At this point, I’ll happily take McDonald’s money.

I honestly never thought that the idiots I play with online could put me on tilt, but there’s an interesting correspondence here:

Record in online tournaments before turning off chat on PokerStars (since coming back from Vegas}: 0-21
Record in online tournaments since turning off chat on PokerStars: 5-2 (with 1 final table.)

There are a few other factors that may be contributing to the swing, but I definitely don’t miss the scintillating conversations of the PokerStars intelligentsia.

As I write this, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami should be playing no limit Texas hold ‘em against a computer program known as Polaris for the benefit of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI.)

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Wifezuki and I returned from Las Vegas early Sunday morning and have spent the day recovering from the travel, the vacation, and jet lag. Now that I’m settled in and rested, I’m looking forward to getting on with poker, programming, and building up this site to more than just a blog.

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If you’ve noticed the new freebie poker mag Rounder at your local poker room and thought that the “poker lifestyle magazine” looked completely useless, you weren’t far from wrong.

But, if you get past the nearly  content-free editorial material towards the back, this month’s issue (July 2007–with Vanessa Russo on the front) includes a listing of what looks like every significant regular weekly tournament in the United States.

It used to be hard to find poker tournaments. Hell, it used to be hard to find poker rooms. And, when you did find them, they ran one or two tournaments a week. Now, a lot of rooms run two tournaments a day. The thing is, they’re not really poker tournaments.

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I just got an e-mail from PokerStars announcing the sixth annual World Championship of Online Poker. While a bit ostentatiously named, the WCOOP has a special place in my heart as the first event where I took a run at being a serious multi-table tournament player.

I did abysmally two years ago and only a little better last year with zero cashes between them. After this year’s WSOP season, I feel like my tournament fu has improved a lot. The WCOOP will be an interesting gauge.

Yesterday’s game reminded me of a concept I have jokingly referred to as “toaster equity.”

I sat down at a 1/2 table around 1 pm and knew immediately I could make a lot of money there. Lots of multi-limper hands, big bets with lots of callers, an all-in every 3-5 hands. And, within two hours, my US$200 buy-in is already up to US$600.
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