The Poker Nerd

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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I’m not 1oo% crazy about the new theme I just moved the site to (Gambler 1.0) and will probably build my own once I get the time to see how it’s done. But, there just don’t seem to be any poker-related themes out there that avoid the cliche of showing a royal flush or pocket aces.

At least for now, it’s better than using one of the pre-packaged themes.

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.

According to news sources, there were more than 25,000 weddings in Las Vegas alone on July 7, 2007 based on the fortuitous confluence of sevens.

Having seen about two dozen of these couples, I’m putting the over-under line for divorce within a year at 7,777.

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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I never gamble.

I…almost never gamble.

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Since this seems to be the detail everyone asks me about, let me start at the end:

KhQh on the button, 100/200 blinds. Middle position raises to T600. I call and see a flop. The flop comes JhTh and a rag. Original raiser betsT800. I raise T2,000 to see where I am. He calls.

Turn come a king. Original raiser checks. I go all in for T10,700. After much agonizing, he calls and turns over pocket tens. The river doesn’t help me. I’m out of the WSOP after just four hours with a loss rate of US$2,500 an hour.

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