Something that constantly aggravates me is a person that bets of a HUGE percentage of their chips into a pot, while leaving 15% or less of their chips behind. If you're going to put that much of your chips into the pot, even if your bluffing, it's just best to move them all in.

Chances are, if you're making this kind of move, you're the short stack. Holding on to an extra 300 in chips when you've bet 2000 or more is pointless. Nobody is going to fold when you move in for your last 300, so why not get all your chips into the pot, preflop?

Even if you can somehow fold your hand if someone puts you all in for your remaining 300 (this would be a really stupid move, you've committed yourself to play the hand by moving that much of your stack into the pot) folding would be the wrong option.

So I guess I jinxed myself. Talking about how good my poker run was going has produced a series of really bad performances. I'm still in the top 100, but if I don't get a few more big finishes, this session could end badly.

Poker players always want to get their chips into the pot with the best hand. It's all a statistics and numbers game really. The higher the percentage, the better chance that you'll come out on top. It's really a series of decisions to make, if you make too many bad decisions, you're done. If you make ALL the right decisions, you usually win.

But there is a factor of 'luck' or the best hand losing. I'm not whining here, I'm merely commenting about how a very strong hand can lose at almost any time. I hate sitting around and listening to people's bad beat stories, in fact, I'll often berate people and tell them to go to therapy. There's one guy in the league that EVERY week I put my ipod on and turn up the music just to avoid his bad beat stories.

Last night, I had some decent hands, but it seemed like I just kept running into a better one. I made some incredible lay downs, because I knew I was beat. Two out of three of these laydowns, the players showed me their down cards, and I did in fact make the correct decision. (I love it when people have to show off their hands, it totally validates my play, and it also gives me valuable information. I can learn how they act, what they do, how they throw their chips into the pot when they have a very strong hand.)

I was down to about 1500 in chips, after starting w/ 3500. The blinds were 200/400, so I was really short stacked. I looked down to find , so no doubt about it, all my chips were going into the pot. This is the best starting hand you can get. So I kind of 'reluctantly' put my chips into the pot, hoping a few others would come along for the ride. Nobody else, but the chip leader did. So he called me and proudly flipped over  I smiled and turned up my aces.

At this point I was an 80% favorite.

The flop was brutal.

In this case any 7 or any 6 makes my opponent's straight. So learning what we did from the last post that is 6 outs. 6 x 4 = 24% roughly, we see that CardPlayer magazine says 23%, but our calculation is pretty close. The turn came a J, so now their percentage is cut in 1/2. But of course the six came on the river. Even when you're a 3:1 favorite, you can (and sometimes will) lose.

I didn't get mad, or feel bad, you shrug your shoulders and say, "That's poker." I was happy to get my money in pre-flop w/ the best hand. My opponent sucked out on me.

Jake is officially 8 weeks old. I don't really know why we have to talk in weeks when it's a baby, but people do. They don't say 2 months, it's 8 weeks, or 16 weeks, it's really kind of silly. Anyways, the big news is that last night, he went to bed @ 10:00 PM and did not wake until 5:15 AM! It was awesome.

To those of you that read without kids, you laugh and probably say, "Whoa.... 5:15 that sucks!" But let me tell you, it's way better than 1:00 AM, and then again at 3:00 AM. 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep is about as good as we can ask for at this point.

We attribute it all to routine. We're essentially training this kid how to behave, based on the methods we employ to create a 'schedule' for him. Around 8:00 PM, we start winding down, we do a quick bottle feed, and then just kind of 'chill' till 10:00. At 10:00 PM we put on some lullaby music, sit in the rocker, do the last feeding, swaddle him up TIGHT, and rock till he's sleeping.

He's then laid down to sleep in his crib, and, if we're lucky, we get seven hours of sleep.

I'll post some more pictures soon.

So in this post, I'll explain some really basic principles about determining your chance of winning a hand based on the information you have at a specific point in time. Being able to determine if you should make a call, or even raise without the goods, but having a really high potential can really improve how you play. For example:

Your down cards are:  You've limped into a pretty good sized pot with 2 or 3 other players.

The flop looks like this:

   Here's how to figure your precentage of winning the hand. Some of this is kind of subjective, you have to determine if your opponent is on a flush draw, or maybe they have a big King. So the first thing to do is determine which cards will give you a winning hand, in this case a fair assumption is a straight, or a flush to win. (it would be a low flush, but the possibility of 2 people having 2 diamonds is pretty low).

   Count all the cards that would make your hand

            In this case there are 9 other diamonds that would help.
            There are 4 aces in the deck that would make a wheel.
            There are 4 sixes in the deck that would make a straight.

            So you have '17' cards to make a really good hand.

            When the board has three cards, you times your outs by four.

            17 X 4 = 68 - So you have a 68% chance of hitting one of those cards.

So if nobody goes crazy betting, it's a good place to put in a good raise, or just call if you're lower in chips.
Say the next card to come is a 'blank' (a card that does not improve your hand like )

            Now when the board has four cards, you still have the same amount of 'outs' times it by two now.

            17 X 2 = 34% - Your odds are drastically lower, but 3.4 times out of 10 you'll still make your hand!

So the river finally flops, and you've caught the . This is called having the 'nuts'. There is not a single hand that can beat you. You're praying that someone was slow playing the , flush, and you'll be able to get all their chips. Having a powerful hand like this all you need to worry about is extracting the highest amount of chips from your opponents as possible. Sometimes this is a great place to check (fake weakness) and let someone do something stupid like move all in w/ their flush, or high pair.

The other portion of this to consider is pot odds. This gets in to a way more complex discussion, but the base theory of pot odds is putting your money in at the right price. Let's say the pot has 10,000 in chips, and someone makes a $2,000 bet. You only have $4,000 in chips left. If you have the hand mentioned above, w/ a 64% shot at it, you're compelled to call, here's why.

      $10,000 + $2,000 = $12,000 So by you adding your $2,000 to the pot, you could win $12,000 for the mere $2,000 investment 12/2 = 6, your're getting 6 chips for every 1 you put in. That is essentially what pot odds are.

Another scenario: The pot is $4000, you have $20K in chips, the chip leader of the game just moved all $30k of his chips into the pot, you have a pair of fives. Do you call? Probably not, as I understand pot odds, you generally want to be getting 3:1 on your money at least to call with a marginal hand like pocket 5's.

   $4,000 + $20,000 (you only have 20k left, so you can only win what you put in) = $24,000

So you're talking about risking $20,000 to win $24,000, it's your tournament life at stake here, you're getting 1.2 : 1, generally most people would fold almost every hand other than pocket aces (AA) or pocket kings (KK). If you know the person betting is reckless, or bluffs a lot, it may be ok to make the call, but realize you'll be in a race situation, meaning you're lucky if you have a 50% shot before the cards are dealt.

This site offers a GREAT odds calculator. 

So I'm doing pretty well this session in the Poker League I've been playing in. I play about 1/2 as much as most of the participants and I'm in 43rd place (out of 6000+ players). The big goal is to be in the top 100 players by the end of each quarter.

I've typically finished in the top 200, but I never played really serious before, often making poor decisions in the final moments of a game, taking me from 1st place to like 8th place. The league I play in is free, we play for points.

At the quarterly tournament the top 100 players, venue leaders, and highest skill rated players are invited. There you're playing for prizes, typically entries to larger tournaments (that pay out big cash), or visa cash cards.

During normal nights, typically 20 - 30 people play, each starting w/ 3,000 - 3,900 in tournamnet chips. The blinds start at 100 - 200 and about double every 18 or so minutes. Tournament play is one of the few times you can actually just fold a lot, and move up in position. Even though it's free to play it's ultra competitive. The kicker is, that it's a timed game, at the end of 1.5 hours, it's over. Whoever has the highest amount of chips is the winnner. This forces you to play harder, and puts you to a decision more often.

So back to my comment about making bad decisions. There have been plenty of times I've had enough chips to just quit playing with 20 - 30 minutes remaining in the game. But being the nice guy that I am, I've opted to make marginal calls, etc. and I've lost because of it.

This sesssion I decided to play to win. We're more than 1/2 way through the session and I'm doing quite well. The last two matches have not been great, but I've had a 1st place finish, and several 2nd and 3rds. The higher in finishing position the greater payout in points, very similar to a cash payout structure.

I'm 43rd overall, I have the 4th HIGHEST (again out of like 6000+ people) skill rating. Like I said earlier, some guys play every night, I'm lucky if I get 2-3x per week. So guys that have 60 matches in, I have maybe 30. This is good when you have a lot of final table top five appearances, and directly attributes to why my skill rating is so high. I'm also the venue leader at the main place I play out of. I'm about 400 points ahead of the 2nd place person. So any one of these three things will get me into the final tournamnet.

While this is all 'small scale' compared to the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and televised tournaments, it's still a hell of a lot of fun. Poker is something I never thought I'd be good at; sure there are runs where I do really well, and times where it seems no matter how good I think I'm playing I get played, but I really enjoy every aspect of the game. Of course winning is more fun than losing, but even when I lose, I have fun.

So on the 5th, me, a buddy from Portland, and two friends from Seattle are headed to Vegas. I'm not expecting to win, in fact, I have a certain amount of dough set aside that is acceptable to lose. Most of it has come from poker games played here in Portland! But it would be fun to win a few hundred bucks. One of the guys here at work always jokes about it as a "Mancation".

One thing you always hear when people talk about Vegas is how much money they won. Yeah right.... you never hear someone come back and say "Man I lost a grand...." I'm honest, last year when I went, I lost about $400. But I had a hell of a good time. Some people don't get it, but for me it's relaxing. Sure, it's a car payment, or something else that may last longer, but this is my thing. This year I feel better taking winnings from several games with me. It's all about odds, the more you play, the more likely you are to do well.

We'll probably play some tourneys ($40 - $60 buy in) and probably some $1/$2 no limit. I'll most likely play some Black Jack too. Our trip was a deal in itself, 2 Nights @ Treasure Island and roundtrip airfare for $255 per person!

Wish me luck.

I think this is based off of the http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ site, but the UI is nice!

http://www.speedtest.net/

Check it out!