White Belt Poker

It hasn’t escaped my notice that back in early January, I wrote about my target of starting to play in the HORSE tournaments at Full Tilt on March 1st this year, with the stipulation that I had to have played ten hours of each of the individual games involved before taking part. Well, it’s March 1st tomorrow, and will I be taking part? Have I put the hours in? Sadly, the answer to both questions is a resounding ‘no’. This horse is kind of somewhere on the back straight, finding the going a little bit heavy underfoot. Here’s the hourly break-down so far:

So it’s a bit of a mixed bag really. Although I’ve got stuck in to Stud and Omaha 8, I’ve barely started with Razz or Stud 8. I could offer lame excuses, but I won’t. I just haven’t been playing enough. It certainly isn’t because I haven’t enjoyed playing these games – it’s been very refreshing and enlightening, because I’ve been forced to concentrate as hard as possible and keep my brain in receptive mode, so that I can learn as much as I can in those ten hours of play; all the time trying to apply solid poker theory regardless of the game. One thing I’ve learned for sure is that if you play Omaha 8 with its myriad decisions and possibilities for any length of time then go straight back to hold’em, it’s like playing poker with the volume turned down. I found myself staring at my two pathetic hole cards thinking “I’m supposed to make a hand with this!”. But you soon get over it and go back to folding 8 out of 10 hands again.

If I’m honest, my lack of playing time has much more to do with the increased amount of energy my day job has been taking out of me since the start of the year, and that’s out of my control until I have a chance to take some time off, probably in early April. I just haven’t had the will to sit down and play often enough. March 1st was a pretty arbitrary date anyway – I only chose it because it’s St David’s Day – so, I’m going to give myself another week or two to complete the ten hours for each game. I have plans for a few evenings from Thursday onwards this week too, so it would’ve been tough to play anyway.

Then again, I’ll probably decide to just dive in there and play one night. Looking at some of the completed HORSE SNGs, they only take just over an hour anyway and with six minute blind increases you may only have time to reach the second ‘E’.

On Wednesday nights, channel five (here in Britain) have been showing an event known as the Party Poker European Open. The format is the now-traditional six-handed no-limit hold’em tournament where the winner of each heat goes through to a semi-final and subsequent final.

These have been running for almost two months now and occasionally one of the episodes is fun to watch. My favourite so far featured Dave Colclough being driven nuts by a (possibly Turkish) guy he didn’t know who was frequently going all-in whenever he entered a pot. Somehow they ended up heads-up at the end. Colclough had had enough at that point and on the first hand he called the inevitable all-in bet without even looking at his cards because he just wanted to get it over with. He turned over one seven then another seven, smiled at his opponent, who turned over Q8 offsuit which didn’t improve and Colclough took the win. After his opponent had left the table, Colclough sat with his elbows on the felt and his head in his hands and told the dealer that he didn’t think he could get up at the moment because his legs had gone.

They’re not usually that interesting though. Often, I end up sitting there wincing at the bonehead plays that the amateurs make, wondering how the hell some of these people qualified in the first place. Okay, so it’s easy for me to criticise people when I’ve never qualified for one of these events and I’ve never been in that game situation – under the hot studio lights, against pro players – but really, there are only so many times that you can watch people re-raising with QT offsuit before the flop at a full table before you flip out and start shouting at the TV, just like you do at a game show contestant who doesn’t know a really obvious answer.

The player who does this crazy kind of thing though is typically a bar manager or sales manager from the Midlands with one or two years experience in the game, who has been successful in his field and who sits there desperately trying to look casual in wraparound shades. And boy has he taken to heart the idea that aggression is rewarded in poker. I mean, god help you if he thinks you’re trying to bully him, because he WILL instantly call an all-in bet before the flop with say, Ah Qh on the first hand of the tournament (yeah, that’s a real-life example from a few weeks ago which backfired spectacularly). Because he is NOT going to be bullied. Hell no!

Okay, here’s what makes me laugh about these guys though. Last week, in the brief player interviews they show between hands to pad out the production, one of these guys described himself as an “aggressive” player, then went on to say how these tournaments were “anybody’s game”, blah, blah, etc. Clearly it’s very fashionable these days to be seen as an aggressive player. (That’s an understatement really). After all, it’s the way Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen and Layne Flack play and they are all winners right? But personally, I think it’s crazy to voluntarily label yourself like that. Ivey, Hansen, Flack et al like to promote the idea that they are aggressive players to intimidate people, because it makes less experienced players believe that they could be playing any two cards at any time – although sometimes they are, of course. The truth is that they do play aggressively… some of the time. But what makes them such good players is their ability to be selectively aggressive; to understand the flow of the game around them; to thrust or parry at exactly the appropriate time. All Joe Bloggs is doing by labelling himself as “aggressive” is putting up a facade. He’s trying to pretend that he’s just like the big boys, as if aggression by itself will be enough and as long as he plays aggressively, he can negate the gap in skill level between himself and his opponents. It’s really an admission that he can’t outplay good players but he’s still trying to convince everyone (most of all, himself) that at least he won’t go down without a fight. But really, what’s so wrong with waiting and giving yourself time to outplay people, rather than going all-in on the first hand when you’re 50/50 at best, thereby letting luck decide your fate? For me, there is much more merit in being adaptable, being fluid and picking your spots if the situation allows you to. I read a magazine interview with Scott Fischman the other day that described his style as “adaptive”. That’s how I would want my game to be described (if I ever got interviewed by a magazine – like that’s going to happen any time soon), or perhaps just as “Style: not applicable”. As Bruce Lee said, “Be water, my friend.”

The first ever Wil Wheaton-sponsored Euro-friendly Friday tournament was played yesterday at Poker Stars and I’m delighted to say that I was fortunate enough to win it. “Over the moon” may not be the right phrase, but it’s the first one that comes to mind.

I’ll spare you all an in-depth analysis of the big hands. Instead, you can read Wil’s roundup of the tournament on the Card Squad website here:

I was really pleased with the way I played, particularly when I was heads-up with Change100 and I came back from almost a 6 to 1 chip deficit (34k to 6k) to eventually win after a tense thirty minute battle. It was pretty surreal for me to play against other bloggers like CJ whose work I’ve been an admirer of for quite a while, as well as having Pauly and Wil in there commenting at the end and asking me where I was from. That was really cool actually!

Thanks to Wil for putting the tourney on at a time when I could play and for creating a blind structure that rewarded good, patient play. Thanks to the other European players for supporting me at the end too, especially Sires (even though the talk of Chili was making me very hungry after almost three hours of playing on an empty stomach.)

See you all next time,
Dave

Wil Wheaton has set up a European tournament for those of us who can’t turn up at 3am on a school night for the usual weekly tournament.

Here are the details from Wil’s site:

If you’re interested in playing, head over to PokerStars, and from the lobby go to tourneys -> private, and look for tourney number 19345283. The buy-in is $10 +1, and the game starts at 1:30 PM EST (6:30 PM GMT) which should make it “friendly” for the bulk of European players.

Note that Wil’s post actually says that the tournament starts at 5.30pm GMT(rather than 6.30pm), but GMT is actually five hours ahead of EST and eight ahead of the west coast, as several people have mentioned. I hope it is 6.30 and not 5.30, otherwise I’ll still be in traffic on the way home from work, which would suck.

So, unless I get stuck in horrendous traffic on the way home, I’ll be there. Cool.