Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Annie Duke
I have been thinking lately about my days back in Montana when I first started out as a professional poker player. I am not sure why I have been feeling nostalgic about the old days lately. It might be because I have been playing a bunch of $10/$20 limit hold’em on UB lately and that is what I started out playing back in the day in Billings, Montana at the Crystal Lounge. I think it has been making me think about my start in poker when the $3000 or so I was making a month at the start seemed like more money than I could ever imagine spending. I mean my mortgage was $125 a month so I guess that I didn’t have a whole lot of money pressure on me. Of course now I kind of wish I could go back to a time when $3K seemed like more money than I could ever imagine needing or wanting.
But anyway, I was thinking about one of the funniest games I ever played in in Montana. It was at a bar in Helena owned by this guy Myron. Myron was renowned across Montana as not being such a good player and he ran a game out of the back of the bar. The structure of the game was hilarious. It was a $1 and $2 blind spread limit game where after the flop the spread was $2 to $50. This meant you could get in for $2 before the flop and bet $50 after the flop. It made it easy to price out any draws for sure. The thing was that the other players played the structure really poorly. If they flopped some piece of the board they would come for whatever bet you made. That meant that you could send the price to a flush draw at almost even money and get calls if you wanted. I mean there would be like $10 in the pot preflop then you could just come out with $50 if you wanted and you could get called by flush draws there. It was pretty sick.
Now the other players in the game didn’t get this from the other side and would let you draw cheap. Of course, if you were drawing cheap enough for the draw you had to call because the implied odds were huge since you could bet $50 after you hit. I basically played hands that flop really well like pairs and A and K high suited cards. I would get in very cheap preflop, see if I hit, then ram the pot since they were all pretty much calling stations.
So, I have great memories of this game for a few reasons:
1) I won my first big prop bet there. I played during the playoffs and at the time I was a huge Eagles fan. The Eagles had made the playoffs so I had just checked the paper to see when the game was. I knew it was at 11 am Montana time but when we sat down to play Myron insisted it was at 2 pm Montana time. So I bet him $500 (which was a huge amount of money to me) and he sent someone out to get a paper and, of course, I won and got paid. Sweet!
2) It was the first and last time I actually saw someone bang their head against a wall. Myron was an emotional fellow to say the least and after he lost a few bad pots he walked over to the wall and actually started smashing his own head against it. That was my first introduction to how, um, shall we say colorful? Gamblers can be.
3) I won a ton of money in the game (over $2500) and got paid in a paper bag full of FIVES! Remember I said Myron owned this bar. Well, the bar made most of its money from the video poker machines in it. Myron accepted checks from the players in the game but I didn’t live in Helena and I wasn’t about take checks from dudes I had never met. I insisted on getting paid cash so I guess that explains the paper bag full of five dollar bills from Myron. He must have emptied out every machine in the place that night to pay me.
All right. That is enough nostalgia for one day. Oh, except to say that I remember it was so freaking cold that day in Helena you have no idea. I guess I am glad I don’t live in Montana now that I think about it considering it was 75 in LA today.
Tags: $10/$20 limit holdem, Annie Duke, blind spread, new year, poker tournaments, tournament structure, ub pro, Ultimate Bet Pro
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Saturday, January 3, 2009 - Cardroom
Well it’s been quite a year to say the least. Everything from the awesome player turnout at the UB Army barracks at the Palms in Vegas during the WSOP to Matt Brady taking down one Million at the Aruba Classic to the launch of CEREUS, it’s all been quite a roller coaster and we look forward to 2009 with great anticipation and some new and exciting tables, tournaments and promos. This year we’re running the Ultimate Bet Online Championship in January and this time around it’s MASSIVE. Check it out here http://www.ultimatebet.com/poker-tournaments/events/uboc. KICKOFF the new year with some Wild Card action this month! You can win yourself a pair of tickets to the greatest sporting event on the planet!! Full details can be found here http://www.ultimatebet.com/poker-promotion/wild-cards. Add a big win to your list of resolutions and make sure to check back weekly for the latest news and promos!
The Card Room
Tags: aruba classic, Cardroom, Cereus, new year, UBOC, ultimate bet online championship, WSOP
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Thursday, January 1, 2009 - Pete
The December days of deals went very well. Players received some amazing prizes every single day in December. Flat screen plasma TV’s to double loyalty points.
The big hit for December was the rakerace. This was the largest rakerace in the history of online poker and it was a hit. We will have given out over $220,000 in cash.
It truly paid to be a player on Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet this month.
I can’t wait to say Happy New Year as we have so many amazing promotions and technology enhancements coming out in 2009.
Keep your eye out for more amazing promos coming up in January. Especially, UBOC (Ultimate Bet Online Challenge) which starts Janaury 9th.
Tags: Corporate, day of deals, Executive, happy holidays, new year, poker promotions, rakerace, software updates, technology enhancements, UBOC, ultimate bet online challenge
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - HollywoodDave
2009 is almost here, thank fuck, and not a moment too soon! Despite pulling it all together in the 11th hour, I spent the vast majority of ‘08 buried in a deep hole that played havoc with not only my gambling bankroll, but more importantly, my emotions as well. The good news is, I learned some incredible lessons this year that I will never forget.
I answered a question awhile back for a player on UB about bankroll management, a lesson I had beaten into my head in 2008. Although I’ve come outta the mathematically-savvy background of professional blackjack, where BR mgmt goes hand in hand with skilled play, over the past few years of playing poker I had allowed some of those caveats to slip away, and found myself not heeding my own advice last winter.
The year started off alright — several nice cashes the first 2 weeks of January — but then a disastrous downward spiral from mid-January to mid-April decimated years of work. Problem was, rather than moving down in stakes as the losses mounted, I stayed at the same level — and in some cases, actually increased levels. Ouch!
In hindsight, its easy to see how badly I compounded my own problems by not adjusting downward in stakes as my BR shrunk, but what’s morel troubling to me is the sometimes uncontrollable swings that are commonplace in poker. I admit it, I’ve been luckier than most; in over 5 years as a professional gambler, I never had a losing year. Sure, some years were better than others, but coming off of a quarter million in poker wins in 2007, I was totally unprepared for such incredible negative variance.
As a blackjack player, swings are built in to the equation. As a card counter, I can only depend on 1-2% advantage, which means I’m losing nearly half the time. You learn that its not about the session results, but only about applying the right plays under optimal table conditions. Shit, I even wrote a book about it! So you’d think I woulda known better, because truth be told, poker is the same way — fuck the results, just play well & under the right conditions & it will all work out in the end.
The difference — at the time, anyway — was that despite the cool math of the blackjack world, my reaction to the poker losses was much more emotional in nature. I found myself getting upset in ways I never did when losing at blackjack. I began to feel cursed, as the daily losses mounted. Some days I’d take a break, only to come back later twice as frustrated when the results still did not return. And the farther I dug myself in, the unhappier I became, until it seemed like my entire life revolved around this negative figure that loomed larger each and every day.
Eventually I came to realize that this was bigger than just wins and losses, it was about my mental health, my happiness as a person, and my quality of life outside of whatever was happening on the tables. And somewhere inside something shifted, and I realized that I was not gonna be held prisoner to my results anymore. Rich or poor, I was gonna try my best to take the emotion out of the equation, and remember that I was gonna be the same cool person regardless of what happened. And you know what? The losing stopped!
Now, the point of this story isn’t what you’d think — I’m sure it helped, but i don’t think the ENTIRE problem of why I lost for so long was simply my attitude towards it. Sometimes shit happens, and we go through long losing streaks — happens to the best players out there, and I’m certainly no exception. But what 2008 DID teach me more than anything is that I can’t make the quality of my life about the quality of my results. Sure, winning a WSOP bracelet and a couple million bucks is definitely on the list for me, but inside I will still be the same person. Same person as I will be when fighting to keep it all from flying away.
So thanks, 2008. Sick, twisted emotional and financial rollercoaster, but you know what? I appreciate it. I get it. Thanks for making me stronger. Thanks for actually letting me get all those losses back at the end of it all — I guess I can still say I never had a losing year as a professional gambler. And now please fuck off, cuz 2009 is a-comin’ and I am more than ready to rock it out all year long!!
-hd.
Tags: 2009, bankroll management, blackjack, downturn, Happy New Year, Hollywood Dave, negative variance, new year, Poker Poker Poker, wsop bracelet
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