Pot Limit Win

I won a 49 player PL tournament last night on bodog. It was a 15+1 with 9 spots in the money. The tournamnet followed normal bodog structure and started with a 1,500 stack. The stack size doesn't seem to be that big of a deal in these tourneys until you hit level 6 (start of the second hour). By level 8-9 the game should become much more push oriented, but per chance last evening it didn't. The field was remarkably passive, sans on hyper aggresor sitting two to my right through the whole tourney. I eventually picked him off at the final table with KK vs. AQs. I was involved in very few big pots and therefore was able to stay around average stack until the final table. The KK hand I mentioned was what put me in the chip lead with $18K and the blinds at 400/800 with a 100 ante and seven players left. This shows that my chip leading stack was quite small with respect to the blinds, but I guess this should be expected with a passive field an only 1,500 starting chips. I was able to pick off four of the last five villians -- most with easy calls (TPTK or better). Overall, it was nice to win a tourney for the first time in quite a while.

Cheers.

Online poker scandal

I highly doubt anyone has missed the biggest online poker scandal in recent history, if not ever. As mentioned in the Freakonomics post, I sincerely hope that if there was an employee within Absolute who blew the whistle by supplying the necessary data to the public that they are congratulated and commended by the poker player community. I have been oft quoted as saying that there is no institutional interest in cheating by online poker sites. This does not, however, account for what appears to have been the likely case here – an individual with inside information using it for evil. A hearty well done goes out to the folks over at 2+2 forums for putting together one of the most intensive collaborative online detective jobs ever seen outside of the conspiracy theorists sites. A call to arms for all online players: Vote with your virtual dollars and move to a more reputable site.

Of personal poker note, I will get a chance to play live in a couple weeks when I return to Evansville IN for a weekend getaway. I cut my teeth playing 5/10 Limit at Aztar and I’m really hoping they still offer it. I hope to prove I can still play limit hold’em halfway correctly. I still remember how good I thought I was the first couple of times I walked with a two-bill profit. I also remember being so tight that I would fold pocket 6’s or 7’s in the cut-off position with nobody else in the pot in front of me... Now I don’t know if I could throw out a raise quick enough.