Danny "Donkey" Nguyen

So last night I was fairly wiped out from water park fun yesterday, played a wee bit of poker, wasn't into it, and ended up watching the Travel Channel broadcast of the 2005 WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament, which I hadn't seen before.

Good lord.

Danny Nguyen, I'm sure you're a much better poker player than I'll ever be, but that was pitiful. I'm all for being aggressive but calling all-in bets with complete garbage hands isn't playing aggressively, it's playing like a donkey. Sure, be aggressive, play lots of hands, wield that big stack, but dude, let it go when someone plays back at you for all their chips. I'm sure that million bucks spends just the same, whether you needed runner runner seven to win it or not, but Jebus, that was some ugly poker.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the Blogger commenting system? Dude, go look at LiveJournal. See how that works? The whole comment thread, like you have, but the ability to respond via an email client, which also publishes the comments back on the blog? Rip that idea off and implement something similar. It's cumbersome as hell to reply to comments with another comment, forcing all parties to keep checking comments in old posts. Which means that lazy monkeys like myself tend to not reply to comments, which completely defeats the purpose of the whole interactive blog thang.

Catching up/responding to a few comment threads, in no particular order:

I'm still data mining the hell out of 15/30 and 30/60 Party games. I'm closing in on 300,000 hands at those levels, with the bulk being at 15/30. I used to be anti-data mining, by and large, but I'm pretty much a confirmed convert at this point. I think the usefulness increases exponentially as you move up in limits, for all the obvious reasons. Saving a BB (or extracting an extra BB) each hour at 2/4 isn't that enormous an edge, as far as saving $4, but suddenly it starts affecting your hourly earn pretty dramatically when it's $30.

I'd guesstimate that I usually have at least minimal data on half the table when I sit down at a 15/30 table, generally with more than 1,000 hands for 1-3 players. The data itself is generally most useful in pretty narrow circumstances, as for most players it's reasonably generic, just gives broad tendencies, shouldn't be relied on solely for a decision, all that jazz.

Where I find myself leaning on mined data the most is usually when defending blinds, especially in the BB when I call a raise and it's heads-up. If it's a tight player who likes to steal, I'll be much more likely to run a bluff check-raise on the flop (and lead the turn if he/she just calls), since the odds are great they'll just fold to the check-raise and abandon the steal. I'll also be more inclined to defend with complete crap in that scenario, knowing that I can eaither get lucky with the flop or try to run a bluff check-raise if the flop misses me. If it's a comfirmed LAG facing me in that situation, though, and the flop completely misses me, I'll just check-fold in that same situation, or simply fold to the raise pre-flop.

Glad to hear assorted folks are doing well with the casino bonuses. If you do your homework and maintain discipline, they're definitely +EV, and a nice way to quickly boost the poker bankroll. I know, you doubters think I'm crazy, I know, it seems ridiculous, but if you pick the right situations it's absolutely no different than sitting at a fishy poker table. You won't always win, and sometimes you'll get absolutely clobbered, but if you keep iinserting yourself in +EV situations you'll make money in the long run. It's just a matter of being careful and making sure it's a +EV situation.