Lots of Early Morning Saturday Ramblings

No love for me in the tournaments last night (I also played the $22K Guaranteed on Full Tilt along with the FTSOP 6 Max NL event). Went deep in both, going out 23rd in the $22K (18 spots paid) and going out 120th or so (80 spots paid) in the 6 max.

The sorta bubble in the $22K was stupid, as I don't think I had any single card higher than a 7 in the last hour, but managed to steal once a round to keep my head above water. I should have been more aggressive, though, despite an utter crapitude of cards, as the table was uber tight and I likely could have thieved a lot more chips. Finally got looked up by K10o when I shoved with K9s and IGHN.

The 6 max event was odd, as we still had our original starting six players at the first break, with no one busting in the first hour. Again, completely card dead but I had a couple of nice re-steals in decent pots and connected with some crap cards out of the blinds, so I managed to maintain a healthy stack, at least for our table, as things were getting wonky since we were busting so few players, so the chip lead at the table had like 6K at one point, when the tournament average was 12K.

Largish stack got moved to our table and immediately doubled me up just before the third break. Joy was short-lived, though, as I lost back-to-back all-in hands versus smaller stacks (1010 vs. JJ on a 882 flop, then AKh versus Q10o on a Qh 10h 2c flop) and found myself short again. Large stack in the SB gave me a free look in my BB with Q9o, flop was Qs9s8h, all the money goes in and SB flips over 2s5s, river is a spade for his flush and dat's all she wrote.

I guess going deep is better than not going deep but meh. Not much I can do on the hands from the 6 max but I needed to bust out the Shop Vac to remove the sand from my nethers in the $22K, as I know better than to sit there and wait for cards.

For all of you bonus junkies, i4 Poker just released an uber juicy bonus for their casino. The bonus is a 30% up to €100 signup bonus, and the WR is just 10xB, or €1000. It's cashable and BJ is allowed, which is about as juicy as it gets. The site is on the B2B network, so all of you US folks should hurry and do this one before Sep. 1, as that's the date that the B2B network is planning on barring US players.

To get the bonus, deposit into the main cashier (deposit €335 for the max €100 bonus) and then transfer the €335 from your main account to your casino account (it's under "My Account" in the tab at the top). When you transfer the €335 to the casino, it'll automatically add the €100 bonus to your balance, so you start with €435. Grind out the €1000 WR and then you can transfer the entire balance back to your main account (don't transfer back before completing the WR) and cash out. As far as I know, you have to track the WR manually, as there's no other way to check it in the software.

My little Degenerate Challenge continues to chug along nicely, although it's morphing a wee bit, at least on the poker side. I've settled in pretty nicely at the NL tables at Titan, and have pretty much given up the grinding of poker bonuses for the moment. I'm not sure if I'll start adding in wins/losses from there to the Degenerate Challenge, as I'm not playing for a bonus, and that exercise was to see how much cashola I could run up doing the poker bonus/casino bonus/sportsbook bonus circuit, but that's why there have been few poker updates over there of late.

As far as addressing a few emails and coments about that stuff, yeah, I've been running abnormally well with those, especially with a few of the stickies. And I do tend to bet fairly big on some of the Crypto monthlies (like 25/hand) so it inflates the numbers a bit, as I've hit some nice scores on those. But I've also donked off a silly amount of money from pushing too hard on a few when I'm up and getting impatient in general, so that somewhat mitigates the luckbox factor in my own results. But no, on average, you shouldn't expect to run quite as well as I have on the casino side. There's still a ton of money to be made, though, if you're willing to grind it out, especially at the beginning when you're building your roll. That's the critical juncture, as too many people get impatient, tilt a bit, lump it all on one hand of blackjack and bust out.

With football season kicking up I'm probably going to be hitting the sportsbook bonuses pretty hard. Those are much less sexy and monotonous and grindy, but they're also essentially risk-free. That should get me close to the 10K remaining to get to the 30K goal, which I should hopefully hit around Decemember/January.

I know you're all sick of hearing it, but I've run out of words for how bad the play is sometimes at Titan NL games. Here's a fun hand from the heater-rific session yesterday:

I sat down about 10 minutes earlier at a 2/4 NL table, and have $375. Villain in the hand is Norwegian Maniac, who has about $1,200 and made it clear within 30 seconds of sitting down that he was, umm, a Norwegian Maniac (well, his location said Norway, which is what I'm basing that part of the snap judgment on, not his prowess in ski jumping or in 3,000 KM cross-country skiiing events.) He's firing off big bets with any and everything, and firing bullets all the way to the river (and proudly showing his complete bluffs whenever they win).

I'm on the button and find AcAd. Whee. Folds to Norwegian Maniac, who opens for $36. (Whee!). Folds to me and I just smooth call. Both the blinds fold and we see a flop of 10h 6d 4c. Norwegian Maniac bets $40 into the ~$80 pot. I bump it up to $80, not very scared of that board, hoping he'll come over the top of me as he's already done a few times in my short stay at the table. He just calls the $40 raise, though.

Turn is 6s, putting 10h 6d 4c 6s on the board. Norwegian Maniac insta-bets $160 into the $240 pot. This isn't exactly what I want to see, as it's entirely possible that he has a 6 in his hand, despite the fact that a $36 pre-flop open raise would normally rule that out. But there's no way in hell I'm folding AA in this spot versus Norwegian Maniac, so it's either call or shove. I can't imagine he's drawing to anything, so I just decide to call, hoping to induce another bet on the river, as all of my chips are going in regardless of what the river is.

River is the lovely As. Norwegian Maniac insta-shoves and I, umm, insta-call for my last $120 or so. He doesn't have quad sixes and I rake in a juicy pot. What did Norwegian Maniac have, that was worthy of a $36 pre-flop raise and the resulting action he gave on every street with a board of 10h 6d 4c 6s As?

92o.