Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Probably the biggest draw in my life (so far)....

I rarely write a post just about a hand (if my memory serves me right, i never write a post just about a hand). This is an exception. I hit what's probably the biggest draw in my life, outs wise. The game is $1/2 PLO 6-max. Nothing big.

My hand: 9d 7d 5h 8h
Position: BB

Preflop: everyone limps around to SB who raises it to $12, I call, 3 more callers. Total five players to the flop.

Pot: $58

Flop: Ah 5d 2d. SB continues for $39. I make a pretty questionable call but does he really have 34 for the straight? Pretty sure he'd bet pot if he had it. Does he have diamond draw? Maybe. Don't see why he'd be so eager to bet into a made straight board if he had diamonds.

Pot : $136

Turn: 6h. Key card! Even assuming the guy has the straight, I still have 25 outs. (All the diamonds and hearts, two black 4s, two black 7s, two black 8s, two black 9s, and minus one of the 4 he has in his hand to make his straight.) I bet pot which I think works well because he can't call with diamonds anymore, and I would be ahead otherwise. The guy tanks and then shoves the rest of his stack in which is only $25.55 more. I obv call.

Pot: $457.10

River: 5s. I hit trip 5s and take down the pot as the guy mucks of all things A369 clubs. I had not 25 but 28 outs against this particular hand! Oh also, it turns out that my read on the flop was correct, that he didn't make the straight and no diamonds.

I had 64% to in on the turn eventho I was the one drawing one card. Pretty awesome feeling it is.




Wednesday, March 24, 2010

This book is recommended.......


The Big Short by Michael Lewis aka the awesome writer who wrote Liar's Poker. This book just got published no more than two weeks ago and I just got my copy on the Kindle. The Big Short tells the story of a few very smart traders/fund managers who saw the big subprime meltdown coming before it happened, and how they managed to make sick amount of money off it. Thru their stories Michael talks about the absurdness and corruptness of financial institutions, the fixed income desks, and the credit rating agencies. I'm thru about half the book and I think it's a really good recount of the big meltdown. The book might be a bit more technical than Liar's Poker and it might require a slightly more financial knowledge to fully understand everything, but the narrative itself is awesome enough to give casual readers (non financial geeks) a fun peek in the big mess. This book is recommended to anyone looking for a fun narration of how subprime mortgages took down the US financial system.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Live game. WHAAATTTTT???

I'm out of town right now and when I return to Hong Kong in five days, there might no longer be a live poker scene. At least not a public one. For those of you who doesn't know what happened, here's the long story short. The Blue Room (a place for higher stakes poker) has been raided by the cops. It's not some minor "license-check" either, they took chips and tables and money and people. Apparently they plotted an undercover cop at the place disguised as a player for a few weeks before the raid.

What's gonna happen to live poker in town? No idea. But all I know (from what I can hear so far) is people are scared to play publicly. This really kills the action as poker is hardly profitable without new fishes coming in. Pretty sad thing imo. There might be private 1-table games at private places, but the accessibility is incomparable. More people might play online and more people will definitely go to Macau. Both for me aren't ideal as online poker is just different and Macau, well, Macau is just far. No more can I drive 10 minutes to a game I know is running. And I'll have to go thru the pain of finding out which game happens when and where. (TO ALL: PLEASE email me or call me or fb me or whatever with any private games that might be running or being set up. This will very much be appreciated. obv don't post details in comment here lol.) I'll still have my one high stake private game at my disposal and I think that game will never be raided because it's set up inside a VERY safe venue but I won't disclose more to protect the game.

What's gonna happen to the most popular poker room in town namely HKPH? No idea. But my guess is they'll see much less traffic. The action there is pretty pfff before all this happened anyways (they only have 10/20 on most nights, or at best 25/50NLH.) Unless they set up a higher stake game and they somehow prove that it's safe to play there, I can't be bothered going.

This just sucks.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Macau Poker Cup

It's Macau Poker Cup time again and I'll be in Macau on March 5-7. The plan is to take the 8:30pm ferry on Friday to get there at approx 10pm. That should give me enough time to check into my room before hitting the satellite at 10:30pm. Let's see if I can run good at this one time. (I tried the online version and I played like a moron.)

Saturday morning is when the fun starts. I plan to go jogging at 8am from Grand Lisboa Hotel to Taipa (across the bridge) and come back. The full distance is approx 7km so it should tire me just enough but not to the point of exhaustion. (Anyone's welcomed to join me, pls post in comment if you're interested.) I would then go back to the room and have breakfast at 10am, followed by a power nap. And then at 12pm I would go slam the Red Dragon tourny.

Saturday night my buddy Brian is having a stag party and I hope I won't be able to make it because that means I go deep in Red Dragon. If however I can make it, I'll make sure it'll be jampacked with fun and alcohol and fun.

GL me gogogogogogogo!!!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Couple of things....



GO CANADA GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!!!!!!!!!! We shipped the Men Hockey (and the Women Hockey but that's a lock). GOGOGOGOGO CANADA!!!!!!!!!!! #suckitamerica


On a side note: this comic strip is pretty funny/nerdy:



And as always: a latest SSF4 trailer:


Comment: All 3 of the new characters play very similarly to SF33S. Which is an awesome thing.