I have been doing tournament reporting at the L.A. Poker Classic since Saturday for PokerPages. As I stopped to write this blog, I realized that I wasn

On occasion a wildcard newcomer gets invited to a homegame. Usually their play is respected and they’re assumed to be tight until they prove otherwise. This week a new wrinkle was thrown into the Harboufront Poker Tour when a guy named “Methadone” showed up. “Methadone” didn’t appear to be a recovering heroin addict as no tract marks were visible on his arms; however, unfortunately for the players at the table he liked to needle. The following recap demonstrates an interesting hand and the pitfall of outthinking yourself against an unknown opponent.

Players in the Hand
Methadone: Unknown
Speculator: somewhat loose and aggressive

Blinds: 25/50
Stacks Size
Methadone: 1400
Speculator 1050

Average stack size: 1000 (8 players)

Preflop: action folds around to Speculator in SB
Speculator raises to 150
Methadone calls

Flop: 4c 7d 10s
Speculator checks
Methadone bets 100
Speculator quickly calls

Given that there are no obvious draws (Speculator raised preflop and it’s unlikely he holds 5/6 8/9 or 6/8 for a straight draw) it appears quite likely he’s holding overcards at this point as he likely would’ve slow-played a big pocket pair in the SB pre-flop.

Turn: 2d
Speculator checks
Methadone bets 100
Speculator calls
Pot is now 700

An interesting call from Speculator, it appears he senses weakness as Methadone hasn’t increased his turn bet relative to the size of the pot and Speculator possibly thinks he can steal the pot on the river. Speculator has also been known to check-call the flop and turn, then bet the river with a monster hand.

River: 7c
Speculator bets 500 (suspiciously leaving himself only 200 chips)in what the railbirds assume is a move to make Meth feel he is stronger than if he had pushed all-in.
Meth thinks for a very long time and calls.

Speculator shows KQ (king high)
Methadone shows A9 (Ace high)

Speculator seems to have out-thought himself on this hand, as his new opponent likely didn’t understand he was trying to represent an overpair by check-calling twice and betting the river.

The hand demonstrates why you should be very weary at a homegame to attempt to bluff a newcomer who may not be thinking along the same lines as you are. Of course, it’s entirely possible that “Methadone” simply read the Speculator like a book…

Approximately six months ago, my roommate Brian and I sat down to write a list of rules for the home game we were planning to start at our house. In the process, we came up with the idea to afford one lucky player the opportunity to play in a major poker tournament, representing the members of our home game. In order to decide on our representative, we came up with a point system that correlated with our weekly tournament. A 1st place finish is worth 10 points, 2nd = 8, 3rd = 6, 4th = 4 and 5th = 2. Players also earn a point simply by showing up to the game and paying the $5 add on that goes directly into what we call the “challenge pool.” Once the pool reaches $2,000, the player with the most points wins $500 cash and the right to represent all players who have earned points in a $1,500 buy-in tournament. In the event that the representative finishes in the money, the amount of points you have acquired over the course of the competition determines your percentage of the rep’s winnings.

Fast forward to last Wednesday. With a 1st place finish in our weekly tournament, I am pleased to report that I will be representing the members of my home game at Event #3 at this year’s World Series of Poker! The event is a $1,500 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament, to be held on June 2, 2007.

It has been a long-standing goal of mine to play in my first World Series of Poker event and I am grateful to have the opportunity that lies ahead. To this point, the biggest buy-in I’ve ever played for was $1,030 in a series of heads-up matches against Chris Moneymaker on PokerStars, back during my Internet heyday. Shamefully, I admit that he won 3 out of 5.

To everyone who plays in our home game - I hope to see you all there on June 2nd! Moreover, I hope to win us some moolah! This might sound corny, but thanks to all of you for making this possible - it really is a dream come true for me.

It

My roommate needed a ride to our old hometown, so I took the opportunity to go see my family for a few days with someone coming along to help the ride go smoother. One of the reasons I wanted to become a pro poker player, is that it would free me up to see my family more often. It hasn’t really happened that way so far, but I’ve taken some steps to correct the problem. I’ve had a cable modem installed, and bought a cheap used computer to bring to my old house. My folks haven’t caught on to the whole World Wide Web thing yet, so I get a chance to show them what they’re missing.

I didn’t bring my database with me, so I installed a license of Pokertracker on the computer, Hooked up Full Tilt, and 4 tabled some 2/4 during my spare time. I didn’t get a lot done. It’s not fun returning to a single monitor 17″ CRT system after having played on a good system for a time, and the hands seemed to drag by.

Then, my father came in to watch me play. I hadn’t realized that he had never seen me pokering before. He last played a hand of poker in the 1960s with his army buddies, and not being a TV watcher he’s never seen a hand of Texas Hold Em. I had a lot of fun explaining the basics, and learned how easily I get trapped into using lingo to describe poker.

By the end of the session, I was having reasonably advanced discussions with him about basic strategy. He got to see me get smashed by quad Tens when I flopped Aces full of tens, and picked up quickly why it wasn’t a big deal and I didn’t get upset. He had gotten very good at predicting starting hands that should be folded, and seemed to have a quick instinct for the simple math of limit poker. The best part is, I left some Sklansky books behind, and as I was leaving to come back to Atlanta, he’d already gotten through the first few chapters of Small Stakes HoldEm.

Some of my favorite memories in the world are of philosophical discussions with my father, and most of the life changing epiphanies I’ve had have come in talks with him. If he gets excited about poker, I can imagine having incredibly productive strategy dialogue with him, which has to be the best way to improve your game.

Even better, it will make going home more likely to be profitable rather than a drain on my money, enabling me to do it considerably more often.

I get a lot of positive feedback for my poker and other gambling articles. I love it of course. But what remains missing is some idea of what topics YOU want to see me cover.

So I’m throwing it open to our reading public. I’m an expert in:

- Every mainstream poker game (HORSE player), limit, pot limit, and no limit.

- Bankrolling short term projects and long term poker careers.

- Poker businesses, including authoring, affiliate activities, and event coverage.

- Professional poker profiles and interviews.

So what sort of thing do you all want to see? E-mail my boss! gary@wisehandpoker.com

Please make the subject of the E-mail: Poker Topics for Bill

You can request topics from Gary for any of our authors, just be clear in the subject. Thanks for your feedback!

According to Cardplayer.com, Doyle

I received an email from Full Tilt Poker today, that began “You should be outraged that the U.S. government is infringing on your personal rights and telling you how to use your hard-earned money.” It went on to say that they feel the UIGEA doesn’t legally affect poker, but there should have been a specific exemption for poker in the act. There was mention of a bonus for signing up for the PPA, which has announced that it’s goal for this year is to get poker a skill exemption from the UIGEA.

I’m not sure I know where to begin here, so I’ll just start right smack dab in the middle. Our rhetoric in defense of our rights has been terrible. The UIGEA, and the seizing of our Neteller funds in transit, have been brutal attacks on our rights by our own government. Every time someone makes the argument that poker should be exempt from the UIGEA because it is a skill game, is hurting our cause. It is a skill game, and you could make fine argument that the justifications stated for the UIGEA shouldn’t apply to poker, but that’s selling out. You only get it one way, you can defend our rights to “use our hard earned money” or you can claim that Poker should be excepted from this bill because it’s different from gambling. It’s not OK to make both arguments, because if you believe in the first principle, then you are saying that you are willing to sell out those who are being oppressed for the games they enjoy that are of lesser skill?

Lobbying for a “Poker Exemption” to the UIGEA is ceding that our government has the right to impose it’s religious based restrictions on our liberties, but that our game shouldn’t qualify as one to be attacked. So if there is a carve out for Poker from the UIGEA, we’re going to let our government stop Americans from sportsbetting online? Are you just trying to selfishly save the thing that matters to you, or are you actually standing up for a principle that matters? The skill involved in poker has nothing to do with whether or not it’s ok for a government to impose it’s will on the liberties of it’s citizens.

I’m not a member of the PPA. They don’t speak for me. As a matter of fact, they clearly speak with a voice that I disagree with, and now that I am being offered a profitable bonus by Full Tilt to join the PPA, I feel that my lack of membership in the PPA is a more clear statement of that.

Since when has the proper response to a tyrant or bully been to politely ask that they oppress someone else more deserving?

Tournament Killer Poker by the Numbers was supposed to be finished 19 days ago, but I’m still tweaking it and adding more material to it. Talking about things like the Independent Chip Model in a rigorous but accessible way is really tough, so I hope my readers will appreciate the overtime I’m putting into that one.

In the meantime, I took some time away from my computer to make some $$$ at a home game that John Vorhaus hosted last night. It was a no limit hold’em game with $1-$2 blinds (first buy-in $100, additional buy-ins $150). The cards started flying at 7:00, but I wasn’t able to arrive until 8:00 because of a dinner that ran late. I had been out all day with my girl, Evelyn, and we needed to eat before heading to JV’s. Evelyn didn’t play (this was her first time even seeing poker played), but I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce her to some of the people I know while they were in their natural habitats.

As soon as I walked in the door, I smelled the aggressive action in the air. Besides the usual suspects (JV and a good friend of mine named Craig) I was greeted by some new faces: Gary Wise, Mr. Wise Hand Poker himself, along with Hollywood Dave and Tiffany Michelle. I said my hellos, introduced Evelyn to everyone, and I immediately went to work.

“Getting to work” meant sitting and folding a ton of hands. Tiffany even made a remark indicating her surprise at how many hands I was folding. It was a shorthanded game, but with all the straddles, preflop raising, and aggressive postflop play, I didn’t have much incentive to become entangled in a lot of pots.

All the folding I did gave me lots of time to observe Gary, Dave, and Tiffany. JV and Craig are typically aggressive, but it was interesting to see that Gary and Dave were actually taking the role of the aggressor for themselves. It wasn’t an easy game, and having Evelyn by my side didn’t make it easy for me to focus, but I was able to pick my spots and build my stack to $208 in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

At that point (about 9:15PM), Evelyn needed to go home, so I left my chips on the table, and took her home. I got back an hour later to see that Gary, Dave, and Craig had accumulated some big stacks at JV’s expense. Shortly after I got back, JV was brutalized for two more buy-ins. At that point, we took a break, and there was some interesting conversation with Dave having to do with his experience as a professional blackjack player.

After the break, we played until 12:13AM. I continued playing relatively tight and straightforward poker…when I was in a hand, my decisions usually involved figuring out whether betting or check/calling was the best way to extract money. After it was all said and done, I ended up +$179 in what was a fun night of playing.

Last night, I played in my first California home game. Tiffany and I were joined from Blackjack pro Hollywood Dave Stann in heading to the Monrovia residence of John Vorhaus, author of the Killer Poker Series.

There, we were joined by Tony Guererra along with a bevy of other experienced players. We played on a fifty-year old leather-bound table. The starting stacks were small, but by the end of the night, we all had a decent number of chips on the table. In between pots, there were witticisms upon witticisms, with the writers all trying to outdo one another. Laughs all around between chicken, cookies, nuts and beers.

This was a harkening back to the days before now. This is how poker used to be played, with no dealers, 6-8 players, all in cloe proximity around one small table. Good times.

It’s great to be in California. I’ve thought about moving here repeatedly over the last half-year, and thus far, nothing in my visit has shown me the folly of those thoughts. Tomorrow, I’ll make my first trip to WT offices. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com