The Poker Pod Home Game

Yesterday I managed to win the Poker Pod home game! It was tough throughout. I had to suck out a river queen to trip up against AA and KK early on.

To add to my successful day I competed against 7 others in the Attu home game and won a marathon session. :D Quite a poker day!

1st Annual Billy Watson Memorial Tournament, Results

Last Saturday brought our Sitka Poker group to the Bell Residence for the first annual Billy Watson Memorial Tournament. This year’s event was a $5 rebuy with the first buy-in from each player donated to the Hard Six program of TLC in Mesa, AZ. Hard Six is the program responsible for bringing Billy back to our family after years of drug abuse. Each day he struggled with emotional instability and addiction, and my family and I are grateful for the strength he showed for so many years.

23 players showed up for the tournament on Saturday. Along with other donations, we were able to gather $300 for the cause! The tournament itself was fast paced and gut-wrenching (as rebuys tend to be). There were 82 rebuys and 21 add-ons, making the total prize pool $515 after the charitable deduction!

My brother Erick flew up from San Diego, and my Dad (and Billy’s best friend) flew up from Arizona to participate. I was so very glad they made it, and I hope that wherever we hold the tournament next year, we can have even more family members participate. This was my tournament though, as I fought through the brutal blinds schedule (the tournament lasted only about 4 hours), the extremely tough field that our group comprises, and the other three money winners to take 1st place overall.

Thank you so much to everyone that participated! Thanks again to those that donated on the side. Thank you, thank you, thank you! to the Bells for hosting! And I hope to see a lot more people next year!

The winning hand:

Late night poker:

Cash game followed. Joe the Pro ruled!
Winners: Yours truly: 1st, Betty 2nd, Emy 3rd, and Tammy 4th.

1st Annual Billy Watson Memorial Tournament

Hosted by John Bell
Tournament Director: Brandon Saiz

On January 21st, 2009, my uncle Billy died after a lifetime of fighting drug addiction. An avid poker player and a great friend, Billy reminded us how important it is to grasp every moment of time with friends and family. Help us celebrate life and remember Billy this Saturday, January 23rd, by playing in a $5 rebuy charity event.

This is how it works:

$5* gets you 1,000 chips to start.
If before the first break you are at or below the starting 1,000 chips you may rebuy for $5.
This allows you to start the tournament with either 1,000 or 2,000 chips. Also, if you lose all of your chips during the rebuy period, you may pay $5 or $10 to stay in the tournament with 1,000 or 2,000 chips respectively.

At the break, anyone may finish rebuying up to 2,000. An add-on will then be available: 2,000 chips for only $5.

*The first buy-in from each player ($5) will be donated to TLC’s Hard Six rehabilitation program in Mesa, AZ in memory of Billy Watson, my uncle and fellow poker player.

Each table will have seated a designated “table captain” to assist with buyins/rebuys. These players’ seats will be locked from movement until tables merge.

The following is a rough blinds schedule**. The first break will be 1 hour and 15 minutes in. At that time add-ons will be allowed. Before play continues the total prize pool, payouts, and total chips in play will be announced.

Level	Duration	Small Blind	Big Blind	Start Time	Chip Up
Round 1	15m	$25	$50	0:00
Round 2	15m	$50	$100	0:15
Round 3	15m	$75	$150	0:30
Round 4	15m	$100	$200	0:45
Round 5	15m	$150	$300	1:00
Break 1	10m			1:15	yes
Round 6	15m	$200	$400	1:25
Round 7	15m	$300	$600	1:40
Round 8	15m	$600	$1,200	1:55
Round 9	15m	$800	$1,600	2:10
Break 2	10m			2:25	yes
Round 10	15m	$1,000	$2,000	2:35
Round 11	15m	$1,500	$3,000	2:50
Round 12	15m	$2,500	$5,000	3:05
Round 13	15m	$4,000	$8,000	3:20
Break 3	10m			3:35	yes
Round 14	15m	$5,000	$10,000	3:45
Round 15	15m	$8,000	$16,000	4:00
Round 16	15m	$10,000	$20,000	4:15
Round 17	15m	$15,000	$30,000	4:30

**Please note that the later blinds may be extended/eliminated to bring about the end of the tournament around midnight based on the total chips in play.

Our Cash Game

I arrived back in Sitka to find my old cash game in what I considered to be disarray. When I left three years ago we had two standard formats. Mostly we played .05/.10 blinds, with a $5 minimum and a $20 to $25 maximum. When we really wanted to throw money around, we would play a .10/.25 game with a $10/$50 min/max. The result of our 200+ big blind maximum was obvious to an experienced player. Differences in starting hand values were reduced because of the implied odds that a deep stack no-limit game presents. Playing solid poker, it would be very difficult for a player to get felted in one hand. Players who excelled at decision making post-flop were rewarded consistently.

Currently the games that are run use much shorter stacks. The .25/.50 game allows a buy-in of only $20, or 40 big blinds. The results are obvious. One of the first games I played in saw a very high percentage of all-ins (with calls) in the first 20-30 hands. On the first hand a player raised with pocket eights and had a couple callers. The flop came out something not so coordinated like Jx-7x-4x. It was checked to the better and he made a standard continuation bet. The player in the big blind check-raised, and the original better considered his options. He re-raised all-in and was called and beat by something like a J9o.

How do you lose your whole stack when an overcard falls on the flop in a cash game? With 40 BB, you might not have a choice. There are 75 cents in the pot to start. The raise made it $2 to go and was called by two players; let's say they were in the blinds, making the pot $6. Both blinds check and the original better makes it $5. He gets check-raised to $12. There is $23 in the pot and it only costs $7 to call. In a deep stack game, he might call to see if the turn is an 8, 9 or 10 - he's getting over 3:1 odds for the call. However, now he only has $13 behind if he folds. With $23 bucks in the pot, he's getting the same odds to move all-in and attempt to win $36 with his $13 as he would get with a flat call here. Given a loose-aggressive player on the big blind, he might have something like A7 with three of one suit, or 74 for a beatable two-pair. Given an overly conservative (not to be confused with tight) player, he might lay down 99 or TT here to a re-raise. So it's easy to see why a player would move in with merely pocket eights in this small stack situation.

There is another factor that may have influenced the move. House rules stated that a player can't chip up a short stack unless it falls below the $2 mark. Now a player with $13 behind is forced to try a tournament-style pre-flop move with strong hands. Otherwise his $2 raise commits too much of his stack.

The other game played is a $1/$2 game with a $50 max - only 25 big blinds!!! I refuse to try it because I can't afford to have my aces cracked and end up tabling $100 in a single night.

And Then There Was One

After three long, wonderful years in Maine I will be hosting my final poker game of this tour on Memorial Day, May 25th starting at 12pm. I am excited about this game. The first event will be a heads-up tournament. We'll follow that up with a standard format NL Hold'em game and finish up with a cash game.

I am also a little upset about this game. I've made some great, life-long friends here. It will be sad to see them [me] go. But I've learned from the Coast Guard that there's no telling when I'll be playing poker with these friends again in the future. If you're reading this, I hope you are close enough to make it.

The Abbie Burgess Game

I will be on the boat most of this week. In my first year and change on this tour that would mean no poker for me. The game has a fairly large following now and we’ve been playing quite a bit. Winter time is usually best for this, as the sun goes down early forcing us to anchor up before people are exhausted.

I wanted to set up our game as close to the format that someone would run into if they visited a cardroom that ran NL Hold’em, while still being able to limit how many chips I bring with me. So we play $1/$2 NL and we each start with around $150. Of course, we don’t actually play at these stakes, we just emulate them. We’re actually playing for no money at all, meaning if you pull off a bluff, it’s the bluff of the century.

I don’t even think about bringing all of my chips aboard. I only take two racks – 40 black and 160 red chips. The blacks are $1 and the reds are $5. We can only fit five people comfortably on our messdeck, so the best short-handed players usually win. Well, that’s not actually true. We encourage players of all skill levels to play, and the beginners that have no clue how to play usually win. The best short-handed experienced players usually finish up for the night.

The reasons for the beginners running the table are simple enough. First, experienced players have extreme issues deciphering the betting patterns of a first time player, as they are not usually based in logic and experience. This is evident when a new player does the raise $5 pre-flop, bet $1 post-flop routine. Betting $1 into a $14 pot isn’t in any book, especially when it happens every single time.

Second, beginners who are just looking to pass the time simply DO NOT care about the results of the game. I can honestly say my goal when sitting down at a free game is to prove that I am the best player that night. The only way to show this is by winning more chips than anyone else. Beginners don’t think that way. What brought them to the game is what is motivating them – let’s have a good time; let's beat the boredom. So playing trash all the way to the river is very common for these players. It’s not surprising to see a player with J4 winning a big pot at the end by hitting runner-runner two pair.

Third, experienced players are looking to “try things out” at this level of play. I don’t know how many times I’ve put my good friend Justin all-in with nothing sensing some sort of weakness, only to have him call me when he was “pretty sure” (and dead-on) that he had the best king-high hand. This same attempt to play tricky poker against a beginner usually ends in disaster.

Finally, experienced players sometimes forget that the person calling them every single hand might actually have aces or kings this time. It’s too easy to get trapped by a player who simply doesn’t know he’s supposed to be betting his big hands.

All of that aside, I love the boat game. It’s great to sit with people I enjoy and play poker. It reminds me of everything that I love about this game. And this particular version, the Abbie Burgess game, is one that I will miss when I am gone.