Top 5 Underwhelming Poker Video Games

Seems like virtually every big-name poker star over the last few years has loaned their image to a highly touted poker video game marked cards.
Howard Lederer and Anne Duke. Daniel Negreanu and Jennifer Harman. Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari. Greg Raymer, Clonie Gowen, Erick Lindgren, Carlos Mortenson. Jesus. Even Paul Darden.
And while those might be the most recognizable names, they're certainly not the only ones. Turns out a few other players have given it a go, with somewhat, umm, less success.
These are them (and their accompanying jacket blurb):
1) Bill Chen's Marginal Statistical Edge
"Welcome to the pulse-pounding world of quantitative analytics, Bill Chen-style!
"Longtime member of the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup, software designer and coauthor of The Mathematics of Poker, Chen plays host to this madcap romp through the underlying math of poker, applying the 'Chen Formula' to push your marginal statistical edge.
"Just a sample of the excitement: Take the high card and score it. A=10, K=8, Q=7, J=6 and 10 to 2 = 1/2 the value of the card (a 6 is worth 3, for example). If the 2nd card pairs the first, then the value is either twice the high card point or 5, whichever is greater. Round any half-points up....
"And there's more. But the most important part, as Chen likes to say when he's a little tipsy and introducing his next karaoke song: 'If you're not living on the marginal statistical edge, you're taking up too much space...'"

Rules man.

2) David Singer's Rules Infraction
"Anybody can luckbox their way to a tournament win. But how many of you have truly felt the thrill of declaring an opponent's hand dead based on an obscure rules infraction?
Ever sent someone on a 10-minute penalty? Made a sloppy dealer question their career choice? Rules nits take notice: here comes David Singer's Rules Infraction..."
3) Vanessa Rousso's Aggressive Call
"The setup: You get moved to a new table with $12,000 in chips. You're there less than 10 hands when you get dealt A-Js on the button (six-handed tournament by the way). Action checks to the short-stack cut-off who raises to $600 ($100/$200 blinds). You call marked card tricks.

Vanessa Rousso: Aggressive caller.

Aggressive big stack in the big blind re-raises to $2,000 (important note... this player did this several times before in only the last 10 hands; either he was being hit with the deck or he was steamrolling with his $25k+ stack when average stack was only $6k or so, so he can't be given too much credit).
Small stack pushes all-in for $2,150 (which means if you call the big-blind big stack can't re-raise because $150 is not considered an actual raise).
What do you do? You make the AGGRESSIVE CALL..."

Got stuff to do.

4) Joe Sebok's Day 1 Chip Leader
"Your mission: Accumulate chips fast and furious on your way to the Day 1 chip lead, making yourself a heavy favorite to make the final table - if not to win it all.
Your next challenge - fritter it all away as fast as possible before another embarrassing bust-out on the bubble.
This is Joe Sebok's Day 1 Chip Leader - where the final table just keeps you from other stuff you need to do."

Birdguts.

5) Gavin "Birdguts" Smith's Duck Hunt
Not so much a video game actually. You just get drunk and shoot at birds off your porch. But it could be a video game.
Note: These unfortunately don't actually exist. Yet.

Winter Sports, Prop Bets and Warsaw Trip Report

A couple weeks after Copenhagen my friend Roland De Wolfe invited me out for a one-week skiing trip with him and his parents in Zermatt, Switzerland.
I elected to go snowboarding instead of skiing as I remembered having a lot of difficulty skiing as a youngster and snowboarding came really easy to me
trick cards.
For the first three days at the resort, all we did was stay in the room and play Chinese poker and online poker; sometimes both at the same time. Finally we got out and hit the slopes. The mountains were higher up than I've ever seen before - so different than the kiddy hills I used to snowboard on back in high school.
It took about 20-30 minutes by train to get up the mountain, so you can imagine how far up it was. At first, I struggled keeping my balance on the snowboard and would fall quite frequently, but eventually I got the hang of it and picked up where I left off 5-6 years ago.
After only 1-2 minutes of boarding, my legs and feet were in excruciating pain and I was out of breath to the point of wanting to stop and take the train back down. I'm not sure if I was out of breath because the air is thinner at higher altitudes, me being out of shape, or me underestimating how strenuous of an exercise boarding actually is but it was probably a combination of all three.
I felt a little bit guilty about not wanting to continue, as it interrupted Roland's ski session and I knew that Roland, being the loyal friend that he is, would want to take the train down with me instead of continuing on without me and meeting me in the room. So we went down, played some more Chinese, went to the sauna and relaxed until dinner.
Every night Roland and I had dinner with his parents at this really nice restaurant in the "Alex," a hotel owned and operated by a family and THE best hotel I've ever stayed at by far. Roland and his family had been going to this hotel in Zermatt for the last 20 years and it's no wonder why.
The whole village of Zermatt is like an undiscovered paradise, almost like a world within the world. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to go skiing or boarding. We tried boarding/skiing again the following day and I had the exact same problem after a few minutes.
This really got me disturbed. I guess punishing my body by eating junk food and not exercising for the last two years was finally catching up to me. Nevertheless, I shouldn't be out of breath from boarding at this young of an age.
I'm a firm believer that in order to make positive changes in your life, you need to get disturbed about your current situation. When I first started playing online poker, I got disturbed about not being a winning player and developed a keen and pulsating desire to become successful at online poker - and more specifically multi-table tournaments.
I know for a fact that I can use this same strategy to get back in great shape and have exercise and a balanced diet become a part of my regular lifestyle. Of course, It also helps if there's some financial reward for achieving my goal.
So I asked Roland if he'd be interested in a prop bet where each of us are required to lose a certain amount of weight by the start of the WSOP (May 31st). He agreed and we discussed the terms the following day marked poker.
These are the rules/terms:

1. NO eating in the three hours before going to bed.
2. Must work out five times per week for at least one hour.
3. No eating the following foods: Fast food, candy, chocolate, chips, coffee, anything fried, hot dogs, corn dogs, donuts, pizza, soft pretzels, cookies, sugary cereals, cake, cupcakes, ice cream cake, white bread, pizza, fries, pies, pop/soda, hamburgers, fattening dressings, pastries, processed foods, red meat, alcohol, potatoes, white rice, egg yolk.
4. Alcohol only one day out of the week.
5. One cheat day per week (we can eat anything).
6. If one of us loses the required weight and the other doesn't, the person who didn't achieve his goal owes the other $25k. If both fail or both succeed, it's a total wash.
7. Roland has to lose 16 kilos; Sorel has to lose 12 kilos.

Starting weights:

Sorel 98.1 kilos
Roland 102.5 kilos
We get charged $1k per rule we violate to a cap of $3k in a single day. Obviously we're not going to be able to monitor each other efficiently, so we're just going by the honor system. I've already broken one rule.
I ate a cookie knowing that it would cost me $1k. It seemed worth it at the time =(. Good news is that Roland has already racked up $4k in violations and isn't showing any sign of slowing down so I'm liking my chances.
EPT Warsaw was a little bit uneventful. I got down to $1,500 chips after three-barreling some guy who called my K-Q UTG raise with 6-2 on the button, flopped trip 2s and called my bet on every street. I raised to $275 at $50/$100.

Lesson learned, again, at EPT Warsaw: Old guys always have it when they re-raise.

He called the button, I bet $550 on a board of 2-2-9. He called, the turn was a J and I fired $1,400. He called, I bet $3,300 on the 5 river and again he called. I really didn't put 6-2o in his range :(. Oh well, I don't feel too bad about the hand as I would have played A-J, K-J, QQ, KK, AA the same way for value.
I managed to get back up to $10k after a few lucky double-ups - QQ vs TT against Luca Pagano and then AA vs Q-K on a K-high board against William Thorson. After recovering, I made the same mistake I've made in every single EPT tournament this year - overvaluing A-Q when I have a very loose-aggressive image.
It's always the same thing: someone at the table makes a comment about how aggressive I am, and then I think that they think I have nothing and are re-raising me light and I three-bet all-in for all my chips.
I really have to stop thinking so deep when I get re-raised by older live players. They always have it!
I've run A-Q into KK and A-K 5/5 times this year in live tournaments when I could have avoided the situation, and only sucked out once (Irish Open). A-Q is the devil.
-- Sorel Mizzi

Running Hot Makes Poker Fun – Courtney Gee Poker Update

And the good run continues! I played four days and 34.5 hours last week, which is exactly what I hope to do every week. I also wish the results could be like this every time:
# MTTs: 171
Hours: 34.5
Net result: +$10,300.65
That’s an ROI of 180%, so I somehow don’t think it’s sustainable :P
I made all the money the first two days that I played trick cards last week, which were Thursday and Friday. Interestingly, I only cashed a total of three tournaments both those days combined. That amounts to a 3.5% ITM (in the money) rate, which is extremely low.
On Thursday I bricked everything until I was 1-tabling the 4 pm ET $162 freeze-out. I just recently put the $162 into my daily MTT schedule, so I feel fortunate to have made a final table already. I placed 5^th for $4,685.62.
On Friday I cashed just a $35 180 before I made the final table of an $11 Rebuy/Add-on (which also takes place at 4:00 pm ET). I had a pretty healthy stack at what ended up being a pretty funny final table.
Most of the players were very bad with the exception of one very good reg. We were both trying to build stacks off the weak players while also trying to stay out of each other’s way as much as possible, so it was an interesting dynamic. The bottom line was that neither of us wanted to lose too many chips to each other when there were so many easier chips to be won elsewhere.
I ended up losing a big flip short-handed and then having to double up off a poor guy with J4 versus his Ax (I runner runnered a flush and he then proceeded to berate me from the rail for being a fish). When it got down to 3 players, it was with the reg and a very inexperienced infrared ink player. We decided to do a chip chop 3-handed, with all of us cashing for ~$9.5k.
The best thing about the larger buy-in freeze-outs is that the fields are much smaller. I had to beat just 586 players to make the final table of the $162 as opposed to the 2,672 I had to beat to make the final table of the $11 rebuy. And then consider that the prize pool of the $162 was bigger than that of the $11 rebuy and it’s a no-brainer as to which I’d rather play.
Obviously there are downsides to the higher buy-ins. A higher buy-in means that you must, of course, have a bigger bankroll.
And then there’s the fact that the field is much tougher in the higher buy-in freeze-outs. You really have to adjust your play quite a bit when playing an $11 rebuy compared to a $162. Sometimes you have to try to build your stack in different ways depending on the tables you draw because the players can differ so much in skill.
I’ll continue to work on my game and to build my bankroll so that I can keep adding new tournaments to my schedule. And if I can also keep running hot, that would be a fantastic bonus!
Have a good week at the tables :)

Running Colder than the Moon - Courtney Gee Poker Update

So … about that “Running Hotter than the Sun” entry. I think I might have jinxed myself!
It appears that $8k downswings at the stakes I’m playing are quite standard as I’m in the middle of another one. Unfortunately it means that I am losing quite a bit this month so far, as I’m currently running at around -2.5% ROI over ~1k games.
I will probably only play a couple hundred more SnGs this month, so chances are pretty much zero that I’ll end up positive for the month.
April has been pretty frustrating. During the last couple of weeks I have realized that I still have endless work to do when it comes to tilt control. I have gotten a lot better at controlling myself overall, but it seems that the really bad runs are pretty good at setting me off still.
If you are a high volume player, you’ll know that my monthly sample is very small. The biggest problem with marked card tricks playing a low volume is that the downswings can feel like they last forever. A breakeven stretch of 4k games might just be a month for some grinders, but it would last three months for me. It definitely sucks, but it’s something I have to accept. It is, however, admittedly quite tough to accept sometimes.

So cold Courtney needs a hoodie.

 

One thing I have going for me is that by playing less tables, my overall ROI should be higher than most. Hopefully this will help lower my overall variance a bit despite the reduced volume.
Everyone has different ways of handling downswings. Unfortunately, I think a lot of poker players deal with it by complaining to anyone that will listen.
I’m not gonna get on some high horse and pretend that I never moan and groan about bad variance, but I will say that I have tried hard to cut down on bad beat stories as much as possible.
I think that I have been complaining more than usual the last couple of weeks, though, so writing this post is a good reminder of how counterproductive it is to complain about variance.
A good friend of mine was recently dealing with a bad downswing himself, and he said to me, “The only thing I can do is review my game often and keep playing as much as possible. I don’t know what else to do.”
He may not know what else to do, but I’d say he’s going about it the right way. As long as you make sure that you are playing juice cards well and that you don’t have big leaks, then you just have to grind through the variance.
Ensuring that you are still playing well is obviously an important factor, but I think it’s also possible to go overboard. I find that I have a hard time relaxing when I am going through a downswing because I am constantly worried that I am playing badly.
Whether it’s worrying about regs outplaying me or worrying about spewing stacks, I feel like I should be reviewing 24/7 to make sure that I’m not doing something wrong. This is obviously unhealthy. Being able to shut off while you’re not playing poker is a pretty important skill and something that I need to work on.
What kind of strategies do you use while downswinging? If you have any unique ideas, please feel free to write a comment. Hopefully by the next time I write, though, I’ll be running so good that I won’t need to use any of your suggestions ;)

WPT Foxwoods Main Event Day 1 and 2

Despite the fact that I've played played 4,327,981 tournaments at Foxwoods and cashed in exactly one, I decided to make the trek across country to grind out one more stupid donkament.
After my run in such a tough field at Bellagio and being so close to my first WPT main event final table that I could taste it, I just couldn't talk myself out of playing one of the softest WPT events of the season.
The structure of the event is pretty good when it matters, even though it's a bit fast early on. We start with 30k chips at 50/100 and it's 200/400 (50) by level four, but they don't skip the 2400, 5k, or 10k big blind levels.
My table draw for day one wasn't exactly marked cards what I was hoping for in a Foxwoods tournament. It would be a great draw at Bellagio, don't get me wrong, but the field is a LOT different here. Here's the lineup...
Seat 1 "Miami John" Cernuto/random
Seat 2 Curt Kohlberg
Seat 3 random satelliter/random young kid w lots of chips
Seat 4 Festively Plump Stoner
Seat 5 Adam "Roothlus" Levy
Seat 6 random satelliter/Chad "lilholdem954" Batista
Seat 7 Gordon Eng
Seat 8 "DontBluffMePLZZZ"
Seat 9 Scott "dorinvandy" Dorin (WCOOP $10k winner)
I got up to 35k early when I flopped an ace holding A♥ K♥ against Seat 3's K♣ K♠, but spent a while slipping afterwards while I couldn't get much going. I slipped down to 20k through a series of second-best hands, which is what I started the last level of the day with (300/600).
During that level I finally started to get it going and picking up a bunch of pots.
Then Seat 3 minraised UTG and flatted my 3.6k three-bet from UTG+1. He overbet jammed nearly 30k on a Q♥ 8♥ 3♥ flop holding A♦ Q♣, and I happily accommodated his desire to play a huge pot with my A♥ A♠.
My chanting for a Queen failed, and I doubled up to ~65k to end day one headed to the 400/800 level.
I was pretty happy when I saw my day two table draw, except for Poorya "isuckoutonyou" Nazari (2009 PCA winner) being directly on my left. He's a really nice guy who I've become buddies with, but is also a sicko LAG player who I really didn't want to have position on me.
Little did I know, it wouldn't be him that would be screwing with me at the table. A kid named Matthew Milliken was two seats to my left and wanted to play every pot I entered ... even though I was opening fairly infrequently.
After watching him try to run people over for hours, it made it pretty easy to four-bet jam A♠ Q♥ on him about 50 big blinds deep. A tougher spot came up when I had the exact same hand about 80 big blinds deep against him a level later, and I ended up flatting the three-bet and check-shoving on a A♣ 9♣ 3♣ flop.
Milliken: I only bet because I thought I had the K♣ with it.
Me: So you're trying to pretend you had a big hand? What...K♠ T♦?
::he continues to pretend he's not completely full of it::
Eventually they made the table a bit worse by adding Chris Moore three seats to my left and Kathy Liebert to my right. Kathy didn't give me much trouble...except for the part of me that loves occasional silence!
We ended up making a fun prop bet though...Foxwoods puts out miniature (key word!) sandwiches in the afternoon for the players since there's no dinner break. I grabbed one of each; tuna, turkey, and ham.
Upon arriving back at the table, Kathy did her normal job of breaking my balls, and bet me that I couldn't finish all three sandwiches before she busted (she had ~25 big blinds). She started the bidding at $1 but I talked her up to $20, which was obviously mine infrared ink.
Bet a fat man he can't eat three miniature sandwiches? What a fish!!!
It did lead to some interesting situations though...like when someone put her all in and I had to start hounding down that ham and cheese! She folded though, giving me more time to eat and take her money.
Chris played pretty well, but I run too good. He raise-folded on the flop when I had a set of sixes on a A♥ 6♥ 3♠ in a multi-way raised pot, even though he had almost half of his stack in the pot.
I ended up busting him when my A♠ Q♠ made a full house against his 7♣ 7♥ after we got it in pre-flop for his last 40k.
I finished the day with 174k going to 1200/2400 (300). The average stack is 156k, 36 places pay, and first place is $910k. It looks like I have a pretty good table draw for tomorrow as well, with Lee Markholt somehow being the only player at the table whose name I recognize.
Hopefully I can find my big jar of rungoodsauce for tomorrow...
Matt Stout

Traniello, Harman hire marketing firm

The increased interest in poker has also created an increased interest in the game's more prominent players. Marco Traniello and Jennifer Harman are two players who've received considerable notice from poker fans, and they'll now be represented by Prince Marketing Group.
"As a respected entity within the marketing space, Prince Marketing Group is highly qualified to help us gain visibility to the general public," said Jennifer Harman and Marco Traniello. "We are thrilled to be a part of the elite roster of sports and entertainment clientele that the firm currently represents."
The two marked cards poker players, who are both sponsored by Full Tilt Poker, will join the marketing group's sports-culture-icon client list that includes Magic Johnson, Smokin' Joe Frazier, Hulk Hogan, Dennis Rodman and the late Evel Knievel.
"The couple is widely recognized within the poker industry, with Jennifer the top women's player and arguably the best poker player in the world, and Marco [...] top-ranked in Italy," said a press release about the two hiring the marketing firm.
Harman won her first World Series of Poker bracelet in 2000, and she won a second bracelet in 2002. She's also the only woman who is a regular player in the Bellagio's "Big Game" where she holds her own against the likes of Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Barry Greenstein and more.
In addition, Harman has the distinction of having won the largest non-tournament game pot ever in a casino, $1.7 million. In the tournament realm, she's won nearly $2 million over the years.
Harman has spent years building her game and reputation in poker luminous contactlenses, while her husband Marco Traniello is newer to the industry.
Traniello first jumped into the scene three years ago during the World Series of Poker after watching his wife play so much and learning from her and her peers. That year, he cashed in seven different Hold'em events. He followed that up in 2006 with four more cashes at the WSOP, and three more at the 2007 WSOP.
Traniello also cashed in the WSOP Europe Main Event in 22nd place, and Harman nearly became the first WSOPE bracelet winner after coming in second in the H.O.R.S.E. event.
"As Jennifer and Marco continue to exhibit tremendous growth potential within the booming poker industry, so does their marketability towards audiences and brands nationwide," says Darren Prince, Prince Marketing Group CEO.
"Jennifer has proven to not only be a top women's player but one of the sport's top competitors overall while Marco's growth and presence as a contender continues to increase exponentially within such a short span of time."

Tabatabai wins South Africa event

John Tabatabai strayed a little far from his London home recently to win his first major tournament in South Africa as he took down the All Africa Poker Tournament.
John Tabatabai was thrust into the marked cards poker spotlight in late 2007 after he came in second at the World Series of Poker Europe £10,000 Main Event. After that he took on the 888.com U.K. Open, where he won one of the heats and came in third in a semifinal round.
His most recent placing before heading to South Africa was at the PartyPoker European Open IV where he came in third in one of the heats.
According to a press release from the All Africa Poker Tournament, Tabatabai claimed that coming in second in the WSOP Europe was the best and worst experience of his life.
He loved the challenge of facing such great infrared contactlenses players, but second place was heartbreaking.
At the All African Poker Tour event, Tabatabai left no doubt that he deserved that first-place spot. According to the All Africa Poker Tournament officials, the cards he had early in the tournament would have eliminated a lesser player well before the final table.
But the final table made up for all his hard work by giving him great hands and friendly flops at the right time. He ended up eliminating all nine of the other final-table players single-handedly to win the event.
Tabatabai had high praise for the All Africa Poker Tournament organization, the dealers and the players after his win. He won't be able to defend his title in May at the next All Africa tournament, but he told officials he'll try to be at the next one after that.
His next poker adventure will take him to San Remo, Italy, for the European Poker Tour event taking place April 1-5.