Gold

I have a ticket to the gold medal game. That is all.

I might just have the best parents in the world. What a stealth birthday present.

NB. I'll take action on the game (prop bets, drinks, whatever) to be paid up at next Vegas blogger gathering I attend. Post a comment if you want in.

I felt a rush

I now see the appeal. About thirty hands into my first foray at FTP's Rush Poker, single-tabling a low stakes NL table, this happened:



Later I won another buy-in off someone who felt like gambling with AQo vs. my QQ.

And then another when someone shoved into me with a crappy ace, like so:



Sometimes, poker is easy.

Then, a lucky villain escaped a cooler situation with half of the pot:



NB: don't engage in fancy traps like I did here:



But do punish overpairs like this:



Finally I sucked out pretty nicely when I decided to gamble it up with AKs preflop against a couple of short stacks. I didn't figure on being in such bad shape, but I got there:



Overall, my initial impressions of Rush Poker are very positive; a common theme should be apparent from the hand histories above which is that nitting it up and taking good gambles when you have the proper overlay is very +EV. Once I built a big stack I consistently tried to play big pots only when I felt it was correct; I often employed small flop re-raises as a defensive tactic and I would often fold trouble hands (eg. top pair, third kicker) to real heat. I shall be sure to try some PLO tables next. I hear from reliable sources that they are as equally profitable as the NL tables I was playing tonight.

Post-birthday "gift"

This is not a disguised bad beat post. Rather, it's an example of how much +EV you can find in a good PLO8 cash game.



PLO8 really can be a low variance bankroll builder. The poker gods just decided I had to suck up a loss this time, but I'll take this gamble every day. Let's look at the equities here:

Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

board: Tc Th 2h
Hand Pot equity
3c 3d 7h 6h 8.81%
As Kh 2s 2c 68.94%
Ah 5h Qh 9h 3.31%
8s Ac Ad 4h 18.94%

This is just a fantastic value for money in a spot like this. Look at the money odds I was getting to hold up with my underfull! Much of the time I will scoop and nearly all of the time I will take half of the pot 4-ways for a phenomenal expected profit.

A very small early birthday gift

I promised myself a birthday present: some time spent playing Omaha.

Of course, with the Olympics starting today all I could manage was some low-stakes online play--the 7-game mix--at lunchtime because the city is turning into a veritable zoo.

And here's FTP rewarding me with a small gift as I actually managed to win a big pot playing relatively deep. Ordinarily I don't like overplaying a hand like this but I had enough time spent with this villain to recognize the action being given was with a really wide range of hands, most of which I beat.



I ran the equity calculation afterward and was mildly surprised that I was only a 65/35 favourite. I got partially fooled by the fact that my opponent actually had 11 wins. As badly as I played this hand (my bet-sizing on the turn was awful and was supremely exploitable), my opponent butchered it even worse: putting that much money in the pot drawing to a 4-high flush and a bare wheel on a paired board is a recipe for a world of hurt against my range. He's just lucky that he was up against the bottom of my range to actually have any equity at all (since a lot of the time he'd be drawing dead).

The 7-game mix can surely be a profitable one to play. I might have to try Rush poker soon.

[Edit] Bonus hand, which goes a fair way to demonstrating my observation regarding the 7-game. Scandis will give you all the action you could want, and with complete trash: