I got to watch most of this tourney tonight. I was flipping back and forth between several other events… 1. the Knicks-Magic game, 2. UNC-Maryland game, 3. The O.C., and 4. https://bursa303.city Championship!
The buy-in was $25,000 and the final table included: Doyle Brunson, , Phil Ivey and Alan Goehring (the eventual winner). It was great to see Texas Dolly make the final table and sit next to Phil Ivey. It would have been like watching Jack Nickalus play a round with Tiger Woods (Sorry Phil for the gajillionth Tiger comparison). Anyway, the Ruskie kid Kirill bluffed at several pots and I was wondering if he would get caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
A new found fan of the Tao of Poker… Poker Babe from NYC wrote me this tonight: “I am watching the WPT Championship game and they just showed this amazing hand between the 2 last players. Alan had KK and Kiril had A4… the flop was 77J and then the turn was a 7 and the river a 7 so Alan G. went from having cowboys to a full house and then he lost on the river to 4 of a kind with an ace kicker. It’s crazy how your luck can change so quickly.”
Phish in Vegas?
I just read a rumor that Phish will be playing three shows in Las Vegas in April! Wow oh wow! Talk about a week of insanity! If they do play, I’ll go out to Vegas for at least a week! Perfect timing too… just around the time satellites for the WSoP are in full swing!
By the way, I saw 4 Phish shows in Vegas (2 in 1998 & 2 in 2000) and that was some of the craziest shit I ever experienced especially the halloween show in 1998.
Falling in Love with pocket Aces… a Penguin’s Perspective
I just read a great blog on Poker Penguin about his aces getting cracked.
Here’s a bit: “My point was that having high expectations of things you can’t control is a dangerous thing. For example, pocket Aces. They’re beautiful right? Seeing those two rockets side by side in your sweatly little (virtual) hand is a good thing right? Well yes, as long as you don’t get wedded to them. If your expectations are too high (Aces are not invincible, as approximately 50% of all bad beat stories will testify), then you are putting your stack in danger. Not even from a bad beat, just from bullet proof bullets syndrome.
Like good old Kenny Rogers says “ya got to know when to walk away, know when to run”. Even with aces, because sometimes the god of poker manages to slip a couple of hungry scorpions into the box with Garfield.
So remember, even a the best starting hand is not a license to print money – it’s just an admission ticket to the flop. After that, you’re playing with a five card hand and if you don’t have one that’s likely to be better than your opponents’ (and you can have a good idea if it will, because you know three of their cards), then you got to fold. I don’t care how pretty they look, or how you had 41.90354343% of the EV pre-flop.
Another analogy (because I like em). Imagine that you’re in a dark and smokey bar, and you go home with a near perfect looking member of the gender you’re attracted to (this would be your aces). They seem wonderful, they’re giving you a hardon just by looking at them (metaphorically speaking). Then the next morning, a bit of light peeks in through the window (this would be the flop), and you see that they are Coyote Ugly. I don’t mean that they look like Piper Peekaboo or whatever her name was, I mean that you’d rather chew your arm off than stay near them again.”
