The Infamous One-outer

Can't remember ever doing this before.

Five Water Pump

Played at Planet Hollywood yesterday and made a couple hundred bucks. Most of my earn is still coming from live play.

On FullTilt I've been playing PLO and it's going good. I'm still at around 40 BB/100 hands and I passed the $1K mark for the ElHajjh account today, to go along with a lump sum rakeback payment coming next month. No big deal I know, but this is how we get there. I'm looking to live off my casino play for now while not withdrawing anything from FT, just letting it build up and moving to higher stakes once I hit 20 max buys for the level I want to play.

I met the Duke's girl Stephanie today. A shout out to my readers in Spokane.

By special request, ElHajjh's greatest lines from FullTilt tablechat:

"cj, you have little chip. i have big chip."

"dabadbeat, because of player like you i buy five water pump for my village"

"you see? you must not try to bluff ElHajjh. it is a thing of fantasy. a dream of madmen and prophets."

"yes we go now, we have funtime pokertime"

"the time has come for ElHajjh to take his rest"

Nice Flop

When I heard that Steve (dabadbeat) and Todd (monsterholdings) were sitting at the same PLO table, it sounded like too much fun to pass up.

In regards to a question on my last post, the guy would have flopped a gutshot straight-flush draw and you couldn't drive him out of that pot with a dumptruck.

Our Friend the Randomizer

Back to live poker. Planet Hollywood, $1-2 NL.

I go on a good run and am kinda in the zone. I am insta-calling with AQ-high for $150 preflop because I know it is good. My hands are holding up. I am up to $800 off my $200 buy-in within a couple hours.

The main action in the game is a kid from Oklahoma. A $2-5 NL game is starting and Oklahoma is going to it, along with a local player who just got to the room, a textbook calling station, a European who resembles a poor man's Pancho Villa. I don't want to play $2-5 cause my bankroll isn't there yet, but Todd says the game is too good to pass up and offers to go halves with me in the game to decrease the variance. I agree to this but my instincts tell me it's a mistake.

As suspected I play weak-tight in the $2-5 NL because I'm sceered to lose a big chunk of my bankroll. Fortunately this is a game where playing weak-tight is no disaster. Nobody except Oklahoma is being aggressive, and most of the time you can just call preflop for cheap and get paid off when you hit. I am up a couple hundred when the following hand comes up.

I limp with JJ in early position, Oklahoma makes it $30, Pancho Villa calls the $30, then a guy who just does weird random stuff makes it $60. I am considering what to do when I see Oklahoma sitting behind me, $1K deep at this point, taking a couple more stacks out to reraise. I muck my hand. Oklahoma makes it like $250, Pancho Villa mucks, Randomizer2000 pushes for $400 and gets called. Randomizer2000 has A2, Oklahoma has AK.

I would have flopped quad jacks and won a huge pot if I'd stayed.

But that's just part of the story. See, if Randomizer2000 hadn't decided to reraise with A2 and reopen the betting, I actually would have lost almost my entire stack because Pancho Villa would have made a straight flush with the 78 of hearts.

I love live poker.

The Vienna Debacle

The past week I've been sick and so I haven't played live. But today a useful doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics, and I'll find my way to a casino soon.

In the meantime I've been on FullTilt playing PLO. I've been experimenting with a strategy Rolf Slotboom discusses in his book, called the "Vienna Strategy," which basically involves shortbuying and then doing a lot of limp-reraising and checkraising while sitting to the immediate right of an aggressive player. Well, I figured I would give it a shot as I am trying to give myself a thorough education in this game, even if I knew this was not the way I wanted to do things in the long-term. I guess it didn't go so well. It seemed like every time I got it all-in with AAxx preflop, the other guy made a straight, and every time I got it in with QJT9-ds, the other guy had AAxx and made Aces full. Over 5k hands can this really happen again and again? Apparently so.

So reviewing my Pokertracker stats I did way, way better when I just bought in for full. How much better? Well, I was + 60 BB/100 hands when I bought in full, and -5 BB/100 hands when I went "Vienna." That little experiment is now over.

This isn't to say that Rolf's book sucks. It's actually really good. I think I just got unlucky employing that particular strategy, which is just one tactic he outlines at the beginning of the book, in addition to big stack strategies he later describes.

So why have I been playing almost exclusively Omaha when I play online? Couple reasons. First it is a change from the constant NLHE cash game grind, which I think I needed. Learning a new game could help me think about poker in new ways and ultimately make me a better NLHE player, anyway.

Second, I can tell you for sure, having stopped playing online for about a year and just having got back into it, that the online NLHE games are tougher than they used to be. I'm not saying they're unbeatable or that a good player shouldn't make money, but the edge is not as big as it used to be. So I am looking for a new edge and am trying to get good at this game. Omaha is a deceptively complicated game and you need to develop your card sense for it as well as learn the tricks. There's a reason that if you go on FullTilt you will see David Benyamine, under one of his aliases, crushing the $200-400 PLO on a regular basis. It's not unusual to see him with 10 buy-ins in front of him, having destroyed the top online pros at this game yet again.

The Pilgrimage

Pot Limit Omaha players on FullTilt were shocked this morning to find sitting at their tables....no....yes!!!...ElHajjh.

I think Saruman summed it up when he said, "There will be no dawn for Men."

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Addendum: I just kinda liked the sound of ElHajjh and it gives me an excuse to say things to assholes in player chat like, "We are pleased to welcome you the poker play."

I was hoping it didn't actually mean anything in any language, but I decided to check it out today.

Oops.

I doubt I'll be offending anybody because devout Muslims don't play poker.

Still, though. This account was set up for rakeback, so if it goes through for that purpose I don't want to ditch it.

Full Tilt: "Learn, Chat, and Play with the Donks"

The past couple days I've been playing PLO on Full Tilt (sn Highwaytime). I've found the games to be fishier than on Prima network and my results have been good so far, running at about +25 BB/100 hands.

Todd was also on FT last night (sn Monsterholdings) and we decided to go halves in the $12K-guaranteed tournament with 560 entrants. Early on I was down to 400 chips when I got my KK cracked but I made the famous comeback and finished in 12th place.