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Jackrabbitslims Poker View profile

Good Start To 2009

Date: Sun, Jan 11, 2009

2009 has been kind to me so far. I won a seat to the GUKPT on Thursday, final tabled the $27.5k at FTP on Friday and finished 15/1450 in the $21k last night.

In the $27.5k I had a top 10 stack from 3 tables down, but never really got much going at the FT. In the $21k I lost a huge pot for the chip lead when tere was 15 left with AA < QJs after getting it all in pre.

So some good performances but an obvious lack of closing. Hopefully I can build on these and continue to work on my tournament game this year. Getting close to some $10k scores definitely increases my motivation.

I have managed to log just over 10k hands at $400 NL 6 max (at an epic 2BB/100) and around another 5k hands trying a bit of $100 NL HU.

2007 was my first full year playing poker and I made some goals at the start of the year which I surpassed and took beyond anything I could have imagined before the end of March. In 2008 I didn't really set any goals (or if I did, I don't remember what they were and certainly wasn't sticking to them) So I have decided that my only goal for 2009 is get get less terrible at poker. I'm going to study as much as I can, because to say I have neglected studying over the past year or so would be putting it mildly.

This means more Cardrunners, Stox and DC in addition to getting hold of a couple of decent books. I also need to get more time in discussing hands with other players, so I'll hopefully be making a conscious effort to do that too.

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Fun!

Date: Sat, Dec 20, 2008

You know whats lots of fun?

Being 2nd in chips with 20 left in a tournie with a big field, and getting your money in pre with AA vs KK against the guy who's first in chips.

And losing.

You know whats even more fun than that?

Less than an hour later, after grinding your way through 450 people to get to the FT of a different tournie, getting it in pre with AA vs KK against the CL when 2nd in chips.

And busting in 9th.

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Fun!

Date: Sat, Dec 20, 2008

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Bad Party (Gaming)

Date: Fri, Dec 19, 2008

The biggest shareholder in PartyGaming and therefore party Poker, has
agreed to pay US authorities $300m (£195m) and plead guilty to a
charge related to illegal online betting.

This person is also in the unfortunate position of being called Anurag
Dikshit, which I know I probably shouldn't find funny. He's an
extremely wealthy Indian businessman who owns a 27% stake in the
company. This will probably be a landmark case where online gambling
in the US is concerned, as it appears two other major Party
shareholders have not followed the same course of action. I also
suspect many of the Poker and other online gambling sites still
operating in the US will be very interest to hear the outcome of this
case.

It's all a much more serious than I had originally thought, with
Dikshit potentially facing up to 2 years in prison. It seems likely
that the negotiations, coupled with Anurag's willingness to cooperate
will result in a settlement with the US DoJ, but it's certainly one to
watch over the coming weeks.

On a more personal note, as a result of playing cash at FTP over
the past couple of weeks, I have also fired up a few tournies there
having never really played anything other than the Sunday $750k. Last
night I busted my first Full Tilt Pro, by sucking out on a short
stacked Lee Watkinson with KQ > AJ, who I didn't even realise was at
my table until I got the pop-up afterwards.

There seems to be so many of these guys in the mid stakes tournies
that I don't think it'll be long until I'm able to cover a whole room
with the commemorative T-Shirts.

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Stars Blogger Tournie

Date: Sun, Dec 14, 2008

I played in this the last 2 years, and will be doing so again this year. One of the guys at ITH made the FT last year, so I have a decent target...

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 416977

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Running good, but not good enough...

Date: Sat, Dec 13, 2008

It's been a busy few weeks for me away from the felt, so I haven't had much chance to play poker of late. When I have been able to get away from my clients pre Christmas demands it's been a great chance for me to bubble final tables and generally run good right up until it really counts. I have posted a 10th, 12th and 15th all in tournies with over 500 players in the past two weeks.

Outside of that I've been keeping up a half-respectable volume at the cash tables, dropping down to $200 NL 6-Max so that I can play a few more tables. I have been playing well in these games and running at what I would imagine is about expectation. Nothing to shout about really, just good old fashioned grinding to make up for a lack of playing opportunities.

I have a decent amount of time over the next 3 or 4 weeks so I intend to get really stuck in and get some decent volume posted. There are a few decent tournies over the holiday period, so I might focus on getting back to my tournie A game and taking things a bit more seriously going into the new year.

There has been some interesting field sizes at a few of the larger live tournies, notably the Bellagio events, but I'll write up my thoughts on that when I have a bit more time.

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WSOP Taxes

Date: Sun, Nov 16, 2008

Sometimes I hate living in the UK. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I love about this amazing and unique country, but from time to time I get annoyed with the weather, the way the country is run or a number of other random annoyances.

It's easy to just see the negatives, but it's important that you don't take the positives for granted. One of these is that I don't have to pay tax on my poker winnings. This suits me for two reasons, the first is that obviously I make more money, but the second is that I'm lazy when it comes to things like record keeping and form filling. So with the news about the taxes due by the players at the Final Table of the WSOP, I'm very grateful for the tax laws on gambling in my home nation.

It's been widely reported so I won't go into too much detail, but overall the players who made at FT this year potentially face an average tax bill of over 42%. There are some changes as the winner Peter Easgate moved to the UK during the break (one definate advantage of the FT delay for him, that's for sure) but the overall result is that all of the players are paying at least some taxes on their winnings.

Had Eastage not moved he would have been in line to pay 72.77% of his winnings, some $6.6 million, straight to Denmark's tax agency. That's a pretty sick rake.

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The Poker Economy

Date: Fri, Nov 14, 2008

The Poker Economy

I have never really thought about how the poker economy until the last couple of months. I always just saw a system of people depositing $100 on a Friday night, donking it off in whatever SNG's or cash games they saw fit with the money filtering through to the winning players (and some others who eventually lose it) and the rake takes it cut. The winning players move up, maybe some cash a bit out, maybe some of the players at the higher levels take some of the money off them and move up, and so on.

Tournament wise I think you have to assume that your average winner of the Sunday million or an FTOPS event doesn't plough the $200k back into the poker economy. It seems likely such is the same for the mid/high stakes grinders too. I think this system is reasonably sustainable, as long as there is a steady supply of people doing the initial depositing and some maniac open shoving every third hand on a Friday night at $2/$4.

So it's interesting to see how things are changing at the moment. Someone told me last week that cash game traffic was actually up at Stars and FTP over the last few weeks. I thought that was a little strange give than they are currently struggling to make some of their more aggressive guarantees at the moment. However, it would appear that at least some of this traffic is coming from other sites where the games are drying up, as I found out this weekend. There has almost always been decent traffic at Cake and Party for the limits I play ($200NL/ $400NL) at the weekend, but that seems to have slowed a bit recently, and with less decent table selection options available, I found my self playing cash at Stars for the first time in ages.

On the positive side, there still seems to be plenty of action online. It feels a bit like early post UIGEA with nobody really knowing what effect it will have on the player pool. The games may be marginally tougher but for now at least, I think the industry is going to be fine. It will be interesting to see what happens other the coming months as people discover that this financial storm may be a little harder to weather than people suspected.

Now of course we have the confirmation/finalisation of UIGEA to fret about. I think the banks currently have a bit more to worry about that spending money on systems to implement the changes made my a pretty open-for-interpretation law, but that’s just the way I see it. The reality is it could be worse, and the harder it is to deposit the less liquidity there will be in the games, so they are bound to get tougher.

Certainly an interesting time for online poker. And only time, as we are all fully aware, will tell.

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Where are the November Nine?

Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008

I'm not sure what Harrahs/ESPN's plans were to hype up the WSOP final table, but it doesn't seem to be working.

As we approach the end of September I honestly can't name any of the players at the final table. Perhaps that would have been different if the gorgeous and highly marketable Tiffany Michelle had made the table, or either Helmuth or Matasow had managed to run a bit deeper.

I think if they are going to generate the hype they need to pull this off they need to start now. As for making it a global event, I haven't even seen anywhere it's being shown here in the UK. I guess we'll have to wait for re-runs on some random entertainment channel in 2010 or something.

I hope I'll be proved wrong and when the WSOP programmes start to air they pick up a significant amount of interest. This should be a great chance for poker to get an influx of new players to the game, and help improve the profile of poker as a game where peoples dreams can be realised.

On that note, the WCOOP Main Event final table featured a microstakes tournie player who won a $5200 seat in a depositors freeroll. He wasn't able to unregister so played, made the final table and ended up dealing for over $800k with a shot at making over $1 million if he won. If you're going to run good for once of your life, I'm pretty sure that's the time to do it...

Edit: Sods law, after I posted this I fire up Stars and see they are doing a big promo called The Million Dollar Men which involves the 6 PokerStars players at the final table of the WSOP.

Trust Stars to succeed where others have failed.

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Where are the November Nine?

Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008

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Where are the November Nine?

Date: Wed, Sep 24, 2008

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WCOOP

Date: Fri, Sep 12, 2008

I have been seriously impressed by the turnout at the WCOOP this year. Stars have just had to increase the number of seats in the $25k HU event as it reached it's 64 person capacity a full three days before the event was due to start. They have also smashed the guarantees on all of the events so far, so maybe getting 2,000 players to stump up $5k for the Main Event, which has a $10 million guarantee, won't be a difficult as I thought.

Unfortunately I'm 0 for 4 during this series, and it looks unlikely I'll be able to play any more events.

As I suspected the play in the non Hold'em events was horrible, but I think all the super duper mega crapshoot sats probably had something to do with that. I satted into the $320 Omaha event in a $107 tournie with 750 starting chips and 3 minute levels, the only saving grace being that none of these super turbo satellites have a rake. I'm pretty sure people who simply had no idea what they were doing were playing these, and due to the structure of the sats there would have been plenty of them in the main WCOOP tournies.

Even though I won't be participating I still have a decent number of stakes in people for the remaining events, some of which are most definitely due a ~$400k win so hopefully I'll have a big score to write about next week.

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Harrington, WCOOP and Cash Games

Date: Fri, Sep 5, 2008

It's been a busy few weeks for me since my last entry and although I have played a fair bit of poker, it's been a bit hit and miss, and mostly cash games.

I ran at 4BB/100 over 35k hands in August at $400 NL 6 Max on Party, but I also did a few 12 tabling sessions on Stars at $200 NL when I had the motivation. Hardly exciting stuff, but certainly very profitable.

I have also been reading the Harrington cash game books over the last few weeks. I have seen people on various forums arguing both ways over the books, but I really like them. I don't think they'll ever be the well known 'must read' books that the Harrington on Hold'em books are, but they definatly have a place on the bookshelf of anyone who plays cash games. I really like Harringtons writing and explanitory styles, and I think these make the books easy to understand. As with the tournament books there isn't anything in them that makes you go 'Wow, that's some crazy shit, that might just work' but they help you look at your own game and how you approach certain aspects of deep stack play. It's also nice to look at someone elses thought processes and the way they view other peoples situations in hand examples from multiple angles.

Unfortunately I haven't really had time to play any tournies. Mostly I have just been donking around in 45 man Turbos when I haven't felt like playing cash. I think there is probably some decent money to be made in these, especially at the $55 level where they run often enough to get significant volume in but the players are still aweful. You get some regular multitablers and some decent players in them, but most of these are easy to identify if you use PAHUD or something similar.

So after grinding cash games for over a month now I fell like switching back to tournies again for a while. Hoepfully I should have more time now that work is a little quieter.

The WCOOP starts today and I have been playing a few sats to different events. I managed to win two seats to $530 events and an EPT Double Shootout which was also good for $800 in W$. I'm going to be playing the first NL event tonight, then the $530 NL on Sunday followed by maybe one or two random $215's during the week.

Unfortunely in the second week I'm moving, so I don't know how quickly I'll get a new broadband connection or whaetver set up. Hopefully it will be in place by Sunday for the $1k NL event, but I really have no idea how long it will take.

It's times like this I wish I was a bit better at other games. My HORSE isn't too bad, with the possible exception of Razz, but I don't think I have enough of an edge to be playing the $320 PLO events or anything like that. I might be wrong of course, I'm sure with all the sats the fields in the non Holdem WCOOP tournies will be bad, so maybe I should take a shot at one or two if I get the chance.

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WCOOP, WSOPE and being bad at poker

Date: Mon, Jul 14, 2008

After grinding out the cash games last week during the Stars promo I'm back to tournies this week. I have sucked sooo badly all week, repeatedly running up huge stacks and donking them off in a variety of super fun ways. I went deep in a couple but lost key flips/got sucked out on, and had a couple of light shoves called and way behind when short. Didn't really get much going in the Sunday Million or any of the other Sunday tournies last night, so a dissapointing week overall.

Unfortunately all of the guys I backed are out of the WSOP. One guy made the money but busted in the first level. It was fun railing the guys and it was cool being at work in the morning here in the UK and getting the odd update e-mail.

There isn't much on the poker horizon for me a the moment, but two things I'm looking forward to are the WSOPE and the WCOOP, both of which aren't until September.

Since they have added a £1500 (roughly $3k) event to the WSOPE, I initially looked at trying to sat into that, but it appears nobody is running sats to that event, so I may try to buy-in direct. I don't really have the patience or the bankroll to try to win a $25k ME package, so I doubt I'll be bothering with that.

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