Review of Cardroom Supply, Inc.

***This post is sponsored by Cardroom Supply, Inc.***

I was contacted by Cardroom Supply recently about checking out their site, and I have to say, it's quite impressive. From poker tables, to chips to use in a casual home game, this is clearly the place to go if you want to raise the bar on your local poker night. The tables offered range from simple tables clear up to professionally designed furniture that any discriminating poker player would be absolutely proud to display in their home any night--not just card night.

This site offers some impressive pricing and the customer service is far more than you'd expect, which is to say that it's extremely impressive. I emailed them regarding specs on a table that I was thinking (if the wife would allow) of adding to my basement, and they responded back in no time flat. If you're looking for a reputable dealer (i.e., not eBay) to provide supplies to make your poker game the envy of your friends, look no further than Cardroom Supply.

May you get all your money in as a favorite!

How's Retirement Going?

Fine, thanks for asking.

As the year comes to an end, I'm looking back at the year it was in online poker, and truthfully (and this scares me), I don't really miss it.

I'm playing in the 50k buy in play chip games on Stars, and that's it. No real money games at all. It's still kind of odd, but it's for the better (at least in the short term).

I've played in a few local events, won some decent money, but it's good right now. I still lurk the forums, and answer questions, BTW.

With the above being said, the one thing I do miss...

...is the money. I looked at PT and my spreadsheets and such, and I netted just short of $10,000 this year in 10 months, so my early goal of $1000 a month was hit just about right on the button. So, behind the bitching about beats, the whining about variance, sat a winner.

Let's take the time to enjoy the extra money (hopefully) that poker brings us, the enjoyment we get from it, and the game we all (still) love.

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all, some of us have a great deal

...to be thankful for.

As One Door Closes...

Another one opens. Last night, as I touched on in the forum, I played in a little $10 buy in home-game style tournament at a local Army-Navy Garrison. Just as I was having doubts about my game, and thinking things like "Can I actually play this game anymore?" I go and turn in one of the most dominating performances I've ever seen in a tournament.

The structure there is a little strange--I was invited by my father-in-law, who is a member, and they start with T100k in chips, with 500/1000 blinds, and the blinds double each half-hour. There is a 3 1/2 hour time limit, so with a 7 pm start time, whomever leads in chips at 10:30 is declared the winner.

These guys have no idea about me (or at least they didn't), so I figure I go in there and play a little weak. It's a rotate-dealer game, all NL Holdem, so I make a couple mistakes dealing cards, recognizing whose action it is (to make me appear fishy), and play starts in earnest. I play the first 5 hands I'm dealt (all junk) and watch the other players take pretty much everything to showdown. Bluffing won't work here (as you'll see later), and if you're seeing the flop, if you want to win, you're showing your hand down. No problem. I'll adjust.

I start to accumulate chips and I'm up to about T130K when the first victim falls. He's played every hand so far, so when he limps in, I'm not shocked. I am shocked to see KK though. I raise (with 1k/2k blinds) to 10k and am actually surprised when he calls. The flop comes Jack-high, and he insta-pushes the flop. Reading him for weak, and maybe a set, but having him covered (he had about 50k left at the start of the hand), I call and he shows 22. My kings hold up and he's the first guy out. The first of many to fall at my hands.

To make a long story short, I had 6 at my initial table. I knocked out 4 of the other 5 when they moved players to make another 6-man table. I knocked out two players in the same hand when they pushed into my turned nut-flush, and two hands later, I knocked out two more players when my 87s flopped the nut straight. We were down to 2 at my table, and there were 5 left at the other table, so when the other table made it to 6, we combined to the final table.

I had almost T1.3 million when I went to the final table, my nearest competitor had about T200k. I actually had to use CAFETERIA TRAYS to carry my chips over to the final table. I drew ooohs and aaahs when I brought my tray over, and drew "Omigod"s when the TD brought over the SECOND full tray.

The only bump in the road that I hit was about 4 hands into the final table when I raised to 100k (being a big stack is awesome) with ATs UTG and the remaining big stack pushed over me with his remaining 180k. I called him and he showed (I kid you not) T7o.

We flopped a ten, he rivered the seven, so I doubled him up and he had life. We got to three handed with me having a significant lead (about T1.2 million to about T400k each for the other two), and soon enough, the other two ended up all-in. The T7 guy above flopped a straight, then pushed into a turned flush, so I was heads up.

Heads up went back and forth, and we decided to chop (after I ran card-dead for almost the entire heads up period and gave up the chip lead). Not too shabby, eh?

They figured out just before the final table that I was a pro...Here's the conversation:

Guy 1: "Oh, look at this show-off. All these chips...(sheepishly, kidding around)"
Guy 2: "Yeah, he's been either real lucky, or he's a ringer. Isn't he Bob's son-in-law?"
Guy 3: "Yeah. He's either lucky, or a pro."
Me: "Hmm. Who told you that?"
Guy 2: "Oh shit."
Me: *smiling ear-to-ear*

Shockingly, I was invited back weekly.

Back to the Tables

I decided to make my comeback step tonight, playing (as promised) $50NL. God, there are some lousy players at that level at Full Tilt. Lousy in a funny, hysterical way.

Just to keep everyone up-to-date on my progress toward my goal:

Played 58 minutes tonight. registering 91 hands (2 tables).
Balance to Start: $300.45
Balance to End: $375.10

Won/Lost: $74.65
Win Rate: 82.03 BB/100 hands (heheh)

Amount needed to move up to $100NL: $224.90

I'm posting some of the funny hand histories at the forum...Enjoy folks. I did.

An Ambitious Project

As most of you who read my forum are aware, I'm in the middle of a "break" from playing. I've also cashed out a large amount of my active online bankroll (active bankroll meaning money that is actively committed to playing online, not anywhere near total bankroll), leaving myself with $300 and literally change at Full Tilt Poker.

Here's what I plan to do: I'm going to take my little break, purge the negative thoughts, get back into balance, then, when I decide to come back, I'm treating myself like I'm in the bankroll-building phase again. I'm taking my $300 bankroll, with ideas on playing the $50NL tables to build it up as fast as possible, with a goal of reaching $200 NL as quickly as possible, all the while, cashing out as I go.

I don't recommend this strategy for everyone, starting with 6-buy-ins at a NL game, but as I had mentioned before, I differentiate between active bankroll and total bankroll. My active bankroll is what is actually online, easily replaceable if I so choose from my total bankroll. The total bankroll is the actual amount of money I have to draw from, independent from money to pay bills or live from--extra money, shall we say. I've never had more than 10% of my total bankroll online at any given time. I cash out frequently (why I refer to myself as semi-professional), and I haven't reloaded from my total bankroll since February '05.

So here it is...At the to-be-determined time that I decide to play, I'll be rampaging through the $50NL tables on FTP. When I double my stake, I move up. At my current win rate at $50NL (17.85 PTBB/100), it should take about 1700 hands, then I'll start on the $100NL tables. I'll be single- or two-tabling, dependent on my mood. I'll be posting when it starts, and keep everybody posted on my progress...Wish me low variance!

Managing Your Bankroll

This is a little primer on how to manage (and keep your bankroll). This works, however, only if you (as you ALWAYS should) keep your poker money seperate from your real (bills and such) money...which brings me to my FIRST piece of advice. Don't play with money you need for the mortgage that month.

Sounds basic, huh? Stick to it. As online poker players, many of us straddle a fine line between hobbyists and degenerate gamblers with a problem, and sometimes that little sentence at the end of the above paragraph is all that seperates the two.

Now for active bankroll management. First of all, you should have an account with a company like Neteller. Neteller is the gold standard of online depositories, and since most US banks will not allow direct transactions to online gaming sites, it's probably your best choice. It's payments are accepted pretty much everywhere, and if you avoid using the Instacash option, it's totally free.

On poker sites, and this is the meat and potatoes of bankroll management, the single most important piece of advice I can give is not to play games over your bankroll. What does that mean? It means you should have at least 10 (ten) buy-ins sitting in your account for your chosen game. If you play FR Limit Holdem, a good idea of a buy-in is about 25BB. So, if you're playing 2/4 LHE, a buy-in is $100, and you should have at least $1000 in your bankroll. Got it? This prevents variance from making you go busto just from a single bad day. This is also very dependent on how replaceable your bankroll actually is, or more to the point, how replaceable you WANT it to be. I made a decision a while ago that I wouldn't redeposit any more money online regardless of what happens, so, even though it's not, I treat my bankroll like it's my last dollars on earth, and conserve it accordingly.

For NL holdem, the same 10-buy-in rule applies. When I mention a buy-in in NL, I mean a full buy-in. So, if you're playing 1/2 NL, and a buy-in is $200, you need to have at least $2000 available in your 'roll.

Variance and your style plays a great deal into this information, If you play a LAGgier (higher variance) style with big swings, where you can both win and lose big in short amounts of time, you should increase the number of buy-ins you need. Also, you should increase your bankroll requirements for playing shorthanded...

I'm going to start a thread in my forum about managing bankroll, so your comments are welcome there!

The Benefits of Aggressive Play

Here we are, discussing something that's not-Poker Tracker-related. I want to discuss something that crosses over the world of both NL and Limit Holdem, and it's the concept of aggressive play.

Last year, when I wrote the auto-rate rules for PokerTracker, I did a TON of research on literally millions of datamined hands, from Stars, Party, and Full Tilt, and the one thing that I discovered was that how many hands a person plays literally doesn't have a damn thing to do with how often or how much they win at the tables. The single factor that determined whether or not a player was successful was whether or not they were aggressive.

By aggressive (you knew there had to be a PT mention), I mean having an aggression factor of more than 1.5 on ALL streets (betting or raising 1.5 times as much as they call). At first glance, you might think that this requires a lot of bluffing, and yes, you're right. Bluffing, and SEMI-bluffing.

When you examine my PokerTracker NL database, the one thing that stands out to me is my W$WSF (Won Money When Saw Flop). My figure there (playing $50 and $100 NL mostly, with some $200 and $400 NL mixed in) is an obnoxious 41.84%. This means that for every flop I see, I'm winning a pot nearly half the time. How? Easy. The key to aggressive play in Holdem is to (drumroll please)...Play your drawing hands like they were weaker made hands, but made hands nonetheless.

An example in NL...I'm in the CO with KsJs, and I open after 2 limpers for 5 xBB. One limper folds, and the BB calls, so three of us see a flop of 8s-Td-3s. Limper checks to me, so my action is...

Bet the pot. I'll vary this here between betting half-pot to betting full-pot based on my read of the opponent. If I have an opponent who is very aggressive, I'll make him think about raising with what could be a top-pair only hand, and I'll fire out a full-pot bet, meaning that if he chooses to raise, he's going to be risking a damn-good sized portion of his stack...To put it into numbers:

$100 NL:
At this point, there would be $17.50 in the pot. If I bet full pot, I'm firing $18 into the pot. Any raise he puts in has to be AT LEAST $36, or over a third of a normal stack, and that's just for a min-raise. A real raise would be for at least half-a-stack.

Looking at the multi-leveled thinking...What do you have? You have the second-nut-flush-draw (9 outs), you have two overcards (6 outs, potentially, assuming your opponent doesn't have a set or a pair with your shared overcard), and you have a backdoor straight draw (1.5 outs). You could have as many as 16.5 outs, giving you a 66% chance of hitting SOMETHING by the river. What does your opponent have? I don't know, and I don't care. All I care about is what he would raise me back with. Would he raise me back with AT (TPTK)? I hope so. Would he raise me with a set? Yes. Would he raise me with Axs? Possibly, but how many players are going to risk >half of their stack with just a naked flush draw?

See my point? If you're re-raised, you can re-assess the situation, but typically, you're beaten. If you have a good read on your opponent, this becomes second nature. More often than not, your opponent will fold to your show of aggression and you'll take down the pot.

In the above example, if your opponent is passive, bet half-to-three-quarters of the pot. Why? Because secretly, you WANT that call. Again, a raise usually means you're behind, but if he calls this "smaller bet," one that would be considered "weak" by your aggressive standards, all you're doing is building a pot for when you DO hit your draw. It also almost ensures that he'll check the turn to you, allowing you to see a free card to beat him.

In Limit Holdem, betting and/or raising with your strong draws allows players to get odds to continue to call your bets, AND it builds pots for when the draws come in.

To be more aggressive, start playing your draws more like made hands. You and your winrate will thank me for it.