Idol week 3

See the previous post in this series if you're not up to speed.

With the idea of setting up a short-term arbitrage this week, I'm placing a half unit preimptively on Lisa +309 to be eliminated this week.

Lisa Tucker +309 risking $50 to win $154

I expect Lisa's line is going to fall tonight post-performances and locking in at +309 may setup an immediate arbitrage opportunity.

Of course one could setup an immediate arbitrage based on the two lines now: placing $130 on Bucky to win at -185 would result in a ~$25 profit regardless of which of the two gets kicked.

however I'm going to wait for the performances to make a call. I think its strongly possible that Lisa's performance will be subpar enough (and whatever fanbase Bucky has will rally if he performs adequately) to keep him alive - whereas Lisa Tucker has already proven she's not going to rally by being in the bottom three for two weeks running.

If Bucky has a terrible performance (and its clear he's headed home) this preliminary move will cost us +EV however we will always be able to hedge the half-unit on Lisa Tucker +309 against whatever line Bucky ends up as as long as its not worse than -309 (obviously).

My poker resume / Top Ten Finishes

I had someone ask me earlier in the week about my poker resume, including my top multitable finishes looked like. I was interested enough in the question to go back through poker tracker and dig up the stats, and have put them together below.

I've been playing cards for a lot of my life. Early games of pitch, five card draw, and seven stud with friends and family. During the mid-nineties I was heavily in to the collectable card games (primarily Magic: The Gathering) at the competitive level (this was all prior to the "pro Magic circuit" that developed later) including numerous local tournament wins and a top finish at a regional-level tournament.

I'd been handicapping football and very active in sports betting since the early-nineties as well, which led as a natural introduction to playing casino poker (mostly stud and limit hold'em) in the very late nineties. In 1997-1999 I'd go out to Vegas four maybe five times a year, mostly for sports betting purposes (NFL Playoffs, March Madness, etc) and was a pretty sucessful craps player and was decent enough using a basic hi/lo counting system at blackjack to make it a slightly positive EV game. In the later of the years, I started mixing in casino poker to the mix, to varying degrees of success.

In mid-1999 I started playing in my first regular poker homegame, a mixed game dealers choice which exposed me to Omaha and other poker variants. I moved almost exclusively to poker around 2002, and started hosting my own homegames around that time. In 2003 I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of a Sklansky book as a gift, and started becoming a more serious student of the game and playing much more frequently in the local casinos and at various homegames. I was playing online in early 2004, almost exclusively a cash player, starting at 1/2 and 2/4 limit, and moving to $25NL and eventually $50NL.

In 2004 I started playing sit-and-gos mixed in with the cash games, mostly 3-table tournaments but some $11-level single tables. In mid-2004 I started actively lurking on Two Plus Two, and garnered a lot of knowledge from there. I started actively participating on 2p2 in August 2004, and eventually became a regular on the Single Table Tournament, Multitable Tournament and Sports Betting forums.

Around the start of 2005, i started working poker blogging in to my contributions to Cujofan.com. In mid-april 2005 I launched Poker.Performify.com and shortly thereafter the poker blog took over the main bit of content on the site. Around this time I started branching out from the cash games online to adding in single table tournaments and occasional mutli-table tournaments. In june 2005, during a pretty bad downswing at the No Limit tables (and with a helping of advice from bloggers and friends including but not limited to Cujofan and Human Head) I made the decision to leave the online cash games behind (at least as a primary focus) and concentrate my energies on the SNG's and Multitable Tournaments.

In the past two years, i've become an even more serious student of the game. Over the past years I've built up my poker library to include almost all the (good) books on the subject. I've studied SNG-specific topics such as the Independent Chip Model (ICM). I've put significant hours in to reviewing hand histories, tournament strategies, theoretical play, and commenting on and critiquing others' play, as well as having my own plays critiqued.

What follows is a list of my top ten online tournament finishes. This does not include a couple cashes in live tournaments in Vegas, nor numerous "homegame" tournament results. The results aren't ranked according to dollars won, but attempted to rank in terms of field traversed. I.e. i've got cashes in $22-$55 level MTTs that aren't reflected because they're technically eclipsed by my progress (in relation to finish % to number of players in the field) in lower-buyin tournaments, i.e. that party points freeroll that I final-tabled early in my online MTT career. Going forward, I'll try to keep this up to date and will permalink back to this post. Without further ado:

Best MTT finishes, career to date:
rank	date	entry	finish	payout
Best Finish	07/11/06	Full Tilt $69+9	2/331	$3654.24
2nd best	11/12/05	Party $50+5	2/430	$3225.00
3rd best	05/19/05	Party $15+1	3/1599	$1918.80
4th best	05/20/06	Full Tilt $200+16	4/115	$1650.00
5th best	06/10/06	Party Poker $100+19	9/637	$955.50
6th best	04/28/06	Bodog.com $10+1	4/453	$420.00
7th best	06/10/06	Party Poker $40+4	4/99	$396.50
8th best	02/02/06	Full Tilt $10+1	5/356	$249.20
9th best	08/17/05	Party $20+2	13/580	$99.60
10th best	02/10/06	Party $50+5	14/426	$181.05

last updated: 06.10.06

If you're going to bubble...

...bubble on the money of your biggest tournament of the night, and do it trying to resteal from quad aces.

After deriding myself for the lack of poker this week, I decided I'd play a little yesterday and today. Last night I ITM'd 2/2 HORSE SNGs on Full Tilt - I just love the new HORSE SNGs - and then tonight I vowed to enter a couple MTTs. After eating dinner and watching Jarhead with the roommate, I sat down and found my way in to a Full Tilt $10+1 MTT, a Party $40+4 MTT, and a Full Tilt $69+6 $16k Guaranteed.

I didn't really get anywhere in the $10+1, and I cracked out of the $40+4 on a coinflip hand about midway through - I was about average and called a preflop raise from the big blind with suited connectors. My 6d7d hit a fourflush + a gutshot draw on the [9d Ts 3d] flop and I checked intending to check-raise but my opponent overbet all-in when I checked to him. I thought about it and called all-in, and found myself nearly a 2-1 favorite to his unimproved AKo (I had eighteen outs, with nine remaining diamonds, three remaining sixes, three remaining sevens, and three remaining eights for the straight (excluding the eight of diamonds, which we already counted in the flush outs). However his AK held up unimproved and I was bounced.

However, in the Full Tilt $69+6 I made a spectacular run before going down in flames. We had 211 entrants for a $14,599 prize pool (almost $4k for first). I was top ten in chips at the first break, and hung no worse than top twenty in chips the rest of the way out. The top 27 paid, and I was sitting around 10-11 M with about 35 remaining on the bubble. I ended up losing about 1/4th of my chips on two hands in the same orbit when I was forced to decisions with mediocre holdings and elected to fold.

As an example, take this hand: Blinds are 200/400 with a 50 ante. A good, aggressive player who is in the top five in chips min-raises my big blind from MP. I call the 400 with 95o (getting better than 4:1 I'm calling there with any two). The flop comes 966 with two hearts. I check, looking to check-raise the flop (and fold to a push) however my opponent checks behind. The turn is an offsuit eight, and I lead the turn for about 2/3 the pot, or T1500. I've got about T6k behind. My opponent quickly calls. The river is an offsuit jack. I check, my opponent fires a half pot bet of ~T2000. I let my time expire, still trying to decide between a call and a fold.

So after that last hand, i'm down to T6k and we're down to 30 players remaining. Again, the top 27 pay, so we're very near the bubble. Two hands later, this same good aggressive big-stack makes a standard 3x BB raise on my big blind. He's gone after my blind every time its been folded to him in MP or later for the last four orbits, and I decide I'm primed for a resteal. I've got good fold equity if I push unless he's got a super-premium hand, and my K4o should have two live cards in the unfortunate event I'm called (and possibly even an overcard with the king). However, my read is off and villian has Aces. The flop brings a third ace, so the four on the turn is just to spite me in to briefly thinking I've got outs before I realize he hit that ace on the flop for a set. Then the fourth ace on the river to give him Quadzilla just adds insult to injury, and I bounce from my biggest tournament of the night right on the bubble after making a couple marginal plays.

I know its always my MTT strategy to play for the final table and not just to sneak in to the money, but I really feel like I made some marginal plays at the wrong time and cost myself some cash tonight. I'm going to go through a full hand history review, and if I find any more semi-interesting hands I'll post them in the comments.

In slightly better news I did break my OOTM SNG streak on Party, finishing second in my first Sit-N-Go of the night. I went on to 50% ITM and 37% ROI out of the SNGs I played in the background while I was finishing up the Full Tilt tournament, so it wasn't a terrible night overall.

A new level of degeneracy: betting on American Idol

Two years ago, my mom got diagnosed with cancer (lymphoma). She's been a huge American Idol fan since the show started. I've got a full on home theater. Starting two years ago, as a way to spend more time with her, we've started doing "American Idol viewing parties" at my house on my home theater (which has actually been +EV in getting a couple different girls and their friends to my house on a weekly basis, but that's another story). She just started her third bout of chemo this week, and American Idol just last night dropped in to high gear of this year's competition (naming the top twelve). This crossroads means I'm going to be watching every episode of American Idol this year - and have watched every episode so far

I consider myself an informed opinion in the musical field. In addition to being a longime music fan, I once derrived 100% of my official (non-gambling) income from writing a music column for a newspaper (which was also published in a couple different formats). I also have at my disposal the opinion of my brother who is a music producer / label owner (who watches American Idol with us, mostly at the behest of his live in girlfriend) and of course the fanatical opinions of my moms and a couple other female american idol fans who attend my "Idol Parties".

Last year I was able to identify Carrie Underwood as the eventual winner of American Idol in week one of the competition. Which let me to examine the betting lines this year, and conclude that there are a couple +EV opportunities. Yes, I'm somewhat embarrased to post this, but the degenerate factor of betting on American Idol each week outweighs the loss of my street cred.

This year, i do not believe the actual winner is as clear cut as last year. However, thanks to Pinnacle's lines, i do believe there are a couple +EV opportunities including an opportunity to setup a long-term arbitrage.

My full writeup on this is posted over on the Two+Two forums. But here are the picks if you don't want to click over and read the details:

Picks to win American Idol 2006

$2000 on Chris Daughtry to win $6002

$2000 on Katherine McPhee to win $9840

$500 on Elliot Yamin to win $4765

Again, click through to my Two+Two thread for a lot more details on this selction if you're interested.

No poker (yet) this week.

No poker (yet) this week, which continues a vacancy streak from the game that I've only broken in the past two weeks with a single SNG session, and a live game during the last Ultimate Fighting event.

The homegame we rolled for UFC 58, while lower stakes than usual, was a lot of fun, moreso than any of my recent homegame tournaments. I modified the format to be T1000 in starting chips, blinds starting at 5/10, 15 minute levels jumping 5/10, 10/20, 20/40, 25/50, 30/60, 40/80, then jumping to thirty minute levels at 50/100, 75/150, 100/200 and would have jumped to 200/400 if necessary. This gave people the ability to play a lot of poker early, with no one really getting blinded off until we made the jump to 50/100. Then the 30-minute levels allowed for a lot of poker to be played at the final table, with much less concern for the blinds increasing and just more focus on playing poker. Highlights along the way include dropping the Krabbler on Cujofan to bluff him out of a pot, complete with doing the crab dance standing on my chair, and then Dross dropping Quadzilla on me a few hands later, complete with Godzilla roar and stomping around the table. Tournament legend and fellow Kansas City resident Rizen was also able to attend, and made his way to the final table before getting cracked out. Anyways Dross and I ended up chopping first and second place for a $100 payday each, a nice little sweetener on the evening's festivities.

As far as online poker goes, I've played exactly one session in the past two weeks. Its been really sad. I have this strange, bad tendancy to get away from the game when i'm running really well. The weekend of Feb 11th-12th I go on a pretty good tear, including two MTT cashes, and then I don't play much poker for two weeks. Last Thursday/Friday I did manage a SNG session of 12 games. I started four tabling the $55s, and actually ended up dropping back down to the 33s by the end: I ran a consecutive 12 games out of the money which is my worst OOTM streak so far (thanks PokerTracker for the stats). I was running "short money" on Party anyways, being short from a combination of spreading the bankroll around multiple sites so I can start focusing on MTTs on the various sites more frequently, as well as having intentionally withdrawn the significant portion of my bankroll to pay some real-world bills and intending to redeposit around the end of March. Well, this downswing combined with the withdrawls means I'm currently too short on Party to realistically play the $55s (considering the portion of my bankroll i've got reserved for multitable tournament entries). I'm going to have to grind it out at the $33s unless I can hit another major MTT score or until the end of the month when I can drop another couple grand back in to Party.