Chris Ferguson Challenge Update: Day 14

Yup its been two weeks.

So I took a few days off since I got a new computer. Since I had an old school mac (not able to handle Full Tilt) as my primary computer, I had been playing poker on an old school Dell. But I picked up a long awaited newer Mac (a used PowerMac G5 off eBay), and now we are back up and running. The Mac gives me the ability to do some screen shots of my actual action, so I will be adding that to the mix (such as the picture of me above betting a heavy 20 cents).

So as we speak I am back to playing in the Chris Ferguson Challenge, and I am sitting at a table right now down 47 cents. I will be getting back to regular updates after my nightly sessions, and I am hoping to play a few $1 multitables this Friday. So no worries . . . I'm back, and ready to get back to work.

Tough News for Online Poker

An interesting and unfortunate development for online poker players in the US.

Government freezes over $30 million in online poker winnings

This is a huge statement to poker players, and frankly I am very surprised at this news. It seems strange to me that this is the stance our country has taken. In my opinion I am still betting on regulation and taxation of online poker similar to what the UK does. Come on Obama your option . . . check or bet.

For updates on what will become a very interesting situation, I highly recommend you check out and maybe even donate to the Poker Players Alliance.

Feel free to comment on this one, I am curious what thoughts are out there on this subject.

Weekend Summary: Chris Ferguson Challenge

So I had a pretty busy weekend: A Family Yard Sale, a Taekwondo test, and a Phish concert. It was an awesome weekend, and to top it off I had Monday off. I had intended to get in a few hours of poker on my day off, but I only managed about an hour and a half. In three sessions over the weekend (a total of 3 hours and twenty minutes) I went from $17.77 to $27.30.

I am playing micro-stakes poker still. I am getting a little bored, but I can definitely appreciate the value of bankroll management. I have almost doubled my original bankroll in less than a week. When I hit $50 the official rules kick in. If you have been following, I am allowed to buy into any game for $2.50 . . . $50 bankroll is the end of this exception, which basically means I will not be doubling my bankroll at the same rate.

Chris Ferguson Challenge: Session Two

Starting stack $16.12.

So I started by sitting down to a $1.25 SNG Two Table. Finished 15th out of 18. Sweet, now I have an extra $1.25 just to get back to my starting money.

Back to my 2 cent/5 cent NL cash game. Here are the highlights . . .

• I go all in AA vs. KK, trip my aces on the flop of AQJ . . . ruht roh. A King or Ten felts me, but it was not to be, turn 4, river 9. I go from $2.08 to $3.95.
• After observing a hyper aggressive player at the table continuously go all in with any decent hand, I call his $1.02 all-in with my pocket nines . . . he turns over K2 off suit. No King comes, I go from $4.32 to $5.30.
• After losing some money (90 cents) folding my top pair Aces with a 9 kicker to a $5 all in, my stack dwindled down to $4.15 . . . I am pleased with my 40 cent profit and figure I will play my blinds plus one more rotation . . . I get dealt Q7 diamonds on the big blind and get to check my option to see a flop. I hit my flush on the river and bet out 60 cents, I get two callers and take down the pot. Session over. $5.42 in my stack. More than double what I sat down with.
  

Final tally for the evening, and new bank roll total . . . $17.77. I am up $2.74 in 3 hours of playing. About 90 cents an hour.

All I have to say about all of this is thank god I have my regular Thursday night game tomorrow night, this penny poker is exhausting.

Chris Ferguson Challenge: First Session

So just a quick correction to my last post, my opening bank roll was actually $15.03.

So I started by playing 1 cent/2cent NL ring games . . . terrible poker.  People don't fold to five cent raises.  So I sat down with $2, and quickly got down to $1.75.  I decided it would be better to play short stacked at a higher table.  

So I ventured over to a 2cent/5cent NL table.  Did a bit better here.  The people surprisingly played reasonable poker, and after an hour I worked my stack from $2.50 to $3.76.  Yes, you read that right, in one hour I made $1.26.  

This is going to take awhile.

My early reflections are this . . . this is a TREMENDOUS task, and the bulk of the work is done early on.  When I was tinkering with the percentages during my play last night, I realized that I will not graduate to a higher table until I have about $200 dollars in my bank roll.  That is light years away!  I really didn't realize what I was getting myself into, but I am really starting to see the importance of it.  According to these principles, I should not sit down at a $1/$2 NL table at a casino with $200 (my standard procedure) unless I have about $10,000 in my poker bank roll (thats laughable).  This really put things in perspective for me.  Playing session number two comes tonight . . . this is way more interesting than I thought it would be, and I will have to learn to harness my chi.  Always end with a rhyming couplet.

Day One ending bank roll:  $16.12 . . . ugh.

Cash Games vs. Tournaments: The Chris Ferguson Challenge

Alright enough of this nonsense with Drew Barrymore . . . lets talk poker.

One of my biggest struggles as a semi-serious player is bank roll management. I think most players of ANY level of poker would agree with this. Now just to clarify, this does not necessarily mean I am going out and blowing large amounts of money on poker. In terms of casino play, I am in the black for 2009. Online play I am a career 'in the red' player, but I generally play MUCH lower stakes online with more high risk tournaments. If you add into this the fact that I really do not differentiate between my 'poker' money and my 'regular' money it complicates things further. Whenever I have a profit, I generally put it immediately towards bills or some unforeseen expense (car maintenance, bachelor parties in Vegas, outrageous bar tabs, etc.)

On top of all of this, I struggle with the cash game vs. the lure of the tournament. When I first started playing poker in the casino, I was much more comfortable with the tournament structure. In a tournament, unless things go wrong quickly, you can generally sit at a table for 2-5 hours knowing that the worst case scenario is that you are not going to finish in the money and you will lose your buy-in. In a cash game, you can lose a TON of money very quickly. During my recent Vegas trip, I lost $600 in about two hours. Not good. However, learning to manage your chips at the cash game actually is a much better investment than a tournament in my opinion. By this I mean, if you are willing to sit at the table for 8 or 9 hours, you can double or triple your original buy in if you are disciplined and patient. If you make it that long, generally there are a few people sitting with you who are doing just as well. So in a table of 10, it is not rare for 30-40% of the people at the table to be making a large profit. In most multi-table tournaments, 10% of the players will get paid, although at a much larger profit.

Hence the lure of the tournament.

Now since I won a tournament within my first year of casino playing, it was hard for me to give up on the quest. Against my better judgment I kept plugging away at these long shot tournaments. I also had an unbelievable streak of finishing on the bubble . . . but more on that in a later entry.

So here is my challenge to myself that you all get to watch.

A couple of years ago I read about the Chris Ferguson challenge. Since this blog is aimed at fairly serious poker players, I am not going to bore you with the whole story of said challenge (if you are not aware of it check it out here). But I am going to make an attempt at the primary goal with a few modifications.

• I am starting with about $15
• My goal is $10,000
• I will not buy into MTT's with more than 2% of my bankroll (this is going to be very tough)
• I will not buy into Single Table SNG with more than 5% of my bankroll
  
• If I am sitting at a table and my stack exceeds 10% of my bankroll, I will leave the table.

Just like Chris Ferguson there are only two exceptions to the above. I am allowed to buy into any game at $2.50 regardless of my bank roll. For multi-table tournaments, I will always be allowed to do $1 buy-ins.

A big obstacle in the early going is the amount of bad and wild play at low limits. I mean when people have $4 on the table, they don't treat as carefully as if it were $400. It took Chris Ferguson, who happens to be one of the greatest poker players of our time, seven months to get his account from $0 to $6.50. All in all, it took him 16 months to complete the challenge.

Anyone who has any experience with poker knows that this task is going to take a tremendous amount of zen-like patience, and probably many ups and downs. I am actually a bit reluctant to attempt it, because I enjoy a good Saturday multi table tournament. But, that will have to serve as a motivator. Here is a snap shot of my starting bank roll. Wish me luck.

Movie Review: Lucky You

So I am taking a risk here by using my second post on this blog to review a Drew Barrymore movie, so allow me to explain.  

A big part of my love of casino poker, is generally the variety of people you meet.  If I find myself sitting at a table with a few interesting people, I can literally sit there until I can't keep my eyes open (my record is 13 hours straight).  I have also sat at tables with nothing but old and cranky locals who are not there to make small talk.  But the amazing spread of ethnicity, education, income bracket, gender, etc. makes for some very good conversation.  This works both ways of course, you can end up sitting next to some miserable people, or someone who just talks your ear off about boring shit.  My least favorite are the people that like to talk through each move they make, as if they are some sort of poker guru.  But generally speaking, the people who stay the longest are the better quality players who are generally more intelligent.  I mean poker is a thinking game, so this would make sense.

So during one of my evening poker sessions in Vegas recently, someone brought up the subject of 'Worst Poker Movie'.  I actually was busy talking to the drunk dude next to me (he has was a happy go lucky drunk, so I was actually enjoying his 'banter'), so I missed a lot of the titles that were thrown out there.  But one that caused a bit of debate was the recent Barrymore flick, "Lucky You."  I hadn't seen the movie yet, but I had a vague recollection of when it came out and seeing the previews.  The table came to a consensus that while it was not a 'great' movie by any stretch of the imagination, it was tolerable if you needed to suggest a movie to your girl without going with 'Hope Floats' or 'Message in a Bottle' or something of that nature.

So I happened to be sitting home, and this movie was onDemand (or is it inDemand?) so I took the plunge.  Now early on I was not sold on Eric Bana as the pretty poker prodigy.  I mean the fiercest grinders that I have seen are generally not a pretty breed.  I would say as a rule of thumb, if someone sits down looking like Eric Bana, everyone at the table is licking their chops to get a portion of those chips.  Grinders in general are a ratty looking crew (this writer excluded of course).  Some of the early scenes in the movie, Bana just comes off a little douchey to me.  If I had to guess, they casted a guy that was not all that familar with poker players, and was going off of WSOP footage where he sees guys like Matusow and Hellmuth 'hollywooding' for the camera.  But Bana kind of fit into his roll eventually as the movie went on.

Robert Duvall was great I thought.  Duvall plays Bana's pro poker player father who is a legend in his own time.  I was a little annoyed at the interactions of Duvall's character with opposing players, where they would lose chips to him and than thank him for the honor.  I mean come on!

TONS of real life pro players made cameos, and I thought that was pretty cool.  But why not include them in the scenes at the final table of the WSOP?

And without ruining the movie . . . the final table of the WSOP is where the movie lost me.  The scenarios put forth from that point forward are so non-poker-realistic that it is ridiculous.  The movie had a chance to be a decent poker movie, but loses all credibility in the end, making way for a sappy Barrymore standard.  

Nonetheless, the movie has its moments.  The poker stuff is actually pretty entertaining, some bad beats, some degenerate behavior, etc.  Horatio Sanz is pretty entertaining in his role, and makes for a good side character, and the movie as a whole is very painless.  So if I had to rate it, I would give it a whopping 5/10.  I am reviewing this from a poker fan standpoint, and there is just a little too much Barrymore-Bana for me.  It would have been an incredible film if they made it darker and cast two edgier people.  Think Leaving Las Vegas with poker.  Give me a Nick Cage type and some cocktail waittress, and put them in a hotel room in North Vegas, bring in Phillip Seymour Hoffman somehow, and add a splash of Bushemi as the greasey local shark.  Done deal . . . I'll write the script, email me your offers.  Thanks.