This is JCarver’s second final table of the 2009 WSOP. Full details can be found here: http://www.pokernews.com/wsop/2009/event-52/

Apparently, since Leo won his bracelet, there has been absolutely nothing of interest to report or write about minus a few celebrity deaths (RIP Billy Mays).  What better time to talk about some good old nachos24 poker?

Well, it has been going extremely well lately.  I still don’t play enough volume to earn some truly sick profit, but I am very happy with how I’ve been playing.  For reference, here is a graph of my last 187k HU hands ranging from 1/2 to 5/10.  You can see my 60whatever buyin downswing around hand 36k and the subsequent recovery.

When I think about how much money I used to make in the golden days of Cake, it’s scary to realize how bad I really was and how little I understood how to truly play good poker.  While there are a number of little things to attribute to my improvement, I am going to paraphrase a quote I read in one of the HSNL threads a while back which really sums it all up.  It went something like “estimating your own hand range is harder than estimating your opponent’s” and this is probably one of the more profound things I’ve read which really crystallized my own improvement.  Once I shifted my focus away from my opponent’s range and began to frame my thinking around what I represented and my opponent’s actions within that context, it just clicked.  That isn’t to say I never thought about it before, but now it dominates the way I think about hands and my overall strategy.

However, I am a little discouraged by the state of HU games nowadays.  PokerStars in particular seems to have gone to shit ever since FTP implemented their new open table policy.  I routinely sit at anywhere from 4-6 tables across 2/4 to 5/10 on Stars for an hour or longer without a single person sitting.  FTP is a little bit better and it seems the number of mediocre regs is much higher so spreading action across those two sites is working alright for now.  The dead time inbetween action really kills the hourly though, especially when compared with 6max.  It’s a shame too, because 6max is such a god damn boring game and it hurts me deep inside to even consider playing it for an extended period of time.  Whoever made 6max the standard anyway?  Maybe it’s time to roll out some 4max tables and break the stagnation that has become online poker.  I guess I could always take up PLO too, but that game has never excited me.

BAD BRACELET CREW, WHAT IT DEW!

http://www.pokernews.com/wsop/2009/event-29/

There was a chop, and the two played for $100k and the bracelet.

http://www.pokernews.com/wsop/2009/event-29/payouts/

HOW IN THE FUCK DO I GET SO DEEP IN A FUCKING TOURNAMENT ONLY TO FUCKING BLIND OFF A THIRD OF MY FUCKING STACK AND GOD DAMN FUCKING LOSE 99 VS 87S WHAT THE FUCK FUCK POKER FUCK LIFE FUCK EVERYTHING I AM STUCK ON THE YEAR AND I AM NEVER GETTING UNSTUCK EAT A FUCKING DICK AND A HALF LIFE AND ESPECIALLY COMCAST FUCKING DIE IMMA GO TO ATLANTIC CITY AND IF I DON”T SHIP THAT 5K EVENT I AM GOING TO DRIVE MY GOD DAMN CAMRY OFF A GOD DAMN FUCKING BRIDGE EAT A FUCKING DICK WORLD

-young leo wolpert

Summary here: http://www.pokernews.com/wsop/2009/event-22/

More info here: http://www.pokernews.com/wsop/2009/event-15/payouts/

This is JCarver if you don’t know.

Vegas tomorrow, twitter updates here: http://twitter.com/PokerDerk

I’m out here in Vegas now for the WSOP, and Bad Beats Crew member evang told us that he could get us passes to E3 if we flew out for the day.  Being big gamers, Jason and I jumped on this chance pretty quickly and along with another house resident, booked a flight and flew into LA at around 9 in the morning.
We took a cab over to the convention center and met up with evang, where he gave us our special passes that would get us into E3 without paying anything.  This was obviously pretty nice, as the tickets cost $500 each.  Having someone in the industry sure is nice!
E3 must have had some sort of haunting problem because we found this parked outside:

Anyway we got inside, proudly holding our affiliate passes, wondering what kind of awesome shit would be in store.  We gave our passes to the gruff-looking lady outside the doors, and she said “I need two forms of industry ID please.”  Apparently the passes evang gave us are only good if you are actually a member of the gaming industry!!  Thanks evang!

Not to be deterred, we decided to pay the $500 for tickets because it would make evang feel bad and that was enough for us.

$1500 later we got in and saw the EA area first, where they had the new NCAA and Madden and other games.  They looked great graphically, but I couldn’t tell much of a difference with NCAA as far as gameplay.  Didn’t get a chance to check out Madden.   They made a big deal about the line play being different in Madden this year but it seems the same in NCAA at least.

I didn’t take too many pictures of things, but one of the cooler things (for me anyway) was Steve Wiebe of The King of Kong fame attempting to set a world record in Donkey Kong.  Possibly the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard of being done in public in front of a crowd but it was pretty cool.

Unfortunately Billy Mitchell would win the day as Steve reached the DK kill screen (the point at which the game will no longer let you continue) 70k points short of setting the new world record.   Hopefully he’ll try again, he seems like a good guy and I support anything that will ruin Billy Mitchell’s life.
We saw the demo of Uncharted 2 which is the game that Evang is working on, and it looked really fun.  We got to play multiplayer for awhile and JCarver ended up winning for his team.  I’m pretty sure he cheated but whatever.  The game seems really good and you should buy it if you like fun games and for some reason have a PS3.

The Square-Enix display was pretty cool too, the Final Fantasy 13 movie looked pretty interesting.  You can tell I don’t remember anything of substance about it because I’m saying things were “interesting”.  To be honest, it didn’t really strike me as anything unusual for a FF game.  The animation was extremely well-done and it looked good but you can’t really tell until you actually play it, obviously.

The Nintendo display was pretty cool also, they had the guy who does the voice of Mario there.  He is a friendly but sort of weird looking old white man, probably in his sixties.   We played the new Super Mario Bros Wii game and it was pretty fun.  You sort of play against and with each other with all 4 players on the screen at the same time, and you can like stomp people down pits and stuff.  It’s pretty cool, looking forward to playing it when it comes out.

We also played Lego Rock Band, which finally features “The Final Countdown” (it’s about time some RB game did), and briefly saw Beatles Rock Band, which is pretty cool.  It actually has like up to 3 vocal players so you could theoretically try to do all the super hard Beatles harmonies and shit but seriously who is going to be able to find 3 singers to play Rock Band with?  I don’t really see it happening with too many people but whatever.

While we were walking around, I met this random nerdy looking guy hanging around behind one of the displays and he seemed lonely and didn’t have a badge so I got him to take a picture with me to cheer him up:

Anyway that’s about all I remember, I’m positive JCarver will post a more thorough trip report though.  I do have an important announcement though, which I alluded to in my previous post.

BAD BEATS CREW WELCOMES ITS NEWEST MEMBER, ANDREW “WAY RON” HART!!!!

BBC Wayrin

Andrew happily donning his Bad Beats Crew E3 badge, gazing thoughtfully into the heavens.  We asked Andrew to join Bad Beats Crew and he instantly agreed, stating “I sure am glad to be finally able to get away from those faggots in the EAD crew.  This is a turning point in my life.”
We wish him all the best and are happy to have him.