DUBLIN BELLYBUSTERS

This is quickly becoming one of my best months to date. I have broken into the Top 300 of the OPR Form Listings and am ranked in the top 0.05% for the year 2008. With the help of some of my fellow online professionals, I feel I have definitely plugged some of the leaks in my game. My MTT game has developed new gears (particularly my late-game after the bubble has burst) as I have come to better understand how ridiculously aggressive you must become in order to go really deep on a consistent basis. Squeeze plays have become a big part of my arsenal and I now feel I am pro-actively seeking out opportunities to turn up the heat. This approach certainly means I will donk a few tournies with what will appear to be questionable plays (See Clip Below!). However, I am confident that, in the long run, it is the way to go if I am to hit a few big cashes.

From now on and with that in mind, I shall, whenever possible, record for posterity the occasions when I really donk it. The first of these occasions occurred on Sunday last. Having battled through a rebuy field of over 1000 players, I made it to the final table. I should have gone there with a massive chiplead but for a nasty bad-beat in a one million chip pot. Nonetheless, I still had the chips to take it down. It was, however, not to be as the maniacal voice on my right shoulder whispered a little something in my ear at a crucial moment, convincing me to make an audacious squeeze play with 5 players remaining...

It is my intention to write a series of blog entries, cataloging my live poker experiences. The focus of this series will be the futility of live poker as an endeavor and the experience of ennui it induces in me.

Case Study: The Elks Club, Windsor, November 18th, 2008.
 - $25 buy-in
 - 60 players
 - 2000 chips
 - Level 1: 25/50
 - Blinds double every 15 minutes

The place smelled like the dead carcass of an elderly chain-smoking homeless man. The cards and chips were sticky to the touch. The players were a random collection of vested tattooed skin-heads... and that was just the women. The standard of play was the worst I have ever encountered but the ridiculous blind levels effectively equalised the field and made it a donkfest. I made the Final Table without picking up a single hand all night but I would put credit that more to the horribleness of my opponents than to any skills that I demonstrated.

The following two hands were the first two of the Final Table and I can safely say are the funniest I have ever witnessed:

HAND 1
The blinds were 1K/2K and the average chip-stack was 12K. UTG (with 13K) limps. UTG+1 (with 9K) limps. Folded around to the button (with 10K) who limps. Small Blind (with 15K) min-raises to 4K. Everyone (Yes, EVERYONE!!!) folds.

HAND 2
UTG (with 7K) limps. UTG+2 (with 11K) limps. Cut-Off (with 8K) min-raises for half his stack to 4K. Small Blind folds. Big Blind (with 11K) calls. UTG folds (my jaw is on the ground!!!) UTG+2 calls. Pot is 15K. The flop comes 9-7-3. Big Blind leads out for 2K (yes 2K into a 15K pot). UTG+2 folds. Cut-Off with only 4K left in his stack and a 17K pot out there goes into the tank and eventually folds, showing pocket 8s!!!! My eyes literally pop out of my skull. The BB rakes in the 17K pot, showing pocket 4s. The dejected player in the Cut-Off mutters nice hand and explains to the table that he put him on Jacks (Yeah, like Jacks wouldn't have shipped it in pre-flop!!!).

The past few days have prompted the following realisation: My life is abnormal. In recent months, I have become full-on nocturnal and as a vampire this time of the year, that means zero daylight hours. Michelle insists that if I don't get into a better pattern (a noon rise would be progress), I am a candidate for Seasonal Affective Disorder. I tell her that that is nonsense and that I have always been of the 'eveningness chronotype' and my body is simply adjusting to a more evolved Circadian Rhythm.

What's am I crapping on about, I hear you say? Well, you see, I have believed for some time now that I am not suited to a diurnal 24-hour daily cycle and am actually more suited to a crepuscular 28-hour one. This 28 hour day would consist of 18 waking hours followed by a 10 hour sleep. My sleeping hours would move 4 hours later as each day passes. Sometimes, I would sleep in the daytime and sometimes I would sleep at night. The consequences of its adoption would be a 6-day week instead of 7 (7 x 24 = 168 and 6 x 28 = 168). I honestly believe that it is the future and I hope it catches on with enough people so that we can all come together and found a maverick principality of like-minded bats. That way I will no longer have to feel weird about my 6pm bed-head, my midnight cooking or my 4am DIY sessions.

Everyone who knows me knows that I love bacon. My penchant for bacon sandwiches during a long late-night poker session is well-documented. I don't know what it is but the smell of bacon just turns me on. I think it's my body's way of expressing anticipation. Very sad, I know.

Well, as the new Great Dane Peter Eastgate was dispatching Ivan Demidov over in the Penn and Teller Theatre tonight, I was battling my ass off in the 50/50. I went deep but frustratingly finished in 13th for a miserable $550 cash (still my best MTT finish for about 3 weeks). First got $11,500. Having maintained the chip average (no more, no less) throughout the tournament, I was sitting comfortably in 9th of 18 remaining. Starved of any real hands, I made do with small steals from late position and a couple of re-steals from late position raisers. This tournament has a good structure so I never felt the need to go bananas. For that reason, I refused a squeeze play with 82 that my friend Stephen O'Connor was goading me to make. It was a button raise - small blind call into my big blind. I was on the same page as him as we typed its potential into the chatbox simultaneously but I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger.

My stack drifted to half the chip average as others doubled up and the blinds passed through me. The blinds were 4k-8k and I had 85K (last of 13) when my big blind was raised by the Cut-Off. I re-raised all-in with A9 and he mucked. The next hand, it got round to me Blind v Blind. I had 100k and Kojac. I shoved. He insta-called with 10-10 and I didn't improve. It was a disappointing end. If I had won that coinflip, I would have been up to 5th place and all but guaranteed a handsome final table cash.

With all the success of my friends in recent weeks, I am particularly craving a big MTT score. I'm not greedy. I don't want 9.1 million. $5K would make me happy. $5K would be a taste. You see, when I go deep it's like I'm smelling bacon. I get turned on. I anticipate. The sweet smell of bacon in my nostrils. But just one time, it would be nice to taste it too.

The Matrix is Full Tilt's latest addition to its Sit N Go Lobby. They put the same 9 or 6 players together in 4 SNGs simultaneously, giving one-fifth of the money to each game's result and another fifth to the over all winner based on an elaborate scoring system. Quite simply, these games have two functions: To maximise Full Tilt's profit by filling four games as fast as it would mormally take to fill one and to maximise profits by training the average poker player to get comfortable multi-tabling thereby cultivating him/her into a player that is capable of spending more in their poker-room. It's a smart idea and it got me thinking about an online poker player's edge.

Speed of thought is a crucial element for the serious online poker-pro. Being comfortable playing more games at once means more profit. The more you play, the more you can make the argument that the player loses some equity as they are unable to monitor the patterns of play and players on every table but if that lost equity is small, then it is more than compensated by the additional volume. I have spoken to many online players recently whose games I respect and I was shocked to discover that some of them (Jacaranda, Chipless Wonder, Galactus X and Michael Craig) only play one or two games at a time. Myself and Michelle both play 8-10 at once (crammed onto our little 11 inch mac screens) while also watching TV, making coffee and maintaining 5 skype conversations. My tolerance gets stretched beyond 10 but my friends Rounder63 and ChicagoAPA have no problems playing 16 at once. (I am fairly confident they both have adult ADD!) Bottom line - Time is money! Online, the ability to make quick poker decisions gives you an edge over the competition. If you can generate a 30% ROI playing 8 tables, you are making three times as much money than my colleague who can generate 40% playing 2.

The Gift of multi-tabling is that far from hindering your game or stressing you out, it actually helps your game. You will find yourself adjusting easily to the pace of 4 games on screen and before long, you will be ready for 6 and then 8. This will cause a Chain Reaction. By playing a greater volume of hands, you will gain more experience faster and thus, speed up your development as a player. Not only that, but I would also maintain that playing more can improve your game by keeping it honest. You are less likely play marginal hands out of boredom and will probably play a tighter starting hand selection.

The Devil's Advocate might take the position that you will lose to much equity by being rushed into overly aggressive decisions. Surely, Something's Gotta Give? Well I couldn't disagree more. In my opinion, you are also less likely to feel precious about the game into which you have solely invested two hours of your life. In my experience, players play too tight late on in tournaments, they don't play Hardball, opting for the nitty play intstead of the right one because they know they will get frustrated with themselves if they make an aggressive play that fails. When you are multi-tabling, one game is just part of the bigger system of games. You are a Plate-spinner buzzing around trying to prevent your plates from falling. And If one does happen to fall, then you have no time to care about it because there is still a room full of spinning plates to which you must attend. In other words, the individual game's importance is reduced and that is a good thing. Why? Because when you take the inevitable bad beat, it stops you from making Much Ado About Nothing.

My apologies for the lack of blogs lately. The downturn in the economy has meant that I have had to save up for new space bar. Seriously though, I have been struck down with a peculiar flu that seems to attack a different part of me every week and I just haven't felt up using the parts of my brain that don't work on auto-pilot. I have ideas for several entries which I will scribble down soon. One will deal with the introduction of Matrix tourneys to the SNG landscape of Fult Tilt and the nature of multi-tabling in general. Another will be about the recent successes of my fellow-Bellybusters in big tourneys and my own risk-aversion and reluctance to play higher.

In the meantime, I want to give a shout out to all the new Bellybusters who have not only swelled our ranks but added a more international dimension to our operation. I think we have had 56 different players turn out since our inception in early 2007. I swear to almighty Trinity of God, Allah and Obama, we is gonna be biggah than the Hendon Mob! (No offence Joe!)