Online Poker is Rigged

Personally I don't believe my title for this post but.........................
You go to any Poker Forum and you will find a thread about how internet poker is rigged. Sometimes I come very, very close to believing that what the donkeys are saying is true. For instance, I played at Full Tilt yesterday for a short while. I played two $2.20 Heads Up No Limit games and I was unable to hit one flop. My opponent was hitting everything. Straights, pairs, sets, you name it whatever he had came on the board and he easily put me away. The second game was more of the same with the clincher being that I was dealt A/Q and went all in. He called with pocket 4s. A 4 came on the flop to give him a set and the turn was an Ace and the river was a Queen to give me two pair. GG me. No only did he hit every freaking hand he played but in the end he gets the set playing shitty 4/4 and my two pair send me packing.

The same pretty much was happening on the .50/$1 Limit Holdem table I was playing. I was getting great hands but couldn't buy a flop for the life of me and my opponents were hitting everything. The culmination was when I had A/Q of spades which I raised from late position to get called by the big blind, flop was Ks, Kc, Ad. he bets, I raise and he calls. Turn was 8c. He bets, I raiseand he calls. The river was Js. He checks, I bet, he raises and I think, uh-oh. I make the crying call only to see the donkey turn over K/J for the full house. The card that gave me my flush gave him his full house and that cost me a few dollars.

It's days like that when I am not hitting anything, losing money left and right, that I just get the feeling that maybe online poker is rigged.

The problem I have though, is that I am so damn lovable, why would the game be rigged against me?

PokerGrader.com

I found a new tool to help you analyze your game. It is called Poker Grader. If you have Poker Tracker you may not need this but if you don't it is a nice little tool to help "grade" how you are playing.

You just copy and paste your hand history into it and click on "Get Your Report Card" and it will analyze your play. This is from the FAQ:
What exactly does PokerGrader do?
PokerGrader uses the hand histories from your online poker sessions to help determine how good of a poker player you are. Hand Histories are saved logs of the hands you played, which store every detail of when you bet, folded, raised, won, lost, etc. PokerGrader uses the data from these hand histories to actually grade your play. The results page also features other useful statistics about your poker sessions. Currently, PokerGrader supports the hand histories from PartyPoker, EmpirePoker and PokerStars

Water, Water Everywhere

I sure picked the worse week of the summer to take a vacation. I had no plans but to play as much golf as I could. Alas, the Weather Gods were dealing me a shitty hand by raining every day of my vacation. I managed to play 3 rounds of golf in 7 days because of the constant downpour in the midwest. What can you do? Play poker instead.

Raining, can't golf, guess I'll play poker. I was building my bankroll back up on Full Tilt after having donked off a goodly amount of my recent wins when I ran into the worse day of poker possible. I was getting dealt excellent hands over and over, A/Q, A/K, Q/Q, A/K again, A/J, 9/9. They just kept coming and I just kept losing. Nothing was hitting me on the flop and my big hands were losing out to even bigger hands. I kept raising preflop only to miss the flop and turn and end up folding with nothing to show. I was leaking money steadily and when my buy-in would drop down to a low amount I would rebuy in hopes of hitting a nice run and winning back my losses. The nice run never came and I totally lost track of how much I was rebuying utnil after on final devestating beat after going in as a heavy favorite I shut down my session and opened up the cashier to see how much to put in my excel spreadsheet.

HOLY SHIT!!! Where did all of my money go?? There is no way I could have rebought that much, Full Tilt must be wrong. But Full Tilt wasn't wrong. I started to add up in my head what I had rebought and included a couple of SitNGos I played without cashing and the numbers started to add up................ or should I say, subtract down.

Well, that's a fine how do you do! For the second time in a week I had donked off almost all of my winning from my previous sessions. I ranted to my daughter a bit and she said the most wonderful words to me that I have heard in a while, "Don't worry, Dad. You'll win it back." She just knew that I was going to win that money back. I thought if she could be that confident in me then I should have some confidence in myself. I went back on Full Tilt later that night and managed to win some nice hands a finish up a buy-in. My daughter was right, I could win that money back.

I played again the next day and made a nice gain in my bankroll and am now almost back to where I was before my last losing session. I am steadily building my bankroll back up by playing solid poker.

Got to love your kids and their undying faith in you.

Gone on Vacation

I've been gone the last few days on vacation. Went up to Northern Lower Michigan and set up a new computer for my dad. He has dial up but I built him a faster computer so that when the information comes in it will handle it faster and open up things quicker. It also had a lot bigger hard drive than his old computer so he can load more of his crossword games and card games. He thought it was pretty nice compared to the old 350Mghz pentium 3 he did have.

I have been slowly building my bank roll at Full Tilt after I lost almost everything I had made during my Limit Challenge. Basically, over a week's time I lost almost all of the profit I made by playing a higher limit than I should have and making donkey moves. I have gone back to A B C Poker and am slowly building my bankroll back up. I have made back over half of what I lost so far. I think it took that big lost to open my eyes to how stupid I was playing. Now I am back to playing tight aggressive poker and am getting a couple of breaks to go my way.

Here is a hand in a 90 player SitNgo that didn't go my way. We were down to 2 tables and I was 15 out of 16 left. I went all in pre-flop and was happy to see the big stack show pocket 4s. Wasn't happy with the way it ended but that's poker. The big stacks almost always win anyway. I'm LZFSB3.

Finished in the money but didn't win much. I was hoping for a final table.

Couple of Jokes

I have not been doing well at poke lately but I really don't feel like relaying any bad beats or hand histories. I know what I am doing wrong and started correcting it tonight so I will just leave you with a couple of funny jokes.

A guy enters bar carrying an alligator. Says to the patrons, "Here’s a deal. I'll open this alligator's mouth and place my genitals inside. The gator will close his mouth for one minute, then open it, and I'll remove my unit unscathed. If it works, everyone buys me drinks." The crowd agrees. The guy drops his pants and puts his privates in the gator's mouth. Gator closes mouth. After a minute, the guy grabs a beer bottle and bangs the gator on the top of its head. The gator opens wide, and he removes his genitals unscathed. Everyone buys him drinks. Then he says: "I'll pay anyone $100 who's willing to give it a try." After a while, a hand goes up in the back of the bar. It's a woman. "I'll give it a try," she says, "but you have to promise not to hit me on the head with the beer bottle."

I knew these Siamese twins. They moved to England, so the other one could drive. (Steven Wright)

I bought a box of animal crackers and it said on it "Do not eat if seal is broken." So I opened up the box, and sure enough... (Brian Kiley)

PokerSavvy

It has been a while since I have touted the best Bonus Whoring site on the web - PokerSavvy. I have been a member of PokerSavvy for over a year now and before the UIGEA I was able to make a lot of money from PokerSavvy by playing low limit holdem. Those were the days.

The PokerSavvy site just keeps getting better and better. I am a member of the OTHER Bonus Whoring site, too and I have nothing bad to say about it. I just want to say that, in my opinion, PokerSavvy is a better site. It has a lot more poker roooms to play and receive bonuses from. It has a great section on Poker Room Reviews. It has added a truly wonderful section of written articles about everything Poker. Not just Holdem, but RAZZ, Stud, HORSE games. You name it. These articles aren't written by just anyone but are written by DoubleAs, Blinders Poker and yours truly. I now have a total of 4 articles that I have written for PokerSavvy. Stop over there and check them out. They are written under my poker playing name LZFSB3.

Good Poker Blog to Check Out

You may have noticed some changes to my sidebar. I have added a couple of poker books written by a Poker Blogger, Scottro. These books can be found at Amazon.com - Why You Lose at Poker and Mastering No Limit Holdem by Russel Fox and Scott Harker.

Check out Scottro's blog, too. It made my top ten Poker Blogs on PokerSavvy. I really like his voice posts and have told him he should do more. Now he is having a poll to see if he should do more voice posts. Go there and vote yes. He has a hilarious video of Adolph Hitler and Poker. Someone did a wonderful job.

He also has a line of poker Tees (t-shirts) at Cafe Express called Two 7s Pokerwear.

Stop over. Read the blog, listen to the voice posts, watch the videos and go buy a tee shirt or a poker book. What more to life is there?

Taking a 2 Week hiatus from PokerStars

I am taking a two week Hiatus from PokerStars. Maybe longer.......................maybe shorter. Here's why.

Dealt to Wolverine Fan [Qs Kc]
*** FLOP *** [6h 3h 9s]
*** TURN *** [6h 3h 9s] [7c]
*** RIVER *** [6h 3h 9s 7c] [9c]
Wolverine Fan: shows [Qs Kc] (a pair of Nines)
Villain: shows [6d 2h] (two pair, Nines and Sixes)
I was 66% to 34% favorite to win this preflop.
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Dealt to Wolverine Fan [As Tc]
*** FLOP *** [Qh 6d Qd]
*** TURN *** [Qh 6d Qd] [6c]
*** RIVER *** [Qh 6d Qd 6c] [Td]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Wolverine Fan: shows [As Tc] (two pair, Queens and Tens)
Villain: shows [6h Ah] (a full house, Sixes full of Queens)
I was 62% to 28% (10% ties) favorite to win this Preflop.
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Dealt to Wolverine Fan [Ah Qs]
*** FLOP *** [7h 9c Ac]
*** TURN *** [7h 9c Ac] [2c]
*** RIVER *** [7h 9c Ac 2c] [3h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain: shows [Qc 8c] (a flush, Ace high)
Wolverine Fan: shows [Ah Qs] (a pair of Aces)
I was 69% to 30% favorite to win this Preflop.
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Dealt to Wolverine Fan [Qc Ad]
*** FLOP *** [9c 8d Qd]
*** TURN *** [9c 8d Qd] [8h]
*** RIVER *** [9c 8d Qd 8h] [Th]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Villain: shows [9h Qs] (two pair, Queens and Nines)
Wolverine Fan: shows [Ad Qc] (two pair, Queens)
I was 73.5% to 25% favorite to win this Preflop.
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Dealt to Wolverine Fan [9h 9s]
*** FLOP *** [8h 5h 4c]
*** TURN *** [8h 5h 4c] [7h]
*** RIVER *** [8h 5h 4c 7h] [2c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Wolverine Fan: shows [9h 9s] (a pair of Nines)
Villain: shows [Jh Qh] (a flush, Queen high)
I was 52% to 48% favorite to win this Preflop.
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Trust me when I say that I pretty much played my hands correctly but was drawn out on by the Villains that hit miraculous flop or stayed in until something good happened.

I can play on Absolute Poker and Full Tilt for the next two weeks and them maybe the doom switch on PokerStars will be turned from on to off after that.

My Announcement

My announcement, you say? It is not a big announcement but is still pretty cool for me. I have an article on PokerSavvy. I put together my list of 10 best Poker Blogs for PokerSavvy and they have included it in their articles section of the site.

I'd post my list here but I want you all to go over to PokerSavvy and check it out. I have also put in to have 3 articles posted that I wrote about heads up play. Please go to PokerSavvy and check them out.

Citizens against Gambling

I was out surfing the Poker Sites on the net when I came across this post at Pokerati regarding "Pro-family" groups and their campaign against Congress rescinding the UIGEA. The article is here, Focus on the Family Action, Others Urge Congress to Guard Gambling Law. This is scary because the groups behind this have a track record of getting things to go their way. They have deep pockets and the tactics they use seem to be very effective in getting legislation passed that they support. And, conversely, getting legislation they do not support squashed.

I never thought it would be easy to get the UIGEA overturned or get a carve out for Poker. I guess I was hoping for the changes to come that I never thought about the opposition and how maniacal they would be in making sure there were no inroads to overturning the UIGEA.

God help us (no pun intended).

Crashed and Burned

I hate to have to inform my loyal readers after the nice things said by Chipper and Minty in the comments section of my last post that I crashed and burned in my first attempt at 5 Card Draw. I knew there would be a learning curve but having the ego I do, I thought I would perform better. I went down in last place at a STT for 5 Card Draw.
In the immoratl words of General Douglas MacArthur, "I shall return." I will be sitting down and giving the game another chance here in the next day or so. Hopefully my learning curve will be steep and I will play much better than I did today.
_______________________
Keep your eye on this site for some breaking news in the next few days.

5 Card Draw

I am going to try my hand at 5 Card Draw on PokerStars. Minty had a link to Michael Wiesenberg's Draw Poker Strategy article. You can find it here at Ready Bet Go.

Michael Wiesenberg made his living playing poker for 10 years before turning to a career as a writer. His books include 'Free Money: How to Win in the Cardrooms of California'; 'The Dictonary of Poker', and 'The Ultimate Casino Guide. I am going to study this strategy and see if I can't apply it and, hopefully, win some money.

I like to play different games of poker and, to me, the games that are farthest from Hold'em are easier for me. I think that is why I like RAZZ. It is totally different from Hold'em but you still have to know the Theory of Poker to be successful. I'm going to give 5 Card Draw a try and see if it can't be +EV for me.

HORSE MTT

I played a microstakes HORSE MTT on Sunday Night on PokerStars and finished 20th out of 320 players for a small profit. I didn't do really well or really bad in any one of the games that make up HORSE. I do remember having one really nice win in RAZZ and another big payoff in the STUD game. Other than that it was just a bunch of smaller pots that kept me afloat.

I really like playing HORSE and RAZZ tournaments but they take sooooooooo long to play than a No Limit Holdem tourney. I was into the 4th hour when I went out in 20th place. In No Limit Holdem, half of the field would have been gone by first break. In the HORSE tourney we only lost about 80 players after the first hour.
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I'm going to try and play some Limit Holdem on PokerStars in an attempt to build my bankroll some. I am doing all right with the 2 table SitNgos but am going to try for a little change of pace and see if I can't build my bankroll some playing Limit.

My Full Tilt Challenge had a bit if a setback on Monday when I played way too many hands and was finishing second best too much. Lost one buy in. I'm going to tighten up and see if I can't move things back into the positive direction. so far in a little over 3 weeks I have made over $50. Hope to double that in the next week or so if I can get the time to play.

You would think I played the Hammer all of the time but I don't. I only play it if I can limp in from BB with it or if I have a big stack. This hand I went on to win the SitNGo. The other is the only good thing that has happened to me at Full Tilt lately. I can't catch a break there in the last two days but this hand was nice.

Poker Gods favor me

I was playing .50/$1 dollar Limit Holdem on Full Tilt, trying to clear a bonus, and was down a few dollars after not hitting any flops with some good hands when I was dealt Ac Kh in EP. I raised was reraised by a LAG type player and I capped the betting. The flop was Kc 6d Jd so I bet and was raised again so I reraised and the betting was capped. I should have known then that I probably wasn't winning this hand. I had villain on A/J or A/Q. Turn was a 7D but I wasn't too worried about the flush as his betting pattern didn't indicate he was on a draw. River was a 6s and when the betting was all said and done, the villain showed As Ad which took the pot from my pair of Kings.

I don't know why I tilted but I did. It was probably because his betting indicated Pocket Rockets the whole way and I just wasn't getting away from my top pair/top kicker. This was the second hand that I hit a piece of the flop with TP/TK and lost so that probably contributed to my tilt.

Anyway, I was down a buy in and leaking more money as I reloaded and continued to play when I was dealt the following hand.

Full Tilt 1/2 Hold'em (8 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ks, 7s.
2 folds, MP1 calls, 1 fold, CO raises, 1 fold, Wolverine Fan calls, BB calls, MP1 calls.

Flop: (8 SB) Jc, 8s, Tc (4 players)
SB bets, BB folds, MP1 calls, CO calls, Wolverine Fan Calls.

Turn: (5.50 BB) Qc (3 players)
SB bets, MP1 raises, CO folds, Wolverine Fan calls.

River: (9.50 BB) 9s (2 players)
SB bets $0.25 (All-In), MP1 calls, Wolverine Fan Calls.

Final Pot: 9.75 BB

Results:
Wolverine Fan has Ks 7s (straight, king high).
MP1 doesn't show.
Outcome: Wolverine Fan wins 9.75 BB.

I shouldn't even have been in this hand and, because I was on tilt, I bet and bet and bet and ended up being a big luckbox and winning back most of the buy-in I had lost. That woke me up to what I was doing and I immediately left the table and thanked the Poker Gods for saving my butt.

Suited Hammer

Online poker is so rigged. I was a pretty big stack in a low buy in SitnGo at Absolute Poker and when the short stack, $560 went all in I figured, "Why not?" and called with the suited hammer. The results are killer for this poor guy who likes Detroit Tiger's pitcher Jeremy Bonderman.

All I could do was shake my head and laugh. I went on to finish second.

Moving Up!

I'm moving up in stakes at Full Tilt. I had a pretty good session today that put me over the amount that I needed to win to move up to the next higher level. I have been playing .25/.50 Limit Holdem and now I will be moving up to .50/$1 blinds.

I have cleared $7.50 of my free $25 dollar bonus but only have 3 days left to clear the rest. I hope to at least play break even poker at the higher stakes and try to clear another $7.50 in bonus over the next 3 days. I have been playing all right but not for very long. I will be upping my time at the tables over the next few days in an effort to clear more bonus.

I have to be careful to only play good poker and win money. Some times when I am clearing a bonus I will play -EV hands just for the rake to go towards my bonus. You can do that somewhat at the lower amounts but not when you get to the higher blinds. I would get suited connectors in late position and if 2 or 3 people limped into the pot, I would limp knowing that the blinds probably would complete and that would give me a pretty big pot to go towards the bonus. Plus, there was always a chance that a good flop would occur and I could take down a nice size pot.