I just placed 2nd in my first major winning poker tournament - it’s not much - 287 people, $5 buy in, $1435 cash pool of which I got $287, but I just started playing poker seriously a few weeks ago and I’m quite proud. It’s only the third tournament of the type I’ve been in, so given that, I thought I did really well.
Anyway, this is the forum for saying inane shit, right?
Nice job. Anytime you can make $287 on $5 you’ve got to be very happy with the outcome.
I’ve just this past month got hooked on watching the poker shows on ESPN and Travel. It’s pretty intense, eh? Anyway, where did you play? What game? I’d love to try my hand at this sometime, but the level that you’re talking about is a lot more my speed than some of those highstakes buy-ins.
Cool! Since the Travel Channel has been showing the World Poker Tour on Wednesday nights I’ve really gotten the hots to play tournament poker. I love the fact that we, the viewers, get to see everyone’s cards the entire hand. Educational TV at its best! No way I’d do well (those guys are good!), but it would be a blast. “Doctor Jackson is going all in for $365,000 on a 2-6 offsuit! What is he thinking?”
Where did you find a $5 buy in tourney? What was the game? What were the limits? If I’m going to live vicariously through you I need details, man!
Here’s another vicarious player. I’ve never been a big gambler, preferring things where chance has less play (like chess). But the way the No Limit Texas Hold 'Em appears to be played, it seems much more like 21 (Black Jack) even though the odds are so greatly affected by all the ways the flop comes down.
Just the other day I noticed that one of the big players (who happened to lose out in the tourney they were covering) has a book out and most of the other players are thoroughly familiar with the book. So much so that the writer had to change his style of play. This struck me as more of a method than a real system like counting cards in 21.
How much reading on poker have you been doing, SenorBeef?
Zeldar, the book was called Super System by Doyle Brunson
Thanks! Yes, that’s the one. They did show somebody reading “Poker For Dummies” which would be where I’d start.
It’s hard to keep the big names straight. The same show had Amarillo Slim and a few others I’d heard of before, and Brunson was just one name that slipped through it all.
That younger guy (Hellmuth?) with the mole by his nose seems like somebody that Bill Murray could play well. Either Murray of Bill Pullman.
It’s fun watching those shows and the Pool Championships. I just wish they could make chess as entertaining for the masses.
Congratulations Senor Beef. As a fellow poker player I can only dream of placing. What game were you playing?
Of course, in order to get the attitude they’d need someone more like JohnMcEnroe!
Phil can behave like such a child sometimes. Sure, he’s an incredible player but his attitude borders on irritating.
Borders?! In the show I saw last night he was over high fiving the observers after squeezing some guy on a hand. I think this is the sort of stuff that used to get people shot in the old West, not cheating. I’d have had to strangle him myself*.
*Note that this is hyperbole.
I second the hyperbole here!
Our coverage here was funky because it was supposed to be Poker starting at 6 and then Pool starting at 7 for two hours. Instead, there was some “news” thing at 6 and Poker at 7 and then another Poker at 8 which I had seen earlier. It was the one where Hellmuth and one of his nemeses (the older guy he got in a fight with) were having it out. I think Hellmuth wound up winning that round.
The two of them were jiving all through the play and at least one other player got into it with Hellmuth after Hellmuth said he was cheating by mentioning his cards.
Hellmuth reminds me of a cousin who was that kind of brat when we were little. That cousin rarely survived an occasion when we were together without getting into a fight with one of us. He just has that manner that invites hostility. Whether cultivated or not.
At least McEnroe can have you seeing his side of some of the scrapes he gets into. Hellmuth has yet to show me anything I’d sympathize with him about.
So! SenorBeef have you had occasion to share a table with Hellmuth yet? 
I would definitely advise beginning poker players to try to avoid learning anything from watching those shows. They show an hour’s worth of hands from thousands, and I’ve seen many players get toasted at an actual poker table because they expected things to move at a similar pace. Also, the limit game is very different from what you see on TV. It’s good as a starting point in that you learn the strength of the hands and the idea of holdem, but the lessons you’ll learn about poker from those shows aren’t typically (in my experience) very applicable to most games accessible to a beginner.
$5 buyin, huh? Must have had a lot of weekend warriors and riverboat captains in a game like that, eh? Congrats SenorBeef.
Zeldar, in terms of chance controlling the outcome, poker isn’t a game where you have all the variables like in chess, but it’s much closer to chess than to blackjack in terms of being a game of skill. There’s also the fact that you’re playing against a human opponent that makes both chess and poker radically different from 21.
To answer a few questions…
It was at an online card room - you’d never find a $5 buy in tournament in real life (as far as I know) because of their running costs with the dealers, etc.
Online, you can enter a lot of low limit ($10, $5, $3, even $1) tournaments with hundreds of players.
I like it - tournaments are fun, if I lose, I’m out $5, and I have a chance to make decent money if it does pay off.
Anyway, I was playing on ultimatebet.com. I’ve played play money on almost all the major online sites - partypoker.com, pokerstars.com, truepoker.com, pacificpoker.com, and real money on paradisepoker.com and ultimatebet.com.
Of course, ultimatebet seems to have the best mix of stuff I want. Paradise has the best software, but they don’t run any multitable tournaments and I love those. UB has it all, and pretty good software.
Anyway, the tournament I was in was actually a limit hold em tournament - I enjoy NL more but I seem to do better at limit tournaments. I’ll still play both. It was actually my first big limit tournament - so I did pretty well.
Regarding Phil Hellmuth, actually, he’s a part owner of ultimatebet.com or he was involved in the development or something. He, as well as a few other big name professionals play there frequently. I’ve watched Phil play omaha 8 80/160 quite a bit… seen him make $3500 in like 45 minutes before.
I actually haven’t read anything yet - I’ve been meaning to, but I haven’t had the money for books and someone else ran up quite a charge on my library card. I have, though, been reading a lot of stuff on the internet, talking to good players, read rec.games.poker, and possibly most important just sat around and watched good players play. I’m treating it like an educational experience and I’ve gained quite a bit of skill in the short time I’ve played on my own.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in low limit stuff, I’d fully recommend ultimatebet.com. The poker sites are legit - they take a small percentage of the pot like a regular casino (although generally half their rate or lower) and have no interest in who wins, so it’s in their best interest to set up a fair game, sit back, and rack in the cash. A few have been around for years now and have quite a reputation.
Another pointless thing: Yay me, I’ve been kicking ass on the ring games too. I made $109.75 in 1 hour 17 minutes tonight in a $1/$2 game. That’s like 45 big bets per hour.
Thus far, I’ve turned my $25 deposit into $433 in 2 days.
Go me.
Ah, low-limit online poker… gotta love it 
I too turned a nifty profit, on Paradise Poker. Went from $100 to $409 on the $1/$2 and $2/$4 tables, though also had a nasty streak that sent me back to $280. Right now I’m at about $330, but the swings are huge (relative to the BB). Haven’t played in the last couple of months, but I probably will find the itch again soon enough. Paradise just isn’t social enough for it to be that fun; even if I’m winning, it can often seem like low-wage work. This is why I usually take months-long breaks, so that I only play when it feels fresh, and so that I can maintain my discipline when I do play…
To those of you who have not played much, limit poker is not nearly as intense or engaging as the no-limit tourney poker you see on TV. Most good players throw away anywhere from 60% to 90% of pre-flop hands, and it can get tiresome after seeing hands like 9-2 and Q-4 time after time. Of course, short-handed play (5 or less) can often be a lot more fun, as you are involved in many more hands, and bluffing and semi-bluffing are a lot bigger part of the game.
Yeah, short handed games seem to be my strongest games. If I find a table of loose/weak players, I can totally dominate. I can be so aggressive at the right times that no one wants to enter a pot with me, and then more than half the time when I bet on the flop no one will get in a pot with me and I take it down.
Low-limit poker online must be a crap shoot though, right? Because there’s very little incentive for good play? I find that in most card rooms you usually can’t get a good game at even $3-6 because nobody will ever throw away a hand. I’d imagine that at $1-2 and with no face-to-face interaction you’d never see anybody fold.
There’s actually a lot of variety - I went to a 3/6 table which was the wildest table I’ve ever been at - it was played like play money. I’ve also been at a penny poker table that was incredibly tight.
Another pointless announcement: I just won my first big tourney (placed first). It was only a $1 rebuy, though - 149 people paid in $3 or $4 each and I took home $163. Not much, but hey, I beat 148 other people.
DO you play as SenorBeef on ultimatebet?
Yep.