A PLO/8 call

That's the topic of a new article of mine on pokermagazine.com

It's about picking off a bluff. Even in pot limit games you don't have to be right most of the time to make a call correct when all you can beat is a bluff. You need to have some reason to think it might be a bluff, of course. Indiscriminate calling isn't going to pay off in the long run.

I don't cover PLO/8 in my casino poker book, but I do cover hi/lo split in general and have a chapter on limit O/8.

If you have a paypal account you can buy an ebook edition of it directly from me for $3.50

Tom DeLay

Some idiot on MSNBC was mouthing off about how serious the indictment of Tom DeLay was, claiming that an indictment of leading republican during a republican administration showed how serious the supposed infraction was.


That's bullshit.

It's a state indictment, by a Travis County Grand Jury. That's in Austin, Texas, the most liberal city in Texas. The DA who brought the indictment is Ronnie Earle, a longtime activist yellow dog democrat.

Any felony indictment in Texas should be taken seriously. But, he's not being indicted by a republican adminstration.




By the way, I appreciate any comments, but don't bother making a comment if your only purpose is to spam for some other site.

Eight ribbons?

I saw a photo of PFC England, the woman that was convicted of the abuse of prisinors in Iraq and was struck by the ribbons on her chest -- 8 of them. She's an E3, hasn't been in the Army long, and somehow managed to acquire 8 decoration? What the hell are those things for?

I know the military has been inventing silly reasons to give decorations to soldiers, to try to make them feel like warriors. But eight? To a soldier who's never really done anything except serve in a combat zone? Has it gotten to the point that military decorations don't mean anything anymore?

I went on active duty in the Navy as in E3 (I was in the reserve) in 1967, did one tour in Vietnam on a destroyer on the DMZ Gunline, got released from active duty in 1968 (still an E3) with three authorized ribbons -- the "alive in 65" ribbon that everyone on active dury wore, a vietnam campaign ribbon, and a ribbon for a unit citation that the ship received for combat action. That was it,and that was fairly typical. If that same service was repeated today I'd have a few more ribbons, for example the Navy gives a decoration for sea duty these days, they didn't used to do that. But, eight?

To provide an example of why I think 8 ribbons on a PFC who never saw any direct combat here's a crew photo from 1968. Everyone in this photo is a returning combat vet, on a ship that at the time had one of the most decorated destroyer crews in the Navy. One of the sailors was an E4, one an E2,the rest E3. Look closely at the single row of ribbons they are all wearing, and compare that to the photo of England.

Our military has just gotten silly. The army used to have specitialy units that wore various colored berets as some kind of method of establishing elite status -- Green Berets for Special Forces, for example. Then a few years ago they decided that they didn't want anymore elitism, so they made cheap berets standard head wear for the military. And, I do mean cheap. Have you ever actually seen one of those things close up?

I don't know, maybe I'm just an old, grumpy fart. But, it used to be that if you saw a soldier on their first enlistment with 3 rows of ribbons you could be pretty sure you were looking at a bona fide war hero who had distinguished themselves in combat in a big way. And, I dont' think PFC England qualifies in that regard.

Today's ad is an affiliate link to pokerroom.com








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How many hands are they playing?

Here's a question somebody posted on rec.gambling.com

I was playing last night low limit hold'em and played the following hands over
the course of an hour or so. In the majority cases I was the aggressor i.e.
raiser and did'nt call raises with the marginal hands listed below.

QQ, AK, AJ, A10, QQ, AK, KK, A10, KJ, KQ, KJ, A9s, AJ, KJ.

In each case there was usually 3-4 callers as is the nature of low limit
hold'em. What % of these hands would you expect to win the pot with?

3-4 callers translates into them playing about 35% of their hands, on average.

So, one way to address this question is to ask how the range of hands above does against 3 players playing the top 35% of their hands. That would be roughly

44/A2s/K3s/Q5s/J5s/T7s/95s/86s/75s/65s/A9o/K8o/Q8o/J9o/T9o/98o and better

Roughly.

Using pokerstove, the range of hands our hero is playing has about

QQ v. 3 35% players has a 46% win %, an impact value of 1.84
A9s v. 3 35% players has a 27.4 win %, an impact value of 1.10
ATo v. 3 35% players has a 26.7 win %
KJo v. 3 35% players has a 24.8 win %, an impact value of .99

KJo is an overall loser (impact value of less than 1) against 3 players who are playing 35% of their hands.

So, if you're in a game where it appears most players are playing about 35% of their hands, you probably should avoid KJo from early position. But that doesn't' mean you should avoid it from late position. If you're on the button and 3-4 players who tend to play about 35% of their hands have limped in, then you're probably no up against 3 hands of the top 35% of hands -- in partiular, you probably aren't against an AA, KK, or QQ in any of those three hands.

You can use pokerstove to look at that situation, and I'll probably do that tomorrow.

Pokerstove is free, btw. If you don't have a copy you really should download one ad fool around with it some.

No new taxes

What utter nonsense. When asked how he expects to pay for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. Bush is claiming that we have so much uneccasary spending that will be easy to cut that we can pay for rebuilding New Orleans and the rest of the Louisiana and Mississipi Gulf Coast.

He' been president for how many years now? And not only does he claim we have a shitload of unneccasry spending, but he claims he knows what it is and can easily cut it?

He is going to screw this up the same way he screwed up the invasion of Iraq, the search for Bin Laden, and the rescue of Katrina victims. This is going to be a huge handout to corporate friends, and you and your grandchildren will pay for it.

Yes, the refuges from the coast need help, hell, I am one. I had just moved back to the coast when the hurricane hit. It didn't really cost me anything, I left before it hit with my car, my rv, my clothes, and pretty much everything I own. My job doesn't depend on where I live. But, I am temporarily displaced, homeless. Personally, I'm not without resources, so I'm landing on my feet, but I understand that many people lost everything, plus lost their jobs. These people do need help. But, they don't need a George Bush boondoggle.

This plan of Bushes is going to cost us more than we can afford.

For today's ad I'll just point you to my website garycarson.com

Playing on pokerstars --

For those of you who don't know, I'm bipolar and sometimes get these little episodes of depression where I don't want to go anywhere or be around people. I've had one of those episodes the last couple of days.

It gives me a chance to piss away some money playing poker online though. I've been playing some on partypoker, truepoker, and pokerstars. But, I'm okay now, got out yesterday and looked at some property in and around Ada Oklahoma.

I'm thinking of making a very lowball offer on a mold infested house in stonewall oklahoma. It's unlivable, it has so much mold. It's empty, has been for months (if not longer)and has major roof leaks. I'm not sure I want to get involved, but I'm thinking about it. If anybody has any experience with getting out mold, let me know.

While I was out I stopped by the Chickasaw Trading Post, in Ada. They have a new 3-table poker room. 3/6 holdem and 2/5 no limit holdem. At 7pm Thursday they had one table of 3/6. The floor told me that they usually had a 2/5 game on days other than Thursday. Rake is 10% to $5 plus $1 which goes to some future bad beat jackpots.

It's an hour and a half away from where I am right now, Ardmore. Before I make an offer on the mold factory I'm driving over to make sure I can get cellular phone and internet connections where that house is. I couldn't get it in other parts of Stonewall but the real estate agent says some parts of town have good cell phone connections. I was in her car, and didn't have my computer with me.

Anyway, I'll try to post some stuff more frequently. I think I'm going to start putting up some political stuff, in addition to the poker stuff.

Here's today's ad.

Poker Stars

Even if you don't want to play, download it and watch the last few events of the WSOOP.

More praise of Winstar ----

One odd thing about the room is that they close from 4 am to 10 am every morning.

That tends to create some golden gambling opportunities from about 3 am to 4 am -- players want to play before the playing time clocks out. Caro wrote about this years ago in Card Player when the rooms in Gardena closed at 2 am. It's a golden time to play.

I've decided to stick around here a while. I checked out some houses for sale in Ardmore on the internet that I'll probably call a realtor about next week, and I found some in Duncan that looked interesting. I might drive over to Duncan Monday afternoon.

South Oklahoma is not a wealthy area. Average household incomes look to be under 30k, the national average is over 40k. That means housing prices are low. My income from writing is independent of where I live, so the housing cost, combined with the lack of tornadoes, and proximity to poker, and central location to other poker spots like Tunica, Alberquerque, Tulsa, and St. Louis, all combine to convince me to just stick around for a while.

Ardmore also has good cellular connections -- I've got a cellualar internet connection and some places (Tunica and Las Vegas are examples) don't have relaible cellular connections. I've found 3 bookstores and one espresso coffee shop (with wi/fi at the espresso shop) in town, so it's not really as anti-intellectual here as one might think.

My mandotory ad for today is for a friends website. I write for it some. KillTheRake.com

I played some 2/5 nolimit at Winstar Thursday night.

It was a great game, but then most people think I never play in a bad game.

They had 3 no limit structures going. 1/2, 2/5, 5/10. All of them have max buyin, all had multiple tables, and they weren't using must move tables. The max buyin is 100 times the big blind. 200 in the 1/2, 500 on the 2/5, and 1,000 in the 5/10. This is the only place I've ever seen a max buyin for a 5/10 blind game. Min buyins are 100,300,500 for the three structures

I made a post on rgp about one othe hands I played last night. I'd be interested in your thoughts on the hand.
Click here for the thread on the hand

I'll finish off with an ad for pokermagazine.com a poker site I write for sometimes.

I made my first visit to WinStar, an Indian Casino off of exit 1 on I35 in Oklahoma, just north of the Texas/Oklahoma border on Wednesday night.

My first impression is very good. The room has about 15 tables, and was about half full. 1/2 and 2/5 nolimit games and 4/8 and 10/20 limit games going. I played in the 10/20 game for a while. It wasn't really a good game but I had that horseshoe jammed up my ass and did pretty well.

The dealers are friendly and competent. The brush is attentive, they have plenty of chip runners and the floor keeps circulating. I didn't see any angle shooting and there wasn't any need for floor rulings the short time I was there.

I'll keep y'all posted.

Here's an ad for my casino poker book.