JamesSlusher.com

If you ask Emily which online poker site she prefers she will tell you Bodog.  She is quick to point out that she likes it much better than FullTilt.  

I’m either a horrible father or the best EVAR.

During an IM conversation with my brother I had a revelation about poker:

I think that the difference between good and great (poker players) is that the good ones understand the chance aspect and the great ones embrace it.

The best way to beat the donks you see online is to not play like them.

I didn’t win a bracelet, so now I have to go back and build tires.

Sigh.

In any competitive field there will inevitably be striations of talent.  Poker is the same as any other sport.  There is the cream of the crop that includes names like Sam Farha, Hoyt Corkins and Freddy Deeb, not to mention the mega-stars like Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson.  Those are the A-listers.

With an A list, there is going to be a B list and even a C list all ranked in descending order in both talent and fame.  Frankly, the pros that I was playing with were at best B-listers and more likely C-listers.  That day there was also a $5000 Pot Limit Omaha tournament going on that had the cream of the crop in it.  It not only benefited me as a player, since I didn’t have to play them, it also benefited me as a fan boy since on the breaks and such I would end up running into them as they did their thing.  I had a nice little chat with Freddy Deeb about how cold they kept the poker room and which sweatshirt in the WSOP store was the best.

So most of my interactions with pros was with B and C-listers.  I already mentioned knocking Fred Goldberg out, who owns a bracelet, so I don’t want to insult his standing in the poker community.  I know that having a bracelet doesn’t automatically make you the best.  I don’t think much of the skills of Jamie Gold or Jerry Yang, and they both hold Main Event bracelets. I will leave it up to others to decide what list Mr. Goldberg is on.

Other pros (and well onto the B-list) that I played include Greg Mueller, Bernard Lee (who knocked me out) and a plethora of C-listers like Raymond Davis.

The thing about these lower level pros is that they are the cockiest bunch of goofballs you will ever meet.  they talk smack constantly, drop the names of the A-listers constantly in order to sound as if they are peers and generally try to intimidate everybody at the table.  The thing about them is that I don’t think in general they are that great.  I think they have more opportunities to play, which gives them a results edge, but for the most part they weren’t knocking me out with their spectacular play.  So the edge that they try to get over talented amateurs is just trying to verbally bully them.  Let me give you an example.

I sit down at a table after being moved and casually remark at how quiet it was there.  I’ve been sitting for less than a minute.  This cat two seats to my right starts remarking about how we’ve got a live one at the table (referring to me and in poker parlance it isn’t a compliment).  Take a look at him.  His name is Raymond Davis.  He goes on for a minute or two in assessing my skills without ever having seen me play a hand, so I can only figure that he wants to tilt me and establish a pecking order in one shot.  I let him have his say and when he finishes I look him in the eye and say (paraphrasing) “Nice outfit, are you supposed to be the last King of Scotland?  Or are you just a really old Eagle Scout?”  To go along with that weird shirt he was wearing jeans that had red sequins running along the stitching around the pockets and down the leg.  I told him, “By the way, Elton John says nice pants”.  After that the talk was much more cordial.  Uneventful even.  They (he and Greg Mueller) went on to start ragging on other C-list pros like Fun Bobby, who was busy getting punked out (scroll down to We’ll Buy the Kid Dinner) at the table behind me.

Thing is, I can play against guys like that all day.  That kind of needling doesn’t bother me (I’m Dale Slusher’s son of God’s sake) and doesn’t distract me from my game.  I look forward to playing them again.

Check out this poker face.  

I’m back from Vegas and my WSOP event.  I finished in the money!  I got knocked out in 236th place which was good for a payout of $2770.  With the initial buy-in of $1500 it means I made about a $100 an hour playing poker that day.  None too shabby.

I only lost 3 showdowns all day long.  I was very very happy with my play.  Of course, the last showdown that I lost was an all-in bet on my part.  I had AA and my opponent (Bernard Lee) had 99.  The flop came 953 and the rest is history.

I knocked several players out, one of whom is named Fred Goldberg who happens to be the proud owner of a WSOP bracelet.  So even if that had been it, I would still have felt like I accomplished my goal of being able to keep up with the pros.

One of the coolest things about this is that I am now a part of WSOP history.  Check it out.  That’s forever.

Thanks to friends and family that supported me and gave me kind words of encouragement.  Thank you most of all to Marilyn, Emily and Jonathan who are my biggest fans and loudest cheerleaders. I couldn’t do it without your help.

I’m going back next year and I will be a better player when I get there.  Let’s see if we can’t push some of those numbers up.

Tomorrow is the big day.  I’m headed for Vegas!  I’m very excited about it, as this is quite possibly a once in a lifetime chance for me.  Okay, that might be exaggerated, but how I do in this will definitely affect my chances of doing similar things in the future.

I’m playing in World Series of Poker Event #27, it is a No Limit Hold ‘Em event with a $1500 buy-in.  It should have roughly 2500 to 3000 entrants.  That is admittedly bigger than the biggest field I have ever beat.  I won a tourney with 1800 entrants once.  I finished 23rd in a tourney with 1968 entrants last Saturday.  But I can definitely do this.

What I’m extremely thrilled about is that Marilyn is willing to let me try.  $1500 is a big deal to her.  It’s a big deal to everyone, but we are talking about a woman who agonizes over $5 decisions at times.  I’m saying it is a BIG deal.  She is also the most risk averse person I have ever met. So the fact she is letting me gamble a huge amount of money is a vote of confidence (or at least acceptance) in my poker skills.  It means a lot to me.

So Happy Vegas Eve everyone.  Wish me well.

My 20 year (!) class reunion is coming up Friday.  I’m really excited about it and have been prepping for it for months now.  I’m down to 190 pounds and I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for years.  So other than having to admit I build tires for a living, I shouldn’t embarrass myself too much.  Well, no more than normal.

June 13th is rapidly approaching and that is when I go to Las Vegas to play in WSOP Event 27.  It’s a $1500 buy-in No Limit Hold ‘Em event.  It starts on the 14th and runs 3 days.  I’m hoping to win the last hand of the tourney, so I should be finishing up Monday evening some time.  Of course, anything can (and will) happen in poker so I could end up having 3 days to bum around.  In that case, my buddy Todd (who is going with me, but not playing in the tournament) and I will hang out in Vegas, see the sights, gamble a little and drink too much.  I’m in the tournament to win it, but as long as I make wise decisions and get my money in ahead, I will be happy with however it turns out.

So both of these things are coming up and are big deals for me, but right now it is simply wait, wait, wait.

Poker is a funny game.  There are all kind of games in this world and most of them have a single optimal strategy that if followed all but guarantee a high rate of success.  Tournament No Limit Hold Em Poker isn’t really like that because of several complicating factors.  First, there are up to 10 people at the table all playing different strategies to begin with.  There may be a single optimal strategy against any single player, but you have 8 others to contend with and unless you are the last guy to act, they can throw a monkey wrench into your plans at any moment.  Second, it is a game of incomplete information.  You don’t know what the other guy is playing, it could be gold or it could be garbage.  You have to guess based on what you have seen him/her play before and any clues he/she might give you.  And those clues might be a deception.  That’s where bluffing comes in.  Other people at the table can lie to you and it is perfectly acceptable. It’s this part of the game that is so devious.  Let me tell you a story of what just happened to me and how I got suckered by my own trick.

I play mostly premium hands in the early goings of a tourney.  By premium I mean AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ.  Those are the hands I will definitely enter any pot at any position with.  If it is especially cheap to get into a pot and I have a good position, I might play about any two cards.  Given 10 to 1 or better pot odds, I will play anything on the button (if you are confused by any of this poker jargon, go here for a good glossary).   If I win one out of every eleven times I play like that, I’m breaking even.  Anything better and I’m ahead of the game.  A side benefit of this is that people see these junky hands when I get lucky and win and think I play crap all of the time.  These cheap hands make me more money later on.  A short while ago on PokerStars I was playing in a tourney that I was dominating.  I hit with my good hands and I hit with my bad hands and I was coasting.  A few people were out and the second place chipleader was to my immediate right.  He called a raise and went all the way to a showdown with a 2 4 offsuit.  That info stuck with me.  What kind of moron calls a raise with a 2 4 off?  A big one that’s who.  Two hands later I have AJ off and I raise about 3 times the big blind.  He reraises me about the same amount.  Now I’ve seen him play crap, so I reraise him All in.  He has JJ.  I don’t hit my ace and I go from first to worst in one hand.  That’s the power of deception and he used my own trick against me. Bastard.  Minus that 2 4 hand, I would have just thought that he had a high pair (which would have been correct) and would have laid my hand down.

There is a third component to this game that I will talk about in a different post as it deserves it’s own attention: Luck.  Adding that in, you’ve got a brutal game.