1. 2008-01-04 21:09:19

   Full Tilting: You Can Play on Poker After Dark

   I made progress on my goals for this year and signed up for an account at Full Tilt the other night. I didn't have any money in the account yet, so I started looking around for free tournaments. I stumbled into a "Poker After Dark" qualifier free roll sit-n-go, so I entered that.

   It turns out Full Tilt is doing some sort of 3-level tournament structure to qualify one person to play in an episode of Poker After Dark for $120k. They have 180- and 360-person NL Hold'em sit-n-go tournaments, where the winner qualifies for another tournament (which can also be entered by spending your "Full Tilt Points", whatever those are). If you win this second-tier tournament, you then play in the 5000-player qualifier to get on TV. Pretty good for free, but quite a long shot.

   I got roped into a 360-player tournament when I should have been going to bed, and I accidentally ended up playing into 6th place 2 hours later. I went out calling another player's bluff with KJ at a 976 flop when I had T7. River was a J, of course :p

   Last night I decided to play about an hour of no-limit cash games. Stephen suggested I buy in at a level where I have 20 buy-ins, so my $300 account allowed me to comfortably play 5c/10c (max buy-in of $10).

   I started up 2 tables and mostly folded for a while, but found myself itching to play some hands, which is not good - I wanted to play like this $10 was important. So I started up 2 more tables to help me keep focused. This worked well, as I spent less time thinking of reasons to call with hands and more time making sure I was keeping up with all the tables. I folded 90% of my hands pre-flop, raised with good hands and/or good position with the rest, and made most of my post-flop decisions based on the betting patterns and odds.

   Early on, I had only won one or two small pots and was down on all but one table. I got AJh in late position, raised the unopened pot, and the button and big blind called. The flop was 992 rainbow, so I decided to take a stab. The button folded, and the BB went all in. My first reaction was to grudgingly fold, but I decided I just didn't buy it, and called down the QJ for the win :) That was the first decent pot I won, so it was a good confidence boost.

   After playing for a while, I noticed that people frequently folded to pre-flop raises. I had AA twice and didn't see a flop, which was not what I was expecting. Conversely, once the flop was out, people called a fair amount, but usually folded on the river. My take is that the people were playing tight pre-flop, but once they had a draw on the flop, they wanted to see the river. One hand I raised with KQ in late position and had one caller, the flop was 955 with two clubs, and he check-called the flop and turn and folded when an ace-of-not-clubs hit on the river and I fired the third round.

   One more: I got T9c in middle position and I limped in to a 3-way pot. The flop comes out 762 with two clubs and the big blind immediately over bets the pot all in. I had a hard time giving that play credit, especially with my flush, gut-shot, and potential overcard draws. I called, but then the button called, too. Oops. BB shows K6o and button shows 44. I'm a luck-sack and catch the Kc on the river.

   I made $24 plus a yet-to-be-determined rakeback. Not bad for my first time out. Thanks for reading :)

   Posted by Jason M at 2008-01-04 21:09:19

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