♠ Friday, September 24, 2004
Some Poker Occurs ... sort of
First, this article from MSNBC on the possible proliferation of ’bots on the various poker sites, including a quote from the creator of WinHoldem (who takes an interesting point of view):
Are poker ‘bots’ raking online pots?
Second, on my life, I'm still not employed. I expected to be interviewed by Soaring Eagle Casino for a dealer position this week, but they seem to be unreachable by phone. I have a promising lead to go back to selling appliances, but they won't be hiring for a couple of weeks. A couple of local car dealers have ads in the paper for salesmen, but it's unlikely they'll provide a draw. 100% commission is fine, but I need money ASAP.
Which leaves poker. Gil has staked me into low-limit games at local casinos lately on occasion, and I've generally booked small wins, half of which I've given to Gil. But on the one occasion where I convinced him to stake me on a day when he had a gig elsewhere, I lost my $100 stake. This was bad for a couple of reasons. First, I didn't win any money. Second, losing Gil's money made him less likely to stake me next time. Third, although I'm sure he doesn't seriously entertain the thought, it has to occur to him that I might possibly have reported to him that I lost it all without actually losing it all. I did lose it all, but there's of course no independent verification of that available. Oh, the problem was 80% poor starting cards and most of the remainder was that when I got good cards they were second-best. My best play was putting a drunken maniac all-in when I had A7, despite missing the flop, and discovering that (as suspected) he couldn't beat my Ace-high. I hit my 7 on the river, but I didn't have to.
A lot of my time lately has been spent at DoylesRoom.com, Doyle Brunson's new poker site. There are some things about it that are a little different, most noticeably that they seat 9-handed tables, but overall it's a reasonably nice room. But why I've been there is that with a bankroll of zero, I have to go there when they're giving away money. Sure, it's pennies, but there is a definite path available from pennies up to dollars. A five dollar bankroll may not be much, but I built it from zero without depositing. A couple of players I've run into in the freerolls claim to have run themselves into reasonable bankrolls from the pennies that are given away, but I find that a little bit hard to believe—if they ran themselves up to $500 bankrolls, what are they doing in the freeroll multitables where the winner gets a whopping fifty-four cents?
I rejoined the world a little bit this week, checking out a couple of the other blogs for the first time in at least a month. Iggy's story about playing poker outside in a hurricane is great; I only wish I was well-bankrolled enough that I could have been there myself.
And that's my life of late. Not very interesting, perhaps, but there it is.
