The All in Poker Radio show is hosted by Vic Porcelli who is joined in the studio by Big Slick Andy Kazen, The Young Gun Aggressor Craig Hogard and The Insider Cody Duffey. Produced by Game On Network Entertainment the show can be downloaded as podcast at All In Podomatic and listened to live each Saturday through the Team 1380 website.

In show 12 Vic and the guys (now guest starring Paul “Hollywood” Peterson) are joined by Jonathan Little of SNGICONS.com, Mark (that’s me!!!) from Poker Bankroll Blog and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow famous poker pro and author of “Check raising the devil”.

The All In Radio Poker Show team’s weekly results 0:00-6:00

Craig played aggressive this week even for his standards and didn’t do too well. In one tournament he actually busted out in the 1st hand with JJ against AQ all in preflop. Good to see it happens to others as well.

Paul mostly played freerolls and a good point was made by Craig I believe that “goofing around online” in freeroll and low buyin tournaments will develop you as a poker player since the more hands you see, the more experience you get.

Vic played Full Tilts SNG madness and qualified to a 50000$ guaranteed tourney. In the same sentence he whipped up a couple of bad beat stories despite his crusade to eliminate them. What can I say….join the dark side Vic LOL.

WSOP update with Jonathan Little 6:00-23:00

Jonathan Little was asked how he plays pocket 10’s in different situations, here’s what he answered.

• Raise if you are in middle position and no one has entered the pot before you
• Raise 5-7BB if you are in middle position and have two or three limpers before you. Fold if you get limp re-raised
• Call if there is a raise behind you and see if you can catch a good flop

Jonathan does not like re-raising in the third situation:

“You are only going to get a lot of action when you are beat and you are going to be beat a lot more often than not” which I think is very true.

Jonathan also advised Vic to loosen up his game. In MTT’s you have to end up in the top 99% to get real money, so you need to add more variance to you game.

WSOP classic clip 23:00-27:30

Peter Eastgate vs. Ivan Demidov in the 2008 WSOP Main Event final. Peter Eastgate won with a straight on the turn against Demidov’s two pair.

Interview with Mark from Poker Bankroll Blog 27:30-36:00

My 10 minutes of fame. I talk about two articles from the blog namely The Poker Bestiary and Loco Poker. Vic and the guys seemed to like the interview, so I am pretty sure I will be on the air again mid July.

Interview with Mike “The Mouth Matusow” 36:00-46:00

Mike Matusow has a new book out titled “check raising the devil” where he shares his life’s experiences. It’s been a tough life with drug and alcohol problems, jail time, ADHD and Bi Polar condition.

Read the book and discover that the life of a Poker Pro is not a luxurious as it’s cut out to be.

During the interview the  now famous fold made by Romanello in the WSOP 2008 main event was mentioned. You have to check this out on You Tube. Romanello folded JJ on a AJK1010 flop against Geller’s KK.

Does he have the nuts or is he just nuts? 46:00-50:00

In this soon to be classic radio show piece we join Roland de Wolfe and Justin Bonomo in the WSOP 2008 5000$ buyin Mixed Hold’em event.

Roland de Wolfe has pocket 6s and calls both flop and turn bets made by Justin Bonomo on a 8872Q board.

Justin makes a massive 200000 chip river bet, but does he have the nuts or is he just nuts?

Go to All In Podomatic and find out.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

The most exiting thing that’s happened in my short but glorious poker blogging career took place yesterday. I had 10 minutes of fame on The All In Radio Poker Show together with Vic Porcelli, Andy Kazen, Craig Hogard and Cody Duffey. I think I was the first European on the show which makes me kind of proud. We talked about some of my favorite blog posts and about poker and blogging in general. It was all over in a heartbeat, but now I can say that I have been on the same live radio show as Mike Matusow (he came on later in the show). You can download podcasts of the All In Radio Poker Show at All In Podomatic and listened to it live each Saturday through the Team 1380 website. Look out for episode 12 that should come online in a couple of days. It will feature me…yeah:-)

As for the garden it is doing great. Everything is growing at an amazing pace since the last couple of weeks have been dominated by warm and sunny weather. The first summer flowers have started blooming as you can see in the last picture. They are rather boring so we are hoping the others will be nicer. I estimate that our tomatoes will be ripe for picking in a month or so.

If you haven’t already heard the news that the Ultimate Bet online poker room announced several days ago then you’re going to now. Ultimate Bet which is the poker room where both Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke are sponsored has made a shocking announcement which is sure to fire up any poker players who play on Ultimate Bet.

If you are a poker player already at Ultimate Bet then you know that they have been running promotions all year long in order to offer as many WSOP Main Event packages as they possibly could to their players. They ended up sending quite a few players to Vegas this year and they just recently told the world that they will be paying the winner of the 2009 WSOP Main Event an extra $10 million. There is only one catch to the deal, in order to be eligible for the $10 million cheque you need to have qualified for the Main Event on Ultimate Bet

Since most players who will be playing in the Main Event didn’t earn their seat from playing in Ultimate Bet satellite events most of you won’t be able to earn this reward. I have really started hoping that someone from Ultimate Bet wins the Main Event because I really want to see Ultimate Bet have to make the payout to the player.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you just won the WSOP Main Event receive the first place prize of almost $10 million and your bracelet and then on top of that receive another $10 million? It could happen this year and although it is rather unlikely to happen it will sure be the talk of the tournament until every single player who qualified from Ultimate Bet is knocked out. There is no doubt that Ultimate Bet was just looking for some media and definitely don’t want to have to make the payout which is why I hope that someone from UB wins.

The 2009 WSOP is a big season for Hellmuth because he won his first Main Event bracelet exactly 20 years ago. There is no doubt that you will see Phil being his normal self this year at the Main Event as he will be looking to make headlines with a victory. Make sure that if you’re going to be watching the WSOP Main Event this year that you cheer on the guys from Ultimate Bet as I know a lot of people want to see this $10 million payday.

This news post was written by Scott Jack author of the Poker Review Blog. The blog offers poker reviews and the rules to numerous poker games including Texas Holdem Rules.

This news is brought to you by Scott Jack the author of a Poker Blog.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

The All in Poker Radio show is hosted by Vic Porcelli who is joined in the studio by Big Slick Andy Kazen, The Young Gun Agressor Craig Hogard and The Insider Cody Duffey. Produced by Game On Network Entertainment the show can be downloaded as podcast at All In Podomatic and listened to live each Saturday through the Team 1380 website.

In show 11 Vic and the guys are joined by Kenneth Smaron of SNGICONS.com, Mike Eise who has recently won his first WSOP bracelet and Warwick Dunnett author of Pokerwizards.

The All In Radio Poker Show team’s weekly results 0:00-3:00

Andy AKA Big Slick, Craig and The Insider Cody Duffey played a live game at Fox and Hound. Cody lived up to his name hitting an inside straight draw. Craig was doing well in an online tournament when he suddenly realized that his neighbour and buddy from high school was playing the same tournament. His buddy ended up knocking him out of the tournament. Any lessons learned from that LOL?

WSOP updates from Kenneth Smaron 3:00-9:30

Kenneth Smaron is one of the people behind SNGICONS.com as well as a WSOP tournament player. He has already taken down 20000$ of winnings at the WSOP this year and still has two tournaments left: the 5000$ buyin Texas Holdem No Limit 6 max tournament and the WSOP Main Event.

Vic and Kenneth discuss the differences between playing short-handed 6max SNGs/MTTs and regular full ring tables with 9 or 10 players. According to Kenneth there is a lot more skill involved in 6max games due the the higher number of pots won on post flop play and the higher number of hands played in general.

If you want to learn from the best SNG players in the world from the many videos available at SNGICONS.com.

WSOP classic clip 9:30-13:30

Joseph Hachem is heads up against Steve Dannemann in the 2005 WSOP Main Event. Steve raises 700000 with A3 and Hachem calls with 73. The flop is 456 giving Hachem the straight. Turn comes an Ace and both players end up all in. Hachem takes the title. I particularly liked a piece of conversation between Hachem and Steve during the turn action:

Hachem: Are you having fun?

Steve: Oh my god it’s a ball

Good stuff!

Mike Eise’s WSOP win 13:30-31:00

Mike Eise won a 1500$ buyin Texas Holdem No Limit event at the WSOP buyin and on the show he talks about how he made it that far.

Mike Eise set benchmarks throughout the tournament such as:

• Make it to the dinner break
• Make it through the first day
• Make it to the money
• Make it to the next money level
• Make it to the final table

When asked where you draw the line between playing to cash or playing to win Eise replied that in order to play to win you need to realize that a tournament has different stages which require adaption of your game. Along the way you can’t be scared. Pick your punches and go for it. If you are in a situation where the right thing to do is to put your tournament life on the line, then do it.

Keep in mind though that the optimal route to tournament success is getting enough chips during the tournament so you can avoid ending up in situations where your tournament life is on the line.

Come final table Eise recommended that you treat it as any other final table you have played in. If you have the big stack start pushing people around and setting the pace so everyone becomes aggressive. At this point you can afford to sit back a bit and watch your opponents knock each other out

Another important point Mike mentioned was to continuously keep your table image in mind. He maintained a table image of a tight player throughout the tournament which gave him plenty of opportunities to steal pots.

Bankroll management with Warwick Dunnett 32:00-until end of show

Warwick Dunnett is the author of Pokerwizards. In this book he among other things interviewed famous poker tournament pros to hear their take on bankroll management. According to Mike Sexton, the biggest sin in poker in not having enough bankroll. But exactly how large a bankroll do you need in order to play say 1000$ buyin tournaments?

Apart from the obvious answer from Mike Sexton: “If you want to play a 1000$ tournament you need 1000$”, there was a large spread in the bankroll sizes suggested by the pros. Here are the numbers:

Daniel Negreanu : 50000$

Mike Sexton : No less than 20000$

Kathy Liebert: 40000$

Marcel Lüske, Dan Harrington and Chris Ferguson: 100000$

To hear the show yourself go to All In Podomatic

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

• To start winning enough money to pay for vacations and buyins to larger tournaments.

• To be able to buy a really cool car (for some reason I get the urge to play poker whenever I see a sweet looking car pass me on the street).

• The fact that the game changes nature throughout the tournament and that you have to adapt to these changes.

• The chance of winning big with a small initial investments.

• The feeling of accomplishment when you reach a final table having beaten a large field of players.

• The feeling of accomplishment when you outplay an opponent.

• The fact that playing tournaments can be seen as stand-alone events with an upper time limit as compared to grinding SNGs or cash game tables which are ongoing events without time limits. IMO this makes tournament play less obligating.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

If you’re looking for a free poker bankroll, check out our review of PokerRoomSchool.

• Keep preflop winning percentages in mind if you lose an all in against an opponent. If for example you are all in pre flop with 88 vs. QK suited, hit a set on the flop but lose to a runner runner straight this is NOT a bad beat. You only had a roughly 50% chance of winning preflop and your opponent’s runner runner flush is just one of the hands included in his 50% chance of winning.

• If you bust out of a tournament or lose a large pot to an opponent who makes the worst call ever and hits his magic card on the river it often helps to blow off some steam by entering a small stakes tournament and go all in on every hand.

• If you feel angry, frustrated or robbed take a break until you feel ready to play again. Ready to play means that you are able to write “nh” in the chat without feeling any resentment towards an opponent who busts you out with a hand that was clearly not nice.

• Realize that poker is a game of variance. If you are 80% favorite to win a hand, you will lose 1 out of 5 times. The are the mathematical facts of the game. The best you can do is get your money in as a favorite

• Have a water bottle next to your computer. If you have a tendency to take your anger out on things surrounding you, squeeze the water bottle instead. It will save you money in the long run.

• You remember the times your opponent’s beat you as underdog, but forget the times you win as underdog. Keep track of your hands using the different poker software applications available. This way you will be able to quantify your lond term winning percentages and convince yourself that the universe is not against you.

• If you are a good player you will exit most tournaments / lose most pots as a favorite. Get used to it!

• Learn to recognize the signs of tilt such as calling to fast without thinking through the situation, chasing draws against the pot odds, calling river bets in frustration when you know you are beat etc….Have the discipline to stop playing whenever you spot these signs.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

If you’re looking for a free poker bankroll, check out our review of PokerRoomSchool.

The All in Poker Radio show is hosted by Vic Porcelli who is joined in the studio by Big Slick Andy Kazen, The Young Gun Agressor Craig Hogard and The Insider Cody Duffey. Produced by Game On Network Entertainment the show can be downloaded as podcast at All In Podomatic and listened to live each Saturday through the Team 1380 website.

In show 10 Vic and the guys are joined by Jonathon Little, 2 times World Poker Tour Champion and Player of the Year in 2007, who provides updates from the WSOP.

WSOP update 0:00 - 10:30

Vic started out asking Jonathon how to mentally get through the valleys that always occur when playing poker.

• Take it easy, relax
• The money can’t matter. If you’re playing for scared money you will never do well.
• Suck it up, keep on trying and don’t quit

Later on Jonathon talked about his site SNGIcons.com where you can get professional help on how to improve your SNG game.

One of the important points that came up was the importance of acquiring hand histories from the winning players and sending your own hand histories to other players for feedback.

WSOP classic clip 10:30 - 14:30

2003 WSOP Main Event final table heads up between Sam Farha and the rookie at the time Chris Moneymaker.

Poker Quiz and Poker night at Fox and Hound in St. Louis 14:30 - 19:00

Vic and the guys played a two table tournament at Fox and Hound in St. Louis and gave out a 100$ gift certificate for the Fox and Hound in their poker quiz. The question this week was:

What professional poker player has the most WSOP bracelets?

The insider report by Cody Duffey 20:00 -26:30

The Government’s battle against online poker players in America continues as 30 million $ was confiscated from online poker payment processors by the US Attorney’s Office. Many player’s deposits at Full Tilt and Poker Stars have simply disappeared.

Vic stated: “America invented poker, so let us play” LOL.

Charity Tourney hosted by Josh Brown of The St Louis Rams for Cystic Fibrosis 26:30 - 28:00

5000$ Charity Tournament for Cystic Fibrosis held at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, St. Louis on Tuesday June 16th at 6:00 PM.

Poker Strategy, playing pocket 10s 28:00 - 36:00

Vic and the guys discuss how to play small pocket pairs in general and pocket 10s in general. Most players agree that you should limp with small pocket pairs, but this brings up the question:

What is a small pocket pair?

What do you think? Let’s have a discussion in the comment section.

Does he have the nuts, or is he nuts 36:00 - end

High Stakes Poker, Daniel Negraneu vs. Barry Greenstein are head to head. Barry flops a set of sixes, but a flush draw comes on the river. Daniel goes all in:

Does he have the nuts, or is he nuts?

Go to All In Podomatic to find out.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

A couple of days ago I played in a 6000$ guaranteed Multi table tournament on Titan poker which is my favorite site for tournament poker. We were down to 33 from around 1200. Average is about 80000 chips. Blinds are 2000/4000. I have 70000 chips.

I pick up AK suited (hearts, the best suit possible) in SB. BB has me covered with 108000 chips.

UTG+1 raises all in for 40000 chips, the next player who is short stacked also calls.

Do you fold AKs in this situation, do you call, or do you push all in? Let’s have a discussion in the comment section of this post.

Now back to the garden:

As you may have read from my Twitter updates we have had a lot of rain lately which has been really bad news for our little garden. First of all, most of our new summer flower seedlings apparently are not designed for heavy rain (if you are reading this Mother Nature please take notes; you didn’t do a good job on these particular species). Whenever it rains heavily they are all flattened to the ground. Here’s where our second major problem has come into play. Snails. Apparently snails have some kind of radar / sensory organ that can detect flattened seedlings. Each morning after heavy rain I have killed up to 25 snails that were having a feast in our garden. Unfortunately the rumor of our yummy garden has spread; now I have to deal with snails every morning even though it hasn’t rained. It’s not all bad news…..I have devised a very cruel and efficient way of killing the snails involving pair of toothpicks.

I also suspect that the massive amount of rain we have had lately is also responsible for the appearance of multiple brown patches on our tomato plants. However this may also be due to some disease that I don’t know about. The life of a hobby Gardner is challenging to say the least.

The main bed of our garden. The Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus) are coming along nicely along the fence. Quite a few of the summer flower seedlings have survived the continuous snail attack.

Our two tomato plants

Close up of the biggest tomato we have right now. I estimate that it will be ripe in 3 weeks time. Notice the brown patches on the leaves I mentioned before. Does anyone know what this is?

Our small summer bed. The seedlings come from a packet of mixed summer flower seeds. There’s a whole bunch of different plants there. It will be fun to see what they look like later.

My plan for this article series is to gain some insight into my motivation for playing small stakes tournament poker in order to justify the many hours I have spent (wasted?) on this particular interest of mine. In addition I want to attempt to come up with an alternative approach, or strategy if you will, for playing small stakes MTTs. Although 1 good results out of 120 tournaments is more or less in line with what I would expect from my previous article on the probabilty of winning a poker tournament, I can’t shake the feeling that my usual strategy is not optimal and that there is a better approach out there waiting to be applied.

I just thought of a good business world analogy to my poker strategy considerations. In 2005 W. Chan Kim and Reneé Mauborgne from the INSEAD business school published a business strategy book titled “Blue Ocean Strategy - How to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant”. Basically they define the market universe through two metaphors, red and blue ocean. I have copy pasted the definitions of red and blue ocean from Wikipedia below:

Red Ocean

Red Oceans are all the industries in existence today—the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody. Hence, the term red oceans

Blue Ocean

Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today—the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.

The definition of the red ocean market universe was a real eye opener for me because it fits perfectly with an average online poker tournament environment. It also made me realize that my current poker strategy has been confined to the red ocean universe. What I really should be doing is thinking out of the box and come up with a blue ocean poker strategy for beating small stakes online MTTs.

In my next articles I will try to build on this idea and also probe whether analyzing my own motivation for playing poker can result in new insights.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

If you haven’t already, it might be a good idea to read the first installment in McTap’s NY Giants Game Challenge before moving on to the update below.

Just a quick little update on my NY Giants Game Challenge, and a some other points of interest. See my blog for more updates.

After being excited to go back and play on the fishy Mansion tables 12 days ago, and also to be able to bonus hunt a little quicker than on Poker Stars, reality quickly set in. It took me 7 days (12 tourneys) before I actually cashed and it was only a 4th place that paid back the BI only. Another 2 days of nothing before I finally started making the money again. Over the past few days, I managed to make all the money I lost back and then some (see BR stats on left side panel).

I am also over 40% of the way to my first $10 bonus, which I figure should hit within the next 10 days or so, depending on how much I play this long weekend. At this pace, I should be able to hit $30 in bonus (of the $200) before the end of June. If I can continue to increase my BR, I should be able to start double tabling these games to increase my bonus points faster. The problem right now is that playing in a $5+1 SNG is 1/20 of my BR (factoring in exchange rate) and that is not proper BR management. I did try the $2+0.40 SNG games but they were such a donkfest that I couldn’t play my normal game and win. I also couldn’t degrade myself to pushing OOP with any 2 cards, like most of the players seem to do at this level. So I decided to move back to the $5 games and have been striving since.

One thing that has come up a few times over the past 12 days is people getting their money in good when they are short stacked but losing to players who have pot odds, and the chance to knock someone out, call. I am totally for this. If you have the chips to call some one’s all-in and it doesn’t cost you more than 3 BB or leave you as the SS, then do it with almost any 2. If calling means committing more than 30% of your stack, then it is not worth it unless you have a strong hand, especially since the person going all-in probably has a pair or better, which would probably include at least 1 face card.

Case in point, on the bubble and I’m the BB. I have about 2500 and the blinds are 100-200. SS is UTG with 550. He shoves it all in. It folds to me. Now it is only going to cost me 350 more for a chance to win a pot of 850. Almost 2.5:1 and I also get a chance to POP the bubble. If I call, I will still have over 2100 chips and in the SB next. I look down at my cards and I have Q8o. I don’t even care about my cards, as I am getting the right price to call, so I do. SS flips over JJ and the first thing in my mind is I have 1 over -> 3 outs. The flop comes A88. BINGO! His hand doesn’t improve on the turn or river and he’s out. He starts losing it, asking how I could call with such a horrible hand. I respond, “priced in” which he doesn’t seem to understand. He starts dropping insults and such and I just ignore him. The part that got me is that he was so mad about the situation (bad call on my part in his opinion) that it made me think he takes this game a little more seriously than the average weekend player who’s only there for the fun. But his reaction to what happened made me think that he doesn’t understand the odds and game (I would have made that call with 72o). If you are going to get mad about a situation, try to understand what’s going on and why hands are being played. That should loosen the tilt edge a bit.

Another situation where I’m on the other side. Last night we are on the bubble, blinds are 200-400. I’m sitting with about 3000 chips and in the SB. BB is the SS with about 1200 (800 after posting). It folds to me and I look down at 88. I push the BB/SS all-in. He calls with T8s. I’m way ahead. Flop comes Q4T. OUCH! I don’t improve and SS doubles up. I comment on the nice catch and he apologizes. I respond that I am cool with it as I would have done the same thing. I understand why he called, as I could have been stealing with any 2 decent cards and he had a suited 1-gap connected cards. He probably figured he had ‘live’ cards and he was getting SS, so standing up to the blind steals was eventually going to be needed. Like I told him, I totally understand. How did I do you ask, well I eventually went out on the bubble as I called the aggressive CL when he raised my BB for the 3rd time in a row with ATo, only to lose to his Q6o that hit a 6 on the turn. Oh well, all part of the game.

Anyway, even though I’m off my pace a little, the BR is going up and should continue as I keep playing my B-game at this level.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

If you’re looking for a free poker bankroll, check out our review of PokerRoomSchool.

See you on the felt.