Tangled Green Thoughts

I've got a new hobby, and it involves the internet, money and gambling. After watching a mini-documentary on professional gambling I went online to an internet gambling site and started playing with play money. I found it exciting. Then I did like I always do when I have an interest in something. I researched like crazy on the internet. I learned theories and strategies and while I read these theories and strategies, I began to see the reasons behind them when I read every theory/strategy (TS) with a finite (ie, probability) + psychology (FP) framework.

When I go to sleep, unfortunately that's when all my deep deliberation occurs and I started inventing my own TS based on a FP framework and in the morning after reading more found out that other people had said the same things, which boosted my confidence in my intuition. Out of all my subjects in school I did best in Finite. Out of all my personality traits, I would compliment myself in being able to put myself in another's shoes and also read people. These are the two things that I think make a good poker player.

So it was then day three of my poker obsession and Mike asked if I wanted to play in a 2 dollar poker tournament online with first prize at 1000. 2 dollars! Why not? These days water costs 2 dollars.

The tournament had 2000 people in it. Exactly 2000 people. Poker tournaments work like this,

Tables of 10 people and as tables kick players out (dude loses 1000 dollars in play poker chips) they will collaspe one table and distribute the 9 people there into all the tables that are missing people. So with 2000 people there were exactly 200 tables of 10 people. My goal was to make top 500 since I had played 3 real Texas Hold'em Poker games in my life and 2 days of internet poker. I was really surprised when our table kept kicking out people and I consistently wasn't one of them.

The tournament started at 9 p.m. Five hours later, 2 a.m., of our table making people go broke I was still playing. I had been playing 5 hours of winning poker, and the two hundred tables had collasped to 11 tables. Losing only two hands when I invested more than 10% of my poker chips and winning every other hand that I went in on over 10%. I had the second highest amount of money on my table which was a guarantee I could last another 20 minutes if I played my style of poker. My hand was two jacks, in poker terms pocket jacks. Of all the possible combinations of starting hands you could be dealt (2 cards from a deck of 52), I had the fourth best hand, arguably the third best hand in my situation. I raised and I had a few people limp in. The flop has nothing but stray garbage cards: 5D, 3H, 10D. The only thing that could beat me right now is if someone had pocket 5s, 3s or 10s (ie, they now have 3 of a kind) so I test them with a big raise, if someone has three of a kind they will most likely reraise me to get the rest of my money, but everyone dropped out except one guy who only calls me (meets my raise and doesn't reraise on me). Another card drops, it's a 9h. Still nothing has a chance to beat me so I put in 1/3 my money and the other guy calls me. The final card flops and its a Js so suddenly on River (the last drop) I have three of a kind. I'm thinking I've won for sure now and go all in. He does not hesitate and goes all in also. My heart stops because of his confidence. We flip cards and he has two spades cards, making a spades flush (5 cards that are all spades). In other words, despite my high raises (the test and then the 1/3 my money) he still risked most of his money in trying to draw spades. That means he put in over half his money when the odds were 82% to 18% in MY favour. I couldn't be angry with myself because I played the right move. If I had won that had I would have made it to the final table of 10 people with a chance at 1000 dollars (anyone who makes the top five wins hundreds).

Anyways, since then I have played on sit down tables, which is basically a single table of 10 people and the last man standing wins. Out of four games with my brother, we've won two of them (6 dollars to enter 25 dollars a win, 15 for second and 10 for third).
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UPDATE: I entered another tournament of 2000 people (it's been 2 days) I only lasted 2 hours this time (instead of five) and placed 440 (instead of 110). Then I got into an argument with my brother because he wanted me to go ALL IN on a card because I was beginning to look poor and was running out of time (ever so often you have to put money in called blinds, which is done automatically and before you see your cards, so because of my low money I would soon run out of money if I don't play). I wanted to wait for a better hand so I folded when another guy went ALL IN. My brother kept on harping for the next five minutes about how I should have went all in. So I just swore off playing internet poker with him. I just do shit like that and I don't care.

I guess the poker hobby had a pretty early death (it's not completely six feet under yet!). Now my movie hobby will likely make a comeback (which in the past had took over my cooking hobby, which took over my gadgetry hobby, which.....)