Friday, August 3, 2007

I'm a 4 star playa

Before I forget... I'm so bad with pimpin the tourneys... I mean I'm just inconsistent with my reminders for Mookie and MATH, the two blogger tourneys that I usually make a point to donate... errrr play in. So, here it is. The Big Game, hosted by the big man himself. Sunday night at 9:30pm ET. $75 buy-in. Come on everyone. So many ways to win the $75 token if you can't buy in. Easiest, IMO, is to take down the $8+0.70 2 table SNG for a $26 token and then parlaying that into a $75 token via the 2 table 18 person $26 buy-in SNG (top 5 in each gets the token). The next "easiest" is the nightly token frenzy where you can buy in for a mere $14+1 for your chance to win the $75 token. So, let's go get that and play in the biggest buy-in blogger event.



The past few days, I've mentioned that I wasn't into it. For some reason, I just kinda got tired and the work tilt affected the way I played poker... or rather, the way I didn't. I really didn't want to do anything... I preferred mindless activities like playing video games.

Speaking of mindless activities, navigating youtube is always a good mindless activity... check this out from yesterday's x-games. This fall is sick. As is the 720 he completed before that...



I'm not a X-game fan or anything... I'm not against it but I don't watch it with any kind of consistency. But I do know how sick these guys are and the tricks that they can do with their boards, bikes, etc. One summer, my friend and I worked the X-games when they came to Richmond. And I had no idea how high the ramps were and how much air time they get using those ramps. It's very sick. So, that fall was like 50 feet... apparently he walked away from it and had to be talked into going to the hospital... That's one tough kid.

Ok, so enough nonpoker stuff. Can you tell these days that my blog is really starting to be an outlet for me?

So, after I wrote the blog about how www.bigstack.com didn't account for satellites and as such was very inaccurate, I received numerous comments agreeing to that effect. Now, as part of that, KOD gave me a new site. Officialpokerrankings.com. And that site seems to be a lot more accurate. It might still be wrong so I'd love to hear people's comments on that. Well, according to that site, I'm a 4 star tournament player. Sounds good right? Until I tell you that it's not on a normal 5 star scale but rather, it's a 10 star scale...



The only thing I don't like about this site is if you are negative, it doesn't show you how much so for a guy like me, I have no way to actually vouch the accuracy or compare with my PT stats.

But check out how all the other bloggers are doing. Now, it appears more true. Or at least, it's right on with the expectations I have about most of the bloggers I know. No real surprises except once again, KOD distinguishes himself amongst the bloggers as he's listed in the top 250 MTT players according to that site. Seriously... why are there haters out there? Are you jealous of him? Or is he an ass in person? (Chad, I kid, obv)

Oh and one last thing I wanted to throw out there about tournament vs cash. Aside from my point of they are two very different games, I do agree that it's so much harder to be a winner in tournaments than cash games. Everyone could fool themselves into thinking they're not doing so bad by justifying via satellites and all that but in the end, there's only a select few who could truly make money in tournaments, only because of the number of entrants in it. Yeah, everyone might be one big score away from being in the positive but if someone plays 100 tourneys, win 1, and is +$100 net, is that person a winning tournament player? In my book, no. Just cuz you're up at one point doesn't make you a winning player without showing consistency. So, taking a snapshot and saying I'm a winning player is as silly as one of my friends saying in fantasy football that "if the season ended today, I'd be in the playoffs." But based on the blogs, I think we all know who the winning playas are in tournaments. Those are the guys who could do it night in and night out and show some semblance of consistency in a game that's virtually impossible to be consistent.

I think it's easier to be a winning cash game player but that's not to say that one is easier than the other. I know, I know. You're now thinking that that's self contradictory. It's not that. There are many layers of skill needed in cash games and there's only a select few who could continue to be positive at higher levels. I hear so many people say that they could do better if they were playing $1-2NL instead of $.25/.50NL or 5-10NL instead of 1-2NL. And their justification is that they won't suffer as many bad beats because the players should be better at that level and so their AK doesn't get cracked by K5 on a king high board. What they don't realize is their own leaks in the game and they continue to ignore their leaks by blaming the "donkeys." Believe me, if you can't crush 1-2NL, you can't crush 5-10NL. Playing smaller stakes due to limited bankroll is no excuse for not being a winning player. If you are playing cash and you think that the only reason you are not winning is because you are getting unlucky, you really need to self evaluate and look at your play. You'll be surprised as to who the true donkey is. That's how I feel every time I evaluate my play. And soon, I'll post some of my worst blunders to illustrate AND hopefully, you all can use that to either think about your play or learn from my mistakes.

Once again, thanks for reading this Harry Potter-esque (only from the sheer length of it) post. Have a good weekend and see you at the Big Game!

5 comments:

Mike Maloney said...

Yeah, that other site looks more like what I was expecting to see.

lj said...

i'm a 4 star playa too!!

Mike Maloney said...

Oh, and I'm a 7-star playa by the way, so BOOYAH!

Anonymous said...

I also agree that if you can't beat $25 NL you can't beat $200 NL and you can't beat $1000 NL.

Those with a limited bankroll should work on the fundamentals of their game at lower levels until the can beat it consistently enough to build that bankroll so they can move up.

AnguilA said...

Every site has its problems though. In OPR, it doesn't account that I qualified to the EPT satellite (1050$) via FPPs, so if I don't get my seat I will take a huge hit! And I love having so many stars at the moment!