Saturday, October 16, 2010

The well; Also pwned by a machine in poker

Just wanted to say I'm doing a well at Cardrunners, which is basically a Q&A regarding my thoughts on poker and life. If any of you guys have questions regarding poker, or life as a poker player, feel free to go there and ask and I'll respond to all the questions. The link is

http://www.cardrunners.com/cr_forums/showthread.php?92311-The-Well-Nicolak&p=858134#post858134

This past week has been busy for me w/ the CR stuff and making my 1st video. I haven't had a chance to play much poker online but I did head over to the Bellagio and played some $40-$80 mix and won about $500 tonight. I forgot about the WPT main event going on at the Bellagio and wish I had remembered in time to sell some of my action so I could've played in it. I don't like forking over $10k of my money for 1 tournament. Anyway I'm going to try to sell some action in future main events in Las Vegas so I can give myself a shot to take down a major live tournament. I'll be posting in the 2+2 marketplace in the future for those and will blog about it if anybody out there wants to buy a piece. Gl to my buddies that made it to day 2 of the event.

Finally I was over at the Bellagio last night as well and played on these HU limit hold'em machines for real money.

http://www.slotmachinesforum.com/showthread.php?5792-Texas-Hold-em-Heads-Up-Poker-%28IGT

You play vs. the actual machine. There is no rake and the machine does not adjust or adapt. Also you can check it's hole cards once the pot is awarded. Pretty valuable info. to see how it's playing. Seems like free money for winning limit hold'em players and to an extent it is. The highest stake you can play is $2-$4 but the action is pretty fast, as fast as you want it to be. The machine, though inflexible in being able to adapt, is surprisingly pretty tough, capable of bluffraising on any street including the river. I'm sure this is about a tough of an ai that can be created to play limit hold'em hu.

W/ that said after awhile you can figure it's game out enough that you should not lose in the long run. Initially I was stuck $240, mostly from a bunch of suckouts, but once I got a read on it's tendencies, played almost a variance free style of poker where I won back $170 before I quit. I'm sure I would've gotten it all back but tbh is not worth my time to win my projected hrly in that game vs my hrly in my normal online games. That's why they capped it at $2-$4, because the great limit hold'em players won't think it's worthwhile to make the guaranteed money.

Now you may ask why they would even have it on the casino floor in the 1st place. I'm pretty sure lots of casual strollerbys get curious and play it and lose. It is placed right next to the poker room, and considering most poker players are losers, most will lose in this game, probably more than the small # of winning players win out of it.

Anyway I got pwned by the machine for $70, but my wife managed to crush it for $100. Also my buddy Joe T won $200 playing it right next to me. It helped expedite the learning curve by having all 3 of us playing next to each other talking about it's tendencies.

Finally I brought my ipad because I thought I may play some actual live cash and set it down next to the hu machine and forgot about it when we left. DOH! Unfortunately I wasn't lucky enough to have an honest guy take it so he can return it to me (or lost and found). I'm not sure what's more embarrassing though, getting pwned by a poker playing machine for $70, or being stupid enough to forget about my $800 ipad.

3 comments:

  1. First off that sucks about the iPad and secondly it's really weird to me that they have heads up poker machines but whatever.

    So also strange, I was looking for the address to your blog as I only have it in my Google reader and it's the first one to come up as you have the newest post of the some 100 blogs I have in there. Anyhow I am adding your blog to our "Player Blogs" section which really isn't that big of a deal but hoping that's okay. I left the link on the comment name.

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  2. cardrunners would mostly be beneficial to intermediate players or even semi pros?

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  3. Thanks Live Poker, that's ok.

    CR benefits anybody aspiring to get better at poker, whether beginner, intermediate, or experienced.

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