Head for the stars

Hope a good weekend was had by all. A couple of work issues have come up for me, so it means I'm in New Zealand for a couple more weeks. I don't mind being here but it does get in the way of my poker routine.

Pokerstars offered a rare reload offer over the weekend. You have 6 months to clear it, so you may as well stack it up even if you don't play on there at the moment. It sure has brought a lot of loose aggressive players to the site. I don't mind the loose aggressive games but they sure get expensive when you are running bad. I had a rough weekend at the cash games, with people hitting everything they were chasing. I don't really go on tilt much, but I do start to call more often than I normally would when people keep jamming the pot constantly. The problem was they had hit their miracle card each and every time. The games are fairly juicy on Pokerstars at the moment with a huge amount of players, often over 100,000, so I'll just keep plugging away.

Today's Topic: High stakes poker

Just to give everyone a little bit of inspiration I've listed what some of the top players are winning and losing in the high stake no limit cash games on Full Tilt Poker so far this year. For anyone who though it was impossible to make money playing online poker this might help change your mind. The figures are taken from hightakesdb.com

Winners
	Results	Sessions	Hands	Hours
pr1nnyraid	$2.260.881,35	184	31427	192,41
sbrugby	$1.194.058,95	739	93007	716,43
durrrr	$1.154.624,55	442	62034	505,97
TillIcollapse	$966.090,50	35	2908	24
mjorgenson13	$899.635,55	494	51483	391,4
hcdnttb	$851.297,00	343	36828	270,42
93TilInfinity	$778.985,55	247	28370	220,15
Jinsokkp	$775.572,10	547	59562	464,39
LarsLuzak	$772.259,05	334	26581	205,32
monkey1001	$758.341,65	124	13206	89,54
Losers
	Results	Sessions	Hands	Hours
Noataima	$-3.454.905,2	203	40437	395,11
David Benya	$-1.294.366,0	354	53581	403,63
magicpitch1	$-1.207.884,3	112	22848	191,28
Ziigmund	$-723.328,15	117	9930	67,98
Gus Hansen	$-686.355,75	97	8872	98,26
SheFaLLs	$-531.084,45	80	9640	84,89
Ram Vaswani	$-512.900,00	44	8274	53,58
A_Hoffman	$-505.281,70	37	5037	31,72
Ozzy 87	$-479.621,60	369	28233	248,42
Luigi66369	$-470.426,10	119	14366	149,18

For anyone uncertain about the figures, yes the top winner is ahead over 2 milion dollars, and the top loser is stuck about 3.5 million. Fairly decent chunks of cash. Sbrugby (brian townsend) started playing 50 cent Nl holdem a couple of years ago, and is now over 1 million up for the year, not bad going. So keep struggling on and keep that dream alive

Today's Link: www.highstakesdb.com

For further information on the internet's top poker winners and losers and a list of games in progress, go to highstakesdb.com

Are kings really king?

It's been a bit of a nothing week for me so far. I've been playing the $24 tourneys on Full Tilt and after 6 of them I've made one cash for about $38 and one for about $96. Cash games this week I've found fairly tight. It's strange how some weeks the tables seem tighter than others. I guess it's a case of continuing to grind it out. I played one table of NL200 along with my NL100 tables today. It's a very small sample so far, but I think the NL200 tables might be as soft if not softer than the NL100 tables. My theory is that most people playing live poker play NL200 live. As a rule the level of play at the NL200 live games is fairly poor. Because they play NL200 live when they decide to play online they choose the same level they play live (NL200). Of course the level of play is generally a lot higher at the same limit online so it makes for softer games at this level with these live players. People who started playing online usually start at a lower limit and work their way up, hence making the NL100 games tougher. It's only a theory and might be completely wrong, but from my play and datamining of the NL200 games I think that I should find little difference to the NL100 games. Fingers crossed.

Today's Topic: KK vs AA

A lot of No Limit players refuse to fold their KK preflop regardless of the action around them. Analyzing over 500,000 hands played at NL50 and NL100 I can say with certainty that not folding KK before the flop under any circumstances is a big mistake. Some might say that the only hand that can beat KK is AA, and what would be the odds of running into that? The odds would be roughly 1 in 24 or 4.39% of the time. So on average once every 24 times that you get KK someone else at the table will have AA. You get KK once every 220, so on average once every 5000 hand you will run into this situation of KK vs AA.

My experience has been in NL50 and NL100 games that if the pot is raised to you with KK you re-raise it and then get re-raised by either the initial raiser or another player and you are both deep stacked (more than 70BB) then unless you have notes or a read on the other player to suggest otherwise, the majority of the time you will be up against AA. It is overall an EV + decision to fold in this situation with KK. If the player you have raised, re-raises you and has less than 50BB, then because of the money already in the pot and because of their increased range of hands with less than 50BB's I have found it to be EV + to call in this situation.

So next time you're deep stacked opponent puts you all in when you are holding KK, as hard as it might be to fold those Kings, you will be making the correct decision in the long run.

Today's Link:

Brian Townsend known online as either ABA or SBRugby, has gone from playing playing .5/$1 nl holdem 2 years ago, too playing in the highest limit games available on the internet. In the last few weeks he has been on a massive downswing losing over 3 million dollars. Read all about it on his blog. Link here.

High stakes poker

Congratulation to Jerry Yang. Winner of this year World Series of Poker main event. He beat 6,358 players to win $8.25 million in prize money.

The overall amount of players was unsurprisingly down from last year’s record of 8773, but still a very good turnout considering the effects of the American UIGEA legistation. Overall the amount of players competing in all WSOP events was up from last year, which is encouraging for the future of poker.

Personally I was a little down playing on Ipoker poker today. Flopped 3 sets but was outdrawn by 2 flushes (people just love flush draws, doesn’t matter what the odds are most people at NL100 are going with their flush draw no matter what the price), and a straight. That’s the way it goes some days.

Saw an interesting article on http://highstakes.nu regarding biggest winners and losers in online cash game poker so far this year, the figures are amazing. Most of the action seems to happen on Full Tilt Poker. Some great hands to view.

NL Holdem Winners

Alias Results Sessions Hands Hours

Sbrugby $3.142.267,55 680 85702 665
pr1nnyraid $1.698.352,65 144 25542 157
durrrr $1.200.998,55 435 61553 501
Till_I_collapse $966.090,50 35 2908 24
jinsokkp $775.572,10 547 59562 464
mjorgenson13 $766.410,00 431 44390 338
traheho $740.711,50 426 47165 382
Genius28 $699.822,50 321 37503 290
whitelime $694.392,90 113 16504 125
93TilInfinity $692.183,70 236 27470 212

Losers
noataima $-3.429.854,75 190 38458 377
D Benyamine $-1.300.177,90 289 45217 353
magicpitch1 $-1.207.884,35 112 22848 191
SheFaLLs $-531.084,45 80 9640 84
Gus Hansen $-522.607,55 95 8007 91
A_Hoffman $-505.281,70 37 5037 31
Ram Vaswani $-485.786,50 42 8144 52
Luigi66369 $-470.426,10 119 14366 149
Mike Matusow $-441.525,55 177 18270 174
Ziigmund $-416.237,05 102 8533 58

Nearly all of these high stake games take place on Full Tilt Poker. So if you fancy doing a bit of rail birding and checking out the action Full Tilt is the place to be. If you’re not familiar with some of the aliases above then I can tell you that Sbrugby is “Brian Townsend” a high stakes player who only started playing poker about 3 years ago. The biggest loser Noataima is “Guy Laliberte” the owner of Cirque du Soleil he has a reported net worth of over 1.4 billion dollars, so I guess 3 million is neither here nor there to him.

Heading off to see the Transformers movie now, so until Monday always remember that there is no such thing as a bad hand in poker. Only a bad flop.