Adventures on the Poker Felt

Bodog kicks off the 4th edition of it’s Bodog Poker Open on November 1st.

BPO IV will include two series running in parallel, the Championship Series with higher buy-ins and larger prize pools while the Contender Series offers lower buy-ins.   All BPO IV Championship Series tournaments will have money added.  The Contender Series will have money added to Event 1 on November 1st and the Main Event on November 8th.

Every winner of a BPO IV Championship or Contender Series tournament will also win a T$500 seat into the the BPO IV Championship Main Event hosted on November 8th.

Bodog is still offering a 100% reload bonus.

BPO IV CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES

BPO IV CONTENDER SERIES

This year’s BPO IV winner will be featured in CardPlayer magazine with additional coverage in the Bodog Beat and Bodog’s Feature article section.

The Angels and Dodgers swept each of their LDS series and move onto the LCS.  A SoCal freeway series would be pretty sweet.  My dad is a die hard Dodger fan.  We’d definitely have to get to a WS game if they get that far.  The Yankees and Phillies are pretty tough, but it could happen.  This would be a “true” freeway series, the 5 freeway runs from Dodger Stadium to Angels Stadium.  It’s about a 50 min drive.  My parent’s and Tina have never been to a WS game.  The experience is pretty awesome.

I’ve spent a lot of time the past couple of weeks watching videos on CardRunners courtesy of Truly Free Poker Training.  I really enjoyed the 4-part series by Six Peppers aka “actiondj” on his PokerStars SCOOP Main Event final table run to finish 7th for $163k ($10k buy-in).  He played and ran very well.  At one point he had PearlJammer and Moorman1 sitting with him at one of the final two tables and owned both pretty hard. Although, PearlJammer ultimately decimated his stack at the final table in a monster flip for a $1.2m pot and he busted a few hands later.  Pretty sick flipping for that much money.  1st paid over 900k.

Playing short-handed at the final two tables is definitely the part of my game I struggle with most.  Seeing how he battled through that was helpful.  It didn’t hurt that he was sitting on one of the biggest stacks.  You can watch how he accumulated all those chips.

Altogether, I probably watched 10-12 videos over the past two weeks.  It felt good to step away from the tables and see how successful online pros approach difficult spots.

I play a lot of different games including sng’s, MTT’s and cash.  I do this mostly to take advantage of  game/table selection but also to add variety and prevent myself from getting bored from the daily/nightly grind.

Bodog recently updated their poker client so you can easily place bets on NFL games from a drop down menu within the client.  Just scroll the week’s games on the left side of the Bodog poker client and place your bet.  The way it was done before was pretty kludgey, this is much cleaner.  They also have a weekly NFL match ups tool which helps you analyze every game.

When thinking about clearing the best poker bonus available, there’s a faster way to do it.  Here are a couple of useful tips.

Consider playing more cash games, regardless of whether you play on PokerStars or a smaller site like Carbon Poker. Cash games award bonus clearing points for every raked hand played.  This allows you to accumulate points more quickly than tournaments, which only give you a fixed amount of points for each tournament entry.

Check the status of your online bonus. Take the time to find the page on your poker site that updates your bonus status.  This is generally found in the cashier of your online poker client.  Not only can this provide encouragement while working toward your goal, it can also show you how much time you have left.   An important factor when trying to clear bonuses.

Get free online poker training from respected online pro’s at CardRunners or StoxPoker.

FREE-fiddy-free at Truly Free Poker Training

Earn 5.5k Full Tilt Poker points in a month and get 1 month of CRs FREE
Earn 3k Full Tilt Poker points in a month and get 1 month of StoxPoker FREE
No hit to rakeback
Keep your FPP’s

You can earn fewer points and receive one, two, or three weeks of free training – just divide the total by four to determine the weekly requirement. For example, if you earn 1375 points, you’ll receive one free week of CardRunners.

There’s no catch. You don’t need a paid membership at CardRunners or StoxPoker to participate. You can end your participation at any time, no strings attached. All you need to do is create your free CardRunners and/or StoxPoker account and earn points at Full Tilt Poker.

Here’s a link to TFTP’s FAQ

I signed up last month, didn’t do anything different to accumulate FPP’s and got two weeks of free training this month.  Pretty sweet deal.

Sign-up at Full Tilt Poker.

I’ve been back at the Bodog cash tables the last few weeks wondering why I ever left. Actually the reason I took a break was I had a really bad downswing in April. But since I’ve been back, the Bodog poker gods have treated me well.

I stumbled across the best cash table I’ve seen in quite a while at 200 NL. Some guy was lagtarding it up pretty hard, the list was 6 deep and by the time I sat down he had $900 in front of him. He stacked me once with Jd4d on a K-high flop with 2 diamonds. I had KdQs and it all went in on the flop but of course he binked a diamond on the river. I insta-loaded, knowing I’d get plenty of other opportunities for a rebate later.

After I reloaded, I doubled thru with 10-10 vs this clown’s 3-5o then scooped $800 with presto in a 3-way pot. He loved playing HUGE pots with marginal hands.

Lagtard reloaded several times after eventually donking off the $900 stack he had. It was the kind of table you wish would never break but the guy eventually ran out of bullets around 4am (PST). I was buckled in for another all-nighter but it wasn’t meant to be.

Very happy with the session though.