Mind Games

Oh -- and I made the FT as well...

A pack of feral cows chewed their cuds for .0043 seconds to convert this hand
PokerStars No Limit Single Draw ($1.50+$1.50) t150/t300 ante t75 - 7 players

UTG: t4,885
UTG+1: t4,747
HJ: t3,000
CO: t7,182
Button: t9,136
SB: t2,400
BB: t15,215 (Hero)

Dealing Hands: (t975) J♥:Q♣:A♣:Q♥:3♥: (7 players)
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls t300, HJ calls t300, CO folds, Button calls t300, SB calls t150, Hero checks

First Draw: (t2,025) (5 players)
SB discards 2, Hero discards 4, UTG+1 discards 1, HJ discards 2, Button stands <== Seriously?,
3♥: || 7♠:4♠:8♣:6♠:
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG+1 checks, HJ checks, Button checks

UTG+1 mucked 3♠:9♣:K♦:T♣:6♣: Lo: K,T,9,6,3
HJ mucked 2♥:6♥:5♦:T♥:2♦: Lo: a pair of Deuces
Button mucked 9♦:5♥:3♦:A♥:5♣: Lo: a pair of Fives
SB showed 2♠:K♣:6♦:4♦:4♣:, Lo: a pair of Fours
Hero showed 7♠:4♠:8♣:6♠:3♥:, Lo: 8,7,6,4,3
Hero won t2025

I think BTN played the wrong game, maybe he thought he´s in a RAZZ-game.

Or 5-Card draw -- I've seen that happen before.

Happened to me too once: Was in a PLO8 tourney and played PLO hi. :f_ugly:.... but cashed anyway...!!

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Happened to me too once: Was in a PLO8 tourney and played PLO hi. :f_ugly:.... but cashed anyway...!!
Ha!
Wait until you play 8-game where the game switches every 5 minutes - it gets dicey when you've just played 5 minutes of RAZZ, then switch to Stud for 5 more, then Stud Hi/Lo

All the best,
VS

Played that just for fun 9 years ago. And YES I often played the wrong game, learnt that I don't like RAZZ and don't like Stud. Don't need more than 4 cards hahahahahahahaha!

I feel cheated when the dealer gives me less than 4
I want to yell, "Hey! Where's the rest of my hand!"

With draw games, it is easy to win long term by just playing the odds.
If you make your draw, you (usually) win -- it is rare to be outdrawn.

The problem is that you cannot draw to the nuts very often.

Here's a hand were I do draw to the nuts but miss badly.

Post draw, I have two 7s and 2 deuces, so the chances of villain having anything lower (better) than an 8-lo is pretty slim, so I tried a bluff.

I've no idea how big to bet as a bluff -- especially since HJ covers me, and I have a $1.50 bounty.

I'll let you decide...

Converting hands till the cows come home
PokerStars No Limit Single Draw ($1.50+$1.50) t25/t50 ante t12 - 7 players

CO: t3,217
Button: t3,065 (Hero)
SB: t4,763
BB: t3,242
UTG: t2,548
UTG+1: t2,353
HJ: t5,178

Dealing Hands: (t159) 7♣:2♥:J♣:4♣:Q♥: (7 players)
UTG calls t50, UTG+1 folds, HJ calls t50, CO folds, Hero calls t50, SB folds, BB checks

First Draw: (t309) (4 players)
BB discards 2, UTG discards 2, HJ discards 1, Hero discards 2,
7♣:2♥:4♣: || 7♥:2♣:
BB checks, UTG checks, HJ bets t100, Hero raises to t466, 3 folds

Hero collected t509

Oh my word! The biggest one-day loss of my "career" followed by my greatest suck-out ever

No-Limit 5-Card Draw is a truly great game.
There are several playing styles -- from passive trappy players to aggro bluffers.
I got trapped a tremendous number of times yesterday, but I got a couple of my own back

In 5-Card Draw trips are your bread-and-butter hands. When they get beaten over and over again, you tend to lose.

The first hand is an example of the stuff that happened over and over (15 times in 2300 hands)
I was stunned at how often trips lost.

The third hand is my attempt to be trappy...

So I think that the main goal at this stage is to learn to identify who is trapping and who is bluffing, and play them accordingly, and learn to switch from one mode to the other myself...

All the best,
VS

Too bad nobody actually saw this hand...

Streaming was fun, but there's a lot of set-up still do be done before it is in any way professional-looking.
Mein Bruder aus Deutschland wird hier für drei Wochen Urlaub machen. This starts Friday, so I'm unlikely to be playing much poker for a while -- or streaming either.

Well this one sucked. One hand of note -- had to draw four cards since I got a free play in the BB.
Everyone else drew worse.

And finally, in a StarsRewards freeroll last Saturday, there was this hand from the "Never Give Up, Never Surrender!" department...

Have a great week...
VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Mein Bruder aus Deutschland wird hier für drei Wochen Urlaub machen.

Well, I had no idea you had a brother from Germany. Where exactly is he from?

Honestly, I think the stream is pretty much fine at this point. The transitions between tables could still be improved, and you could maybe eventually add some polish to the layout by filling up the empty spaces. But all things considered, I'd say it's completely passable as it is.

Thanks for the encouraging words about the stream.
I've asked PokerStars if they have a policy document on streaming. I'll let you know what they say.

Although it is "completely passable" it lacks polish, so hopefully I can shine it up a bit over the next few weeks.

My brother and his wife live in Hamburg. I don't know much more than that, as I've never been there.

All the best,
VS

On w34z3l's coaching stream this morning the topic of The Deal PokerStars game came up.

The Deal
 If you play the Deal for 7 StarsCoin per throw, you must get a Royal Flush to win half the JackPot.
 If you play the Deal for 70 StarsCoin per throw, you must get a Straigh Flush to win half the JackPot.
 Even if you don't win, if someone else does, the other half of the JackPot is split among everyone who has played in the past 12 hours. I do not know if it is proportional to how much you've spent.

Since the jackpot is approaching $200,000 it is becoming worthwhile to play. The amount you get as your share is higher, plus more people are playing.

The $200K limit is totally arbitrary -- the chances of winning the jackpot they way I play are extremely remote, but if you play 7 StarsCoin every 12 hours, you're going to spend way too many coin for what you get.

How I play The Deal
 When the jackpot is > 200,000 I play 7 StarsCoin every 12 hours.
 I play only 7 StarsCoin each time, and I play only one "hand" each time
 From time to time, you actually win money, or win StarsCoin as you go along, which increases your ROI
 If someone wins when the JackPot is < $200K then I get nothing, but so far that has only happened twice -- but it was the last two times, so maybe I'll rethink that cutoff.

The Results
                Date    Jackpot    Cost    Earned    $/coin  
    2017-08-13 06:35                114      4.50     0.039  
    2017-08-30 00:20                 76      3.55     0.047  
    2017-09-21 18:23                 32      2.27     0.071  
    2017-10-02 19:30                 19      2.19     0.115  
    2017-10-25 20:15    275,605     171      4.33     0.025  
    2017-11-16 07:25    236,750      26      5.19     0.200  
    2017-12-02 04:50    287,860      12      5.41     0.451  
    2017-12-18 04:19    211,501       6      4.05     0.675  
    2017-12-28 05:38    262,315      43      4.86     0.113  
    2017-12-31 03:52     58,187       0                      
    2018-01-15 16:40    198,355       0                      
  Totals & Averages:                499     36.35     0.073  

I hope that someone will be able to make use of this...
VS

Our head-admin speaks German? ♠_love:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Our head-admin speaks German? ♠_love:

I have no idea. I'm not a head admin ♠_biggrin:
I can read -- and even write -- German if I have a dictionary close by. If someone is speaking it, I can tell what they're talking about, but can't understand what they're saying very well.

As for actually speaking it, I've forgotten all I learned. My employer paid for 3 German courses in the late '90s because we acquired some machinery and all the manuals (and software) was in German.

This all came about because every time I exited a particular application the screen popped up a message that said, "Die Programme wird beendet" . I figured out "Programme" and "beendet" all on my own :coolface:, but "wird" looked so much like "weird" in English that I thought that this was some sort of warning message.

I also purchased a CD so that I could learn proper pronunciation. I did OK, but I could NEVER pronounce "schmetterling" or "hier" to satisfy the program.

I found German grammar to be quite fascinating. The "Trennbare Verben". We use them in English -- but only separated. "Plug it in" is OK, but there is no "inplug" to match it. Perhaps there once was.

Cheers,
VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
This all came about because every time I exited a particular application the screen popped up a message that said, "Die Programme wird beendet" . I figured out "Programme" and "beendet" all on my own :coolface:, but "wird" looked so much like "weird" in English that I thought that this was some sort of warning message.

Actually, it's supposed to be "Die Programme werden beendet" (or "Das Programm wird beendet", if it's singular).

In today's globalized world, it seems pretty odd that software like this would come without any options to change the language, but I guess those were the '90s...

It's actually a bit of a pet peeve for me when software nowadays automatically switches to my system's language without any options to change it. I just prefer it to be in English, for one thing because I'm used to doing pretty much everything on my computer in English by now, but also because this makes it much easier to do a web search if I need any help with my program.

Luckily, there is usually a workaround, which involves simply replacing the German language file with the English one (which is sometimes known as the 'GIMP method', because GIMP is infamously one of the tools that does this). But I still don't understand why changing the language is apparently such a big taboo. It used to be a pain to convince Google to let me use their international website too...

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I also purchased a CD so that I could learn proper pronunciation. I did OK, but I could NEVER pronounce "schmetterling" or "hier" to satisfy the program.

Seems like this program was quite unforgiving, considering that "hier" doesn't even sound that much different to the English "here". Maybe I could use this kind of software myself to work on my English pronunciation, I sometimes sound a bit like Elmer Fudd when I'm not paying attention. Though oddly enough, people tend to assume I'm American when I'm naturally speaking German.

I think that the problem with "hier" is that I pronounce the "r" sound at the end, whereas the program wanted it to be so reduced as to be merely a suggestion of the sound.
Much like the difference between the British and American versions given by OneLook
Compare that to Google's version of "hier"

As to what was wrong with "Schmetterling" I could never figure it out. Mine and theirs sounded the same to me.

If I can't hear the difference, how could I change?

Cheers,
VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I think that the problem with "hier" is that I pronounce the "r" sound at the end, whereas the program wanted it to be so reduced as to be merely a suggestion of the sound.

That makes sense. The German word sounds a bit more like a quick version of "hee-yah", I guess.

Though most Germans would probably understand you just fine if you simply said "here". In fact, some local dialects in my state pronounce the 'r' pretty similar to the English version. Some other rural communities around here, on the other hand, tend to trill the 'r' like an angry dog.

I used to speak in a pretty thick Hessian dialect myself when I was younger, but I gradually got rid of it when my teachers pointed out that it made me sound unprofessional, and some of my friends were sometimes teasing me about it as well. But I'm still able to mingle with some of the older folks in the area who tend to speak like that, if need be.

And I can imagine that words like "Schmetterling" must be super tough to pronounce for non-native speakers.

As sry. You are Supermod Not Headadmin ....however...cooool!

Originally posted by Harrier88
I used to speak in a pretty thick Hessian dialect myself when I was younger, but I gradually got rid of it when my teachers pointed out that it made me sound unprofessional, and some of my friends were sometimes teasing me about it as well.

This is the problem that George W Bush had. He sounded stupid. His Harvard degree did nothing to dispel that belief.
He was from Texas. People from the hill country of Kentucky and Tennessee have it even worse.

Their accent is truly beautiful in some ways, but it doesn't convey the notion of intelligence.

Peace,
VS