Shabbir's Diary

Grim proof that my wife is one of the smartest people on the planet.

As we watched the tragedy in Mumbai unfold through the Web (web tv coverage from India was better than CNN or MSNBC on cable), the horror of it all really sank in.

When the first accounts came out that guests at the Taj hotel were being herded into rooms, locked in and then ignored, I said, "How odd, why would you take hostages and then not pay attention to them?  Why wouldn't you make any demands?"

Sarah said "They're going to blow the hotel up.  That's why they don't care about the hostages.  They're going to kill them in the explosion."

Turns out she was right.

"Mercifully, the group, armed with plastic explosives, underestimated the strength of the
105-year-old building’s solid foundations."

Congrats, you beat 51 people to win an entry into a poker tournament you can't compete for!

Any denials that "I am not a degenerate gambler" just went out the window.

I play sometimes on sportsbook.com, one of the Cake network poker sites that's really a sportsbetting website.  I don't sports bet (if you know me at all, you know my aversion to anything else in a casino except poker) but I've received the occasional bonus there, so it's worth it to play.

They have a frequent player points system, which awards "gold chips" every batch of Frequent Player Points.  The points reset to zero every month, but the gold chips stay.  There are a small handful of things you can do with gold chips, like play in Sit N Go tournaments where the entry is 5 gold chips and the winner receives....more gold chips.   (ha)

I finally happened to see something I considered buying in for: a $425 satellite ticket to win entry into two tournaments in Australia in mid-January plus traveling money.  Basically everyone that enters the $425 satellite is competing for the one prize package.  So I'd have to win two tournaments to get to Australia: first, I have to win my seat in the satellite (no easy feat), then I have to win the prize package.

I didn't pay attention to any of this, and just was excited that I could win something with the "gold chips" besides more gold chips.  I entered the tournament with 50 other players, and the top 5 got the $425 prize package.  I got lucky catching good cards during the rebuy period so I didn't have to make any hard decisions.  I then played my butt off during the middle and bubble sections of the tournament.  I kept myself in mid-chip position until someone finally got too low a stack and shoved and lost.  Five of us got our satellite ticket....for Sunday after thanksgiving.

Except I have plans for Sunday after thanksgiving.  And were I to win that, the Australian tournament starts January 18th, 2009.  Sarah and our new daughter are due to be born January 25th, if she's punctual, so the last place I'm going to be is Australia.

Heh.  Well it was good tournament experience.

Dealing with a blinds thief / stealing the blinds / defending your blind

It happens all the time in Hold'em: you're in the big blind and some jackass goes to steal your big blind.  Stealing blinds is good money in a casino that doesn't rake until the flop, but to be successful at it you have to be able to play after the flop or pick on a weak player who always folds to your raise.  Take the situation I've shown below:

Assuming you've got a small or medium pair, nines through twos, your odds against anything from a tight raiser through a loose raiser are pretty good.  Assuming your opponent is willing to raise with 12% of his hands, you and him are 44%/56%.  Assuming he'd steal with half of all the hands he is dealt, you're actually a slight favorite (54.5% / 45.5%).

Though you're not going to have the advantage of position, if you can play after the flop you might be able to take control of the hand if you hit one of your hole cards on the board.  The pot is offering you a little better than 3 to 1 odds to call, and at no time are you a 3 to 1 underdog with these cards.

But what if you don't have a pair?  I've computed some other useful odds against an opponent who would be willing to raise half of their hands:

Assuming your opponent steals with half his hands
Your hole cards	Your showdown equity
Any two Broadway cards (AKQJT)	59%
Any two suited cards	43.4%
Any pair	62.2%
Any Ace or King	52.8%

The upshot of this is that you're unlikely to be much of an underdog when you sense someone is stealing your blind, and while you may want to call for meta-game reasons, such as you don't want to establish the fact that your blind is easy to steal, you have a little math behind you as well. I computed all the math here with PokerStove, an awesome tool you should be using to scenario out these situations.

Running away to sea

Everyone has their version of 'running away to sea'.  Mine involves getting into the family car and going to Las Vegas or Reno, NV to shark the low-limit tournaments against the tourists for a living.  (Not a very good living, I'd like to point out)

My friend Derick's 'run away to sea' fantasy has always been more literal: he wanted to run away and be a sailor.  A number of different places around the world train sailors and provide a certification that allows you to get work as crew or captain on boats around the world.

Derick ran away to Malaysia to join and started a blog about his experiences.  Check it out.

Safdar Tournament Poker Bootcamp

Attention friends, especially Matt's friend, Lem who will be in Vegas December 5th:

There's talk of a tournament-focused trip to Vegas to reprise the Safdar Tournament Poker Bootcamp from this summer, the weekend of December 5th thru Tuesday December 9.  Most of us have not cleared it with our spouses.

If it comes together, we'd likely arrive sometime friday, and play tournaments (probably 3-4 / day) for 4 days thru Tuesday.  This isn't a lazy trip (though I guess you could laze through it).  We usually work our asses off, playing 8am, 11am/12pm, 3pm, 6pm, and sometimes 10pm tourneys. 

If you love poker as much as I do, contact me about logistics.

If your name is Chris Hannigan, you may stay in my hotel room in the second bed for free.

If your name is Jason Kim, you should get your ass out here with us.