Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Who will stand up and fight?

A nice $450 upswing in the last three days is being ruined by yet another Online Poker site saying "no" to US customers. Doyle's Room is pulling out at the end of the month.

I originally joined so I could try and qualify for a nice copy of SuperSystem 2. It's been close to a year and I still have not cleared their impossible bonus hurdle. I started with $1,200 and I am down to around $1050. They were one of the last sites that actually accepted one of my credit cards, so my plan was to qualify for the book and then pay back the credit card. Technically none of the money is part of my "bankroll" since I bought in with credit. Only the loss of $150 is included in my win/loss calculations.

The silver lining in this is that they worked out a deal with Full Tilt to transfer over money and action points. I went in last night and requested that they transfer over everything for me. I checked this morning and it had not been done yet. It may be a while.

I was a little surprised that Doyle's Room lasted as long as they did. Especially since Doyle Brunson is such an icon in the poker world, you would think he would not want to go to jail over something as silly as Online Poker. After the rumors of his arrest last week, Doyle probably figured out that as a man in his 70's, it's just not worth the hassle.

I think Full Tilt and Poker Stars are our last hope. They have built up a sizable player base so they can make enough money to gamble on fighting the United States in court to keep letting us play here.

Plus I read that the Poker Players Alliance is hiring former senator D'Amato from New York to help with the lobbying. Finally the PPA is getting off of their ass and doing something.

I wonder if the news of Doyle's Room had leaked out to the players by 2/18. I was playing $.50-$1 NL on the site and it was one of the rare occasions where all the players at the table were exceptionally bad. In a six handed table, 3 of the players were seeing over 70% of the flops. Maybe they were playing with a double up or lose it all mentality figuring it was a long shot to get their money out of the site with them leaving.

After a half hour of value betting the calling stations I had run my $100 up to $160 when I had the following great hand. The player, Yio, had started to vastly over bet some flops. If the pot was $8, he would push all in with $100. I had seen him do it at least 4 times in the last 15 minutes. One of the times he did it with pocket 7's when the flop came all low cards. He was on my left so I felt like I could trap him if the right opportunity came along.

I had the button and Yio was in the Big Blind. I am dealt KcQs and the game is 4 handed. UTG folds and I raise to $4. The small blind folds and Yio calls the $3 raise. The flop is 3d 9c Qh. Sure enough, Yio pushes all in for $193.26 (really just $160 since that was my stack size). If I had any respect for his play at all, I might have considered folding, but I had seen this move too many times. I insta called and Yio turned over 9d Ts. I am a big favorite. The turn was a beautiful Qd and the river was a meaningless Ace and I double up with a $162 profit in one hand. I'm pretty sure that is the largest hand I have ever won in online poker.

Now I just have to hope I can eventually get my money out of the site.

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