Ugarte's Poker Grovel #18, or Where's Wildo?I was really looking forward to blogging the tournament, but frankly there is more to blog about the software than there is about my play. I busted out quickly and without much drama ... but of course the lack of drama is what is so bad about the software.
So with much props to tournament winner Otis (who gets a link to his non-poker site for winning), not quite as much props (but still substantial props) to second place Chris Halverson and bronze props to Pauly, here’s my story.
I didn’t play particularly well. To be perfectly frank, today was a pretty rough day emotionally. Even though I had been looking forward to the blogger tournament, by the time it came around I wasn’t really in the right mindset for play. I won a few hands early with position raises and was able to get others to fold, but those small wins only barely kept pace with the money I was losing in blinds and missed flops. I honestly don’t remember what I had in those hands, except to say that I wasn’t bluffing. (I know that is not very convincing, but the hands weren’t really memorable, and I don’t feel like combing the hand history.)
I then got a phone call from my mother, which brought up all of the stuff I had been dealing with all day, so after 20 minutes of post-and-fold for the conversation I came back to the table even worse than when I left it. In addition, I had a stack of ~1400. After folding for a little while, I finally got a hand that was playable. I’ll let you decide if the play I made was the right one. (Hint: I think it wasn’t.)
With no limpers in front of me, I raised my A♦8♦ and was called by Boy Genius (I think) from the BB. The flop was A-T-x rainbow and when gza checked, I bet 500 and got check-raised all-in. So, should I have called? Well, I called, and Genius showed me AQo. All that will help me now is an 8 ... and there it is on the turn. (No queens ... no queens ... no queens ...) And the river isn’t a queen! Its a 10! And ... and ...
Suddenly Boy Genius and I both have aces and tens, but he’s got me outkicked and kicked out. Tournament over.
Actually, that is much more dramatic than it actually looked because, as I am sure blogs all over have already written, True Poker has some serious problems with the way it handles all-in situations. In fact, within a millisecond of my call the turn and river were on the board, both of our hands were face up, my avatar had turned into a shadow and I had to quickly scan the board and his hand to figure out why I lost. In fact, I noticed that he had a higher kicker than me before I realized that, had the cards been dealt one at a time, I would have had a moment of elation on the turn before being punched in the gut on the river.
It was a recurring theme: the players go all-in, the cards all appear at once, a winner is declared and the chat fills up with “I looked away ... what did he have?” Even the players in the hand don’t have time to figure out exactly what happened in a hand without the aid of a hand history. As Rick said to me as we were watching the final table, “The program slowly passes the button around the table, but flips (and cleans up) the cards faster than you can read them.” I didn’t even see the final hand.
Other flaws in the true poker software:
1) The actual laughing when someone types “lol” is annoying.
2) You can’t observe the other tables while you are playing.
3) You can’t play in a ring game while the tournament is going on.
4) The board is very space-inefficient. There is too much black space around the board, and you can’t change the size of it. It sits in the middle of the screen, so if you want to keep the chat log/play log it has to sit at least partially on top of the play area.
5) The play log doesn’t list the cards that you were holding, nor does it include what other people played at showdown - so you can’t review the hand until you get the hand history.
6) There is no place to type in your bets; to raise you have to use the slider.
Anyway, it is kind of cumbersome, and with the possible exception of blogger tourneys, I think I am done with True Poker.
Some additional comments:
I didn’t see much of Rick’s game because we were at different tables. I did see the hand he busted out on, though: a stone bluff on the river when he was shortstacked. Risky move and it backfired.
I got to watch some Pauly, though. Pauly was at Rick’s table, so I didn’t see him until after I busted. By the time I got there he had a decent stack, and with a couple of solid wins he moved into the chip lead. By the time the game moved to the final table, Pauly had a huge chip lead. He then took his big stack and used it to push people around. He was raising from UTG, late position, the blinds - and he was building a superhuge stack. Unfortunately you could se it coming - when somebody finally raised Pauly, you could be damn sure that they had a hand you didn’t want to mess with. Just as I suspeced, Pauly was tilty enough that he didn’t survive very long when StickandMove and Chris Halverson were finally dealt good cards. (On the other hand, third place is nice, so I don’t think I’ll give any more shit to Pauly.)
After the tournament was over I signed on to Bugsy’s Club (who, incidentally, have the best interface I’ve seen) and played a couple of SNGs. I busted out early and embarrassingly in a 5+.50 NLHE SNG. I then finished in 2d in a limit Omaha/8 SNG. Net for the day: -16. Blech.
Congratulations are also in order for Felicia Lee, who finished in 5th and StickAndMove who finished in fourth.
You know, I really thought that Wil Wheaton was going to show up, but I guess he had other plans.
Finally, a big shout out to Iggy for setting this game up.
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