PokerBat’s Poker Party Blog

The PokerBat in his size 46 jeans, his size 20 shoes, and his size 71/2 hat made i over the IP Poker Classic.  The Bat obviously has never let his head get too big, but that says nothing about his britches.  The Poker Classic was a fun affair as the Bat always loves a live Texas Holdem game or two. The Bat saw, but declined to talk to many of the bloggers on GCP that seem to get preferential treatment to the Bat.  Perhaps, the Bat simply isn’t good looking enough to get higher placement on the front page.  Will have to email Wild Bill about this at some time.

Clearly, Gene D, Kai Landry, Poker Monkey, Wild Bill, Reid G, all had better things to do than say hi to the Bat.  That’s alright the Bat don’t need other bloggers to feel good about himself, though the Bat did say a couple of those guys on a cash table playing Blind Man’s Bluff.  Don’t mess with Wild Bill in that game.

What did the Bat do?  Well the Bat bubbled several events where the Bat got his money in good and the poker powers that be slapped his hand away like he was child in grandmother’s cookie jar.  The Bat’s favorite hand of the day occured when the Bat held pocket 7s.

The board was three to a flush, the table idiot, and that was a hard position to earn from the seven contenders (eight if you count the dealer) appeared to be on a flush draw.  The Bat had been tearing up the table like he was the Ghost Rider with a flaming school and pimped out Harley, but this guy kept getting lucky on him.  One of the flush cards was lucky 7, or maybe in this case unlucky 7.

The Bat’s set needed a little protecting from Flush Draw McGraw, the dog-faced luckbox enemy who kept taking a bite of the Bat, so the Bat just fired away half his stack.

The Cleveland Browns Superfan lookalike, who might have had the only pair of britches bigger than the Bat’s, rubbed his meaty fingers through what was left of his curly hair.  “Why so much, slim?”  he asked in a Mississippi drawl.

Bat normally don’t take kind to people refering to the Bat’s weight, but as this guy was also a super-heavy the Bat didn’t give it much thought, but calling a fat guy slim is about as amusing as the Fat guy from Borat naked but without the context of Borat.  Which is to say not amusing at all.

“Well, how about I just go all in on you…” he smiled and pushed his chips forward as though the Bat might fold.  Bat eyeballs the stack, and for a mili-second considers a slow-roll but then quickly calls.  Yeah, the fool had a mid-level flush draw.  You know how that one worked out.

Despite taking more hits than the Grateful Dead during intermissions, the Bat enjoyed the event.  The 7:00 pm tournaments probably could have done just a little better giving another 1k in chips, but otherwise the structure was rock solid.  Plenty of play throughout the event and none played like some turbo Online Sit and go poker tournaments.  The Bat has to echo the compliments to Bill Bruce and Jimmy Sommerfeld.

The Bat also picked up the second issue of Gulf Coast Poker Magazine and a XXL T-shirt from the GCP boys.  Guys, some of us are a little bigger than just a double XL.  Next time buy some bigger shirts.  Kudos to those guys for a solid issue and the Bat forsees many more good things from those guys in the future.

What’s the Bat got to do to get a Bat cover?  Bat takes down the Main Event here and at Harrahs is that a possibility?  Bat knows his ugly mug might scare potential readers away but he’s still the future face of poker.

PokerBat ain’t so nuts about the nuts part two

Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Sorel Mizzi finish out the top 10. What is this dead Ukranian presidents? The Bat wants them off the list, commies need not apply. Sure they may play poker online but just because they get dial up in East Bratislavia don’t mean they make the Bat’s top 10.

The Bat’s replacements? Scotty Nguyen just Nguyen Baby. Kathy Liebert and Vanessa Selbst but only if the Bat can be in between. If anybody has seen the Bat, you’ll realize the Bat being in between is the disgusting part of the visual, yeah it’s that bad. Liebert and Selbst both don’t get enough credit. Sucks being a woman that doesn’t have movie star looks. Give a man their game and they’d be famous.

Who else… Oliver Hudson. Who the heck is Oliver Hudson, the semi-famous brother of Kate Hudson who ran full house into full house in the first hand of the World Series against Sam Farha and had the good sense to never be seen again. That’s poker genuis. A hand like that plays out you need to recognize you are going to be a lifetime cooler and get out of the business. Oliver Hudson is a poker hero. He keeps playing and next stop is a graph that is the exact opposite of a superuser and Hudson had the dough to lose. This guy got up at just the right time. He had too many failed pilots and mediocre sitcoms to do anyway.

What’s that bring us to? Bumping up Mortensen and Alaei, add Hudson, the two hefty hotties, and every man Scotty Nguyen? Hmmm… that’s six. The Bat will allow Phil Ivey back on the list. See that’s how good the Ivey man is, even when the Bat sets out to denigrate the guy he still winds up sixth.

Three spots left… Joe Hachem from Australia of course. The man from down under sports a soul patch. Hmmm… That sentence could be on a g rated blog or an x rated blog. The Bat will say no more about that. Anyway, Hachem is a short-fused sawed off with great patience and one of the few poker players not named Phil Hellmuth to start a poker catch phrase. Who wasn’t saying “Pass the Sugar!” after watching that World Series. Well, the Bat wasn’t because the Bat isn’t a follower, in fact, the Bat only started saying it after all you fellas wore it out, and the Bat was the first to be ironic with it. Told you the Bat was with it for an old man.

Okay after Salty Joe, who’s next up, Antoine Saout. This is not a top 10 for a Sit’n go tournaments so only real men need apply. This real man was also the forgotten man from the last Main Event final table. He pushed Ivey off of hands he got his money in good at every turn and the little French cybernerd had a poker face a robot would kill for. What’s that give us eight in the top ten.

Number Nine is the Bat’s clone Darvin Moon. That logger from Maryland is a lot like this blogger from Hairy-land. Yes, the Bat don’t know if Moon can compete with the Bat’s back hair and the Bat is well aware the Bat can’t compete with Moon’s millions, but other than that the Bat and the Moon are twins. So what if Moon overplays the AQ you could argue he just plays the hell out of it.

Number 10 the old guy at the end of the table that is tighter than Jon Goodman’s jeans. You know the one, it’s the same crusty curmudgeon that curses under his breath as stacks player after player that refuses to respect his raises. The guy that always needs two trays when he’s done who you wonder if he’s going to die before he gets to his car in the parking lot.

The Bat once got stacked off by a guy right before he went into a heart attack. You want to talk about steaming you ain’t never getting those chips back. Guy’s dead. It’s like the Oliver Hudson inclusion, this guy had the good sense to not walk away but to roll over and kick the bucket when he was up. For all those old men the Bat reserves this spot.

PokerBat ain’t so nuts about the nuts…

The PokerBat ain’t quite old enough to have played Texas Hold’em poker when the nuts literally meant the nuts. The Bat has played some pool games where car keys were thrown on the table as stakes but WAY back in the day the nuts used to mean the nuts from the wheels of your wagon. You’d only put those on the table if you had just about an unbeatable hand. Since then the nuts has morphed into the best possible hand. The Bat is old, but not that old you Internet ingrates.

The Poker Bat has evolved with the times, a tad bit better than Daniel Negreanu to say the least. The Bat knows how to use a laptop, an iPod, an iPad, and an iPeed. You youngin’s don’t know what an iPeed is but it’s basically a diaper for us older folks. Anyway while on this crazytrain of information they call the world wide web, the Bat reads ESPN’s got a new rankings of players. They call it the Nuts.

You’d think it’d be Mike Matusow, Mike Caro, the Tiltin Texan from GCP, Soheil Shamseddin, and Shaun Deeb, but you’d be wrong. The Bat gets that the Nuts is supposed to be the absolute best players. They are the Nuts. In first place they got Phil Ivey. Does this guy have an detractors? Does anybody have a bad word to say about him? The Bat doesn’t like unainomousness or unaminity or if you are a stickler for spelling everybody agreeing if you know what the Bat means. Even if the Bat can’t support it the Bat is going to take Phil Ivey’s number ranking to task.

Phil Ivey ain’t the best player in the world because the Bat sez so. Jason Mercier is ranked number two. This guy is a gulf coaster, and even though the Bat can’t get any respect from Gulf Coast Poker.NET (when will the Bat be at the top of the blog list where the Bat belongs) he has to agree this guy is one of the top players from our region. He tore up Europe and now he’s back in the States doing the same thing. He’s also a luckbox and he must have sat on a pile of horseshoes and picked up a couple without using his hands. The Bat likes the kid but lucky doesn’t cut.

Third place on the nuts, which should be that quack, quack guy Paul Magriel, is Tom Dwan. This elf/vampire/future James Bond villain is sicko but he ain’t the third best player in the world. Win some tournaments kid then we’ll talk, if Phil Hellmuth has taught us one thing it’s that tournaments are the true indices of brilliance in your own mind. Stop talking about people’s ranges and try not to look so white when bluffing, and get outside of a casino or away from a computer screen every once in a while. And this Pot Limit Omaha thing you got going give it up. That game is immoral.

Daniel Negreanu in fourth? Rigged.

Carlos Mortensen in fifth? The Bat moves the Matador to first place. Dude is unstoppable when he cares and was the first to win the triple crown.

Scott Seiver in 6th? Okay, this guy and Noah Schwartz should make a movie together. They should call it Superbad. I don’t know if Seiver, though funny, is even the best SS in the world. Soheil Shamseddins, Shannon Shorr, Steve Sung, Shane Schleger, this is a borderline epidemic in alliteration. Nazi Germany didn’t have that many SS’es. It’s the new Phil of poker.

Daniel Alaei in seventh. The Bat says move this joker up to 2nd. Apparently, he can ball in it all.
Patrik Antonius is eighth. Until the Swede or Fin or Dane or whatever he is finishes the Durrrr challenge he should be barred from top ten lists. The Bat doesn’t like those that dilly or those that dally.

Wow, looks like the Bat is only half-way through his post, better make it a two parter like everybody else seems to be doing these days.

Poker Bat Chews Up Online Poker Aardvaarks

This past weekend The Bat went back to what The Bat does best…  play poker online.  It was dream because all these little fishies that try and play poker on the internets have no idea what they are doing.  The Bat keeps hearing about all these Ballas, these kids winning millions of dollars and spending it like they got billions of dollars yet the Bat can’t see anything but bad playas at every level. 

Recently, the Bat snapped off a kid named Appelfsh, from somewhere south of Transylvania, which means leafy, green Tranny country, and the kid went off on the Bat in the chat box.  “You play no good.  A$#RDHOLE!”  Okay, aardvaark the Bat’s putting you on notice.  He continued attacking the Bat which loyal bat readers would know is -EV.  “You chase, chase, chase, chase, chase”  then he did “CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC” for sometime.  The Bat giggled to the Bat’s inner self.  The Bat a chaser, har-har-har.  Maybe if the Bat didn’t have the implied odds because the aardvaark was sitting at 200 bbs the Bat wouldn’t have played K2 suited.  But the Bat knew if he hit, he’d snap a stack and that’s just what the Bat did.

The Bat channeled his Ed Hardy wearing, gel in hair, gel on hands, gel on keyboard, persona and got slimey on AppelFsh.  The Bat said, “It’s hard to chase a sitting duck.” 

He replied something like “Duck you.”

“Tired of getting stack by bad hands that “chase” aardvaark?  Learn how to play poker and how to fold a big hand!”  The Bat countered.

The kid disappeared from the virtual felt and the Bat went looking around for his next victim.  Blink, Blink went the little software in the corner that alerted the Bat that PeachfisterH20, another of the Bat’s favorite fishies had just jumped online.  It was turning into a good night.

The Bat found the night getting even better when the PeachfisterH20 started luckboxing his way to a big stack.  The Bat watched terrible play get rewarded and could hear Charles Barkley in the Bat’s head say, “That was just turrrrible, turrrible.”

PeachfisterH20 rarely chats but he couldn’t keep a lid on things when the following hand happened.  AgentOTown raised, PeachfisterH20 popped him and the Bat saw a salty, sultry, seductive 78 o/s.  Spicey.

The Bat called ready to snap an aardvaark.  Okay, the Bat knows you are asking.  Aardvaark?  Donkey is so arbitrary, so is fish, so this week all these online poker fools are aardvaarks.  You see they can’t can’t get away from AA they are blinded by it no matter the flop.  And even after they get stung by it, they’ll make the same mistake the next time the get AA.  Okay, that makes aardvaark less aarbitraary (so to speak) but generally these fools can barely see their own two cards much less check their side view or rearview mirrors to know a Mac Truck like the Bat is about to squash them.

That was happening to PeachfisterH20.  AgentOTown disappeared like a 90s boy band and the Bat was treated to this beauty of a flop J87 two spades.  PeachfisterH20 got peachy and overbet the flop with his obvious overpair.  The Bat now has two pair for those paying attention to this edge of your seat, white knuckle, catch your breath poker hand.

The Bat knows this aardvaark is just looking to end the hand now.  He probably doesn’t even realize 910 is already crunching him.  He just sees the spade flop and is scared of another shovel on the turn or the river.  The Bat thinks about shoving and says f it, move the slider all the way to right and let’s hope this holds.  Bingo, Blango, Bamoo, All-in, Call, brick, brick.  The Bat wins another pot and felts another fool.  Yes, he held AA.  Online poker is fun.

Poker: What to do, Where to go, Why to do it?

The Pokerbat is considering his options.  First, make a special holiday weekend of crushing the online games.  That’s option number 1.  Course that is option one every day for the Bat, when the Bat logs on to play poker on a mac at home.  The Bat likes that option, he likes the way it ends up, and he’ll enjoy the journey there–but the Bat don’t have to be at home to do that.  They make computers portable these days and now that they have poker on a mac to go, the Bat ain’t going just sit at home and play, thank Peter, Paul, Mary and Puff the Magic Dragon for wireless cards.

 Second, the Bat loads up his 1978 Cadillac–which looks a little something like the picture minus the paint job, new engine, new parts, shinyness, washed-ness, and the original seat materials, AND the the little doohicky on the front (Bat thinks one of the neighborhood kids is wearing that as a necklace)–and heads to St. Louis because that other Poker  animal, the PokerMonkey, is raving about the structures, the casino, and some giant golden arches.  That is option number 2. 

Now, the Bat is fond of McDonalds but he doesn’t need to see a supersized McDonalds in the middle of Missouri to feel better about eating Big Macs, or fries, or milk shakes, or sundaes, or nuggets… 

Bat doesn’t have a weight problem, he has a wait problem, as in he can’t wait to eat.  Since, the Bat has a local Mickey Ds, that option is off the table.   And excuse the interlude, but the Bat is going to the drive through in the middle of this post.  The Bat’s got a McFlurry itch that needs to be scratch, to the Bat’s caddy.  You didn’t think it would be called the Batmobile did you?   

Thirdly, go to Biloxi and play in that stranglehold of a structure they got at the B.R.  The Bat says stranglehold because before you know it, those blinds and antes will sneak up on you like a Gay pro wrestler executing a sleeper hold.  The Bat created a little nursey rhyme for players at that tournament to sing when the structure falls about like an old stadium full of TNT.  Make sure you chant near your poker tournament director, if you don’t think luckboxes should be rewarded…

“It all goes to hell, and it all goes in, he who is luckiest wins, and he who ain’t, buys-in again.” 

 The Bat realizes that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but you have fun with it, especially as your chips go to the center of the table all willy-nilly.

Fourthly, the Bat loads up his Cadillac, with his poker on a mac computer and wireless card, and goes on a poker road trip/bender.  Head to down to New Orleans for some cash games, take the winnings and hit the highway up to St. Louie, play some poker on the road while driving (will be safe going the speed limit),  play in a poker tournament there and then head down to Baton Rouge try to find the poker “room” in the middle of that casino there, check out the hybrid poker club maybe, and then skedaddle over to Biloxi.  That sentence is tiring and the Bat hasn’t even gotten to the good part.

Sit at the cash tables and crush the donkeys coming in from the slaughter house upstairs.  Sing to them the Bat’s song:
“It all goes to hell, and it all goes in, he who is luckiest wins, and he who ain’t buys-in again.”   The Bat has trademarked that little ditty already so you site squatters with visions of money in your birdbrains settle down.  That’s it.  Tune in next week, same Bat blog, same Bat poster, for the results.