Week of September 1st, 2008

To a great surprise I got a kings welcome back into my small village in Botswana. While I had been gone visiting the Grand Teton Mountains (see below post, of journal and pictures), the elephant dung that I had bought for the village farmers was delivered. Elephant dung is a great, but expensive fertilizer in Botswana. The elephant dung will really help the crops this year, the village was so happy. Our spring will be starting in another few weeks, so the framers are just getting ready to plant. The celebration include a parade as well as a huge party. The village just wanted to thank me for my great generosity. I think I spent about $100.00 on the dung, but to them it is all the money in the world.

I am a bit of a god to most of the villagers. I am the big fish in a small pond. They know I come from America (so they think I am rich), but they see I live much like them. The only real difference is I live in a small trailer instead of a hut like most of them, other then that I live much like them. It is true I am the only one in the village with internet service, but I need that for my poker. I also have a generator to insure I have electricity at all time. They call it current rather then electricity and they lose current at least once a day do to the quality of the power lines.

I make a donation of some sort to the village anytime I have a big win at poker. I believe this helps keep the poker gods on my side. After the big celebration over the elephant dung, I slept 24 hours straight, boy was I jet lagged. This week was short, by the time I had my wits about me it was already Wednesday and I was leaving Sunday to vacation in France. So I spent most of the week getting ready for that trip.

I am taking this hot babe, she is from Holland, she is here doing humanitarian aid. I told her we are going as friends, but boy do I hope it develops into more then that. Also another couple that lives here is joining us. Once in France we will spend a week in Paris and then a week in Bodoin. Bodoin is a small down just outside Avignon. We are meeting another group of friends I know from American once we arrive in Bodoin, more on the trip when I return.

I want to continue to explain what my career was before I started my life here in Botswana. As I mentioned last I was given the position of Technical Sales Consultant. At the three mark I realized I was working about 10 times as hard as the sales people and making about one fifth of what they were making. So, I requested a sales position. After a lot of negotiating, I received the sales territory of Virginia and West Virginia. This territory had been the worst producing sales territory in the country. The first year I made it one of the top territories. I believe I was able to do this from all I had learned from the sales people I had worked with over the past three years as a Technical Sales Consultant. After five years of Sales, I decided enough was enough and I quit. I had bought a boat a few years back, a 42 foot Whitby sailboat, the plan was to sail around the world. I will go into more detail about this trip around the world, and my past career later.

As I mentioned this week was short so not much poker play. I made some money, $48.00 to be exact. The exciting thing was my hourly rate was the highest every $361.88 per hour and so was my value per hand, $4.02. I only played about 8 minutes of poker which made up 12 hands. It happened I hit two nice hands in those 8 minutes. I am reading a new book on poker play which I highly recommend. The author is Dan Harrington and the book deals with playing cash games. Most books on playing poker focus on tournament play. You might not realize this there are some big differences with tournament play versus cash games.

One little tip I picked up is the value of deception in cash games. In cash games most of the times all the players have big stacks (lots of chips compared to the blinds) while in tournaments it is rare that many players at your table will have a big stack. So in a cash game you may want to bet preflop with a good drawing hand, but make the bet look like you have a great betting hand, like AA or AK. This way you have three ways to win.

1) Everybody folds to your preflop bet because they think you have the best hand.
2) You do not hit, but neither do the other players and the other players fold on your next bet.
3) You hit your hidden draw, and the other player or players hit good hands, but not as good as yours.

I played at some low level tables to practice this strategy (these hands are not in the above stats) below is a hand that the strategy worked. I only risked about 3% of my stack to win 100% of the other players stack or you can look at it this way, if I hit, my odds are 33 to 1, if I did not hit and the other player bets I would fold and only lose my original bet.


PokerStars Game #20152979214: Hold'em No Limit ($0.02/$0.05) - 2008/09/04 21:20:50 ET Table 'Anchialos III' 6-max
Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: tavusa ($4.20 in chips)
Seat 2: Varón ($4.01 in chips)
Seat 3: wamaul ($2.86 in chips)
Seat 4: DUG ($6.45 in chips)
Seat 6: taberhouse ($9.80 in chips)
Varón: posts small blind $0.02
wamaul: posts big blind $0.05
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DUG [3s 6s]
DUG: raises $0.15 to $0.20 I am first to act so I make a bet 4 times the blinds, but just over 3% of my stack.
taberhouse: folds
tavusa: folds
Varón: folds
wamaul: calls $0.15 Ok one caller
*** FLOP *** [Ks 8h Qs]
wamaul: checks
DUG: checks I did not hit and the flop could have hit him so just give the hand up if he bets.
*** TURN *** [Ks 8h Qs] [3d] Now I have the lowest pair, not good at all.
wamaul: checks He might have a pair of kings or even KQ, and is slow playing, which is dump, because I could have a flush draw.
DUG: checks not worth a bet, since I have a very bad hand.
*** RIVER *** [Ks 8h Qs 3d] [3c] Bingo, now I most likely have the best hand and he will NEVER think I have a 3.
wamaul: bets $0.25 Great, I hope he has KQ
DUG: raises $0.25 to $0.50 If he does he should go all in.
tavusa is sitting out
wamaul: raises $2.16 to $2.66 and is all-in Perfect
DUG: calls $2.16 No brainier
*** SHOW DOWN ***
wamaul: shows [8c Kd] (two pair, Kings and Eights) He had worse then I thought
DUG: shows [3s 6s] (three of a kind, Threes)
DUG collected $5.49 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $5.74 | Rake $0.25
Board [Ks 8h Qs 3d 3c]
Seat 1: tavusa (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet) Seat 2: Varón (small blind) folded before Flop Seat 3: wamaul (big blind) showed [8c Kd] and lost with two pair, Kings and Eights Seat 4: DUG showed [3s 6s] and won ($5.49) with three of a kind, Threes Seat 6: taberhouse folded before Flop (didn't bet)


As you can see I like to practice new strategies at low tables so I limit the possible loss.

Off to France so there will be limited posts if any, and most likely no poker play. On my return there should be a good journal of the trip and some great pictures.

P.S. The above picture is of me in my trailer in Botswana.