24 hours of online poker

January 10, 2005 10:03 PM

Poker player plays for 24 hours in a row? Yawn. Online poker player plays eight tables simultaneously for 24 hours in a row? Interesting.
posted by bdk3clash (20 comments total)

I'd rather stab myself in the eye than play 8 tables for 24 hours.
posted by mosch at 10:23 PM on January 10, 2005

Baybe if it was blackjack...
posted by Balisong at 10:49 PM on January 10, 2005

heh, Maybe..
posted by Balisong at 10:49 PM on January 10, 2005

bdk3clash -- Is there any online reference for the poker vocabulary used in the thread? I'd love to appreciate this for all its glory.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:02 PM on January 10, 2005

Can we get off the online poker? I feel like a suicidal comment spammer even saying those words.
posted by quasistoic at 11:06 PM on January 10, 2005

Here's a list of abbreviations.

Here's a poker dictionary.
posted by bdk3clash at 11:17 PM on January 10, 2005

some of those plays were awesome :) if you ever want to start playing poker use this thread as a reference
posted by drscroogemcduck at 11:51 PM on January 10, 2005

When does an addiction become a feat?
posted by ori at 12:03 AM on January 11, 2005

"When does an addiction become a feat?"

I'd say around hour nineteen.
posted by bdk3clash at 12:33 AM on January 11, 2005

0.5/1 limit? Gimme a break. Come back when he does this while actually risking large sums of money against people who know how to play the game. No limit.

It's not about stamina. It's about money and risk.
posted by drpynchon at 12:45 AM on January 11, 2005

I'm with mosch, but credit where credit is due: if you can come out of that amount of time with that many hands with any kind of win rate, you're a better man than me.

Of course, I have decided to stick with live games. Except maybe for the occasional tournament...

Civil, I don't think the earlier linked abbreviations quite cover it. For the game summaries,

BB=Big Blind (or Big Bet, depending on context)
SB=Small Blind
MP=Middle Position
UTG=Under the Gun (first person to bet)

For the cards, it's pretty much instinctive--K being king, Q queen, etc. But "o" means offsuit and "s" means suited, so a king and queen of hearts would be KQs.

Forgive me if you already know this.
posted by lackutrol at 1:27 AM on January 11, 2005

I'd rather stab myself in the eye than play 8 tables for 24 hours.

8 tables too few for you mosch?

~wink~
posted by kamylyon at 5:06 AM on January 11, 2005

Thanks for the primer. I know poker and basic strategy, but with the new attention it's recieving, a whole lexicon has come up that left me often times scratching my head (2+2, for example). Now that I've "translated" some of that, I am really impressed. Some great hands (though given 1700 some-odd hands, you're bound to have a few!)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:32 AM on January 11, 2005

Civil, 2+2 is a respected poker community and book publisher.
posted by TonyRobots at 8:06 AM on January 11, 2005

0.5/1 limit? Gimme a break. Come back when he does this while actually risking large sums of money against people who know how to play the game. No limit.

Consider how much thought and effort one table of high stakes, no limit poker takes. It's tough enough playing 2-3 tables at once.

Multiply it by 8 and multiply that by 24 hours and you're asking to lose a lot of money because you can't give it the attention it deserves. I don't think that the best players in the world could stand up to that kind of constant braindrain for 24 hours straight.

Still, I think this is a collossal waste of time, as he ended up only making ~260 dollars profit, or roughly 11 dollars an hour. Fairly unsubstantial, given online poker standards.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 8:23 AM on January 11, 2005

Ahhh I love the Action Junkie attitude... "you're not cool unless you play No Limit!"...

It takes a lot more discipline and mathematical skill to play limit poker. Yes, it takes an artful mind and psychology to truly master No Limit -- I respect both games quite a bit -- but don't scoff at people playing limit poker.

I play $5/$10 limit poker and right now I'm squeezing out about 3.1 big bets per hour per table (I often play two tables)... believe me - that's no easy task. (for any poker geeks out there, that 3.1bb/hr is after roughly 13,000 hands of tracking... I'm well aware that it may not stay at that level once I have a better statistical sample)...
posted by twiggy at 8:51 AM on January 11, 2005

It takes a lot more discipline and mathematical skill to play limit poker. Yes, it takes an artful mind and psychology to truly master No Limit -- I respect both games quite a bit -- but don't scoff at people playing limit poker.

That wasn't my point at all. I play some limit and it has its merits (though truthfully, I do find it tedious and designed to limit winnings and equalize players). But the bottom line is that that game almost entirely does depend on statistics and discipline as you said. And well, that makes it much easier to play it on 8 tables at once, especially against 0.5/1 competition. That's why people are now writing computer software that can beat that game. But even that said, put this guy on eight 5/10 tables and he'd probably give up once he realizes how much money he's losing.

Personally, I'll take one $200 buy-in no limit game any day. It was, after all, the game that put me through school.
posted by drpynchon at 10:09 AM on January 11, 2005

"But even that said, put this guy on eight 5/10 tables and he'd probably give up once he realizes how much money he's losing."

I'd just like to point out that the poster who completed this challenege, bisonbison, has been playing 8 tables full time for quite some time now at the 3/6 and 5/10 levels. And he is indeed a winning player at said levels.

So there.
posted by bdk3clash at 12:05 PM on January 11, 2005

Fair enough...
posted by drpynchon at 12:35 PM on January 11, 2005

When I read stories like this, I'm always reminded of a 2+2 poster by the name of Lebronomania. He's the posterboy for the online multi-tabling explosion.

October 2, 2003 he made his first post in which he happened to indicate that he's an online pro.

October 9 he makes this post where he considers moving up to the 15/30 games, and states that he has the requisite skills.

October 21 he posts about a $2500 losing night, where he was playing five 15/30 tables.

October 22 he posts asking about the stars 30/60 game. Since clearly he's too good for 15/30.

October 29 he suggests a poker marathon. 24 hours of five or six tables of 15/30. And in a followup mentions that he thinks he's as good or better than everyone else on the forum.

October 31 he posts that he has passed the bar exam... but will keep playing poker rather than go into law.

November 10 he posts that God was with him while he played six tables of 15/30, and that God hated him.

November 11 he asks how to calculate the probability of a winning player showing a massive losing streak. Remember, at this point he's been playing 15/30 for a month, and immediately jumped into massive multi-tabling. But he's sure he's a winning player. Later that day he wonders if online poker is rigged. When people wonder if he should be playing fewer tables or at lower limits, he attacks them.

November 12, he announces that he has quit poker.

Personally, four tables is plenty
posted by mosch at 12:44 PM on January 11, 2005