Extreme Tilt

Results in for October

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:34:00 +0000

Hey Guys,

I'm going to check the latest results a bit (you should too) ... but we should be up-to-date through October for the Extreme Tilt Leader Board. It looks like miraclegro is making a great charge to the number one spot.

mindwise

September Player of the Month: Potroast00

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:12:00 +0000

There were three clear dominating performance on UB in September with Potroast00, papaGEORGIOOO, and Wiscomurrary all easily pushing past the magical 300 point mark. Papa did his best to take the lead on the last day with a 7th place finish in the 11pm 9/30 $100 tournament but it wasn't enough to overcome Potroast00's 353 points. Congrats to all three on the amazing September results!

Hot Players: miko77q Continues to Crush

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:45:00 +0000

With the UB $100+ Leader Board finally up-to-date, it is clear that one thing has not changed: miko77q continues to dominate the big Ultimate Bet tournaments. He currently stands alone on top of our leader board with 1347 points. Miko has cashed 67 times this year in $100 or $200 UB tournaments with June being his only slow month. He's already cashed 7 times in September.

Potroast00 has pushed his way past P0kerpr033 into second place on the overall leader board, while RagnarPirate holds fourth. PapaGEORGIOOO has also made a huge run and moved all the up to fifth place. Congrats all on your excellent play!

September: With just a few days to go in September, we have an excellent race with Wiscomurray holding a slight lead (336 points) over potroast00 (327 points) and papaGEORGIOOO (327 points). This will go down to the wire!

August Player of the Month: MarkesanMike

MarkesanMike pretty much owned August with 330 points, almost 80 points ahead of dapster. Also re-emerging in August, after taking some time off, was AngryClec, who came in 4th. If we included the afternoon $100 qualifiers (into UBs various $1000 tournaments), then Clec very well may have one the month. He was dominating those. But our leader board only looks at cash tournaments.

July Player of the Month: fgrtrade

Fgrtrade had only six cashes in July -- so how the heck did he win the month? He had an absolutely amazing four 1st place wins, a second, and a third. That's just plain sik folks. This guy is a closer.

June Player of the Month: RagnarPirate

RagnarPirate dominated June with 306 points (over second place finisher hsk1972 with 197 points) with 10 cashes, including two firsts. Anytime you get over 300 points in a month, you are rocking. We've only had a few all year. Fantastic job! One other note on June was Rizen coming in 14th ... why is that special? Because he was at the WSOP for much of that month!

Overall, I'm doing okay ... currently running 35th overall, which I'm happy with after running so bad in July and August. I made two final tables on Monday night, so things are continuing to run well (although more so in the rebuys).

Good luck all.

mindwise

P.S. If you find any errors or missing results, please let me know.

Leader Board Now Up-to-Date

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 02:23:00 +0000

It looks to me to be good through 9/24. I'll update the monthly leaders soon.

Leader Board Almost Updated

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:04:00 +0000

Hello Everyone ... we've had some tough problems, including a hard drive crash, a back up error, and a database error. So some of the delays have been trying to get information off of a hard drive that had failed (and that never happened). So we had to rebuild the database. The leader board right this moment is almost up-to-date. I just noticed that a few days from mid-August were still missing. We're putting it in now. It should be updated by the end of the day. I'll post again when it is.

Good luck to all my buds in Aruba!

Leader Board ... Borgata Trip Report

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:40:00 +0000

Hey guys ... so we had a fairly significant database problem. It has been solved we believe and now we're rebuilding and adding in the missed tournament. The leader board should be back up to date next week. Thanks for your patience.

Here is a trip report from the Borgata Open. I went down on Tuesday and played in the Event #1 (NL $500), which had a field of 1033. The play wasn't in the new poker room but large hall upstairs, which offered very good playing conditions. I didn't quite get to the dinner break in the tournament.

It's all a blur right now but I do recall losing 1000 of my 4000 chips on the first hand. NICE. I had AJ in the SB and the hand went something like this: The button raises the 50 blind to 125 and I flat call as does the BB. Flop J 7 2 rainbow. Buttom bets minimum of 50, I raise to 150, BB calls, button calls. Hmmmm. Turn is 10. I bet 225. BB calls and button folds. River is a 9. I bet 250. I really can only put the BB on KJ but J 10 is also a real possible hand considering how much people love it. But you would sort of expect him to reraise with two pair. Well he minimum raises me to 500 and I feel forced to call and he turns over J 8 for the straight. Nice start. I'm wondering if I just didn't bet enough to move this guy off top pair and as I consider this, I watch him play 5 of the next 6 hands. In the first 30 minutes he caught trips on the river twice (calling bets with a pocket pair with overs on hand hand) and another straight with J 8! I decide that I probably didn't bet enough but that it was clear I wasn't going to move him off that hand no matter what.

He's our chip leader at the table until Wendell Barnes is moved to the 10th seat. Wendell got a little bit of fame for making a final table in a January WPT event that Daniel Negreanu won. In a key hand they played together, Wendell put in some fake teeth. Negreanu crushed the final table to go onto win. But you can see from Wendell's steady results that he is a real player:

http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/61121/wendell-barnes.htm

He had a big stack and played it well. He took a bunch of players out on the table by winning a few coin flips and simply not folding top pair when players tried to push him out of a pot. They never had anything. I'm not sure what about him made them do that, but it happened over and over. He finished 24th.

For the rest of the tournament, nothing much stands out. I built back up but lost a JJ vs AQ race and lost with AK vs A7 two pair to go down to a short stack. I made one very tough laydown of AK suited when I still had chips when I put the guy on Kings or Aces and he showed Kings.

That night I played in one $100 SNG and donked on the bubble (top two paid) and called it a night.

I did rail PSP1, a PXF Subscriber, in the 2nd chance tournament that night. He crushed early but eventually was in fearless short stack ninja mode. He was literally the low man in the tournament for two hours and continue to be so ... but he just moved up the pay scale but taking just enough blinds. Eventually they got down to five and cut a deal where PSP guaranteed himself third place money ... plus their was more cash to play for. He went out 4th in a very well played game.

One funny moment: with two tables to go there was a huge, enormous chip leader (who was playing extremely well -- he made a great transition from wild, loose player to fairly tight player who just stole enough to maintain ... he did it immediately when he sensed a momentum change). The big stack had literally taken 7 people out in the last 30 minutes and when PSP sits down, he is playing up his loud, loose image and grandly states that he can tell PSP is a nice guy and he will not pick on him.

Now, PSP is a nice, very funny guy (and will often have that image on a table) but he stares the big stack down and in the absolute straightest, deadliest look says: "I'm not a nice guy." He didn't give a hint of a joke. I'm cracking up but they proceed to fold to every small stack all-in he played and he marched to the final table. Hey, maybe he was just lucky but he clearly made a decision to pick that image at a new table and I'm sure it helped him get thru one or two steals.

The next day I play in Event 2 (NL $750). This time I only lose $900 on my FIRST HAND (10 10 no good on a 9 8 4 board). Hey, that's progress, right? Things didn't go well and I'm out after a few hours. I remember thinking I had a PUFF of 5 but really the key was getting no action when I did have a hand.

I was wondering if it was going to be one of those runs we all hate in poker, but I then played a $250 SNG and chopped that (including a last longer) and felt good going into the evening 2nd chance tournament. I felt I played my best in this event, eventually finishing 22nd out of 240 or so for a small cash. It was a disappointing ending when my JJ couldn't beat QJ all in preflop in a hand that would have almost tripled me up.

The next day I chopped a $100 SNG and a last longer bet with PXF subscriber Maggie. It was an interesting SNG with 3 bad players and 7 pretty good ones. Maggie was tough sitting on my left and out played me in this hand pretty early: I had A 4 spades in position and called Maggie's early raise, as did several players. The flop came Ac and two spades and Maggie bet out. I put Maggie on a good ace and finally decided not to repop all-in. I just decided that she would call and there was no reason to race this early. The turn was a blank and she bet out big and I folded. Later I asked her what she had and she said: "You don't want to know." KQ! She said she knew I had her on a good ace and knew I was on the flush draw and knew it was too early for me to race ... so she made the play.

I briefly considered banning her from PXF for life but then realized she was a real good representitive for the site! Good luck in your next event at the Borgata Maggie!

One final note, PSP also did very well in Event 2, eventually making the final table and finishing 9th. Great job PSP! Just wear your PXF hat more often!

mindwise

ExtremeTilt Leader Board Update

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:36:00 +0000

Hey Guys,

I'm away all of next week but I wanted to update the leader board before I left. We are missing four days of tournaments right now but I will be getting them in the middle of next week.

My bad MTT run continues ... it's perhaps the longest poor run I've had in 18 months (tecs, satellites, and sngs are good however). When I look at my stats, I had an excellent June but July and August have been sucko (although my live play wins were my biggest ever and obviously that made July a big month overall). What's interesting is that, accept for the past few days, I have been much more successful building a stack early, something that use to be a problem. I haven't had much time to go thru my hand histories with PXF taking so much effort but it's something I need to do. I know that part of the run has been a very high number of bad beats ... seems like everyone hits trips vs. my aces and kings lately.

The UB Aruba tournament doesn't really fit into my schedule (three kids in school) and even though I won two entries into their $1000 tournament, I cashed those out. Right now I have almost 3000 tournament dollars and a ton of Tecs. So I'm kind of thinking I'm just running bad in MTTs for some reason. We'll see. I'll probably play some smaller Aruba tournaments and see what happens.

Good luck this weekend in the majors!

mindwise

What's Up

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:42:00 +0000

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the long delay between posts. It's been a fun, tough summer. My little company has been busy and everyone has (is) on vacation so there have been some long days.

The highlight, pokerwise, was my trip to the WSOP. I played in the $1500 NL Prelim Event 37 and finished 156th out of 2800 or so. It felt fantastic to cash and make it to Day 2, but when you bust you still feel like kicking someone. LOL.

I then won a $500 "2nd Chance" tournament that night. It's very cool to win a live tournament (payout was $16,000) -- winning live is a lot different than winning online. It was great to meet so many PokerXFactor members, UB buddies, and PocketFivers at the WSOP. Unfortunately, with their scary faces stuck in my head it's going to be harder to play against them. ;-)

And, of course, it was thrilling to follow Rizen's deep run into the Main Event that ended today. Simply brilliant.

Otherwise, everything has been focused on PokerXFactor which continues to grow and do well. In the Fall we'll be releasing our next big upgrade to the Hand History Analyzer and there are daily videos to produce.

In online poker I've been running very good in SNGs (winning several $100 ones and 10 tecs in the last week) and in satellites (over 1000 tournament dollars), but haven't been doing much in MTTs with some bad beats and bad play. PokerStars has been a tough nut lately in particular.

I took my first shot at UB's Aruba tournament last night finishing 18th out of 104 or so. Top 3 paid. I was about 13th out of 18 when I was late coming back from the break. I get to my chair and see the clock is going as I have AK diamonds in the big blind. A stack slightly smaller than me (around $5500) had gone all-in late position, then a big stack flat called. This looked pretty hopeful to me. I figured the small stack could have almost any two cards -- probably an average ace or middle pair and the big stack coul have the exact same. I needed to chip up that that was the spot. I pushed allin and small stack flips QJ hearts and big stack calls with a middle pair. Flop has a beautiful King of hearts ... but then heart, heart and I have to settle for the smallish side pot. That was the spot where I needed to hit to make the run. Next hand it folds to my SB and I go all-in for the rest of my few chips with ace rag and BB calls with KK. Ace. Woot. Next hand it folds to me on the button with AQ. I push and SB (who I just busted his KK) insta calls with 99 and I miss and am out.

I have a lot of tournament dollars to give it a go but not much time left.

Good luck all!

Ne

PokerStars Blogger Tournament

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:30:00 +0000

PokerStars does this cool blogger tournament and I want to PLAY! I had my first big cash at PokerStars recently, when I took fifth in their nightly $150. They do have some cool promotions.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 3351196

I also made the final table in the night Bodog $50 tournament. This is one of the very best values on the Internet right now because it has an amazing $25,000 Guarantee. VN.

May Player of the Month: jamesavery

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 20:41:00 +0000

Congrats to jamesavery, the Extreme Tilt $100+ Leader Board player of the month! James did it with a remarkable 10 cashes in $100+ tournaments in May, including two seconds, a third, and three more final tables.

You can see our full list of top players in June below.

ExtremeTilt June Top Players

I didn't see all these players in action, but when I did play, these players always seem to be doing great ... here are my "hot players" for June: biggiepomona (who had a great stretch over the last third of the month), G S X R (UB's answer to Mike "the mouth" Matusow ;-), shattus, p0kerpr033, Annette_15 (let's just rename the 2pm $100 to the "Annette $100" cuz she just OWNS it), pinksock, jfiiue4, debo34, feldliss, and slabstract. Congrats all on excellent months! Now let's all get our WSOP seats in June. ;-0

Next PXF Tourney at PokerStars with WSOP Prelim Seat Added

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 20:09:00 +0000

Hey all ... Just wanted to post a few announcements concerning PokerXFactor.com:

* Our next Subscriber tournament is at PokerStars on June 19th. We're adding something special: the winner also gets a $1500 seat in a WSOP prelim event plus $500 for travel. Woot.

* We've signed our first "Guest Pro" at PXF -- it's the great brsavage, who, while playing less this year than in the past, may very well be having his best year ever. His first video could be up as early as tomorrow.

* June Special: Normally, only PXF Subscribers are allowed to use the PXF Hand History Analyzer (which can handle multiple hands). For June, we're allowing players who simply register for free to upload one multi-hand history. It will give you a great feel for how the HH Analyzer can help you spot leaks in your game.

We'll also be announcing another big time guest pro soon. Stay tuned.

Speaking of pokerstars, I've finally managed to cash in a few tournaments there. Nothing big, but for me that's a big change. I've never been able to handle their structures before.

May was a good month for me. For the first time ever, I won two $100 MTT tournaments (one on UB, the other in a small 100 person tournament on another site). I've had some frustration this week because I made a bunch of final tables where they were satellites and only a few spots paid, but couldn't cash or score a seat. I did take second in the ecrew this week.

We'll have the May player of the month soon. Thanks,

mindwise

PXF Hand History Analyzer Beta Online -- PXF Tourney Tonight! (5/18)

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 18 May 2006 19:45:00 +0000

Okay the beta of the PokerXFactor Hand History Analyzer is up and running. Subscribers can now load their Hand Histories into the Analyzer and share with friends and post to PXF Subscirbers to see (you can post the clean version or stats version). We appreciate your feedback (as well as your patience during the beta testing).

I posted my UB $100 win as the first public hand history in the analyzer. You don't have to be a subscriber to see it, just a registered member (which is free).

UB $100 in PXF HH Analyzer

My PUFF (Preflop Unadjusted Fortune Factor) for the tournament was a healthy 56 (average is 50). I remember having a couple of nice suckouts (nice for me). Hand 314 was huge (hey they were sooooted). I hope PXF Subscribers will post some of their tournaments as well at P5s (the links for posting hand histories are in your My Account area, click on "My Hand Histories" then "edit" next to the hand history, then the private links can be used to send to friends or post in a forum). What was your PUFF?

We added a print function just today, so now you can print your stats. To see my introductory video on the PXF Hand History Analyzer, click the link below.

PXF HH Analyzer Video

PXF Subscriber Tournament Tonight:

I hope our subscribers will join us for the PXF tournament tonight (5/18) at PokerStars at 9pm ET. Passwords are posted in your My Account area.

Bax and Sheets recorded the video for the first Subscriber tournament today, so that will be online next week. They will be doing a video for this tournament as well. Thanks,

mindwise

A UB $100 Win! ... What's next at PXF

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:41:00 +0000

It was kind of cool to win a UB $100 MTT with 135 players last Friday. I've had a bunch of bigger cashes in $200 tournaments but winning something is fun. ;-)

I use to play $30 and satellite MTTs everyday and would win those from time to time, but can't play in them anymore. So it's nice to get back in the winner's circle. I had at least three good suck outs during the tournament but got sucked out on equally as much, and I won two big races that got me to the final table. I also had G S X R on my left for almost the entire tournament and thought he played very well, as did shumonytonite, acesfull23, and kice32.

I was the low stack on the final table with 5 to go and then again with 3 to go, but for some strange reason I thought I had a good chance to win. I think it was because both my final two opponents were so hyper aggressive, that I had a very good read on them. So, while yes they picked up many pots by betting out no matter what flopped, I also won huge pots or even doubled whenever I hit my hand. One simple check on my part and they quickly smashed that UB Pot Bet Button ... and with blinds and antes so large, the pots were big. Even if I just sat and used almost all my time before making a minimum bet, they would take that as weakness and put me all in. They did this to me when I had trips once and when I had the nut straight.

So how do you describe their play? Obviously, it was very strong because they had huge stacks with three to go and they picked up lots of pots with aggression and they played fearlessly and dominated the final table. On the other hand, they never dialed it back. If you watch aggressive players like Bax, P0kerPr033, or AngryClec, you see they switch gears easily. When they think they are beat they minimize their loses. It's possible, of course, that because these two were both hyper aggressive, they actually pushed each other to higher levels of aggression, and I was the lucky beneficiary. It was funny that they never chatted at all, although I tried to loosen them up. After I won a hand by going all-in preflop, I told them: "Gee, this all-in stuff is really working for me. Thanks Sheets." Or when I hit quad 8s: "That fourth 8 was a good card for me." Couldn't get get a comment. ;-) Thanks as always for the rail support!

PXF UPDATE:

The big item we are working on for PokerXFactor.com is the next stage for our replayer. The main goal is to move the PXF Hand Viewer, which our subscribers currently use to review hand histories from tournaments or SNGs, from a simple "Hand History Viewer" to a "Hand History Analyzer" ... We're going to make it incredibly easy for users to quickly analyze their play, to identify key hands to review, and to understand, through extensive stats, their own play in the MTT or SNG. We're introducing what I think is a new stat, called PuFF, that I think people will enjoy. More to come on that. Here is a screen shot:

ExtremeTilt April Player of the Month: miko77q ... More on UB

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:51:00 +0000

Congrats to miko77q, who is our April Player of the Month! Miko missed being the March Player of the month by just one point and he is our current Overall leader with a huge 150+ lead over therook81. Congrats miko77q on a continued great run!

April, 2006 Leaders

If you take a look at the link above you'll see all the hot players in April. Some of them, like sneakone and sexygee, I don't know much about. Others, like james taylor are top pros, but I just haven't had them at my tables much when I do get a chance to play. The players on the list that I've personally seen that they are playing very well include: the talkative g s x r, jeffbeesdat, Wachovia, --kill-bill, mucker, psp1, anniebets, beazynow, killerbritty, potroast00, P0kerPr033, and the great bel0wab0ve, who seems to be spending more time at UB. If you have these players at your table, be prepared to be "re-popped" anytime you raise. ;-)

I especially like the way P0kerPr033 repops you. It's always just the right amount to cause you extreme pain. It's never an easy call and makes you doubt your AJ off in a hurry.

UB MTTs

Concerning UB and yesterday's post: KrazyKanuck apparently stepped in and had them put the some of the $100 MTTs back in. There is one tonight at 8pm with a nice $15,000 Guarantee.

We can hope this will be stable but who knows. In the past months UB has launched a nice $30 rebuy, had great success with it, then pulled it without explanation. They've launched half a dozen $100 tournaments a day, but with no guarantee, so many were no bigger than a SNG, so they failed terribly. They've launched excellent nightly $100 tournaments, then changed the time, then pulled them. They launched a terrific Wednesday night $200, then changed the time, then pulled it. They have moved their Sunday $200 tournament time slot several times.

This is not a way to BUILD a following.

I wish one of UBs "Ambassadors" -- KrazyKanuck, Legggy, Debo, Poker Ho, or Shawn Rice -- would be given control over UBs rebuy and $100 touranments for just two months. If UB did that, then if UB actually announced it that these players had control for two months, players like me would flock to the tournaments they set up to support them. Do it UB.

UB Losing Interest in Big Multi-Table Tournaments

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 03 May 2006 13:32:00 +0000

As you all obviously know, I have been a big supporter of Ultimate Bet. I know for a fact, based on emails I've received, that a bunch of good players were playing MORE often in UB $100 tournaments because they enjoyed the Extreme Tilt $100+ Leader Board and wanted to move up the rankings.

During UB's disastrous upgrade problems, I was supportive as well. They were promising great things for the MTT player, including some sort of super tec system, saving hand histories, and most importantly bigger and better tournaments. And soon they introduced those tournaments, including a nice $30 rebuy, a great $200 Wednesday tournament, nightly 7:40pm $100s, which were later changed to an even better 8pm $100. Plus, then introduced an exciting $500 Sunday tournament.

And now? They are all gone.

The software upgrades never happened and all the big MTTs are gone except for a 11pm $100, which is useless to the East Coast player -- and really to the middle America player as well. I'm sure UB will throw one or two of these back in but it sure looks like they have given up trying to compete for the bigger buy-in MTT players.

I'm not sure what this means for the Extreme Tilt Leader Board. I can never personally play in the 11pm $100. The Leader Board wasn't about me but I liked being part of it, at least. The purpose of the leader board was always simply to see who the hot players were at UB. Now there is so little interest there, should I really bother to keep up the Leader Board with PokerXFactor.com taking up so much time? I'll hang in there for a while and hope things change.

I'll also note that UB hasn't sent me a hand history in months. I'm always polite when I ask for them -- and I make VIDEOS of hand histories ... another nice promotion for the site they will not get. I have two friends who also never get hand histories from UB and PXF members report the problem (they can upload HHs into our Flash HH Viewer), but I know several others that get them in a few minutes. How is that possible?

UB has a bunch of online pros who are part of "Team UB" ... including KrazyKanuck, Leggggggggggy, Debo, and Shawn Rice. All are very strong players and they have been excellent reps for UB -- especially on PocketFives.com, which is one of the top online poker communities now. But what can these reps now do? They hardly have any tournaments at UB that, I would think, they can honestly say are interested in. It's embarrassing what UB has done.

I think UB just sees that nice steady rake from all those players in the $1 cash game and they just can't take it when sometimes there is an overlay on a tournament. But they didn't really give their bigger MTT tournaments a shot because they lost so many players from the upgrade problems. They needed to stay the course and win those players back. But who knows ... they don't communicate well with their users or supporters.

A Good Run ... Hot Players

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 21:14:00 +0000

I was going to post yesterday about the good run I've been on, but didn't have time. Well the run ended with two bubbles last night! Fun.

First the good news: I've moved up 16th on the Extreme Tilt $100+ Leader Board, even though I'm playing less poker than ever before (playing very little from the end of February through most of March). April has been a good month with 5 cashes, including a few final tables. I took 3rd in the $100 on Sunday. Then I had a funny result in the $100 on Monday. I had a big stack most of the tournament, something that is happening a bit more often for me, when I started getting a lot of small pocket pairs in various positions. No matter what I did with them, they cost me chips. I limp, someone went all-in. I raise, someone re-raised allin, or called and beat me to the bet on the flop. I called but then got hammered. So my big stack melted away and there I was 30th with 31 to go -- top 30 paid. I limp into the cash and immediately double up. The very next hand, I'm all-in with A 10 but it loses to a small stack's AA. The ante and blinds hit me and I'm down to 5 chips!

I win that hand with A3 when two threes hit the board. I actually fold a hand, then pick up A3 again. Woot -- that's the nutz. I'm all in and win when two aces flop. I win another hand and now I'm actually a little threat. I ended up going from 30th place with 5 chips to going out 20th on a coin flip.

Last night was rougher but I was still happy with my play -- mostly. I had a big stack in both the $100 8pm and the ecrew. In the $100, I chipped up early to 8000 chips when I get moved to JohnnyBax's table -- and he has 8000 chips too. First off, he wants to know why I'm playing and not editing videos (aha! I was editing -- adding those "tags" to the videos so each one can have a table of contents -- I sure hate those tags). Then, of course, I can't take Bax's chips because it would ruin any chance of a video. ;-)

It didn't matter: after being very active for the first hour I go stone card dead. I win the few hands I play mostly -- but after another hour I'm down to 6500 chips. Bax is out and now we're at the bubble -- 33 to go with 30 paying. I chip up a bit to maybe 8k and I'm in 27th place. I can easily sit and cash.

But the problem is with 30 paying and only 205 entries, the first ten spots pay a profit of just $27. I wanted to win. I pick up 66 in the small blind when a big stack raises. I put him on an average ace and went all-in. I had enough chips where he should really fold A10 or AJ, but he has better than that -- AK and has to call. An ace hits and I'm out.

Ecrew was fun. I had a big stack several times, including at the final table. But I made a horrible call with AQ. I had already raised the BB when a guy went all-in. I certainly could have folded but, with the big stack, was willing to gamble. I also admit I was a bit tired and wanted to move things along. He flips AK and I'm down to 8k. Still in fine shape. With 9 to go, 8 spots paying, I pick up AA. The same guy had raised the BB and only had to call 4k more. He flips 10 10 and trips up. GG me on the bubble.

Players who are running well lately include --kill-bill--, g s x r, anniebets, chiliking, and psp1. Very nice runs -- terrific job. I also see jeffbeesdat is second for the month, but I don't really know the player well.

Congrats to AngryTeeTee who won entry into the WPT 5-Star World Poker Classic and had an excellent first day! Great job!! Bax starts his play today in the tournament. GL to both!

March Player of the Month ... One Year Old! ... A Good Run

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 17:22:00 +0000

Congrats to markesanmike, who is our March Player of the Month!

It was the tightest competition for monthly honors since ExtremeTilt began a year ago. Markesanmike had 187 points, miko77q (our overall leader) and yo 11 tied for second just one point back at 186, rizen had 185, chips1331 is 5th with 183, and finally feldliss was 6th with 179 points. Wow! Congrats to all ... very well done.

Miko77q continues his extremely hot run. Not only was he 2nd overall in March, he already has cashed five times in April. I haven't played much with markesanmike, but he certainly had a great March.

ExtremeTilt launched in early April 2005 and we're now one year old! Thank you all for your support, feedback, and friendship. Woot!

My good run continues ... maybe cutting back on tournament play is helping my game (and maybe listening to hours and hours of videos from Bax and Sheets again and again is helping a bit too).

In the UB Sunday $200 last week (March 26), I final tabled (ending up 9th), then cashed in a $100 and $40 (bubbling the final table) at UB last Friday. On Tuesday, I played in the $200 UB WSOP Satellite and finished 3rd for a nice cash. Then last night I final tabled the UB Wednesday $200 (ending up 8th). Fist pump, double woot. It's nice when cards hold up and you suck out from time to time.

The WSOP satellite was interesting. Only the winner paid the seat and the top 7 cashed. One player had an enormous lead and having already won a seat previously, he pretty much did what he wanted. Three handed, I went out with AQ vs JJ.

In the $200 last night I was happy with my play. For the first 1.5 hours I folded a lot with nothing much to do. My AK lost to a 66 small stack and that got me pretty low. Then I went on a great rush, lost a fairly big pot when KK couldn't beat a small stacks 99, then rushed again.

I was very happy with my board with 30 to go. A couple of very good players were on it but I was picking up a few pots per round. Then with 20 to go, I got moved to an extremely hard table that included several chip leaders plus DoubleLucky in a signifiicant but smaller stack to my left, and other ranked players like pokertrip, scgolfer, and several other strong players like -not-p-, steam boat, etc. Yikes.

DoubleLucky was simply all-in when he played a hand and he eventually moved up with a big suckout and some excellent play (finishing 4th). I went big-time card dead at this point as well, getting J4 over and over it seemed. But maybe it was good not to have cards because it was a nutty, tough table. I can't recall ever being on a table where it folds to someone in reasonable position, that person makes a very healthly raise, and then one of the blinds with a good to average stack went all-in and the original raiser folded. It happened over and over again. The only hand of note that I folded was AJ off to an all-in and a call before me.

I finally hit a rush that pushed me to the final table when I caught KK, AK, then KK. The final table wasn't much to talk about. With one very short stack all-in, I had called with 77. The flop was 2, 4, 5 and a big stack checked. It was a very strange play, because this big stack often bet out no matter what. It felt like a trap and I made the terrible play of checking. In the back of my mind, I kind of thought that we were going to check it down -- but really it was too early for that. The turn was a five and big stack bet $15,000, which would cripple me if I lost. I had him on 10 10 or JJ and painfully folded. He flips 66 and wins the pot when the all-in misses. Not good.

I finally got low and then my all-in AJ ran into AQ. There were a number of players I didn't have a lot of experience with who played well, plus I played with miko77q and could see why he is having such a great year.

Okay back to work on PokerXFactor.com (our "Match the Move" quizzes are going online soon).

New Leader Board Rule

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:35:00 +0000

For some reason, UB has been running a bunch of $100 tournaments with no guarantees and hardly anyone is playing in them. In two of these, only six players participated. This isn't even a Sit 'N Go. So I'm forced to put in a new rule: to qualify for the UB LeaderBoard, there has to be a minimum of 50 players participating in the tournament. I can't have 6 man tournaments screwing up the rankings.

We are making great progress at PokerXFactor and I look forward to someday playing more and posting more. Thanks everyone for your continued encouragement.

Right now I have two systems setup for editing the Bax and Sheets videos: one at home and one at work. Last Friday I finished a video at home and couldn't move on to the next one (it was on the work computer), so I decided to play some poker for a change. I played in the 7:40 $100, 8pm $40, and 9pm $100. I cashed in the 9pm (finishing 18th) and cashed in the 8pm $40, bubbling the final table going out 11th. I made a real dumb play to go out 11th: I had been 12th by a fairly large margin when someone went out and I picked up KQ in middle position with just 6 people at our table. It folded to me so I went all-in but then noticed that the guy on the Button must have just lost a pot, because he was extremely low (I had enough chips for a couple of rounds and didn't HAVE to make that play). The BB wakes up with AQ and I'm out. Serves me right for focusing on the 9pm $100 and not taking a few more seconds to see what was going on.

Ecrew is back tonight on UB. Woot! It will be fun to play again. Good luck all!

9th in UB $200 .. Playing Differently

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:18:00 +0000

I took 9th in the UB Sunday $200 tournament out of 571 players. The railing support was terrific and fun -- thanks guys, it's always appreciated. Woot! Since I'm often only playing two tournaments a week (the UB Sunday $200 and Wednesday $200 -- I'll eventually add Tuesday's Ecrew, which have stopped while UB was going through it's troubles), it's cool to hit.

There is no way to make the following not look self-serving but I have to be honest: thank you Bax and Sheets.

I have made several UB $200 final tables over the last six months and cashed a bunch of times, but this one was different for one main reason -- I really enjoyed this tournament because my stress level was so much less. This is the main thing I've gotten so far from the videos by Bax and sheets: confidence that the play I am making is perfectly fine based on math, position, the cards, the players, etc.

In the past, I've struggled over lots of the tough decisions we all face when going deep in a tournament. But this time, I was absolutely sure that there was only one move for this hand -- or even that there are three ways to play this hand and all are acceptable. That just lowers your stress completely -- then it's up to the cards.

On top of this: I definitely played differently in a whole bunch of situations. I came over the top when I had a big stack without top premium hands, making the early raiser make a decision for his entire tourament. I isolated players better than ever before. I didn't limp nearly as much. I called far less. I made at least 4 very tough laydowns when the math wasn't right or where I would have been breaking one of Sheets' rules. I called a few lower stack all-ins when the math was right but I knew I was behind. I played my cards more aggressively when I hit my hand and got paid off more often and sucked out on less. This stuff adds up. Sure, I did some of this stuff in the past, but not as consistently -- hand after hand -- like I've been doing lately.

All of these things and much more are second nature to Bax and Sheets. Seeing them make the correct plays over and over again just burns it into you. So thank guys. Obv.

In the first two hours of the tournament, I had terrific cards that held up. There was only one bad suck out during this run that stung and one other didn't hurt that bad. I was playing more hands than normal because of the cards, maybe 20% and winning more than normal. Hours three and four were fine. The only downside to the tournament was my table had a ton of big stacks. I was 3rd or 4th in chips in the tournament but was often on the table with the chip leader and two others in the top ten -- even with 120 players to go. So that did slow me down, which of course was maybe a good thing.

I then went card dead when we got to maybe 30 players and two little runs of cards kept me alive. Finally with 14 or 15 to go I hit and moved up in the tournament to 3rd, only to blow it in the one horribly played hand of the night, an attempted steal from the SB against the BB, who played the hand great. Dumb! I limped into the final table then hit a hand. I was still in last place but safer with 60,000 chips and blinds at 4000/8000 and big antes. In middle position, I got AQ suited but an early position player went all in. I honestly thought he had JJ based on an earlier play he made and with 12k blinds coming, I finally made the call. Bad read -- he flipped KK and I went out 9th.

On top of those rather poor plays, I had one other hand I played badly and maybe 5 other hands I want to pull up in the PXF Replayer and take a hard look out. I have a long way to go but I feel like I'm getting there.

Congrats to shattus for taking second, plus pullincards1, kristen, and anniebets on their results too!

Overall, it was an exciting night of poker because Bax went deep in the PokerStars $1 million and the UB $200, plus it was fun to watch Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, the WSOP champion, dominate the PS $1 million. He finally went out 2nd after holding a 3 to 1 lead over the guy he was heads up with. Still, it was a nice $185,000 pay day. ActionJeff, a player I've been watching a lot lately, won the $500 UB and went very deep in the PS $1 million as well. VN.

Good luck this week!

Hot Players

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 03:22:00 +0000

As I dutifully type out the results for the Extreme Tilt UB $100 Leader Board, I notice which players are scoring often or big or both. The recent list includes classyploppy with another first, leggggggggggy, one o clock, angryclec, debo34, 235711, rizen, gator93, and especially P0kerpr033 have been killing. Well done fellas.

235711 (pretty much the worse name on UB -- sorry!) has been expecially hot. He or she had excellent January and February results and 4 final tables in March with one win and a second. Classy has only one cash in March, but it was a first. P0kerPr033 only has one cash in a $100, but he's been owning the aruba and wsop satellites ... very nice. Rizen is our top player so far in March by 70 points! He has four $100+ cashes in March and they were a first, second, and two thirds -- this guy knows how to close.

Good luck this week.

UBs Continued Troubles

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:29:00 +0000

Because of PokerXFactor's launch, I haven't been able to play any poker! All weekend we edited videos, which takes focus and concentration to piece them together and carefully match the audio levels. So I was excited to be play in the UB Sunday night $200 while I inserted hundreds of "tags" into the videos, which is mindless (mind numbing?) work. The tags gives the videos a table of contents so people can quickly replay a hand or advance a head to a hand of their choice.

But no, the tournament never started. I figured that would happen when UB first insisted that I upgrade to their latest version -- but unlike the normal click a button and the download starts, the error message told me to go to their website and download. Well, at least, I thought, it's a big new version. I download the new version, install, launch the app, and I get the same error message. This happens several times. I try uninstalling the UB software completely, then reinstall. No good. Finally, I ignore the error messages and try to login 10 times in a row and it magically works. So my hopes weren't that high.

It's easy for me to wait for UB to fix it's problems because I know I can't play much. But this has to be very bad for UB. With the big software upgrades at Party and the better blinds at PokerStars, UB has to be losing customers for good. If one of these sites upgrades their software so that you are always in the bottom center seat (only UB and Full Tilt do this), then why play at UB at all? I like many of the players (poker buds) but without Ultimate Buddy (which has also been down), I can't even rail easily.

The problems have been going on for weeks now. It's getting very serious for them. I hope they can turn it around.

Good luck this week!

PokerXFactor Training Center is Live!

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:59:00 +0000

Check it out.

PokerXFactor Training Center

I hope to hear from you guys tonight on the Conference call! Thanks.

Date: March 9th, 2006

Time: 11:00 PM EST

Toll Free: 1-800-214-0745

International: Toll/ Direct: 1-719-457-0700

Then dial the following Guest Code when prompted: 684236#

And so it begins ....

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:28:00 +0000

That's what I normally say when I'm down to 200 chips and quad up, but in this case it refers to the launch of the PokerXFactor Training Center late today. It's going to be very busy (don't miss our conference call tonight at 11pm ET, see details below), so I can't really blog for ExtremeTilt today.

I just wrote the first PokerXFactor blog, which you can't see yet because the site is not yet live -- so here it is. Talk to you later!

-------------------------------------------

Subject: Being Green

Today, of course, is going to be very busy as we move to make PokerXFactor's Poker Training Center "live" during our pre-launch phase. But I wanted to quickly post about a hand history that Sheets sent me late last night.

Right now, Sheets and Bax are busy sending me hand histories, which we animate in the PXF Hand Viewer, then they add their narration to them. Bax recently sent me a great hour and half of video, which we are working to edit, compress, etc. Great stuff.

So Sheets casually sends me a hand history last night of a $500 SNG that he won with a simple comment that this was "a pretty good one." I load up the hand history in the viewer and take a quick look.

Now our "developer's hand viewer" has some special features. It shows all the hands played on the right side and if Sheets wins a hand for more than the big blind, that hand is highlighted in green, if he loses a hand for more than the big blind, it's highlighted in red. This lets him quickly scan the upcoming hands so he can make sure he doesn't miss something interesting. Plus, for really long tournaments, it lets him (or Bax), skip a few hands to the next important one. Here is a quick picture of the hand history Sheets sent me:

So I load this up and I'm looking, looking, looking -- it's ALL GREEN!

I finally find just three hands where he lost more than the big blind. And this wasn't some 50 hand SNG where he simply blew out the table. It was a tough, 147 hand slugfest -- and he lost THREE HANDS larger than the BB. Sorry, I just think that's sick. What's the song by kermit the frog? "It's not easy being green..." I wouldn't know! GG Sheets.

Sheets and Bax Conference Call Details

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 21:49:00 +0000

I hope you all join us for the conference call tomorrow night:

Date: March 9th, 2006

Time: 11:00 PM EST

Toll Free: 1-800-214-0745

International: Toll/ Direct: 1-719-457-0700

Then type the following Guest Code when prompted: 684236#
==================================================

I had some questions about the future of ExtremeTilt.com. Although I'm sure I'll be posting more about PokerXFactor, I don't want it to overwhelm this site. Just hang in there for the next few weeks as we launch. The leader board will absolutely continue (hey I'm climbing up -- up to 40th now!). And you can expect my completely torturous review of my own poker progress to continue at Extremetilt. LOL -- something to look forward too! ;-0

PokerXFactor will have it's own blog as well.

The Big News: Bax and Sheets at PokerXFactor

noreply@blogger.com (mindwise) — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:31:00 +0000

If you are a PocketFive reader, you may have seen the announcement that JohnnyBax and Sheets are going to be the featured pros who will be creating videos for PokerXFactor.com as the site evolves into a Poker Training Center.

What's the right word? Hmmm. WOOT! Fist pump. ;-)

They've just started working on the videos so we're doing a special "pre-launch" on Thursday, March 9th as we build the content. We'll be announcing some special things for the "early joiners" on Thursday.

I hope you'll all join us for a toll-free conference call on Thursday night (March 9th at 11pm ET). Bax and Sheets will explain their vision for the site. We'll be posting the phone number and guest code tomorrow.

Lots of work to do! Below is a link to our press release. Stay tuned.

PXF Press Release