Pokerstars Superbowl Sunday Million February 7, 2010
Posted by Jennifer in : poker , add a commentIt’s SuperBowl Sunday, so to feel like I’m a civilized American, I have to gamble a little richer than usual. So I’m liveblogging the Pokerstars Sunday Million, a tournament which I haven’t played in a quite a while, back when the players were so much worse than they are now and Greg backed me. I figure a lot of players will be half watching the football game and tilting on teasers gone wrong. Here we go…..
5:45 PM- Tougher to liveblog in a 215 than a freeroll. Have a few more chips than I started with, 11K. I had a few interesting hands which I’ll post when the tournament is over 
6:52 PM- Got KOed–shoved with ATc and got called by AQo. Two clubs on the flop but no more. Will update this with a hand or two of note later on.
Pokerstars WBCOOP Main Event Live Blog January 31, 2010
Posted by Jennifer in : poker , 1 comment so far
4:51- OUT 
Had KK all in vs. 66 and JJ. Jacks hit a heart flush. Anyway, it was fun blogging and playing simultaneously. Maybe I’ll try it more often!
4:20- Doubled up…but not through skill, but someone else’s lack thereof
4:11-Often already in shipping mode when re-raising. I have~2400 chips and blinds are 30/60 blinds+5 antes
4
- Hula-hoop break, up to 2900 chips.
3:42- Had a few interesting/successful hands, AJo on the cutoff, wasn’t sure whether to go to war preflop with 50 big blinds, but won the hand anyway. Then I had this J9s hand:
3:23-Got AA on the button and re-raised an aggressive player but unfortunately he folded. 2400 chips-100 fewer than I started with.
3:10- The whole tight when tired thing doesn’t apply to online play…I was thinking about the Main Event of the WSOP, where I decided to get some “practice” the night before the big day and ended up bubbling in a Bellagio event at 5 AM (I felt like a big genius). The next day I was floored and a bit tighter than usual. But in an online freeroll, being tired makes you just want to shove at the earliest opportunity. That being said, the challenge of blogging while playing is fun, so I’ll try not to do anything too weird.
3:04- Woohoo, the dudes to my left and right (so far) are indeed, sitting out! A total of five players sitting out at the table, so steal city until further notice…
2:58- Pokerstars WBCOOP Main Event starts in a couple minutes! I hope for many big red aces. (we bought this deck for the Goldilocks shoot) I was up today at 6 AM covering the final round of Corus Chess 2010, which was both a privilege (Congrats to Carlsen for winning the event and to Nakamura for finishing strong!) and an unusually early wake-up for me. Sometimes I play too tight when tired so I’ll be trying to avoid that tendency.
PokerStars WBCOOP Saturday prelim: Live Blogging! January 30, 2010
Posted by Jennifer in : poker , 2 comments4:34: Lost a race with 88 v. ATo and I’m out. Not much to say though ofc villain’s call was horrendous.
Boohoo, better luck to me tomorrow! Tougher hand was this one. Please vote on my correct play on the river:
4:15- Doubled up with 22 vs. A7s, lucky me! Interesting 77 hand…not sure what the right play is on the flop….
3:55-Interesting hand with tons of draws on the river. Lucky not to lose more on this hand- well not losing my stack was the reason I checked rather than bet on the river.
3:40 PM- All in against the button from the BB. AKo vs. AKo, split pot Up to 2380 chips. By far the toughest preliminary I’ve played yet.
3:15 PM- Nothing too eventful so far, was down to 1800 chips, just won a few back with this hand. Would you bet or check the turn? I like betting since it seems my opponent has given up on life (I mean this hand) but checking protects me from getting check-raised. But the chances of me winning with a hand that wouldn’t have improved on the river seem much greater than the chances of him check-raising….
3 PM- First hand of the WBCOOP event #6. A little bummed because in most of the WBCOOP events I played so far, 4-5 players sit out which makes the game so much fun! Raise, raise, raise all the time! Looks like today we have a full table….will continue to post any interesting hands in this post. Wish me luck!
I Will Play in Pokerstars’ Blogger Poker Championship! January 21, 2010
Posted by Jennifer in : poker , 1 comment so far
I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.
Registration code: 793376
Wish me luck!!
A Golden Rule of Homeownership January 20, 2010
Posted by Jennifer in : art, feminism, poker , 1 comment so farA golden rule of homeownership, right next to “no keg parties” is “don’t let a film crew into your house.” I learned the lesson the hard way when filming my latest video art project with DimMak Films. After five minutes of production, a doorknob broke. For the next 14 hours, the cast and crew squeezed between tripods to enter bathrooms, and I hoped not only for good shots, but that the equipment that took up every spare square inch of our house (but somehow never showed up in the shots, hooray!), wouldn’t damage the 100-year-old home I recently bought.
Well, rules are meant to be broken, and I’m really excited about editing and eventually showing this piece. Goldilocks vs. the three bears. Place your bets now.
Pokerstars listens to my thoughts on women in poker! January 12, 2010
Posted by Jennifer in : poker , 1 comment so far
Pokerstars is the only poker site I play on and recommend to friends, because of their generous and consistent sponsorship of the US Chess League. Pokerstars customer support is also legendary, which was emphasized to me recently when I wrote the following letter, politely complaining about mandatory spa packages and training sessions they included for satellites into the Ladies PCA Caribbean Adventure event. An excerpt of my letter:
Women, like men, play poker to get as much value as possible and I didn’t notice many similar packages in WSOP qualifiers or in the other PCA events. I think if you polled women, we’d rather have 15% more prize packages than have the way the money is spent decided for us.
So as far as I understand the package was $1100 (entry fee)+ 900(expenses)+ 1000(Hotel)+ 250(Spa)+ 250(High Heels Poker Training). I think in the future, spa packages and poker training programs that are part of ladies’ event satellites (as great as they sound) should be optional and available for cash-out if desired unless the spa package or training session are included at significant discount rates.
They responded by telling me that maybe next time (for the Monte Carlo EPT series) they would seriously consider running two types of satellites, and the kicker…what was my address, cause they wanted to send me a gift! I wonder what it will be.
Also, poker fans should read my interview with Jeff Sarwer on CLO. It got a lot of positive feedback, which cheered me up in this frigid weather. Next up for me: Covering the Liberty Bell Open for CLO, playing a few tourneys at the Borgata Winter Poker Open, and editing my latest video creation. More on all that soon! Love, Jennifer
Atlantic City Christmas with Snow December 27, 2009
Posted by Jennifer in : poker, travel , 1 comment so far 
For the third year in a row, I spent a beautiful Jewish Christmas in Atlantic City. Piles of snow iced the beach and by the time we left, it was washed away by the rain. Every morning we ate greasy breakfasts at the hotel diner and on Christmas morning, 9 Queens was featured in the New York Times. I played just one poker tournament, a $40+12 at the Tropicana, where I lost AK to AT. The next night, I was trying to see how many free drinks I could acquire while placing just one minimum bet at Pai Gow. Somehow, this charade lasted long enough to distract me from entering the $10,000 guarantee at the Trop, which turned out to be a real EV bonanza with less than $7,000 (55 players, 125+25) in entry fees.
My dad was smart enough to play in the tournament and he got to the final table, at which point it seemed everyone wanted to chop based on their stacks. I pulled out my trusty G1 and did the math for the table(each chip was worth .0121212.) Nine players were ready to chop, but the final player, a medium stack refused the deal. I can’t really blame him as I probably wouldn’t have accepted such a deal. Play resumed, dad couldn’t get his chips in in a good spot, and so it goes.
Among the photos below are a shot of a snowman at the Atlantic City train station, and me reading Jokes for All Occasions (1921/22) by the fireplace of the Chelsea Hotel lobby. Most of the jokes were more interesting insights into the time than lol funny. The racist jokes were vicious. On the other hand, most of the jokes related to gender, money, adultery, jealousy or sex were so tame by modern standards that they would never register as jokes to us. Here’s one on poker which resonates since Americans are still the butt of many jokes on our inability to absorb certain worldwide standards of measurement:
Tommy Atkins and a doughboy sat in a poker game together somewhere in France. The Britisher held a full house, the American four of a kind. I’ll raise you 2 pounds, quoth the Yankee. Tommy didn’t hesitate, “I aint exactly onto your currency but I’ll bump it up 4 tons.”
Forever 29 suited and Beauty Queens Revisited December 19, 2009
Posted by Jennifer in : books, chess, feminism, poker , 2 commentsFake wind blew out my dyed and straightened red hair. My eyes were smokier than they’ve ever been as the photographer told me, “God wanted your hair to be curly.” Indeed, a lot of artifice went into my new website banner, but what did you expect, a drowsy everyday photo of me typing away?
A couple months ago, I was lucky enough to have a portrait session with Suzy Gorman, the same Saint Louis photographer who took glamour shots of participants at the US Women’s Championship. The Gorman photos and some resultant controversy on blogs and forums, reminded me of how difficult it was for me, four years ago, to write Chapter nine in Chess Bitch, European Divas. In the chapter I profiled Antoaneta Stefanova and Alexandra Kosteniuk, two beautiful and accomplished Grandmasters (Kosteniuk became Women’s World Champion and a GM since I wrote Chess Bitch) who took opposite approaches to publicity. Stefanova is very under the radar compared to her accomplishments, while Kosteniuk with few possible exceptions (Kasparov,Carlsen) is the most popular chess player in the world.
I pointed out the pitfalls of celebrating women chessplayers as pinups: It could penalize or scare women away who don’t fit into a certain standard of beauty, or who just don’t feel like posing for glamour photos. On the other hand, emphasizing beautiful chessplayers contradicts the nerdy image of chess that persists. Also, dressing up and posing is fun for many girls and women and attacking that head-on is not my brand of feminism. At the time of writing Chess Bitch, I was ambivalent about all these issues. However, I was sure about the chapter’s conclusion, a line too perfect to cut once conceived and also a great way to test whether my friends actually read Chess Bitch: “Journalists and fans don’t go around commenting on the size of Kasparov’s cock.”
Four years later, the negatives have faded (pun intended here as well). As long as sexy publicity campaigns are high quality and optional, I approve of them more as a journalist and artist than I disapprove as a feminist. Alexandra Kosteniuk said her new book, Diary of a Chess Queen, “It was the 2001 World Championship that made me understand how important it was to work constantly with the press; and since that time I have given a lot of attention to photo shoots and my off-the-board activities. The popularity of chess during the Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov eras can be explained by the outsized personalities of those grandmasters. People who do not play chess aren’t very interested in what novelty Grandmaster N employed on move 40 of the Petroff’s Defense…”
During my own photo session, Bjork was playing, and I found when looking over the photos later, my favorite portraits were those that seemed to be less mimicking sexy face and more like me, or at the very least more like Bjork. For my new website theme I had to jump at the chance to be forever 29 suited. Some of the other photos are too risqué for me to post here, but I do have a new poker/chess themed twitter page and I also added two new galleries on my photos page, on roulette chess and hula chess.
On the subject of the Women’s World Champion, I’m grateful that Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk decided to do her Christmas Goodwill simultaneous in Tucson. When I saw this offer on Kosteniuk’s blog, I knew that Jean and the Tucson 9queens Academy would be a wonderful venue for Kosteniuk. Look for upcoming photos and details of the event on the 9queens blog, Chess Life Online and Kosteniuk’s various websites, including twitter.
I hope everyone has a very happy holiday and if you’re looking for a place to give, please consider donating any amount to 9queens, or read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn for more ideas.
Love, Jennifer
My first Main Event and a chesspoker round-up July 11, 2009
Posted by Jennifer in : chess, poker , 8 comments
So I am back from the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, my first live deep-stacked event. It was an incredible experience to play in the ME, as you really get the feeling that just playing in the event is a dream come true for so much of the field. Well this was true for me too, so I was nervous every time I put chips into the pot. My nerves were in direct proportion to the chips in the pot, and not at all with what I actually had-my heart stopped whether I had the nuts, a marginal hand, or absolutely nothing. I made it through the first day with about as many chips as I started with and then big DRAMA about fifteen minutes into day two.
I had scoped out the table composition and googled all my opponents. I knew that the short-stacked guy on my left was an aggressive pro who would try to make a lot of moves for the blinds and antes. The biggest stack at the table, with 60K (pretty much everyone else had between 25 and 32K), was Annie Duke’s husband, Joseph Reitman. Reitman is an actor and has also been playing a lot of poker since marrying Annie. I didn’t really know what being Annie’s Duke husband would mean about his play, but I was guessing tight-aggressive.
In our first hand of the level about ten minutes in, Joseph raised in early position to 3x the BB, 1500. I called on the button with tens. Flop is Q 2 3 rainbow. He checks. Baffling! I was ready to raise on a continuation bet and then give up to resistance but this check is confusing. I bet about 3K, which some of my poker friends said was awful (they like checking behind to keep pot small.) Others say it’s fine, or even good. Turn is a 7 or a 5. He bets 5K! I reluctantly call, thinking that there’s a decent chance he’ll give up on the river, which brings a 5 or a 7. He fires out again 12K. I fold. Kind of annoying hand to lose almost a third of my stack on. My gut told me there was a 50% chance my tens were good, but my brain told me the chances had to be much lower. Unless he’s a total savage or a mind-reader.
The very next hand I get KJs on the cutoff. Middle position limps. I raise to 2K, partly because I know the guy on my left will shove with a huge range if I also limp. I don’t want to waste 500 chips in that way. Flop is 89Q with two spades. Original limper makes it 3500. I think for a minute and shove my remaining 20K. He instacalls and turns over 99. I don’t catch. Bye to me! I had a gutshot and a flush draw, but because if the board pairs he fills up, I was just under 35% to win the hand. It was still the correct play. Against his range of hands, I have fold equity against many and then great equity against a lot of others. I’m even a slight favorite against hands like JJ or AQ. The only time I’m way way behind is against something like AT of spades.
Feel free to leave a comment if you can think of other chesspoker players I don’t know about. Going into day three, Michael Casella (still active 2300) and Randy Bruekner (no longer active, 2000) are still in. How can I forget Dan Harrington? He’s also still in at the end of day two, with 182K in chips. Keep the dream alive!
From Vegas to AQ in AC June 16, 2009
Posted by Jennifer in : poker, travel , 9 comments
At the Ladies World Series of Poker this year in Las Vegas, I had almost no interesting hands. I won a race AKs vs. a shortstack with ATo, which got me through about four hours with approximately the same stack as I started with. About five hours in, with 17x the BB I pushed from the SB with 33 and lost a race to AJo in the BB. My two-time "in the money streak" broken, but I had few regrets about the way I played.
On an unrelated note, I was impressed by the size and number of breast implants in the tournament. Somebody called it the cleavage vs. the grandmothers– It’s not typical that I feel like I have one of the smallest bras at the table!
This year, I’m playing in the Main Event on July 4th weekend, which is exciting but scary cause it’s a way deeper tournament than anything I’ve ever played. I was too busy with the chess tournament at the South Point to get much poker practice in June in Vegas, so yesterday I went to Atlantic City for the Ladies Event at the Borgata Summer Open. 174 players entered including one lady-man, with a blonde wig and muscles larger than any dude in the casino. According to the floorman, there’s nothing they can do to stop a man from entering. On break, he told me he played for the "great action", which made me suspicious. I support anyone who identifies as a women to play in a Ladies’ Event, but I don’t want to see an entire fraternity showing up for the "action."
The structure was nice- we started with 10,000 chips and 25/50 blinds with 35 minute levels.
I had two annoying AQ situations on the first level that I’d like to share:
#1- Second to Act limps, I raise to 200 in MP with AQo, the Small Blind calls, original limper folds. Flop is Q54 with two hearts and a diamond, but I have the ace of hearts. SB checks, I bet 300, she reraises me to 1000. Already I’m unhappy, but I make the call. The turn is a 7 of spades and she overbets the pot to 3000. After a long think, I folded. My logic was that since I had the Ace of Hearts, that cuts out a lot of draws that I can beat, and it felt more likely to me that she had one of the hands that busted me, like 44 or 55 than a hand that I busted, like KQ. Later she told me she had Kings.
#2- Folded to me in the cutoff. I raise to 200 with AQo. Button and SB call. Flop KQ4 rainbow. SB checks, I decide to take a stab and bet out 400. Both opponents call! Turn is a 5. Checked around. River is an Ace, no flush possibilities on board. SB checks. I bet 1000, which I’m not sure about- what hands can I beat that she’ll call me with? Maybe AT or KJ? Anyway, when I bet 1000 the Button thinks for a while and re-raises me to 2000. SB folds and I call. The button has Jc Tc for a straight, so I lost a bunch of chips on this hand.
Later I rebounded by showing down a straight, winning one race and then stealing blinds. Then, I busted about 20 players before the money with TT vs. AK.
Let me know if you have any tips on prepping for the Main Event except for winning races.
