That is certainly a good question. And the answer is – it was an accident. Online Casino Malaysia was supposed to be the name of another site that I was going to create – one totally unrelated to poker. But, thanks to a mix-up, the poker site got the other site’s name. What could be done?
In poker, the goal is to achieve the best possible results with the hand that one is dealt. In Texas Hold ‘em, which is what I’m primarily concerned with, if it’s expensive to play a bad hand when your money is already in the pot then it’s best to dump the hand and cut your losses. However, if you can play lousy hole cards (the two that you’re dealt) without betting any extra money, you might end up with such a great flop (first 3 cards that are part of everyone’s hand) that what was once a bad hand becomes a great one.
Having a poker site called ipicimi might be one of those situations. After all, what does ipicimi have to do with poker? Nothing on the surface, but with a little thought it has everything to with what I want this site to be. It started out as an acronym, and that hasn’t changed. It just stands for seven different words than what was originally intended.
Interesting
Poker
Insights &
Creativity
Involving
Monetary
Illusion
The monetary illusion part at the end signifies that I will be playing primarily, if not entirely, with fake money. Although that doesn’t involve the thrill of gambling and fear of losing money to the extent that playing with actual currency does, it’s the same game and lessons learned from the risk-free tables apply to the risky ones. Accounts of especially good and especially disappointing hands that I’ve played will be the “Interesting Poker Insights” along with a feature called “Hand of the Week”.
The creativity is what I hope will truly set this site apart from other poker blog sites out there. I’ll have a regular feature called What If Wednesdays, and you’ll have to read those to see what is is. I also plan to write poker-related rhyming poems and song parodies and submit them as blog posts.
So, that’s why this site is called IPICIMI. Any questions?
Don’t Worry About What Might Have Been
Lately, I’ve made several unfortunate folds. Those are hands that I considered playing but didn’t because of the high cost of calling, and would have won. I dumped pocket jacks because several people either called or re-raised a big bet made by someone after me, and I would have beaten both pocket kings and a flush because there were two jacks on the board. I made what would have been the right move in most situations, but it was still frustrating and led to me making a stupid, overagressive play right after that.
Then, today I dumped my pocket kings before the flop because it was early in the tournament and two people were already all in. One was tilting, but even so there were almost certainly a lot of ways that I could’ve lost with two others in the pot. It turned out that the tilter had an ace and nothing else, and the other player had queens, and my kings would have held up. That frustrated me and may have caused me to lose more of my chips, but at least I calmed down in time to remain in the tournament for another two hours.
It is tempting to try to make up for missed opportnities by trying to bully people and entering a lot of pots, but that doesn’t work on a consistent basis. In the free games that I’ve been playing, people with anything decent will be reluctant to fold and even if they have nothing plenty of players will bet more than I’m willing to risk without the nuts. It’s probably even less likely to work against good players, since they probably can recognize tiltish behavior and know how to get chips out of it.
I hope that I’ll be able to follow my own advice.
I don’t think that I’ll be playing at PokerPages for the rest of the month. I’m confident that I’ve clinched one of the top fifty places in their league for the month as long as I don’t hurt my ranking by having a bad game. This is another test of self-control.
If anyone is reading this within a day or two of when I’m typing this – happy new year. This will probably be my last post for 2006.
