As I mentioned last week, I will appear on Dr. Alan Schoonmaker’s new Internet radio show on holdem radio.com on Tuesday, April 24 at 5 PM. The show is broadcast live from Binions. You can listen live, or pick it up from the archives a few days later.

Alan is a brilliant man, and is trying to make his show more about poker psychology, strategy and issues than celebrity type questions (”What was your biggest pot?” ” Where do you store all those bracelets?”). You are welcome to suggest questions for him to ask me, by e-mailing him at alannschoonmaker@hotmail.com.

I am honored to be his third guest. His first two were Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky. It should be fun, and if you decide to listen, I hope you enjoy it.

Warning. Much name dropping ahead.

Friday I played in the Jennifer Harman Charity Tournament at Caesars Palace, benefiting the SPCA No Kill shelter in Las Vegas. Entry was $300 with multiple $200 rebuys with a qualifier and $200 add-on. There were almost no prizes, though ta $10,000 WSOP seat was donated by Caesars to the winner, and Full tilt gave some prizes to the final table.

This was a strange event, as Jennifer’s request attracted many of the world’s best and best known tournament players, many of whom had little interest in playing or trying to win. Of course, some did. I was delighted to be asked to play as I like the charity a lot (I got my SnowShoe Siamese cat Princess Yulee from that shelter), and I have unlimited respect for Jennifer.

Good news and bad news at my first table. Some empty seats (many players donated the $300 and did not show), but occupying seats were a couple of relative strangers, Barry Greenstein, Chad Brown, Doyle Brunson and David Grey. Doyle wanted to play golf and went all-in on the first hand (6-5 suited). So did David, who seemingly wanted to leave, but not play badly doing it. Chad also went all-in, seemingly to go play cash games. David had J-J and won with a set. Two seats open! Barry made some big bets that were folded to, then I raised all in with 8-8. Barry had A_5 and flopped two pair. Rebuy!

I was not planning to do much rebuying, but I did want to have a good showing because it would be fun and also might help book sales. Winning cash games does not generate much publicity. (Oh, the structure was lightening fast, for those of you who follow this stuff, 1K in chips for your buy, 1K for each rebuy, 2K for the add-on; $25-25 blinds, 25-50, 50-100 in twenty minute rounds.). Fortunately, I picked up a few hands, made aggressive plays, and won many chips, including getting many of my chips back from Barry who was happy to get rid of them and not rebuy.

Their seats were soon taken by Marcel Luske and Isabel Mercier. Marcel was fun, made several rebuys, and played most hands. Here is a hand I lost to Isabel before I knew how she played. (Tight as a drum, she eventually blinded off, essentially). She limped early, I limped behind with Kh-Jh. A few others trailed in. On the flop of Kc Qd 3c,, she checked, I bet nearly the pot, everyone else folded and she called. I did not think she had a very good hand for her early position check on a totally drawish board. The three paired on turn, and I made a too large bet to get her to throw away her draw (about 2/3 pot). She check-raised all-in. I had her covered by a decent amount and and had built the pot to where I had to call, I thought. Wrong, as she had K-Q and I was drawing dead. I got there when a jack hit the river, but they did not give me any chips.

I rebuilt my stack and made it to the add-on period with enough that I did not take the add-on at all.

I will continue this saga next week, with more name dropping and a couple of other hands. For those who cannot wait for the sad ending, I went out 12th, taking an unfortunate beat that I am sure you can wait for.

On Tuesday, April 24 at 5:00 PM. I will be a guest on Dr. Alan Schoonmaker’s new Internet Radio Show on holdemradio.com. Dr. Al’s show is on the “Psychology of Poker,” which is also the name of his first poker book (which I recommend). Listeners will be invited to call in, or to e-mail Dr. Al before the show to suggest questions. More instructions will be posted both here and on my forum, but I want to give you a heads up so you can postpone everything else in your life to listen in.

I hope you all can join us, and help make the show a really dynamic one.

I am in the final stages of the book, so I missed another week. I am sorry, and I hope you wonderful (and discerning) people continue to wisit my site.

I am playing a lot of turbo heads-up No Limit tournaments on line these days. HU NL is quick, fun, and profitable. Matches take no more than 15 minutes, and most last less than five, which is perfect for my stamina these days. There is a surprising amount of skill. I started with a deposit of $300, and played $33 tournaments until I got to 500; $55 until I got to $1,000, and $100 until got to $2,000. I am now playing $100 and $200 and we’ll see how it goes. I am not that strong, so I play only one or two a day.

Heads up allows you to study your opponent carefully. Since I like to think that my game in general, even in full game limit, is geared toward exploiting my opponents’ weaknesses, this format allows me to really work on that aspect of my game.

Most of my opponents in the HU NL events pay too tight. Simply, they are waiting for a hand. This allows me to chop-chop-chop, a technical term for betting at almost everything and winning all of the ones where we both miss. I use this method to build up a chip lead against these sorts of players. My first goal is to get to to a 2:1 advantage, so if we get an all-in and I lose, I have 1/3 of the chips and if I win, the event is over. Often, I do not have the best of it, as I am willing to take races and even small underdog status to eliminate my opponent once I get to 2:1. If I lose I go back to chopping.

My second goal is to get to 3:1. In this instance, I am willing to gamble all-in more liberally as if I lose we are even in chips and if I win we are done. At least so far, I have had excellent luck against these players who allow my to gain a lead, although I am sure that are annoyed that when they finally do get all-in, they appear to get drawn out on.

Sometimes, I meet an opponent who does not allow me to chop away, by being more aggressive. In those cases, I try to make bigger bluffs and bigger moves with my good hands, as this sort of player is quite suspicious and after a while will call a big all-in with bottom pair or even k-hi. It is a question of establishing a mindset in my opponent that I am impatient.

Anyway, if you have a few minutes to spend on line, you might want to try these. Win or lose you learn things.