Booze and lose?

A tough and important day at work yesterday, so having negotiated it successfully I treated myself to quite a lot of lager at the pub and a ton of quickfire sports talk. (England are in the European Championships quarter-finals tonight, if you didn’t know). I took the bus home still wondering whether I would play, or collapse into bed.

It was never really in question, I was awarding myself a blowout after work, and so a nice drunken poker session was the cherry on the cake, or the froth on the lager.

So – after playing with brain cells reeling as I sat into the early hours - I will have to check out a lot of hand histories tonight to see exactly how well or badly I played certain hands. I think I was quite aggressive at Omaha, and certainly made one bad raise – but I won a couple of other large pots which my hazy memory is hinting may have had something to do with a nice degree of aggression. So perhaps I lived and died by the sword.

I finished the night (and another cold bottle of beer) at 2am, winners by thirty bucks. I won at Omaha cash, lost an Omaha sit and go, and won three out of four $10 heads-up matches. Funniest of all, I had an experience that I guess all poker players should have at some stage; I bust out of a tournament on the very first hand!

It was a $15 multi table event, 156 entrants, and I came 155th. Dealt AK immediately, there was a fairly large raise in front of me. I decided that this was it, the beginning of the run of cards in a tournament that I have been waiting for, and I raised all-in. Quite honestly, I expected folders all round and a couple hundred chips added to my stack. Instead, a guy in the blinds called all-in, and so did the original raiser.

I don’t massively like either of their plays (and yes, I know mine was quasi-suicide) as the blind turned over pocket 7’s and the other doofus, I mean the other guy, turned over AJ. No help for anybody and I was out. Not sure why I got 155th rather than 156th – perhaps it was alphabetical. In which case, call me Arnie Aardvaark from now on.

What do you think? Which of us made the most idiotic move in this pot? I think it might be a three-way tie. Having said which, to engage in some self-justification, I re-raised a weaker Ace than mine and got an overcall from an A-grade optimist with a small pair. At least I had some ‘opponents folding equity’ in the hand. Quite why I raised all-in is another matter entirely, and I have written to the people at Carlsberg to ask for an explanation. Maybe I’ll get some vouchers or something.

So that was my evening. It was especially nice to win three of four headsup matches. I did a bit of data-mining (rolls on floor laughing) and these are clearly not profitable for me so far, but they are not big losers either and I enjoy them immensely.

I was going to muse over whether or not my poker game is too predictable. However, it is time to go home, I still have a slight hangover, and I need to focus on England versus Portugal. I have bought the Portugal shirt numbers on the spreads, because most of the Portuguese attacking players tonight wear very high shirt numbers.

Its one of those bets you hope to lose.