Pleasantville

I am getting a little concerned that this blog is turning into an endless succession of results and ‘notable hands’. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but I’d like also to be making dazzling insights and humorous asides. I guess I have to keep grinding, and let those big pots (of wit and wisdom) come when they come.

So, Thursday was a fun night of poker. Once again I did an extensive tour of pokerville, searching –always searching – for a good game and a weak opponent.

I found them at pot limit Omaha, where I feel totally comfortable these days. I know I will have losing sessions from time to time, but barring a run of truly evil beats I feel confident they will be rare. I won around $75 in three hours of unremarkable PLO.

I took a poor $10 heads-up player inside five minutes. What is it with these dudes that they want to put all their chips in with no pair on the end? They are always trying to blast me off a pot after I have shown strength on every street. Somebody should tell them that there are no style points in poker.

Most satisfying of all, I found a three-handed game of stud ($1/$2 seven-card variety) in which all three players were short stacked and immediately and obviously poor. Two were simply chopping their stacks down like lumberjacks with call after call after call, while the other folded at the first sign of strength. I was lucky enough to get a few cards and inside ten minutes the callers were bust, the folder was giving up and I’d made over $20. Making hay while the sun shines.

I lost money by playing my first multi in a couple of weeks or so. For once I didn’t even get close to the money. I cracked after over an hour with no cards and made a foolhardy move to bust out in 55th place. I can’t remember how many runners, between 150 and 200 I think. I am longing to experience a real rush of cards in a tournament. You see it in every event; somebody at your table has a half-hour or fifteen minutes where they get cards, flop big with them and accrue a beautiful stack in no time. Given that I have managed to get in the money with a workable stack several times recently, without ever having such a rush, I am looking forward to it happening to me.

I also lost money later on when I returned to seven card stud at an interesting table. One guy was ramping up a lot of the pots, but I could not build a hand or make one stick. I was actually down around seventy bucks inside an hour and seething somewhat, when I had a run of straight, full house, straight in three straight hands to finish only a few dollars behind. This is a consistent pattern in many of my stud sessions, early losses and a late rally. Perhaps I play too loose early on, I’m not sure at the moment.

After all the wins and losses, the swings and the roundabouts, the hits and the misses, I totalled $63 over four hours of poker.

And after all I wrote on Friday about keeping records, I had to laugh at myself after this session when I checked my banking history with my poker site. That little $66 to $1000 target I had for myself? I forgot about one of my recent withdrawals; I actually made the grand target over a week ago.

Two grand, here I come.