The two most valuable commodities in the world

I'm feeling grumpy. I'm still somewhat ill. No fucker reads this crap anyway. It would be nice to find myself in Google searches and get stats for page views and find out what links (if any) people come to this site from and try to get some reciprocal linking going on... and so on and so on. But I think all of that takes time and money, which happen to be the two most valuable commodities in the world.

Besides which, I have this paranoid fear of somebody I play against actually reading this. Ugh!

So, I have tried to get back into a positive frame of mind. Despite the recent carnage, I am still a winning player in my games of choice (or rather, my games of neccessity) over a decent period of time. Last night I followed a very pleasing session of snooker with a fairly pleasing session of poker.

I found a lovely game of Pot Limit Omaha. I must admit to being leery of playing PLO with my current bankroll, but game selection is game selection and this was a beauty. Very little preflop raising, and no big bully stacks. I actually felt alright about buying in a little short, something I have never ever done before. Over two hours I doubled my buyin, which had more psychological benefit than financial. This was a game I could have killed if I were not playing on a shoestring, but it is what it is and it ain't what it ain't. I suffered one annoying beat, putting a $10 short stack all-in preflop with KK9x (x means I can't remember) versus his QTTx. I've said before that Omaha hands don't have that big of an advantage over one another preflop, hence I steer clear of the big multiway all-ins that you sometime see, but headsup with those hands I was a decent favourite.

At the same time I played more five card stud, and won another 10 big bets in the couple of hours. I'm running at virtually five BB per hour in this game, and while this is over a very short sample I am pretty confident that it can continue.

Why? Well, to put it simply, there are a bunch of poor opponents. And what do they do wrong? Surprise surprise, they play too many hands and they call too much. It was ever thus. Their congenital optimism is a little more surprising than usual, given that 80% of everybody's hand is exposed in this game. I don't think I have come across any other form of poker in which it is so frequently possible to bet the nuts and get called - or even raised. Since you can so often get paid when you know you are good - and remembering exposed cards can help enormously in that respect - I am happy to play pretty tight, and let others deal with swings and variance. (I saw one chap go from his last 9 bucks up to 90 and back to 30). Which is not to say that I don't make any 'moves' or have some fun, 'cause I do, but there is just no need to overdo it.

Actually I have a lot of fun. I enjoy the game immensely, because it gets different parts of my brain firing. And I especially enjoy getting raised and reraised when I hold the nuts on fifth street.

What are those guys thinking? The guys who do that? I bet, reraise his raise, and still the opponent doesn't think he might be beaten and puts in another raise. I guess, simply, they are in mortal fear of ever, ever being bluffed and feeling stupid.

I think there's a lot of it about. I mused on this after the five short $5 heads-up no limit hold 'em tourneys that rounded off the night. I won 2 and lost 3, but it would have been the other other way round if not for this: I have KQ and have raised without the button pre-flop. The flop is K55. I check, my opponent (who has me outchipped but only slightly) makes a moderate bet, and I raise all-in. He calls fairly quickly - with A4o. He hit an Ace and won, but I am still boggled by his call.

It became clear over another couple of matches with him that his strategy was to bet huge only when he had absolutely nothing - and so he evidently assumed that I would do the same.

There's a lesson for both of us: your opponent doesn't neccessarily think like you do. Remembering that would have stopped him making that incredibly bad play, and later would have stopped me laying down the best hand twice to his bluffs.