Playing drunk

Ninety minutes of play and I was stuck a hundred dollars... beating the arm of the chair in frustration, aiming futile curses at my opponents and at my stinking useless cards, wondering why I hadn't just gone to bed in my drunken state.. how could this have happened again?

After a night of snooker, pool and beer I headed home on the bus. I felt quite sick, and tired, and told myself I was not playing poker when I got home.

However, when I got back I found I had the lounge to myself for a change, and just could not bring myself to pass up the opportunity for some solitary play. So with a hot sweet cup of tea by my side I dived in, despite feeling wobbly.

Actually, playing drunk doesn't always harm me - sometimes I am so conscious that I really oughtn't be playing that I play with commendable tightness. And that was more or less how I played last night. But the cards just would not come. Precious little in the way of starting hands, absolutely nothing flopped, and if a dubious half-a-hand did flop for me then fierce action compelled me to surrender.

For the most part I managed to avoid tilting, settling for drunken whimpers of pain and frustration rather than making it worse with bone-headed plays. I did tilt off the remnants of one buy-in, when I felt I had just enough of the flop to be worth calling down a guy who was betting very frequently but proved to have two pair which I didn't outdraw.

I was just about ready to go to bed and call it a bad night, with the game getting short-handed and my luck getting no better, when... when... I made the nut flush on the turn, got a call of my raise and my hand held up. And then moments later I flopped the nut straight and got it all-in versus two opponents; despite having no redraw I won that hand too and in the blink of an eye was ahead by $10 and three busted-out opponents had left.

Time for bed. I had also won two heads-up matches while waiting for some sort of Omaha hand, so it turned out to be a moderately decent two hours or so of play. The heads-up wins were quite routine really - that makes five wins in a row by the way. My best streak is nine.

I went to bed knowing I had dodged a bullet, and resolving not to play drunk and tired again, at least not until the next time I felt like it...

Postscript: Today my bank has started to play hardball with me after tolerating my overdraft-exceeding ways for some time. I am in a real fucker of a situation just as my holiday comes up. I really need to keep winning!