Fear in the dentist's chair

Chronological post:

Last night, after some excellent snooker, I played for perhaps an hour and three quarters. I was in a $1/$2 five card stud game which had a gen-you-wine maniac in it. He raised every street if he was in a hand, and he was in most - and naturally enough got one or two others playing along, mostly trying to isolate him I suppose. Pots were frequently in the region of forty dollars or more, twenty big bets, a LOT for a five card stud game.

I lost in the game, about nine big bets, which is negligible really. When nobody is going to fold anything past third street because of the large size of the pot and the small size of their brain, you have to make a hand. I never got a wired pair bigger than 9's, and never could hit anything. Usually if I was going anywhere in a pot somebody would open-pair a big card. These things happen; it was a game where one decent hand could have won me a (comparatively) enormous pot but I just never saw one. It is a shame that I hadn't made my deposit at that stage so that I could afford to keep playing.

For the record, the maniac lost around 70 bucks while I was at the table, a fact not disguised by him bringing $500 to the table after a string of losses.

In other action, I won three out of four heads-up games, coming from 600-2400 down in one of 'em. But I failed to cash in a PLO sit and go, coming fifth when an opponent made a dubious call of my all-in raise on the flop with only a flush draw, but hit it. A small $15 total loss on the night.

This morning I was at the dentist for the completion of my root canal work. I'm a brave soldier, so that was fine.

My mind drifted onto poker whilst the dentist did his thing, and I discovered a little fear inside me. Fear of the PLO games that I want to get back into. It probably didn't help that I took a look last night and the $50 buy-in game was running at an average pot size of over sixty bucks... that is huge for that game. It was a murderer's row of loose, aggressive players with three figure stacks. Still, I won't be sitting in games like that. So, after the dentists I made a deposit and am ready to get pack in the Omaha saddle as and when the game is good.

Then, upon checking my blog here at work, it was nice to get a comment from a new reader. Blu, I'm afraid the five card stud games I play are at an English site that doesn't accept players based in the USA. I think that Planet possibly spreads the game as well, but I haven't played there in well over a year so I can't be sure.

Well, this has been another boring update... please accept my apologies. For English readers, I just remembered that Chelsea have a player called Scott Parker. How long will that idiot stay there, sitting in the reserves, as he was always destined to do?

Last night I had another footie bet. This one was a 'push' as Spurs drew with West Brom.