Nothing matters when your tooth hurts

Bear with me reader, I am rather low at the moment. My assorted pigeons of financial recklessness, general laziness and procrastination are coming home to roost all at once, a whole flock of ‘em.

I’m in the shit money-wise, and my tooth-ache returned with a vengeance last night just to really make me suffer. And I did suffer.

The terrible irony of last night was that I had the house to myself from when I got home until almost midnight – a situation I normally pray for without success. But last night I could only cope with the poker and toothache combo for a little over an hour before I had to retire to the sofa, almost crying in pain. (In fact I did cry a little; man it HURT, without respite). All I wanted to do was sleep, but it wasn’t possible for hours.

The poker was interesting. I decided, partly based on many bloggers’ experience, to play some $50 no limit hold ‘em. It began beautifully. I got some cards, particularly rewarding when I had raised with slightly goofy cards, got nicely ahead early, and then used my intimidating (!) stack and the predictability of my opponents to play the table like my own little violin. I was doing all the right things, seizing on evident weakness to take pots down with nothing, all that stuff.

I am not entirely sure what happened, but I then started to lose what I had won; I think I began to raise a few too many hands (I was stunned by the way that four, five, six players per hand often would call significant pre-flop raises), missed a lot of flops, and started to get ‘looked up’ a bit. I think some better players arrived at the table also.

I found myself more or less back where I had started, and was quite peeved. I HATE blowing back winnings, and I had been developing fantasies of tripling, quadrupling my buy-in because my control of the table had felt so good – I was just waiting for one real big hand. (It seems that unlike Party, the players at my site aren’t ready to tank it all-in with second pair etc.)

At which point, I proceeded to attempt to manufacture that big hand. I raised to $10 pre-flop from the button with JJ. A guaranteed way to get called only by better hands, you might think!. One caller. Flop comes K high. He checks. I bet pretty big. He calls. Turn was, I think, an Ace. At which point I really stuffed up by checking behind him. River was a blank, he checked AGAIN and I possibly messed up again by checking. I think he would have called on the end due to the size of the pot and the fact that he was an optimist who turned over K6s. King six! If I had bet the Ace on the turn I guess I would have taken it down, though.

So, as the toothache went into over-drive, I realised I had played like a plonker and wound up quitting a loser by $40, with $10 from a short-lived PLO game to soften the blow.

If I had quit both games the moment the tooth began to prove even a minor distraction then I would have been $60 winners for twenty minutes of play.

I can’t decide if I will play that game again. Probably I will retreat to the safety of the headsup games and the recently rewarding sit n goes.
Better card-related news: this morning I span my casino bonus round the tables (because I seemed unable to withdraw it without doing so), and I won £11 by playing the requisite number of hands of blackjack. That makes me £20 winners (ten bets) over about 150 hands. Wow, I must be real skilful.

Tonight, and please god let my tooth be okay, is the home game. I fear there may be only five of us when I would prefer a couple more, but it should be great fun anyway. Chips! Dealer button! Real cards! Arguments about the rules and blinds! Acting out of turn! Misdeals! Tells?