Poker players shouldn't have families

There won't be much thought going into this post, since one thing or another has delayed me since Friday. Yesterday it was the classic 'mistakenly close Word without saving what you have written' scenario. Most frustrating, but my criticism of Matt at the Poker Chronicles can wait for another time; I don't feel so 'antsy' today, although I will still say that many (most?) people like personal content in blogs, no matter what Mr Chronicles thinks.

So, a quick skim through the last three online sits, from last Thursday and Friday and then last night (the weekend having been spent seeing The Girl I Am Seeing as usual, despite our latest series of rows).

Thursday: I got home from an enjoyable night at the pub, not too drunk to play and just drunk enough to play 'for the love of the game' (ugh!), as discussed last week. I found an attractive Omaha lineup and bought in a little short, because there were no big stacks and I wanted to play with the freedom to risk losing my stack if a situation demanded it. As it happened, that sort of situation never arose, and the weak lineup and some reasonable cards enabled me to win about thirty bucks in an entirely stress-free hour or so.

Friday, having anticipated a long session, I got home from work exhausted and slept most of the early/middle evening. I just played for perhaps two hours at around 11pm. First, four headsup matches. Yes, only $5 matches, yes it is rinky-dink stuff. I won three out of four as per usual in current form. A couple of them were enjoyable battles actually.

Then a PLO sit and go. I capitalised on others’ mistakes to end up holding over half the chips at the table with three players remaining. Annoyingly, the second stack knocked out the third so we went heads-up almost level. The other guy quickly showed himself willing to gamble at this stage, so I went for it and we were very quickly all-in pre-flop with what turned out to be very similar hands. Mine was a little better, and it held up to earn me the win and a nice little run of 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 1st. Avoiding those third places is nice.

We skip past the weekend since it featured no poker, and arrive at yesterday. Having not played for almost three days I was really looking forward to getting stuck into a good session. However, personal bits and pieces (poker players shouldn’t have families) got in the way and I ended up with just a little more than an hour.

$1/$2 Five card stud went well. It was a really poor set of players, utterly predictable/readable and totally prepared to pay me off, and I think with hindsight I should have made more than the eight big bets that I pulled in.

I also – puke! – lost two out of two headsup games. I’ll credit the second guy with a very good bluff at a critical moment, although I would like to play him again. The first guy I had outchipped 3:2 and I him got all-in with A4 versus my A6, and the board looked like this on the turn: 4967. He got his long-shot river and I couldn’t claw back from there.

Anyways, last week I made $130 in a little over ten hours and at my current bankroll level I have to be very pleased with that. Right now I would be delighted to make $130 each and every week. I would also like to build the bankroll right back up, but circumstances do not allow. I have to keep nibbling at it.

Oh, the sins of youth.