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.

Howl of pain

This won’t be a terribly clever entry; just a howl of pain and annoyance and frustration and self-recrimination.

Basically, I lost more than $400 over the last 48 hours.

I was not well at the weekend. Starting Saturday night I began to have an aching back and exhaustion. I cut my weekend with my girl short on Sunday morning, and slept til mid afternoon. At that point, fuzzy headed and tired, I sat to play poker. What a doofus.

I lost quite a lot. Although I did flop top full house against quads – ouch! – I did not play well. I also got tetchy and emotional about what was, at that stage, a perfectly manageable loss. The kind of loss that comes along once in a while, and perhaps even stops me getting too carried away with my own game.

I should not have gone back later, and lost more. During that second session I was certainly on mini-tilt, although when I look back the major part of the loss was suffered against one opponent who is usually a donator. On this occasion he had a bit of a stack and was betting very frequently. I flopped a series of strong hands with which I decided to trap him, only to see him have – or hit – the nuts every single time. I’ve not had a string of second-best hands in a long time.

Oh well. Bedtime. I already knew I would probably be off work on Monday, when I would put some hours in and play carefully and with focus…

Well, the day started like that. I only had small goals – small but obtainable – and since there were no appealing PLO games I just played some $5 headsup matches. I actually won nine in a row of them, without ever getting particularly lucky!

Oh for the day to have ended there. Instead I ran out of patience and played 6-max PLO. This is not a game I have ever excelled at. I make a lot of my money in PLO by playing better starting hands, by hitting nut flush over weaker flush and so on, against weak players who let me draw and are scared to call my larger bets. At 6-max, in general, you don’t get those opponents. I got killed, although in hindsight (again) it could have been little worse than break-even if I had not made a couple of stupid mistakes.

Both mistakes were similar, chucking all my chips in against irritatingly aggressive opponents – and they turned out to have the goods.

And now, with the distance of time, I realise that those two mistakes accounted for a huge proportion of my Monday losses.

In the evening I went back and played $1/$2 five card stud, which is a game where I am showing a remarkable win rate thus far, plus more $5 heads-up. Stud yielded $32 in just over two hours, but I lost four of five heads-up matches (one to a guy who I had all-in twice with KQ versus KJ only to see him river a Jack).

So, when all is said and done, I am quite devastated. $400 should not be a truly damaging setback, but because I have been happily drawing on my bankroll for a while (I am in an ocean of debt, remember?) it actually leaves me short-rolled enough to be leery of playing PLO.

More importantly, to me, I was just about to pay for a week’s holiday out of my bankroll, and I have just spunked more than that amount of money in two tired, ill, tilty sessions. I can hardly describe how good it was going to feel to pay for an entire holiday from a couple of months’ poker winnings at 25c/50c blinds! I have thrown away that enormous psychological boost; just tossed it away like an idiot.

Why, why, why didn’t I withdraw the dough before I even sat down on Sunday? Why did I play badly? Why didn’t I at least get lucky, even just once, on any of the hands that I misplayed?

Sigh.

Most depressing of all, I think I was simply playing against a lot of better PLO players on both Sunday and Monday. At 25c and 50c blinds!

I truly thought I was starting to know the game well and play it well. But with two, three, four players in the game prepared to bet frequently, prepared to put you to the test – I failed. It is food for thought. I think the daytime lineup is stronger than the evening crowd, certainly. And I have to accept that I am nowhere near as good as I had started to think.

I am going to play five card stud for a while, unless I see some really weak PLO lineups.

Game selection!

Postscript: I have to stay reasonably positive. I have still turned the $66 dregs of a bankroll into $800 in three months of low-limit poker. I have to learn from the mistake of playing tired and ill - and going back for more! - so that something positive comes out of this fiasco.