Friday, July 09, 2004

Rude pictures

Today's personal snippet: I got a camera-phone this week, and I do rather like it. I already had an El Cheapo digital camera, but there's something very cool about one that you carry with you at all times by virtue of it being part of your mobile. And yes, like every other doofus who gets one of these things, the first thing I did was to swap some rather rude pictures with The Girl I Am Seeing. (I cannot bring myself to say 'girlfriend', thats just way too serious. Although I have pledged exclusivity for as long as we are seeing each other, which is preventing me indulging myself in a couple of other spots or living the louche lifestyle I anticipated after I split with my ex).

But never mind that, I hear you cry, how did it go last night after my - gasp! - 72 hour break from poker?

Well, it didn't go too badly. I only won $35 over about five hours in total, but I did feel back in control of myself and I did play with game selection, position and patience as my guiding principles. A quick breakdown:

$1/$2 Five card stud: $6 in one hour of quite enjoyable play. Throwing $6 with a foolish bluff-raise on fourth and crying call on fifth was a little silly.

Heads-up No Limit tourneys: Played 6, won 3 which makes a neglible loss on the rake. Got stiffed in one where we were almost level in chips and I got him all-in on the flop as a 2-1 underdog, but he hit. There is no doubt in my mind that these are profitable for me, but only at a low level. They are great fun though, and a very good second table as they stop you playing all but the best situations on your main table.

Pot Limit Omaha (cash): I played quite well, with good patience and not a whole lot of cards. I made one I made one tough fold which overall I am happy with. I may have been winning, but if not then I was drawing all but dead and I am determined to avoid those 'drawing dead' situations.

I also gathered my courage when my made nut-flush saw a board-pairing river, and I bet all-in. If you don't bet big in these situations there is just too much danger of getting bluffed off by a half-decent player - or by somebody who thinks their non-nut flush might be good. Betting here (given the size of the pot and remaining stacks) was definitely the right play, even if the guy had turned over the full house and I lost. My money was scared but I was fearless.

Best of all, I kept alive to other tables and was able to hop later on to a truly sweet table comprised almost entirely of poor short-stacks. My overall win was only $37 in about four hours, but without any monster hands that is quite acceptable.

Pot Limit Omaha (Sit and Go): These are really starting to piss me off. I have now failed to cash in (I think) five in a row. This one was typical, I just didn't see a hand at all, while two moderate players hit monster flop after monster flop to build stacks with which they knocked us all out one by one.

Overall, as I said, I was more or less happy with my play. This was the sort of session where, over the last fortnight, I probably would have got bored and frustrated and gone chasing hands and pots with disastreous results.

I will be back in action tonight before spending the rest of the weekend with TGIAS.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Pour some sugar on me

Mmmm, I have not played poker in nearly 72 hours, two whole days and nights and a bit, and I feel good for it.

I have now made a deposit and I feel ready to sit down and play, with recent events put behind me. Thats not to say I 'expect' or guarantee to win, but I feel that I have got my poker head back on.

I have enough deposited to play PLO if I wish, but my guiding principle is going to be game selection. I will play whatever looks like the best game, the best lineup. There is a fair chance that will be five card stud more often than not at the moment. But whatever, I feel ready to be patient and careful and thoughtful. I also feel ready to pay attention when I play. It is unforgiveable that I have had to make guesses on certain decisions recently when, with a little more attention, I could have had more of a read on certain opponents.

Enough poker for a minute. I love Boy Genius's blog, and reading it this morning reminded me how much I like 'personal' content in poker blogs. BG even mentioned 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' by Def Leppard, which is one of my favourite songs. Not my normal type of music at all, but it makes me smile, including the over emotive transatlantic vocal delivery... 'Paaawwwww suurrrm shu-gah on maaaaaaay! Ooooh, ina the name of-a-luuuuuve'

You wouldn't think the singer (Joe Elliot, fact fans) came from the northern english city where I lived until February.

BG also described himself as 'slightly overweight', at 5 feet 10 and 15 stone. This may or may not betray differing UK/USA sizing, but that sounds pretty heavy to me. But then again he might be a broad-shouldered linebacker type. Me, I'm five-eleven, and eleven and a half stone (which is 160 lbs for American readers). I'm pretty slim but not exactly skinny. 'Lean', I would call myself. Dark hair, pale skin, average not-bad features that seem to constantly lead people to tell me I look like such-and-such celebrity.

And my eyes are hazel - or red when I'm on tilt.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Worst post ever

Last night I was very tired, had somewhat of a headache, and thought very very seriously about simply going to bed very very early. Instead I played some poker, because - well, because that's what I do. Not a very healthy reason.

I started off okay in a couple of small headsup matches and a handful of decent Omaha hands which put me about $20 up. More and more tired, I should have stopped there. But instead I stayed, and began losing at Omaha. After losing a couple of reasonable pots I went utterly card-dead again, and began to lose patience. At the same time, I joined a pot limit five card stud game. Boy, there is money to be made in that game; but I failed to do so, thanks to twice having people pair up on the end when I had them drawing very slim against my small pair and strong Ace high.

Frustration came upon me, patience departed from me, and I basically spunked my entire bankroll bar $25 in three hands: I had lost out on a couple of very nice pots by folding weakly when there was some action. JJJ on an AJx Omaha flop was the best example, put down because I was convinced my opponent had AAA! So, I decided it was time to throw the chips in with any semblance of a hand on the flop (or second street in stud).

The moves I made were not all that bad really - perhaps a lesson for the future - but I got called and lost.

Went to bed not really caring due to my exhaustion.

Today I care. In the space of eight days I have forgotten how I ever won money at Omaha. I have lost a great deal of confidence in my poker game, in all but the headsup field. I have seen myself go on fairly strong tilt several times. I have seen myself display a complete lack of patience. Also a complete lack of guts.

I am now going to have to make a deposit, which will hurt a little at a time when I anticipated withdrawing several hundred pounds to pay for my holiday.

And then I am going to have to play PROPERLY. I'm going to play Omaha and start from the basics again. Which means position, position, position, position, position, position, position, position, position.

This is a really crap post, but thats ok because it reflects my really crap game. I have to add that I really have run bad over the last two weeks, and last night was no exception - but the many mistakes I have made have helped put me into the situation where running bad could cause me such problems. By which I mean, my mistakes have helped leave my bankroll at a point where I became psychologically affected by going behind during a session. It didn't used to be a problem - many was the Omaha session where I would drop thirty, forty, fifty dollars early through dry cards, only to wait for the right moment to strike in a good situation and big pot. Over the last week I have panicked when losing, and then gone chasing.

Sorry, this is my worst, most boring post ever, but it has been written purely to exorcise the demons of my last week's poker.

Starting tomorrow it is all going to change. I am not going to play simply out of habit. I am going to play when I feel ready, lively and enthusiastic about it. When I am prepared to devote considerable attention to the game rather than playing on websurfin'instantmessagin'musicdownloadin' auto-pilot.

Bring it, as they say, on.

Monday, July 05, 2004

Scared money

My petulant outburst in the last post led to a couple of comments. Felicia called me a scrooge. Well, I hate small talk and small children, but Scrooge is not all that apt; I like Christmas and am a spendthrift. In fact, being a spendthrift is the biggest weakness in my entire life. I hear Ebeneezer Scrooge had excellent bankroll management skills but was a little weak-tight.

Anyways, the comments – proof of life! – were very welcome. I don’t like asking for links is all. I hate to feel like some new guy at the blog party, pulling on coatsleeves and pestering people in order to become part of the crowd. And I still have this ambivalent attitude, ‘cause sooner or later someone I play against is going to read this, work out who I am, and torture me with all my weaknesses! (More on my weaknesses later). And that could cost me, jeez, twenty bucks or something!

The other comment came from 'Cheap Thrills', whom I have never linked before but enjoy reading a lot. In an excellent post about keeping records, he quoted me just after Tommy Angelo - which is one of the most flattering and gratifying things I can imagine. (The other most flattering and gratifying things I can imagine are extremely rude, naturally). Tommy Angelo is a genius, viz this typically spot-on snippet:

“I make a living at poker by choosing when to enter a game and when to leave it. These options give me the freedom to choose my state of mind, and to choose my opponents. My betting decisions are of small consequence, comparatively.”

Tommy's site is worth a visit to read all his articles. I have been meaning to order his CD for about eighteen months, without ever getting round to it. I really must hear his song ‘I’m running bad’. Because yes, I am running bad.

I have been recovering slowly from last weekend’s debacle - until I added another, fresh debacle late on Saturday night. I couldn’t get dealt a hand nor hit a flop, my cards were as dry as an astronaut’s lunch, and ultimately I got pissed off and tilted. Combine that with a couple of very unkind rivers and you have a recipe for a very bad night’s sleep.

I think I am going to stop keeping records again. I could come out with a load of baloney reasons, but frankly its just too damn fucking depressing at the moment. I have definitely got back into letting results affect the way I play my next hand, but that’s less to do with records and focussing on the short-term, than with simple pain!

I actually find it harder than some people to stop recording my results, because deep down I am somewhat of a stats freak. That’s one reason I have always liked American sports, most of which lend themselves so well to mountains of statistics. Gridiron is my favourite, with its pass completions, third down conversions, field goal percentages, punt yardage, punt return yardage, sacks, yards per rush, interceptions, tackles, penalty yards… and so on.

But at the moment I could live without knowing that I have suffered about five horrible losing Omaha sessions out of seven or eight, that I have missed the money in four consecutive PLO Sit and Goes, that my five card stud winnings have tailed off horribly… About the only positive lately has been the headsup no limit games, where I am winning more than my share. I’m even 1 of 1 at the $20 level. Must’ve been drunk.

I gotta try to stay positive. Or rather, resume being positive. I have still won a tidy sum of money over three months, starting from the shrapnel remains of a bankroll. The problem is that I am back at a bankroll level where I am playing scared money – at least in pot limit Omaha – and scared money is only ever about five minutes away from being somebody else’s money.

Yet one step further and you have shell-shocked money, which has gone beyond fear and doesn’t care if it lives or dies. Thank heavens for that stuff, as it enabled me to double through in a scary PLO hand which otherwise would have finished me off completely.

Anyways, I have to steer clear of PLO until me and my money have the guts for it again. Back to five card stud.

You know, I have found it next to impossible to find any writing on five card stud, anywhere on the internet. Which is great, and leaves me to continue trying to work the game out for myself. I saw a guy playing a whole different way last night. He raised and re-raised virtually every hand, often on every street, often when he was quite clearly behind, sometimes when he could not even beat his opponents’ boards.

Yet he won quite a lot of money. He did hit some cards on fourth and fifth street, that’s for sure, and when he did he was still in there fighting for a big pot when people with better hands had fallen by the wayside. He upset me bitterly when he and another guy went raise-crazy on fourth street while I had split Kings, to the extent that I was convinced that one had hit trips and one had paired an Ace. I folded, and the hand was won by a pair of 9’s. He upset me even more bitterly when I had split Aces, grinned my way through his raises and re-raises, and then almost cried when he hit open Aces on the end with a better kicker than mine. I won in the game, a little, but those two hands cost me pots worth almost $80, which at the moment is a big deal.

I have pondered his style a fair bit since leaving that game. One thing he was certainly doing was ensuring he got paid off – and paid off BIG time – when he did have a hand. But what about all the raising when he was, to put it mildly, drawing slim? Was he simply trying to make the pot large enough that it was almost always correct to keep taking the next card? If so, surely that applied to all players. I can’t quite work it out – but I do know that while he got very, very lucky against me once (winning a $30 pot that he had no right to) and also donated heavily to me in another hand, the most significant thing he did was win a large pot with a pair of 9’s when I folded Kings! Now, if you do that once or twice in a session then your results should be okay.

For all that, I see no particular reason to alter my own style, which has been bringing in the money steadily. I simply made a mistake in that ‘Kings’ pot, as I should have called fourth street and seen a showdown due to the size of the pot – and I was unaware at that point that the second opponent was as bad as he proved to be.

That hand came down to what I wrote about last time: The other two guys didn’t believe that my King was paired, because they would have raised and reraised as I was even without the pair. And I believed that they had tripped up or paired an Ace because I wouldn’t have played like they did unless that were the case. Each of us assuming our opponent approached the game the same way as ourselves. Once again it bit me in the arse!

Perhaps my biggest weakness as a player is that I am too much of a ‘believer’ (eg. Believing my opponents have a hand/some sense). I suspect it is not quite as expensive as being too much of a ‘non-believer’, but when I am wrong it does feel pretty bad.

Oh well. Overall it was a frustrating session of stud. And the PLO Sit and Go I paid was even more irritating. I was down to four players in second place with a nice stack, and felt confident that I was the best player at the table. I couldn’t see myself coming worse than second. Shortly afterwards, I was bubbling out in fourth. I stuck a chap all-in on the turn when I made the nut straight with flush re-draw, but his set filled up on the river and I was all but crippled. I played aggressive from there to get back into some sort of contention, but got unlucky on a flop where my opponent and I had almost the exact same draw but he hit a two pair with his otherwise useless fourth card. A very, very frustrating failure to cash in a tourney where I truly felt I played the better than anyone else by quite some margin.

Enough for now. Final note about links: I simply don’t know how to set up a list of links at the side of my page like many people do. If I could, I would!