Life is too easy for beautiful women

Strewth, I must be getting addicted; I hated not posting yesterday even though I didn’t play on Tuesday night. That was one of my best poker decisions in a while; I was very tired and needed to catch up some sleep. Also, I think that I play a little better when I am consciously deciding to play rather than just booting up the laptop because that’s what I do. And when I am a little fresh it helps too, with the patience and the focus.

Anyways, I didn’t post yesterday because I had a ton of meetings at work. Not something you will read often in here.

I played last night though, for about three hours. Pot Limit Omaha the whole time, with a PLO sit ‘n’ go and a multi-table tourney during the evening also.

The multi (no limit hold ‘em of course) was only a $5 + 1 and I don’t think I will bother with such small buy-ins any more. I find a difference even from 10 or 15 buck games, a fiver is just so small nobody gives a toss and you cannot buy a pot. To build a stack you simply HAVE to get some big cards or some big luck. I went out 95th out of 229 having never flopped a thing, wishing I could be like the doofus who called all-in pre-flop with A-7 versus a raise and re-raise. The other guys had 77 and KK but the Ace came and we had our early chip leader.

The sit and go was strange, somehow. For a start, there appeared to be two players who literally did not understand the rules. One went out early when he called two all-in players on the river (both of whom had the flush) with ONE PAIR.

I found myself in the last four players inside two rounds, having barely put a chip in the middle and without a single winning hand. I was the short stack by quite a margin, but thanks to the early stage and tiny blinds I was able to stay patient. The other players kept at it hammer-and-tongs and I was in the money before long. At this point I got aggressive and managed to eliminate one guy to get myself heads-up with a 2-1 chip defecit. After some cat-and-mouse I wound up level on chips, but when the blinds got serious I couldn’t find a hand and had to settle for a reasonable second place. Last three PLO sit ‘n’ goes: 1st, 2nd, 2nd. I have been happy with the way I have avoided the ‘almost-not-worth-it’ third place by being aggressive at that stage.

The PLO cash turned out pretty well. I went down about $25 early, and could never quite claw it back for ages and ages. However, I stayed reeeeal patient, used position well to nick a few pots, and eventually my big hands came. I managed to finish exactly $50 up, which was pleasant enough and had everything to do with game selection (mostly weak players), paying attention, and patience.

Oh, one weird thing from the multi table tournament; when I got sat at my table, who should be there as well but the organiser of the home game I used to play in regularly. We are getting back into action this coming Tuesday evening, and I can’t wait! Poker with added banter, beer, laughs, cigarettes (joints in some cases), actual cards and actual chips… lovely! Sometimes I forget that I own a good number of proper clay chips and a dealer button. Anyway, I may take the stakes for that game out of my online bankroll next week, try to treat all poker as a proper separate-bankroll thing.

That’s about it. Many bloggers have been riffing this week on Iggy’s post about ‘losing well’ and related thoughts. It reminds me most of a good quote from Jesse May’s (over-rated) novel ‘Shut Up And Deal’ – about how the hard part of poker is not mastering the skill, but mastering the luck.

This morning I’ve been trawling a lot of blogs that I hadn’t read in ages. ‘Stripper by Night’ doesn’t get many mentions, but is an interesting read. I’d love to have her online bankroll. I’d also love to have her body – I’m sure I could strip or lapdance my way out of my debts pretty quickly. Sigh... life is just too easy for beautiful women!

Flopping good stuff

Hmm, I forgot about my resolution to ‘play happy’ last night, but - looking back - I think I did it anyway. I had a nice shortish session, and was happy with myself over game selection and my play.

The Omaha line-ups didn’t ring my bell, so I sat in a $1/$2 five card stud game and found rich pickings. I certainly ran good, picking up more paired openers than you could reasonably expect, but I also played really well and felt completely ‘in the zone’. I honestly cannot think of a single significant mistake I made in the hour I played, which is great because I do have a tendency to miss bets in limit poker. Not last night; I got every bet I could, made the right calls, the right raises, the right reads – for instance, drawing a bluff on the end from one guy who I knew could not call if I bet but liked to have a pop if you seemed weak.

I started a PLO sit and go during that game, and ended up coming second to follow yesterday’s win. I probably played better this time, turning on the aggression when we hit the money, which resulted in me going heads-up with a 2-1 advantage. Unfortunately I got cold-decked on two consecutive hands, flopping good stuff when my opponent flopped the mortal nuts, and I had to settle for second. Still, a 1st and 2nd in consecutive sit and goes has renewed the confidence.

Finally, I played three heads-ups. I lost two of the three, which was a bit galling. In the last one, with a small chip advantage, I had the guy all-in with A9 versus my AQ only to see him hit a 9 on the river. His provocative showing of a couple bluffs after that irritated me a little.

What else? My blackjack bonus got paid into my account very promptly last night, so that’s nice. I either take it and run, which means I forfeit any future promotions, or I have to spin it four times and risk losing it. Maybe I’ll just bet on black on the roulette wheel until I have done the requisite staking. How bad can you run on coin tosses? (Answer, as all tournament players know, is ‘pretty damn bad’!)

Thanks are due to JD of Cheap Thrills, who has pointed me toward a good blogger interface which I will download onto my laptop at home. So I should soon be updating this post and the last one with links etc.

Current favourite song: ‘Givin’ Up’ – The Darkness

Love the game

[What have they done to blogger? I can't do italics or links in this horrible new set-up]

Corfu was nice. This time last week I was sitting by a blue swimming pool under a clear blue sky and blazing sun, sipping Coke and reading a good book.

To follow on from my last entry, Spider-Man 2 was absolutely stunning. Amazing. Spectacular. Speaking as a long-term fan of the Spider-Man comics, familiar with Marvelisms like ‘no-prize’ and ‘nuff said’, I don’t think it could have been any better.

When I got home I played short-handed Pot Limit Omaha, which is about the biggest risk I could take with my paltry bankroll. However, it was a strangely passive line-up (hallelujah!) and I won about thirty bucks without ever really having any sweaty moments. I also won yet another heads-up match, before retiring to bed happy and looking forward to my holiday.

Fade to present day:

So last night I got back in the saddle. It felt real weird playing again after a long break of ten days. I felt patient and calm. Sadly, despite a reasonably attractive lineup at the PLO table, nothing really went my way. It was a table where people simply paid off anything and everything, but that does mean you have to make a hand from time to time and it just didn’t happen. I was down a catastrophic (in my current situation) eighty bucks, until I caught a bleary-eyed full house at 1am to recover forty of it.

Since I also won a PLO sit and go, I finished the night down just twenty dollars. It was nice to win the SNG after a long streak of missing the money entirely. People really do play spectacularly badly in these, but it doesn’t necessarily help unless you manage to wind up as the beneficiary of one of the huge mistakes yourself.

Probably the most interesting (hello, anyone awake?) thing about my card-playing last night was that I actually played some online blackjack.

Huh?

Yeah, I know. Well, what happened is that I read that super book ‘Bringing Down The House’ (Ben Mezrich) on holiday and ended up playing hundreds and hundreds of hands of blackjack with myself on the sun-loungers of Corfu, teaching myself a basic card-count.

I wondered if it might – just *might*, you understand, since I am not stupid – be possible to card-count online as long as you played at very small stakes. But of course not; the casino shuffles the deck(s) every single hand. Well, I had downloaded the damn casino software now, so I figured I would at least try to get myself a £20 bonus, which meant staking £80 playing £2 stake blackjack. I had a lovely rush of cards and was up about thirty quid once I had played the requisite hands, so I moved my original stake back into my poker account and am now just waiting for the free money. Cash-out curse reared its head when I played on for a little while with my profits.

So that’s my recent poker and card playing updated. Its been nice today to have a week’s worth of blogs to catch up on. Boy Genius never, ever disappoints, nor does Iggy. (I favour frequent, shorter posts Iggy).

Couple of comments/thoughts on other recent blogs:

HDouble says the USA is as good as it gets for gambling. True in a casino sense I am sure – but as a Brit, it sure is nice to live in a country where gambling online and in betting shops (found on every high street in the country) is completely, unambiguously legal and tax-free.

Matt of The POker Chronicles does ‘go off on one’ occasionally, and I can’t avoid taking his comment about James Woods to task. With typical hyperbole and bravado Matt claims to have watched ‘more movies than anyone I know’ and yet hasn’t heard of James Woods? Without so much as blinking I would think of ‘Videodrome’, ‘Contact’ and ‘The Hard Way’, and I know he’s been in better stuff than those. I guess Matt is quite young. He remains a good bilious read, anyway.

Pokernerd was a blog I had somehow avoided reading, and its good; my curiosity was roused when boy genius mentioned Nerd’s catergorised listing of links. I was gratified to find myself listed quite high in the ‘almost every day’ section.

Finally, not a bloggism, but I really liked this quote from Rolf Slotboom’s latest CP article:

‘Don't be too results-oriented. Poker is a beautiful game, and you should enjoy it even when you're down. It is my experience that people who really love the game perform much better than people who just think in terms of money made/money lost.’

He’s right, poker is a beautiful game and I do love it. I am going to play tonight for the *enjoyment*. We’ll see how that works out!

PS Damn this new blogger interface sucks. Apologies to all blogs above who would be linked otherwise.