Danger zone

Felt full of optimism last night. Sat at work looking forward to a night of poker, I thought to myself ‘I am intelligent and motivated, I can win money consistently at poker’.

Somehow I got home and played badly and lost just over a hundred dollars, and I didn’t care enough (at the time, I sure as hell care this morning) or focus enough.

It went wrong from the word go, when I started with some $1/$2 five card stud. I managed to ship $40 at that, in an hour. Must be my worst session ever in that game. I probably played a tad too many hands. I certainly called down a couple of times when I shouldn’t have. I certainly suffered with the cards too – a chap called me on every street with Queen high when I was showing a King, and he caught a pair on fifth. That is 25% of the hour’s loss right there I suppose.

Then a break to eat, while my ears steamed somewhat.

Back into the fray, with a multi-table tourney. Played a few too many speculative hands early, failed to make a couple of bold bluffs when I knew they were called for, became fairly short-stacked. Cracked up and made an all-in move with 9Td trying to nick the blinds. Got called (badly I think, not that it matters) by KQ and went out.

No limit hold ‘em cash game. Nothing much happens for a while, as is the nature of NLHE. I get a cheap flop with TJ. Flop comes TJ2 with two diamonds (which I don’t have). I bet, get raised, decide he might be on the draw and raise all-in, and he has a set of tens. I recovered some of my buy-in but realised I was too impatient to ‘get even’ and quit that game.

I figured some PLO would be a good move; I’ve just started re-reading Ciaffone’s book which had resided with a friend for about eighteen months, and also figured when I needed a fillip I should play my most familiar game (not to mention one where a very juicy pot can be won). I played okay there, but did – and here’s a familiar phrase – play a few too many hands and could never get ahead.

Meanwhile I also managed to lose two of three heads-up matches. I won the first on the second hand, holding KK on a Kxx99 board where my opponent had a 9 in his hand. The other two were surprisingly tough, although I made a very borderline all-in call in one which I don’t feel I would usually make.

And there’s the rub – last night I was, for some reason, Mr Action. I couldn’t make good folds, couldn’t accept I was beaten, couldn’t stop throwing a few chips in with weak hands. I simply played badly – the complete opposite to how I had intended to play when I looked forward to my session. I cannot explain it.

Now my bankroll is back into the real danger zone – if it were a car’s petrol tank then the warning light would be on. So I’m in the same dilemma I discussed a few entries ago; whether to try to eke my way back into safety, or take a Mike Caro-endorsed risk with my pathetic, shrivelled ‘roll.

Me and The Girl Etc argued again last night, both by phone and text message. Perhaps I can blame her for putting me off my game. I am getting increasingly fed up with the constant arguing and constant demands upon my time. When me and my ex split up I anticipated being single for rather more than two weeks. Instead, I have been in this half-single, weekend-relationship middle ground ever since, and it is getting wearing.

Finally, I downloaded that bloggar thing at home, so links and italics and suchlike will be returning to my posts. I am not yet sure if I can use it to edit the existing posts that have suffered from blogger’s crappy recent changes.

Test

I love it but can i make it work?
underlining
guinness drinker

The last bus home

It was nice to get a positive comment from ‘Pauly’ of Tao of Poker (these things will turn into links soon, I promise). Like a mere 70% of the population of earth, I imagine I can write a little, so its nice to get a little praise from a published dude.

On the writing note, I am awaiting quite eagerly the inevitable slew of poker novels over the next year or so. And yes, I have thought about trying to write one myself; something about a poker-playing robot private eye who gets caught up in a world of power, money and sex and… hmmm, better not give all my best ideas away.

I am actually, half-heartedly writing a novel at the moment (for ‘writing’ read ‘plotting’). Its about the misery, frustration and futility of long-term romantic relationships. There will not be a happy ending, at least not until Hollywood options it.

The home game last night was quite fun. There were only five of us, and one - the host! - bogged off to the pub before the second of our two no-limit hold ‘em tourneys. (There was also one quick 4-player one before I arrived). So the numbers were disappointing.

In the first game I got a few hands and played very well in my opinion – never made a single costly mistake, stole plenty. I also was pleased that I seemed to be pretty unreadable, since one or two of the regulars have delighted in claiming in the past that I give off ‘loads of tells’. I got heads-up with a 2-1 chip disadvantage, at which point we made a deal because the eliminated players were getting antsy at sitting around so long; the three-handed play had lasted an eternity. Give the amount of heads-up experience I have gathered online lately I would have preferred to play it out, but there you go.

The second game was a big £10 entry and only four-handed, as I mentioned. I couldn’t get started here at all, always getting beaten into the pot when I was considering a move, and somehow developing a very weak trigger finger. I made one decent and brave all-in semi-bluff to stop my stack getting seriously tiny, but as the blinds went up I was still nowhere and was practising my patience. I’ve always been quite good at waiting out a run of poor cards in live play, probably because the game is more interesting to observe than online, and my reward came eventually. I got JJ and QQ in consecutive hands, monsters in a four-handed game.

I went all-in on the button with JJ, expecting a call somewhere because I had been hinting that I needed to make an all-in move sooner or later. Sadly all folded – I hadn’t considered that my stack, though small, still would take a third of any of the other three players’ chips.

So with the QQ and a few more chips, I just made a middling raise. My closest friend of the three made it clear immediately that he intended to raise me all-in; while I welcomed this, something about his predatorial manner did worry me. My instincts were right, since he turned over Aces and despite picking up a straight draw I could not buck the odds.

I did literally go home then, not in a strop (losing with QQ to AA doesn’t hurt much after all) but because I still had time to catch my last bus. I was down £5 for the night.

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?

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.