Sat tight and waited

The PLO cash just keeps on rolling. Won another $80 last night in a little under three hours. It was an okay game, not the best ever, but people would pay off big hands so I sat tight and waited for them.

I have to record the failures too, though. I have made a poor start in the $10+1 PLO sit and goes. Since cashing in second in my first attempt, I have failed to money in four straight. 5th, 5th, 4th and 7th.

I don't think I am doing a lot wrong, honestly. I still see most all of the mistakes from the $5+1 games going on, although there have been typically another two or three decent players in these games compared to one or none in the five buck beanfests. But I haven't managed to win a crucial hand in the last four attempts; my 4th place could easily have been a top two place last night but I lost two toss-ups in succession, just for instance.

Five events is not enough to form an opinion on whether these will be as profitable as the $5 games; I have gone four without cashing in the smaller game before now.

I'm at just over $550 profit in the last 15 days, and am thinking of treating myself - something like a cheapo MP3 player, perhaps.

No real idea about the weekend. I may play a ton, or may take a little bit of a rest. I don't think the PLO cash games will be as soft, so I will need to be ruthless with myself in game selection.

Peace.

Tweaks

Just a quickie. I didn't have a great night of poker. Around three hours either side of the pub (England football match on satellite TV), and won only $11.

Some heads-up after work, a small loss. And some PLO at night, where I did okay but blew back most of a decent stack before I left. I got a little lucky to get the stack, to be honest. I misread my opponent somewhat, but my turn bet and his re-raise left me few enough chips that I had to call with what turned out to be eleven outs. I knew I could not be drawing dead, even in the worst case scenario. It was a slightly tougher table than in my recent sessions, and I was pleased with how I played it.

I really want to get the heads-up play back on track, and I have spent some time last night and today lost in thought about my weaknesses. I have come up with one or two tweaks to make, and have also devised a specific strategy I want to try out against opponents - except against the weak and/or readable types, where I won't change much at all.

If I put as much thought, involvement and effort into my career I might have got somewhere by now. But I have never wanted to.

Current numbers: in the fourteen days since I made a deposit, I have won almost $500.

On my game

Work.

How do people do it? How do they switch off their thoughts, their interests, their hobbies, their obsessions, their fantasies, their desires, for eight hours a day?

I just can’t. It drives me mad. My brain simply will not stop whirling about poker, money, girls, friends, books, films, football, you name it. And yet, all around me, I see people who subsume all of that in their work; in the phone calls, the planning, the reports, the e-mails, the projects, the targets. It’s a neat trick, and I want to know how it is done. Is it hypnosis?

I was late this morning, again. This was due to last night’s diet of Kentucky Fried Chicken, beer, poker, stress and limited sleep.

The stress came because of the conversation with The Girl. She didn’t take too kindly to my ‘conditions’ of us seeing each other, which did not entirely surprise me. We couldn’t get anywhere with the conversation, and so it would appear that we really are finished.

I feel bad and a bit low about this. I think it is almost entirely for the best - for me, at least - but I truly hate hurting people.

Poker went well. I continue to find good PLO games and play and run well. I won over $50 in two short sessions, around two hours in total. Still can’t book a win to save my life in five card stud though. I’ve started raising and semi-bluffing a bit in order to make pots bigger, but haven’t managed to win one of the fuckers!

I do feel ‘on my game’ in the Omaha, which is a nice feeling. Folding trouble hands, folding out of position, bluffing at good times, thinking ahead in a hand - which is a very valuable thing to do, and something that I have only just really started to add to my game. In other words, factoring into my betting/raising/calling decisions whether I want the pot big or small by the turn or river, what I intend to do if certain cards come, whether I want to set up a river bluff if necessary, and so on. I think this comes through experience, getting more and more used to the situations that arise in the game.

But still, the biggest factor in it all remains the weakness of many of the opponents I choose to sit down with. I am well aware that I would get my arse handed to me if I sat in a game that doesn’t suit me.

Oh, I chatted (instant messaging) with a fellow blogger last night, which was really good fun. I have not had a poker buddy before, apart from the attractive Swedish girl who I ended up swapping photos with and getting invited to dinner - yes, in Sweden!

Finally, its worth checking out a couple of recent bloggers’ takes on some of the poker writing and writers. Like me, Matt picked up on Cardplayer writer Allyn Jaffrey’s new surname and its significance, and has written about it in his usual scabrous and hilarious style. And Internetpokerpro (who is, er, not a pro despite his huge winnings) critiques several writers. I don’t agree with him in every case, but there is no doubt that there is some terrible poker writing on the web, some of it presumably being paid for. I agree with him most about Harry Demetriou, a guy who is loaded from stocks and gambling, and has some excellent tournament results, yet cannot put together a cogent sentence or clear piece of advice. He’s either holding back, or simply isn’t a natural communicator.

Etiquette

I’ve been living fairly well since I began house-sitting. Doing some press-ups, taking care of my skin (I have dry skin problems), eating some vegetables and fruit, drinking juice. These are things that often go by the wayside in my normal life; because so much of my time is fucked up by having my mother around (talking endlessly) I want to squeeze every moment of lazy pleasure out of my time, and taking care of myself goes out of the window.

With as much solitude as I like, I can find time to cook, groom and exercise. But what good it is when I still smoke (and drink a little too much)? Sigh…

To quote the late, great Jeffrey Bernard; ‘Starting tomorrow it’s all going to be the same’.

Last night I did not speak to a human soul (apart from a shop assistant when I bought milk and lager) from leaving work and going to sleep. That’s not ideal; for all my love of solitude I am also a social beast. My best mate preferred to watch cricket on telly.

So, either side of a baked potato and broccoli dinner, I played poker. The pattern of the weekend continued, in that I won handsomely at Pot Limit Omaha and lost at other games. I can’t really complain, since PLO is where the biggest wins are possible. It has been possible to find a suitable game quite a lot since Friday, and I have been lucky enough to hit some hands. I have also been playing nice and tight, while being prepared to stick the chips in when the situation demands it, and have avoided any of the annoying beats that blighted last week.

Let’s take a look at the numbers: In eight hours of PLO cash from Friday through Monday, I have won $293. I’ve made some good folds, played tight pre-flop, raised when it was warranted, hit some hands, avoided suck-outs. I have borderline sucked out myself a couple of times, but nothing outrageous – just borderline calls where I was getting 2/1ish on my money and figured I had those kind of odds, and with a decent stack fancied the gamble. I’ve either hit, or discovered the guy had basically nothing.

But by far the biggest factor in this performance has been the fact that I am ONLY playing when the table is predominantly weak. Its like Tommy Angelo said; compared to game selection, my individual betting decisions are relatively unimportant.

Besides PLO, the night was a small loser. Heads-up limit hold ‘em has slipped to less than 8 bucks an hour. I think I have lost my focus a little bit and played my cards rather than my opponent. I also came 5th in a $10+1 sit and go. That means I am fractionally down after three of these games, and I have to say that the last two have definitely played differently to the £5 games.

I did take ten bucks from a guy at $1/$2 heads-up five card stud. He only had $10 – five big bets – at the table, and since I got (K)K and 9(9) in the first few hands he lost it pretty quick. I then left, even though he brought another $10 to the table. I think five stud kinda sucks heads-up. The antes are so small that they’re hardly worth stealing and it can get very dull. Still, I think often about the etiquette of leaving a heads-up game. I don’t ever want to be seen as a hit-and-run merchant, but I think if you bust a player out of what he was prepared to put on the table then that’s probably fair enough. I saw an opportunity where a player had a tiny amount in front of him, which usually indicates weakness, so a chance to take a few bucks for minimal risk. I would be interested in any comments on the etiquette, anyway.

Finally, I made a snap decision to keep seeing The Girl, last night. But then I couldn’t get hold of her on the phone, so we will talk tonight. It is dependent on her accepting a couple of things, including the fact that I am not going to stop having a close friendship with my ex.

Really finally, following yesterday’s comments on booze, I worked my way through four cans of Stella Artois while I played last night.

No libido

Hmm, when did I last have a day without drinking alcohol? I truthfully don’t know. Two weeks? Longer? And wouldn’t it sound so much worse if we talked about ‘taking alcohol’ or ‘doing alcohol’ rather than about ‘having a drink’? Language matters. You don’t have to be familiar with the works of Wittgenstein – although, as it happens, I am – to know that.

And since language matters, I really ought to try not to open a post with four consecutive sentences ending in question marks. This may be my fiftieth post, I am not sure. (It is - ed.)

Since I mentioned alcohol, what do we all think about drinking and then playing, or drinking while playing, or downright playing drunk? Personally, I do it all the time. If I play after 8pm then the chances are that I will be drinking a little, and if I play after 11pm then I am sure as hell to be pleasantly pissed. Now, don’t laugh, but I don’t think it hurts my play that much. I rarely drink to real excess, typically three to four pints of lager, so I am nicely ‘buzzed’ without being out of control. I sometimes think it even helps, because I have a weak-tight streak which the booze can drown.

However, I have a distinct feeling of déjà vu telling me I have written about this before, so I will move along. But first, from one of the top ten films of all-time, a quote about déjà vu:

Phil Connors (to guesthouse owner): Do you ever have déjà vu?
Guesthouse owner: Oh, I’m not sure. I could check with the chef…

I got the DVD of that movie recently, and must get around to watching with the commentary. Seeing as I already know all the lines.

So, how did the weekend go? The great thing is, I don’t really know off the top of my head. I say that’s a great thing because it’s indicative of my current zen-zone of making my best decisions in the best games, and not worrying unduly about results. At the same time, you can be damn sure I would know if I had lost!

So, let me check the records for a moment: Okay, I won $140. Not too bad, but I did play a ton of hours, apart from Friday when it was less than two. However, the fact that I won $157 in five and half hours of Pot Limit Omaha cash-play, while extremely pleasing (not to say overdue), shows that I lost in just about everything else…

Five card stud dealt me an absolute wave of cold cards and fifth street beats. Heads-up limit proved generally tougher over the weekend than during the weeknights, but I see that I still managed over $5 an hour at it, despite playing for far too long against far too aggressive players. Interesting that there seemed to be tougher folk around over the weekend, which was contrary to my expectations; I suppose, though, that people who are playing poker at midnight on Friday night - instead of being in bars and nightclubs - are more likely to take the game seriously. Or maybe it was just random. Either way, my confidence is still there at heads-up despite some fearful batterings over those 72 hours. I had one dude who I could just read like a book, and who had the glaring weakness of betting obvious draws and then shutting down on the river when he missed, enabling me to bet absolutely anything with impunity.

Finally, PLO Sit and Goes. I made the decision to move up to $10+1 whenever possible – those games take a lot longer to fill up than the ever-popular $5 tables. I ended up playing two $10 games and two $5 ones. I came a good second in my first $10 attempt, which sealed my confidence. There were a couple of good players at the table, which is one or two more than I am used to. In the second attempt, I came fifth in a tourney which had too many people left when the blinds got big, making it something of a crapshoot.

The five buck games don’t bear talking about, especially since I managed to bubble and come 6th. I really want to play the $10 games exclusively. Due to the ridiculous 20% take on the smaller tables, playing at $10+1 gives more than double the edge, and you make as much profit coming second as for a third place in the $5 table.

So, it could have been a sticky weekend if the PLO cash games hadn’t finally paid off somewhat. I am still eschewing most opportunities to play there; when there are two, three or four bullies at the table, when the average pot-size is too big for my blood and suggests a game of heavy raising. I want to play weakies, who let me draw cheaply and don’t test my non-nut full house with a big raise with their trips, or whatever.

What was interesting over the weekend was how much better I played PLO when I had a biggish stack. Didn’t make the usual weak-tight folds, made the correct raises when I sensed weakness, and so on. I will never be an outright bully-boy; I lack the nasty streak, the balls and the gambling spirit. But I can put more pressure on with a decent stack, and you can almost visibly see people shrink away from your bets and raises when they know that going to the river could easily cost their entire stack.

End of poker content.

I spent much of the rest of the weekend fretting over what to do about The Girl. I’m in the middle of two and a half weeks having a place all to myself - and rather than wanting to get her over to indulge the space and privacy, I have preferred to indulge myself, alone. Which fundamentally means lots of poker, with a little reading thrown in. Do I have no libido or what? Would I feel differently if we were ‘soul-mate’ material? If the mere thought of her drove me crackers and I wanted only to know what she is doing and thinking every minute of the day? Am I even open to feeling like that about a woman ever again?

My indecision is driving me crazy and driving her away. It is also stopping me enjoying my private time as much as I could.

These sort of things are all part of the novel I am, ha ha, writing. I did actually put some words down on Sunday morning, which I am very pleased with. They will form the opening of the story, with a little more fleshing out. Ideas are starting to come thick and fast. It’s going to be brilliant, of course.

Finally, and only British readers will know how ‘sad’ this makes me sound, I have realised and accepted that I really like the TV series ‘Heartbeat’. It’s cosy, feel-good, warm and fuzzy drama aimed at middle-aged people. But what’s wrong with a little escapism?