Closer

I have a feeling that I recently mentioned two good poker books, but went on to write about only one of them. Well, the other is called ‘The Science of Poker’, by Dr Mahmood. I flicked through it once or twice in the bookshop some time back and didn’t fancy it, but last Friday I finished work early and had the chance to sit in the café at Borders and give it a proper read. And, it is excellent.

Any book with pot limit Omaha in it at all is a bonus for us devotees of that game, and Mahmood writes some decent stuff about it. The book gave me some food for thought about certain types of starting hand and the way to play big ‘wrap’ draws. The heavy statistical bent of the material doesn’t particularly do it for me, but Mahmood has a neat turn of phrase too. I liked this:

‘Loose-aggressive players are both dangerous and beautiful. They are like the necessary evils that make our lives interesting and even enjoyable’.

A good book if you are interested in pot limit play, particularly Omaha, and as it happens I have played against the author many times online.

My girlfriend and I watched ‘Closer’ the other night. What a load of crap. It looked exactly like a play turned into a film, something which rarely works. The dialogue in a movie needs to be more naturalistic to be convincing, and I’m sure that could have been achieved without losing all the best lines (and you could almost see the playwright – a keen poker player by the way - sitting back with a smug smile when some of the line were delivered).

Julia Roberts was the only one of the four stars (Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Clive Owen) who managed to seem more low-key and believable, rather than telegraphing every line and gesture to a theatre audience. Perhaps she has more experience of betrayal and tangled love - ?

Incidentally, what gives with Jude Law? It’s the first time I have seen him in anything, so I had no idea he had such an awful voice and was so physically average. Who knows what the hell attracts women?

If it is snooker skill then I am getting more handsome; I played my best ever session last night, making numerous breaks (without beating my personal best). I played poker when I got home slightly drunk, and recorded only a tiny win as follows:

I came only 10th in a two table sit ‘n’ go while losing some chips in a PLO cash game which broke up before I could recover. Then I sat in another cash game and played very well, while taking second place in a small one table sit ‘n’ go. I more or less threw the SNG heads-up. After my heads-up opponent had been rescued by a pot-splitting river card when all-in, the play ebbed and flowed for a bit, to the point when I was desperate to go to bed and gambled with Q8 when I was pretty sure I was beat.

The cash game was entertaining, mainly because a chap started talking to me after I lost a (very small) pot, and his opening gambit was ‘Are you a beginner?’ He proceeded to criticise/patronise me over a period of time, and it amused me no end - not least because I had outright stolen two reasonable pots from him already at that point (he was a transparently weak player). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I am that great of a player, but this dude’s weakness was like a beacon on top of his head. The very fact that he was sitting with about a tenth of the maximum buy-in was a clear indicator – not because he had lost chips (we all do) but because no intelligent player would sit in a pot limit game with a miniscule stack when he could top up.

Finally: I am moving over the weekend, and my phone line gets connected on Thursday. I have a contingency plan for the intervening days, of course…

At last I can forgive Jim McMahon

I can’t believe I forgot to mention yesterday the New England Patriots becoming an authentic dynasty, with their third Superbowl win in four years. I think back to the Mike Ditka Chicago Bears and the Parcells New York Giants, both of whom were touted as ‘dynasties’ and failed to deliver. I hated both for various reasons (Superbowl XX being an obvious reason), so am most gratified by the Patriots achievement.

I didn’t tempt fate in here, but I was extremely confident about the game on Sunday, based on what I have seen of the Eagles over the past couple of years. It seemed to me that they are capable of playing really badly and making big mistakes that aren’t in the Patriots make-up – the Eagles’ dismal time management in the fourth quarter springs to mind, as well as managing to wind up starting on their own 3 yard line at the death instead of at the twenty. Never mind McNab’s interceptions.

I watched the game with several cans of strong lager, lots of cigarettes and a nice log fire. It was absolute bliss, even after spilling lager over my mobile phone (it died for a while but – like me – was recovered the next day).

I had another decent session last night, playing a two-table sit and go and the usual PLO 6-handed game. I got rewarded for different qualities in each – more aggression than usual in the tourney and a lot of patience in the cash game.

I have read quite a bit about tournament play recently, one way and another, and certain things have really started to sink in. These things helped me take 3rd in the sit ‘n’ go, after a distressing beat on about the third hand when a chap called my chunky preflop raise and then called my all-in flop raise on a 955 flop, when he held KJ. (He hit the river to beat my AQ).

Actually, I really should have got heads-up at the end, but rather than wait for the 2BB third stack to die I took on the chip leader with KT versus what proved to be his AK. I very, very nearly got him to lay down on the turn but it wasn’t to be.

In the cash, patience worked out for me. Whilst I like to raise quite a wide range of hands in PLO (position willing) I just couldn’t pick up even a sniff of a hand and also had to contend with a fella who liked to reraise persistently. So I battened down the hatches after a couple of lost pots, stole a decent one on the river against a weakie, and waited… Eventually I picked up one of those lovely multiway flops for my hand; a made straight, higher straight draw and small flush draw. The result was that I doubled through thanks to an opponent who was drawing to the straight I had already made and had no other outs. Love it!

I’m playing well at the moment, definitely. I’m thinking more about my actions than I have done for a while, and that is starting to come more naturally. I really would like to move up to bigger games; I haven’t always played quite as low down the food chain as at present, but my constant cannibalisation of my bankroll precludes me moving up for the time being. Part of my deposit on my new living-space is coming out of the poker account tomorrow. Which makes me both happy and sad, at the same time.

Ace of Spades

Things are continuing to go quite well, when I do actually get to play. An horrible two-outer in a moderate pot and a lost coin-toss in a decent pot prevented it being even better.

An interesting thing came up twice in a middling losing session the other night. Twice an opponent bet into me quite big on the river, in such a way that I felt strongly he did not have the nut hand he was representing. In both cases I had what amounted to third or fourth nuts, and chose to call – both times losing to his marginally better hands. I feel pretty sure that he would not have called an enormous raise back, and I feel that I left pots on the table through lack of guts. My reads were good, but I didn’t take the optimum action. Or did I? Perhaps calling was best because (a) it risks less money on a read which could be wrong; (b) a shade better hand and my call would have won and (c) he might have called a raise, you never know.

Talking of good reads, I want to praise two books. I just re-read Doyle Brunson’s book ‘According to Doyle’ over the weekend. It is essentially a collection of anecdotes, but many of them convey really useful poker wisdom (it is now reprinted as ‘Poker Wisdom of a Champion’). Not advice of the ‘Ace Queen is no good with five players left to act’ ilk, but broader thoughts on being a good gambler and poker player per se. I don’t know to what extent it was ghosted, but Doyle displays a pleasing turn of phrase and a story-telling knack.

I’ve been on a splurge of downloading tracks and copying CDs onto my laptop for my crappy MP3 player recently. Recent downloads include ‘Ace of Spades’ by Motorhead, ‘Angel Is The Centrefold’ by the J Geils Band, ‘Kayleigh’ by Marillion, and CDs copied include ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd. What a magnificent piece of work that album is.

It is now less than a week before I get my independence and privacy back. Sadly, my credit problems mean the phone company want a £50 deposit to turn the line on for me. That was not unexpected but could delay me getting connected by a day or two.

My total debts amount to about $65,000, which I am paying off at around $12000 per year under my current arrangement. I’ve put it in dollars because it sounds even more impressive. Or rather, less impressive.