This and that

Played another session of live 8 game at Dave's on Saturday. We started at midnight and ended (reluctantly) around 4:30. A rolicking good time. Minimal profit. Getting home at 5:30 a.m. in the morning tends to wreck your Sundays, however.

Online, the Poker Gods have been smiting me on a regular basis the last couple of weeks. Two-outers? No problem. Racing? I'm wearing concrete sneakers. I thought I wasn't running all that great when I was apparently running good this fall. Compared to the last two weeks, I was a finely tuned Ferrari.

Finally, discipline is a learned skill. It's one thing to fold. It's something else to know why you should be folding.

Stuff

I'm a sorry excuse for a poker blogger. But there's nothing that can be done, I'm afraid. You have to accept me for who I am -- a sorry excuse for a poker blogger.

Here's a reason to post: I reached a milestone this morning, passing 10,000 hands of $1/$2 6-max limit on Stars. Wheeeeee. I'm tearing it up, too, with a 2BB/100 win rate. Pathetic.
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In another time, another place, I played a ton of $1/$2 6-max on Party. Mostly single-tabling, it took me months to reach 10K hands. (Can't remember my win rate, but it was higher.) This run on Stars took me 31 days. I started four-tabling but have cut it back to two as of late.

The widely held opinion that play at Stars is tougher than Party appears to be true. Games are way more aggressive. I've adjusted, betting and calling much lighter than I'm acccustomed, but probably am still too tight at >22% pre and >12% PFR.

It's been a bit of a steady grind. Doesn't feel like I'm running good or bad. Players at $1/$2 are handicapped greatly by the horrifically, userous rake. Only consolation is that I made Gold last month for the first time. I've noodled around at $2/$4 (600+ hands), where the rake is 17% lower, but I'm not maintaining a bankroll that can handle the expected swings at that level.

Tournament wise ... I had another nice cash last Friday, finishing 5th in a $27.50 NLHE tournament on Stars (1,316 runners). Online phenom EeeTee2008 and his numerous railbirds finished fourth. I schlepped through that tournament, my M seemingly hovering around 10 until the end. I did have two luckbox moments with KJ vs. JJ and AQ vs. AK. Standard riggedament action.

I was slightly amused to learn that Official Poker Rankings has me at 15, 770 out of the more than 1.5 million players it has ranked in 2009. That puts me in the 99th percentile. Those numbers look mighty fine until you read the fine print -- profit. That number ain't so impressive. Plans to turn pro have been put on hold. (I'm thinking my good run through the 45s earlier this year bolstered the OPR numbers.)

So things have been going well online, but there hasn't been any live play in the last month. I've either been busy or have chosen golf over poker on the weekends. I've got two chances to play tournaments this coming weekend -- at DiverJoules and Dave's -- and hope I make at least one of them.

Stealing from the blind

I checked behind on the flop, vainly hoping to induce at least some action. The turn killed those chances.

Grand prize

And what did I win this poker-filled weekend? A NEW DRYER!

Played a 20-person bounty tourney at Julie's on Friday and chopped it up, getting a premium for my chip lead (118K to 82K). The payout and the five kills (at $20 per) made for a nice night.

Was I a wimp to chop? Probably. I had the guy, who I didn't know, 1.4 to 1. Blinds were 2,000-4,000. But it had been a long week, I was hungry, and I was ready to go home.

Played into the wee hours at Dave's Poker Pit last night, crashing in the donkament about midway through the record-setting 47-person field. Sat down for some $1/1 NL action and won a few pots but then left when we got $2/$4 8-game going. What a hoot. We'd still be playing if Dave hadn't kicked us out at 4:30 a.m. -- a half hour past the normal deadline. Chips were flying, yet my $80 profit made me the big winner in the game.

One interesting hand in the PLO portion of the program, by far my worst of the eight games: I pot from LP after some limpers with A-A-3-3. Jack T-Way and Meats call. The flop is K-9-2 with two diamonds. One of my aces is a diamond. As best I can recall, Jack pots it and Meats and I (reluctantly) called. WTF did I think I would win the hand with at this point? The sad but truthful answer is, I don't know. The reality is that I suck at PLO.

The turn is the 3h. Is this a good card for me? Or a really bad one?

Jack pots again. Meats tanks, which screams that he's on at least the diamond draw -- but not the nut one, thanks to my ace. Meatsian pondering gives me a chance to not-so surreptitiously study Jack. The answer comes quickly. I have him smoked.

The problem is the Meats. I'm guessing at that point (but am not sure and haven't made up my mind) that I would need to bail if he calls. After much anguish, he finally folds. I push what I have left (just over $100). Jack's face confirms my suspicions, but he makes the crying call with ... dry aces. He's drawing dead. Meats's diamond arrives on the river and I haul in a nice pot.

Data asked in e-mail why I would bail to Meats if I thought I had the best hand? My reply: "Again, that's why I suck at PLO." There's talk of making 8-game a regular feature at Dave's. That would be cool.

I'm baaaaaack

Autumn has brought an end to my normal summer poker hiatus. My poker batteries recharged, I've been attending some CPMG events and have jumped back into the online fray. Results thus far have been okay. Finished 5th earlier this week in the 7 p.m. $10+1 tournament on Stars for a four-figure cash. Finished second in a smallish PLO8 tournament on Tilt a couple weeks ago. (Too bad I pissed all of those profits away playing PLO cash.)

I had a nice summer. Worked hard on my golf game and pushed my handicap back to a respectable single digit. Poker Jones Jr. had a productive summer of baseball, and I didn't mind being a spectator instead of a coach. I've been able to scratch my coaching itch managing a fall ball team, and I'll be doing a lot of hitting instruction this winter.

I'm not sure how much attention I'll be giving this neglected blog, but I'll try to check in on occasion.

Hanging around

I've been a most unfaithful correspondent of late, a condition I can only attribute to lethargy and ennui. I've been playing poker, but just not motivated to write about it.

Let the curse begin. I've had a bit of success on all fronts, tournament and cash, live and online.

Baseball (my son's high school games and the travel team for which I'm the pitching coach) has limited my live play, although I did win an 18-man PLO tournament last Friday and a small amount of cash afterward for a decent profit.

I admit to some blatant luckboxery in the tournament win. I'd hardly played a hand in the opening five levels that led to the first break as everyone else traded chips back and forth. The cards got better after the break and I built up a significant chip lead as play continued at the final table.

Down to six players -- four paid -- I limped with JJ44. Vinnie, to my left, potted, which put him all in and Doug Poker then re-potted, esssentially putting himself all in. That left me with a decision on whether to put half of my now formidable stack into the middle. I hemmed and hawed for a minute before having a WTF moment and deciding to gamble. The flop gave DP an open-ender with J-6-7-8 while Vinnie showed KKQQ. The one-outer jack on the turn and the paired board on fifth street sealed their fates. I was a paltry 14 percent to win that hand preflop and had the good fortune to hit. I'll take it.

Yet by the time I got heads-up against a player named Bill, I was at nearly a 4-1 disadvantage, having lost a huge chunk of my stack on a slight cooler. (Flop came ace high, I was sitting with A-K-x-x and Bill had the other two aces.) It took about 20 hands to complete the comeback and secure the win.

Online, I've been able to build my roll with some 8-Game, 45-man SNGs and tournaments the last couple of weeks. It hasn't been enough to bankroll a vacation home -- or a WSOP trip -- but it's been enough that I felt safe to finally cash out some of that roll. Since the return of eCheck to Poker Stars, I've been depositing $25 here and $50 there to finance my low-limit adventures. The cashouts were part of a psychological ploy that will reduce future guilt should I need to reload again.

I've moved up in limits. I've been playing as much $2/$4 8-Game as I have my normal $1/$2. With a 25 percent ROI over 300 games of 45-person SNGs, I've moved up to the $6.50s. And I've also upped the usual tournament buy-in amounts, especially with rebuys. I've come agonizingly close to some real money in tournaments as of late, only to get cold-decked or unlucky as the final three tables approached. With a little luck and continued solid play, I'm hoping a big tournament cash is right around the corner.

This is my last week of rehab for my knee. It's back to work after Memorial Day. It's been nice to have the time off, but I'm ready to return to the working world. My batteries are recharged and I have some interesting projects awaiting me. Given the short shelf life for my profession, I'll be needing to kick it into high gear in the coming months.

Highs and lows

Pot limit Omaha hi-lo is a funny game given all of the potential ways you have to win -- and lose -- a hand. But I'm comfortable with O8, much more so than plain old Omaha. One of the bloggers recently referred to O8 as a literal game because everything is pretty much laid out for you. If someone is betting it, the chances are extremely high he actually has it. It makes reading your opponents hands fairly simple. And people likely bluff far less in O8 than in other games, it makes it pretty easy to steal chips from late position, at least in low-limit donkaments.

Perhaps it's no accident that I'm a literal person in life. I do tend to accept things at face value. Thos 3,000 hands of low-stakes NLO8 earlier in the year probably helped as well.

I doubled up in the first couple of minutes of the tournament then mostly treaded water for the next couple of hours. (PLO8, by the way, is one sloooooooow-ass game. It took more than seven hours to complete.) I had blinded down to T1800 about 30 spots from the bubble when I went on a little that got me into the money. I continued to play solid, hit some of my big draws and stole a decent amount from position and was fifth in chips when we reached the final table.

Down to four, I was the small stack with 175K, but third-place guy (the eventual winner) had only 13K more than me. The chip leader was at 483K.

That's when I got aggressive and began opening more pots and hitting some big draws to build my stack to just over 700K and take the chip lead. That's when Eventual Winner got even more aggressive and began to either outplay or outdraw me to take over the chip lead. Likely a combination of both. I sensed he was a much better player than me.

Eventual winner had a 5-1 chip advantage when we reached heads-up. He finished me off a couple of hands later when my As-2s-8d-Th got outkicked by his Ac-2d-8h ... Qc on a board of 8s-9h-5d-5s-5h. Chips went in preflop.

While the payout ($277) is chump change for you ballas, it provides a much-needed cushion for my anemic bankroll. Sadly, it's by far my biggest MTT cash in the more than 35o I've played on Stars and Tilt since the beginning of the year. If I happen to be standing at the precipice of an online heater, I'm more than ready to take the plunge.