Poker Jones

In the book

2011-05-18T23:01:00.003-04:00

I got a glimpse of what it's like to be a professional poker player tonight at Nautica. My professional play went like this: I folded for the first hour. Folded for the second hour. And for the final two hours of the session, I merged my range and really tightened up.

I had A-Q once, the third of four players to call a $12 preflop raise. Whiffed the flop. I did get 6s during the first half-hour. Raised preflop to $6 UTG. Had an out of body experience and watched helplessly as I c-bet the J-high flop. Babies cried and dogs wailed in despair.

Those were my big hands. Runners-up included pocket 4s (limp-called for $17 total) and A-10. Won two pots with garbage, netting $28. Lost $74 on the night.

And I'm booking that mofo as a win.

Tonight I watched semi-competent players having bad nights needlessly piss away good cash money making crying calls when the villain's hand, for fuck's sake, was practically face up and there was no way on God's green Earth that the villain did not have it.

Why chase? There's nothing to catch in the long game, correct? Thus I view tonight's abysmal run of cards were an outlier, an aberration. I've run mediocre before. I'm certain I will run mediocre again.

Must read

2011-05-17T20:48:00.003-04:00

Found this thread yesterday on 2+2. Great stuff.

This description of a player type is one of my favorite passages:

Soul-reader donk - this guy is obsessed with putting you on an exact hand. His ego and pride in soul-reading skills are almost more important than making money - it's almost like he'd rather make that awesome fold than win a big pot. Like the nit-donk, he's quite bluffable - the key is you have to think, how would the soul reader himself play the hand I want to represent, and then play accordingly. Flush card hits on the river and you missed your straight draw? Feel free to bluff this guy - but the key is figure out the exact bet size that HE would bet if he hit the flush, and bet accordingly. He'll tank, then say "man I knew you drew out on me", and fold - the correct response is to sigh, tap the table and say good fold, quickly muck and give him credit for a great soul read.

The week in re-spew

2011-05-16T18:28:00.004-04:00

Run good went off the rails this weekend. Lost over a buy in Friday at Nautica without much effort. Some of it was transferred to the awful old fart who rivered gutshots not once, but twice. Some was lost playing speculative hands that went nowhere. Another $120 was spewed near the end of the session when I called a preflop raise with 6-5o from EP.

Why did I play 6-5o from EP? It was only $5. Why did I call $8 on the flop of 8-5-x? It was only $8. Why did I lead for $40 (~pot) when the 6 hit the turn? Stupidity, I guess. I kinda sorta thought I was ahead, but $20 was a much better choice. Unfortunately, an aggro-chick regular (VP$IP of >70%) min-raised. I tossed in my last $65 without much though. WTF am I beating there? Nothing, of course. Her flopped Texas Shoebanger (8-5) held. I reloaded and bled a little more before leaving for Linda's tournament.

A losing session is no bother. Gutted by an AOF? That's poker. But the 6-5 hand sucked from the moment I peeked at my cards. Forcing the issue when the deck won't cooperate is a losing proposition.

The tournament at Linda's went no better. Spewed early, rebuilt with steals and then reraised AI for 11K with pocket 3s against a shortstack with T4600 at 250/500. I was certain that I was no worse than a flip and was proved correct. Shortie had K-J and a 3 hit the flop. Unfortunately, so did an ace, which gave Data, who had pushed AIPF behind me, the overset.

On Saturday, got coolered early in the tournament at Dave's tournament with an underset for most of my stack. Meh.

(I failed to mention earlier that I binked Dave's tournament the previous Saturday for $460. Survived a flip at the bubble with 6-6 v K-J and then steamrolled the rest of the table in God mode for what proved to be an easy win.)

Hoping to get in two Nautica sessions this week and will be playing the POY tournament Saturday/Sunday.

Nautical voyage

2011-05-13T15:43:00.002-04:00

Run good continues and I’m not ashamed to say that makes me happy.

Trudged down to Nautica on Wednesday. Took the same 10 seat at the same table as last Wednesday. Active early, winning some medium-size pots but went into lockdown mode for the last hour of a three-hour session thanks to crappy cards. I’m okay with that. Call me a nit. Until I learn otherwise, my strategy for Nautica’s $1/$2 game is patience and value extraction. Good at the former and need work at the latter

Left some money on the table Wednesday. Here’s an example:

Raised to $14 from the SB with queens after some limps. Three callers. Flop is Q-5-5. Checks around. I fire $25 at the turn. All fold. Crap. Should have led the flop. May have gotten the same result, but I suspect that line would have given me a better chance of getting more out of the hand.

I’ve started thinking a bit more about image. I'm guessing I'm viewed as a middle-aged guy who plays pretty tight preflop, who usually comes in for a raise when he does play and typically c-bets the flop. I hope they see someone who is friendly and non-threatening, someone who has some kind of clue but isn’t a shark by any means.
The trick here is to exploit that image by inducing folds to pick up the random $30-$50 pots that make live poker profitable. Snagged a few of those Wednesday, which led to a decent-sized win (+$280) without much stress.

Leaving after just three hours Wednesday may have been –EV. I had a goof on my right who was in for around $500 and had rebuilt to nearly $700. He played a ton of hands, liked to bluff and seemed clueless overall. I kept waiting in vain for an opportunity to take a chunk out of his stack but found none. He did fold to me a couple of times early, which made me wonder how he would play against me with some of the hands he showed others.

I left because I had grown tired of the (volunteer) left-handed dealer who practically elbowed me whenever she dealt my end of the table and because I wanted to check out Jen’s $1/2 game in her office downtown. Skill-wise, I knew the lineup of Group regulars at Jen’s game would be tougher, but I was good with that.

We got to 12 players soon after I arrived and split into tables of six. Played much different than Nautica with button straddles and few unraised hands preflop. I was not uncomfortable, but the table helped raise awareness of the need to improve and expand my game.

One hand of note. I raise to $8 with A-Q and got one caller, a guy named Bill who I’d never met before, calls behind me. Flop comes Q-J-6. I lead for $15 and he raises to $40. Huh?

Here’s my read. Don’t think he’s raising here with two pair or a set, so I call.

Turn is a blank, completing a rainbow board. I check. Bill bets $65. I ponder. I think I’m still ahead and call. Is my check-call weak? Probably. River is a 6. I moan that that’s a bad card, but really don’t believe it. I'm pretty sure he doesn’t have a 6, but I check hoping to get to showdown without committing any more chips. Bill foils that plan by betting $100. Shite. The pot is ~$250. I take a minute and throw in a chocolate chip. Bill immediately states, “Good call,” and mucks.

This hand bothers me a bit despite the good result. I’m not comfortable playing pots that big with one pair, but given the pot odds at the end and my read, felt the call was justified. It’s not a spot where I want to find myself often, however. A more aggressive line would have meant a smaller profit in the hand, but passive, check-calling lines seems spewish in the long term.

Day off today, so headed to Nautica soon to play a couple of hours, followed by a $40 Group tournament at Linda’s. Will try to post this weekend. For anyone reading, sorry about the longish posts. Need to come up with a briefer, more reader friendly format.

Live conversion

2011-05-04T23:21:00.004-04:00

Last week, I left Nautica, the charity poker "festival" in the Flats, disappointed that I failed to pull the trigger with ace high to a turn bet. I knew the guy was trying to steal a $50 pot with a $40 bluff. Everything in my being said he was stealing. Yet I folded. He showed. I was good, of course.

That hand crowded my thoughts as I fell asleep that night. It lingered the following day, a stark reminder of the mediocre state of my game. A good poker player would have called -- no, raised -- in that spot if he really believed in his read. A good poker player would have taken down a $90 pot. I did neither. Draw your own conclusions.

The demise of Stars and Tilt has put me in a bad spot. If I want to play poker, I now must put on pants, get in my car and drive somewhere. Playing poker now requires an effort. Yet I have no choice. I must play poker.

Addiction specialists (and addicts, I suppose), talk about triggers that remind people of their hunger for their drug(s) of choice. My laptop is a trigger. Open it up to check e-mails and I find myself staring longingly at the Stars icon on the desktop.

Fortunately, I have opportunities to play live. The Group typically has at least two games a week, usually more. Nautica is downright convenient, although the $6 max rake at $1/2 sucks. And Cleveland's first and only casino (with a 25-table poker room) is scheduled to open early next year.

I've played nine times since Black Friday -- six times with The Group and three times at Nautica. Not great volume, but it's a start. What I don't have at the moment is a proper roll. That's a problem. You need a lot more money to play $1/2 properly than is required to donk around at low limits online. I started with an exploratory $200, doubled it up fairly quickly and then saw it dwindle to a single hundred dollar bill.

Tonight, despite feeling a bit tired, I caffeined up and headed to Nautica. I had reached Public Square on Superior when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car in the other lane swerve toward mine followed by a dull-sounding thump. I pulled over and the driver pulled in behind. It was a 21-year-old kid who had driven up from the 'burbs of Columbus with his girlfriend for a concert. He couldn't figure out where to park. I resisted the urge to point out that a parking lot sat 20 feet away.

He gave me his information and I didn't give him a hard time. He seemed a little shook up. I considered calling police for an accident report but decided against it. I had poker to play.

At Nautica, I was pleased to discover open seats at several $1/2 tables. I grab the 10 seat at one of the tables, which has some decent-sized stacks but no monsters. (Sorry for the change in tense. But poker narratives always sound better in the present tense.)

A new player takes the 2 seat right not long after I sit down and immediately wins a pot by raising preflop in position and chasing away a few limp-callers with a c-bet.

A few hands later, I find A-Q in the big blind. The same guy raises to $12 from EP and gets three callers, including me. Flop comes 10 high. He bets $25, two folds and I ponder. Folding would be easy here, but I call. No need to give up yet. This is something I must learn.

King on the turn. I check and he casually tosses out another $25. I still think I'm good. If not, I could be drawing live. An 8 on the river completes no draws. Villain immediately pushes in his last $45. Fuck. I give him a look and analyze his story. The turn bet? Weak, I decide. The instapush at the end? Fishy. The way he held his cards in the air and rubbed them back and forth? I cut away chips and toss them in.

"Good call," he blurts. Shit, maybe I'm good. But, as it turns out, I'm not. I wait for him to table his hand and he finally shows A-Q. The table murmurs. I shrug, offering no explanation.

Fact is, I had to make the call. I had to prove to myself that I'm capable of listening to my inner voice. That I can call thin. That I'm able to draw conclusions from how a hand plays, ignore the monetary value of the chips and follow fucking through.

I then took a one-way trip to Rush City. Couldn't miss. Even the crap hands I folded would have dragged pots. People didn't seem to respect my bets and each time I showed I had the goods. Cracking aces with a set of deuces didn't hurt. As tough as the A-Q hand might have been, the rest of the session proved simple, easy. There were a few good players at the table and no real fish. But there was no one to fear. A standard Group cash game table is typically much tougher.

I hit and run after two hours, cashing out $729 on a $200 buy-in. Should I have stayed longer? Meh. I had booked a solid win and much-needed bankroll boost.

Conclusions to be drawn? We'll see. It's only one session. But as I sit here, I'm certain of one thing. I'm jonesing to play poker. Just hope I can get a session in tomorrow somewhere.

Just asking

2011-03-28T21:19:00.003-04:00

Can someone teach me how to get away from kings on innocuous boards when villains hold aces? Given how many times it has happened the last week (Rush and donkaments), I obviously need lessons.

LOL freerollaments

2010-10-31T18:33:00.002-04:00

Poker has sucked lately. Haven't played live in weeks and my online tomfoolery has been unproductive. Instead of grinding at 6-max NLHE, where I've been on a good run, I've been concentrating on donkaments ... with one major exception. I managed to drop 3 BI at $2/$4 8-game playing like a spewtard.

Tournaments have been so bad that my OPR rank has dropped from the 98th percentile (for the last 120 days) to 76.5, the lowest I've been in over a year. Bleh. Doesn't seem like I'm playing poorly but rather am getting bit on the ass by variance.

Thank God for freerollaments. PS offered a $5k purse to bloggers who removed an old flag from their blogs and 249 donkeys showed up. Finished 4th for a most welcome $425payday. (Even that ended badly, losing with JJ v. QJ sooted AIPF.) But trust me, I'll take it. Many thanks to the kind people at Stars. I'll remove other stuff from my blog if you'd like.

Starting all over again

2010-10-17T16:32:00.002-04:00

If you have Google reader or some other aggregator and actually have my blog linked, you might be confused about a couple of posts I tried to put up yesterday with a Pokerstars flag for a blogger freeroll. The thing blew out the template, prompting an e-mail to PS and a semi-quick response that the coding is not working.
PS is giving me a ticket for the freeroll anyway for having taken down my old WCBOOP flag posted earlier in the year.

Here was the rest of that failed post:

While there hasn't been any blogging for months, it doesn't mean my poker life has been fallow. I've had a few minor successes recently, including my deepest run ever in a $3 rebuy, a 7th place finish for $122 last Sunday. I screwed the pooch in that one, missing out on a big payday with some stupid and altogether unnecessary aggressiveness.

I had managed to chip up slightly from T34 shortly after the end of the rebuy period to T3 million with around 40 players left. I then proceeded to spew, spew, spew and met my demise much sooner than I had ever expected. I felt sick for a day or two knowing how I had blown such a great chance for a signficant payout.

Two days later, I finished second in a $8.80 6-max PLO tournament, and later in the week managed a third in a $5.50 PLO on the same night I bubbled the final table in an $11 HORSE donkament. Good results. But nearly a week later, the rebuy still haunts me. Happy Halloween indeed.

I have been trying to play as much as possible online lately, primarily tournaments the last month after a break-even, 25,000-hand binge of NL with the last 15,000 hands at $50 6-max. I’m hoping to play between six and ten tournaments today, starting with the $11 rebuy and an $8 affair. (Big-name pro sighting: Shaun Deeb is slumming at my rebuy table. Checked his OPR stats. He’s got over $1.2 million in profit. Must be nice. I thought the guy retired.)

I'll update if I manage any decent finishes.

Quick turnaround

2010-05-09T10:20:00.004-04:00

Picking up from my previous post, I bring you a semi-contemporaneous retelling of my SCOOP PLO adventures from last night. And now, let us go to the action on the felt.

I had been floundering at 13K with 1,000 runners left -- 3,800+ total with not much happening when the villain to my right doubled me up and then was so kind to double me up again. With a healthy stack of about 65K, I cruised into the money after more than five hours. Given I'd only invested one buy-in and the add-on, I'd at least double my money.

Continued to chip up a bit when I got A-A-J-x and 3-bet. The flop came J-2-3. I bet, villain raised and I pondered, letting a big chunk of time elapse before I repotted. He called with 7-J-8-10. TPLK. A 9 on the turn gave him an open-ender but the river bricked and I scooped a 382K pot, putting me in 6th place with just under 300 runners left.

Long way to go. Blinds at 1250/2500. But I'm sitting on 170 BB at this point, so there's lots of room to play AND be patient. A nice spot.

Finally got moved after spending the first 5 1/2 hours at my starting table.

Armor chinked a bit after losing a 115K pot with A-Q-Q-J on a flop of A-10-4. Villain check-called AI with A-K-K-6 and held. In 21st place with just over 200 runners remaining.

We enter the 7th hour and I'm not doing much. Won some small pots to chip up north of 450K. The Jones children are currently watching SNL with Betty White and Jay Z. I'm 21st with 145 runners left.

After 500 hands, I've seen 32 percent of flops.

Crap. Lost a 145K pot with A-4-10-8 vs. 8-6-4-Q on a board of A-3-2-5-Q. I called 45K on the river, suspecting he'd made his straight on the turn. Down to 395K.

Big stack with nearly 900K has been transported to my immediate right. Let's see how this goes. Blinds at 3K/6K. Average stack is 332K. Seem kinda card dead. Most of the hands I'm winning with are bluffs.

Boom shackalacka. Win a 468K pot with A-A-8-8 rainbow on a flop of 5-10-4. I pot and villain repots AI with A-K-Q-10. I've got 140K to call to win a bunch. I mull and make the call, knowing I'll have 200K left. I hold up and jump to 650K and a top 20 stack.

Soon after, a similarly sized stack to my right and I get into a huge pot. I call a raise with 10-J-9-9 and the flop comes 9-8-Q rainbow. Big stack and I, for all practical purposes, are both AI. He shows A-J-4-10. Turn gives him a flush draw but the river is a K and with chop it up. A bit unlucky there.

New player to my immediate left is the chipleader with 1.2 million. Table change, please. I'm at 656K. Blinds at 4K/8K.

Couple of small pots, including one vs. chip leader, get me to 716K. Holy schnikeys. Chip leader has taken out the 650K stack to my immediate right and is now at 2.1 million. Second place has 1.2 million with 89 runners remaining.

Leftover coffee I heated with some powdered hot chocolate at 10:30 is long gone. Nursing a 20 oz. Mountain Dew White Out for my caffeine fix. As a Dew connoisseur, I judge it an acceptable flavor. Last hand before the break (7:55 into tournament), push chip leader and a bigger stack off the flop to win a 110K pot with A-A-Q-9 on a board of K-9-5 with two diamonds. I'm at my high water mark of 761K.

I'm 19th with 73 players remaining and the average stack at 551K. Two more Motrin at the break, my second serving of the tournament. With only 70+ BB left, the possibilities of playing a pot for all my chips is growing. Small ball has gotten a little more difficult, especially with chip leader's aggressiveness. All I can hope is to get them in with the best of it.

It's now 1:10 a.m. Three million-plus stacks at the table. Former chip leader down to 1.7 million and now in second place. Sixty-four players remaining.

(Finally) raise with 4-K-Q-J. Former chip leader calls 36K. Flop comes Q-A-10 rainbow. I refuse to screw around and pot for 90K. Villain folds. Get to 800K the next hand when I call a raise in the SB with K-10-J-A. Three players to the flop of 3-2-4 with two hearts. (I have the J and 10 of hearts.) I pot and both villains fold.

Sixty players left with average stack at 670K. Just about to hit 600 hands for the tournament.

Having nearly reached the 8:30 mark, I must admit my concentration is flagging. When the going gets tough, the weird turn pro. It's time to turn pro, ladies and gentlemen. Still pretty card dead. Down to 712K and blinds at 8K/16K.

Fuck. Just lost a big pot to former chip leader (FCL) with Q-9-A-J on a flop of K-J-J. Played it poorly, which, ironically, likely saved me chips. OOP, I checked the flop thinking about a check raise but the other two villains don't bet. I pot the blank turn, FCL calls and I then check-call 192K on the river 8. Villain shows J-8-x-x. Fuck. Down to 376K. Not good.

Must double/triple/quadruple up. Now 39th with 47 runners left. No time to panic. Still have 20 BB.

Called SB steal from BB with 10-7-6-5. Flop comes 10-3-10. Villain bets 42K, I pot and he folds. Wish I had tried a check-raise. At 400K now. "SNL" is long over and the Junior Joneses are off to bed. House is quiet now.

Down to 338K. We're at 42 players left, which represents the biggest pay jump thus far. I'm sucking wind at 36th. Meh. Will need to play for my stack soon. Now must wait for the right spot. Average stack is more than 1 million.

Raise from cutoff with K-K-9-10. Two callers. Fold on flop of A-Q-x. Next hand, stupidly call a preflop raise of 52K with J-J-K-10 double suited. Player behind me pushes. Raiser calls and I fold. Down to 226K. In 36th with 38 left. Can only play monsters now.

Virtually no pots going unraised preflop. Stupid call with J-J-K-10 double suited but I wanted desperately to see a flop. Blinds at 10K/20K.

Got a walk. I'll take it. Blinds at 1250/2500. Still waiting. Pushed through to 36 players remaining. Very nice pay jump at 30th place. Need ... chips ... now. Break about to start. We're 8 hours and 55 minutes into this affair. Decisions are simple now.

It's 2 a.m. Drunks are staggering out of bars. I'm staggering in what has become a PLO marathon. Down to 35 players. Folding garbage. Everyone at the table has 1 million plus including a new chip leader with 3.4 million. FML. At least there aren't any antes. Now positioned in dead last with 159K and 34 players left. Will be pushing in the next few hands most likely.

Push with 10-A-7-A UTG. Win blinds. Wheeeee.

Fold blinds. Shite. Time for the big comeback. Stole blinds with 10-10-A-3 double suited. A limped pot holding 2-3-5-6 from BB. No love on flop. I fold ... again. Blinds just went to 15K/30K with 33 players left.

Headed to the Dark Side of the Moon. Will be out of radio communication until this is over. Hoping to emerge into the bright poker sunshine.

2:30 a.m. -- Out in 24th. With just under 200K in chips, I raise with 6-7-8-K, the K suited in clubs. FCL calls. I'm AI on a flop of 4-8-2 with two clubs. FCL has A-J-10-5. A 3 on the turns gives him a wheel and the river is no help to me. Sigh. Played well but cards didn't cooperate when I really needed them to. Payday is $883.20. A nice profit, even for 9 1/2 hours of play, but I'm deeply disappointed knowing what kind of money waiting at the top of the heap. (First place paid $26K.)

Two scoops

2010-05-08T17:19:00.002-04:00

I've played two SCOOP events thus far, $11 turbo PLO and $11 NLHE. I made minor cashes in both, missing the first hour of PLO and quitting with 44K in chips and blinds at around 400/800/xx in NLHE. Work was to blame for both incompletes.

I had no business entering the second tournament. I knew there would be a huge field, but failed to read the directions and didn't realize starting stacks were 10K. Not a good tournament for a school night. Ran okay for awhile and got into the 400s with 7,000 runners left. Once we reached the money around 12:30 a.m. (8 p.m. start), I knew I needed to bail. Missing work the next day was not an option. I clicked "Sit out" and went to bed. My unmanned stack got me to the 1400s for a $33 payday. Woot.

Currently playing in a $15 6-max rebuy PLO. Since it's Saturday evening, I can actually stick around and win this one. (Hey, why not?) I am off to a good start. I've run my 3K starting stack to over 12K within the first 35 minutes. Let's see if I can run ridiculously good in this thing.

While I don't post much here, I've been playing a fair amount of poker, although virtually all of it's online. I'm lucky to play live twice a month now in CPMG events. My current refuge online is $2/$4 8-game. Stakes are high enough to be interesting. I've even dipped my toes in the $4/$8 waters despite my lack of bankroll to support those stakes.

If I win this tournament, I promise to post again soon.

Springing into action

2010-03-08T21:13:00.004-05:00

Spring has peeked its reluctant head into Northeast Ohio the past few days, causing the 12-foot snow pack to drip like the post-nasal funk that has taken root in my head.

Mrs. Jones' remedy? A CIA-sanctioned waterboarding device known as a "Netti Pot" that is filled with a warm salt solution that you pour through your nostriles. It's a delightful sensation. But it does help, unlike the local HMO that says it no longer prescribes antiobiotics for sinus infections.

As for poker, my bankroll's been dripping as well. Through 12K hands of 6-max $50 and $25 PLO, I'm down a couple hundred bucks at $50, up slightly at $25. I'm not very good at this game yet. But I don't think I'm that bad, either. A handful of mistakes is the difference between winner and loser right now. Still too tight, too passive.

On the other hand, I've had a bit of success playing PLO tournaments. Go figure. I final tabled an $8.80 tournament Sunday (6th of 388 runners) as well as one last month (5th of 366 runners). And now that I think about it, I won the only live PLO tournament I've played. Notable hands from Sunday include 7-7-7-7 and 4-4-4-4. Also got A-A-K-K double suited for the first time I can recall.

In addition to my PLO shenanigans, I did win a CPMG tournament at Dave's since I last posted, breaking a streak of about a dozen live tournaments without a win. Got it done in a steady, unspectacular fashion. Hope to play again this weekend in the closing days of the POY points race.

Piss off, Kenny Rogers

2010-02-02T19:13:00.002-05:00

I need to begin this missive by letting you know that I'm not a gambler. Not really.

Yet, at the chili cook-off at Dave's on Saturday, I didn't make it much past the first break after Timmuh! called my semi-bluff all-in for half his stack with a gutshot and what proved to be an over. (K-J vs. J-10 on a flop of Q-9-x.) Yeah. I concede it was an iffy play. But there was enough dead money in the pot that I would have nearly doubled up. Should have known better. It was Timmuh!

We started up a $1/1 table and doubled my buy-in fairly quickly before an eight-handed 8-game table formed. ($3/$6, $150 max). You've got to love the CPMG, where degeneracy reigns supreme. We had 58 runners for a $50 tournament, two full $1/$1 NL tables and 8-game -- with a waiting list.

While the skeptics insisted that 8-game was a fad that wouldn't last, it's been running every Saturday night for nearly two months straight. Apparently props aren't going away either. I hate props.

When my fellow 8-game players asked if I would be participating in the night's prop-bet action, I begged off. That's when I was told that Data, the only person in the world I thought had less gamble than me, would be taking a card. Reluctantly, I succumbed to peer pressure and paid the price.

The card you chose had to appear on the flop or as a door card -- $3 a man for each hit. While everyone else was hitting their cards, the fucking 5 of hearts went Osama on me. Totally Unfindable. It cost me $70, which wiped away my modest 8-game profit and generally pissed me off.

Again, I should have known better. I'm really not a gambler.

(My chili finished third among the nine entries. Diablo won with a pretty good mix. Doug Poker finished second -- with nine cans of Chunky Roadhouse chili. Too funny.)

I've Got a Cadmium Ticket

2010-01-30T10:13:00.003-05:00

Finished in 118th in the WBCOOP 8-game tournament last night, good for an $11 SCOOP ticket. Never could get any traction to climb higher.

Tonight's the totally rigged 4th annual CPMG Chili-Cookoff, a competition I failed to win in two previous tries. Nearly decided to boycott this colluded contest con carne.

I wasn't put on this Earth to please judges who apparently live life taste bud-challenged. My chili's the best, dammit! The best!

Cash ExPLOsion

2010-01-24T12:23:00.003-05:00

My PLO experience and a window of opportunity allowed me to play Dr. Pauly's PLO tournament yesterday. Semi-luckboxed my way to a second-place finish. Ran well and (ahem) think I played pretty well. I was down a big chunk at the start of HU, but quickly crippled chitwood with a set of 7s v A-A (all-in on the flop), but then doubled him up with K-K v A-A.

He chipped back up some more, but I still had the lead when we got it AI on the turn when the jack gave him a set and me Broadway. The river paired the board, putting me in bad shape. It ended a short time later with short-end of the straight v his big end. At Pauly's thoughtful suggestion when he pimped the tournament initially, I gave a portion to the Haiti Fund, which PS matched.

I had plans to head to Dave's for the weekly CPMG tournament and $3/$6 8 game but the tourney took longer than I anticipated and I had promised to make pizza for supper. I could have made it in time to buy in around the 3rd level, but while the mind was willing, the body felt sluggish. It's nearly an hour drive and I typically find myself walking in the door around 5 a.m. Instead, I entered the $27.50 and $3 rebuy on Stars. Bottom money in the rebuy and 42nd in the $27.50 (1,300+ runners).

And, fr some insanely stupid reason, I decided to fire up a .50/$1 PLO table after I'd made the money in the $27.50. I was tired and knew I wasn't sharp. It didn't take long for me to spew a little over a full buy-in when I repopped a solid player with A-A-x-x and repopped him again on a 10-high flop. He held A-10-10-x. How fucking stupid of me.

I still have much to learn about PLO. I'm too tight and too passive for 6-max, limping and calling way too much. My reading skills have improved some, but I still too often don't know where I am in hands. It's been costing me.

For the time being, I'll continue playing what I think is a lower variance kind of game until I figure out how to correctly ramp up the aggression. I managed to do it playing 6max LHE and I'm hoping that I can figure out PLO as well.

But I need some knowledge first. This seat-of-the-pants approach is not working. It's time to hit the books (and the forums).

Put those FPPs to work for a good cause

2010-01-23T22:19:00.002-05:00

Pokerstars is matching whatever contribution you choose to make to Haiti relief. You can make a cash transfer to "Haiti Fund" or purchase a contribution using FPP. For example, 3,100 FPP "buys" a $50 contribution, which PS matches.

If you've got some FPP sitting around, put them to work for a good cause. You don't need another hoodie, anyway.

The Big Sleep

2010-01-16T10:20:00.005-05:00

Got home from the basketball game last night after watching our hometown high school heroes get run out of the gym by a bunch of short, extremely talented white kids and decided to play some poker. With the PS account back down hovering in the low two-digit range (where's my bailout, Mr. Obama?), I chose to enter the $5.50 PLO8 tournament at 2140.

It quickly became apparent that any online poker would be a mistake. I was dog tired after a long week and found myself struggling to stay awake. But the other button-pushing monkeys out there, unaware of my altered consciousness, decided to gift me a bunch of chips, so many that by the time the bubble broke three hours later, I had a top 5 stack. (654 runners/99 paid.)

My good fortune could not overcome the need for sleep, however. With about 60 monkeys left, I went from nodding off for a few seconds to a deep REM state. Perhaps an hour later, I woke up to discover that my stack had been eroded to the point where I was in 12th place with 15 players remaining. (I went from around 100K to 55K, not a huge loss.) It was now 2:30 a.m., but I did feel refreshed.

Long story short, I nursed what remained of my chips, made the final table with the shortest stack of about 6BBs and ended up finishing 4th for a $240 profit.

It's a welcome boost to the bankroll, having grown tired of reloading every couple of weeks to pay for my latest addiction -- 6max PLO. I'm not too good at this game yet, but I'm breaking even after about 2,500 hands and am having fun learning the game. I just need to make sure I remain awake.

This and that

2009-12-03T18:54:00.004-05:00

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

2009-11-19T19:00:00.004-05:00

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.
.
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

2009-11-01T20:33:00.003-05:00

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

Grand prize

2009-10-25T11:14:00.005-04:00

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

2009-10-09T07:55:00.002-04:00

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

2009-05-20T10:28:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-28T10:36:00.008-04:00

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.

Zagat's bedamned

2009-04-19T22:43:00.003-04:00

Sunday dinner is the canvas upon which I create my culinary art. Sometimes I produce museum-quality pieces. At other times it's a preschool doodle that only a doting mom would tack on thee famly 'fridge.

This evening's menu was muy facil. A roasted chicken, smashed potatoes with gravy and steamed vegetables -- comfort food for a damp, spring day. Everything, save the chicken (which I managed to roast to perfection) came out wrong.

When it became quite apparent that I had managed to mostly fuck everything up, instead of issuing a burst of profanity that typically serves as an amuse bouche for my kitchen disasters, I chuckled and brought the food to the table where Mrs. Jones and the not-so-little Joneses happily tucked into the thin mashies and gravy, woefully overcooked veggies and roasted chicken as if they were seated at the chef's table at Chez Panisse.

I realized then that culinary beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My mess of a dinner looked pretty damn good to me.

A little something

2009-04-08T10:34:00.003-04:00

I managed to get partly off the schneid last night in the Blogger Skillz game, finishing fourth in the PLO8 tournament. While I'm comfortable with general O8 concepts, I've only played a handful of PLO8 tournaments and have never gotten deep enough in one where huge blinds were a factor. I missed a few spots where I could have been more aggressive at the FT. Good learning experience and a fun tournament to play.

Poker Jones Jr. made his varsity starting pitching debut on Saturday. He pitched five innings, gave up one run and two hits, walked two and struck out six to get the win. He wasn't facing the '27 Yankees, but he displayed good poise and threw a decent percentage of first-pitch strikes. A good first step.

Hurts so good

2009-04-01T21:12:00.004-04:00

Not much poker lately, thus not much to write about. But it's been a good and much-needed break after a steady diet of poker that accompanied my housebound convalescence.

The baseball season is underway. Poker Jones Junior made his regular-season varsity debut the other day, pitching two innings in mop-up duty. Not a bad outing -- no hits, no runs, one walk and two strikeouts.

And there's physical therapy, a 90-minute program I suspect was created by torture specialists at a CIA rendition camp in Romania. Sumbitch does it hurt. Someone -- anyone -- can shove the cliche "no pain, no gain" up their ass?

I did find myself in the vicinity of a driving range earlier today and decided to test the leg. Hit about 30 balls, all with short irons. Hit them well, on target with proper trajectory, but the session proved conclusively that I'm at least a month away, probably longer, from being able to play even nine holes.

There was going to be a post last week about finding overlays in both the noon $30K guaranteed and the 12:15 p.m. $15K guaranteed turbo. Cashed in both, but couldn't get beyond bottom money. And I did win the now weekly CPMG 8-game tournament on Stars Monday night, coming back from a 7-1 deficit heads-up. Only 13 runners, but a satisfying win nonetheless.

About to sign up for the Mookie, where I will undoubtedly flame out somewhere in the middle of the pack. Maybe I'm starting to like torture.

Operation Overlay

2009-03-26T15:13:00.004-04:00

In all of the time I've played on Stars, I can't recall seeing a guaranteed tournament not reach its intended prize pool. I was signing up for some 45s late this morning when I peeked at the tournament lineup and saw that the noon $30K guaranteed appeared to be well short of its target.

The sucker I am for overlay value, I paid me $22 and proceeded to fold into the money for the last 45 minutes or so. (Wasn't difficult, given the super crappy cards I was being dealt.) The tournament ended up $4,440 short of its $30K guarantee. I'll be on the lookout for similar bargains in the future.

While I've largely stayed away from the blogger tournament circuit for the past year or so, I did manage to sign up, at the last minute, for the Skillz game (limit) on Tuesday and the Mookie last night (where I donked off a middling stack bluffing with a pair of threes. Damn, I'm good.)

Given last night's performance, I have absolutely no moral authority upon which to base the following statement, but meh, it's my blog and no one can stop me: Bloggers, overall, ain't all that good at tournament poker. Too bad I have to include myself in that cohort.

Skim graph

2009-03-25T14:59:00.005-04:00

I guess this qualifies as a brag post, given how pleased I am with the direction my Sharkscope graph is headed after 911 games. It's nice to have some good news to report.

The initial spike downward resulted from a failed effort a couple of years ago playing a bunch $20 180s on Stars. Never cashed ... in ... a ... single ... fucking ... one. I've since failed to cash in any 180 at any amount, including a handful of $4.40s. If the tournament has a 180 in it, I'm extra-dead money.

The graph began drifting upward when I started playing single-table SNGs, starting with the $3.40 turbos and then advancing to the $6.50s. As is my nature, I got bored with SNGs and moved on to less fruitful forms of poker.

The latest positive trend comes from the 45-man $3.25 turbos I've been playing the last couple of weeks. Through 169 games, I'm running at an obscene 35 percent ROI. While it's highly doubtful I can sustain that rate, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. Sure beats repeatedly kicks in the junk.

My only slight quibble has been a couple of HU situations where I couldn't put my opponent away thanks to some lousy luck. My ITM distribution, however, shows how evenly they are spread with 5 wins, 6 seconds, 5 thirds, 5 fourths, 7 fifths, 6 sixths and 5 sevenths. There are also 4 eighths (the bubble) and 4 ninths (bubble +1).

One of the things I like about 45s is that you do not need to cash in a high-percentage to be profitable. My ITM is at 23 percent at the moment. If I recall correctly, it was somewhere in the low 40s for single-table SNGs.

Unquestionably, I'm running better, winning more races and (ahem) benefitting from a few more suckouts. But my game is also more sharp and focused. Situations present themselves more clearly, which is a nice feeling. Basically, I'm making fewer mistakes while getting slightly better cards, which should be a good combination.

Good is bad

2009-03-23T11:11:00.002-04:00

Howard and the boys (minus Clonie, of course) turned off the doomswitch yesterday long enough for me to final table a $5.50 NLHE tournament with 743 runners. When I wrote my whine in the previous post about Tilt eating my lunch, I had already built a sweet-looking stack in this tournament thanks to contributions from the stupid money and some good play. I waltzed past the bubble in this one.

So, it should be apparent that making a final table is an especially good thing given my recent bout of futility. But that's not the case. My presence at that shiny, azulean table was tainted by the fact that I did not deserve to be there.

The first hand was just pure luck. No biggie. After the bubble broke, I raised and re-re-raised a guy AI with pocket jacks. He called with kings and the flop came Q-J-9. Made quads with a jack on the river and I vaulted into the chip lead at 136K.

Not long after, at a new table, this hand occurred. I called a small stack's EP raise with A-K from late position. Guy to my left re-raised on the button and the small stack raised AI. I just called, putting around 93K in the pot and leaving me with 110K behind.

Why did I just call there? The short stack is a non-issue. The guy to my left had just under 50K to start the hand. Why didn't I get him AI as well and proceed to play bingo? The flop came rags, I checked, button pushed, I folded and he won the hand with ... A-K. Fawk me.

That hurt, but was hardly a fatal blow. I built my stack back up to around 130K and got dealt QQ in MP. There might have been around 35 players left at this point. Small stack from MP raised AI. Huge stack to my immediate right at a relatively new table re-raised a bunch. I pondered, thinking that I could afford to fold queens at that point. Good players can fold queens, right? And fold I did. Short stacked showed A-Q and the big stack pocket jacks. The queens, of course, would have been good and I would have had the chip lead at 320K.

Idiot. Am I being results oriented here knowing the outcome? Perhaps. But it feels like cowardice. Had we been on the battlefield, the commander would have ordered me shot.

My march to the final table was uneventful as I folded and floated enough to keep my chin above water while silently cursing my nittish nature. I was very short-stacked at the final table and was happy to get seventh. Interestingly, the $109 in profit put me slightly in the black over 154 MTTs on Tilt since the first of the year. Meanwhile, I'm down just over $300 in MTTs on Stars, the site where I thought was doing better. Go figure.

I did discover another significant leak in my game -- playing tournaments when I shouldn't. I was hanging around in the $8.80 Turbo on Stars (8:40 p.m. start) when I signed up for a $5.50 PLO8 tournament that began at 9:30.

I like PLO8. I've had break-even results playing about 5,000 hands of no-limit O8. PLO8 tournaments are fun to donk around in. I busted in the $8.80 and built a stack in PLO8, but started losing interest fast. I'd already played a ton of hours that day and was tired. I squeezed into the micro money and then shoved with a hand full of paint, not unhappy to lose the hand. It was 1:15 a.m. by that point. I've pissed away far too much money on tournaments that I had no real desire or motivation to enter. Another lesson learned.

Getting better all the time

2009-03-22T15:19:00.003-04:00

Variance has been swinging in a positive direction the last couple of days. I've had a couple of nice sets of 45-man $3.40s on Stars that have given me an 18 percent ROI over 139 games. As always, the small sample is meaningless statistically, but important psychologically. I'd always prefer to be kicked in the junk less than more.

You must grind to be a profitable SNG player. And it's virtually impossible to win a meaningful amount playing $3.40s unless you were playing hundreds a day while maintaining an off-the-hook ROI. That ain't happening.

While my stated goal remains to win 100 buy-ins for the move up to $6.50s, that looks like a pretty daunting task. I need to find the energy to play a whole lote more than the 139 I've gotten in over the last 11 days. I need to get in much better shape both physically and mentally while continuing to plug the leaks in my game.

My MTT results have also been slightly better as of late. And that applies only to Poker Stars. Full Tilt results are awful. I'm not sure why Howard Lederer hates me. I might be hallucinatting, but I feel as if I'm ready for some bigger tournament scores. Lord knows I'm due.

On the rehab front, my knee continues to improve and get stronger with each passing day. I've received permission to drive (about two weeks ahead of schedule) and will begin outpatient physical therapy on Tuesday.

Got out yesterday to watch Poker Jones Junior make his varsity debut in the team's first scrimmage. (He's a sophomore.) Junior pitched two innings and allowed one hit, two walks and struck out three. Very impressive. (I'm not proud.) He also flew out to the warning track in right field on a day when the ball wasn't carrying.

Playing kvetch

2009-03-19T19:44:00.003-04:00

Screwed myself royal when I used the "S" (success) word in my last post to describe my fledgling efforts at multi-table SNGs. I've been on a big downswing since Tuesday, cashing in only 12 of 72 in 45-man $3.25s. There were no wins during that the stretch with one 2nd and two 3rds. It's a given that these 45s are swingy, but for fuck's sake, variance swings back the other way, doesn't it?

At one point during this streak, I cashed just once (a 7th) in 32 tournaments thanks to a flurry of bad beats and bad cards. I managed to pull that sucker out of the tailspin with a solid bunch of cashes only to lose another engine and resume the nosedive. Here are my bustout hands from successive 45s today:

1) Kings vs. A-J
2) Jacks vs. A-K and A-Q
3) A-K vs. A-Q and A-J (A-J made Broadway)
4) A-K suited vs 4-4
5) Jacks vs. A-9
6) Flopped 2-pair counterfeited at the river

A bit ago, I lost most of my stack at the bubble with kings vs. Q-9.

I'm comfortable 5- and 6-tabling, and I've kept misclicks and missed situations to a minium. (I did fold my SB to a guy who was sitting out.) I initally had some problems not getting aggressive enough with a dwindling stack and rising blinds, but I've mostly fixed that and have been pushing with ATC when appropriate.

So, I'm working on the assumption that my SNG strategy is sound. There are still a few situations where I'm not quite certain of the correct "standard" play (A-x with a middling stack from early position at the final table is one.) But otherwise, I'm using the right approach. Now it's just a matter of the poker gods getting their feet off my neck.

Taking my medicine

2009-03-17T12:37:00.005-04:00

I'm way to old to join the ranks of fan boyz, but I'm afraid I'm there. It's hard not to trip over yourself in praise of a chubby German kid who has performed a feat of Internet pokering that you would not think possible.

Last month, Boku87 proposed a donktastic prop bet on 2+2 that he could run $100 in his Poker Stars account into $10,000 over 15 days playing nothing but low-limit SNGs. The rules stated that the SNGs could have more than 45 entries with a maximum buy-in of $16. He was looking for 3-1 odds and finally got around $10K in action.

I'd never heard of this kid, but he's apparently a highly successful SNG ubergrinder who regularly plays 30 tables or more ... on his laptop. Poker Stars got involved by escrowing the bets and updating Boku87's progress on 2+2.

Yesterday afternoon, about 40 hours short of the deadline, the sonuvabitch did it when his account drifted over the $10,000 mark. There were so many people on 2+2 at the time that the site's servers crashed.

It's hard to fathom that anyone could pull this off. He started off 50-tabling $1.10 SNGs and absolutely crushed them. It took him only a couple of days to work his way up to the $12s and $16s. His Sharkscope graph kept climbing while playing 7,432 SNGs and an astounding 381,000 hands during his run.

I had one encounter with the wunderkind. A couple days from the finish line, Boku87 added a bunch of $3.25 and $6.50 tables, which happen to reside in my neck of the poker woods. Early in a 45, I got dealt jacks UTG. That's when I discovered Boku87 sitting to my immediate left. I raised, he re-raised and I pushed AI. He called with his aces and I rivered a jack to put him on life support.

I almost felt bad for having sucked out against him, but I had my own worries. I'd been running grotesquely bad. Dog shit bad. I had really looked forward to playing a ton of poker during my rehab at home, but ended up cursing myself for ever playing this stupid game.

At one point, I failed to cash in 24 successive tournaments on Poker Stars and a robust 25 on Full Tilt. I can't remember ever being so discouraged. I didn't whether I should destroy my laptop in a fit of rage or curl in a ball on the floor and cry my eyes out. Instead, I kept playing.

Was the deck running cold? Absolutely. Redonkulously bad beats? Way more than the usual. But I knew there had to be more, that there was something fundamentally flawed in my play.

My medicinal regimen could not have been helping. Knee replacement is a painful mofo, necessitating the use of strong narcotics. (I've been writing about my brand new knee at my other blog.) I didn't feel as if the drugs were causing me to play stupidly. Yet my game was off. Nothing seemed to work and variance could not shoulder all of the blame for the downswing.

I backed off on the painkillers about a week ago, and things seem to be a little more in focus. It helps that I'm now playing a game that I've had success at in the past. I'd been doing too much meandering, playing all sorts of different tournament types and some cash as well. I'm now concentrating on 18- and 45-player turbo SNGs. I started with $6.50s, which resulted in a small loss, before dropping to the $3.25 and $3.40 varieties. I've worked my way up to six tables with some limited success.

It looks as if six tables is the most I can comfortably play at the moment. I only started cascading the tables last night. (I previously maxed out at four, sizing the tables so they slightly overlapped and I could keep an eye on the action at all of the tables.) It's strange to lose sight of big hands you're involved in when another table pops to the front. The hope is to get the bankroll to 100 buy-ins and move back to $6.50s. That might take awhile.

I used to hate Q-9

2009-03-03T22:02:00.000-05:00

FYI

2009-02-24T00:11:00.002-05:00

I've started a new blog to journalize this whole knee replacement experience. It's called Adventures of a New Knee.

Try a little ugliness

2009-02-23T22:14:00.003-05:00

I return from my blogging hiatus with a hand that cost me a good chunk of change but made me money in the end. And how does this happen? I was at Dave’s playing $1/$1 HA on Saturday night when I was dealt 6h-7h in MP six-handed. I call the $2 straddle and Eskimo popped it $12 from the small blind. I was his lone caller and we saw a flop of 4-5-x with two hearts, giving me an open-ender and a flush draw. Eskimo led for $20. The moment those four red chips left my hand I knew I had made a mistake. Why am I just calling? Why didn't I push the $140 or so I had left and make him play for a good chunk of his stack?

The turn was a blank and Eskimo bet $38. The moment having passed, I just called ... again. The river was a blank and I folded to his reluctant, final bet. Eskimo showed jacks. I mucked.

Malcolm, sitting to my left, asked, “Six-seven of hearts?” I nodded. “I would have pushed,” Malcolm added. I nodded ... again.

My first instinct to call rather than push was likely guided by the economic reality of the situation. I had already reloaded once and would not be going to an ATM for more cash. I wasn’t ready to go broke. And I did mount a comeback, thanks to a couple of big hands and well-timed bluffs, and finished the session with a small profit.

Interesting side note. I started at a nine-handed $1/1 NL cash table after busting out of the tournament but soon joined a a five-handed HA table. I’m not a big fan of PLO, but I happened to have bought Jeff Hwang’s book that day and had recently logged about 6,000 hands of NLO8 online. But my prime motivation was to get away from a guy at the hold ‘em table who wouldn’t shut the fuck up. Sometimes I have the patience to listen to incessant, inane chatter. That was not one of those nights.

Here's the weird thing: Over the next three hours or so, I failed to win one PLO pot. I was admittedly playing real tight, but I got to see a few flops and got nothing useful. Six-handed, I surely should have saw something that resembled a hand that I could bet (and win) with. (I also failed to win a hand in a couple orbits of NL Pineapple, which strikes me as a goofy game, although not hard to figure out.)

Going in tomorrow to get my left knee replaced. High-anxiety moment. I’ll update after I return home from the hospital.

Follow-up visit

2009-01-26T17:15:00.002-05:00

As indicated in my previous post, not running so goot. It was actually a relief to figure out (fool myself?) that it has primarily been variance kicking my ass in MTTs.

Despite the poor results, I have not lost my enthusiasm. I am continuing to shoot in the belief that shots will start to drop eventually. Perhaps my 13th-place finish (295 runners) in a PLO8 tournament last night will provide me with some positive momentum.

I came home a bit ago from a follow-up visit to the orthopedic surgeon. It was a follow-up only in technicial sense. The first visit two weeks ago was with a doctor who told me he didn't do knee replacements and that I'd have to come back and see a doctor who does.

"I don't know why they scheduled you with me," he said with a shrug. I managed to bite my tongue for once.

But he had relatively good news. He thought I'd only need a partial replacement, which comes with considerably shorter recovery time. Today's visit explains why the first doctor doesn't do knee replacements.

The real doctor determined I need a brand new knee, which I'll be receiving at the end of February. He told me that that, after the surgery, I'll have the left knee of a 60-year-old man.

"A healthy 60-year-old man," he quickly added. That news did not do much for my 49-year-old peace of mind.

As for why my knee should be in such wretched shape, the doctor guessed that it was cumulative, a collection of knicks and scratches that has torn the cartilage to shreds. My knee wasn't made for that many trips up and down the basketball court, that many pass patterns, that many hours on that baseball field, or that many golf swings. Sumbitch just wore out and it's time to get a new one.

The doctor had that air of confidence you like to see in physicians, airline pilots and hookers. He assured me that I'll eventually be pain free after surgery and weeks of rehab. He saw now reason why I won't be able to walk long distances, play golf or participate in other low-impact activities.

And the 2 1/2 months that I'm expected to be out of commission, largely sitting at home on my ass, should provide plenty of opportunities to have variance kick me in the junk while playing online. As for now, I'm looking forward to that as well.

And the beats go on

2009-01-25T00:07:00.003-05:00

Hours of study, intense post-regression analysis and post-hypnotic suggestion has led to this conclusion about my MTT play the last several weeks: I run bad.

Stupid bad.

Fugly bad.

I've managed just a handful of cashes and one final table over this time period and, with the exception of one brain-dead night, I've not played that badly. But the deck won't stop bitch slapping me with the kind of standard, fucked-up beats that make you question your sanity.

When shooters miss, they keep firing away in the belief that the shots will finally start to drop. That's me, kids. Any day now. Any day.

Streakin'

2009-01-19T17:53:00.005-05:00

My national nightmare ended around 1 o'clock this morning when I found myself cashing in a $2.20 triple draw tournament on Stars. My small stack disappeared a few hands later, leaving me with a $2.82 profit.

That miniscule cash did, howeer, end a streak of 21 online tournaments where I failed to make the money. The most miserable example came in the $32K Guaranteed Sunday on Tilt.

With 600-plus players remaining, my 12K stack was well above average when I found pocket aces in the small blind. A player in MP made one of those odd-amount raises, prompting me to reraise an equally odd amount. Heads-up, the flop came 10-9-6, which looked pretty damn good for aces. Or did it?

I made a pot-sized bet of around 2,300 and my opponent put another 5K on top. Sumbitch. Does he have 10s? That's what it felt like. It certainly made sense.

Having made that solid read, I pushed all-in hoping he had jacks, queens or kings. I quickly discovered how smart and how stupid I was in one fell swoop. Of course he had pocket 10s. And, of course, I had blown a chance to cash in a tournament with decent-sized payouts.

There was a time when I would become a super nit when I knew conservative play would likely lead to a cash. That doesn't happen anymore. The bottom payouts are meaningless to me now. In search of a stack that will carry me to the final table, I've stayed aggressive, and there were four or five times during the streak where I busted within sight of the money. I want a stack that will carry me to the final table. But that's not going to happen either if I can't trust my strong reads and lay down hands, even aces, when I believe that I'm behind.

Small steps

2009-01-17T17:01:00.002-05:00

We had reached a strange but potentially deciding moment in what had been for me a strange tournament. Turbo Tom and I were heads-up Friday night in a $40 tournament at Diverjoules, the last men standing from a field of 18 players.

Turbo pushed his last 38K on a turn card that, at first blush, I believed did not help him. Something told me nothing on the board had connected with his hand. Unfortunately, nothing on the board was good for my A-6 suited either. If I call and lose, my sizable chip lead will be gone. I pondered. Could my ace-high be actually be good? I reviewed the preceding action and gave Turbo a long, hard look. The answer arrived. My ace was ahead. I called and Turbo sheepishly flipped over 10-7. My ace high held up and the tournament was over. Turbo, a good sport and good guy, grumbled and wondered how I could have made that call. Knowing what I think I knew, how could I not?

By all rights, I should not have reached that point in the proceedings. I don’t question my good fortune in life, but I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly lucky poker player. You would not have known that Friday night.

After a poor start, I doubled up when my 5-10 suited cracked limped kings in a blind vs. blind battle with Monsignor. I then doubled up at the final table with Jd-9d vs. Colin’s A-J with a flopped flush. Three-handed and in the money, I got a huge double-up when I my pushed Qh-8h outran Turbo’s big slick on the river.

My luckboxery created the expected pissing and moaning from players and audience alike, but I didn’t care. Shit happens in poker and, on this frigid winter night, good shit happened to me. I’ll take it.

When I trudged out to my car afterward, the temperature having dipped below zero, I felt pretty warm inside. I’ve spent the last month or so working, with limited success on my tournament game. I’ve played nearly 90 tournaments online since the first of the year as I try to make the incremental improvements needed to finally break through.

I’ve sustained an insignificant monetary loss thus far, but I believe I have gained some knowledge. Situations seem clearer. The read against Turbo was half situation, half body language, but it was a read and not some half-cocked guess. The process worked well.

The difficulty in this self-improvement effort has been determining what I don’t know. Ultimately, it really comes down to decision making. Better players make better decisions. Their mental checklist in determining how they play a hand contains more items – more information to consider – than the rest of us. I need to study and work harder to expand my checklist. When that happens, I can only hope that the monetary rewards will follow.

Make mine 7 3/8

2008-12-31T10:03:00.003-05:00

Further proof that online poker is completely rigged:

First time for everything

2008-12-26T13:26:00.006-05:00

Here are a couple of noteworthy hands from the past few days.

I thought I was way good in the first one. I can't recall ever seeing a straight flush over a straight flush before.

Then there is this hand:

And I can't recall ever seeing quads over quads, either. (This one is from a $5.50 HORSE tournament.)

Silent might

2008-12-25T21:08:00.006-05:00

I had no business playing poker at 1:30 a.m. Christmas morning. The children and wife were nestled and snug in their beds while I sat downstairs pushing buttons on the poker machine.

It was sheery lunacy. I was two hours into a $3.30 knockout tournament on Tilt with a long, busy day looming. There were gifts to exchange and open, breakfast to make, breads to bake, Christmas feast to prepare, relatives to pick up and schlep to the house and then entertain. Only a bad beat or a stupid play was going to prevent me from cashing. But so what?

Only a final-table payout would come close to offsetting the sleep this was costing me. But I vowed to press on and had an average-sized stack at the second break thanks to pocket kings holding up against four (yes, four) all-ins. Fatigue took over after the break and I began nodding off between hands. I had almost stopped caring. While I wasn't about to dump my chips, I needed to push the envelope. It was time to go high or go to sleep.

And high I went --real high -- during one of those satisfying rushes. I began bullying the table like Scut Farkus in Christmas Story, stealing blinds and stacking people when I had it. I had nearly double the number of chips as the player in second place by the third break and had perked up considerably. I can't remember ever having so many chips relative to the rest of the field and was having fun throwing my weight around.

When we reached the final table around 3:45, I held 35 percent of the chips in play (637 runners). A medium stack took out three players during the first orbit to grow a stack nearly as big as mine. I took out a couple more players and got to heads-up play with a 2-1 advantage. More than a half hour later ... I finished second when my pocket 6s failed to out race his K-Q.

My heads-up play was ... okay. There were a couple of loose calls on the river with second pair I'd like back. I employed all the strategery I know, but could not get him to pay me off when I had a hand.

The payout of around $250 plus (with bounties) turned out to be worth it. I crashed around 4:30 and was awakened by the kids at 8 to open presents. While I didn't have a choice, I managed to gut it out and got through the day without incident. Christmas dinner was great -- beef tenderloin with a horseradish sauce, duck ala orange, roasted redskins in walnut oil and assorted steamed and braised veggies. I even found time to make a dozen Parker House rolls and a baguette.

After all of this, am I sleeping at 1 a.m. on the day after Christmas? Of course not. I'm finishing this post and have chips in a $5.50 HORSE tourney. (Had a minor cash in one of the 9 p.m. Daily Doubles earlier.) I'll sleep tomorrow ... or maybe the day after.

What a drag it is

2008-12-23T16:26:00.009-05:00

I had to leave home at halftime of the Browns game on Sunday to get an MRI on my left knee. I had not missed a minute of this wretched season to that point, making my departure, medically necessary for both preventive and diagnostic reasons. The Browns' perpetual ineptness has become sickening.

The medical clinic, a large modern building off I-271, typically bustles with the sick and infirm during the week. On Sunday, it was desolate. There is something odd about visiting a doctor or undergoing tests on a Sunday. What is it about a particular day of the week that colors the commerce of life? Are there cultures that don't bother to distinguish between days of the week? Or is everyone a slave to the Julian calendar?

The magnetic resonance machine might be an expensive piece of high-tech equipment, but it clanks and clatters like a $4.95 Rube Goldberg machine. The damn thing is loud. I had the technician show me the images afterward, particularly the median meniscus, the crescent-shaped layer of cartilage that acts like a shock absorber for the inner part of the knee. She pointed out a white line she said indicated damage. I considered that good news. Meniscus tears can be repaired fairly easily.

Today, the rheumatologist finally reached me with the MRI results. The meniscus, he said, is actually intact. But there's virtually no cartilage left at the end of the femur and tibia and that they are now bone on bone, which explains the constant pain.

I was surprised my reaction to the news. I sat in privacy of the darkened "fish bowl" -- the room where daily news meetings are held -- and wept quietly. It's not as if I were told I have six weeks to live, but "severe degenerative arthritis" disturbed me. Instead of relatively benign arthroscopic surgery, I now face the prospect of a knee replacement and lengthy rehab. A bad beat.

A baseball coach I met this fall told me that he regrets not having one of his knees replaced sooner, that it improved his life immensely. That's heartening. Perhaps I should be result oriented in this case. My knee needs fixed. The meds they've prescribed barely reach the pain but are too powerful to take while I'm at work.

Like the Julian calendar, I've treated age largely as a conceit to be dusted off only when useful. I've clung to the pablum of "young at heart" despite my rapid descent toward age 50. I play poker with folks who are much younger that me, work alongside reporters nearly half my age and coach a bunch of smart-ass teen-agers. Only occasionally do I look in the mirror and see someone ... middle-aged. I realize that others see an old(er) guy, and that's fine. But I wonder what that image will be, both inside and out, once I go into public with a newly acquired accessory that no big-pimpin' balla should be without -- a cane.

Fuck me and the fact that I need a cane. The sooner I can get rid of the thing the better.

Quantity is Job 1

2008-12-22T17:37:00.003-05:00

Like Ford Motor Co., I don't need a bailout ... yet.

Sunday, however, looked bad enough that I had an e-mail to Hammerin' Hank Paulson composed and ready for delivery. But once again, my final tournament of the night brought a small measure of redemption. To that point I had bombed out of one badugi, three HORSE, four NL and one Indian Poker (tough getting the laptop screen to your forehead) before final tabling a wee $3 knockout tournament on Tilt.

There were 665 runners and I finished fourth. I also collected an impressive three -- that's right, three -- bounties along the way at 50 cents per donkey unit. The $134 payout was my biggest in a while online.

I've read in blogs and forums about how the ballas regularly jump into multiple big buy-in tournaments searching for, and occasionally finding, a big cash. I've decided to emulate these playas but at a micro level.

My justification for the number of soul-sucking hours I've been playing online lately is that I'd like to make money. Money is good, and I'd like more. Poker db stats show that I cash in roughly 1 out of 6 MTTs. (It's 19% on Stars and 15% on Tilt.) The trick is getting deeper more often I have in the past.

The hope is that dedicated tournament play will lead to significant growth in the bankroll sector of the poker economy. It remains to be seen if the constant two-tabling helps or hinders the quality of my play. It does making folding easier. And I'm less apt to be surfing the webs or watching TV that when I single table.

Preparing corn chowder while playing a HORSE and badugi tournament is a little tricky, but I'll try to avoid that in the future.

Limpy gait

2008-12-21T09:39:00.003-05:00

Final tabled another HORSE tournament last night on Stars. More runners (234) and larger buy-in ($11) makes this a slightly more respectable finish.

Got very lucky to even cash. Around 10 spots before the money bubble, I was down to crumbs when the big blind hit me in hold 'em, forcing me and my 5-3 offsuit all-in against two players. I didn't even bother watch the hand play out and turned my attention to the other tournament on the screen. Yet a short time later, the HORSE table popped up and I discovered I had just over 1,000 chips. A freakin' minor miracle had occurred.

I managed to win a few more hands, hunkered down and pretty much folded my way into the money (40 paid). More luck propelled me toward the finaly table after the money bubble burst when I made two pair on seventh street to win a big stud all-in. I got up above 40K at one point, but bled off far too many chips chasing speculative hands against smaller stacks. I was on fumes when I we reached the final table of eight players and lasted just a few hands.

HORSE tournaments emphasize to me how minuscule the edges are. Small mistakes you make throughout the tournament seem to have a compounding effect. The need for aggressiveness must be balanced against the rising swell of blinds and antes. The approach that seems to work best is playing extremely tight preflop and pounding hard when you think you've got the upper hand. And, as always, position is huge in determining which hands you can play and those you cannot.

I also had a minor cash in an $11 knockout tournament on Tilt last night. ($8 goes to the prize pool and $2 is your bounty.) The bounties produce a noticeable change in the way people play. Shortstacked all-ins are more than likely going to get called by big stacks with marginal holdings for the chance to collect the extra dough. I'll be looking to play a few more of these.

Finally, headed to a satellite clinic of one of our mega-hospitals today to finally get an MRI on my left knee. It took three visits to a rheumatologist to finally convince someone that the 24/7 pain I feel is something other than osteoarthritis. The doc's best guess was a torn meniscus. I'm hoping that's the case and some arthoscopic surgery will provide relief.

The growing pain has been a drag and is life limiting. Just walking 10 blocks to lunch on Friday proved ill-advised. Playing golf or throwing batting practice at the moment is inconceivable. The sooner I can get this fixed the better.

Mixed game results

2008-12-20T16:33:00.003-05:00

I'd settled down on an icy Friday evening in front of the poker machine for a mellow, but dedicated, night of donkament registration. Nothing short of a nuclear strike would deter me from making my appointed rounds against faceless interweb foes. And register I did, two at a time to keep the laptop screen filled with digital degeneracy.

Yet no matter the tournament type -- freezeout, rebuy, HORSE, badugi, Token Frenzy on Tilt -- nothing went right. Mellow eventually went south with the wife, kids and 401K. Bad cards, back luck, bad timing and bad play had conspired like Wall Street bankers to make for a bad night of pokerific action.

Finally, I registered for the final two tournaments of the night, a $5 HORSE on Tilt and $2 PLB (pot limit badugi) on Stars. I started poorly in those two as well, but began hacking through those fields with the dull machete that is my game. I managed to cash in both, including a final table in badugi, where I finished fifth. Poker can be a slog, but patience and persistence finally prevailed. One of the longest nights of the year had come to an end.

Badugi mofo

2008-12-18T17:49:00.006-05:00

The crudely stated reality is this: I'm a $2.20 badugi pro, bitches.

Finished third in a pot-limit badugi tournament (128 runners) last night and thought I was on my to yet another big win when we got three-handed. but had my first-draw, 9-high badugi draw crushed by my opponent's first draw, 7-high badugi.

(For the unitiated, a demographic that included me just a month ago, badugi is a four-card, triple draw game where you tried to try to get four cards of four different suits, none of which are paired. The best hand is A-2-3-4 rainbow. Origins of the game supposedly are Korean.)

The pot-limit version of badugi is far trickier than limit. Like other poker games, with limit badugi you mostly need to show down the best hand to win. In pot-limit tournaments, especially when the blinds are large, position and aggression rule the day. Yet you also find yourself in situations where you need to think things through and determine whether a thin call might not be appropriate. I know. It's no different in NLHE or other big bet games. But it has helped me look at poker in new ways. For whatever reason, I have an affinity toward lowball games.

Give the micro buy-ins for these tournaments, the rewards for going deep are insignificant. Yet this experiment has been interesting and I can believe I've been learning lessons along the way that should prove relevant no matter what form of poker I play.

Top drawer

2008-12-17T09:45:00.002-05:00

Here is a pathetic side note to my little Badugi tournament win: It was my first online MTT win. I have a couple of seconds in low buy-in, large-field tourneys, but no winst. The badugi MTT had only 120 runners, but it's officially an MTT win in my book. This triple draw tournament I played last night did not have a large field, either, but a win is a win.

This was a fun tournament. I was the small stack when we got three-handed, then went on a huge rush and had about a 3-1 advantage at the start of heads-up play. He chiseled away until I was down to around T12,000, but could not stop me from roaring back for the victory.

No love yet

2008-12-16T21:32:00.004-05:00

Flamed out in 100th place in the second blogger championship qualifier. Never got anything going. With an M of 4.5, I pushed from the SB with A-6 to steal the BB (200/400/50) and got called by A-K. I'd make the same play again.

I'll play the O8 tournament tomorrow, where the Poker Gods will have to nominate me as their Man of the Year to win a seat in the finals. There is only a remote chance I can play the 8 Game on Friday. I'm playing a $5.50 PLO8 tournament on Stars now.

Interesting bit of news today about the Detroit papers cutting back home delivery to three days a week. Local newspapers may not last another five years at this rate.

Try a little tolerance

2008-12-15T19:08:00.005-05:00

I arrived at Dave W's Saturday night in a good frame of mind, amped to play some poker. I've enjoyed success at Dave's over the last month and a half, cashing in three of the five tournaments I've played. Cash games have been good to me as well.

Mailman, who has energetically embraced his role as TD for these Saturday night donkaments, is in the habit of being punctual. He opens new tables when enough late players have arrived. A few minutes late (as usual), I drew a seat at Table 3 in between a father and son whose mannerisms sent me careening toward the dark edge of tilt.

Unless their bumpkin personna was an act, there was nothing malicious about their behavior. There was one curious soft play between them when the son didn't bet on the end with the second nuts and dad had a pretty big hand, but they had shown themselves to be passive, calling stations to that point and I dismissed the possibility of skulduggery. They were unsophisticated both in poker and in life.

What annoyed me most was their constant blathering and the way they repeated each other's inanities like an old married, but slightly retarded couple. One such blatherer would have been bad, but in stereo it grated my nerves like a block of aged parmesan.

At first break, I headed upstairs and out into breezy cold for a smoke. I took stock of my situation. No matter how idiotic their behavior might appear, I realized I had no right to judge them. They were there, like me, to play in a $30 donkament because that's what they could afford. Were they slow? Yes. But that's the hand life had dealt them. That's not their fault. I might hold a self-image as a semi-worldly, decently educated individual, but I'm sure there are people I've met along my journey through life who have viewed me as rube. It's all about perspective.

I returned to the basement in a better frame of mind, but even that was a largely self-serving sentiment. I discovered some time ago that I play my best poker when I shed my surly tendencies in favor of a positive, upbeat attitude at the table. In this case, I believe I succeeded. I busted during the second level after the break, but at least I felt better about myself and my neighbors.

I moved on to the cash game ($1/$1 blinds) ready mix it up at a tough, tricky and fun table . I had some hands early on that put me in some tough spots that required reads that I mostly got right. I was up around $30 or so when my flopped two pair (A-3) lost to A-10 on the river for a $100-plus pot. I then spent the next three or four hours folding like an origami master. I can't recall when I've been so cold decked. There was no reason to play the garbage I was being dealt. Limping was barely an option, much less calling raises hoping for miracle flops.

When I finally got a couple of hands near the end of the night, no one dared stay in pots with me. I couldn't blame them.

I have worked hard at opening up my game since I began playing with the Group four years ago, but my performance Saturday night may have re-cemented my reputation as a nit. At least I know better. Or do I? Once again, it's all a matter of perspective.

Bad-u-guy

2008-12-14T16:59:00.003-05:00

I am quickly becoming one of the most accomplished $2 badugi MTT players on the planet. I bubbled the final table of the first one I played a week ago, and now this:

Moore's flaw

2008-12-10T18:17:00.004-05:00

I don't believe that I'm a technically a losing player online, but given what I've done the last year and a half, it would be ludicrous to say I'm a winning player.

I can't recall whether I went busto on Stars before Neteller crashed or sometime after, but there was a period where I played precious little online because I no longer had a convenient way to fund my account. And that was okay. My participation in Group games provided ample opportunity to play livve.

When the e-check thing came along, I again made deposits again into my Stars' account, usually $25 or $50 here or there. It's quick and easy. I haven't bothered to total how much those $25s and $50s total, and don't think I want to know. It's been all deposit and no withdrawal for too long. Back in the ... ahem ... day of Party Poker and at Stars for awhile, I was a withdrawer. I got money and spent it on vacations and stuff. I went a couple of years without without ever having to deposit money in those accounts. (Full Tilt is another matter. A lifetime loser there.) Online poker was fun.

Today, I can only conclude that I suck and should not play online. Game selection, bankroll management, ability to concentrate for more than 3 seconds ... it's all bad. I ran the bankroll up a bit a few months ago with some tournament cashes and 8-game success, but that money, as always, disappeared into the ether.

The prime motivation for playing poker should not be boredom, which appears to be the case. I feel ... disengaged, a mediocre button smasher. Will I stop playing online? Of course not. I get bored easily. And I'm addicted. And I possess a masochistic need to be kicked in the junk -- repeatedly.

Those were alot of words to make a point made by other: Live poker is so much more interesting. My level of online poker lethargy is matched only by my increasing enthusiasm for live games. So much more information, so much more rewarding. I have plans to play tournaments/cash games this Friday AND Saturday, which has me jazzed after a weekend of no live poker.

Also, I made a cryptic remark in a previous post about major life changes. As it turned out, nothing much changed. No Turk came calling, asking me to turn in my playbook. That's cool. There were some intriguing but speculative prospects out there, but I opted to stay with the tried and true. I still find my job rewarding. After spending the better part of 30 years in my profession, that's not a bad thing to say.

But the industry (okay, it's newspapers), is in rapid decline. The print product will largely disappear in another generation or two. In the meantime, it will become smaller and more compact as advertising and readership dwindles further and computing power grows. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to channel their inner Luddite and read newspapers long enough so my kids can get through college.

Since all the cool kids are doing it

2008-12-04T21:56:00.003-05:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 699957

Bricks without straw

2008-11-30T15:34:00.006-05:00

What's the first rule about heater? Don't talk about heater.

I've cashed (one first, one second and two thirds) in the last four CPMG tournaments I've played for a tidy 600% ROI. How have I done it? I've played well and have gotten absofuckinglutely lucky in a handful of crucial spots, including several occasions when opponents folded big, dominating hands preflop to raises or re-raises.

I'm especially pleased with the win Friday night, a smaller, 15-runner tournament at River Pete's. Victory was achieved largely without cards. I had pocket 9s twice, folding them preflop early and doubling up a shortstack with them late. I stole the blinds and one limped bet with pocket kings late. That's it. There were no sets, no flushes and one straight made with a looooose call with an open-ender on the flop against the short-stacked Meats' pocket aces. Pressure poker ruled the day.

Can this heater be sustained? One can only hope. Positive results breed confidence and foster an approach that keeps most off the demons at bay. But luck will turn. It always does. Facing it with equanimity is the key.

What I find sustaining is the knowledge that I have so much more to learn. The lessons are just easier to take and more clear when you are winning.

Gambling fool

2008-11-09T13:49:00.003-05:00

I like to think that I don't have much gamble in me. After last December's Vegas trip, I was poised to write about making some way-out-of-my-comfort-zone bets on the Browns-Jets game, including doubling the action at halftime, but others beat me to the punch with similar and no doubt, better written stories about their Browns-Jets betting experiences. (Cliff Notes: I couldn't watch the wackiness at end of the game and instead wandered aimlessly around downtown like a half-dazed desert rat. The action made me nauseous. I felt no joy cashing my winning tickets, only relief.)

Which is a segue into an interesting hand Saturday night at Dave W's in a typically loooooose $1/1 NLHE game. My original $80 stack fluctuated over the course of several hours, up $50 and then down around $20. That's when I reloaded for another $40, caught a few hands and ran it back into positive territory.

Seven-handed, I was dealt As-Ks one off the button. An EP player raised to $6 and got four callers to the flop of 3s-5s-Jx. The SB checked, Theo in the BB raised $33 all-in, followed by two folds and a quick call from your Hero, who couldn't wait to get it heads-up with Theo knowing with unbending certainty he also was on a flush draw. (You have to know Theo.) That's when the BB screwed everything up. He check-raised all-in, putting $124 on top.

I had him covered, although not by much. I tanked. What's he have? A set? A big pair? I had played with this guy long enough to know that two pair was out of the question on that flop. Same with a drawing hand. Fuck. It's a set or a big pair. Intuition said big pair. And freakin' Theo has some of my outs. What's a donkey to do?

My brain, addled by old age, bad living and the season's first pressing of Great Lakes Brewery Christmas Ale (wicked good), ciphered that my pot odds were roughly 2-1 ... maybe. That's when the little voices in my head began their own independent discussion:

"You can gamble and either have a pretty good night or a somewhat shitty one at the tables."

"Yeah."

(Neither one of those inner voices are very articulate. Consider the source.)

So I gambled. BB flipped over queens. Theo a couple of spades. The turn brought the ace of diamonds and the river the ace of clubs. Ship it.

Maybe there's a little more gamble in me than I thought. Or maybe I had too many Christmas Ales.

American pride

2008-11-05T19:51:00.004-05:00

Anyone kvetching about how 63 million people screwed up by voting for Obama should take a moment and realize what this election means to the world, both symbolically and for purposes of realpolitik.

The American Dream does not belong solely to Americans. It belongs to hundreds of millions of people around the world who dare hope for a brighter future. Tuesday’s election did much to restore the world’s faith in the meaning of that dream.

"No matter how they cast their ballots, all America can be proud of the history that was made yesterday," President Bush said today in the Rose Garden.

I believe Bush meant what he said. He is not an evil man. Neither is Barack Obama. He needs to be given a chance. If you don’t like the job he does over the next four years, vote him out of office. But for now, he deserves at least a measure of begrudging respect and the benefit of the doubt.

The world needs a strong, capable leader. I think we've found one.

Back in the saddle again

2008-10-23T19:36:00.005-04:00

AcornMan has shamed me into ending my blogging silence. I left a comment a couple of weeks back that he mentioned comment in a subsequent post. I felt embarassed at the thought of someone discovering nothing but stale posts, leaving me no choice but to resume blogging. The school counselor told my parents I was vulnerable to peer pressure. I guess she was right.

Fortunately, I do have poker to write about. I've made a semi-serious return to the game with the end of the baseball season(s).

(Quick brag: The high school summer team I coached began the season 0-6 and appeared headed for Doormatville. They started playing better and managed to finish the season a couple of games under .500, which made us the No. 6 seed for the playoffs. They then reeled off three straight wins on the road to capture the league title. The fact that Jones Junior got the game-winning hit in the championship game made the experience all the sweeter.)

Career-wise, changes are afoot. The industry I've spent much of the last 30 years working in is dying at a surprisingly rapid rate. But that's okay. It's time to go. I'm exploring some interesting opportunities, although nothing concrete. Anxiety level remains low for now.

Cooler weather also puts our early Sunday morning golf game on hold until next spring, which means more live poker. The Group's game selection remains superb. There is a Saturday night tournament that regularly draws 35-40 players. Finished second in PantherBilly's monthly tournament last Friday (26 runners) and won a couple of buy-ins Saturday night in a small cash my buddy Sherfer set up at the last minute.

I've managed to gain a little traction online, primarily mixing tournaments with $1/2
8 Game on Stars. I managed to final table an $11 HORSE tournament (214 runners) last night, finishing seventh when my short-stacked A-Q fell to the mighty J-6 in hold 'em. I also went on a sick run to grab the chip lead semi-late the other night in the $8.80 turbo (20:40 start time) but fizzled out in 26th.

And I've jumped lightly back into blogaments. Went out in the Skillz game (PLO O8) by a semi-redonkulous move by somebody and saw my aces pwned by trip sevens in the Mookie. And I'm entered into tonight's .10 rebuy shenanigans.

Trippin'

2007-12-12T18:45:00.000-05:00

As planned, I was primarily a fringe participant in the blogger hijinks in Vegas. I did get the opportunity to meet a few folks at IP on Thursday night and at the Venetian on Saturday. It was quite cool attaching faces and voices to some bloggerly identities.

Given my relative obscurity in the bloggerly community, I was pleased how folks were gracious and made a stranger feel welcome.

A great trip overall with not a lot of poker. There was some bad luck and bad play at $1/2 tables at Riveriera and the Venetian, tournament cashes at Binion's and Orleans, a mistaken registration for an O8 tournament at Orleans on Monday. (Finished in the mid 40s in a 60-person, very elderly field. Actually, kind of fun.)

I busted in the WPBT Classic just before the second break. I got great cards early when none of those solid, tricky players were ready to spew and not much of anything after that.

My buddy Shep arrived from D.C. late Thurday night. We slipped seamlessly into our traditional pursuit of Vegas-induced ridiculousness. The high point involved crashing the Las Vegas Metro Police Department Christmas party at the Hilton on Friday. No arrests, incidents of police brutality or criminal charges resulted, even after our cover as a recently retired FBI agent and a D.C. cop were blown near the end of the evening.

My head did feel like a target for police baton training on Saturday after multiple bartenders severely cracked my skull with bottles of Ketel One and jars of green olives. My attorney is working out a settlement with Oscar Goodman as we speak.

Today, I'm hacking sputum in rainbow colors. It's either a wretched cold or I contracted TB from the desert rats at Gold Spike.

I'll flesh out a few other details/observations about the trip in the next few days.

Moving on up

2007-12-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

Shep and I are staying on the Strip for this trip to Vegas. We have always stayed downtown previously. The desert rat ambience seemed to suit us. My excuse was double-deck blackjack. Shep perversely insisted one year that we stay at the Golden Spike and booked us a "suite." Something went wrong with the reservation and they gave us the same rate on a two-bedroom suite at the Plaza. It was not much of an upgrade, but certainly more acceptable.

That was the year we were pulling out of the Plaza parking garage for a road trip to Laughlin when a cop on a moped followed us to the street. Within seconds of exiting the garage, we were surrounded by several police cars, a motorcycle and the forementioned moped. That damn moped worried me.

The existence of an open bottle of Cuervo, a 12-pack of beer and a potential felony or two in the car was not comforting either.

I rolled down my window like a good citizen and one of the officers, gun drawn and at his side, urgently asked if I knew the gentleman in the passenger seat. That would be Shep, of course.

Shep is 6-3, broad but not fat with a clean-shaven head. He is also quite black. We quickly learned that a large black man had robbed several tourists in the Plaza parking garage that morning.

I resisted the urge to throw Shep to the blue-uniformed wolves and told the officer that he's a big-time reporter in the Washington Bureau of a rather large wire service, a claim that just happened to be true at the time. The cops pulled him out of the car, spread his legs and frisked him away. They apparently weren't big readers. They let me, the white guy, stay in the car and listen to smooth jazz on the radio while they checked Shep for contraband.

Who says justice is blind?

We were allowed to leave unharmed and unarrested, shaken and slightly stirred. Shep has always maintained that he should have gotten Rev. Al Sharpton, who he knew, to file a harassment claim that would be worth a princely sum of say .... one thousand dollars. I've always insisted that we were at least owed some buffet comps.

Shep and I started our Vegas habit soon after we had completed a long project at the paper about gangs. We had scammed a trip to Reno for some big seminar during the reporting, won some minor cash after winning an award for the series and figured Vegas might be a good place to spend it.

The trip hasn't been an annual thing, but we try to hit Vegas the first week of December every couple of years. The rodeo is always in town, but we endure it. I've tried to convince Shep that we should get tickets and stop by the bullriding or something for an hour or two, but we never make it. I do, however, loath country music by the time we head back east.

This year we decided it was time to act like semi-responsible, mature adults and stay on the Strip. I initially picked the Stratosphere, afraid to settle too far away from the warm, mangy womb of Downtown. We settled on the Riveria. I've never been in the place, but it sounded old-school and the rates were reasonable.

It wasn't until I booked our rooms that I learned the headline show is "An Evening at La Cage" with Frank Marino. Instead of cowboys (and a scant number of cowgirls), we'll possibly be rubbing sequined elbows at the tables with crossdressers and transvestites. Interesting.

Yeah, I got the Vegas buzz. Ready to play poker. Ready to drink. Ready to observe the human zoo. I looked for a tournament that I can make after landing tomorrow. It looks like the best available option is ... the 2 p.m. at Binion's.

I have to face it. I'm a desert rat at heart.

Positive identification

2007-12-04T00:26:00.000-05:00

If you see a tall, white guy in his 40s stumbling through the IP's Geisha Bar on Thursday night, that will be me. Take pity on this WPBT virgin and I might buy you a drink or three.

Arriving Thursday morning first freakin' class on Continental from Cleveland and will be looking to play a noon/early afternoon tournament. That should give me plenty of time to stop by and meet a blogger or two that evening before my buddy Shep arrivies from D.C. I'm planning to play the WPBT on Saturday as well.

I'm looking forward to this trip. It's been awhile since I've done Vegas. My liver is quivering in anticipation.

Do I still qualify?

2007-11-08T23:10:00.000-05:00

I'm a lazy bastard, but technically still a poker blogger, which I hope makes me eligible to play in the WPBT Winter Classic.

Without regard for you virtual ink-stained wretches, I have made plans to be in Las Vegas the weekend of Dec. 7-9.

Woooot. Where do I sign up?

I just made this discovery in the last five minutes while perusing blogs and sliding into the money in the nightly $3 redonkament on Stars. How fucking cool is that? (The fact that I'll be in Vegas, not cashing in a low-limit rebuy tourney.)

Starting more than a decade ago, my buddy Shep and I had gotten into the habit of making a Vegas trip in early December about every other year. Life has gotten in the way in recent years and the trip hasn't happened. In fact, the last time we (I) pulled off a Vegas trip, the bloggers were gathering at Sam's Town. I had been reading blogs at that point, but had not yet begun mine and did not feel like crashing it.

Seriously, if there is anyone out there who actually subscribes to this blog and knows any of the salient details, I'd be most appreciative if you could leave a comment or point me in the right direction.

There has not been much poker lately outside of low-limit online donkeying online. Not very satisfying.

Life continues to be busy. Work and the beginning stages of a cool project have kept me satisfyingly busy. The early stages of winter have begun taking root here in Cleveland, which has put a damper on golf. I hope to get a chance to play next weekend during a quick trip to Florida.

I did find time to head to Mountaineer Park for some live poker. Mountaineer is a horse track across the Ohio River in West Virginia that is just over a two-hour drive from home. A 20-table room opened the same day at Wheeling Downs, a dog track that is not much farther.

The folks in the two counties where the tracks are located thought live poker and table games might be a good thing. I have to agree.

The place had been open only a couple of weeks and the operation (dealers, floor) was a bit rough, but at least at my $1/2 table ($300 max buy-in) the players were astonishingly bad. (I would guess that a dozen members of The Group have also made sojourns to The Mountain and have reported they have also played at tough tables as well.)

The room is nice. Good chairs, chips and cards. The cocktail waitresses were surprisingly attractive. Lots of legs. About two-thirds of the tables were in use on the Friday afternoon/evening I was there and I'm guessing there were as many as 10 $1/2 tables were open by the time I left. They also were spreading $2/5, $5/10 and one table of $10/$25. There were some limit and Omaha tables as well.

I played six hours and left with a whopping $100 profit. Session got off to a rocky start when I dropped $200 after flopping a straight with K-10. Got it all back after paying $16 to set mine with pocket 5s, received a 5 on an ace-high flop and got put all-in by a woman with A-9.

This hand says it all. I raise from MP with A-K. (Standard pre-raise flop in this game was $12 or $15.) Dude on the button calls. Flop contains an ace and I bet $25. Button calls. The turn is a blank and I ask the dude how much he had left. It's $41 and I tell him I'll put him all-in. He says, "I guess I have to call," and shows ... pocket 4s. Easiest $75 I've ever made.

Cash out

2007-10-05T23:31:00.000-04:00

I returned to the J.C. $1/2 game after working late again Thursday. (Okay, a little insight. Work involved attending the opening game of the Indians-Yankees divisional series. I'm flying out in the morning for the NY portion of the program. Suffice it to say I have a fairly cool job.)

There were two fairly full tables running when I arrived around 11 p.m. There were only a couple of people I knew at the table where I sat down. Matt, the guy who beat me heads-up in the WSOCP, was to my immediate left.

While my previous $1/2 forays have been relative gambles where I've more or less decided to "take a shot" while realizing I'd be the fish at the table, I felt I was returning a little better educated and slightly more comfortable with the uber-aggressive nature of the J.C. $1/2 game. Preflop raises of $7 are viewed as trifles. It takes $12 or $15 to get anyone's attention preflop.

UTG my first hand, I weakishly limped with pocket 8s. Matt put $12 on top and it folded around to me. I made a standard set-mining call. The flop arrived with two face cards. I checked, Matt bet and I folded. Standard stuff.

I proceeded to fold every hand over the next two or three orbits. It was easy to do. My cards were garbage and weren't worth limping in with knowing that they wouldn't stand up to the inevitable raise. I'm guessing it gave me a nittish table image, but I didn't mind. Tournament poker has taught me to be patient. At action tables like J.C.'s, I could afford to bide my time knowing that when I finally made a hand, there would be a good chance that someone would do the betting for me.

I eventually did hit some hands and I did get paid, including an ace-high four-flush on the river and turning a wheel after raising preflop from the button with A-4. The same guy paid me off both times. Not much later, I raised to $10 preflop with pocket 10s, got called by the aforementioned victim and had to fire two bullets ($20 then $50) at a K-J-x flop and an innocuous turn card to push him off the hand.

I think the guy had a jack, but that's an educated guess. The $50 turn bet was apparently convincing enough because he didn't take long to fold. Considering my upper limit in NL cash online is .25/.50, firing that second bullet took some newfound gumption. I'm not capable yet of firing a third.

Up maybe $125, Charlie arrived and sat down at our table. Charlie is mentioned in one of the posts below. He the most aggressive, creative and successful $1/$2 player around. These limits are pretty small potatoes for him. He mentioned that he's been playing in a no-max buy-in game somewhere in town. He shows no reluctance at rebuying. The $200 is insignificant to his roll and he knows, more often than not, he'll be leaving J.C.'s with a tidy profit.

I can't help but pay attention to how Charlie plays. (It would be stupid and reckless not to.) What impresses me is how much "small ball" he plays, controlling pot sizes and absconding with pots when no one else seems to want them. Yet, like all good players, he knows how to fold. As much action as he gives and creates, he does a great job of minimizing how many chips he will commit to a speculative hand or pure bluff. His table image alone gives me a great advantage.

A couple hands after Charlie arrived, I was dealt Ah-Kh while UTG. I bet $10 again. There might have been one caller until it got to Charlie, who called from the small blind. The flop came 10-high with two hears. I checked, a weak play, but I wanted to see what Charlie and the other guy would do. The other guy also checked and Charlie bet $12. I called and the other player folded.

The turn was a black ace. Charlie bet $15 and I quickly made it $45. Charlie glanced at me and didn't hesitate to put another $60 on top. I knew I was behind, yet I only considered my options for a 10 or 20 seconds before confidently announcing that I was all-in. (I had him covered.) Charlie went into the tank, announcing that he had two pair.

"I'm thinking you have big slick," he said, thinking aloud. While attempting to portray a calm veneer, my psychic interior was in a roil. I could stand a call, but obviously hoped for a fold. I'd brought only one buy-in with me and it would have to last. He shook his head and mucked. I showed him my suited slick. Although I didn't ask for it, the dealer rabbit hunted. The river would not have helped me.

Charlie's table personna is happy-go-lucky, but he showed a flash of annoyance and bemoaned the fact that he failed to stick with his initial read. He said he thought I might have had a better two pair.

I've replayed this hand several times trying to figure out if I had outplayed him or just got lucky. It's probably equal measures of both. He hasn't played with me all that much and may not have had a read. I hope that uncertainty persists the next time I'm seated at a table with him.

Horse with no fame

2007-09-29T14:26:00.000-04:00

That's right. I'm bad.

PokerStars Tournament #61820484, HORSE
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10
384 players
Total Prize Pool: $384.00
Tournament started - 2007/09/28 - 21:45:00 (ET)
Dear hacker59,
You finished the tournament in 5th place.
A $21.13 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Consider me a top-flight jockey on a very small H.O.R.S.E.

Poker has been going okay. Few online tournaments as of late, a decent amount of triple draw and PL Omaha. I'm not sure why, but I can't generate any interest in play NL cash online. At the limits I should be playing given my bankroll, it just feels tedious. I need to get over it. I need to get a roll so I can safely afford to play at least $50 NL if not higher.

I haven't played live in two weeks. Not since what was dubbed the World Series of Cleveland Poker. With a $100 buy-in, the organizers hoped to fill eight tables of 10 players for shootout format. They only got 30, however, and to fill the final table, they decided to take two players from four shootout tables. Set up at three venues, my table at J.C.'s had only seven players, an advantage even though five of the seven possessed solid tournament games.

Matt and I advanced from our table on Friday night to Saturday night's final table at Eddie J.'s. I've talked glowingly in the past about how The Group has created a vibrant poker around Cleveland. There are four and sometimes five home games a week and all are played on nice tables using quality cards and good chips. There is an expectation that games will be run well. And, if you want impressive, technology-savvy Eddie J.'s set-up included live streaming video of the final table.

I felt confident going in. I knew seven of the other four players and wasn't much worried about the other three. Cocky? Perhaps. But I didn't think there was anyone there appreciably better than me. That was good enough.

Nothing spectacular happened for me at the final table, save flopping quad 5s. (Didn't get too many chips, however). With the exception of overplaying A-Q early on against Matt, I played solid poker, surviving a cold deck with selective aggression. Like many of the other Group tournaments in which I've cashed or won, I just stuck around until finally Matt and I got heads up. First paid $1,475 and second $725. (We had made a deal early on to pay the fifth-place bubble their buy-in.)

Matt began with a 3-1 chip advantage. I worked my way back to even, dropped to 2-1 and got it back to even again. Around 40 hands into heads-up play, I decided to see a flop with Kc-8c after Matt raised from the button to 4K with blinds at 800/1600. Two clubs came on a raggy flop. I pushed and Matt called with pocket 8s. No love arrived on the turn and river, leaving me with the consolation prize.

I initially told myself that I was satisfied with the way I played the final hand. A few days (and weeks) later, not so much.

Matt is a solid player, but given his aggression level, vulnerable to a trap. I'm thinking now I should have waited for a better spot. Yes, if a club had come on the turn or river I wouldn't be typing this. But at the end, with first place on the line, I failed to employ one of my best tournament skills -- patience.

Cash on the line

2007-08-31T02:41:00.000-04:00

Knowing that I'd be working late, I made plans on Thursday to stop at JC's weekly $1/2 game on my way home. While I hadn't played live poker in awhile and had the itch, JC's game is not one that I normally play. I probably hadn't been back in over a year after having gotten mauled the few times I did play because of non-existent cash-game skills and an inability to adjust to the wacky nature of that game.

I felt a little better about my prospects Thursday. I've became more comfortable playing cash thanks to numerous sessions in the .25/.50 Donkey Game that invariably broke out during Group POY tournaments last fall and winter. The game earned its name -- the play sometimes bordered on the nonsensical -- but I found it profitable relative to the stakes. My comfort level also was helped by playing cash games online, where I've had limited success.

There were two tables going when I arrived at JC's, one with eight and the other with seven players. Diablo and Charlie, two of the trickiest cash game players in The Group, were at the shorter table. Both had stacked me during previous $1/2 forays. But I happily took a seat at their table, ready to play. I figured I'd proceed cautiously whenever I got into a hand with them.

Also at the table were JC, a rock-solid player, Jeff, with whom I played a bit in The Donkey Game, Uncle Bob, a wealthy retiree who plays and chases with ATC, and three guys I didn't know. I bought in for $180, nearly all the cash I had on me. I planned on nursing it by playing smart and fairly tight.

JC monkeyed up my chips as I was dealt my first hand: A-Q off. There were three or four limpers in front of me and I limp from the CO. That might seem weak, but it was my first hand for mercy's sake and I wasn't going to crazy with it. That's the way I stumble.

The flop came A-Q-x with two spades. Wow. Diablo bet $15 and I made it $30. Everyone else folded. Diablo called. He is a tough player who has been known to spew chips when he's had four or five too many beers. On this night he was completely sober and drinking a Coke.

The turn was a small card, but not a spade. He checked and I bet $60. A spade hit the river and Diablo pushed his last $49. Fuck. A flush? That didn't make sense. I didn't think he would spend $60 chasing. A set was possible, I supposed. I sighed, took some time counting out the $49 while surveying the meager stack that would remain if he a set or the improbable flush. I briefly considered folding, but knew there was too much money in the pot to back out now. I tossed the chips into the pot, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd been pwned again.

Diablo announced, "Two pair," without showing his cards. I happily tabled my A-Q and he mucked. My heart raced as I dragged the substantial pile of chips and stacked them will less-than-steady hands. Nice start. I lit a cigar, pleased with the outcome.

I stuck to my plan and played fairly tight by JC $1/$2 standards, winning a couple of small pots over the next half hour or so. Wanting to get involved, I raised to $7 (a smallish preflop raise in this game) with Kd-8d from late position. Charlie, in one of the blinds, made it $15 total. Charlie is unquestionably the best cash-game player in The Group. No one who has played with him on a regular basis would argue the point. He's fearless and smart and possesses an uncanny sense of where he is at in a hand. He's an action junkie with skills and a deep bankroll, a dangerous combination.

I called Charlie's raise with those homely cards and got a flop with two diamonds. Charlie bet $14 and I insta-called. He's not likely to pay me off if I make my flush, but I didn't think I should back down ... yet. The turn was a non-diamond small card that gave me a gutshot to the 8. Charlie checked and so did I. A bit of scared play, I admit. I might have been able to take down the pot there, but I feared a check-raise from Charlie if he sensed weakeness.

The river was a 6, which filled my 8-high gutshot but missed my flush. Charlie led for $15 or $30 (recollection is vague) and I made it either $30 or $60. Charlie immediately put another $100 on top. Oy vey. Now what? Only one hand beats me -- 8-9. I assumed he had an 8, but dreaded thoughts began circulating that he might have the muthafuggin' 9 and that I'm toast. I reluctantly called, he showed the 8 and we chopped the pot. I only won a pittance in the hand, but it almost smelled like victory. I'd gotten into a big hand with Charlie and had lived to tell about it.

I mostly avoided him and Diablo the rest of the session. I did get Charlie (and Uncle Bob) to fold on a king-high flop when I C-bet my pocket queens with about $60 in the pot. He took his time before mucking his cards.

Charlie: "I wanted to see how much your hands were shaking."

Me: "If it's any consolation, my hands were going to shake regardless."

I showed him the queens. After that, I won a few decent-sized pots after that, including a couple against Jeff and Uncle Charlie and finished $310 to the good when the game broke up shortly after 2 a.m. I doubt I'll be playing at JC's frequently, but there's no reason I won't be back at some point in the near future. The poker was interesting and makes me curious if I can replicate the results and learn a little bit more about my game -- and myself -- in a game for which I'm only vaguely familiar.

Old-time religion

2007-08-27T22:39:00.000-04:00

Back from a week's worth of vacation, I fired up PS and got a pop-up informing me that I was one of the lucky ducks allowed to load my account with E Checks. And load I did. Just like the good old days. Instantaneous. No fees. Made me proud to be an American. Again.

My efforts, so the plan goes, will be directed at learning how to (finally) play NL cash games. In accordance with my bankroll, it will be micro-limits and 6-max tables, which will provide more opportunities to work on post-flop play. If I go broke, I reload.

But in the not-so-long term, I think that if I can't beat these levels, I should probably quit poker.

News flash

2007-08-12T00:21:00.001-04:00

Forgive my inflicting eye strain by posting again, but there's poker content to report.

I played in a $30 tourney last night hosted by Chris, a fellow member of what has been dubbed the Dead Tree Mafia. (Not my invention, but it works.) He got a nice turnout with 24 players. By 1:15 a.m. and a 7:04 a.m. tee time looming, I worked out a chop when we got three-handed with a premium going to the chip leader (not me.)

Cashing was a nice boost for the poker psyche, affirmation that time away was indeed refreshing. I feel as if I have a grasp of a broad outline for success: Play smart, don't get grossly unlucky and selectively pick spots for unbridled aggression.

While I no longer have a fascination with dropping the hammer, I did sneak one in at a crucial moment last night. Down to about four big blinds, I successfully dropped le marteau from the small blind, collecting much-needed chips from numerous limpers. I would have made this move with ATC, but it was kind of sweet that I had the power of the hammer at my disposal.

In online news, Full Tilt finally transfered the $75 I was owed, so I'm back in business there. I even won a buy-in at $25 NL game with a flopped set of 4s while UTG. Five players, unraised pot and a 4 arrives on a rainbow flop. I bet less than the pot and get a caller from the big blind. I bet pot at the turn, which put two clubs on the board, and BB check-calls again. The river is a third club that pairs the board (jacks) and he pushes. I insta-call. If I go broke here, so be it. He has the flush and I win. That's cool. That's poker. Patience and a measure of luck.

Gone but not forgotten

2007-08-09T14:55:00.000-04:00

Bless me bloggers for I have sinned. It has been 3 1/2 months since my last post.

Poker has been a low priority in my life. I've played two live Group tournaments and, until a couple of days ago, nothing online. Got an itch and played some FPP satellites and SNGs, which is my only Internet option given the fact that I'd frittered away the crumbs in my online accounts months ago.

I came from way behind heads-up in a 70 FPP SNG for a seat in the $100,000K guaranteed Sunday tournament, unregistered and took the T$11. Used that to enter a $5.50 MTT on Stars this afternoon and am still in it with just over 200 players left. Woot! That's profit, baby! Poker Jones is back!

(There's also $75 waiting for me in my affiliate account on Tilt, but can't get support to figure out why I can't transfer it into my poker account. I'm sure it will be rectified eventually.)

I've not missed poker until now, and I'm not sure "missed" is completely accurate. I've kept tabs on blogs, followed the WSOP primarily through Pauly and still occasionally watch TV poker. But I actually feel eager to play again and the time off seems to have been refreshing. Poker had become an onerous chore when I began my hiatus in the spring. Let's see how long this newfound enthusiasm lasts.

Golf has been a far bigger deal this summer. I''ve enjoyed working on my game again and there have been some nice results. I've had the opportunity to watch a fair bit of professional golf up close this summer -- I've seen Tiger Woods play close to 60 holes -- and that's provided some inspiration. It's kind of cool to say that you've gotten to watch the best who has ever played the game. There is no doubt in my mind about that, either. The guy is amazing.

The reason I'm (still) playing poker this afternoon is that I took one of the many vacation days I have left today to play in a skins game on a great course with some local club pros, a few aspiring playing professionals and some other solid golfers. I wanted an opportunity to play with better golfers in an effort to elevate my game. Struggled, but still scraped together a 79 and even won a skin with a par 5 eagle after hitting a hybrid approach to 3 feet. It paid for the round and most of the skins buy-in.

There are 150 players left out of the nearly 2,000 who started this donkfest and my M is shrinking fast. Surrounded by big stacks, I'm in push and pray mode. Despite my dire circumstances, it's kind of nice to type such pitiful words again.

It's good to be back.

(Addendum: Poker sucks. With 21K left and blinds at 1k/2K, I raise from EP with aces. Get called by BB whose K-9 flops two pair and boats on the turn. I take it all back. Out in 101st. Poker sucks. LOL.)

I haven't gone away

2007-04-26T22:01:00.000-04:00

From a distant outpost in the blogosphere, Poker Jones reports that all is well. There have been changes in my life, and fortunately they've mostly been for the good.

As for why I've not posted in weeks, the only real answer is ... I haven't felt like it. Don't worry, you haven't missed much. Online play has been sporadic and at micro-levels in accordance with my diminishing interest in virtual poker. But I remain a faithful reader of your blogs. I continue to be interested in reading what you have to say.

My concurrent interest in live poker, meanwhile, has increased significantly. I'm playing Group tournament/cash games at least once a week and have come to fully appreciate how much more interesting poker is when played with the animate.

Further busying my life is a rekindled love affair with golf. The game lost its importance in recent years as my attention turned elsewhere. There have been newfound opportunities to practice and play which I've fully embraced.

That's it for now. I'm sure I'll eventually be dropping by here again. I'm just not sure when.

Long night's journey into the night

2007-03-10T01:26:00.000-05:00

I've come to like the donkish $3 rebuys on Stars but have not done too well in my last handful of attempts. I had aces cracked twice last week shortly after the add-on period while sitting on averaged-sized stacks.

Sign up for the 8 p.m. version and get no help or luck during the first hour. By the break, I've got $21 invested in the thing but only 2,500 in chips. I reluctantly add-on, ready to make another early exit. Not feeling it, kids.

But I start chipping up steadily, bluffing with position and then doubling up with queens vs. A-K to double up. Experience kicks in. Maybe I do know how to play this game.

The bubble bursts at the same time I'm felting a guy from the button with A-Q. (2,665 runners, 504 get paid). That hand gets me to 64K. Alrighty then. The table immediately dissasembles.

Second hand at the new table, a big stack with around 130K minraises from UTG+1 and I min-reraise him with pocket queens. He surprises me by immediately pushing all-in. Shite. Maybe I'm wrong, but it smells likes aces or kings. I fold. But that's cool. I've got 57K after that hand.

Find aces for the first time from LP with a limper in front of of me. I raise 4x the BB (blinds at 1K/2K/100). Limper and blinds fold.

Raise from LP with A-K. Cutoff with around 25K calls. Flop comes A-10-X. Chips go in the middle. He's got A-10 and turns a 10 for the boat. Back down to 33K. Below average with 350-plus left. Fuck. What's a donkey to do? Rebuild his stack, I guess.

Blinds soon rise to 1500/3000/150 and reduce my stack to 27K. I'm entering the push and pray zone. I eagerly await my cards, hoping to find something that will give me a fighting chance for a much-needed double-up.

Blinds about to hit me at 2K/4K/200, I push from EP with pocket 5s. A-K and A-Q call. Board brings no big cards and I get healthy in a hurry with 86K. Woot! Back above average.

Check-raise a weak bet from BB and am up to 95K, then get to 110K on a semi-bluff in a blinds battle.

Rush-o-rama time: Raise 3x BB from LP with A-J. Guy to my immediate left insta-calls. Flop comes 2 spades. I lead, he calls. The turn is a beautiful spade. I check, he checks; The river is a harmless king. I bet 24K, he calls -- with big slick. I'm up to 170K -- a top 20 stack -- with just over 200 left;

Fold pocket 7s to an all-in for one-third of my stack. Blinds are at 3k/6k/300. I steal them with with A-10 suited. Fold pocket 6s UTG+1 a few hands later.

Steal from button at place bubble w/ 6c-10c. Fold the hammer (sigh).

The break comes. We're 4 hours, 22 minutes into this thing. I have 160K. Average is 124K with 141 players left.

I had had an intermediate goal of making it to at least 162nd, which would almost double my investment. The Stars 20 percent structure puts all the real money at the top and the only way to make anything is to final table this sumbitch. Blinds will be at 4K/8K/400 after the break and I'll be on the button.

Fold K-Q UTG. I hate that freakin' hand. The blinds get into a pissing match. Probably a good thing I folded.

Call a min-raise from LP short stack in BB with J-7. The flop comes A-J-x. I put him in for his last 19K. He has aces and I'm down to 121K. Got to rebuild some more. M is around 8.

Limp from UTG+1 with 6s and the blinds come in. They check the K-K-7 flop. I bet, they fold.

Steal blinds from button with pocket queens. I have gotten some cards tonight

Blinds up to 6K/12K/600 with 96 players left

Fold BB with 6-3 to button raise. Considered a repop but wussed out. Can't afford to let him steal again. Fold SB to a raise and am down to 113K.

Fold 5-2 to min-raise from BB. Flop comes 5-2-6. Shite. Down to 98K.

Push Kc-Jc from SB. The BB and a big-stacked min-raiser fold. I'm at 139K and the average is 227K.

Fold small aces twice during the ensuing orbit.

Get A-K and pop a 3xBB raiser all-in. He folds. Back to 195K;

Get my first walk of the tournament.

Complete from SB with 6-8; 4 players see a flop of 6-8-x with two clubs. I push, satisfied to take it down without further action. Ac-3c calls all-in. He gets his club on the river and I'm back down to 130K. Fuck. I win there I'm up to 320K. Perhaps I misplayed that hand; A nice-sized bet might have set me up to win it on the blank turn. Maybe not.

First table change in almost 2 hours. I'm put directly behind the button. A small break. Chip leader has 1.4 million. Nice. 65 left. I'm in 54th.

Blinded down to 99K, I've returned to push and pray mode. I get Big Slick UTG and push. A shortie with around 50K calls with 9-10. Slick holds up I'm back to 163K before the blinds, which I fold holding 6-3 and 4-2.

Blinds at 10K/20K/1K; a small bit of breathing room; I can fold the next set of blinds if dealt junk. But I'm very much looking to push anything halfway decent. My agg factor is 8.33. That's good, right?

I indeed fold the blinds, including SB with Q-J after a raise and push in front of me. Pusher shows pocket kings. GF, me. Back to 99K.

I find A-K at in MP. There's a raise in front of me and I push. Another slightly larger stack also pushes. Raiser calls and the cards are tabled. Pusher's got A-K, the original raiser ... aces. Fuck me. I'm out in 46th place for a payday of $53.46 after 5 hours and 21 minutes of work.

Horse malarkey

2007-02-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

Sure glad I made the money. I'm not sure what I'll do with the profits. Maybe Stars will send me a check for $1 so I can frame it.

PokerStars Tournament #43983777, HORSE
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00
240 players
Total Prize Pool: $2400.00
Tournament started - 2007/02/27 - 18:45:00 (ET)

Dear hacker59,
You finished the tournament in 28th place.
A $12.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Sweet and savory

2007-02-25T22:42:00.000-05:00

Apropos of not much, it's interesting to note that making a preparing a proper pad thai requires a bottled ingredient called fish sauce, a concoction so foul smelling that you'd imagine it being distilled from a mash of gangrenous limbs. But mix it with tamarind paste and a little sugar in a wok and you create a wonderful coating for your noodles.

Cooking is a minor passion for me and Sunday night supper is my turn to shine at Chez Poker Jones. Requests are taken, recipes consulted, provisions acquired and preparations made. It's not always fancy -- there's nothing like the aroma of a pot roast and vegetables wafting through the house on a wintry day. But the meals can get elaborate and I'm not afraid to experiment on my family (sounds evil, doesn't it?).

Pad thai is not gourmet cooking (it's a popular street dish in Thailand), but it was new to Chez Jones, was met with great approval and resulted in demands that it be added to the Sunday repertoire. I'd call it a culinary success.

The importance of Sunday supper in our home goes well beyond the culinary, however. It has long been a pleasant and important ritual for us, serving as a bridge between the week that was and the week that will be. The only real constant in our lives is change, but there's real comfort to be found in sharing a home-cooked meal with your family.

As for poker ... I donked out of a $50 Group deep-stack tournament Saturday trying to push someone off a pot with a semi-bluff (open-ender) after the flop. We were not quite 90 minutes into the thing and the blinds were still relatively small. Yet I became impatient and gave my stack away. Stupid and disappointing. I'm not happy with my NL tournament play these days.

Online, I've been working on mixed games and played a couple of micro-limit HORSE tournaments on Stars over the weekend, making the "money" in one and bubbling +1 in another. Those two efforts reminded me of how bad I am at Stud hi-lo and prompted me to enter a $1 tournament in that game last night. I think I did okay and finished 25th out of 350-plus runners, turning a tidy profit of $1.29 for almost 3 1/2 hours of work.

There's obviously no money to be made in micro-limit tournaments, but they are useful learning tools. The patterns of Stud hi-lo are far more recognizable today than they were before the tournament. And it was nice to discover that aggression is in fact rewarded in Stud hi-lo.

Perhaps the "secret" is know when to press the pedal to the floor and when to let up. But that applies to all forms of poker, doesn't it.

Minor heat wave

2007-02-18T10:19:00.000-05:00

The North Coast continues to be shrouded in snow and cold, but the Poker Jones is on a small but welcome heater.

Saturday began, however, on a frigid note. I lost an $80-plus pot in a $25NL game after flopping a set of queens. (Villain #1 had pocket kings, Villain #2 had (BAH) K-J. We got all the money in on a flop of A-Q-x. Fifth street brought the redonkulous case king.)

I then dumped a chunk at $100NL by playing A-K like an asswipe when my opponent did everything but type into chat announcing he'd made a set on an ace-high flop. I topped off my stack and got some of it back, but not enough for stop self-loathing completely. I thought my NL game had progressed to the point where I know how to lay down TPTK. Apparently not.

There was still a $40 tournament to be played at TK's Saturday evening. Snow squalls and slick roads might have stymied a lesser degenerate, but I leaned on my years of experience as an Iditarod musher and made it through. There was poker to be played. The weather did limit attendance to just 23 players.

You wouldn't think I was playing poker during the first 90 minutes. Living up to my
weak-tight reputation, I folded all but a few hands -- winning none -- through the first three levels. (The preceding reference is supposed to be a joke. Gary seems to be on a mad rush, using his table image to befuddle and amaze.)

I huddled with my lead sled dog and we decided it was time to switch gears and play the poker. (We did have a back-up plan: A cash game was threatening to finally begin.)

My night started when I got to see a flop with 5d-7d from the BB. The flop came 10-7-x with two diamonds. A new guy bet, I came over the top and he folded K-10 face-up. I showed him the 5-7. I called the same guy's preflop raise not long after with Jc-10c. The flop came 10-high, he led weakly and I again came over the top. He mucked and I showed him the 10. I won another small pot or two and got my 5K starting stack up to around 7,500T at the break.

Relying on my less-than-stellar memory, I can't seem to recall much of anything happening the first half-hour after the break until I was dealt my biggest starting hand for the entire tournament -- pocket 10s. With blinds at 300/600 and sitting on around 6,500T, I pushed and another new guy called off half his stack with pocket 4s. The 10s held up and I finally had chips to work with.

From that point on, I busted two short stacks with Q-10 and A-Q and then bluffed my way into the money. I won several healthy pots with post-flop aggression and managed to work my way into a minor chip lead as we neared the bubble. (Four spots paid.) At the bubble and even after it burst, I sat back and watched as players eliminated each other. My cards were crap and I let them do the dirty worki.

But it meant a 3-1 disadvantage by the time I got heads-up with Sada. I had not played with her previously, but I liked what I saw. She had mounted a comeback from a short stack at the final table with tons of aggression (but thankfully conceded a big pot to me earlier on a scary board that I missed with A-6.)

She had frustrated several players by pushing every hand she opened with. It looked like sound strategy to me, given her stack size. Three-handed, she eliminated Data with K-10 vs. his A-J to get us HU.

And how was I feeling? Tired. I'd been battling a minor but annoying migraine most of the night and wanted the tournament to end. The chip disadvantage did not bother me. (The blinds were 1,500/3,000 and I had around 30K). I believed, rightly or wrongly, that I had an edge skill-wise. But 5 1/2 hours of play in TK's overly warm basement and my the incessant throbbing inside my skull had left me drained.

We parried for around a dozen hands, seeing only a couple of flops. I lost a big chunk on a failed bluff post-flop and found myself down around 20K. I got to see a flop the next hand with Big Lick suited. The board came 6-6-8. We both checked the flop and the turn brought a jack. Sada led for 10K and I pushed. She called with J-something and I doubled up.

A warrior would have played on, using his newfound momentum. A wimp would offer a deal. I'm a wimp. We split the $670 left in the prize pool and 670 all-important POY points.

I was happy to have finally cashed after having gone 0-for-2007 in four or five previous Group tournaments. But, in the light of day, I'm feeling a little squeamish about having made a deal. My SNG experience has made me comfortable (and dare I say confident) with my heads-up play.

But what's done is done. I received a premium given my stack size and soon after the puppies and I sledded off into the cold, snowy night, a little warmer for our efforts.

Symmetry

2007-02-16T23:10:00.000-05:00

This one hurts.

There are 43 players left in a $5 rebuy on Stars (2,127 runners). I've just gotten moved after losing a big pot with A-K from the BB. (UTG had raised to 36K and two short stacks move in from LP, putting another 120K in the pot. Sitting on 290K, I push to isolate UTG. He folds and I find myself up against K-J and pocket 7s. An ace flops but K-J turns Broadway.) That hand puts me at 220K, the first time I've been below the average since the first level of the tournament.

I'm still feeling good, comfortable even, on what has been a smooth voyage into the semi deep. My reads have been spot on, and for awhile, morons have been giving me chips. (Got it up to 380K at one point, but lost a bit to the blinds and re-raise pressure.) It'll be tough sledding to make the final table, but I'm only a double-up or two from having a realistic chance.

After a half-dozen hands at the new table, my stack at 211K, I find pocket aces UTG. I initially consider limping, but decide to play it safe and raise 3xBB to 48K. All folds to the blinds, who both come in. (SB has around 500K, the BB around 225K.)

The flop looks good for me: 4-3-Q. SB leads for 75K and BB folds. I push my last 163K hoping he has Q-something. He calls. With 4-3. No miracle queen or ace for me and I'm gone. In 43rd place. To an ass-clown with 4-3.

Painful indeed.

Mark of distinction

2007-02-14T01:03:00.000-05:00

Mr. Wheaton said I made history tonight by being the first person to win an eponymous WWDN tournament. (The player who knocks Wil out of his second chance tourney gets to pick the game for the following week. I took him out on the bubble last week playing PLO.)

My tournament game hit critical mass for this one. Good reads and good cards can take you far. Plus, pot-limit seems to suit me. They're a little easier to play than NL games.

The Good Doctor had a decent chip lead at the start of HU and tried to take control with uber-aggression. But there was no reason to get antsy. The blinds were still small relative to stack sizes, certainly deeper than at heads-up in turbo SNGs.

Relying on time-tested patience, I conceded blinds and tried to stay out of harm's way with junk hands. I bluffed a little, including one pot that helped me crawl out of the hole Pauly was digging for me. I eventually got cards when Pauly bluffed and took it down.

It's a small win, but again, most welcome. Winning is always a nice balm.

And I can stick tonight's trophy on the mantle next to those from my Mookie, MATH, and two WWDN: Not wins. Will the Big Game be next? I can only hope. I need to win some tokens first, though.

Fishy business

2007-02-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

I made no money in any of the Sunday majors. I entered no Sunday majors, but that is a minor detail.

I had more important fish to errr .. pan sear. The following is tonight's menu, prepared by these not-so-humble hands in honor of Mrs. Jones's birthday:

Chilean sea bass with a lobster cream sauce
Wild mushroom risotto
Wilted swiss chard
Sauteed green beans
A tasty Pouilly Fume.

I put a nice dent into a bottle of Coppola sauvignon blanc during the cooking process that must ... be ... finished ... tonight. Feeling toasty and ready for the 9:30 REBUY!

Slowplayed out

2007-02-10T23:55:00.000-05:00

I bubbled in a live $20 rebuy tournament Friday night when my push with A-Q failed to hold up against someone who called off more than half his stack with A-10. The guy, in his mid- to late 60s, mentioned earlier in the evening that he was playing playing poker when they still delivered ice in horse-drawn wagons. But it was obvious he hadn't spent much time at a tournament table.

I'm not pissed at him. Ace-ten probaby looked like gold. Even experienced donkeys make that play. (Although I don't believe he had some kind of read and put me on crap. He insta-called/raised. He pretty much said both.) But it hurt. I can't win a race against one of Jerry's Kids in a tournament at the moment and get taken out on a 3-1 shot.

Bubble anxiety had made for a passive final table. The big stack (and big man at a conservative 450 pounds) raised with some frequency. Monsignor on a healthy stack raised some. But the blind play was uber tight and no one seemed willing to defend.

I wasn't going crazy either, given my short stack. I stole enough blinds to stay afloat. And on the three occasions I did have big hands -- pocket aces twice, kings once -- I failed to get action. I guess I should have tried limping.

Had I folded A-Q there, I likely would have cashed. There were two stacks smaller than mine. I hate bubbling more than most, I believe. Despise and detest it as much as eggplant and nuclear winter. But bubble bedamned. Poker Jones plays the poker, baby. I had a pushable hand, got my chips in way ahead and lost. Again.

I managed to grind out some profit Saturday afternoon ($20 in a Stars Silver freeroll, an SNG, $25 NL and even some triple draw). After a Jones family dinner at superb Chinese restaurant in our 'hood, I jumped into one of the new $3 rebuys on Tilt. I love rebuys. The strategery in that first hour is a hoot and I'm getting more comfortable gamboooling during the rebuy period.

In the second hour with a slightly better than average stack and the blinds at 100/200, I found two red aces UTG. Remembering the lesson learned from the night before, I limped and hoped for a raise. I didn't wait long. A smaller stack to my immediate left made it 660. Everyone else folded and I just called.

The flop came 9-5-7 rainbow. I checked, he bet 1K, I pushed. After a short delay, he called off his remaining 3,500 or so with ... K-10. Noice!

The following picture says it all.

Could he have spewed his chips in a worse spot? No pair, no draw and a 6 percent chance of winning, for fuck's sake. I execute a slowplay with aces to perfection and Tilt delivers a junk-crunching, rant worthy, runner-runner straight.

Afterward, I politely asked in chat what he thought he was ahead of when he called off his stack, but got no reply. Not surprising. There's no honest way to defend that play, save putting me on a complete bluff.

I sat stewing as I watched him build his stack to over 30K. I rebuilt mine, but then got overly aggressive, made a few sketchy plays and busted 70th, 43 from the money.

Global warming? Bah. Welcome to Coolerville, baby. Tournament poker -- my degenerate raison d'etre -- really sucks at the moment.

Did I stutter?

2007-02-10T10:50:00.000-05:00

Google could not find me a patron saint for e-wallets. This dude is still waiting to be canonized but is supposed to have some kind of mojo in the world of banking.

Bernardine of Feltre
Born to the nobility, the eldest of nine children, he grew up with a speech impediment. After hearing Saint James of the Marches preach at Padua, Italy during Lent, 1456, he felt a call to the religious life. Joined the Order of Friars Minor in May 1456. Studied at Mantua, Italy. Ordained in 1463. His speech impediment miraculously cured, and he became a travelling preacher throughout Italy, noted for his fiery sermons against usury. He organized more than thirty monti di pietá throughout Italy to give people an alternative to high-interest lenders.

I acknowledge that Bernie's not an inspiring figure. Hell, this guy's story is just as good. At least some of us have heard of him. (And it might not hurt to pray to him as well.)

I'm not a victim of the great Neteller Swindle of 2007, unless you count the 29 cents sitting in my account. I hope I'm wrong about this, but the government is not likely to give Neteller the $55 million it has seized. Unable to prosecute poker players and gamblers, it wants to scale new heights of hypocrisy and fuck them over by taking their money.

Does Neteller have to find a way to get Americans their money to remain a viable and (again) tradeable company? You'd think. Again, let's hope.

It has taken nearly three weeks to get my ePassporte account up and running. Nothing about that company impresses me thus far. It either has awful customer service or is overwhelmed with new customers. I suspect both. And I'm not sanguine about it or any other gambling-related concern's chances of surviving in the U.S. market given the current landscape.

Omaha-ha

2007-02-07T00:59:00.000-05:00

This was not expected but very much welcome:

Coincidentally, I've played a fair amount of cash PLO on Tilt in the last week and am getting more comfortable with the game. I'm sure I've played at least one PLO tournament prior to this, but I have no recollection of it. (Blogger) tournaments are played far more aggressively than cash games and had to adjust on the fly. Apparently I did okay.

I did benefit from a couple of suckouts, including one against our gracious, but short-stacked host at the bubble. Quality hands held up to the end and I managed to get away with a few well-timed bluffs by betting hard at scary boards.

Winning was not in the cards despite a slight chip lead HU. My opponent might be a very good PLO player (certainly better than me) , but the cards he got over the next dozen hands were even better.

Wil bestowed me the honor of picking next week's Second Chance game. Mark your calendars, folks. We'll be playing pot-limit hold 'em.

Oh ... Canada

2007-02-05T20:24:00.000-05:00

I’ve almost learned the words to your national anthem. I’ve spent money at your tourist traps and have been a profligate user of paper products. I’m sure I’m good for at least 5 or 10 percent of your country’s gross GDP.

Why, Canada, why?

It is ridiculously cold here on the North Coast. The vapid but beautiful weather gal tells me this bone-chilling air comes courtesy of something called an Alberta clipper. I admit to being geographically challenged, but I’m fairly certain Alberta is in freakin’ Canada. WTF? Who let this Arctic mass in? Where’s the Border Patrol when we need it?

Autobiographical interlude:

Work caused me to attend a court hearing outside of Toronto a few years ago. At the start of the proceedings, an officious bailiff told us to stand and ordered us to pay attention or some such nonsense and then ended the spiel with an invocation of “God Save the Queen.”

Jingo is not among the isms I embrace, but I was surprised by my reaction. It rankled that I had been asked to pay minor fealty to some rich old bag living the surreal life courtesy of the public dole. Christ, that was a war we actually managed to win. It struck as responsive a chord with me as an offering of “urinal cake” on a dessert cart.

(Never mind the fact that my father’s side of the family arrived in Amurrrica in 1730 carrying a land grant from King George II, payment for helping subjugate the Irish masses in Ulster.)

What does any of this have to do with poker, you ask? Not a damn thing. Even I, the great conjurer of strange transitions, cannot link the extreme cold, the queen and downtrodden Irishmen to poker.

But that's okay. I attended a writing seminar once where the speaker said we should not be afraid to “show the bones” in our writing. This post does just that. Downright anorexic, really.

But here is some poker content:

Last Wednesday, I jumped into the cash game at Brian Wilson’s and employed a new strategy: Play as many hands as possible. Why, you ask? Because I could. It didn’t take me too long to accumulate two extra buy-ins and not much longer to find myself down more than half a buy-in. By the time I dragged my ass out of the basement at 4 a.m., I found myself up an impressive $4. Woooot.

The game was tougher than usual and featured some of the regular $1/2 crowd. The quality of my play veered from donkimus maximus to (ahem) freakin' brilliant. It was good to push my personal poker envelope and ended up being the most fun I’ve had at the table in awhile.

And now some poker blogging content:

I don't pimp other blogs much, but here is some that is richly deserved. This Dude is one of the best storytellers in the poker-blogging universe. His posts are always a treat.

Same as it ever was

2007-01-29T20:04:00.000-05:00

A few hands into Sunday's Group tournament, I re-raised J.C. from the SB with A-K. He made it 2,500 total and folded face-up. J.C. tabled his own version of Big Slick Unsooooted.

No big deal. It was only 600 of my 10K starting stack. I said, "Nice bet, sir," and moved on.

But there was no where to go. I stumbled to the break with 6,100 after stealing the blinds two or three times -- the only pots I would win. Quality cards were lacking. Other than the aforementioned Big Slick, the best hands I saw were a few smallish pocket pairs that failed to connect on the flop. My one attempt to float with them post-flop failed miserably.

I donked off my last 4K at 400/800 blinds with A-8 suited. At least there was a cash game waiting.

Hell, I only won one pot in the hour or so I played cash. Fortunately, that hand turned a losing session into a winning one, covering the tournament buy-in. The game (.50/.50 blinds) broke up sooner than I would have liked. (It’s far easier to be patient playing cash, the game that never ends.)

I did decline an invitation to join the $1/2, probably wise on several levels. I white-knuckled my way home through something just shy of a blizzard, one of the few heavy snowfalls we’ve seen on the North Coast this winter.

This persistent cooler continues to frustrate. I don’t think I’ve played that badly. Yet I know good tournament players regularly cash and make final tables. Since I do not, I can only assume that I’m not playing as well as I’d like to think.

Where do we go from here? The Stars account sits barren. (ePassporte is taking its good old time getting my account established.) I’ve got crumbs in Full Tilt and am playing $2.25 SNGs. (I’ve actually doubled the bankroll after about a dozen of them.)

Wait a second, you say. You vowed to take a break.

I admit it. I'm weak. If I've got chips, I'm going to play.

I am Poker Jones.

Public service announcement

2007-01-26T22:30:00.000-05:00

The Bears (+7) and the under (49).

The money lines are poorly priced.

Do your homework and you'll find a few value plays left in the 300-plus prop bets available at the different books.

And remember ... the Super Bowl is just one game.

Elizabeth Shueless

2007-01-25T20:43:00.000-05:00

As I spend the night guzzling the backwash of my poker accounts, I feel a bit like the Nicholas Cage character in Leaving Las Vegas. Am I donkeying myself to death? Or will I enter rehab and triumphantly return to the felt clean and sober? Maybe I can snuggle with Lindsay Lohan as we exorcise our demons together. (Resist ... urge ... to ... type ... "Hey. I hear that Betty Ford is available."

Having already bled off some of the 'roll tonight playing .10/.25 NL and a card-dead Riverchasers tournament, I'm using what's left in my Tilt account playing $6.50 SNG turbos. I just finished 9th in the first of these when kings fell to A-Q on the second hand. We've played two hands in the second one and I'm still in. A moral victory.

I told the Monsignor on the way to lunch today that I need a break. I seem distracted. I can't get any traction in tournaments and my cash game skills have improved to the point where I've become a danger to myself. Sessions find me chipping up steadily with smart play and giving away those profits (and more) thanks to a couple of inexcusably stupid decisions.

I'm playing Sunday in a $50 deepstack tournament (10K in chips, 20 minute levels) that's expected to draw 70-plus players. After that, we'll see what my poker future holds. Of course I'll be back. But a hiatus, even if for a week or two, is in order.

Lessons learned

2007-01-24T08:43:00.000-05:00

I'm suffering a bit of blogger regret this morning for my previous post. Perhaps I should have given Duggle a chance to quietly remove his post before anyone else was the wiser. But what's done is done.

I guess there's an object lesson for all of us. If you hit a dry spot and need to embellish the truth to post something interesting, resist the temptation. Turn on the TV. Or better yet, read a book.

Duggle say what?

2007-01-23T18:32:00.000-05:00

I think I have steered clear of controversy during my year of blogging, but this is an instance that cries out for setting the record straight.

Diablo, who uses the screen name "pornstar69" on Stars, posted a hand history on our Group message board early this morning about a player named DuggleBogey cracking his pocket kings with a runner-runner straight. When I read it, I assumed that Duggle was just donking it up at low limits.

It's safe to say that Diablo was. He is an extremely aggressive and (when he's not had too much to drink) talented cash-game player (but doesn't play much online). He is a terror in the $1/2 and $2/5 home games and has had some nice scores in Vegas and casinos around the Midwest. Players of his ilk (along with my paltry bankroll and mediocre skills) are why I avoid the Group's higher-limit cash games.

Lo and behold, Duggle also posted about the hand. Except he changed a few salient facts, such as the stakes being played. Duggles says it's $100NL, which by my reckoning has blinds of .50/1. But the HH posted by Diablo indicate that the blinds were .02/.05. I have no reason to think Diablo would have altered the HH. He doesn't know Duggle from any other of the millions of donkeys in the virtual poker universe.

Here is the hand history in question, abbreviated to include only Diablo's and Duggle's actions:

PokerStars Game #8079036103: Hold'em No Limit ($0.02/$0.05) - 2007/01/23 - 01:03:17 (ET)
Table 'Dolios V' 9-max
Seat 1: DuggleBogey ($16.49 in chips)
Seat 6: pornstar69 ($10.92 in chips)
pornstar69: posts big blind $0.05
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pornstar69 [Kc Kd]
DuggleBogey: raises $0.15 to $0.20
pornstar69: raises $0.80 to $1
DuggleBogey: calls $0.80
*** FLOP *** [3c 4s Jd]
pornstar69: bets $2
DuggleBogey: raises $3 to $5
wirewraps: folds
pornstar69: raises $4.92 to $9.92 and is all-in
DuggleBogey: calls $4.92
*** TURN *** [3c 4s Jd] [2c]
*** RIVER *** [3c 4s Jd 2c] [6s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pornstar69: shows [Kc Kd] (a pair of Kings)
DuggleBogey: shows [5c 4c] (a straight, Deuce to Six)
DuggleBogey collected $21.81 from pot
DuggleBogey said, "thanks"
pornstar69 said, "wow"

You'll notice other discrepancies between Duggle's account (slowplayed kings?) and what the HH shows. And why do I bother to bring this up? Diablo is a friend of mine. Plain and simple.

Maladjustment

2007-01-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

I never heard back from Full Tilt and played the $109 satellite for Sunday's $750K Guaranteed. There were 154 seats to be won, which was good. The 5-minute turbo structure, however, sucked. I lasted just under an hour, 250 players from the promised land. You need to build a stack early in these things and I never got above 1,800 and change. I lacked a game plan going in. I think you've got to be willing to gamble in turbo structures. While I can't think of any spots where the opportunity presented itself, there must have been at least one or two. Meh. My investment was only $5.50.

My bankroll in the Absolute Challenge stands at $17.61. I donked off $7 last night playing a 5-table SNG. A-K fell to A-9 when he rivered a 9 after the chips went in on an ace-high flop. Stupid me.

There are no guarantees

2007-01-21T10:32:00.000-05:00

Absolute Poker
$2.20 3-table NL SNG

Seat 2 - PROACES ($2350 in chips)
Seat 3 - JAMES14411 ($285 in chips)
Seat 4 - OZZY23 ($1430 in chips)
Seat 5 - JAXONBROWN ($1140 in chips)
Seat 6 - SKITTIE ($2990 in chips)
Seat 8 - NEALCASSADY ($3145 in chips)
Seat 9 - CRAPPGAME ($1285 in chips)
JAMES14411 - Posts small blind
$25OZZY23 - Posts big blind $50

*** POCKET CARDS ***

Dealt to NEALCASSADY [10h 10c]
JAXONBROWN - Calls $50
SKITTIE - Calls $50
NEALCASSADY - Calls $50

I know. Just calling here is weak. But it's early and the action thus far has featured lots of limping and screwiness. I've got chips and hope to see a raggedy flop.

CRAPPGAME - Calls $50
PROACES - Folds
JAMES14411 - All-In(Raise) $260 to $285
OZZY23 - Folds
JAXONBROWN - Calls $235
SKITTIE - Raises $720 to $770

This is where it gets interesting. There is no way I don't have the re-raiser beat. He's got a middle pair of some sort and wants to isolate. Smart move. But it's time for a squeeze play.

NEALCASSADY - All-In(Raise) $3095 to $3145
CRAPPGAME - Folds
JAXONBROWN - Folds
SKITTIE - All-In $2220
NEALCASSADY - returned ($155) : not called
*** FLOP *** [As 5s 3c]
*** TURN *** [As 5s 3c] [3h]
*** RIVER *** [As 5s 3c 3h] [3s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
JAMES14411 - Shows [4s 4h] (Full house, threes full of fours)
SKITTIE - Shows [9h 9c] (Full house, threes full of nines)
NEALCASSADY - Shows [10h 10c] (Full house, threes full of tens)
NEALCASSADY Collects $5410 from side pot
NEALCASSADY Collects $1240 from main pot

I didn't expect a call, but realize this was a $2.20 SNG. I managed only a 5th-place finish, when the deck went frigid and steal situations were virtually non-existent. One hundred percent ROI, though. Wooot.

The fact I'm playing on Absolute at all is quirky. My account stood at zero when I collected $3 in rakeback and turned it into $8 ... playing blackjack. I bolstered it a bit more with a second-place finish in a $2 SNG and a second-place finish in a $2 3-table SNG yesterday.

I'm trying a modified Chris Ferguson low-limit challenge, using micro-limit games at a steppingstone to a million-dollar bankroll. Granted, it might take awhile.

And continuing the micro-limit route, I entered two $2.25 7-table satellites this morning for a seat into Full Tilt's $109 100-seat satellite to the $750K guaranteed. I flamed out of the first one and then:

I was severely short-stacked (7K) with 6 players left and the blinds at 1,500/3,000. The big blind hit me and I looked down at Q-5 suited. A big stack pushed and the second-smallest stack called all-in. I wish I was better at roughly calculating 3-way pot odds on the fly, but guessed that I was screwed. I folded and hoped for some minor miracles in the next few hands. I would have busted had I remained in the hand.

Details are hazy, but I basically won the thing in less than 20 hands. I won races, but got my chips only once while behind -- the first and only hands of heads-up, taking out the short-stack's A-Q with 7-9. (I had a 9-1 lead at HU.)

The satellite starts at 3:30 p.m ET, not long after kick-off for the NFC championship game. I had hoped to unregister and take the cash so I could concentrate on football but that does not appear to be an option. Sheeit.

The cash would have been particularly sweet. Why, you ask? Because I've blown through a big chunk of my main online bankroll on Stars playing $1/2 and $2/4 triple draw the last couple of days and am running low on gas. It's amazing how fast you lose money when your priced-in quality draws refuse to hit time and time again. I was running bad, but the games seemed good and I was certain I'd finally have a run. Didn't happen. I sort of know how Chris Fargis feels.

It's a little disappointing. I haven't tried spending consistent hours playing cash games since I quit the $1/2 6-max grind on Party several years ago. I hoped TD would be the ticket. I'd been winning at the game, albeit at a low hourly rate. Variance and some poor bankroll management were mostly to blame for the skid. I don't think I played badly -- the percentage of draws seen stayed consistent at or even below my normal 33 percent. I like TD very much and have no plans to give it up.

Before the day's out, there's a good chance I'll be putting what's left of my Stars 'roll in play for TD. If I go broke, no big deal. While I hardly embrace the concept, I easily accept it as a consequence of poker growth.

(And I'm far from "broke." Online poker has treated me fine, given the amounts I've been willing to risk. Hell, I've been playing off a $100 buy-in at Stars for more than a year and a half and financed a nice family vacation and other expenses with last year's profits. And I've still got a little money on Tilt and a whopping $24 on Absolute.)

I'll reload with elan, if such a thing is possible. Too bad we Ugly American Poker Degenerates are being persecuted by the Uglier American Morality Police. Fuckwads. I'll have an ePassporte account funded in a few days but wonder how long that option will last. I tried to open an alternative Click2Pay account but got this e-mail after my IP address was rejected.

From: Support Team Munich in general
[mailto:support.click2pay@click2pay.com]

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for contacting the CLICK2PAY Service Team.

Due to the existing US legal situation the decision has been taken to not accept any new sign-ups from US players. Please respect our decision in this regard.

Kind regards
CLICK2PAY Service Team

I replied:

"Wimps."

Zoned out

2007-01-17T18:49:00.000-05:00

I chatted with Monsignor the other day in the cafeteria about the state of our respective poker games. The discussion centered mostly table image. He thought his was donkey, which he knows isn't true. His tournament skills are solid and evidenced by some recent cashes in Group tournaments. His cash game is not so strong, which is understandable given how little he plays it.

But the actual subtext of the conversation was more about self-image and how we want people to perceive us. What I should have said then (and did mention today) is, "Dude, you need to get out of your head and into theirs." Understand, this admonition was as much directed at myself as it was to Monsignor. My inability to crawl out of my own obsessive-ridden head and into my opponents' is one of those nagging weaknesses in my game.

Here is an embarrassing but telling example: It's perhaps the second hand of last night's Mookie. I get pocket jacks in early position and raise 3x BB. The big blind (who I don't know) calls and the flop comes 2-2-5. I bet 3/4 of the pot and he min-raises me. Hmmm. He doesn't have a 2. I know he doesn't have a 2. A set of fives? I don't think so. Screw it, I say, and push. He calls. I'm right. He doesn't have a 2 or presto. He's got freakin' kings and I'm toast.

I completely fail to consider that he might make either a weak or trappy play by simply calling the preflop raise with a bigger pocket pair. I eliminated the 2 and pocket 5s and then made only a half-assed attempt to get into his head, put him on a range of hands and donked off my stack. And there have been other similar miscues in recent days/weeks that have turned MTTs into a money pit for me because of unfocused play, including my first attempt last night at the new $25+2 on Stars. (I saw some truly awful play in the 20 minutes I lasted but only contributed to the stupidity.)

Unfocused poker costs money that I don't want to spend. My last two MTT cashes, Riverstars and an online Group tournament on Monday, only occurred because of ginormous suckouts. If I don't get extremely lucky in those two instances, I make nothing.

There has been plenty of discussion of athletes being "in the zone" and even at the low-levels of competition I experienced over the years, there were instances when I felt it. You know the ball will rip the nets when the shot leaves your hand. The baseball speeding toward you is the size of a beachball. Or there's no doubt you're going to put the football squarely in the receiver's hands.

I didn't begin playing golf until my early 20s and fell deeply for the game. I slowly improved, took some lessons and embraced the game with a passion that bears an uncanny resemblance to my relationship with poker.

Eventually, my scores were low enough that I tried to compete in some small local tournaments. The results weren't good, but that was okay. I was learning. Playing a round with your buddies is one thing. Shooting a score in competition is another matter.

I entered the course championship at the Metroparks course I regularly played. (The top finishers qualified for the systemwide Metroparks championship.) A 41 on the front 9 put me well behind the leaders. I didn't feel nervous or uncomfortable, which I had in the past, but I basically schlepped around the course at a mediocre pace.

But I didn't abandon hope. I reset my goal of qualifying and decided to seek a moral victory with better play on the back 9. I managed to do that and reached the 17th tee just 1-over for the back. I found the fairway at 17, a semi-tough par 4, put it on the green and sunk a 10-footer for birdie.

Unfortunately, the 18th awaited. It's an almost unfairly tight par 4 down into a valley and back up to a severely elevated green. Many a score at Manakiki had been fattened over the years by the 18th hole and tee-shots that had wandered into the woods left and right. Adding to the pressure was the realization that a par and a 77 might get me into the championship tournament.

What's a hacker to do? Get a clue. Take your time. Don't rush. Rush I did not. A smooth 3-wood found the fairway. I took my time reaching my ball and was in no hurry to play my approach. I visualized the shot -- freaking saw it -- and put the ball about 20 feet back of the pin. The instance the ball left my putter I knew I had drained it. A 35 on the back and a 76 for the round proved to be the exact number I needed to qualify.

For most of the back 9, and certainly for those last two holes, I resided in the zone. I quieted the voices that can creep into your head in such situations and performed without effort or strain.

Are there poker lessons to be learned here? (By the way, I bombed out of the bigger championship tournament.) I think so. I believe that successful poker players not only possess a better understanding of the game than the rest of us, but are better at thinking and concentrating. They're better at muting negative and extraneous thoughts.

And they are better at getting into our heads, using shadow puppets to project scary images when they're weak and harmless bunnies when they're strong and having us buy it more often than not. And while they may not always be in "the zone," they're at least somewhere close.

I sneak into my scaled-down version of the zone occasionally. But those moments are infrequent and all-too fleeting. Experience and knowledge can help get you there, but clearing out the clatter in your head seems equally important.

Drawn and quartered

2007-01-15T18:19:00.000-05:00

Not long after finishing the recent post floating the idea of discipline, I bought into a Tilt $24+2 and, after several table changes, was seated to the left of a player with the screen name "Discipline." He finished fourth. Very strange.

(I, on the other hand, was booted around 250th (1,000-plus runners) while possessing a slightly better than average stack when a 'tard with A-J called my A-A re-raise and all-in bet postflop with no pair and no draw save the mighty runner-runner flush. End of rant.)

Discipline does have many guises. Concepts like not leaving a table when it's good, regardless of whether you're winning or losing. I tried to adhere to that principle last night in a TD game until yet another sexy draw -- 2-3-4-7 in this case -- K'd with three swings reminiscent of John Kruk's at-bat vs. Randy Johnson in the '93 All-Star Game. (Gotta love Google.) I finally bailed after these repeated body blows added up to my worst-ever TD session.

Because it's what I do, I jumped into a .10/.25 NL game that included some Group compatriots. I made two very nice plays to double up against The Canuck and Chan and then donked off the profit with pocket queens against an unknown player's flopped set of jacks. It should have been an easy laydown after his post-flop raise. Yet I greedily hoped for A-J and put him all-in. Typical big-pair donkey dazzlement on my part.

Once again, it's about discipline. It's about not wasting $20 while practically wishing your opponent lacks the the set you strongly suspect he has.

It is about calling a pot-sized bet with second pair postflop because you believe your opponent is floating with big overcards.

Discipline is ignoring the incessant braying of your inner donkey.

Discipline is the courage of your convictions.

Presto is Gold (The Live Album)

2007-01-14T12:23:00.000-05:00

With apologies to Fuel.

Flamed out around 20th place (34 runners) in last night's Group tournament. Never got anything going. (I did, however, move in blind UTG with 1,100 chips left and the blinds at 300/600. Two callers. My K-7 boated. Alas, my tournament existence proved short-lived. I lasted less than an orbit when A-10 fell to pocket 9s.)

I jumped into the normal loosey-goosey .25/.50 cash game. Folded, limp/folded for a couple of orbits. I straddled and was dealt pocket 5s. There were 4, maybe maybe 5 callers. Out of principle, I put a symmetrical "hat" ($5) on it, figuring my tight-ass rep might win me the pot right there. Nope. Min-raised by Tony. Ack. Can't be good. I called the other $5 and everyone folded.

The Poker Gods delivered a Fuelish flop of A-5-x. Hoping the ace was a good card for me, I checked. Tony bet $10. Yep. He's got one. I pushed my last $30 or so and he reluctantly called with A-K. Trip 5s are good and I take down a fair-sized pot. I found myself up two buy-ins when the game broke up an hour later. Not bad for 90 minutes work.

Not-so-smooth chaser

2007-01-12T18:52:00.000-05:00

Discipline -- and I'm not talking whips and leather -- in poker seems to be an instilled trait. Perhaps the S&M reference is appropriate given how painfully poker lessons are sometimes imparted.

The learning goes slowly. In my current token turbo on Tilt I had a breakthrough. I folded aces to a raise and reraise after a paired flop. Eyes may now roll at the moronic simplicity of that move, but I'm still pretty low on poker's evolutionary scale. My knuckles have only recently ascended above ground level. (I just busted 10th when my push with eights failed to hold up against kings.)

For one hand in the Riverchaser tournament last night, said discipline was sorely lacking. We were not quite in the money when I called UTG's min-raise from the BB with 8-9o. The flop came 8 high with a gutshot. He bet weak. I think, shit, he just might have aces. In fact, I think: It's 50-50 he has aces. And then I push. Yep. Push. Risk my tournament life despite a read that screamed "You're behind, 'wipe." He instacalls and has the aces. I happily straighten on the river, the recipient of blind luck.

I made the final table and chipped up nicely when eights held up against A-10. I donked off almost one-third of my stack unnecessarily by calling an all-in with A-5 and proceeded to lose races with A-K vs. Gary while 5-handed and A-K vs. pocket 9s a few hands. (Gary finished third while nursing a short stack with timely aggression. Who's weak-tight? Good job, sir.)

Funny line

2007-01-05T12:45:00.000-05:00

If Triple Draw is the new drug on Stars, then the NL version must be a baseball-sized rock of crack. It's a hoot to play, but you know it's really not good for you. I've stuck to limit the last week or so after watching several NL sessions turn into train wrecks. The limit games have mostly been good, although I got stuck a bunch (for me) last night before making a minor save. (And I've run into some bloggerly brethen testing the TD waters, including Princess, waffles, and Milwaukee's Best. )

Limit dictates that you pound the pot with premium draws preflop, slow down after the first draw if you don't make a hand or a solid 1-draw and occasionally attempt trickery after the second draw or on the end based on position and whatever info (betting pattern, number of cards drawn) your opponents are giving you. Losing sessions lately have been a mattter of watching those premium draws refuse to fill. Donkitude is a contributing factor as well, but I've mostly reigned that in as my comfort level with TD increases.

In a fit of madness, I jumped into a .25/.50 NL game today and decided to try a new approach. For example, instead of standing pat after being dealt 2-4-6-7-8 (which I would quickly do in limit), I decided to break 8s for the implied odds of making an even better hand. Rough and even perfect 8s (2-3-4-5-8) have not treated me kindly in NL. They are not the kinds of hands I care to invest alot of money in.

The NL session started poorly. I put $8 into a wheel (2-3-4-7) draw that I folded after the second draw to a big bet. I donked off a little more calling at the end with a sketchy 8. And then I doubled up a short stack when the donkette called off her last $9 to my bluff at the end while holding a queen. (I refuse to give her credit for making a brilliant call. I had raised "preflop" and had drawn only 1 the entire way. She drew 2 on the third draw.)

The hot grease of tilt sizzling in my brain pain, I reloaded for another $25 and waited. Then this hand occurred with Ms. Queen:

PokerStars Game #7777814981: Triple Draw 2-7 Lowball No Limit ($0.25/$0.50)
Table 'Leukothea III' 6-max
Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: puffcloud ($27.50 in chips)
Seat 2: Vlyrr ($48.25 in chips)
Seat 3: hacker59 ($48.20 in chips)
Seat 4: whoz yadaddy ($50.30 in chips)
Seat 6: Francesa ($28.90 in chips)
hacker59: posts small blind $0.25
whoz yadaddy: posts big blind $0.50
*** DEALING HANDS ***
Dealt to hacker59 [8s 3h 7d 4s 5h]
Francesa: calls $0.50
puffcloud: folds
Vlyrr: calls $0.50
hacker59: calls $0.25
whoz yadaddy: checks

Is this a weak play? Maybe. I probably should try to thin the field. But I've already decided to break the 8, the strength of my hand is well-hidden and if I don't hit, I can get out cheaply. If I do hit, I've got tremendous implied odds to trap.

*** FIRST DRAW ***
hacker59: discards 1 card [8s]
Dealt to hacker59 [3h 7d 4s 5h] [2c]

Whoot!

whoz yadaddy: discards 2 cards
Francesa: discards 2 cards
Vlyrr: discards 3 cards
hacker59: bets $1.50

Got to bet something here. If I check, standing pat will look especially fishy.

whoz yadaddy: folds
Francesa: calls $1.50
Vlyrr: folds
*** SECOND DRAW ***
hacker59: stands pat on [3h 7d 4s 5h 2c]
Francesa: discards 1 card
hacker59: checks
Francesa: checks

I desperately want her to have a free card and make some kind of hand.

*** THIRD DRAW ***
hacker59: stands pat on [3h 7d 4s 5h 2c]
Francesa: discards 1 card
hacker59: bets $4.50

A pot-sized bet that I'm hoping smells like an 8 or even a 9.

Francesa: raises $22.40 to $26.90 and is all-in
hacker59: calls $22.40

I couldn't get the money in fast enough.

*** SHOW DOWN ***
Francesa: shows [7c 4c 6h 3d 2s] (Lo: 7,6,4,3,2)
hacker59: shows [2c 3h 7d 4s 5h] (Lo: 7,5,4,3,2)
hacker59 collected $56.80 from pot

I would have played this hand much differently in limit --raising preflop and leading the entire way. Yeah, I hit the lottery after the first draw. But I think the slightly unorthodox line I took gave me the best chance to get all of her money.

End-of-year closeout

2006-12-29T10:24:00.000-05:00

I suck and I need to get better. At everything. (I will, for the sake of accuracy, admit to having perfected the recipe for chicken marsala. But we can all agree that is a skill set of limited value.)

End-of-year reflection leads me to ask whether I've reached life's mid-game with the blinds and antes climbing, knowing that if the dealer doesn't slide me some major mojo soon that I'll be taking a stand under suboptimal conditions while left wondering whether the real opportunity occurred much earlier but I lacked brains, ability and chutzpah to recognize its existence.

(How's this for an example: You're in for 5 buy-ins with less than 10 minutes remaining in the first hour of an $8 donkfest and see three all-ins in front of you while holding pocket 10s. You know there's got to be at least one overpair among the three and that you'd be gamboooling in a major way if you make the call for your last 2,800. You don't, of course, the 10 flops and you flame out a couple of minutes later with pocket 9s vs K-Q. Point of this interlude? IT'S A FREAKIN' REBUY, DUMBASS. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GAMBLE.)

Ah, the bountiful poker-life analogies. Screw it. Life's been pretty good. I've gotten plenty of breaks. My timing has usually been pretty good. But I can't help but wonder whether I've wrung all the value I should have out of the hands I've been dealt.

I am a better poker player than a year ago. There are more pages in the playbook. There is discernible improvement in both my tournament (more aggressive) and NL cash (probably too loose/aggressive) games.

My enthusiasm for poker has only deepened. I've even become addicted to a new poker drug -- 2-7 TD. I've played thousands of hands since Stars introduced the game and have enthusiastically set about learning the game's complexities.

Triple draw, in fact, will be a good test for my resolve to improve. Learning is best done systematically, although accident and happenstance impart their own sometimes painful lessons. Learning to learn better represents a formidable but achievable challenge. And the biggest step toward becoming a better player -- laying down more hands -- doesn't take a Ph.d. to master.

This is the first anniversary of this blog. While not well read, it has served as an adequate journal of my poker progress. That's good enough for now.

Appropriate

2006-12-25T10:53:00.000-05:00

Someone found this blog using Goggle search terms "donkey" and "hacker." That's about right, I guess.

Merry Christmas. Peace, goodwill and poker degeneracy to all.

Remember the Main

2006-12-17T10:07:00.000-05:00

It's 10 a.m. on a gloomy, overcast but unseasonably warm Sunday morning in December. We're about to drive out to the country to kill a tree and set in motion Christmas revelry at Casa de Poker Jones.

I should be asleep. Arrived home around 3 this morning from The Group's POY Main Event, passed out around 4 and found myself awake at 8:30. Pine trees must die.

We're lucky here on the North Coast to have an extremely active stable of donkeys who have found each other through the screwy medium of poker. When I found the Cleveland Poker Meetup Group more than a year ago, there were two weekly tournaments that typically had 18-20 participants. Both had turbo-like structures and seemed to serve primarily as an appetizer for The Group's main course -- the $1/2 NL cash game.

I didn't venture into those shark-infested $1/2 waters much. It did not take long to realize that I was but a sardine in their poker chum ball. The mainstays are tough, inscrutable players who typically clean up during forays to Salamanca, Detroit, Vegas and other gambling venues. If you can win consistently in the Group's $1/2 game, casino tourists represent easy marks.

Given that my interest (and strengths) were primarily in tournament play, I began some behind-the-scene discussions, especially with the rock-solid Turbo, about creating events with deeper structures and not long after tournament poker took on greater significance within The Group. (I'm sure others were thinking the same thing, but I like to think I helped get it kick-started.)

By late spring of this year, Commander Data and Brian Wilson created a twice-weekly POY series and tournament poker exploded. In the last few months, the average player count was north of 30, with a high of 41 -- on a Wednesday night.

I had few opportunities to play early on because of baseball commitments and ended up playing 20 of 54 events. I did okay. I won the 41-person tournament, chopped first-place money once, finished second once and had a few other ITM finishes. (These were $20 tournaments and five places paid.)

Data came up with a formula where each dollar won would be worth one point and the points would then be reformulated to determine your starting chip stack for the Main Event. "It's all about the points" became the battle cry. The extra POY dollar we threw in for each tournament would be used to fatten the main event prize pool.

I finished eighth in the points race while figuring out how to play live poker (i.e. -- play the player) and would start the ME with 47,800T. Data, the manically efficient TD and organizer of these tournaments, won the points race and would have 110,000T. The smallest stack would have around 11K.

Anticipation ran high for the main event with plenty of chatter on on The Group message board. Predictions were made and odds set. Yesterday -- the big day -- came and I didn't want to play. A cold had turned into a nasty sinus infection that seem to trigger migraines or something that surely felt like one. Mrs. Jones suggested again that I might want to see a doctor and I finally took her advice. A doctor loaded me up with prescriptions for antibiotics, decongestants and Vicodin. I still felt like crap by late afternoon but headed out, knowing sometimes you have to play hurt.

Thirty one of the 45-plus eligible players, including all but one of the decent-sized stacks, were in attendance. I had one of the bigger stacks at my starting table, which gave me license to raise a bunch of pots preflop and float a bit afterward. A rivered straight with 3-5 soooted won a nice-sized pot.

I built it up to nearly 70K and then donked off a bit calling raises in position with small pairs hoping to hit the lottery on the flop. I lost one-third of my stack just before the first break when I called a 20K all-in with A-K and failed to suck out against queens.

The break ended and my head began to pound. I reluctantly popped the emergency Vicodin I brought with me and determined to muddle through. The head torture subsided but the deck decided to punish me instead.

The blinds began tearing larger and larger chunks out of my stack. Short-handed while waiting for tables to combine, I stole blinds to survive, pushing with any two decent cards. Details are a little blurry, but I made it to the final table of 10 players with an anemic 47K. There were two other similarly sized stacks while the other seven players shared around 1 million.

With a couple exceptions, it felt like every hand at the final table contained a 2. (Stole the blinds twice with aces, doubled up one with jacks and crippled Pete while shortstacked with A-K vs. his pocket 4s). I could never gain any traction yet managed to finish fourth. It was nice to finish ITM, but I'm hardly celebrating.

I wimped out on the bubble when I folded pocket 9s to an all-in for slightly more than half my stack. Had I called and lost, I would have had less than two rounds of blinds left and decided not to race. Something told me that Johnny Underpants had a big hand, but that might be a rationalization read. (Johnny U., one of the talented young players in the group, went on to win the tournament.) I think I had to call there to have any chance to win, bubble be damned.

RESPECT MY AUTH-OR-I-TIE!

2006-12-15T22:44:00.000-05:00

The dude had put me slightly on tilt. Yeah, it was only a .10/.25 PL Omaha table that I had fired up out of boredom while playing a $5 NL tournament. But tilt is tilt. We were playing short-handed and he kept pushing me off pots when the board went bad on fourth street. My head aching from a sinus infection, it didn't take much to piss me off at that point.

Meats, a solid and talented player in The Group, asked me recently during a post-tournament Denny's session whether I ever tilt. I assured him that I don't. I guess I lied.

PokerStars
Omaha Pot Limit ($0.10/$0.25) - 2006/12/15 - 22:38:50 (ET)

CONURE33 ($46.30 in chips)
hacker59 ($30.55 in chips)
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hacker59 [7s Jc Ad Ah]
CONURE33: raises $0.50 to $0.75
hacker59: raises $1.60 to $2.35
CONURE33: calls $1.60
*** FLOP *** [2c 6d 5d]
hacker59: bets $4.60
CONURE33: raises $13.80 to $18.40

This put me into mull mode. A set? A draw? WTF? I mindlessly pushed what's left of my stack.

hacker59: raises $9.80 to $28.20 and is all-in
CONURE33: calls $9.80

*** TURN ***
[2c 6d 5d] [As]
*** RIVER ***
[2c 6d 5d As] [Ac]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
hacker59: shows [7s Jc Ad Ah] (four of a kind, Aces)
CONURE33: shows [4c 3s 3d Qh] (a straight, Deuce to Six)
hacker59 collected $58.20 from pot

Sick stuff. I like it. That'll teach him to fuck with me.

Wednesday Night Light

2006-12-13T19:37:00.000-05:00

The Triple Draw Experiment has been going well, especially as I become more comfortable with the rudiments of the game. But I ran into felt like skullduggery for the first time at a $1/2 limit table. The guy raised virtually every hand. I had decent, and a few times very good, starters and draws against him that never hit. A little frustrated, I even called with pocket 2s on the end at one point to see what the hell he had (a decent 8).

Except for a couple of small pots early, I pretty much bricked the rest of the 45-minute session and lost a decent chunk by the time the table broke. Overall, I played like shit. My few attempts at trickery failed miserably.

I suppose the success that I've enjoyed thus far has been due in large part to how passive (i.e. -- bad) the play has been. Hitting hands helps as well. (Especially when you defend your BB in the .25/.50 NL game with 2-7-x-x-x and make the nuts after the second draw and have raisers to your left and right.)

But to move up in limits, even if it's just $1/2, I'll need to learn how to better deal with those willing to make plays. It reminds me of my first forays into $1/2 6 max limit HE on Party. It took awhile to adjust, but adjust I did.

I'm currently at a .25/.50 NL table while playing the $3 rebuy. Not doing very well at either game. I'm getting lots of pairs and big cards at TD and nothing but little cards in the tournament. I'm sure this post sucks as well.

I'm too tired to think of a title

2006-12-12T01:14:00.000-05:00

Went deep again in the $3 rebuy on Stars. Finished 67th (3,162 runners) when I pushed my last 91K with A-Q suited against a big-stacked min-raiser who happened to have aces.

Nice to wade that far through such a large field, but it's a lot of work to net $50. First place, on the other hand, was worth $6,300, an amount for which I'd be willing to skip even more sleep.

But to get to the promised land, you can ill afford to miss opportunities to get big and I think I let one slip through my fingertips tonight. With blinds at 1,500/3,000/150, the very active player to my right min-raised. I folded pocket 2s from the button while sitting on just over 52K. He gets K-J to call. The flop came K-2-x. Shit. They got all their chips in the middle after the flop and min-raiser showed pocket kings. Wow. Good fold, me.

But there was a problem. The turn and river were spades, matching the two on the flop. They had no spades. I did. A triple-up plus would have put me in the top 20 with around 300 players remaining. I keep thinking that hand would have gotten me way deep. Maybe final-table deep.

Played some more triple draw Sunday, both .25/.50 NL and .50/1 limit, and did not do goot. Lost a big chunk -- but not all -- of my stack with the second nuts in an NL game and failed to hit any of my decent draws in limit. And there was a fair amount donked off by someone still figuring out how to play the game.

I got stuck even more while two-tabling (1 limit, 1 NL) earlier this evening but managed to eke out a smalll profit after winning a nice-sized NL hand. With the rebuy tournament about to start, I was glad to take a save and get the hell out of there.

Draw by numbers

2006-12-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

I begin with the warning that this is not a strategy post. It's more of a cautionary tale: Do not try this at home or without a doctor's prescription.

While I'm not one of those people who runs out to the store to buy the hot product just because all the cool kids have it, I did have an interest in trying 2-7 Triple Draw when Stars added it to the mix. I think I played a little bit of micro-stakes TD over at UB at one point, but I was likely in the midst of a crack binge at the time.

A check of the Stars TD lineup, though, showed that the game is selling worse than Obstetric Barbie Gynecological Exam Kit this Christmas season. There were few tables open and the limit games were always full when I checked.

Finally, in a what-the-hell moment, I joined a .25/.50 NL table with a wimpy $30. I more than doubled my buy-in pretty quickly thanks to some good hands, including the nuts. I played two more sessions yesterday and essentially broke even, a ridiculous feat given that I played 15 hands heads-up with a guy who kept min-raising and then drawing 4 cards.

I jumped into a game this morning, which prompted the following hand history. I'll try to recount in the best Fuel55 fashion that I can, keeping it short and simple.

(Side note: Fuel's frequently posted hand histories have added greatly to my limited NL cash-game skills. For example, the idea of "floating" was only a vague, poorly employed notion before finding his blog. Thank you, sir.)

PokerStars Game #7382256246: Triple Draw 2-7 Lowball No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - Table 'Memnon II' 6-max

I bought in for a wimpy $30 and won a $20 and a $15 pot in the first four hands. This is the 11th hand of the session.

Button: MK_Sniper ($60.55 in chips)
Seat 4: brenngeorge ($16.25 in chips)
Seat 5: hacker59 ($45.15 in chips)
Seat 6: Katertot08 ($7.75 in chips)
brenngeorge: posts small blind $0.25
hacker59: posts big blind $0.50
*** DEALING HANDS ***
Dealt to hacker59 [2c 9h 3h 4s 8d]

This is a decent starting hand in TD, I guess. I knew I'd toss the 9, but wasn't sure about the 8.

Katertot08: folds
MK_Sniper: raises $1.50 to $2
brenngeorge: calls $1.75
hacker59: calls $1.50

It's $1.50 to call into a pot of $4.50. Easy call given my holdings.

*** FIRST DRAW ***
brenngeorge: discards 1 card
hacker59: discards 2 cards [9h 8d]

I guess brenn has pretty good starters as well. Good-bye 8.

Dealt to hacker59 [2c 3h 4s] [3d 2d]
MK_Sniper: discards 1 card
brenngeorge: checks
hacker59: checks
MK_Sniper: bets $3.50
brenngeorge: folds
hacker59: calls $3.50

Ugly draw. I admit to having no real business making this call. If he stands pat, I fold.

*** SECOND DRAW ***
hacker59: discards 2 cards [3d 2d]
Dealt to hacker59 [2c 3h 4s] [6s 7c]
MK_Sniper: discards 1 card
hacker59: checks
MK_Sniper: bets $5
hacker59: calls $5

I actually loaded up for a check-raise, planning to pop him another $10 but stopped myself and decided to go for a slowplay. I probably should have followed through on my first instinct.

*** THIRD DRAW ***
hacker59: stands pat on [2c 3h 4s 6s 7c]
MK_Sniper: stands pat

Ugh. No check-raise now. I toss out a blocker.

hacker59: bets $7.50
MK_Sniper: raises $42.55 to $50.05 and is all-in

Sheeit. Does my man have the nuts? I can't fold here. If the second nuts ain't good enough, so be it.

hacker59: calls $27.15 and is all-in

*** SHOW DOWN ***
MK_Sniper: shows [7h 5s 6d 2h 3s] (Lo: 7,6,5,3,2)
hacker59: shows [2c 6s 3h 4s 7c] (Lo: 7,6,4,3,2)
hacker59 collected $90.30 from pot

Let's be clear. I only have the vaguest of notions about how to play TD. But it's a nice break from hold 'em stasis that seems to have set in. And I love the strategy implications. When do you break/not break/stand pat?

Having read some of Chris Fargis' posts about TD, I know there are ways to "float" in this game. But I'm guessing that mostly applies to higher limits. At the stakes I'm playing, an ABC approach -- whatever that is -- is more in order. Folding does not appear to be an option for many of these players.

And If I'm actually going to learn TD, I need to do it a limit where the inevitable mistakes are less pricey. There is some forum action over at 2+2 that should be worth exploring.

Rebuy-bye

2006-12-09T01:38:00.000-05:00

I can finally post. Something good happened tonight.

Finished 45th in the $3.30 rebuy donkfest on Stars (3,198 runners). Down to 191K with blinds/antes at 15K/30K/1500, I pushed on the button with A-3 and got called by A-7. No help for me. Not a huge profit, but I'll take it.

This last month and a half of MTT play has amounted to a deluxe room at Abu Ghraib, where
Sgt. Variance has been giving me an unrelenting foot massage with a bamboo stick. But tonight I got cards and hands held up.

The evil ways the RNG has been tossing me from tournaments has been amazing. How many times can a man lose when his opponent flushes while holding the same pair? Paranoid and fearful, I probably played a couple of big hands too fast tonight, failing to extract maximum value. In my tepid defense, I thought there was a decent chance the donkey in the example below might actually call.

The donkey folded, however, and nothing much else happened after that.

A little bored at one point yesterday, I bought into a .25/.50 NL Triple Draw game with $30. My first attempt at NL Triple Draw. We were 4-handed and no one at the table had more than $50. I won a few small pots early and then stacked a guy with the nuts ... yeah I got it on the third draw and his second nuts were no good. The game broke up a few hands later and I left $45 richer.

A sign of things to come? I can only hope. As idiotic as it may sound, I'm due for a heater online. Yeah, I know. We're due nothing in this life or any other. But dammit, a paradigm shift is very much in order.

Thankfully, I've had been playing live much more often. And the more I play live, the less interesting the online game seems. Playing poker on a computer is convenient, but jousting with real people is far more rewarding.

There's a $50 buy-in tournament later today that should draw 35-40 players. The event will include the first annual CPMG Chili Cook-Off and I've concocted a new recipe. And least I know it will have some heat.

A hand out

2006-11-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

Our handsome and modern office building sits apart from downtown in a neighborhood where renovation means covering first-floor windows with iron bars. One of the more successful ventures in the neighborhood is a large homeless shelter. The office, located along the main flyway to and from the shelter, provides a front-row seat for viewing the humanity passing back and forth.

One character stands out. He's an older guy, maybe in his 50s. He travels with a large number of plastic bags which, from what I can see, contain many more plastic bags. There are so many bundles of plastic bags, in fact, that he cannot carry them all at one time. His back slightly bent, he takes some of the bags, moves them ahead 100 feet or so along the sidewalk, and returns to the pile for the next load. It takes him three or four trips to traverse from Point A to Point B.

While these bags are clearly important to him, their intrinsic value remains unknown to this middle-class observer of the human condition. I've not yet worked up the courage to ask why he chooses to burden himself with so much baggage. Perhaps he's some kind of plasticine penitent looking for redeeming grace in the undiscovered beauty of a Giant Eagle bag?

Make mine paper, please.

But the sisyphean work this man does does seem emblematic of my path of Poker Progress. Instead of upwardly arcing curves, I have craggy peaks and valleys. I'm higher than I when I started, but did it have to be so freakin' hard getting here? Slow learner, me.

A hand review from Friday's Group tournament that is noteworthy primarily for its freakish nature.

We're 7-handed, waiting to combine to two tables. I get aces UTG. We're at the 5th level (150/300) and I've been pretty active to this point. I make it 900T and get three callers. Jason, in the BB, ponders. I casually mention that it looks like he wants to take a stab at the pot. He raises to 4,000T. I push my remaining 14K to get everyone else out of the hand. They all fold, including Jason, who could not help but put me on aces or kings. Fine with me. I'd won a nice-sized pot at that point.

Here's the Ripley's Believe It Or Not portion of the program. The other hands were, in this order, pocket 10s, pocket jacks, pocket 6s and pocket queens. It shouldn't take much guessing to figure out which pair would have won had the hand played out to the river.