Blogger Pods 2

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Return to the Basics

Decent review of the basics for HORSE.

http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/16530

Poker Stars Review

Here is my preliminary review of Poker Stars.

Do well, do well, do well... get bad beat for it all.

Rebuy.

Do well, do well, do well... get bad beat for it all.

Rebuy.

Bad Beat.

Do well, do well, do well... get bad beat for it all.


I'm not being biased at all.

Jamie Gold

Could we have had this Jamie Gold thing wrong this entire time? I wasn't around for the World Series of Poker fiasco but what I learned from reading about it and listening to my friends is that Jamie Gold won by pushing around the final table with aggressive talk and aggressive play. Also, I learned that Jamie Gold had made a promise to a friend/business partner to split his winnings and that a lawsuit was filed over it presumably because Jamie Gold didn't want to do it anymore. Looking back though, could we have been ass-backward about the situation the whole time?

Here are the facts to the best of my knowledge.

1) Jamie Gold promises to split winnings.
2) Jamie Gold makes phone call during the WSOP telling the other guy not to worry because he will get his half.
3) Gold gives ridiculously generous gift to dealers and casino staff.
4) The other guy files a law suit to make sure he gets his money.
5) Gold appears at different poker events. The ones that I've seen (High Stakes and Poker After Dark) show a Gold who is uncomfortable with his new star status and seems to try to be relatively humble towards the other players. Also, it appears as if most of the other players like him (Doyle being the exception).
6) Gold settles the lawsuit out of court.

Everything here shows Gold as a relatively decent fellow except the part where the other guy files a law suit. Could it be possible that we all just assumed Gold was a prick and decided he didn't want to share when in reality the other guy went "Holy crap! I'm going to get millions. I better find a lawyer and get this thing out in the open to make sure he doesn't change him mind?"

I don't know Gold and I don't know everything about the situation but we all jumped to conclusions about the guy and it would suck if we've been trashing a relatively nice guy for the past half a year.

Hustler Highlights

I’m a huge fan of table talk – in my mind it’s one of the greatest advantages live poker has over online poker. That and being legal. Anyway, here are a few “soundbytes,” if you will, from yesterday’s 5-hour sesh at the Hustler. There was a cash-game full of pros right next to my table … kind of a who’s who of sorts. David “Chip” Reese, Ted Forrest, Phil Ivey, Johnny “World” Hennigan, Larry Flynt, Barry Greenstein, and a few guys I didn’t recognize. Each of them had huge stacks of $1,000 chips in front of them. Pretty cool stuff. So here are the gems I remember. Enjoy.
_ _

Seat 7: Yeah, we knew you had a pocket pair.
Me: Really? Wow, good read.
Seat 7: Actually, it wasn’t that good a read. Before the flop you were muttering “Come on, let me hit a set!”
Me: Was I really?
Seat 7: Yeah.
Me: Seriously???
Seat 7: Hahaha, yeah.
Me: Jeez, I gotta work on my poker face. Giving tells left and right here … I mean, literally telling what I have!

Seat 3: Damn it, that’s almost like … almost twice that I’ve laid down the best hand!
Me: Almost twice, huh? So you mean … once?
*Laughter*

Seat 7: Check it out!
Seat 6 (his girlfriend): What? What is it?
Seat 7: That’s Phil Ivey!!!
Seat 6: Oh really? Wow! Oh wait … who’s Phil Ivey?
Seat 3: ‘Who’s Phil Ivey?’ Man, not only does she not belong in a poker game – she deserves to be shot for asking that question!

Seat 5: Nice jacket, where’d you get it?
Me: In South Carolina … when I went to see my folks.
Seat 5: I see. Well it looks really good on you.
Me: Uh, thanks … bro …

Floorman: I’m sorry sir, but you have to remove your hood while at the table.
Me: You’re joking right?
Floorman: No, sir.
Me: Really? Wow! Is that really a casino rule? I mean Phil Laak wears a hood!
Floorman: Who?
Me: You know … The Unabomber.
Floorman: Sir, I don’t negotiate with terrorists, and I’m not negotiating with you.
Me: Hahaha … this guy has balls … he’d probably make Osama remove his turban.
(I take off the hood).

Me: Nice Tens.
Seat 2, raking the pot: Wha …?
Me: You had pocket Tens, right?
Seat 2 smiles and shakes his head.
A few hands later the same guy check-raises me …
Me: Damn it, you have two pair. You have Aces and Jacks … outflopped the crap out of me. I’m gonna lay this down.
(I lay down my Ace-King face up.)
Seat 2: Jesus, you have reads … am I getting hustled at the Hustler?
Me: Haha thanks for the Chris Ferguson comparison, but if I were Jesus I’d for sure be at the next table over.

Seat 7: I wish I could sit down at that table. Just to learn from those guys.
Seat 8: Yeah, you’d be like – “Um, I’d like to buy in for the small blind.”

Seat 2: Wow, you called me with middle pair? Amazing. Nice hand, though.
Seat 6: You just had that “I’m full of sh—” look on your face.
Seat 4: Ouch man, she just said you look like sh—!
Seat 6: Not so much that he looks like sh—, but he certainly plays like it.

(I make a great call on the river with Ace high to take down an $80 pot.)
Me: Sorry man, but your bet just didn’t make sense to me. Smelled like a bluff.
Seat 3: So if he’d moved all in you would have folded?
(I ponder this for a moment)
Me. Against a good player, I’d lay it down in a heartbeat. Against you, though … I’d probably beat you into the pot.
Seat 3: Hahaha

El Stinko

Poker in my life has been “El Stinko” lately. Unless I have a really good showing in the CP VIP Tourney, that will be it.

Let’s start with the news today. Tony G no longer allows US customers. They claim that if I want my money, I have to transfer it to Tony G and he will in turn transfer it to me at Poker Stars or Full Tilt. Shady.

Here’s what I really want to post about.

Last night, I played in a $20 rebuy tournament at the local elks lodge. There was a $10 add-on at the break. I have to say that it was fun and the prize pool was decent with first place taking home $500. However, the structure in my opinion was horrible. For the first hour, the blinds increased every fifteen minutes. I was at a slow table. We couldn’t make it through a round before the blinds increased. I would guess that at the other tables, they were playing approx. one round per blind level.

After the break, things changed. They redrew seats and I started out on the button. They also changed the length of the blind levels. Now I would have guessed that they would make it longer now since players could no longer rebuy. However, the opposite happened. I’m not exactly sure what they did but it was one of three things. Either a) they shortened the blind levels to 6-8 minutes each, b) they increased the blinds every time someone got knocked out, or c) both. Like I said, I started on the button and the blinds went up 3 times before I got to be in the blind. This was at an 8-handed table.

How did I play? Well if my cards held up through the night, I probably would have had a chance to win. But you can say that about any tournament with any format. I’d venture to guess that in two hours I played 11 hands. At a round every 15-20 minutes, that’s 1-2 hands per round. My hand selection was pocket kings, pocket queens, pocket fours, ace-king, ace-queen, ace-queen, ace-nine, ace-five, ace-four, king-queen, and jack-ten. It was a below average night in terms of luck as I won small pots with ace-queen, ace-nine, ace-four, king-queen, and jack-ten and managed to lose big pots with the other 6.

Really I’m just complaining because I didn’t do as well as I hoped. However, with the structure, any skill advantage I may have is severely hindered and it’s not worth the time and money unless I continue to get staked in the game.

Sharks and Fish

*I wrote this while I was in Thailand and I thought it was pretty decent. I tried to shop it to Two Plus Two but they weren't interested so here it is. In the future, I plan on going in depth on a couple of the ideas I bring up in this. *

INTRODUCTION

Shark. Fish. They are two of the more common expressions in poker. One conjures images of great hunters of the sea: savage aggression, flesh-severing teeth, and a hauntingly efficient nose for blood. The latter is shark food. They are more numerous but less dangerous and more… ordinary.

Poker players share many similarities with wild animals such as sharks and fish. To both, survival is of the utmost importance as there are always hunters and competitors lurking. However, survival alone is not enough to be successful. For this, one needs to survive AND reproduce. Good players understand that the goal isn’t merely to protect your chips. Nor is it to put your chips constantly at risk while attempting to generate more. Instead, the optimal ratio lies somewhere in between these polar strategies.

Behavioral ecologists have found that animals also must find this balance. Only they don’t study texts and theory to determine which way is best. Instead they discover it through trial and error while risking something much more valuable than the chips that are in front of us. The ones that use the most efficient strategies are the ones that survive and reproduce. The rest, at varying rates, eventually go broke.

PREDATOR AND PREY STRATEGIES

Despite the prevalence of terms like shark and fish, and perhaps because of them, much of the wealth of information available from the natural world has been overlooked. For millions of years, predators and prey have waged an evolutionary arms race towards survival and greater reproductive success. There have been strategies and counter-strategies and counter-counter-strategies. Poker players have a chance to learn from the best of the best.

A few examples of prey strategies used for thwarting predators and of hunter counter-methods should illustrate the applicability of these tactics to poker.

Detection and anti-detection strategies are often the simplest and most intuitive methods. For example, some desert rodents such as Banner-Tailed Kangaroo Rats forage more on moonless nights than on well-lit ones (Kotler 1984; Lockard 1978). This is presumably because their avian hunters have a more difficult time spotting them when there is no moon (Kotler 1984; Lockard 1978). Similarly it would be advantageous for a relatively unskilled poker player to avoid playing when many better players are around.

Many creatures also use cryptic behavior to avoid detection; they use camouflage to blend into the background. Predators have developed a method to counter-act this and to decrease the amount of time spent looking for food. They make use of search images (Tinbergen 1960). Blue Jays do this by stressing subtle visual markers associated with their food while searching (Pietrewicz and Kamil 1979). Poker players can do the same by creating stereotypes and generalizations, then applying them to the people sitting at the table around them. This timesaving shortcut will increase the speed with which one can identify everyone at the table. It could also be used to identify the variety of fish preferred from the others in a quick and timely fashion.

Even if they are detected, prey have strategies that can deter predators from attacking. One such method is association with a protected species. For example, close proximity to wasps or ants that are particularly aggressive towards one’s predators could provide some safety (Alcock 1997). A monkey will prefer to raid someone else’s nest if it has to brave painful wasps in order to reach yours (Joyce 1993). Similarly, if one is seated near a wild, lucky player with a big stack or near a good loose and aggressive player that player could be used as a buffer or shield. It would be very difficult for a shark to target you because he is also risking a tango with the other player’s stack.

Displaying warning coloration is another attack deterrent strategy. The goal is to advertise your unpleasantness so that the predator recognizes and avoids you (Alcock 1997). Even though the predator would probably still be able to eat the prey, it won’t like it very much if it gets sick, injured, or dies from the process. Thus warning coloration spares both the predator and the prey from unpleasantness. Monarch butterflies are famous for this (Wiklund and Sillén-Tullberg 1985). Their predators become ill and vomit after digestion and quickly learn to avoid them in the future (Wiklund and Sillén-Tullberg 1985). Many good poker players also use this strategy. They utilize a tight and aggressive table image to advertise that any potential attackers would be playing from behind.

All is not lost if you aren’t a good poker player or a toxic butterfly. There is also a deceptive side to warning coloration called Batesian Mimicry after Henry Bates, the naturalist who discovered it (Alcock 1997). Non-toxic and fishy individuals both can display warning coloration to deceive predators away from what would otherwise be a tasty snack. This is because although they, themselves, are not dangerous, the predators will avoid them due to their resemblance, at a glance, to their more unpleasant brethren.

Finally Optimal Foraging Theory warrants mentioning. This states that for one to forage optimally, it should choose food that provides the most energy for the least amount of effort (Wikipedia OFT). For clam-eating crows, this means ignoring smaller clams and focusing instead on larger ones (Richardson and Verbeek 1986). Small clams do not maximize food per energy spent (Richardson and Verbeek 1986). For poker sharks, this means searching for fish with a lot of money already on the table a.k.a. ATMs. Neither the poker players or the crows will be performing as well as they could if they wasted time on small prey when they could go for the larger stacks instead.

There is also a silver lining to this for people who find that he/she is being seated at a table consisting of more talented and stronger players. By buying in for a small amount, say the minimum buy-in, one might be able to play under the radar. After all, good players will be trying to forage optimally and to them you are only small clams.

CONCLUSION

The strategies discussed are just the tip of the iceberg. They represent a simplified sampling of predator and prey strategies that could be found in most animal behavior and behavioral ecology textbooks such as Alcock’s Animal Behavior. More complex strategies and greater analysis are published in various scientific journals; many of which are available on the Internet. Finally, predator and prey strategies aren’t the only aspects of behavioral ecology relevant to poker. Others include coping strategies for unpredictable and changing environments, stimulus filtering, habitat selection, migration, and competition with like individuals.

Much can be learned from these effective stratagems, which have been evolving for millions of years. Even if some seem elementary, one should remember that often the simplest strategies are the most efficient. But they are often the most overlooked.

REFERENCES

Alcock, J. Animal Behavior, 6^th Ed. Sinauer Associates, Inc: Sunderland, Massachusetts. 1997.

Joyce, F.J. “Nesting Success of Rufous-Naped Wrens (Campylorhynchus ruifnucha) is Greater Near Wasp Nests.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 32: pp. 71-78. 1993.

Kotler, B.P. “Effects of Illumination on the Rate of Resource Harvesting in a Community of Desert Rodents.” American Midland Naturalist 11: pp. 383-389. 1984.

Lockard, R.B. “Seasonal Change in the Activity Pattern of Dipodomys spectabilis.” Journal of Mammalogy 59: pp. 563-568. 1978.

“Optimal Foraging Theory.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_foraging_theory. 2006.

Pietrewicz, A.T. and Kamil, A.C. “Search Image Formation in the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata).” Science 204: pp. 1332-1333. 1979.

Richardson, H. and Verbeek, N.A.M. “Diet Selection and Optimization by Northwestern Crows Feeding on Japanese Littleneck Clams.” Ecology 67: pp. 1219-1226. 1986.

Tinbergen, N. The Herring Gull’s World. Doubleday: Garden City, New York. 1960.

Wiklund, C. and Sillén-Tullberg, B. “Why Distasteful Butterflies Have Aposematic Larvae and Adults, But Cryptic Pupae: Evidence from Predation Experiments on the Monarch and the European Swallowtail.” Evolution 39: pp. 1155-1158. 1985.

Weekend Recap

1. Friday Night Casino – Not a whole lot to report. I played some $2-$4 limit and posted my first losing live session since I came back in December. I feel that I played well but just didn’t have a lot to work with. I will be glad when I get my check from Bodog or get a job and can play something other then $2/$4.
2. Saturday Night Home Game – Back to back losing nights for me. I didn’t feel like I played particularly well towards the end but it didn’t matter since I would have lost everything anyways on the last hand when I went all in with a straight and someone called with a set and filled up on the river. The extra few dollars I could have had from playing better wouldn’t have been enough to change the result of the final hand.
3. Jamin called my bluff. I won’t post any hand histories. I’m not that insecure about my game and I’m way too lazy.
4. Super Bowl – First, Jamin watched the game with a girl instead of with his buddies. There should be a man-law against that. Second, two weeks ago I thought the Colts would win. With each passing day, I’ve become a little less confident. So as with the NCAA Championship, I’m making a game day reversal and choosing the Bears to win. I also made a 5-prop bet-parlay just for fun. I have:
   
1. Neither team scoring three straight times without the other team scoring. LOST
   
2. Either team scoring in the first six and a half minutes of the game. WON
   
3. Both teams making a field goal 33 yards or longer. LOST
   
4. Peyton Manning’s first pass being a completion. LOST
   
5. Rex Grossman’s first pass being incomplete or intercepted. LOST
   
5. I’m way more excited for this week’s television lineup then I should be. Then again I’m adding the return of Lost and what should be a classic UCLA-USC match-up to my already terrific lineup of High Stakes, Poker After Dark (I watch a week behind so I start on the Laak-Esfandiari week), 24, and Heroes so perhaps I should be even more excited.

Heads Up Series between Billy & I

Jamin: Dos :-D

Billy: Cero :-X

Billy threatened to post the hand histories if I did this, to show the world how big of a suckout artist I am. I guess I'm the luckiest player ever. :-P

You Know You're Way Too Into Poker When...

Billy: well i think thats a good idea
Billy: ive generally had good experiences on double dates
Jamin: definitely... i called it
Jamin: would be too nervous heads up
Jamin: damn i called it heads up
Jamin: i'm such an addict
Jamin: like when i asked for a set of cookies that time at diddy riese

Drawing Red Lines

*There seems to be an interesting correlation with how many hours I play and how much I post or rather how little I play. I seem to have found a good balance right now.*

Drawing Red Lines is Jim McManus's bluffing at poker and at war. It's a good read.

The first part can be found online at Cardplayer.

The second part can be found in your local casino addition of Cardplayer and also online.

How Could I Play This Differently? #2b

To recap: I am heads up in the big blind with 3-5 against a loose aggressive player in the small blind. We saw the A-2-4 flop for cheap. All the cards are hearts. She checked-raised my $2 bet for another $6. I just called.

The turn is the jack of clubs. This is a great card for me as it doesn’t scare her and at the same time probably didn’t increase her chances of catching up to me. She bets $4 into me.

I was a little surprised at this. I didn’t expect this card to scare her but it looks as if it did. She bets really weakly $4 into a pot of almost $20. Why would she do this? If she had a pair and a flush draw I don’t think she would be so obviously weak. I would expect her to either continue her strong image or check and hope I so scared of getting check-raised again that I give her a free card. If she has a set, she could be trying to trap me into a re-raise or she could be scared by my call that I have the flush and am trying to trap. If she has a vulnerable two-pair she might be scared that I just made a bigger two pair. Also, she could just be doing what I did on the flop and made a small bet to try to force me to reveal information about my hand.

I believe that my table sees me as a tight aggressive player because I am worried about getting outplayed. Therefore I don’t think she can put me on a hand like ace jack because I would have raised before the flop. Also, I think that she would expect me to have played a lot stronger on the flop if I had had a made hand. Factoring this in, I think she is making an informational bet and wants to see just where I am at in the hand. Also, I think this is a strong move because it means she isn’t worried that much about the river card hurting her chances of winnings. She is probably confident that if I just call and the fourth flush card hits, she could lay her hand down. Therefore I narrow her down further to either two-pair or a set that she thinks is good or she is on the draw and is trying to set her own price for seeing the river.

What should I do? I am facing a $4 bet and including the bet, the pot is $24 minus the rake. I rule out calling. I am leaning towards the read that she has two-pair or a set over the flush draw. If I call and the flush card hits, she will act cautiously which means I won’t make much on the river. Thus I need to extract some value now. How much should I bet?

I ended up raising to $15.

I chose this amount because it was almost 4 times the amount of her bet but was still small enough where I wouldn’t lose her. I have decided to wait for the river to bring down the hammer. I am waiting to make sure I have the best hand because I’m sure if she has two pair or a set, all the money will go in the middle as long as the scare card doesn’t come. However, I’m not sure if this is a good amount. She has to call $11 if she is on the flush draw. That means she is getting almost 4:1. I don’t think she’s on the flush so that means she is getting almost 4:1 to fill up. Perhaps I should have bet slightly more to give her worse odds towards filling up.

Small blind just calls. The river is the ace of diamonds. She bets $10. I call. She shows the ace of clubs and the four of diamonds for a full house and I muck my straight.

This was about the worst card in the deck for me. All I could do was call and hope that she had pair of aces and the flush draw and not that she had the two pair or set that I was reading her for.

I don’t have a lot of problems with how I played the hand. However, it was out of the ordinary for me and I am not really comfortable with how it went. Normally I would have re-raised her on the flop. This would create a number of problems for me though. I am pretty sure that she would have moved all-in on me. She was riding a rush and was loose aggressive. I would end up guessing between whether she made the flush or was making a play. I would probably have folded and been bluffed but I also lose a significant % if I call when she is on the flush draw and when she is on the full house draw not to mention if she made the move with the flush.

I guess what I’m really asking isn’t whether I should have played the hand in this manner but where I could improve on this strategy.

Occasionally, the poker gods cut me some slack.

Whenever I have one of those ridiculous nights that we all have, where every single friggin’ thing that can go wrong at the poker table does, I usually just throw my head back and lament – “Why don’t I ever get to be the guy that comes from behind and wins all night? When will it be my turn???”

The obvious answer is that good players won’t have those nights too often, because they typically aren’t getting their money in as an underdog as much as a fish does.

Even so, it would be nice sometimes after those rough nights to stick it to someone else the way EVERYONE has been doing to you. You pray for a hand where you can stack someone on a bad beat, just to restore your sense of equilibrium in the poker universe.

And every so often, your prayers get answered.

Last night, I got to feel what it’s like to be on the right side of some sick beats. And I’m not talking about Pharrell and Timbaland. I’m talking getting it all in as a massive underdog, and smiling incredulously as somehow, all the chips are shoved toward you on the river.

I was playing in a home game over in Beverly Hills. I’ve been trying to expand the number of different home games I play in, since Billy isn’t around to play heads up with me everyday like we used to (more on that in my next post). Anyway, the guys over there are great – they’re friendly, they have personalities, and they all love poker. Connor (the host, and one of their better players), Brendan (his brother, and the other pretty good player), Sean (an actor), Sammy (mini-Phil Hellmuth), Ryan (the fish), and Wook (the token Asian). This was my second time going, and occasionally some other players will drift in. But this seems to be the core group of guys. The game is a No Limit Hold ‘Em SNG with a $20 buy-in and rebuys for the first hour. The previous time I was there, I took it down over a field of thirteen, after a great heads up match at the end with Brendan. Last night, we had a field of only eight, with the top two finishers splitting the pool 70/30.

Anyway, there were two huge hands where I came from far enough behind to actually feel bad about sucking out. The first one was definitely the worse of the two. As some of these guys were liable to give me action with draws and second pairs, I had been raising with any suited Ace, and with unsuited Ace-mediums or better. This hand I picked up A-9 offsuit, and decided to make a healthy raise under the gun. The blinds were 200/400 at this point, so I made it 2,500 to go. Brendan was in late position and my only caller.

As I mentioned, Brendan is a pretty good player, especially post-flop, so his range of hands here was pretty large. But he is prone to (correctly) re-raise with big aces and pocket pairs before the flop, so I felt pretty confident I had the best hand so far. I put him on a hand like K-10 or Q-J. Maybe even a weak Ace. The flop should be a pretty good indicator.

The flop came Ks-9c-7c. Didn’t really work with the red cards I was holding, but I hit a pair so I fired out 3,000, and Brendan insta-raised to 6,000. Something told me he sensed weakness in me and was making a play here (well within his repertoire), so I came back over the top all in for about $13,000 more. I had him covered. He thought about it for quite some time, and I felt pretty confident that he would fold. Then he started in with the questions: “You got pocket Aces? A set? Bigger flush draw?”

Uh-oh.

He called and tabled K-6 of clubs. I didn’t really fault him for the preflop call. I had been playing so aggressively that I was clearly offering reasonable implied odds if we both connected with the flop. But yeah, he had me destroyed – top pair and the flush draw … I was embarrassed to show my cards. But I did, and pulled out my wallet to rebuy. Before I could pull out the Jackson, the Ace of spades hit on the turn and the table erupted. I was happy on the inside, but didn’t show it too much. Brendan still had outs for the re-suck. But no, the river came with another 9, just adding insult to injury, and I took down a monster pot early.

Even worse for Brendan (and better for me), this ridonkulous beat set him on tilt a little bit and he paid me even more later. I had A-K suited on the button, it was folded to me so I raised to about 4x the big blind. Brendan pushed all in with 8-9 offsuit (thinking I was stealing) and I called. The board was insane … the flop came with a king, then another king hit on the turn and ANOTHER on the river. Runner-runner quads … it was like a parent spanking a child into submission and yelling a single word on every hit: “DON’T … YOU … EVER … MAKE … A PLAY … ON … ME … AGAIN!!!” Ouch.

The other hand came later in the action. I was in the big blind with A-7 of clubs, and it’s limped to me. The blinds are large enough at this point to make a steal worthwhile, PLUS the pot is nice and juicy since everyone (5 players now) has limped, PLUS I’m still the big stack so I get to push them around a little bit. I move all in here, expecting everyone to fold. But Ryan (the one I called a fish up above … yikes) slowrolls me a little bit and calls. Sean says to him nervously, “That’s a hell of a call man.”

Ryan just shakes his head and says, “Not really … it’s an easy call when it’s a sure thing.” He tables pocket Aces.

HEE-HAW!!!

“Nothing is a sure thing at this table,” Sean replies.

I sheepishly turn over my A-7. As soon as Brendan sees it, he puts a hand on Ryan’s shoulder and says, “Sorry, buddy.” He senses what’s about to come.

The flop contains two clubs and a 7 – beautiful! The turn is a red blank, however, and I start getting nervous. I have Ryan covered, but losing here would cost me about 60% of my stack which would cripple me given the rising blinds. Nothing to fear, however, as the 4 of clubs (gorgeous card, don’t you think) hit on the river, and I rake it all in.

I don’t feel nearly as bad about this beat – he played his monster so weakly and the pot was so large that it would have been a mistake for me not to take a shot at it. Still, I got it all in with the worst of it … a bad beat is a bad beat.

So I have to give my thanks to the poker deities tonight. They gave me a glimpse of poker heaven – where the good players win even when they temporarily become bad players.
_ _

They say it’s better to be lucky than good.

Those rare times when you get to be both, it’s simply not fair. HEE-HAW!!!

Pure Sickness

I look at my cards. 9 of hearts. 10 of hearts.

The flop.

8 of hearts.
7 of hearts.
6 of hearts.

Straight flush? How do I get paid off?

Turn.

5 of hearts.

River.

4 of hearts.

Now my opponent has straight flush too. All-in.

What you didn't see my 7-card Straight Flush?

Sick!