Thanks for the Heads Up: No Pun Intended

Match #1 in the best of 3 Tattoo Match between Jamin and Yo Soy.

7:28 Jackie draws first blood.
7:31 Jamin takes down the first showdown of the evening with his queen kicker.
7:33 Blinds are going up.
7:35 Jackie disgustedly shows pocket aces when Jamin folds preflop.
7:38 Blinds up to 75-150.

Jamin: 1250
Jackie: 1750

7:40 Jamin takes down a decent pot when Jackie folds to his reraise.
7:41 First all in of the night but no caller. Jamin claims he had Q-2 of clubs.
7:43 Blinds going up.
7:47 Lots of preflop folding going on.
7:48 Blinds up again. Chip stacks are fairly even still.
7:50 Jamin goes all in and Jackie calls.

Jamin shows Ace-four offsuit and Jackie shows 9-6 of clubs. The board is no help to Jackie and Jamin takes the first match.

Match #2 will be featured later tonight after our HORSE tourney.

This is Why I'm Hot

Shout Out

I came across a great tip today courtesy of Poker on a Mac.

Apparently you can read a lot of information from various poker books at Google. This is a great option for someone who wants to see what they are getting before they go buy a book or for someone like me who normally only gets 1/3rd through a poker book before they get bored.

Here's the link to Poker on a Mac's tip.

Incompetence at Spirit Mountain

Normally when I hear about people acting out of line at a casino, it is followed quickly with comments about how the dealer and casino did not properly handle the situation. This was not the case last night. The only incompetence came from my fellow poker players.

Hand #1:

I look down at Ace-King off under the gun. We are playing limit Hold'em so I pop it up. The guy directly to my left calls. A loose passive chick calls from middle position. A solid but hyper-aggressive player calls on the button and the big blind who is just killing time till his buddy gets knocked out of the tournament also calls.

The flop is K-Q-J with two hearts. Big blind bets out with confidence. This looks like a dangerous board. However, the guy on my left and the girl in middle position could have anything. The hyper-aggressive player would have re-raised preflop if he had two face cards. So all I'm really worried about are players on drawing hands and the big blind. I raise to put pressure on the draws. The guy behind me calls. Middle chick and the aggressive guy fold. The big blind calls.

The turn is a miss. Big blind considers betting but in an obvious sign of weakness he chickens out checks. I toss in a bet and both players call.

The river is the 9 of hearts. It's the worst card in the deck. Big blind may have had a pair and a draw. The guy behind me could have had anything. Big blind checks and I check too. The guy on my left bets. The big blind calls. I take my time with my decision. Is there any way I can fold the hand? Why would big blind just call if he hit a draw? What could the guy behind me have to bet with?

I've probably been thinking for ten seconds when the guy on my left announces that he can't win the hand and tables ace-5 of diamonds. He was just bluffing at the scare card on the river. I still haven't called but he made my decision really easy. I have to be ahead of the big blind. However, before I'm able to place my call, big blind tables his hand too. K-2. Top pair crap kicker. I call and take down the rather large pot. People can be so dumb.

Hand #2:

I would have had the best hand if I had played and could have diffused this entire situation. However, I didn't so here's what went down. It is heads up at the river. The board shows Q-J-3-7-2. There's no possible flush. Once again the guy on my left is involved. The other guy is really loud and aggressive. He's kinda a prick. The guy on my left was on the button and the loud guy was the big blind. Big blind bet out on every street and the guy on my left called him down.

After the final call, the aggressor says "Good call. I only have a pair of threes." He flashes his cards so quickly that I didn't get to see them and then he mucks his hand. The guy on my left didn't know what to do. In his defense, he was a really nice guy but he just didn't know anything about playing poker as was the case here. He had ace-king high and couldn't beat the threes but the other guy mucked. So he just placed his cards down, face up, and looked around for help. The dealer immediately pushes the pot his direction but he doesn't start picking up the chips.

Big blind looks surprised that the chips aren't being picked up right away. Then he looks at his opponents cards and notices for the first time that he mucked the best hand. He blows up. The dealer says that you have to table your cards to win the hand. The guy tells her to fuck off. She calls the floor over who explains the same thing and awards the pot to the ace-king guy. The guy with threes immediately leaves, still complaining and kicks over some dude's cane on the way out. What an ass.

March Madness and NBC Heads Up Poker

I love the holiday season. March and April are the best two months of the year and there is no better way to kick off the festivities than by filing out a bracket for NBC's heads up poker championship. Without further ado, here are my first round picks.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pHPKIFJDO2nzx3K1oMWpWAA

I'll work on getting the full bracket up on GoG over the weekend.

Blogger Pods 2

I’m registered in the free BloggerPods poker tournament Online poker Mac

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.

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.

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.

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!

The Gauntlet has been cast.

Dear Veneno,

"I have a Heads-Up challenge for you ... 2 actually... my blog teammate Jamin lives in LA ... wants to challenge you to a LIVE heads up best of 5 series ... the loser has to get a temporary (henna) tattoo of the other's blog name ... im interested in a best of 5 online for an as yet undetermined prize ..."

Respectfully,

Billy
GRIND OR GAMBLE

_ _

The above is in response to Veneno's open challenge on her blog. Billy and I both decided that enough was enough. :-P

How Could I Play This Differently? #2a

This hand happened a couple days ago and I didn’t know what to think about it. I didn’t know where I played it well and where I played it poorly. My first remark is more of a disclaimer. I didn’t play this hand in a typical fashion and I’m not looking for advice as to how you should play this hand most of the time. Instead I decided to play the hand cautiously because I felt I could get my opponent to commit a lot of chips on the river if she had anything.

Here we go.

I look down at the 3 of clubs and the 5 of diamonds in the big blind. Things are folded around to the small blind who I privately call the bitch who went south with my money but will refer to as the small blind for niceties sake. She just calls and we see the flop.

The flop is the ace of hearts, the two of hearts, and the four of hearts. Sweet I flop the straight on a dangerous board. The small blind checks to me. What should I do?

First, I consider the situation and my opponent. We are playing $1/$2 No Limit Hold’em and the pot is a little less than $4 because of the rake. My opponent started the hand with $90.63 while I started the hand with $150.80. She also has been playing very loose. I would estimate that she was seeing somewhere between 80% and 90% of the flops and it didn’t matter too much if it was raised pre-flopped. She continued to play loose and aggressive after the flop and wasn’t afraid to lose chips attacking perceived weakness. However, she had gotten knocked down to less than $50 in chips and just went on a nice run to get to $90 so she was feeling confident. I felt sure that if she had any sort of hand she would be willing to stick all her chips in the middle as she rode the rush.

So I bet $2. In terms of what I’m holding, it doesn’t mean that much. However, it forces her to give away information. It doesn’t give her great pot odds to hit her flush on the turn. Also, my made straight means I don’t have to worry about her catching two pair or trips on the turn in case she has something like a K-4 with the king of hearts.

What do I expect to happen? I think if she has nothing either she will fold or bluff with a check-raise of around $10. I think if she has the flush she will just call. I think if she has something like a pair and a flush draw or two pair she will raise but not large enough to scare me out of the hand if I have a low over-pair or a pair and a worse flush draw. These bet sizes are a little specific but I felt I had a good read on her betting patterns.

She check-raises for $6 more. What do I do?

Given my previous logic, her hand falls into the good hand and doesn’t want to lose me yet category. My read that if she has anything decent I will be able to get all her chips in the middle fits perfectly with this range of hands. Also, I think if she has two pair or a set or perhaps even an ace with a good kicker, I can wait to see the river and still get her to commit if another flush card doesn’t come.

I decide to play it weakly (aka safely) and see what the turn card is. I just call.

dude, if she's like give up poker and marry me tonight i'd say yes

Trip Down Memory Lane: Part 2 of 2

Finally I get pocket tens again and hit another full house. I make about twenty off of it. Then I hit a straight in the big blind and that gets me up to about $70 total. Things are starting to turn around. This is the longest live poker session I’ve had in forever and I’m dead tired. I’m so tired that I actually doze off during one part of a hand at the table. This is where we meet the hero of my story. The hero is called the zone. I used to hit the zone in track and football and high school periodically. I can’t explain it. I’m not trying to do it. My subconscious just takes control of my body and my mind can’t stop it.

Case in point #1) I have 6-4 in the big blind. It is folded around to the button who just calls. The small blind calls. I check. The flop is 6-7-8. It is checked around. The turn is a 6. It is checked to me. I should bet with trips and draws to a straight and full house right? That’s what I’m thinking but I check. The button bets. Small blind folds. I fold. What the hell am I doing? Why did I just fold that face up? Why did I just say “Nice Straight.”? The button makes a little smile and turns over 9-10.

Case in point #2) I have 8-3 off in late position. It’s raised pre-flop and I am thinking fold but my hand throws in the $4. The flop is K-10-4. The raiser bets out. My hand auto-raises. I’m sitting there going what the hell did you do that for Hand? The guy calls. The turn is a miss and the guy checks. Hand bets $4. The dude shakes his head and folds.

The whole time I was sitting there thinking “What the hell am I doing?” but like I said I was in the zone. It was pretty sick.

Anyways, long story short. I got unstuck and walked out of a 7 hour session +$8. What can I say? I’m a high roller.

The next stop down memory lane is Bodog’s Sunday Guarantee. I have played in it twice previously but both were about a year ago. I didn’t cash in the event. That is disappointing. I didn’t bring my A game either. I probably brought my C+ game. That’s even more disappointing. C+ just isn’t good enough against a field of 1900+. And I only give myself a C+ because I feel I played well after I stuck myself in the position of being a short stack by playing my D game for the first couple hours of the tournament. However, there is a bright spot. I had to find it. Something positive to give myself hope. The first two times I played in this tournament I felt hopelessly over my head. Not so now. I felt like I belonged and that if I played well I would have a chance to take this thing. It gives me a reason to play again. It’s not a $39,000 check that Wells Fargo may or may not accept but it’s something to keep me going.

The last stop down memory lane is a visit from my old nemesis. This nemesis goes by one name and one name only: Top Set of Jacks. It seems like every huge (monetarily) bad beat I take happens with this hand. The most memorable which I previously posted about was when my top set was beat by a runner runner flush in Vegas. Once again, I was playing $1-$2 No Limit. I limped in early position looking for a raise that I could re-raise. However, one person called and the big blind checked so three of us saw the flop. The flop came J-7-4 rainbow. Big blind checked. I checked too because I knew the third player is aggressive. Sure enough he bets the pot. To my surprise the big blind raises. I’m not worried though because I have the best hand. I re-raise him. Once again I am surprised when both players call me. The turn is a 10. There is still no flush draw. Big blind checks and I push all in for roughly the pot. Both players call. Big blind turns over 5-6 and the other dude turns over 3-5. What the hell? A gut-shot and an open ender and they are taking away each other’s outs? Needless to say a 6 hits on the river and the biggest idiot wins a $500 pot. I can’t fault the open-ender too much. By the time he called for the river card he was okay pot odds. Anyways, the nemesis struck again. Next time I’ll just see if the nemesis likes the taste of the muck and save myself $100+.