Move Your Ass, #4

On the bright side, kicking ass at the degenerate challenge so far. But I also sort of managed to completely burn myself out grinding through the WasaPoker bonus way too quickly, as far as putting in ridiculous hours to get it done. So I may chill on the poker a bit and catch up on some assorted work I keep shoving on the back burner.



Went to the tiny local horse track at Manor Downs with ScurvyWife and a friend today, which was lots of fun. ScurvyWife and I finished up +$40 or so, which is a pretty major coup given my past inability to do much other than gleefully set my money afire at the horse track. Normally I chase silly longshots and superfectas but I was mostly good today, trying to pick decent values and sticking to $5 place/show bets. It also helped that we hit on the one quinella box I allowed myself, as well as both of our individual place and show bets that race.



ScurvyWife took her camera and we went down on the rail near the finish line for one race, so she could take a short video of the action. She seemed to find it pretty amusing that she managed to record me saying "Move your ass, #4", but was concerned about putting it on her website/blog, which her pretty damn conservative family reads. And I'm like, "Uhh, he really needed to move his ass. And if your right-wing family can't see that and appreciate the urgency of the situation, screw them."



(I may, in fact, have only said the first sentence and merely thought the second.)



Back to the world of normal people at this time, dreading having to roll into the office on Monday. I'd gotten spoiled with telecommuting on Fridays/Mondays, which is temporarily on hold due to our silly reorg at work. Yeah, I know, it's hard to gripe about having to go to the office five days a week like normal folks but dude, I liked my three day work week. Here's hoping I can grit my teeth and not burn the building down until we get our telecommuting privileges back, after we prove that we can be good, dutiful monkeys.



In other gambling news, yeah, I'm the sucker that bet $50 on Zab Judah last night. Looked like a good bet for about three rounds but that was about it. Stupid boxing.

Read The Full Article:
http://suckout.blogspot.com/2006/04/move-your-ass-4.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Light Weekend and G-Vegas Post Mortem

My first royal flush plus quads and I end up only +$186 for the one $10/20 session Saturday. The royal wasn't a huge pot, raising with AsJs with two callers, flop comes 6hQsTs and I'm raised, Kc comes on turn and I check but get checked behind, then Ks comes on river. I pull the hesitant internet bet and am called by 5d6s. Some big leaks chasing plus QQ vs JJ catching a straight on the river lowered the session, but I'll take the booked win.



Wrap-up from the G-Vegas week:

• Best part of the week was having the Big Guy (my ten-year old) sitting next to me for nine holes on Friday. I slopped it around a good bit for sure, but his enthusiasm and hugs between shots was just so special.
• BadBlood's game was a great time and hopefully the first of many.
• Horseback riding with the Big Guy and All-In (our eight-year old). I used to ride when we would visit our cousins when I was little, but it's something we never see anymore. Will probably do more this summer.
• Monterrey's. Nice.
• Could we and should we live there in G-Vegas? I'm fairly certain that I'll be home-officing. Would a smaller place like G-Vegas be a better lifestyle? Would it be a nice place to continue the company with nothing connecting us to the ATL? Is it healthy to be that near to family? We'll be figuring this out over the next few months.
• Golf vs. poker. I must admit that I enjoy golf more than poker. I don't know which I'm better at. I'm somewhere around a 10-12 handicap in golf, shooting in the low 80's most of the time. I don't know what that correlates to in poker necessarily, maybe about the same in limit, I'm not sure.

I have to go back to the dentist to see if I'll have the completed filling from ten weeks ago or root canal. I'm a big baby anyways, so I'm not looking forward to it in general. I'll let you know what happens Monday PM. Here's Monday's Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon:

• Poker and Liquor: TeamScottSmith and Shep were at the G-Vegas game, and I had a chance to chat with Shep briefly before we settled in. He was previously a chef at a fancy exclusive club in G-Vegas that I'd been to a couple times. It's again one of the things I like about live poker, being able to meet people that I wouldn't normally bump into. These brothers seem like good guys for sure.
• Bobby Bracelet: Playboy Mansion photos, etc. I need to check this out more, so I'll put it on my list to hit. A tragic story of a friend of his posted last week also.
  
  
• A Chick and a Chair: I've been to Joanne's site before, and she's now in Vegas on a trip. A lot of photos of Calgary, which is a bad place for me. I was almost deported from Calgary the first time I traveled there in 1992. Long story, but it was pre-NAFTA and they were threatening to send me back to the US (not necessarily where I flew from).
• yestbay: David is a Texan working away at this game, playing in bar tourneys as well as railbirding blogger tourneys.
  
  
• Poker through the Eyes of an Amateur: Matt has played in recent blogger tourneys, working to maximize his bankroll against those donkey-fish-gay-poker-bloggers (of course not me). GL, Matt.
• Road Warrior: Shark has alot going on for sure, so I'll have to study on him in the future.
  
  

Read The Full Article:
http://ccexplore.blogspot.com/2006/04/light-weekend-and-g-vegas-post-mortem.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Just as

... just as she?s about ready to cut it up, she says, "Wait a minute honey - I?m gonna add it up."

Add it up... add it up... add it up... add it up... add it up... see whatcha got... you gotta add it up...

This beautiful day brought to you courtesy of the Violent Femmes. I'm getting ahead of myself a bit here, so let me go back to the beginning.

I headed out to Empress, as mentioned in my last post. I arrived around 1pm, just in time for a new table to start up. Exxxxxcellent... The game was 5/10 limit holdem. Nothing too exciting happened at the feeder table, and within a half hour or so I was moved to the main game.

The fish were out in full force this afternoon, and no amount of tapping the glass was scaring these little buggers. I was seated in the 10 seat (they play 11 handed at Empress), and the two guys to my left (the 11s and 1s) played every hand. The guy to my right was a regular, and a good player. To his right was an any-ace-or-face guy who liked to gamble it up. The 7 seat was the any-two-suited elderly woman, and to her right was a ginormous man who was very passive (ie. check-call the nuts) but played decent starting hands (VPIP of maybe 25%). The 5 seat was a very serious Mexican guy who rebought... a lot. The 4 and 3 seats were older guys - regulars - who were neither good nor awful players, and the 2 seat was a regular who was decent but prone to tilt, and a bit passive (ie. limps with JJ).

Bring it on, guppies!

I continued to be conscious of my leaks, and avoided making those mistakes. Early on, I caught a couple hands where top pair held up for me, and was up $100 fairly quickly. I lost a bit of it back when my AJ flopped top two pair, and I bet it all the way (UTG). The guy to my left rivered a flush with 3-5 of clubs, a hand which on the flop had only the backdoor flush draw going for it. Nice. Hand. I almost got tilty after that one, but instead took a walk and reminded myself that it would all come back to me in due time.

Then came this gem: if I wasn't on the list already, I am now DEFINITELY going to hell. I limp under the gun with pocket Ten's. 7 people come to an uncoordinated flop of K-10-7. I bet. Call x7. Turn is a second club. I bet. Call x5. River is the third club, and pairs the board with 7's (giving me a full house, ten's full of seven's). I bet. Fold x4, and the 7 seat raises me. I raise her back. She calls. She had flopped two pair, K7, and rivered the smaller boat, seven's full of king's.

Remember who the 7 seat was? Yeah. The elderly woman. AND she was in a wheelchair.

I think popping an old lady in a wheelchair for a river re-raise qualifies me for a one way ticket to hell, don't you? That was after her 9th or 10th rebuy (though she only bought in for $40 per).

Is it getting warm in here?

I digress. My favorite hand of the day was one that I might have folded, had I not been conscious of my leakiness and what exactly defines my personal leaks. I had KQ of hearts in the big blind. Middle position raised, and I called the raise (along with 4 other people). 6 of us saw a flop of 10-7-2, one heart. I checked, and the original raiser bet out. 3 callers (including myself), and 4 of us saw a turn.

Now - I mentioned in an earlier post how one of my leaks was calling to overcard draws on boards that are coordinated against my favor. In this case, I was careful in considering my call. The board had no real coordination for any straight or flush draws, and gave me both backdoor flush and straight draws with my overcards. I discounted the overcards by a couple outs, in case the original raiser had KK, QQ, or AA, but based on the guy doing the raising, I wasn't much afraid of that.

The turn came a 9, giving me the gutshot and the overcards. I didn't make a flush draw, and with everybody still in the hand, I didn't really think my overcards were any good now. However, I was getting more than 10:1 on my money to see a river card, so - bring it on.

The river brought a glorious Jack, giving me the straight, nine through king, with no flush possibilities onboard. I risked missing a bet and went for the check-raise. To my surprise, the fish to my left bet out! Then, the original raiser raised him. I 3-bet it, and the guy to my left folded (???). The original raiser capped it, and I called.

He had J9 sooooted for 2 pair. (Interesting raise preflop?) The nut straight won me a monster.

I just about tripled my $200 buy in by the time I left, proving once again that Sundays are indeed my best day for poker.

I left the casino after only 3 1/2 hours - much shorter than my usual session. But, I'd lost back to back pots at the end there, and decided that if the cards were going to turn cold on me, I would take my profits and run. As I walked outside and headed for the parking lot, the 55 degree weather felt like a glorious heat wave, and it was hard to suppress a grin as I hiked to my car. As I approached the car which I truly adore (it's an 03 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder GT convertible), I grinned even more. I climbed in and rolled down the windows, and headed towards I-80, bopping along to the Violent Femmes and singing way too loudly for my skill level.

It was a good day. :)
Filed Under:

• B&M
• Empress

Read The Full Article:
http://hellaholdem.blogspot.com/2006/04/just-as.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Drip drip drip

Besides my nose, I've discovered a bit of a leak in my play lately. My stats don't show it; my VPIP in PokerTracker is right where I want it, and I've begun concentrating on my post-flop aggression as opposed to obsessing over preflop aggression. It has been working.



BUT...



I'm getting involved in some hands I shouldn't from bad position. The Negreanu favorites have leaked into my favorites (T-8s, 9-7s, low to mid suited connectors), and I'm playing them from early and mid position. Not usually the best plan. I shouldn't even play them from late position if there aren't already a few limpers in the pot. I'm not going to stop playing those hands altogether, as they're my "mix it up" hands (if you've seen me play, I'm a bit rock-like), but I need to be more wise in when I choose to play them. To my credit, I've been very good with counting odds and outs, and only chase viable draws when I have odds to do so with those hands.

However...



Another leak: I'm being too optimistic sometimes in my counting of outs. If there are 2 of a suit onboard, and a bunch of people in the pot, I need to consider the chance that my out of that suit is not really an out. Same with all coordinated boards. I'm not properly discounting my outs based on flop texture, and I think it's leading to some chasing that shouldn't be going on. I've also been lured into chasing overcards - such as, I hold KQs on a board of 2-5-10, and I'll call a small bet to see the turn. Granted, on an uncoordinated board, sometimes I'll have odds to do this (6 outs to top pair/good kicker), BUT... I have to avoid doing this on coordinated boards, and when I am heads-up and don't have appropriate odds to call the small bet.



I've also concluded that I must play a minimum of 3 tables when playing online - preferably 4. Otherwise, I end up surfing the web, or reading a book, or watching TV in between hands, and for some reason, that's when I start chasing and making bad decisions. With 4 tables open, I am required to be completely absorbed in the games I'm playing, and I tend to make better decisions. From now on, when I'm playing poker, I'M PLAYING POKER. End of story.



I'm so excited at how well I played yesterday (ran up $100 profit at 1/2 limit, to boot) that I kind of want to just play online today. However, Empress calls out to me, her wiley ways luring me back to the felt. How lovely it is to shuffle chips, watch people, and marvel at all of the fishy Sunday afternoon goodness that can only be a 5/10, 11-handed game at Empress.



Off I go. Here's to plugging those leaks and playing my best game!

Read The Full Article:
http://hellaholdem.blogspot.com/2006/04/drip-drip-drip.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Gotcha!

So, in fairness, since Felicia has been telling about my Glennie-isms, she wanted to me guest post one where I got her :)



(BTW, I hope you all know that she has a tendency to.. "embellish", shall we say?)



Anyway, we're traveling somewhere, and she loves to snack, so we had some Pringles. The one thing about Pringles, though, is that all the flavor is usually just on one side, and the other is just plain chip. To make sure I get the max flav from each chip, I'll lick the side with the flavor first :D That's what I like. That's just what I do.



For a change, Felicia is driving, and, just as I finished licking one of the chips, she asks me for one. Yup, I gave her the one I just licked :))



Seemed right at the time. You should have seen her face! Hehe.



Glenn

Read The Full Article:
http://felicialee.blogspot.com/2006/04/gotcha.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!

Livin the wet dream

First things first: Katja got "woman of the week" for WomanWeb magazine. While Katja is still on her "girls only" vacation and I am still "home alone" time continues to be lots of fun. Winning 125 BB in the local...

Read The Full Article:
http://50outs.blogs.com/poker/2006/04/livin_the_wet_d.html

Add to del.icio.us   Digg this   Post to Furl   Add to reddit   Add to myYahoo!