Saturday, December 13, 2008

Wine and a win

Sat round all day yesterday playing cheap poker and POed since I wasn’t in Vegas, that and it was just a miserable day all around. Poker wasn’t much better. Up until the end of the night it was basically a wash. Win a few bucks here, lose a few there. Was going to play the Donkament but with everyone in Vegas, no one signed up so that killed that idea. While entertaining that idea I was looking at my email and noticed one from the Shark Tour. Now I used to ply games from the Shark Tour years ago when it first started up and it was basically a few freerolls and some $5 buy ins. After awhile I just stopped and they have grown during the time I was away. Lot more events, website with message boards, whole nine yards. Nice setup. Looking at the email I noticed there was a small buy in rebuy on Ultimate Bet at the same time as the Donkament. Since I like to multi table in tourneys to keep me from being bored I figured I would indulge after all these years.

Well as it went, I had a few glasses of wine while playing last night and due to recent circumstances I had throttled my usual consumption of alcohol way down. After all, when you have a weak leg and semi useless arm giving you balance issue it don’t seem too smart to put something in your system where the main effect seems to be to screw up your balance. IOW, I’ve been on the wagon for the last few months due to the stroke and the unaccustomed alcohol combined with red wine’s natural effect of making me sleepy were doing their thing. When I checked and saw only two others registered for the Donkament I decided to pull out. Since I was giving up there and feeling tired I was ready to also pull out of the UB game but decided what the hell. Good decision. Though only a small field, about 20, I decided to play and made a triumphant return to the Shark Tour. Thanks to a friendly deck at the proper times, a few judicious steals and semi bluffs, a couple of good reads and basically two really good guesses on “what the hell, if I’m beat I’m beat” situations I wound up taking it down to add a few bucks to the UB account. Felt good to win against some decent players. Heads up got a bit scary. I went in with a better than a 10-1 chip lead and some good heads up play by my opponent with a bad guess or two combined with a couple of good guesses and bad boards allowed my opponent to bring it back to almost even.

Situation didn’t last long there though as, on the final hand we both got a bit tricky and I was a bit trickier, and luckier. I caught K-Qs in the BB my opponent either just called or min raised. Rather than raise I decided to see what the flop would bring deciding to take it from there so I just called. Flop was A-x-T and I checked. My opponent bet the minimum and I figured it was worth the price to play the gutterball so called. Turn was that beautiful J and I checked again hoping for something other than the min bet. He obliged, I raised and he shoved followed by my call. He had, as I said, been playing tricky, holding A-K, hoping to trap and got unlucky. River added insult to his injury by bringing a K and giving me the victory. Enjoyed the hell out of myself as tired as I was, play was very good. Going to have to start paying more attention to the Shark events. Sorry no one was around for the Donkament however.

Enough boredom. Enjoy Vegas people and think of us little people who couldn’t make it.

1 comment:

Memphis MOJO said...

Are you Wolf's Howl on UB? I'm Memphis-Mojo with a dash between the two names.