Some poker content

Have to start this off with two of the weirdest plays I have seen, both on the same night. In the first instance was playing a tourney on Full Tilt. Guy flopped quads and then proceeded to check them all the way down. In position yet. I can understand checking the flop, maybe even the turn but when your opponent checks the river how do you not throw something out there? Later, on AP, I watched another guy raise his A-A by 4 preflop and then proceed to check them down to two callers. WTF were these guys thinking? How do they think you accumulate chips in these games? Just when you think you’ve seen very bone headed move in the book.

Speaking of bone headed I’ve been playing the low limit 4 card hold em tourneys on Full Tilt lately. Nominally they are supposed to be Omaha games but I can’t call it Omaha when you have raise, reraise, all-in with 4-5 callers preflop. At the showdown you see one guy actually have an Omaha hand worth playing to the raise and everyone else has a pair of somethings. Been getting some small cashes but most nights are like last night where my pot sized bets on the flopped nut straight was called on both flop and turn by someone holding a pair of kings who winds up backdooring a flush. Or the guy who feels his trips are worthy of a repot with a suited board and of course rivers his boat. That was the two Tilt games. The one I play on AP the cards just sucked. Those guys are almost as bad but not quite though almost every hand is raised pre. That game is a turbo however so you eventually have to make a move and hope you catch. Tonight Omaha was a tad better to me. Played a $1 satellite PLO8 to a much bigger game and although I didn’t get the seat I came in second and picked up 20 some bucks, just a few less than the satellite buy in was worth. Couple more people and I’d have had the seat but the cash is cool. My AP bankroll growing a bit which is cool considering I’m still playing with freeroll money.

Speaking of AP and my bankroll it picked up a healthy addition last night playing standard 2 card hold em. Playing the Shark Tour home game on AP last night, $4 buy in .that added another $70 to the bank. I like these games, kind of like the blogger games. Lots of chatter, mix of players and donks, fun in other words. Fact I seem to do well in them don’t hurt. Will admit I got lucky heads up last night. Went in to H2H severely outchipped but caught one of those hands you need to in a situation like this. Holding A-J in the BB the SB raised and I shoved, he called. He had A-7 and when the J hit the flop I was back in the hunt. It helps when you even out the chip stacks head to head. Slows down the bully factor. There were a couple of hands that pissed me off in that game and one I pissed myself of on. Twice I flopped a flush and had someone bet into me on it so rather than push I just smooth called. When the turn paired the board I bet into the check and got called. When the river double paired it and the guy bet out I had to trash the flush. Not once but twice dammit. That sucks. The hand I got angry at myself over was a preflop all in by the button with a call by the SB and since the button was short and it was not quite a 3x raise I called with K-Q. I was involved in a hand on Tilt at the time and basically just checked down with the SB. What I didn’t notice was the 4 clubs, including A, on the board with my K giving me the nuts. If I had seen that I would have thrown out a river bet just to see if I could get a few more chips. At the showdown I noticed the SB had the J of clubs so more than likely would have called a value bet there. I started mentally kicking my arse but luckily those extra chips were needed. Wanna thank Mojo for the railing even though AP doesn’t allow comments from observers at the final.


AP being good to me right now. Playing a $4 sniper, a KO tourney as it were for those who are used to FT terminology, as I write this Have already made a buck over the buy in in KOs and am itm though not deep as of yet. Sitting about middle of the pack right now, maybe slightly better. No matter what I’ve added another couple of bucks to the bank roll. Right now I’m a bit on the tired side so I’m not going to put it past myself to make a stupid mistake. Sooner rather than later. We’ll see.

Update

it wasn't sooner nor was it really a mistake but again I go down before the decent bucks. Went out 20 something when I ran my A-K against a small pair and thought I hit the K on the flop he siked his set. Neither one of us was in great shape, about the same amount approx 10 BB left. With that much left I probably should have shoved his 4x raise but don't think it would have made a difference as he was pretty well committed anyway though in these tourneys you never can be sure. People will sometimes try and hang on to the last chip but you could say I did make a mistake there by not shoving. It's a hole in my game that I recognize but tiredness and habit won out last night.

Well I’m boring myself now and I can barely keep my eyes open as it is so I will thank you for your visit and wish everyone a good day or night or whatever it is when they read this.

Another step

I’m back on the road. Got back behind the wheel this week. Started Monday, driving to a poker game of course. Game was close to home so figured it was a good place to start. Had intended to start over the weekend but the stomach virus put the kibosh on those plans. Since the grip is still a bit weak I had Dad put a knob on the wheel to give me an assist but I find that I do not really need it as much as I thought though it does come in handy every so often. I was going to wait a bit longer, trying to get more strength in the arm and hand, but came to the conclusion that waiting wasn’t really helping. Over most of the rehab the last couple of months I concentrated on doing exercises to build strength but lately had seemed to hit a wall. While I tried using the arm and hand it was more hit or miss than I like to think about. Over the last couple weeks I decided to make a major effort to do things left handed, things I might not even normally do just to push it. Carrying things, opening doors, picking up objects. It’s not easy, especially since I’m a natural righty, but the more I did with it the more I was able to do. I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t strength that was needed but reeducation of the limb also. Hence the driving. Figured the sooner the arm got used to the wheel the faster it would return to form. So far, so good. While driving I try keep my left hand on the wheel as much as possible to retrain it. It seems to be giving the arm and hand a hell of a workout. I’m getting some swelling on the hand that’s affecting the grip somewhat but overall it’s not too bad. The arm itself must be getting a hell of a workout though since it’s tired as hell. Had what I take a good signs the last night and today, got some muscle flex in both the bicep and the forearm, something I hadn’t seen in 5 months. It ain’t consistent yet but I know I saw and felt it. Means I’m still improving.

That last sentence means a lot to me. I was starting to get worried. A lot of reading I had been doing was starting to scare me on the rehab. I was trying to get a timeline on things and checking on the Net and everything that I was reading about rehab was stressing learning to adapt and do things with what was available rather than about recovering use of the affected limb. Now my therapists seemed to concentrate more on the bad arm and had a lot of encouraging words for me but the reading was getting me discouraged. Was the happy talk just encouragement or was it straight talk. As I read deeper though I started to find more recent stuff that helped my mood. It seemed that more recent findings on stroke rehab contradicted the long time accepted principle of adaptation and encouraged the use of the stricken limb to get it working again and even mentioned certain device developed mainly to assist in these tasks. So I started on my reeducating program. Word of advice for anyone who might be rehabbing and reading this, push yourself to reeducate that limb. Do, or try to do, things with the bad limb. Don’t wait for recovery, you have to chase it. There will be frustration along the way, that towel will drop, that switch won’t turn, especially at the beginning. Just remember, most progress in recovery is done in the early months so the sooner you push the better.

BTW, thought I was gonna make Eh-Vegas if I could get behind the wheel. After all it’s only about an 7-8 hour drive, piece of cake. Don’t look like it’s happening. Did not realize exactly how tired the arm would get after just a few days of driving to work and back. By today I could barely keep my arm up and on the wheel. It obviously ain’t makig no 8 hour road trip. Damn.

A stomach virus can be a real pain in the ass

Been awhile but been busy. Had my daughter down for most of last week and just took her home Thursday. It was nice having her around but wasn’t the best time we could have thanks to some kind of stomach virus running rampant through the family. Things started off well, picked her up last Sat, got home in time for dinner, went to the pizza place and played on her Wii for awhile. Still can’t beat the kid. Sunday was my brother’s birthday, the big 50, so we had family in for dinner and cake. He was hoping for Vegas but had to settle for that. As he worked Sunday we spent the morning running around picking up stuff for dinner. There I watched a master con man at work.

Since I’m still not driving we’re riding around with my parents to the various places we need to go. First stop is Target. While sitting at the exit waiting for my mother my daughter gives me the old, “I’m hungry, can I have some popcorn” spiel. As she skipped breakfast to sleep in, and it ain’t candy, I say OK and give her a $5 to go get some. She returns and starts to give me the change and I tell her to keep it. We have a couple more stops to make and I know what’s coming. Sure enough, we get to the next stop, a deli/bakery to pick up rolls and a tomato pie and she’s now thirsty. I look at her and tell her that she has money, what she is asking me for. I go over to the deli counter to pick up a sandwich for lunch and to look for some sopressato to munch n later and as I get in line to pay for it there’s my daughter standing in line with my mother with her drink on the counter with my mother’s stuff. On the way out I ask how come her mom-mom was paying for her drink. “She insisted”, goes my daughter and I leave it at that for the time being. We then head for the dollar store to some things my mother wants and she comes walking out of there carrying a bag. I ask what’s in it and she says streamers and balloons and things and my mother says that she got them so my daughter can decorate the dining room. Hah! My daughter has a thing for balloons and I smell a con job in there somewhere. Final stop is the grocery store to pick up the cake and some other incidentals and my daughter comes walking out of there with a couple of pies in her hands. When she gets in the car she starts munching on them and I ask where they came from. “Mom-mom bought them for me”, is the reply. “You had your own money” I say and my mother goes, I can buy things for my only grand daughter. “It’s a grand mom thing”, comes out of the peanut gallery. What a trip. My daughter pigs out and still has the change from the $5. Even better, I get home from work on Monday and find that one of my aunt’s had come over with her granddaughter and taken them out shopping and my daughter is showing me the new hat, sunglasses and necklace she got. Where did they come from I ask. “Cioci Anna Mae bought them for me”, comes the reply. Why, I ask. “I told you yesterday”, she goes, and “it’s a grand mom thing”. Oh brother, can this kid work a con or what?

Well, the birthday went off well but that was the end of the fun and games for awhile. Monday my brother winds up sick as a dog. On Tuesday the mother is laid low. Wed both my father and nephew are blowing chunks and on Thursday, lucky me. Don’t know about any others at the party but my family got ravaged by some kind of stomach virus. Luckily my brother had recovered enough by Thursday to drive me to get my daughter back to her mother. My daughter said she felt OK (found out from my ex that it hit her Friday) but the last thing I really wanted to do was make that trip. Nothing like making a 5-6 hour trip on limited access road when everything you ate the day before decides it wants to vacate the premises and the cry is “two exits, no waiting”. Well I was able to hang on until the trip was over before my system started serving eviction notices but the next 36 hours were not fun. I hate stomach viruses. It’s a bitch when you don’t know which end should be worshipping at the porcelain altar. Even worse is that wrung out feeling it leaves you with between the not sleeping, not eating and even the not drinking that it causes. Finally crapped out, both figuratively and literally, about 3 this morning and slept till 3 this pm. Was finally able to keep something in the stomach and looks like it’s over though I still feel like someone grabbed me by the ass and drug me thru the knothole backwards. Well, still have a day to rest up before I actually have to do anything so I’m just going to sit here and behave. May play some online poker but my head ain’t really in to it just yet.

Well, now that I’ve bored you all with tales of my illness I’ll leave you with a bit of levity even though I’ll probably get shot if my ex ever reads this. The other night while my daughter and I were sitting here watching the tube I couldn’t find anything on that seemed to interest both of us. Scanning the on demand selections I came across a special on anime. Now my daughter loves her anime and the rating was TV 14 so I figured, why not. The show wasn’t too bad, going thru his development of anime and different themes usually found in it. Well at one point they bring up sex. Now, being a student of things Japanese in my younger days I am fully acquainted with hentai, cartoon pornography, but as the show was rated TV14 I doubted they were going to get into that and while the term was mentioned they didn’t. It wad basically tame, explaining that the Japanese didn’t have our puritanical background concerning sex so that anime was a bit more risqué even when aimes at a younger audience. The next thing you know they show a clip from a show where two school girls are talking to a boy and the next minute on of the girls gets behind the other, starts massaging her breasts and saying, “see, her boobs were always a lot bigger than mine.” My daughter sits up, her eyes get wide and she looks over at me who’s trying my damnedest to look as normal as possible. The next thing you know is we both start cracking up, it was just so unexpected. It was one of those pregnant pause moments where, while both of us could probably handle it in other circumstances the presence of each other threw us both off.

Well, time to relax a bit. Thanks for your perusal

Speaking of Omaha

Been playing O8 cash tables on UB and Tilt the last week or so and doing so-so. Couple nights ago while searching thru the tourney list on Tilt I saw a $5 PLO game so thought I’d give it a try. Either a stroke of genius or the worst thing I could have done depending how you want to look at it. It was the craziest PLO game I had ever played. Now I’m used to having a crazy man or two in the game, ones that raise up preflop with mediocre hands because they have a pair that would be good in a hold ‘em game. but in this game you would have 2-3 guys popping it up pot preflop and 4-5 callers. As far as I’m concerned Omaha is a post flop game and there are damned few hands I play to a raise so I was doing a lot of folding. As it was I tripled up when I caught a straight flush and got paid off but by then it was really too late as there were some fairly large stacks at the table and for he most part I was card dead My chips got whittled down when the few starting hands I was able to call the outrageous bets with didn’t pan out. All in all a fairly quick game. The whole time I was at the table though I prayed like hell for just a couple of hands to pan out because the way these peckerwoods were playing one could chip up easily. The way things went it could be considered, as stated earlier, the worst thing I did.

OTOH, there is that stroke of genius thing. Why? Well it was obvious that most of these guys hadn’t the foggiest about the game. Some were just playing almost every flop, the old hell I got 4 cards so anything is possible strategy. Others seemed like they were playing hold ‘em as not only were pots being raised with any pair of aces, regardless of what the other two cards were but kings and queens were bringing reraises and low to middle pairs were following right along. Occasionally I saw a revealed hand that showed that the person had some idea of what they were doing but not a whole lot. These guys were also chasers and I don’t mean in the sense of someone bets and you have 20 some outs but in the sense they’ll chase the 3 outer. To a pot bet. Hell some would call with top pair and no draw for that matter. In fact I probably could have done much better if I was willing to gamble with these maniacs as I folded a winning hand a number of times but when a guy pots a paired or suited board I have to assume my straight is useless, not that the guy is betting his aces up or trips. So where does the genius thing come in? Well watching this one has to assume that if they are all like this these games are takable with a modicum of luck. I say luck because, in my game at least, my starting hand selection consists of drawing hands and with all that preflop raising I’m going to need for them to hit since just playing is going to put a hit to the stack. Playing these could be profitable if they usually run like this.

So last night I’m looking for a game and I spot a $3 PLO and decide I have to give it a try. Well not quite as bad with the preflop raises but it is very loosey goosey with guys who tend to rate their hands in NLHE terms as opposed to PLO terms. Even better. It enabled me to play the post flop game with out needing the preflop commitment but didn’t really change the pot size at the end. Game started out slow for me but I did pick up a few pots to give me a few chips to weather a bad spell if need be. I didn’t. All of a sudden I started racking. Started catching hi spreads with at least one suited A or K, double suited spreads and hi pairs, double suited and if I didn’t smack the flop on the get go I hit it enough to have a ton of outs. I was so damned hot that after took the chip lead I couldn’t get action. I wasn’t even potting. I’d get a flop with outs but nothing made, hit ½ pot and collect. Got it up to 30K, bogged down a bit, got it up to a bit over 50K and went into the bubble with over double the second place guy. Just gotta love being the huge stack coming up to he bubble. Now I’m not a big believer in trying to steal in Omaha mainly because, preflop you usually can’t do it due to the I got 4 cards syndrome and post flop you got the chasers. But when you are near the bubble and you have that many chips and some shorties at the table you just gotta try. It worked. Didn’t add significantly to the stack but kept me from losing blinds and when the bubble broke I was still up over twice second place. Here’s where things started to slow down. Hole cards were still good and even the flops weren’t bad but the shorties started to suck out on me. I wasn’t losing great amounts at any one time I bled off about 20% of my chips and lost my chip lead. Right before we hit the final however one of the mid stacks thought his trips was worth pushing against my nut straight and I went into the final as chip leader with a healthy lead.

As much as I would like to say the streak kept on and I took the thing down but reality is I finished fourth. About an $80 payout for a $3 investment so I’m not complaining but it should have been better. I gave up almost all my chips to one guy at the final table. I hope he went on to win because when I left he had over ¾ of the chips in play. I just couldn’t beat this guy. While I was getting good hole cards I wasn’t hitting the outs the way I had earlier so started bleeding chips. I then took a big hit from one of the smaller stacks when I flopped nut straight, forced him to go all in and he called it off with J hi flush draw. He hit the river. BTW CK, it was crubs. Three more suckouts and I was gone and by suckout I’m not talking guys calling the pot bet with tons of outs to multiple draws but guys looking that gutshot straight, or two fill the two pair. Even that late they were still playing 4 card hold ‘em.

I could say it was all my fault. While I was still chip leader I caught A-A-x-x with both x’s being hangers. The shorty went all in for about 10K. I figured if he got callers I was going to try and isolate. While I don’t like the just aces with hangers I figured that playing heads up with them against the shorty wasn’t that bad a play. Before it got to me however the second stack made the same move and potted. If just one of those aces had been suited I might have gone to war but there were still 8 at the table, I had a decent stack and I wasn’t comfortable taking on the one guy at the table who could hurt me with nothing more than top pair. To play I would probably had to force him in with a pot bet and as he wasn’t folding much once he was in the pot I wasn’t sure I could do it so I laid it down. Worst move of the night. Both of those guys were playing nothing but naked pairs so the as were good and would have held but to make matters worse I would have filled up. Even better, the guy who bet me off was the guy who I gave most of my chips to. Could have taken him out there and saved myself a lot of grief.

Now that I’ve bored you to death you should be able to drop right off to sleep. Thanks for reading the idle ramblings of a delusional mind.

How could I be him and get caught by such foolishness

Because Riggs did it

For all you Target fans and my phantom readers

I didn't just write this

Omaha, where did I originally learn to play it? Good question, one I really don’t have an answer for. Mojo, you gonna rue the day you asked it. Poker in general I learned to play when I was knee high to the proverbial grasshopper. My family had a a regular Sat night game, nickel and dime, draw, stud, both 5 and 7 card, a few with wild card variations and a few games that resembled Omaha but weren’t quite. Instead of playing with the rest of the kids I sat tableside, watching, and then later filling in when someone went to get a drink or something to eat or to take a whiz. Once in awhile when someone didn’t show I could actually grab a seat but that was rare. It was a big night if someone won $20. When I-went away to college I basically gave up poker for a number of years as I didn’t play there and the home game fell by the wayside except on rare occasions. The opening of casinos in Atlantic City scratched the gambling itch of my family members. They played slots, I played blackjack. Never gave the poker room a thought.

Gave up blackjack after my second trip to Vegas. I was cold in general that trip but one day I wandered into the Mirage and sat down at a $5 table. I was up and down to start but then I went on a streak of 20 straight hands of 19 or better including a couple of blackjacks. Hell of a streak. Even more amazing, I didn’t win a single frikkin hand. Not one. Nada, zip, funjis, squadush. After that I packed it up, walked back to Excalibur, put on my bathing suit, went out to the pool, grabbed a paper and a lounger and told the girl working there to bring me a rum punch and to stop back every 20 minutes. Spent the last two days of my trip in that lounger, got a nasty burn. Have never played blackjack since. (Interesting aside to this is that my brother was out there again about 2 3 years later and ran across the girl from the pool working in one of the casinos. He was talking to her and mentioned that he remembered her from the pool a few years earlier. Her reply was, “oh yeah, you’re the brother of the guy who likes rum.” Guess I made an impression) so since I gave up blackjack I had also given up AC. Slots aren’t my thing except for maybe sticking a $20 in one while waiting around and while I like craps I can’t make a day of it so I just stopped going. Then one day, about a year or so before the poker boom hit I wound up being tricked into a trip to AC. Was told we were going to Cape May for awhile as my mother wanted to see the place and then stop at one of my favorite restaurants in Ocean City for dinner. I figured I could use the day out so I went along. Well we made Cape May but the restaurant in OC was closed, it was off season, and somehow dinner wound up being in a casino in AC. Of course it goes that since we are here … As the rest of the family went off to the slots I wandered around looking for something to do and found the poker room. Said what the hell got a seat at a 2-4 limit table and have been hooked ever since.

At this time poker was dying a slow death, no one was playing, the Borgata hadn’t opened yet and most of the rooms were closing. Eventually I think only the Trop and the Taj had rooms open. Luckily my family was big Taj goers so I had no problem when I went down with them. The room was right there. A little later I started futzing around online. Opened an account on UB and started with the play chips but quickly got bored with the idiot play sine it was only match sticks so I deposited on UB and stared playing micro games. It was probably somewhere around here that I found out about Omaha. Stated playing as a break from HE and found out I enjoyed it. Was helped along by the fact I won $10 bucks on a hi hand jackpot for a K hi straight flush, Hey, I was playing a penny game at the time, $10 was a lot. So that’s probably where I first ran across Omaha. Started with the hi game. Omaha complicated enough without worrying about splits. Still prefer the hi game though no one really plays it. Everyone wants to play O8. They get excited about those half pots. In live games finding an O8 game is tough enough, don’t even think about plain Omaha, at least in AC. Used to always put my name on the list for a game when I saw it but they rarely came together. The Taj had one at 2-4 that used to gather on Fri nights but the regulars locked up their seats and you weren’t getting in. Found out the Borg used to spread one n Wed afternoons at 4-8 with a half kill but that was usually locked up by regulars also. Besides, Wed is a work day. One week on vacation I actually got into the game. As I had gone up to AC from Ocean City to play on a Wed. It was great fun but never got back into it. O8 has since become a more regular game, at least the last couple ties I was at the Borg they had a list but I was there for tourneys and so never found out whether the game was actually going or just an interest list.

So I guess I started playing Omaha online. Of course as a newbie I had the same attitude you still see in a lot of games online, that of, Oh boy, I got 4 cards, I can probably make tons of hands. It wasn’t until much later I learned how to be selective in my starting hands. Basically picked up a lot of advice from the Poker Analysis forum and by playing. The one thing about Omaha and O8 is that the variance can kill you. Add this to the fact that many low limit players play it like they are playing Hold em and it can get expensive if you get cold decked especially in pot limit games. That’s why I prefer limit at low stakes.

OK MM, you sorry you asked that question? Totally bored yet? You really want to talk O8 you should probably talk to Riggs or CK; they seem to be playing a lot of it these days. One day I’ll have to ask you about bridge. Started to learn it while in high school but never stuck with it.


Thanks for stopping by boredom central

Lots of stored up poker

Guess we’ll make this one about some poker. Been trying to write for the last couple days but something, including my own freaking mind, keeps interfering.

We’ll start with last Sat. Simple $50 buy in, .25/.50 NLHE with friends, munchies and beer. My nephew decided to play which helped the transportation problem since I had a ride down but was going to have to rely on the kindness of strangers to get home. By the time the night was over he wishes he hadn’t but we’ll get to that in a moment. Knew about half the players at the table, Game started out decent for me if not great. Took down a few small pots early to put me up a bit and never really went into the red. Most of the pots I took down thru the night were smallish. Only one decent pot and two memorable hands, one the last hand of my night, one connected to the other in a way. Game was fairly straightforward which was a bit surprising given that at least two of the payers I did know aren’t exactly shy about being lagtards at times. Guess this wasn’t one of those times though there was at least one hand between the two where it did show thru. It was one of the biggest pots, and biggest suckout of the night. Our host Doug, who some may remember from Al’s bash, decided to pull one of his Doug moves and do a reraise shove on the flop with air. He got himself called and then proceeded to hit runner, runner for the nut flush. Doug is shitty that way. A similar situation later developed although at least this time the pusher had a hand. Ron shoved with top pair, good kicker and was called by Dave, the victim of Doug’s suckout, who flopped 2 pair. Ron then proceeded to runner, runner the nut flush. If I was Dave I think I would have called it quits right there but he gamely bought back in. A while later he was again involved in another massive suckout but this time he was playing Hoover. Guess he deserved it.

It was all these suckouts that contributed to my nephew’s disgust with the night. He had been playing fairly conservatively up to this point, he later told me his cards sucked all night and he had only a few really playable hands, but this had he called a preflop raise and the shoved on the flop. Think it was a reraise but he might have been acting first. His opponent, Kevin, also known as dogballs, called. Again some of you may remember Kevin from the Bash game. He was the “thinker”. My nephew turned over K-Q suited for two overs and flush draw while Kevin had 8-8. With that name should have known he wasn’t going to release them. Turn and river came up blanks for my nephew; in fact I think the river was an 8, adding insult to injury. Of course my nephew remarks that everyone hits their suckouts that night but him. He buys back in but not much later I hit my one decent pot and sorry to say it’s at his expense. I’m OTB with 9-9 and I raise it up and he’s SB and calls as does another player or two. Flop hits J-9-x, two suited and the nephew bets out $12 and it folds to me. Seeing the straight and flush draws out there, not to mention he’s my nephew and is already down a buy in I jack it up to $36.rather than slow play. He tanks for a bit and then pushes all in which I snap call. He turns up J-9 suited for top 2 and goes down in flames as blanks hit the turn and river. He gives up after that and goes wandering and since he’s driving I play a bit more and give my half hour rather than let him sit around. Besides he has to work at 7 and it’s getting near midnight. Not much went on in that last half hour except I dropped about $20-30 to Dogballs. I’m in the hijack with suited connectors and raise it up and Kevin in BB calls. Fop comes down 3 high cards giving me an open ender and Kevin checks so I put out a pot sized bet on the semi bluff and he calls. Turn is a blank and he checks again and I now know he’s either got a mid pocket pair or maybe paired one of the under cards on the flop and that if he didn’t fold to that flop bet there was no way a second bullet was getting him of them so I need to hit the straight so I check. River another blank, we check down and he’s got the damned 8s again. Oh well. So now it comes to my last hand but Doug, the ma in charge of the bank is dealing, so OK, I tell him I’m cashing out after the next hand. Great timing. Doug’s deal I get 8-6 off and fold. Next hand I get A-Q, raise and get a couple callers. While Doug is getting the bank the flop comes 2-A-2, not bad. Checks to me and I bet the pot, about $20.and it folds to the guy on my right, friend of Doug’s who has been playing fairly good poker all night, manly folding. He looks and says”20, I only got about 30 altogether.” This is where I should have smelled the rat. He then proceeded to go all in, not for $30 but more like $45. Since there is no way I can put him on the deuce unless he played A-2 or 2-2 to the raise I figure he’s got to have the A and I can’t figure the K since he limped. Could have been that since anything is possible but since it was only a bit more than a min raise I call. Then I found out what exactly was possible. He turned up his cards and I’m staring at a 2-3. A 2 fucking 3? WTF. So I don’t catch my A or runner Qs and after leaving $10 for the house I wound up cashing out up about $10 instead of about $60-70. What a freak combination of circumstances. An extra hand that I hadn’t planned to play because the banker was busy, good hole cards, catching the frikkin flop and having someone play a 2-3 to a raise and smacking the flop. Not a good night for the family in terms of luck but at least I came up in the black.


Online I’ve been playing a bit of O8, limit on UB, PL on Tilt. I started off decent the first couple night but the last few have not been kind. In O8 I usually only raise preflop on 3 types of hands, double suited spreads of 9 and up, corner spreads with at least 2 suited and low spreads containing an A. Other than that I’m usually content to play the game post flop. Basically I’m looking to build a pot for the scoop because at low limits a 2 bet in limit or a 3x in PL isn’t really scaring anyone off and all of those hands give great scoop opportunities. Well I’ve been getting a bunch of such hands lately. Problem is they aren’t synced with the flops. When I’m playing hi, lo cards flop, lo and I see the hi ones and somehow when I have the corner it never fails to come either a paired board or mid cards. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig here preflop. Add to this the chips I’m losing due to those characters who don’t seem to recognize the word quarter when all they have is the nut low and insist on reraising with it and all the winning hands I keep getting bet off by people who don’t seem to realize that trips and straights are not power hands on the turn with a paired board and the cash tables are now to the down side.


OTOH, the SnGs are still good to me, usually providing I with my MTT buy ins. Still working on my multi table game. Friday night I was playing a $5 KO tourney when the Donkament started up KOs don’t normally fit my style as I usually try to play to accumulate rather than chip up big. It’s a hole in my game that when I have the big hand I don’t seem to recognize how much my opponent will be willing to call so I probably underlet my hands trying to make sure I get something rather than going for the kill for fear the fish will spit the hook. Was doing reasonable in it had already collected 2 KOs and was in the top 15 in chips. When I got tangled in the screens between the two games, not once but twice, and had Tilt fold me when I probably had a winning hand. Damn mouse pad on this laptop is quirky and I have to stop multi tabling Tilt because their time doesn’t give you much fudge factor to play with. So with that I had to give up the Donkament. The game is more fun to play but the KO had a lot bigger payout. And since I was sitting so well in it I had to concentrate on it. Well I cashed it, though not big. I got my entrance money and a few extra in KO money and went out somewhere in the 20s for about another $20 some. Was sitting in the low teens in chips when 3 bads got me in the space of a few hands. Bad luck, bad read and bad timing. Bad read was when I had A-J and UTG raised pre. I called and 3 low came out and UTG bet. For some reason I put him on a steal and raised thinking the A might be good. He pushed and really didn’t have enough behind him that I could lay it down. He had a pair of tens and my overs didn’t hit. Bad timing came a couple hands later when I had A-4 suited in the hijack. Folded to me and I raised figuring I might have a shot to get the blinds and antes with some outs if called. In his I was dumb because I wasn’t paying attention to stacks and didn’t notice that 2 of the following 3 players had stacks that committed them to all ins if they played and would cost me about double the bet I laid out. Well of course the button goes all in for a bit less than a min raise and I have to call and he has A-J to my A-4. We hit the A but his kicker holds. A couple hands later, down to a lo stack I catch A-K and shove and get called by the big stack. Love it when I see A-J but of course here is where bad luck joined the party. River J put the kibosh on my hopes of making a come back and put those visions of decent cash back in the closet.


Finally, I had intended to write this post yesterday while waiting for the RPT TOC to start. How I qualified I don’t know since I spent the first month of the period in the hospital and my playing time since has been severely limited. but I guessed I did well enough in those I played to get the points to qualify. I thought I was going to get there early with time to kill and I would write this but it seems I misremembered the starting time and got there with only about 30 min to spare so no writing and the tourney gets included in the post instead. Not much to write about with the tourney. I managed to hang around to about 50th before going out. Got my chip stack up early but never really big and basically just futzed around. I have come to the conclusion that to do well in these things one cannot play the steady chip accumulation game. The blind structure after the first couple of levels requires you chip up early. That and the fact that there is always going to be some donkey willing to call off their stack with a draw make it impossible to play poker rather than cards. Twice I tried to make a move in the mid levels and both times the guy in the BB called me down both pre and post flop. It made 6 times total that he called preflop raises on me. He just hated to give up that blind. Later, about halfway thru the tourney and at a blind level where a lot of people start dropping out I saw a woman who, if not the chip leader at that time, was damned close to it, call off half her stack on a flush draw. She originally called two all ins and a call by another big stack with A-5 suited. Not a bad call given the size of her stack. However the after the flop the other big stack pushed all in, something not usually done in these situations unless one has a big hand since you really don’t want to risk keeping the all ins in the tourney with a good size stack . So you usually don’t bet unless you are sure you can take out the other players. She thought for a bit then made the call for somewhere about half the stack. Now half might not sound like it’s that bad a call but we were at a point in the blinds where the basically start doubling so you don’t have much time to recoup if you lose. BTW, she hit the flush on the river. So as I stated you need to be willing to gamble at these things. As for myself I lived and died by the suckout sword. About halfway thru I was down to 3 times the BB with an A-7 suited in EP. Figured it was that hand or the next as I never wait for the blind in that situation so I put it all in and get a caller. Oooppps. He turns A-K and I’m getting ready to call for my ride. A hits the flop but that’s no help. Turn a blank and I look at the dealer and say “I’ll take a 7”. Damned if he doesn’t oblige. That and another double up after I get moved keep me playing for another hour and a half but I push with A-K and get called with A-J and instead of doubling and possibly making the prizes the J on the river kills my tourney. Guess I deserved it. Just to give you n idea of what you play against in these games there was one hand, blinds 50-100 and the little old lady in the BB only has 60 behind. UTG goes all in for 165. Snap call on part of BB right? Nope. Lady shows a 3-4 and folds saying she can’t play that. Lady, in that situation you play atc and pray.


OK, down to the final 7 players in my league game. Ooops, now itm and have taken the chip lead. Time to concentrate. Won’t bore you any longer. Thanks for the visit.

It's harrasment (or is it) but is it sexual?

I had started to write my latest post about some poker since I’ve spent the last couple nights playing O8 and Doug had a home game last Sat but my mind started wandering thru the paths of social issues and social justice and I started asking myself questions. Since I couldn’t come up with any I thought I might ask my devoted readers. Oh alright, it’s probably more like any dumb, unlucky son of a bitch who stumbles across this site but I am still curious as to what people think. I know there are some lawyers out there in blogger land so feel free to chime in.


No we all know there is a lot of obvious sexual harassment out in the world and a lot of not so obvious. Some people have differing opinions as to what constitutes sexual harassment. Boss pressures an underling for a date, or more is harassment but is a coworker just asking another for a date such? Lewd remarks are definitely in the harassment category but is issuing a comment on appearance? As I said there is a grey area where some folks might consider a line being crossed and others not. This however isn’t where my mind was wandering.

The situations my mind was playing with are obviously harassment, the question is, do they come under the heading of sexual harassment? I’m sure most of you have come across these types at work. In a more physical labor situation such as construction or factory work they would probably be construed as jokesters having some fun but is what about an office setting? And should the factory floor be considered any different than an office? You know the type I’m talking about. There’s the typical juvenile who thinks that calling or insinuating someone is gay is the biggest insult they can hand out. They obviously never noticed that a lot of gay people are smart, successful and have a satisfactory sex life. Maybe a higher proportion of gays fall into this category than your average straight folks. Seems like it to me at times. Be that as it may, this character has no originality. They hurl the “gay” epitaph out there adnauseum as if one hadn’t heard it the first time. They purport to want to know how the “boyfriend” is doing or girlfriend in the case of the ladies, and want to now what you and the friend did on your date last night or over the weekend.


This brings us to the second type. They don’t bother with the gay situation. They just want to know all the details of your sex life and aren’t shy about asking or about making up hypothetical situations for you. Sometimes they may be honestly curious, if not tactful or in others the questions are asked in the sprit of implying you don’t have a sex life and that there is something wrong with you. Some members of the previous category use this tactic as a way of implying the target’s sex life is a gay one.

Then there is the character who thinks he’s killing two birds with one stone by picking on two people, either of the same or opposite sex and either saying that he is going to hook them up for a wild night of sex or, by asking them questions imply that they have already hooked up on their own and he’s just trying to solicit the details. You sometimes get one of the victims figuring it’s all in fun and “going along” with the “joke”.

So, as I said, most of you have probably encountered these characters. Is what is going on a joke or is it harassment? If harassment is it sexual harassment? It’s obviously not what is commonly considered sexual harassment, where one person is pressuring another for a sexual relationship but the context of the situation revolves around sexual content. What should be done about such characters? Is this kind of behavior OK in one setting but not others? As I said, my mind sometimes wanders strange paths at times and I wonder what others think. Feel free to share your opinion. Feel free to tell me to fuck off.

I appreciate the time spent listening to me. Thanks for the visit.