It's the Economy, Dummy!

The games at Oceans have been really weak lately. Oceans started a nice feature where they send out a text message when a high limit game starts, like 20/40 or 40/80. Unfortunately, they aren't very consistent about sending out the text message. When Lonnie works, he seems to be pretty good about sending out the text message. So on Wednesday I got a text message in the early evening that a 40/80 game got started. I sent out some messages and it was revealed to me that the game was pretty good. So I went ahead and headed out to the casino. I got there about 8:30pm. There was a single 40/80 with a short list, NO 20/40! It had broken at 7:45pm. I don't think I have ever seen that before. Even the 40/80 broke early around 11:30pm or so that night, so I didn't play that long, and I won the grand total of 16 bucks in that game. I did however go on a heater and won over 1k in the 8/16 game that I played for a couple of hours.

I've had a very good last week, results wise. I played 4 days, 8 different sessions (I consider playing at any level a session), and I won in all 8. Not all were huge wins, but at least I didn't lose in any of them. I'll have to double check my logs, but I don't think I've had a perfect week for quite a while. For the week, I put in a total of 20.75 hours and averaged $200.67 an hour, so pretty damn good. I have been working really hard on playing my A game, all of the time, particularly preflop, and I think that I am starting to play dividends.

Bring the Pain!

So I played in a great 40/80 game last night at Oceans-11. Only a couple of real tough spots and a lot of easy spots. Eventually we got short handed and we played 3-handed for a while.

Mike, Wayne, and me played 40/80 with overs. Since we were all overs, it was actually 40/80/160. Preflop the blinds were still 20 and 40. But the bets on the flop were in 80 dollar units and the turn and river were 160 dollar units. Mike eventually went busto, and had to rebuy. When that happened he said we wanted to take overs off, since he didn't have enough chips to properly play overs. So we did for a little while. I couldn't seem to win a hand. As soon as Mike won some chips we went back to overs I seemed to start winning again.

And then Brenda stepped into the box. Now I'm not superstitious, nor do I believe in bad luck, good luck, luck charms, lucky seats, hot seats, cold seats, good dealers, bad dealers, etc. However whenever Brenda sits in the box, she always seems to deliver the pain to me. Case in point, I'm dealt pocket aces in SB, and 3-bet preflop. Flop comes 643. 2-bets go in 3-ways. Turn is a 3. I lose to Mike's 23o. Very next hand, I have pocket queens. I lose to Mike's A7 suited.

Fortunately, despite these abominations of hands short-handed, granted the A7 wasn't too bad, I still had a good night and booked a 3.5 rack win.

Happy Birthday Me!

I turned 34 today, but I don't look it, feel it, or act it! I do however have the middle aged responsibilities. Wife, two kids, mortgage, yadda, yadda, yadda. Life is good, even though the economy is down, no bonus and no raises at work due to the bad economy, but other than that, all is well with the world outside of poker.

Inside the world of poker, I have basically played break-even poker since the beginning of the year, so that is kind of meh. At least I am not losing, but not winning kinda sucks too.

I played like the worst heads up limit holdem poker player like ever last night in the 40/80 at Oceans-11. He open limped like 95% of his buttons. I don't think he ever won one hand at showdown. Every time we went to showdown, I had him crushed, and all the times I'm sure he had me beat (not very often), I would muck on the flop or turn. Good times.

Stuck and Unstuck

Well, I got it back and plus some. I grinded out a nine hour session last night, getting in for 4 racks and basically never being a winner until like the last hour, where I finally went on a rush and started pounding on the fish and booking a rack and a half win. I knew that I couldn't leave with the game being so damn good, yet somehow I was losing. I hate it when that happens!

Monkey Tilt

Bad for your bankroll, don't do it!

Fortunately, I only lost a rack and 2 stacks, but the damage could have been much worse. I was glad I got out of there when I did last night, otherwise it could have been pretty ugly. Not sure what exactly did it to me last night, but for some reason . . .

I think I need to go back and reread Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker again.

Big Downswing

Lost 109BB in back to back 40/80 sessions. Both were mostly short-handed, mostly 3 and 4 handed, at most six. Not sure if the loss was totally due to my cards, cold-decks, and combination of bad play. In any case I will be much more careful in the future when playing against these particular players.

On a better note, I hopefully hit the bottom of my downswing and will start running well again. I booked a 4 rack win in the 40/80 last night and I am now down a little over 2k for the year in 97 hours of play, so nothing I can't overcome with a string of winning sessions. I pine for the days of when I seemed to run like a god, and couldn't have a losing session despite playing bad. I think the longest win streak I have ever had has been like 10 winning sessions in a row.

Back to the grindstone.

Happy New Year!

Played my first session of 2009 last night. If last night is any indicator of how 2009 is going to be, I'll be a millionaire before July :-)! Let's just say I had a good night, an outlier on the chart, an aberration, an anomaly. One that I hope to make a regular occurrence.

I showed up at the casino at approximately 10:30 pm, yesterday. My wife and I got a baby sitter and we went out for a nice dinner and a movie, and then my wife gave me her blessing to go play some pokers. I got into a short handed 20/40 that was particularly juicy. I played for a little while, and then one of the weaker spots wanted to convert the game to 40/80. I was in the must move game with 3 other players, and the main game had 8 players. As soon as the main game lost another player, one of the players at my table would have to move, the game would become 3-handed and likely break. I told the floor man, that as soon as that happened that I would just leave, but if he made it a 40/80 game I would stick around for a while. I went to the bathroom to let them sort things out, and when I came back, we were coloring up our chips to play 40/80. The weak spot went busto, we played 3-handed for a little while, when farmer Chuck showed up and we played 4-handed for a while. After Chuck went busto, I went home.